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Title: At the library table
Author: Adrian Hoffman Joline
Release date: January 26, 2025 [eBook #75216]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Richard D. Badger, 1909
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Charlene Taylor, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT THE LIBRARY TABLE ***
AT THE
LIBRARY TABLE
BY
ADRIAN HOFFMAN JOLINE
Author of “Meditations of an Autograph Collector” “The Diversions of a
Book Lover” &c.
[Illustration: [Logo]]
BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER
=The Gorham Press=
1910
Copyright, 1909, by A. H. Joline
All Rights Reserved
THE GORHAM PRESS, BOSTON, U. S. A.
PREPARATORY NOTE
Three of the papers in this volume have been privately printed. I have
added, however, some new matter to the sketches of Ainsworth and James;
and it has been suggested to me that those sketches should be published,
although I have some misgivings about them. The other paper I am
reprinting merely to please myself. Two men have confided to me that
they have read it, and possibly two more may be persuaded to do the same
thing.
November, 1909.
CONTENTS
PAGE.
I. At the Library Table 5
II. The Deliberations of a Dofob 31
III. In a Library Corner 45
IV. Of the Old Fashion 67
V. William Harrison Ainsworth 83
VI. George P. R. James 125
AT THE LIBRARY TABLE
Whether there are many who take much interest in books about books is
a matter of doubt. Multitudes of people like to think that they are
fond of books merely as books, and derive great comfort from the
innocent delusion that they delight in the possession of them. A neat
and imposing library is an attractive ornament of the country house as
well as of the city mansion, and if the volumes are bound in a
becoming fashion, by Zaehnsdorf, Rivière, Lortic, or Cobden-Sanderson,
they look well on the shelves and impart to the establishment an air
of dignity and refinement. But it is a portentous question whether the
majority of book-owners ever find occasion or opportunity to inquire
within or to inform themselves about the contents of the tomes which
line the walls of the comfortable library. The toilers who are
absorbed in the drudgery of daily work have little leisure to expend
on the inside of their books, and the merry idlers who devote their
energies to sports, athletic or otherwise, amusements, and the varied
diversions which occupy the minds of the members of our modern
“society”, have still less. My dear friend, the average man, deserving
as he is of admiration and respect, cannot have much interest in books
which are purely bookish, and my dearer friend, the average woman, who
now and again plunges calmly but despairingly into the depths of
“literature”,—combining with others of her kind in so-called reading
clubs, so as to share her afflictions with her fellows—secretly longs
for the sweets of fiction while she pretends to be fond of such stupid
performances as essays and dissertations. In the recesses of her
personality she regards works of that description as bores to be
avoided; and very likely she is not far wrong.
Mind, I am not talking of inhabitants of Boston, Massachusetts. It may
be that my notions are derived wholly from my New York environment. A
New Yorker appears to think that it is an evidence of weakness to allow
any one to find out that books are dear to him, and seems to be as loath
to confess the passion as he would be to proclaim at the club or upon
the house-tops his fond attachment to the lady of his choice. In the
goodly number of years during which I have trodden the pavements and
availed of the facilities of transit afforded by the street-railways of
the city whereof we are justly proud, I do not remember hearing the
subject of books or of things pertaining to books discussed or even
referred to by any of my neighbors. But recently in Boston, while
walking on Boylston Street, I passed two lads who were still in their
later teens, and distinctly heard one of them say, “the Latin derivation
of that word is”—I lost the rest of it. In New York he would have been
uttering something in the vulgar argot used by the youth of our
times,—preserved and fostered by the newspaper—about “de cops” or “de
Giants”, or the superiority of some novel brand of cigarettes. They
would have blushed for shame to be discovered in the possession of any
knowledge of such discreditable matters as “Latin” or “derivations” of
any description. The gospel of “doing things” has been preached to them
so strenuously that they have long since forgotten, if they ever knew,
that there is any virtue in “knowing things”.
Sitting at the library table and letting my eyes wander with affection
to the adjacent shelves, I try to fancy who buys the multitudinous books
of memoirs and reminiscences, of literary, dramatic and political
gossip, which are poured forth so profusely from the English presses.
Now and then I encounter their titles in seductive catalogues and
purchase them at large reductions from the original prices—“published at
£3 10s and marked down to 7s 6d.” We have nothing quite like them in
these United States, or very little, because they do not “pay”, as the
phrase runs. I wonder whether these English books “pay” in England, but
I am inclined to think that they must, for publishers are not usually
actuated by motives of pure philanthropy; they do not print for pleasure
only or for personal gratification in bringing out the screeds of
ambitious authors. I like those English books; their type is large and
legible; the paper has a substantial mellowness; and the simple bindings
are well-fitted to be torn off and replaced by real bindings. They have
the merit of what may be called “skippability”, for the writers are
sadly given to deplorable diffuseness and degenerate frequently into
tediousness for which I love them, as a fellow-sinner. They convey
impressions of abundant leisure and unlimited vocabulary. Does an author
ever become conscious that he is growing tedious? If he does, how he
must revel in the thought that, despite his tediousness, some daring
explorer will toil through his pages, and that in some library at least,
be it that of the British Museum or of our own Congress, his book will
stand triumphantly upon the shelves in the company of Lord Avebury’s One
Hundred.
I do not believe that an ordinary American, at least in these days,
would dream of publishing such a book as “Gossip From Paris”, the
correspondence (1864–1869) of Anthony B. North Peat, which the Kegan
Paul house brought out a few years ago. Some one may say that an
American could not, and I will not deny the charge if it is made. North
Peat, whose name sounds like that of a station on the Grand Trunk
Railway, was not by any means a famous person, but he was a clever and
an observant journalist and there is much of interest in the volume
mingled with much that is of no present interest whatever. One passage
has given me comfort, because it contains something rarely encountered—a
good word for the collector of autographs. Usually when an author is
feeling a little rancor about life generally, he will go far out of his
way to kick an autograph collector. I purr slightly when I quote what
North Peat wrote in September, 1866.
“I know one man in Paris who has an extensive library composed
exclusively of works in one volume and of the same folio; but,
perhaps, among the manifold phases of the collecting mania none is
more excusable than that of gathering autographs.*** To read over the
names and the tariff at which signatures or letters are quoted gives a
most curious insight into the place held in public opinion by the
generals, diplomatists, poets, literary men, composers, and even
criminals whose handwritings are eagerly sought for by amateurs. Last
month the prices ran thus: George Sand, 6f.; Seward, 10f.; Jefferson
Davis, 15f.; Duke of Morny, 4f. 50c.; Michelet, 1f. 75c.; McClellan,
20f.; Verdi, 3f. 50c.; Prévost Paradol, 2f. 50c.; Champfleury, 2f.
Gerard de Nerval is quoted 20f., thanks to a note attached to the
letter, ‘correspondance amoreuse très passionée.’ A copybook of the
King of Rome is quoted 20f. Rénan, the sceptic author of _La Vie de
Jèsus_, keeps up in the market, and goes for 10f. A letter of Henri
Latouche is to be sold for 2f. 50c.; it contains the following curious
passage: ‘The only souvenirs of my literary life to which I look back
with pride are, having edited _André Chénier_ and having deterred
George Sand from devoting her talents to water-colour drawing.’ A
letter of Louis XVI is quoted at 2f. 50c., by which the King grants a
sum of 2400f. (£100) to ‘La Dame Rousseau, cradle-rocker to the
children of France’.”
I have quoted thus at length not only because of my pride in the
compliment to autograph collectors but because the prices mentioned must
bring a pang to the hearts of those who buy now-a-days and pay more than
ten times as much for George Sands, Verdis, and Louis XVIs. I can
imagine the sensations of a dealer of to-day if some innocent should
offer fifty cents for that Louis XVI document—I am confident that it was
not a letter. Mr. North Peat has overlooked the fact, as is common with
those who do not belong to the inner brotherhood, that contents are of
much consequence in establishing the market value of autograph letters,
but his figures are not without significance. Some of us are glad to
observe that even in 1866 McClellan’s autograph “fetched” twice as much
as Seward’s and six times as much as Verdi’s.
Very unlike the reasonable remarks of North Peat is the autographic
deliverance of that once celebrated “educator”, Mr. Horace Mann. This
gem of wisdom, given to me by a Boston friend in a malicious spirit of
kindly generosity, is lying on the library table. It reads thus:—
“I would rather perform one useful act for my fellow men than to be
the possessor of all the autographs in the world.
HORACE MANN.
“West Newton, April 23, ’50.”
It is an excellent specimen of the smug self-satisfaction, the
Chadbandian cant, the affectation of altruism which marked the middle of
the nineteenth century, particularly in the regions lying about West
Newton. Cheap enough withal it seems to be, for as he could never by any
chance become “the possessor of all the autographs in the world”, his
expression of preference signifies nothing whatever. The formula is
simple enough. Select something which sounds noble and unselfish and
then say that you would rather do that thing than to have—all the
diamonds, all the pictures, all the Caxtons, all the gold mines, all the
puppy-dogs and all the tabby-cats in the universe. It is in
contemporaneous vernacular, a safe “bluff”. If he had said that he would
rather perform one useful act for his fellow men than to be the owner of
a hundred shares of Standard Oil, it would have had some meaning, for
one could then measure the precise extent of his devotion to the welfare
of mankind. One may naturally inquire, why not have all the autographs
in the world and do not one but many useful acts for one’s fellow men?
There is no inherent incompatibility between the two ideas.
It may be suggested that the subject of books about books and the
gathering of autographs are not cognate; that they have no relation to
each other; that they are illegally joined together in defiance of the
laws laid down in Day’s Praxis. I knew a dignified New England author,
lawyer and soldier who was accustomed, when assailed by a proposition to
which he did not assent, but which he was too polite to dispute, to
close discussion by the sententious remark, “That indeed”. I never fully
understood precisely what it meant, but it seemed to be conclusive for
there was no more to be said. It was like some of the cryptic utterances
of that model of concise expression, Mr. F’s aunt. But I maintain that
the man who truly covets autographs, covets books likewise for the sake
of the books themselves, irrespective of style or contents. It may be
one of Mr. Crother’s One Hundred Worst Books, but all the more precious
for that very reason. My point is easily demonstrated by a logical
device not uncommonly adopted by those who manufacture our opinions for
us in the public press. The man who—to continue the locution of Mr.
Joseph Surface—does not feel a fondness for books of the bookish sort,
derives no gratification from the ownership of autographs. I am not
referring to the pseudo-collector with his album or to the encourager of
profanity who besets the living great with requests for his signature. I
allude, sir, as General Cyrus Choke said in regard to the British lion,
to him who finds a charm in written words penned by the hand of a
warrior, a statesman, or a scholar. It is a charm that may not be
defined, for when you venture upon a definition it softly and suddenly
vanishes away like the Baker who encountered the Snark that was a Boojum
in the Carrollian fable.
I am not ashamed to acknowledge that there is something about the
exterior of books which appeals to our warmest affections. We love to
sit among them and enjoy the sight of them as many rejoice in the
prospect of lake, valley and mountain. Dear old R. Wilfer in _Our Mutual
Friend_ had one darling wish, to possess at one time a complete new
attire from boots to hat, but he never attained that glorious pinnacle.
The late Sultan of Turkey, thirty years or more ago, had an enthusiasm
for rifles, bought a lot of them at an enormous cost, and constructed
for the storage of these treasures a kind of mausoleum of rifles, a
grand edifice in which the muskets were arranged in serried ranks
radiating from a centre where, upon a throne, the potentate who called
himself Abdul Hamid Khan Sani, Sultan and Sovereign of the Ottoman
Empire, was accustomed to sit in solemn and solitary state while he
gloated over his acquisitions. In like spirit I would exult if I could
have a library room where I could see all the books at once, reviewing
the beloved brigades and cheerfully foregoing the reading of them. To
marshal the regiments of books, the well-uniformed battalions, the heavy
artillery of the folios, the light skirmishers of the duodecimos, would
bring a joy akin to that which the pompous and patriotic soldier, the
vainest of men, Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, used to feel
when, sitting on his charger, he reviewed the valiant little army which
conquered Mexico over sixty years ago. This recalls to me that in the
innocent hours of childhood I supposed that the head which Salome
demanded was brought to King Herod on just such a charger as the General
bestrode according to the veracious picture which hung over the sofa in
the “back parlor”, when I also firmly believed that the baskets in which
the fragments were gathered after the miracle were the large, ordinary
baskets used in our laundry.
Vain as he was, the old General was a good, sturdy warrior, and no one
can read his egotistical memoirs without becoming aware of the fact, in
spite of his enormous self conceit. When King Edward VII visited us as
Prince of Wales in 1860, I saw the royal youth on the parade-ground at
West Point. I remember him well, for as A. Ward observed, “I seldom
forgit a person”. But the General was the man I longed to gaze upon, and
I regret that a facetious uncle easily persuaded me that the gorgeous
drum-major who led the band was the Great Scott himself. The materiality
of this reminiscence lies in the fact that a volume of Scott’s Memoirs
is usually to be found on the library table, a model of what an
autobiography ought not to be. Soldiers in later days learned to write
the story of their battles with more good taste and modesty. Perhaps
General Benjamin F. Butler was an exception, but he was not a soldier,
and his battles were very few; and those of us who loved and honored
McClellan regret the publishing of his “Own Story”, a deed he would
never have countenanced. A man should never be judged by what he writes
to his wife.
It would not be amiss if some fair-minded and competent person would
give us a candid and impartial history of some of the men who have been
dealt with unjustly by the merciless masses in this country. McClellan
is one of these victims, although students of military affairs have
begun to comprehend the truth about him; but the great majority still
believe that he was a timid, dilatory and inefficient commander who
quarrelled with his President without a cause. General Arthur St. Clair,
of revolutionary times, was even a greater sufferer, and he has been so
long dead that his record may be judged calmly. Aaron Burr has had
several defenders, and it is now well established that whatever sins he
may have committed, treason was not one of them. Martin Van Buren,
sorely maligned by partisan historians, has been ably vindicated by
Edward Morse Shepard. James K. Polk, Chief Justice Taney, and Andrew
Johnson also deserve to be relieved from many of the aspersions which
have been plentifully bestowed upon them. Unfortunately there is a
tendency on the part of most men who undertake a work of that character
to become advocates rather than judges, and to impair the influence of
their arguments by an excess of ardor.
Most of us find that as the number of our years increases we are apt to
pass more and more of our time at the library table, within easy reach
of the shelves. I have been charged with believing that books are “the
chief things in life”; I admit that they are not and ought not to be
that, but I see no reason why we should not be allowed to enjoy them as
we would any other innocent pleasure, in due moderation. A good many
young people might as well be accused of believing that sports were the
chief things in human existence; and both in England and in this country
I apprehend that sports engross the attention of the multitude to the
exclusion of such minor things as books; but I find no fault with them
because they choose pleasures different from mine.
Youth is a pleasure in itself, but one may be allowed to have misgivings
as to whether its joys are not in some degree overrated. Certainly our
young people seem to work very hard to get their fun out of life, and
after they have had it they do not appear to be much the better for it.
We often sigh for our lost youth, and if we are lucky enough to be able
to remember so much of our Horace, we whisper to ourselves “_Eheu
fugaces_” and the rest of it, while if we were confronted by a decree
that we must go over it all again, Latin included, we would beg for
mercy, or, if we happened to be lawyers, ask for an adjournment. It is
“a wise dispensation of Providence”—if one may be permitted to refer to
the mandates of Providence in that patronizing way—that the old have
their pleasures too and that the boys and girls are not violating any
congressional or legislative provisions against trusts by having a
monopoly of enjoyment. Most of these pleasures are associated with
books. Talleyrand’s sad, wistless old age is of no moment when compared
with a sad bookless old age.
The accusation that the lover of books cares more for them than he does
about life and its varied problems, is as unjust as the complaint,
preferred—semi-jocosely, it must be owned—by that pertinacious
bibliophile, Irving Browne, that “the book-worm does not care for
nature”. He quotes the animal as saying:
“I feel no need of nature’s flowers,—
Of flowers of rhetoric I have store;
I do not miss the balmy showers—
When books are dry I o’er them pore.
No need that I should take the trouble
To go abroad to walk or ride,
For I can sit at home and double
Quite up with pain from Akenside.”
The punster is such a derelict, such a scoffed-at sinner, that he may
not be taken very seriously. Others than Browne however, have gravely
reproached the devotee of the library for his alleged lack of affection
for the outer world and its beauties. But the man who knows his Gilbert
White of Selborne, and his John Burroughs of the Hudson, cannot be
wholly outside the ranks of nature-lovers. We may be uttering a truism
when we say that as we grow older we come closer to mother earth, and as
we strike off more and more years from our calendar all the sweet things
of earth are nearer to us and the trees, the flowers, the fields, and
the wide expanse of hill, river and valley take on a new meaning. A few
days ago I “took a drive”, if one may avail of that wretched colloquial
form of words, to the hamlet of Bedminster, name suggestive of Axminster
with its carpets and Westminster with its monuments, as far as the site
of the old church which was ruthlessly and needlessly destroyed by
iconoclasts within a year or two. It was a delightful autumn drive, the
joy of it tempered by the abominable automobile which infests our New
Jersey roads with its hoots and stinks and cloudy mantle of dust: and
the bookish associations surely did not detract from the pleasure. There
is a good picture of the church in Melick’s “Story of an Old Farm”, a
book containing a mine of information about a neighborhood filled with
associations of the Revolution. When you pass by the graveyard which
still remains, you cannot help thinking of the young English officer,
wounded and captured at Princeton, who died on the journey to Morristown
and was buried in that field where his monument remains at this day.
Melick’s book is disorderly and needs condensing and arranging, but let
no one tell me that the natural beauty of the country is lessened for me
because I study it. It is one of those most often to be found on the
library table in company with Ludwig Schumacher’s pretty story of the
“Somerset Hills”.
Many of us may recall from our own experience examples of the peace and
contentment, the grace and the dignity of book-lovers who have
understood how to combine their pleasure with the active affairs of
business. I remember affectionately one who had passed beyond the years
of what Elisha Williams called “God Almighty’s statute of limitations”,
and who went to his rest only a few months ago. Elbridge Goss, of
Melrose, was a type of a New England gentleman, a man of business as
well as a lover of literature and of historical pursuits, fond of his
books and autographs, all in a mild, modest and unobtrusive way; a
gentle, admirable man, deserving of esteem and honor. There was no
pretense about him; he had a delightful simplicity, a true catholicity
of sentiment; there was no envy, hatred or malice in his composition.
His “Life of Paul Revere” has long been known favorably, and his other
works, chiefly historical, were no less meritorious. His was a full,
useful and well rounded life, and although his name may not be recorded
among the famous, it will not be forgotten.
Some weeks before his death, he wrote to me thus: “As to your copy of
Coleridge, has it the expunged verse from ‘The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner’? The genial Longfellow once picked up his copy from his
centre-table and read it to me as follows:
‘A gust of wind sterte up behind
And whistled thro’ his bones,
Thro’ the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth
Half whistles and half groans.’
When Coleridge saw it in print, he took his pencil, crossed it off, and
wrote in the margin, ‘To be struck out. S. T. C.’ It did not appear in
subsequent editions.” Coleridge did well to erase it for it is
dangerously near to the ludicrous.
Whether the poet’s later emendations of his published verses are always
improvements is problematical. We have been surfeited of late with
examples of Tennyson’s amendments. He seems never to have been wholly
satisfied with his work. In Buxton Forman’s “Keat’s Poetry and Prose”,
one may perceive that a poet’s changes while sometimes making the lines
smoother, almost invariably weaken the effect. It is so with Byron. The
first thought and image, coming fresh from the brain, are usually more
vigorous and poetic than the sober second-thoughts, and alterations
appear to enfeeble the expression. It is Doctor Johnson’s “wit enough to
keep it sweet” and the “putrefaction” amendment all over again. That, my
friend who loves to ask “Why first editions?” is one of the reasons why.
The reference to Buxton Forman leads me to record an amusing bit of
characteristic English newspaper wisdom. Some years ago in a book about
autographs I ventured to make some remarks concerning Keats and Forman
which drew down upon me the sneers of a London journal, the purport of
which was that my observations were vulgar and peculiarly American.
After I had recovered from the exaltation of spirit arising from being
noticed at all by such an eminent authority, I permitted myself to
indulge in justifiable mirth because it happened that I had stolen those
very remarks from an old number of the London _Athenæum_ in which my
Keats letter had been copied and described: but according to the well
known custom of plagiarists, I had accidentally omitted the quotation
marks. I inferred that an English assertion becomes vulgar only when it
is repeated by a despicable Yankee. Never again will I be guilty of
petit larceny.
This matter of quotations is often a troublesome one. I am sorry now
that I left out those neat little commas. The orator has an unfair
advantage over the writer, because he is not obliged to use them, and in
common justice he should be required to give some sign that the eloquent
sentences he borrows are not his own: he might be compelled to hold up
two fingers. A good, well rounded quotation is a great help when ideas
grow so timid that they refuse to come at your call. I suppose that a
lawyer who is asked to speak before assemblages, on some legal topic,
almost always consults _Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations_, where he finds
little to aid him except that respectable old stand-by, “The seat of the
law is the bosom of God; her voice, the harmony of the world”. It sounds
well and it makes a sonorous finale, besides giving the impression that
the quoter is accustomed to occupy himself with the works of fine old
authors: although it always seemed to me that when applied to what we
call “the law” in these times, it is rather highly colored. A friend who
was an admirer of the sentiment once carefully prepared an “address” to
be delivered before the Maryland Bar Association, and had it printed in
advance, lugging in the famous lines at the close of his peroration. To
his horror, the learned President of the Association, who spoke
immediately before him, and who evidently had a _Bartlett_ of his own,
closed an admirable speech with the same old “seat” and “bosom” story.
There was nothing to be done but to pour it forth again upon the heads
of those helpless Marylanders, on whom it must have had a “punch
brothers” effect; but that man will never trot out the “harmony” yarn
again unless he is sure that he is to have the first chance at it.
Mr. James Ford Rhodes in an entertaining paper about Edward Gibbon,
expresses his belief that the historian of Rome’s decline and fall
thought with Thucydides “My history is an everlasting possession, not a
prize composition which is heard and forgotten”. It is not a
particularly novel observation, but a faded pamphlet lying before me is
a reminder of the fact that “prize compositions”, “prize poems”, and
“poems on occasions” are always much the same as they were in the time
of Thucydides, feeble things, and the wonder is why men go on
encouraging them and why sane people continue to produce them, unless
there is a fond hope that some of them may turn out to be as good as
“The Builders” of Henry Van Dyke or the great Commemoration Ode of James
Russell Lowell. Even the devoted worshipers of the Autocrat must admit
that as his college class drew nearer to the front rank of the Alumni
processions, his reunion-verses grew quite tiresome; but no one could go
on for some seventy years writing anniversary stanzas on the same theme
without degenerating into the commonplace. The pamphlet is a little one
of thirteen pages, entitled “Pompeii, A Poem which obtained the
Chancellor’s Medal at the Cambridge Commencement, July, 1819; by Thomas
Babington Macaulay, of Trinity College.” It was of this juvenile poem
that the boyish author wrote to his father on February 5, 1819: “I have
not, of course, had time to examine with attention all your criticism on
‘Pompeii’. I certainly am much obliged to you for withdrawing so much
time from more important business to correct my expressions. Most of the
remarks which I have examined are perfectly just; but as to the more
momentous charge, the want of a moral, I think it might be a sufficient
defence that, if a subject is given which admits of none, the man who
writes without a moral is scarcely censurable.”[1] Poets, whether young
or old, seldom take kindly to criticism of their lines, but one cannot
help feeling some sympathy with the youthful Thomas in his gentle
rebellion against the unpoetic demand of his somewhat priggish parent
for a “moral”, although the subject of “Pompeii” ought to be far more
fruitful of “morals” than that which ten years later was inflicted upon
Tennyson, whose “Timbuctoo” carried off the prize in 1829. The
Laureate’s successful “piece” is less impressive than Thackeray’s biting
burlesque—not of Tennyson but of everything produced on that absurd
theme—beginning something like this:
“In Africa—a quarter of the world—
Men’s skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled,
And somewhere there, unknown to public view,
A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.”
Tennyson competed because his father wished him to, and “in place of
preparing a new poem he furbished up an old one written in blank verse
instead of the orthodox heroic couplet and sent it in.”[2] Milnes wrote
at the time, “Tennyson’s poem has made quite a sensation; it is
certainly equal to most parts of Milton!” The future Lord Houghton was a
cheerful, genial person, if he _was_ guilty of the most abominable
handwriting I ever encountered, for the celebrated scrawls of James
Payn, Charles Darwin and Horace Greeley are copperplate script in
comparison; and Milnes was only twenty then. I knew quite a number of
Tennysons and Miltons, of the mute, inglorious sort, when I was enjoying
the enthusiasms of that period of life, under the shadow of the
Princeton elms; but somehow their chariots have all been transformed
into motor-cars, although they have avoided the fate of Phaëthon, that
mythological prototype of a chauffeur.
“Pompeii”, naturally enough, is a fair example of the stilted verse
which a bright lad might well have written in 1819. He tells us, among
other interesting details, how
“In vain Vesuvius groans with wrath supprest,
And mutter’d thunder in his burning breast,
Long since the Eagle from that flaming peak
Hath soar’d with screams a safer nest to seek.
Aw’d by th’ infernal beacon’s fitful glare
The howling fox hath left his wonted lair;
Nor dares the browzing goat in vent’rous leap
To spring, as erst, from dizzy steep to steep;”
the moral, which father Zachary failed to detect, being that these
intelligent brutes had much more foresight than mere Man, and had wisely
decided that a volcano in eruption was “no place for them”.
Poor as prize poems may be as poetry, some famous men have not disdained
to enter into the competitions. Lord Selborne’s effort gained for him
the Newdigate prize in 1832, and was deemed worthy of publication in
_Blackwood_. The list of prize winners in the two great Universities
might well be worth studying, even if the poetry came from the machine
and not from inspiration. Byron’s Address on the opening of the new
Drury Lane has not survived, but the “Rejected Addresses”, spontaneous
and _hors concours_, will never be wholly forgotten. Indeed a grave
personage is recorded as saying of them that he did not understand why
they should have been rejected, as some of them were very good.
A book-lover may think that he has an affection for all books, but he
surely must draw the line at law-books, books of theology and medical
treatises. So many people who have a notion that a book is valuable to a
collector merely because it is old, will insist on bringing to me, in
the kindness of their hearts, ancient theological tomes, for example,
which are in fact less desirable than old Directories and not for a
moment to be compared with old Almanacs. I have a friend who is enamored
of school-books and books on mathematics; a mania that has method in it
and I can understand the merit of it better than I can the pursuit of
first editions of Trollope. He has a remarkable collection and has
printed a catalogue in two volumes, not only complete in all details but
a handsome specimen of book-making. He showed me a copy once, and in a
moment of hallucination I thought that he was going to give it to me,
but he carried it away. I am not sure that I would be interested in the
collection, and he cares as little for my autographs as I do for his
arithmetics. I was silly enough to speak of my hobby while he was
fussing with his catalogue and I saw his eyes assume that far-away look
which meant that he heard me and that was all. When any one with feigned
interest says, “I would like so much to see your autographs”, I smile
inwardly, if such a feat is possible, and I know that it is only one of
those polite fictions which go so far towards making life pleasant. Very
few people, especially those with a pet hobby of their own, care a straw
about other people’s collections, except perhaps in the matter of
paintings, which, to use an abominable but familiar phrase, is
“altogether a different proposition”. The other man’s collection seldom
assumes importance until the auctioneer falls heir to it. For collectors
seldom have much sympathy with collectors who occupy different fields
from theirs: indeed I have found more true sympathy between collectors
and non-collectors. Steele in one of the numbers of the _Tatler_ deals
with the mania of collecting and makes much poor fun of one Nicholas
Gimcrack, an entomologist, who spent a fortune in accumulating insects;
but entomologists have their uses and perhaps Gimcrack, if such a person
ever lived, might have retorted that his spiders were as well worth
having as Sir Richard’s unparalleled collection of unpaid bills. There
are useful features of postage-stamp collecting; there are attractions
about the hoards of numismatists; one can see why even game-chickens may
be profitably “collected”; but I fancy that the hobby of a lady of my
acquaintance—the collecting of pianos—might be attended with
inconveniences. I fear that the hapless being who confesses that he is
an autograph collector receives the most general condemnation. I once
had a notion of bringing together what might be called the by-products
of autograph-collecting,—a collection of all the ill-natured and abusive
things ever written or printed about autograph collectors from the
beginning of the world to the present day, but it would probably fill a
book as big as my Boydell Shakespeare, which is so unwieldy that I have
had serious thoughts of hiring the tower of the Metropolitan Life
Building to hold it. Yet how kind some of our busiest and greatest men
have been to the wretches who “write for autographs”; the record of
their long-suffering patience would fill another large volume.
There are other manifestations of the autograph fever almost as
troublesome as the familiar prayer for the signature of the person
addressed; there is, for example, the begging of autographs of other
people which the victim is supposed to possess. Hawthorne, when applied
to in this manner, became quite fierce and intimated with some vigor
that the letters of his friends were valuable to him and not to be
parted with. The venerable Bishop White was more gentle, when beset by
that pioneer of American collectors, Doctor William B. Sprague. There is
a pleasant, old-fashioned dignity about the Bishop’s letter which tempts
me to reproduce it from the original now lying on the library table. It
is a model, and if I ever wrote to men soliciting gifts of that
order—which heaven forbid!—it is just the sort of reply that I would
like to receive. The Bishop’s portraits always make me think of what
Aldrich said of Wordsworth—that he gave him the impression of wanting
milk: with his benign placidity it is no wonder that he lived until his
eighty-ninth year.
“Philad^a, Feb. 12, 1823.
Rev^d & dear Sir:—
I have received your Letter of ye 23d of January, & am disposed to
take Measures for compliance with your Request. I suppose that I can
furnish you with some signatures, which may be embraced in your
design; but, as it will require considerable examination, to
distinguish between interesting Letters of former correspondents, &
others which I can have no particular Reason to retain, I must defer
ye Work, until I have less of pressing Business on my Hands than at
present.
In ye mean Time, I am, respectfully
Your very humble servant,
Wm: White.
Rev^d Wm: B. Sprague,
West Springfield,
Massachusetts.”
The Bishop was doubtless one of the last to transport into the
nineteenth century the use of frequent capitals, the archaic “ye” and
the quaint long “s’s” which are not “f’s” as many believe.
The subject of autographs is to me what King Charles’s head was to Mr.
Dick. That I am not alone in my infirmity is proved by a letter of James
Freeman Clarke, written in 1878, in which he acknowledges the receipt of
a catalogue of a German collection, and says, naively, “Notwithstanding
my professed indifference to any autographs except those of the Apostle
Paul, Alfred, Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther and the like, I
confess that my mouth watered at the sight of so many of them. It was a
pleasure even to read the description and title”. These words, showing
that his indifference was a mere pretense, were written by a serious and
scholarly man, famous in his day as preacher, author and educator, and I
am sure that even his little pretense would soon have been abandoned if
I could only have been honored for a little while with his company at
the library table.
Almost every one finds it hard to understand as he attains the period
when juniors say to him, “Now, at _your_ time of life”—a form of
expression I have come to loathe—that he is really no longer—to use
another wretched locution,—“up to date”. I am beginning to comprehend
the feelings of some of the excellent bewigged old gentlemen of the
seventeen hundreds whose lives lapped over that mysterious one-hundredth
year which is just like any other year, but there is a weird something
about it, indescribable, impossible of definition, which makes it
different. I am certain that those of us who awoke on the morning of the
first day of January in the year of grace 1900, had a consciousness of
passing into a new age, although—not to revive the ancient controversy
but merely to assert the indisputable fact—the new century did not begin
until a year later. How painfully modern Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Coleridge
and Mr. Shelley must have seemed to the men who knew so well their
Crabbe and their Cowper. It has always been my opinion that the
unfortunates who happen to be born exactly in the middle of a century
are taken at an unfair advantage by those who arrive in a century’s
closing years or in its opening days. They grow old-fashioned so much
sooner. In Comyn Carr’s book of reminiscences (published in 1908)—by no
means one of those dull productions about which we were chatting a few
pages back—he says heroically that he is not very gravely discouraged by
occasionally finding himself ranked as a champion of an outworn fashion,
but he groans over the revelation of a “cultivated young writer of the
newer school” that ‘among men of culture Dickens is now never read after
the age of fourteen!’ This cultivated young writer—we must take Mr.
Carr’s word as to his culture, for otherwise one would be likely to
consider him what Lord Dundreary called “wather an ass”—must have been
trying to impose upon the credulous old gentlemen, who frankly owns that
he was born in the misty mid-region of 1849. What pained me most was the
meek and submissive acquiescence of Carr in his relegation to the
category of back numbers at the surely not venerable age of fifty-nine.
As Thomas Bailey Aldrich said the day after his birthday, “It is
unpleasant to be fifty-nine, but it would be unpleasanter not to be,
having got started!” I insist, however, that it is not enough to warrant
the exile of any ordinary person from the realms of contemporaneous
interest. Dickens, Thackeray, Hawthorne, Tennyson, Browning, all great
Victorians, if an American may be reckoned in that class, are not, I
venture to say, as obsolete as the cultivated infant would have us
believe; if they were, there would not be so much said of them and
written of them in this fast aging first decade of the twentieth
century. Returning to Dickens, I prefer to the babe’s prattle of Carr’s
young interlocutor, the dictum of Chesterton, when he tells us “that
Dickens will have a high place in permanent literature there is, I
imagine, no prig surviving to deny.”
In a time so remote that I shrink from mentioning the date precisely, I
overheard a young prig say to the feminine companion whom he was
escorting to her home after listening to a lecture by Charles Sumner,
“he suits the masses”. It was a singularly inept remark as applied to
the stilted and artificial oratory of the pompous Senator; but the fact
that “he suits the masses” may well be cited to warrant the assurance of
the lasting quality of Dickens’ fame. The lesser lights are growing pale
and dim in comparison with his and with that of his illustrious compeer,
who ranks higher perhaps in the estimation of the “cultured” but no
higher in the favor of the general. Bulwer Lytton, Charlotte Bronté,
Trollope, and George Eliot, if we may group together stars of such
varying magnitude, shine more feebly than they did while they were in
the full blaze of their glory. But when one takes from the shelf or from
the library table a volume of Dickens or of Thackeray, he may well
exclaim, as was said of the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, “This is
no book; who touches this, touches a man.”
Many of us still retain an affection for Trollope, even if he was, as
some recent compilers of literary hand-books say, “one of the most
boisterous, tactless and unmetaphysical of writing men”—all the more
precious to me because of his unmetaphysicality. In novels “_à bas_
metaphysics!” If it be true, as these autocratic tyrants of taste aver,
that he “keeps his nose close down, dog-like, to the prosaic texture of
life,” he pursued the game to good purpose. To all lawyers, he must ever
be dear because of his delightful Old Bailey character of Chaffanbrass;
to all the clergy he must be a source of joy for his innumerable
bishops, rectors and curates; and to all physicians a lovable man for
Doctor Thorne. Was he not as much unlike Hawthorne as one novelist may
be unlike another, yet did not Hawthorne say that Trollope’s work
“suited” him? “They precisely suit my taste” wrote the author of the
Scarlet Letter, “solid and substantial, written on the strength of beef,
and through the inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some giant
had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case,
with all its inhabitants going about their daily business and not
suspecting that they were made a show of.” Yet in these days they cannot
be expected to compete with such illuminating representations of real
life as may be found in the pages of—let us say—Elinor Glyn, who
manifestly aspires to be the Aphra Behn of modern literature.
It is some consolation to realize that we commencing patriarchs are able
to get more satisfaction from our comfortable places at the library
table than others get from the seats of the mighty at horse-shows,
bridge tournaments, automobile contests, and golf competitions. An
enthusiastic golfer once confided to me that the most charming adjunct
of his sport was the shandygaff and the high ball which otherwise the
stern decree of the medical man would have denied to him. Let us say it
in all modesty and self-depreciation, we know so much more than is known
by the modern smooth-faced devotee of the safety razor, who freely
permits the unattractive contour of his mouth to betray the
imperfections of his character. I am convinced that if the customary
motor-car fiend would shroud his expression in hirsute concealment he
would appear far less fierce and domineering. If language was given to
us to conceal thought, surely beards were meant to hide brutality. Even
these young people will come in time to the consciousness of their
present ignorance and the realization of the truth that men learn by
experience. Aldrich—not Nelson, the tariff-king, but Thomas, a king of
modern American letters—said “I often feel sorry for actresses who are
always too old to play Juliet by the time they have learned how to do
it. I know how to play Hamlet and Romeo now, but my figure doesn’t fit
the parts.” Sad it is to reflect that our figures are unfitted for the
roles we would so hugely enjoy. Possibly it would be better for us if we
ventured more in the outer world and spent less time at the library
table; but we cannot always bestride the galloping horse or trifle with
the fascinating brassie. It will be only a few years before riders and
golfers alike will meet us in the fields where we will all be reduced to
socialistic uniformity, as I am taught to believe. Then, perhaps, I may
not regret that I yielded, willingly and lovingly, to the temptations of
the library table.
THE DELIBERATIONS OF A DOFOB
In the neighboring city of Chicago they have a club which boasts the
name of “The Dofobs”. It is not a pretty name, but it means much to the
members. Every two or three years it produces a Year Book and it has
printed “The Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne”, a copy of which now
and then appears at the auction block and is sold for a fabulous price.
Aside from such occasional diversions, these people indulge in pure
Dofobery, which is not really as bad as it sounds. It signifies a
peculiar relation towards books and bookish things; not a mania for
books, but a comfortable enjoyment of them; not a craving for them
solely because they happen to be old, or rare, or famous, but a delight
in them and in the associations which cluster about them, in talking
about them, in scribbling about them, in amusing oneself with them. It
does not require much sagacity to read between the letters of the name;
for most people know what “d.f.” stands for, and “d.o.f.” is only a
variation.
A Dofob does not trouble himself much about what others think of him or
of his favorite pursuits, because he has what may be fairly styled the
true Dofobian spirit and lives up to the immortal definition of an
honest man as enunciated by the philosopher Timothy Toodles. The honest
man, according to the _dictum_ of that profound observer, was one who
did not care a small Indian copper coin of trifling value—that is to
say, a dam; although I think the philosopher added some superfluous
words about not caring that for what sort of coat a man wore as long as
his heart was in the right place. This sartorial and physiological
supplement is immaterial, for the truth of the characterization lies in
the primary expression: perhaps the word “continental” prefixed to the
name of the coin would impart to the definition a distinctively American
flavor.
Mr. Growoll in his interesting account of American Book Clubs tells of a
number of these associations, whose laudable purposes are grave, serious
and edifying; wrapped in a mantle of dignity which is most becoming but
which arouses emotions of awe rather than of sympathy. The Dofob is not
as serious as the Grolierite or the Caxtonian. The fact that many of his
fellow-beings look upon him as an individual of imperfect intelligence
because of his inordinate interest in books, he considers to be
equivalent to a patent of nobility; for if he loves a particular book
with a passion transcending all others, he is thereby raised, in his own
estimation, far above the ordinary level of mankind and looks down from
empyrean heights on those who are not sufficiently endowed with
intellect or with intuition to comprehend that the veritable Dofob is
the only person who possesses the power of recognizing at sight the very
best and worthiest of all the books ever printed since the days of Fust
and Gutenberg. With a superb self-appreciation and yet with the greatest
affection and respect for my companions in Dofobishness, I own that in
the depths of my being I consider no individual Dofob to be quite as
praiseworthy, deserving and omniscient as I am. I regard myself as
preeminently a D.O.F. and all that those letters imply, happy in the
contentment which usually results from absolute self conceit. Our chief
pleasure is in being regarded as confirmed and irresponsible cranks,
defying the contumely of the world, hugging to our bosoms our pet
delusions and willing to let other Dofobs hug theirs as closely. I might
however be jealous if any one of them should hug too long and
affectionately my own sweetheart book, for lovely books are as
delightful but often as untrustworthy as lovely women. They are apt to
run off with some millionaire. I am sadly conscious of the fact that the
much prized Davenant folio or my Beaumont and Fletcher would be as happy
in the arms of another as they are in my own. I think that I may as well
abandon the metaphor here and now, for I may be unwittingly led into
something which is described in the catalogues as “curious” or
“facetious”. The man who was arrested for stealing a folio Shakespeare
which he was lugging home after the fashion of Charles Lamb and who
pleaded that it was a joke, was justly reminded by the wise magistrate
that he was carrying the joke too far. (Cf. Joseph Miller’s Reports,
_passim_). There is such a thing as carrying an analogy a little too
far.
Parenthetically, one is moved to inquire why it is that we Dofobs who
write about books are accustomed to adopt a style of labored
facetiousness, for books are serious things. It is like the fashion of
those who relate the history of old New York and who assume the tone of
“Knickerbocker”: or of the delineator of life in the far west who cannot
help imitating Bret Harte as the novelist of adventure in knighthood
days imitates Sir Walter Scott. Books ought to be worthy of pure
Johnsonese, the only dialect of dignity enough to deal with so solemn a
subject.
A Dofob would not assert with offensive pride that the majority of
people in this prosperous country are devoid of a real affection for
books, but he is sorry for some of those who fondly imagine that they
are bookish, occasionally reveal their inmost thoughts about books, and
unconsciously disclose their sad incapacity to understand the essential
nature of book-loving. In the matter of bindings, for example, there is
commonly a lamentable ignorance. A few years ago I fortunately
discovered a book printed in the latter part of the eighteenth century,
produced in New York, and bound in the fine old calf of the period: a
little dilapidated by the ravages of time and the bookseller’s shelves,
but by no means in a state of ruin. That very binding made it cost me a
goodly sum, for the contents were of no general interest; the book
itself, the entity, binding and all, gave it value. I honored that book
and after petting it properly, gladly gave it to a dear old gentleman,
the only man in the city who knew anything about the subject dealt with
in the book. A few weeks later he proudly brought it back to me in order
that I might inscribe a few words on the fly leaf, and he said with
considerable satisfaction, “You see, sir, that I have it neatly
rebound!” And so he had, to my horror. The splendid old calf—I am
referring to the binding—in which a Dofob would have rejoiced greatly,
had been replaced by smug, cheap and modern cloth. Then it was that I
grieved because my vocabulary was limited to the few thousand words
which the devotee of statistics allows to the average man. All the
languages of Mezzofanti could not have done justice to the situation;
but the heroic self-restraint of a Dofob came into play and I suffered
in silence. The honest but misguided friend will never know the full
extent of the crime, and as the book is more to his liking in its
present garb than it was in what he was pleased to call its “shabby”
dress, it would have been needlessly cruel to undeceive him; and, after
all, the matter was beyond remedy.
The kind friend who understands the intricacies of the stock-market and
who tells me much that I care not for, about my garden, where I should
buy my clothes, and what I should have in my library; who enlightens me,
as many of our merciless fellow-beings love to do, about all questions
of religion or of politics; the dear creature who is fond of saying
“Now, what _you_ ought to do is”—whatever in the plentitude of his
self-contentment he ardently believes to be what every one else should
do, because _he_ does it; this one, I say, seldom knows anything about
bindings. “_I_ buy books to read”, he brags, as if one could not read
comfortably a well-bound book. If you mention Tout, or Rivière, or
Hayley, or Zaehnsdorf, to say nothing of Lortic, Prideaux, De Sauty or
Cobden-Sanderson, he stares at you with glassy eyes of indifference and
perhaps he calls your attention to a Barrie “edition de looks”, or to
some of the paralyzing productions which the simple-minded are deluded
into purchasing by the influence of alluring advertisements and
insinuating circulars designed to mislead the ambitious but unwary
buyers of books in the market-place.
I plead guilty to the charge of being a dreary old fool over books, but
chiefly over old books, for they have a settled and permanent character
which no one may impeach. We may be tolerably sure about them; they are
generally what they seem to be, with their broad margins, their solid,
substantial type, and their charming air of dignity. Most of the books
of our day are unworthy of absolute confidence, and their paper, their
binding, and their typography are a source of grief to the judicious.
The man whose literary pabulum is sufficiently supplied by his daily
newspaper may ask why an old book, with aged and decayed covers, is
better than a new one with that outward adornment of gilt which some
publishers delight to lavish upon us. The sagacious Dofob will not
undertake the task of breaking his way into the solid density of such a
mind or of explaining to him the reason, for the game is not worth the
candle. When I was a boy I rashly attempted to convince a likely colored
lad that slavery was right and should never be abolished, but to my
fervid eloquence he invariably responded “Well, I doan’ know ’bout
that”. It was an effective rejoinder and I now believe that he was
fairly entitled to his name of Solomon. The smart individual of these
times is beyond the reach of argument, and all one can do is to say to
him, “Go to your newspaper, buy subscription editions of ‘standard
authors’, fill your shelves with ‘the best sellers’, and be as happy as
you may”.
But notwithstanding what I have just said, it is a favorite fallacy
quite prevalent among the uninitiated that a book must be old in order
to attract the bibliolater. True, as Emily Dickinson, with a magnificent
disregard of rhyme, sings:
“A precious mouldering pleasure ’tis
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore:
A privilege, I think.”
A Dofob, however, does not restrict himself to such dolorous delights as
“mouldering pleasures”, and sees no good reason why he should not be
fascinated by something fresh from a good press as well as by what
writers about books are addicted to calling “musty tomes”. A “tome”, I
believe has come to mean “a large book”, but a Dofob does not
necessarily prize it above a slender duodecimo, any more than he would
prefer a fat friend to a thin one; and while gray hairs may be held
dear, blond locks and jetty curls may be just as winning. A thoughtful
physician once told me that he never read a book that was less than ten
years old; he was not and could never be a Dofob. The rule may be well
enough when applied to fiction, and a rigid observance of it would save
some valuable time; but why should a man living in the earliest quarter
of the last century have delayed for a decade the reading of Shelley’s
“Prometheus Unbound”, or “Rob Roy”, or “The Heart of Midlothian,” or the
two precious volumes of “Charles Lamb’s works”, then given to the world?
A Dofob cannot be persuaded that any book should be neglected because it
is old or condemned merely because it is new. The passion for rare
relics of antiquity is one not difficult to comprehend, but it is not
exclusive of a passion for the best of modern books. Whether the date
upon the title be that of the reign of Elizabeth or of the time of
Victoria or Edward, “a book’s a book for a’ that”.
There is a good deal of sameness in the praises of books by book-lovers.
In his Anthology called “Book Song”, Mr. Gleeson White says: “friends
that never tire, that cannot be scorned or dallied with, is an idea that
recurs constantly”, and in regard to those eulogies of special volumes
with which most of us are familiar, he remarks justly, “at times the
pride of ownership becomes a little irritating and seems deliberately
worded to provoke jealousy”. It is a characteristic of Dofobishness that
the Dofob does not indulge in panegyrics upon his own property, although
he may do a little private bragging among intimates. He may dote upon
the book of another, and borrow it too, giving no credence to the common
delusion that a borrowed book is never returned. That is where he shows
his superiority over the ordinary man. Nor does he glorify his books as
“friends who never tire”. I would not care much for any friend who was
so devoid of human qualities as not to be tiresome now and then. A
companion who was always entertaining would be a cloying sort of person,
and even his perfections would grow wearisome in time. The book has an
advantage over a friend in this, that it may be thrown in a corner, or
thrust in a cabinet, or banished to the back-rows when its allurements
begin to pall, and if it experiences any sense of resentment or
mortification at such a summary dismissal, it gives no outward or
visible signs of dissatisfaction. Moreover books are immensely superior
to human friends for they never “call one up” on the telephone, that
imperious invader of peace and comfort, a modern affliction more
dreadful even than the motor-cycle, that Moloch of the highways, because
it has a wider field of operation. One may have some respect for the
automobile, king of our roads, but for the vulgar, snorting tyrant, the
degradation of a graceful, noiseless bicycle, naught but disgust and
horror. No self-respecting horse can meet it without justifiable
rebellion. I have found it the Juggernaut of New Jersey.
Few comprehend fully the bookishness of a book, its deserving dignity,
and its peculiar sensitiveness. This man will deliberately turn down the
corner of a leaf, and that man will cut the sheets with rude,
iconoclastic finger or ruthlessly bend open the tender volume until its
back is well-nigh broken. There ought to be a constitutional provision
against cruel and unusual punishments of books, for surely they are
fellow-citizens of worth and as much entitled to protection as the red
men of the West who have recently been added to the number of our
masters, or the voluble and dagger-loving emigrant from Italy who comes
to us with droves of his kind and cheerfully stabs his women or his
rivals in our public streets. I shudder when I remember how often I have
beheld the shocking spectacle of a Philistine actually pulling a book
from the shelf by the top, or wetting his fingers as he turned the pages
of a sacred first edition. But it is better not to dwell upon such
harrowing subjects.
However boastful, arrogant and censorious these deliberations may
appear, I protest that I am not quite as conceited as I pretend to be.
The bravado is assumed. I am really humble, conscious of my limitations,
and profoundly deferential towards the experts who are masters of
book-history and are able to “collate”, while I am, by natural
incapacity, utterly unable to share in the collation. I admire these
mighty men afar off, and am devoured by envy of their learning. Let me
however disclose the miserable truth that I find old Dibdin stupid, that
I am dreadfully bored by the tedious catalogues given to us from time to
time by some of our non-Dofobian book clubs, and that in fact I abhor
all catalogues of things which I can never hope to call my own. It may
be a mark of genuine Dofobery to scorn scientific book-description; it
always makes me uneasy and discontented. It affects me much in the same
way as the formal phrases of what the companion of my childhood,
(bookishly speaking) Captain Mayne Reid, used to call “the closet
naturalists”—now known as “nature fakirs”—must affect men who pursue the
tremendous teddy-bear and the bodacious bob-cat in their native wilds. I
am so much in love with my own few books that I would no more dream of
regarding them from the cataloguer’s point of view than I would of
measuring my Dulcinea’s features in order to ascertain whether or not
she comes up to the standard of beauty prescribed by the dull and
pedantic persons who reduce everything to formulas.
Candidly, anything hereinbefore contained to the contrary
notwithstanding, I believe that in our beloved country there are more
enthusiastic lovers of books than may be found in any other land. Yet,
if I am not sadly mistaken, England is the paradise of Dofobs. She ought
to be; she is so much older than we are; she was bookish when we were
busy in building an empire and boasted more bears than books. It makes
my heart palpitate when I glance over the fascinating lists of Sotheby,
Wilkinson and Hodge, and see what the libraries of the well-to-do
Britons disgorge without ostentation,—treasures which make the
book-lover’s soul thrill with the indescribable tremor which only a
long-desired book can bring. I find myself wondering whether it will go
on forever, if the resources of the innumerable “gentleman’s libraries”
in England will be exhausted in our own time at least. I trust not,
although I fear that the insatiable demands of American buyers may
ultimately absorb the supply. I am not by any means an Anglomaniac, for
our English cousins are fast becoming too socialistic for my taste, but
surely their auction-sales are more attractive than ours, and what is
more delectable than one of their best “book shops”? Why cannot we have
such palaces of joy as those which may be found on the Strand, or in
Piccadilly, or in the regions adjacent to the British Museum, or indeed
in other places than London, where a Dofob may discover almost
everything necessary to sate his appetite. I am affectionately
reminiscent of Maggs’s. I am not trying to advertise Maggs’s; the name
is not beautiful, euphonious, or seductive; it reminds one of the
nomenclature of Dickens. But the shop is a dream, the managers are
tactful and considerate, and there one may browse undisturbed and
uninterrupted, with no sorrow but that which comes from the fact that
while the prices are low when compared with ours, the purse of a
plutocrat could never suffice to give us all the jewels preserved in the
coffers of those polite and kindly vendors of dainties. I do not know
what may be in Chicago, but in New York we have scarcely anything as
alluring or as charming. Why are we denied such luxuries? When I am
daring enough to enter the precincts of a New York “book-store”—it is
never a “shop”—I approach the majestic salesman with fear and trembling,
having already left my pocket-book with the gentle cabman. Does the
nobleman lead me smilingly to a quiet recess, place a chair and a table
at my disposal, and with tender solicitude submit to me the latest
acquisition, the first edition, the extra-illustrated treasure, the
autograph letter or manuscript which has just “come in” and has not yet
been advertised or catalogued? By no means; he regards me with the same
contemptuous hauteur which is displayed by the clerk of a popular hotel
when I register my name and plead for “a room with bath”. I depart from
the chilly halls feeling that I ought to be ashamed for having disturbed
the lofty serenity of the supercilious magnate. They do these things
better in France and in England: better in almost every other country as
those who have had experience well know. They are content, these
foreigners, with moderate profits. It is true that an American
bookseller is obliged to pay higher rent and is subjected to heavier
expenses because of the extravagant exactions of almost every one in
this free land of ours—except, of course, the modest and diffident
lawyers. Patriotism does not require one to acquiesce uncomplainingly in
the exorbitant prices of our own book dealers. Let me however be fair
and qualify my sweeping assertions: I know a few very decent
book-vendors in New York and in Boston who want to be reasonable and are
“not so bad”. I am grateful to them for many favors. In the words of
Heron-Allen’s “Ballade of Olde Books”,
“I’ve haunted Brentano and John Delay,
And toyed with their stories of France so free,
At Putnam’s and Scribner’s from day to day
I’ve flirted with Saltus and Roe (E. P.):
But weary of all, I have turned with glee
To Bouton’s murk shelves with their wealth untold,
Yearning for Quaritch in Piccadilly
Where the second-hand books are bought and sold.”
This would be more accurate if some of the names were changed. I plead
not guilty to Saltus and Roe, and I may perhaps be forgiven for not
remembering at the moment who John Delay was or is.
Why do we allow such sordid considerations as prices to influence us in
any way? Most of us Dofobs are devoid of a surplus of funds, but we
value our possessions all the more because we may have had to make some
sacrifices to secure them. If we were indifferent about cost, we would
lose much of the pleasure of ownership. I well remember the time when I
abstained from luncheon in order to buy a second-hand, shabby volume at
Leggatt’s. I do not have to deny now my appetite for midday food, but
whenever I come upon one of those old books in my peregrinations about
the library, I have the pleasant little throb of the heart which brings
back to me the ardor of youth, and those cheap treasures take to
themselves a halo which transcends the brilliancy of even an illuminated
missal or a noble Caxton. Those long cherished companions speak to me in
eloquence scarcely to be comprehended by one who is not a Dofob to the
core.
We are grateful to the kindly dealers who send to us catalogues full of
temptations for those who are so ready to be tempted. With James Freeman
Clarke already quoted, we repeat that “it is a pleasure even to read the
description and the title”, and often like Eugene Field of blessed
memory we mark the items which are too bewitching to resist as if we
were going to acquire them and then either forget about them or resolve
that our purse cannot afford the luxury, afterwards confident that we
bought them and searching for them in vain in the entrancing regions of
the book-cases.
Then what an insane joy there is in arranging the volumes, sometimes
lamenting because the shelves are not exactly adapted to the association
of fellow-books so that we fear that they will not be as friendly one to
another as we would like to have them. If any one needs occupation for a
rainy day, what more agreeable work may he find than that of assorting
the books, so that not only will their sky-line be less jagged than that
of lower New York, but that their contents may be of a nature to make
them as sociable as they ought to be: while it must be borne in mind
that the colors of their bindings should not be too glaringly
inharmonious. And after all have been arranged, it is the joy of the
genuine Dofob to arrange them all over again. There are times when the
shelves overflow, and then comes the question of a new book-case and a
still graver question as to where it shall be placed, leading to a
further question about the enlargement of the house, which should be
constructed on the Globe-Wernicke principle, for the main use of a house
is to store books in it.
But there comes to every Dofob the thought that it will not be long
before he must leave them. What is to become of them? No one will ever
worship them as he has done all his life. They are interwoven with his
existence and it is pitiful to think that he must be parted from them. I
fear that in the world of the hereafter there may be no books, but it is
not easy for me to imagine a heaven where books are not. I do not mean
to be irreverent and I do not know whether I may attain even a bookless
heaven, but I am unorthodox enough to own that I might prefer a bookish
Hades.
IN A LIBRARY CORNER
I hate an orderly library. It has a formal air which repels familiarity;
one cannot ramble in it, stroll aimlessly about it, come upon unexpected
“finds”, or pluck a blossom here and there without fear of consequences.
It is as devoid of charm as the stiff, uncompromising gardens of the
eighteenth century which arouse ill temper by their arrogant
right-angles. The card-catalogue itself is an encourager of angry
passions; and glass doors are odiously inhospitable. What care I if dust
accumulate? It is a blessed privilege to brush it off. What need have I
of a card-index, when in hunting for what I want I may discover
treasures hitherto lost to memory? When I encounter glass doors, those
grudging guardians of the sanctuary, I long to fracture the panes with
one mighty kick, for they are offensive with their _noli me tangere_
exclusiveness. I want my books where I need not open a door to get at
them or climb a ladder to reach them.
Not that I am averse to a certain method of arrangement, or to a
well-defined color-scheme in the matter of bindings. No one wishes to
put a tiny 16mo by the side of a towering quarto, or to fill the lower
shelves with duodecimos and the upper ones with folios; nor does any one
desire to fret his eyes by massing together colors which scream at each
other and disturb the peace. I would not have Petroleum V. Nasby or the
Orpheus C. Kerr Papers elbowing the “voluminous pages” of Gibbon or the
serious dignity of Grote; but Boswell and Trevelyan need not be
aggrieved by a close proximity to such inferior productions as
Collingwood’s _Life of Lewis Carroll_ or Hallam Tennyson’s disappointing
Memoir of his illustrious father. “There are few duller biographies”,
says Augustine Birrell, “than those written by wives, secretaries, or
other domesticated creatures. Neither the purr of the hearth-rug nor the
unemancipated admiration of the private secretary should be allowed to
dominate a biography”. True, Trevelyan was Macaulay’s nephew, but he was
barely of age when his uncle died, and had not yet been wholly
“domesticated”.
It is almost needless to say that these wise utterances are not intended
to apply to public libraries, those mausoleums of books, where one may
“consult volumes” but never really read them; for how is it possible for
anybody who is not endowed with a power of phenomenal self-absorption,
to forget that the custodians, although unseen, are perpetually on
guard, while the enforced silence of the place is a constant temptation,
well-nigh irresistible, to arouse the echoes with defiant yells. In one
of those halls of grandeur miscalled “reading rooms”, I am always
reminded of “study hour” in school, and am in momentary expectation of
hearing some one ask of the grim presiding functionary the old, familiar
question, “Please, sir, may I go out?”
In every true library, there are sacred corners. In their cosy precincts
you do not usually come upon the dress-parade volumes, imposing in their
garb of polished calf or of velvety morocco, addressing you in solemn
accents, reminding you of the aristocracy of their long descent,
forbidding you to disturb them by casual pullings-down or thoughtless
turning of their chilly pages. Their glacial aspect appals the ardent
lover and freezes the founts of affection. These are seldom to be found
in corners; they demand the showy places on the shelves where they may
intimidate the beholder and turn him away abashed at their impressive
array. They are as much shut off from the admirer’s fond touch as are
the alleged crown-jewels in the Tower or the priceless manuscripts in
the British Museum. My ideal library is composed chiefly of corners
where one may linger in morning-jacket and slippers, and not be
conscious of the need of attiring himself in the evening garments which
conventionality decrees to be necessary for those who take part in
stately functions. I often long to disarrange the symmetry of some
“gentleman’s library”, just as when reading Johnson, or Gibbon, or
Hamilton W. Mabie I have a fiendish propensity to split an infinitive or
to end a sentence with a preposition.
Now if I were bent on making a foolish pretense of what is known as
“good taste”, which I have no right or disposition to boast of, I would
assert untruthfully, but no one could disprove it, that in these snug
retreats I feast upon “The Proficience and Advancement of Learning”, or
Evelyn’s Diary, or Pepys, or Sir Thomas Browne, or Elia. Every one who
affects a literary “pose” is given to praising Elia; and there are few
more precious books in the world. Yet if those immortal essays should
appear to-day for the first time, they would have only what the
newspapers style a “limited circulation”. A dinosaurus would have just
as much popularity in the annual Horse Show, for they belong to the era
of the stage-coach when people did not “do the Lake Country” in an
escorted tour on a Hodgman car, and the Venetian gondola had not been
crowded out of the Grand Canal by snorting motor-boats; when there were
great men; poets, novelists, essayists, historians and statesmen. To the
question, “Why have we no great men?” Mr. Chesterton rejects the answer
that it is because of “advertisement, cigarette smoking, the decay of
religion, the decay of agriculture, too much humanitarianism, too little
humanitarianism, the fact that people are educated insufficiently, the
fact that they are educated at all”. But his own answer, “We have no
great men chiefly because we are always looking for them”, may be smart,
but it is not convincing. The fact is that we do not have great men
chiefly because we think we have no need of them.
The craze for equality has so possessed our minds that if one of us is
presumptuous enough to thrust his head above the struggling mob that
surrounds him, we set to work with one accord to pull him down, for who
is he, forsooth, that he should assume to know more than we do or to be
more than we are? In the days when the ignorant and the mediocre had not
come to understand the might of their power, there were leaders; but
however greatly they may need wise leaders now, they have become the
leaders themselves and the ambitious are only astute and adroit
followers. The state of the times is reflected in our literature; and as
every man has arrived at the belief that he is an infallible judge upon
questions of politics and of government, so he fancies that he is
divinely endowed as a judge of all things literary. Thus it has come to
pass that the guerdon of fame is bestowed, not upon the best book but
upon the best seller. It has also come to pass that the only individual
who is allowed to dominate his race is the editor of a newspaper. Great
is the power of humbug; there is but one god, which is “the people”,—and
the editor is his prophet. Every one from the cardinal to the curate,
from the President to the postmaster, trembles before the majesty of a
malicious monkey who by some mischance has contrived to get hold of a
printing-press; for his penny compendium of slander and of crimes
reaches the sons of manual toil who go to their work in the early
morning, filled with envy of the well-to-do, grumbling at the fate which
condemns them to labor while men whom they regard as no better than
themselves enjoy sports and luxuries denied to them, ready to drink in
the flattery addressed to them and rejoicing in the bitterest of
assaults upon wealth and vested interests. No one is great to them
except the crafty demagogue who ministers to their self-importance.
The mild and gentle Thomas Bailey Aldrich said in a moment of unusual
irritation: “American newspapers are fearfully and wonderfully made. If
about twenty thousand of them could be suppressed, the average decency
of the world would be increased from twenty-five to fifty per cent.”
This is no new cry; but it does not avail much to us soured old
sufferers from their multitudinous lies and libels, to retire to our
library corners and scold at them. In spite of our complaints, we think
it a hardship if we cannot peer at them through our glasses over the
matutinal coffee and enjoy their lies—about other people.
Great is the power of humbug, I repeat, with an air of imparting a new
and important truth. I have just been reading—in a corner—a sketch of
James Kent by Mr. James Brown Scott. He says of Charles Sumner that he,
said Sumner, was “an ornament of the bar as he later was an ornament of
the Senate”. But Sumner was not a real lawyer; he was not fitted for the
conflicts of the bar. There is nothing like the battles of the law to
take the vanity and pomposity out of a man. I do not wish to be
understood as saying that there are no vain or pompous members of the
legal profession, but they seldom win much respect or distinction. I
doubt even if Sumner can justly be called “an ornament of the Senate”.
He never _did_ anything, he never originated anything; he only “orated”,
so that in a sense he may have been ornamental; surely not useful. His
speeches were carefully prepared and rehearsed; he was weak in debate.
If any one cares to waste time upon the speech for which he was caned by
Preston Brooks, he will be amazed at the scurrility of the language and
the indecency of the vituperation. It is hard to believe that a man of
his stalwart frame could be permanently injured by the blows of a light
stick such as the one which Brooks used that day. The assault was a
wicked performance, but Washington laughed in its sleeve over the outcry
which the castigated one made about it. In those days the anti-slavery
speakers were hunting for martyrdom, and Sumner made the most of his
beating. In course of time, he was supplanted, as a martyr, by the
deified horse-thief and murderer, John Brown. When the Senator assumed
to dictate to Grant, he found his well-merited fate, and he has passed
into oblivion. His useful, modest, hard-working colleague, Henry Wilson,
as earnest and enthusiastic an opponent of slavery as Sumner was, is far
better entitled to be called “an ornament of the Senate” than his more
cultured but less effective associate.
Down in a quiet corner hides an humble cloth-clad little book which
scarcely any one cares for except myself, and its interest to me comes
less from its mild satire than from my affection for its author.
“Salander and the Dragon, by Frederick William Shelton, M.A. Rector of
St. John’s Church, Huntington, N. Y.”, with its Goodman, its Duke
d’Envy, its Gudneiburud, Drownthort, and all the other parodies of
Bunyan’s nomenclature, makes dull reading for the present generation,
and it may be that my liking for it is only a form of perverse vanity.
As I glance over the faded leaves, they bring before me the gentle,
scholarly Shelton, who had been my father’s class-mate at
Princeton—delightfully old-fashioned in the time when I had a boyish
acquaintance with him. He was quite like his books, small, decorous,
with a gleam of the humorous mingled with reflective sadness. I can
fancy his shudder of dismay over most of our present-day sensational,
highly-colored “literature” falsely so-called. I never knew more than
two persons who had ever read “Salander”. But it aroused my indignation
a year or two ago to read in a flippant review published in one of our
magazines, a contemptuous reference to Doctor Shelton, whose nature and
whose style were too sweet and pure for the taste of the pert, feminine
scribbler.
Near the unoffending duodecimo is the well-beloved “Squibob Papers”, not
as good as the immortal “Phoenixiana” which George Derby’s friends
induced him to publish in the middle fifties, a famous precursor of our
later and more elaborate “books of American humor”. My copy is not of
the issue of 1859, but one which was printed by Carleton in 1865, after
the author’s death. As most people know, poor Derby, who died at
thirty-eight, was an officer of the Corps of Topographical Engineers,
or, in his own words, “a Topographical Engineer who constantly wears a
citizen’s dress, for fear some one will find it out.” Comparing them
with the Engineers, he remarked that “the Corps of Topographical
Engineers was only formed in 1838, while the Engineers date from the
time when Noah, sick of the sea, landed and threw up a field-work on
Mount Ararat”. It was an odd training school for a humorist, but Derby
did not need much training.
His “great railroad project” of “The Belvidere and Behrings’ Straits
Union Railroad”, with its branches to the North Pole “to get the ice
trade”, to Kamchatka “to secure the seal trade for the Calcutta market”,
and to Cochin China “to secure the fowl trade”, reads very much like the
prospectus of an exceedingly modern enterprise. His “Sewing Machine with
Feline Attachment”, by which a cat, induced by a suspended mouse,
operates the mechanism, is an ingenious device, and he records that he
“has seen one cat (a tortoise-shell) of so ardent and unwearying
disposition, that she made eighteen pairs of men’s pantaloons, two dozen
shirts, and seven stitched shirts, before she lay down exhausted”. The
Fourth of July Oration, commemorating our forefathers who “planted corn
and built houses, killed the Indians, hung the Quakers and Baptists,
burned the witches and were very happy and comfortable indeed, and
fought the battle named ‘the battle of Bunker Hill’, on account of its
not having occurred on a hill of that name”, should never be forgotten
if only for the story of the boy who picked his nose on the Fourth of
July because it was Independence Day. Not very refined fun, you may say,
but food for laughter, and with no taint of a peculiar kind of vulgarity
which mars the fun of certain more classic fooling.
Among the tenants of the corner is a cheap and shabby American edition,
in two fat, awkward volumes, of my pet novel, “Ten Thousand a Year”,
much pawed over and alas! dog’s eared; while the first English edition,
in three volumes, (Blackwood, 1841, “original cloth”), is seldom aroused
from its serene repose on a conspicuous shelf. Ten thousand pounds a
year then stood for colossal wealth; and when my boyish mind first
applied itself to the study of the fitful fortunes of Tittlebat
Titmouse, that income still appeared to represent riches beyond the
dreams of avarice. When I began the study of law, I was one day toiling
over Kent’s Commentaries, and the senior partner, bluff and kindly Aaron
J. Vanderpoel, came upon me suddenly, crying out “What are you reading,
young man?” I confessed, with the conscious pride which one feels when
detected in doing something supposed to be virtuous, that I was reading
Kent. “Don’t read Kent!” he shouted, “read ‘Ten Thousand a Year’”.
Perhaps his advice was good; at all events I took it, and I did not tell
him that I knew it already from cover to cover.
It is the best “lawyer’s novel” ever written, even if it is full of
doubtful law. For the hundredth time you will follow with eager interest
the progress of the great suit of _Doe ex dem. Titmouse vs. Jolter_, and
await in breathless suspense the momentous decision of Lord Widdrington
upon the question of the admission of that famous deed with the erasure,
however well you may know that he is sure to exclude it; a ruling
undeniably wrong, but if his lordship had held otherwise the story must
have come to a sudden and ignominious close at the end of the first
volume. This would have been a calamity, although the Aubreys and their
woes become quite fatiguing and Oily Gammon turns out to be “more kinds
of a villain” than is to be met with in actual life. He deserved a
different fate; he ought to have married Kate Aubrey, and lived
unhappily ever afterwards. I refuse to believe that he was guilty of the
meaner crimes attributed to him in the account of his dying moments; but
Warren probably thought that as Gammon had to die, he might as well
depart this life in the odor of perfect villainy. He, Gammon, was a
liar, thief, perjurer, forger—almost a murderer; but his crowning act of
infamy was to devise an elaborate method of suicide to defraud a
life-insurance company. If he had lived a little longer, he might have
been found giving a rebate or riding on a Third Avenue car without
paying his fare.
Warren had about all the worst faults chargeable against a novelist, yet
the book has life. It may not be found in the drawing room or on my
lady’s table, or in the languid hands of those who continually do
recline on the sunny side of transatlantic steamers, but it endures. The
account of the election in which, to my secret satisfaction, Titmouse
defeats Mr. Delamere, is far better than Dickens’s attempt to describe
the Eatanswill contest and fully as good as Trollope’s effort in the
same field. Mr. Delamere, one of those impeccable figureheads created
chiefly for the purpose of providing a husband for the equally
impeccable young female angel who is so transcendently pure that she
blushes deeply at the mere thought of a lover, oblivious of the fact
that her adored parents must at some time have surrendered shamelessly
to the sway of Cupid, is almost too noble for words; and as for Charles
Aubrey, did not Thackeray pronounce him to be the greatest of all snobs?
But he is such a precious snob.
Yet after we leave the nobility and gentry we find an abundance of
humanity in the numerous “characters” who throng the pages, particularly
among the lawyers. They would be just as well off without their
impossible names which give them an air of unreality. But at that time
it was a favorite custom of fiction-writers to label their personages
with tags, and if Dickens may be pardoned for his Verisophts and his
Gradgrinds, and Thackeray for Mr. Deuceace, Warren may surely be
forgiven for Quicksilver, Subtle, Tag-rag and Going-Gone; and the world
will continue to apply the name of “Quirk, Gammon and Snap” to
attorneys’ firms as long as we have those useful adjuncts of
civilization. In my time I have known several Quirks, not a few Gammons,
and many Snaps. Snap is a sort of lawyer whom only a lawyer could
conceive of; and Gammon, stripped of the basest of his qualities, may be
encountered a dozen times a day between the Court House and the Battery.
Not far removed from the company of Titmouse and Gammon, is “Trilby”;
the copy with the autograph letter of Du Maurier to Osgood, not the
elaborately bound assemblage of the original _Harper_ chapters, whose
illustrations are so much more attractive than those in the
later-published book, with the cancelled pages about Lorrimer and Joe
Sibley which so offended the shrinking, diffident Whistler that they
were remorselessly cut out—Whistler, who never hurt the feelings of a
friend or learned “the gentle art of making enemies”. Then there are
“The Bab Ballads”, and Lear’s “Nonsense Book,” and Alice, my Lady of
Wonderland, and my Lady of Looking Glass country, whom so many adore and
so many fail to comprehend. For there are myriads who, like the little
Scotch lad, can see nothing in Carroll’s playful extravagances except
that they contain “a great deal of feection”.
It is sad that the modern disposition to overdo everything should have
so trampled upon such a delicious thing as “Trilby”; made it so common;
worn it threadbare; and when it was no longer fresh, thrown it aside
like a shattered toy. It is a manifestation of the childishness of the
multitude which goes wild over some temporary hero and then lets him
fall into the limbo of the forgotten when there are none so poor to do
him reverence. There must be some magical elixir in “Pinafore”, for
although thirty years have gone by since it sprang into universal favor,
it still survives, is laughed at and admired, and is even quoted in
after-dinner speeches. The mention of these speeches, without which no
public or semi-public dinner is considered to be worth eating, brings
painful reflections. We seem to be losing the art; perhaps we are
approaching the heaviness and prosiness of our English cousins on such
occasions. It is a melancholy thought that some reformers have
introduced the plan of hearing the speeches first and devouring the
dinner afterwards; and very lately diners were encouraged by the
engraved announcement on the cards of invitation, that there would be
“only six speeches, strictly limited to ten minutes each”. Yet, as a
rule, the speakers are not burning for an opportunity to talk; they may
truly say, as a beloved college president was wont to remark to a
disorderly class, disturbing his lecture with horse-play, “Young men,
this may be a bore to you but it is infinitely more of a bore to me.”
There is difficulty in adjusting a speech to the tastes of the
present-day dinner crowds; the time of the unending stream of anecdotes
has passed, with its everlasting “that reminds me”, and it seems to be
succeeded by an epidemic of the serious, which is not easily dealt with
in the presence of a mob flushed with champagne and shrouded in
tobacco-smoke. Some resort to epigram, but in fifteen minutes the
epigram begins to degenerate into jerky twaddle and palls upon the jaded
appetite. Now and again the orator exhibits an inclination to do what
our newspapers are forever howling about—to “probe” something or
somebody; but probing is always a painful operation and frequently does
much more harm than good. It is not given to many to be really
entertaining in discourse, so that our few entertainers are sadly
overworked. This unhappy condition of affairs has brought us to the
latest stage of infamy, when post-prandial talkers demand pay for their
performances: and we may expect to see the day or the night, when the
star of the evening will refuse to rise in his place and do his act
until the pecuniary reward has been tendered to him in specie, bills, or
certified cheque. Fancy the toast-master’s emotions if as he begins the
familiar “We have with us to-night” he is interrupted by a cry from the
hired guest, “You’re a saxpence short!”
Much unlike the books of which we have been speaking, but in its own way
as attractive, is Mr. Atlay’s “Victorian Chancellors”, a collection of
model biographies, of interest not only to lawyers but to lovers of
history. Atlay makes no claim that his undertaking is to be regarded as
a continuation of Lord Campbell’s “Lives”, and his methods are
absolutely different from those of Campbell, who is amusing but so
palpably unfair and often inaccurate that full faith and credit cannot
be given to him. I regret that the “Lives of the Chief Justices of the
Supreme Court” have not been written by some competent lawyer of our
time, with sufficient leisure and a taste for authorship, as fair and
free from personal prejudice as Atlay’s work proves him to be. The
“Lives” that have hitherto appeared are by no means satisfactory.
Flanders, Van Santvoord, and Tyler, the biographer of Roger Brooke
Taney, are painstaking enough and undoubtedly conscientious, but they
are of the old school, dull in style, with little or no sense of
historical perspective. The biographies of Jay and of Marshall are not
adequate; they do not reveal the men to us with that distinctness which
is necessary to hold the reader’s attention. The “Lives” of Chase are
weak and flimsy. Some of the great Associate Justices might be included
in the series—Story, Curtis, Nelson, Miller; and perhaps others—famous
for long and faithful judicial service if not for surpassing legal
ability. Somehow our modern writers are not at their best in biography;
those of sufficient skill and industry, like Henry Adams and James Ford
Rhodes, are led to devote themselves to general history which affords a
broader field. Moreover, a Justice of the Supreme Court is not as
closely identified with politics and the administration of the
government as an English Chancellor usually is, and the dry technical
details of the career of a mere lawyer are not tempting to the man of
letters.
There is a different corner, in a darker part of the library, where one
may well linger when the wind is in the east and teeth are in need of
gnashing. One of the discomforts of advanced years is that you are
unable to do any gnashing without inflicting more pain upon the gnasher
than is actually worth while. In this corner are gathered together some
of the few books which cannot be loved; wall-flowers of literature,
which never made the bookman’s heart palpitate with any fond emotion.
Here let us approach with hesitation and timidity, for however dry and
disagreeable a book may be, still it is a book. “Somebody loved it”. The
man who evolved it, who brought it forth, who labored over it, who
corrected the proofs, was pleased with it; deformed and misshapen though
it may be in the eyes of others, it was beautiful to him. Moreover, much
may after all be learned from the poorest of books; and the food from
which I would turn in scorn, may to another be palatable. Therefore I
wish it to be clearly understood that in making what are called
“derogatory” remarks about any book, I am guiltless of the offence of
setting up my own judgment and preference against the view and opinion
of any one else whomsoever; I am merely expressing my own personal
feelings. If it be asserted by some one who chances not to agree with
me, that these feelings are of no importance to any one but to myself, I
may reply that I admit it and that no one is obliged to read what I have
written; and should he complain that he has paid “very hard cash” for my
book and has a right to full consideration, I will answer, as Mr. Lang
answered somebody,—that he should read Mazzini, and learn that man has
no rights worth mentioning, only duties. Moreover I would say to him
that if he can prove that he paid for the volume its full price, and did
not pick it up at a discount in some second-hand book shop, that refuge
of lame, halt and blind books, or at a bargain counter in a department
store, I will cheerfully refund his money, provided he will furnish me
with a sworn affidavit declaring solemnly that he sincerely admires the
book which I detest. But even the omnivorous reader must like some books
better than others. If, as was truly said, no cigars are bad, some are
certainly more smokeable than others, and some pretty women are prettier
than other pretty women. If the books I do not like were the only books
in the world, I suppose that I would be fond of them as Frederick was of
Ruth until he beheld the loveliness of Major-General Stanley’s numerous
daughters.
One of the black sheep of my flock is called “Random Reminiscences: by
Charles H. E. Brookfield”, published in 1902. The author is the son of
Thackeray’s Brookfield, and his portrait shows what manner of man he
must be. How any rational human being could write out or cause to be
published such a flat, stale and unprofitable mess, passes
understanding. The most wretched of anecdotes are retailed, and if he
chances upon a fairly good one he spoils it in the telling. “I am not
aware”, he says in his preface, “that I have included in this volume
anything which appears to me of importance; I trust that I have not
either committed the impertinence of expressing any views.” This may
have been meant in a facetious way, but it is obviously so true that one
is impelled to ask why on earth he wrote it. He is so proud of his
pointless stories that he makes one long to go out and kill something,
thus creating a counter-irritant. How can any one fail to give way to
inextinguishable laughter over this final outburst of glee: “Thanks to
Dr. Walther and his treatment, I put on nearly 2 stone weight in a
little over two months. I was 10 stone 4 before I went, and 12 stone 2
when I left. And I am over 12 stone to-day, three years later”. From his
humor I should think that he was heavier. I have been waiting patiently
for a second edition to ascertain whether he has grown to any extent,
but none has appeared. No wonder that he finished his autobiography with
a quotation from a newspaper which said of him, on his supposed decease:
“But, after all, it is at his club that he will be most missed”. Jolly
dog, how he must have warmed the cockles of their hearts with his merry
jests!
In the same corner with the jovial Brookfield and his “twelve stone” are
gathered together the various biographies whose titles begin with “The
True” or “The Real”. I confess that I have not read through “The True
Thomas Jefferson”, although I am burdened with two copies, but I have
ploughed through “The True Abraham Lincoln”, and found it an ordinary
piece of hack-work, marred by blunders. The calm assumption which leads
a writer to proclaim that he alone portrays “the true” and “the real”,
as if all other accounts were false, is condemnatory at the outset. As
for Jeaffreson’s lot,—“The Real Lord Byron” and “The Real Shelley”,—they
are monuments of dullness, the subjects overloaded with petty details of
no value to any one. Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson, who was always
publishing “Books About” something or somebody, has presented to mankind
his “Recollections”, conspicuous chiefly for its covert sneers at
Thackeray, whom he hated, and studied disparagement of the personal
character of that giant who towered so far above Jeaffresonian pigmies.
Jeaffreson’s books belong to the Sawdust School of literature. He has
not even the brightness of Percy Fitzgerald, who has so long made the
most of his stock in trade, a certain friendship and association with
Dickens, and who in his two volumes of “Memories of an Author” is almost
as bad as Jeaffreson at his best. It is true that Dickens had a personal
liking for Fitzgerald, when the latter was a contributor to “All The
Year Round”, but I believe that Charles Dickens the Younger not many
years ago expressed some doubts as to the intimacy of the two men.
Jeaffreson was a weak and self-important person, jealous of his betters.
George Somes Layard says, in his interesting “Life of Shirley
Brooks”,[3] that Jeaffreson in his “Book of Recollections” wrote “with
ill concealed envy of a far abler and more successful man than himself”
a silly fling at Brooks concerning the name “Shirley”; and elsewhere
refers to the “Recollections” as a “querulous and pawky book”. The
characterization is undeniably just; plainly in accord with the opinion
of the reading public; and the two pawky volumes rest peacefully in the
trash corner.
In company with Jeaffreson will be found everything written by Mr.
William Carew Hazlitt, who, in a long life of devotion to the
accumulation of miscellaneous information of doubtful value and to the
parading of the name of Hazlitt, has caused a vast number of pages to be
covered with typographical records of his diligence and of his unfailing
capacity for making blunders. Full forty years ago he was unlucky enough
to come into close contact with the keen lance of one James Russell
Lowell, who riddled his editions of Webster and of Lovelace, included in
John Russell Smith’s “Library of Old Authors”. Lowell wrote that “of all
Mr. Smith’s editors, Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt is the worst. He is at times
positively incredible, worse even than Mr. Halliwell, and that is saying
a good deal.”[4] Whether Hazlitt was worth flaying as Lowell flayed him,
may be questioned. But Hazlitt still goes on, in his Boeotian way;
always inept; sometimes so offensive that, as in the case of his “Four
Generations of a Literary Family” it has been necessary to withdraw the
work from circulation.[5] An example of his “foolish notions” may be
seen in one of his latest books, “The Book-Collector” (1904) which has a
sub-title composed of fifty-one words. Mr. Hazlitt announces the
astonishing generalization that the autograph collector does not care
for books or for manuscripts beyond the extent of a fly leaf or
inscribed title-page, and that he is a modern and inexcusable Bagford
who tears out the inscription and throws away the book. He cites the
case of “a copy of Donne’s Sermons, with a brilliant portrait of the
author—and a long inscription by Izaak Walton presenting the volume to
his aunt. It was in the pristine English calf binding, as clean as when
it left Walton’s hands _en route_ to his kinswoman, and such a
delightful signature. What has become of it? It is sad even to commit to
paper the story—one among many. An American gentleman acquired it, tore
the portrait and leaf of inscription out, and threw the rest away”.
I believe him—to use the language of a mighty hunter—to be a meticulous
prevaricator. If the tale be true, and I should like to have Mr. William
Carew Hazlitt under cross-examination for a while, it only shows that
there may be a few vandals in the tribe of autograph collectors, but no
true collector would ever be guilty of such a wanton crime. Bagford tore
out title-pages, but that affords no evidence that book-lovers are
habitually given to the folly of tearing out title-pages. As for the
case being “one of many”, I deny it; if he had known of another instance
he would have gloried in the description of it. But he never knew law,
logic or truth, and upon his indictment for silliness it would be
necessary only to offer in evidence his books,—and rest.
But why should I get so very cross about poor old Hazlitt? The wisest
thing I can do is to recite to him the touching verses of “You are old,
Father William” and remonstrate gently with him in regard to his
pernicious habit of incessantly standing upon his head. It will be a
good plan to return to the favorite corner and soothe my ruffled spirits
by reading Percy Greg’s comical “History of the United States”, or
better still, the dear little story which Roswell Field wrote about “The
Bondage of Ballinger”.
Whether so famous a poem as Young’s _Night Thoughts_ is entitled to the
privileges of the pit of Acheron, may be matter for dispute; but as
Goldsmith said of those gloomy lucubrations, a reader speaks of them
with exaggerated applause or contempt as his disposition “is either
turned to mirth or melancholy”. We have preserved “tired nature’s sweet
restorer, balmy sleep”, and “procrastination is the thief of time,” but
we know that the didactic parson’s famous poem is “hardly ever read now
except under compulsion.” My chief grievance against the man who was
compelled to
“Torture his invention
To flatter knaves or lose his pension,”
is not, however, founded upon his lugubrious pentameters.
The man who turns down the corner of the leaf of a book is not only fit
for treason, stratagems and spoils, but is well qualified to commit any
mean crime in the calendar. If his memory is so poor that he cannot
remember page or passage, let him make a small pencil note on the
margin. Such a note may readily be removed by an eraser, but a “dog’s
ear” can never be wholly removed. Its blight continues during the life
of the book. Now Boswell records this sickening fact: “I have seen
volumes of Dr. Young’s copy of _The Rambler_, in which he has marked the
passages which he thought particularly excellent, by folding down a
corner of the page, and such as he rated in a supereminent degree are
marked by double folds. I am sorry that some of the volumes are lost.” I
do not share in this sorrow; it is well that the testimony of such
brutality should be effaced. Double folds! Insatiate archer, would not
one suffice? Perhaps Johnson himself, Virginius-like, destroyed his
offspring thus shamelessly violated.
It is often difficult to get out of corners; but before I escape, let me
give to the dog’s-earing, nocturnally reflecting Young full credit for a
single utterance—“Joy flies monopolists,”—which proves that it was not
wholly in vain that he burned the midnight oil; for although he speaks
in the present tense, it is manifest that the spirit of prophecy was
strong within him. He looked ahead for more than a century and foresaw
the day when “grafters” might be glorified and exalted, debauchees
acclaimed us apostles of the people, and murderers feasted and honored,
but monopolists hated, shunned and abhorred as miscreants whose sins can
never be forgiven. Joyless indeed are those who dare to deprive their
fellow beings of the inborn right to equality in everything; for we hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created free and
equal,—that is to say, with the right to do just as they please, to till
the soil, to mine the earth, to invent the telegraph and the telephone,
to manufacture steel, and to construct railways, but not to do it so
well as to prevent any of the great people from doing the same thing.
The abandoned wretch who, by his despicable brains, his virtuous life,
and his pernicious industry, seeks to impair those rights in any degree,
however trifling, must be prepared to bid farewell to happiness and
contentment. If he is able to avoid the jail, it will be well for him to
seek refuge in some secluded spot; let us say, in a peaceful library
corner.
OF THE OLD FASHION
Speaking appreciatively a few nights ago at the club, concerning a
recent magazine article on “Prescott, the Man,” I was reminded by a
youthful university graduate of only twenty-five years standing, that
“Prescott is an old-fashioned historian.”
There is much that is amusing in the attitude of the self-sufficient
present towards the things of the past and there is also an element of
the pathetic. I am often called an “old fogy,” an epithet whose origin
and derivation are uncertain, but whose meaning is reasonably plain.
Nobody who ever had the name applied to him was oppressed by any doubt
about its signification. Some authorities tell us that it comes from the
Swedish _fogde_—one who has charge of a garrison,—but I question it
despite the confident assertion of the _Century Dictionary_. It is not
altogether inappropriate, because old fogies are compelled to hold the
fort against all manner of abominations. They are the brakes on the
electric cars of modern pseudo-progress. Thackeray speaks of “old
Livermore, old Soy, old Chutney the East India director, old Cutler the
surgeon,—that society of old fogies, in fine, who give each other
dinners sound and round and dine for the mere purpose of guttling.”
So the term is always associated with the stupid and the ridiculous,
used with regard to “elderly persons who have no sympathy with the
amusements and pursuits of the young.” Nobody ever refers to a young
fogy, although most of us know many exceedingly dull-witted young people
who have no sympathy with the amusements and pursuits of the aged or
even of the middle-aged. One class is no more worthy of contempt than
the other. The adolescents who find their highest form of entertainment
in “bridge” are at least as deserving of pity as the semi-centenarian
who prefers to pass his evenings among his books and his pictures or to
devote them to Shakespeare and the musical glasses. There are some
delights about the library fireside which compare favorably with those
of the corridors of our most popular hostelry.
Certain kindly critics have insisted that my own literary tastes were
acquired in the year 1850. I am not sure that the despised tastes formed
in those commonplace, mid-century days are to be esteemed more highly
than the tastes of our own self-satisfied times, but a good deal may be
said in their favor. Perhaps the past is not always inferior to the
present. There are varying opinions on the subject, from the familiar
saying of Alfonso of Aragon, quoted by Melchior, immortalized by Bacon,
and paraphrased by Goldsmith—that saying about old wood, old wine, old
friends, and old authors—to the dogmatic declaration of Whittier that
“still the new transcends the old.” It may occur to antiquated minds
that there are some elements of excellence about old plays compared with
the dramatic works of this careless, _insouciant_ time; that Wordsworth
has some merits which are superior to those of the worthy gentleman who
now fills the office of Laureate, and that possibly the poetry of the
last few years is not entitled to boast itself greatly beside that of
the early nineteenth century—the poetry of Scott, of Byron, of Shelley
and of Keats. But we have the telephone and the trolley-car, the
automobile, the aeroplane, and the operation for appendicitis; and we
admire our progress, the wonderful growth of the material, the
mechanical, and the million-airy, while a few may pause to ask whether
good taste and good manners have grown as greatly. Some of our older
buildings for example are assuredly far better to look at than the lofty
structures of steel which tower in lower New York and make of our
streets darksome canons where the light of day scarcely penetrates and
where the winds of winter roar wildly about our devoted heads as we
struggle, hat-clutching, to our office doorways. May we not cite the
City Hall and the Assay Office as honorable specimens of dignified
architecture? There was something impressive too about the old
“Tombs,”—replaced not long ago by a monstrosity;—a structure which a
lady recently told me was once referred to by an English friend who had
never been in New York, as “the Westminster Abbey of America.”
It is delightful to be young and to indulge in the illusions of youth—a
truism which it is safe to utter, for nobody will dispute it. “Youth is
a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret,” said the strange,
semi-oriental personage, an enigma in politics and a problem in
literature, Benjamin Disraeli. Everybody knows the rude saying of old
George Chapman, which it is almost an impertinence to quote, but every
one does not remember whence it came—that young men think the old men
are fools but old men know young men are fools. It is certain that we
have cherished that idea in our minds for many centuries. Pope, in his
epigrammatic way, remarked that “in youth and beauty wisdom is but
rare,” but we cannot give him credit for originality in the utterance.
We will go on with our regrets, our reproofs and our hesitancies, and in
the course of time those who sneer at us now as cumbersome relics,
_laudatores temporis acti_, mere maunderers enamored of an effete past,
will take their turn, fill our places, and endure the pitying and
condescending smiles of the succeeding generation. There is nothing new
under the sun, and the man of to-day may well pause in his arrogant
career to remember that he will quickly pass into the category of the
obsolete.
Some of us who are beginning to descend that downward slope of life
which soon becomes sadly precipitous, but who retain a vivid
recollection of the long ago, are fond of recalling a period of New York
which in this era of lavish expenditures, indiscriminating profuseness,
and careless prodigality seems strangely simple. Those were the days
when in sedate Second Avenue and Stuyvesant Square were the homes of
dignified wealth, whose owners rather looked down upon Fifth Avenue as
_parvenu_; and Forty-second Street was almost an outpost of
civilization. We revelled in the delights of the ancient Philharmonic
concerts and believed that Carl Bergmann was the last evolution of a
conductor; later we recognized Theodore Thomas as the man who did more
to develop a taste for good orchestral music in this country than any
other one man who ever lived. We thronged the stalls of old Wallack’s,
with its most excellent of stock-companies—something which has wholly
disappeared—and we rejoiced in Dion Boucicault and Agnes Robertson. A
little later we haunted the upper gallery of the Academy of Music in
Fourteenth Street,—at least _I_ did, because of a confirmed stringency
in the money market,—and cheered the magical top-notes of the ponderous
but melodious Wachtel and the generous tones of that most inspiring of
singers, the splendid Parepa-Rosa. We hailed with loud acclaims the
manly and dignified Santley—more in his element in oratorio than in
opera—and the royal contralto, Adelaide Phillips, long since forgotten
except by the Old Guard who afterwards transferred their allegiance to
Annie Louise Cary. It may have been a provincial time, but we did not
think so; it was a good time, and we enjoyed it.
It seems but yesterday when all over the land flashed the news of
Lincoln’s death, and the black draperies suddenly shrouded the streets
while the triumphant note of Easter Sunday died away in a cry of
lamentation. I was in old St. Bartholomew’s in Lafayette Place that
Sunday, and the recollection of it will never be lost. Nor shall I
forget the grief and alarm of a small band of Southerners, secessionists
of the strongest type, domiciled in the same house with me, as they
lamented that in the death of Abraham Lincoln the South had been
deprived of its best friend, the man who would have made reconstruction
a blessing instead of an affliction. They had been rebels, it is true,
but they were conscious of the loftiness of the soul of that noble
citizen who, with faults which are often the accompaniments of
greatness, stood for all that was just and magnanimous in our national
life.
Some of us have a clear recollection of the camping of soldiers in City
Hall Park, the cheering of the multitude as the regiments of volunteers
swung down Broadway on their march to Virginia, when we were striving to
preserve the republic and the horror of civil war was present with us
every hour. We were less cynical, less ambitious, less strenuous in
those days, and I think we were more serene and sincere. We had serious
imperfections, but we did not carry ourselves quite as mightily, and on
the whole we had some creditable characteristics. There is no good
reason why we should be ashamed of ourselves.
Were we so very stupid in the fifties? Was there not some true and
honorable life in our social and literary world of that generation?
Surely our newspapers were as worthy of respect as some of our
contemporary journals with their blazing capitals, their columns of
crime, their pages of the sensational, and their provoking condensed
headlines which exasperate me by their airy flippancy. I sometimes
wonder that nobody except myself utters a protest against those dreadful
headlines. They reduce almost everything to vulgarity, and the affection
of condensation is distinctly irritating. Most objectionable of all are
the headlines followed by interrogation points, because they are
misleading. If, for example, they say in capitals “Mr. Smith strikes his
mother?” the average reader—and there is more of that sort than of any
other—glancing over the pages misses the query and goes to his grave
with the firm conviction that poor Smith was the most unmanly of brutes.
I am not sure that the interrogation mark protects the proprietors
against a libel suit.
It is true that in the fifties our art may have been of the tame and
tidy sort, timorously clinging to the conventional; our financial
enterprises were conducted on so small a scale that a million was a sum
which made the banker’s heart palpitate with apprehensive emotion; our
politics were concerned chiefly with the colored man and his relations
to the State; in architecture our awful brown stone fronts were
oppressing in a domineering way all the town in and above Fourteenth
Street. But there was a certain dignity about it all, an absence of
tawdriness, a savor of respectability.
Fourteenth Street! It must be difficult for the New Yorkers of to-day
who have not passed the half-century mark to realize that only fifty
years ago it was really “up-town.” It is easier to imagine the present
Thomas Street as it was in 1815, a spot to be reached only after a
bucolic journey through country lanes which my grandfather used to
traverse on his way to the New York Hospital where he studied medicine.
We think of that condition of things in about the same state of mind as
that in which we contemplate the Roman Forum or the stony avenues of
Pompeii. It amuses me to recall the period of the fifties and early
sixties when the Hudson River Railroad had its terminus in Thirtieth
Street near Tenth Avenue, but sent its cars, horse-drawn, to Chambers
Streets and College Place just opposite old Ridley’s, whose pictures
were on those familiar inverted cones of never-to-be-forgotten candies,
the virtues whereof have been proclaimed sonorously on railway trains
from time immemorial, and that Chambers Street station will always live
in the memory of old-fashioned people who used to “go to town” from
rural neighborhoods. My aforesaid grandfather took me often, much to my
joy, to visit his son in West Nineteenth Street, and the conservative
old gentleman, who served as a surgeon under Commodore Charles Stewart
on the good ship “Franklin,” always went to Chambers Street and thence
by the Sixth Avenue horse-railway to Nineteenth Street, which caused the
pilgrimage to be unduly protracted, but we always reached our
destination sooner or later—generally later. I remember that an idiotic
notion possessed me that we were confined to traveling on West Broadway
because country people were not allowed to encumber the real, the
glorious Broadway, of whose omnibus-crowded splendors I caught but
furtive glimpses by peering up the cross-streets. Another gentleman of
the old school, whom I loved sincerely, invariably proceeded from
Thirtieth Street—and after the genesis of the Grand Central Station,
from Forty-second Street—to the Astor House, from which venerable house
of cheer he wended his way serenely to Union Square, or to Madison
Square, or to any quarter where his business or his pleasure led him,
however remote it might be from City Hall Park. To him the Astor House
was practically the hub of the metropolis. These details may seem to be
trivial, but they are characteristic of the old-fashioned men of half a
century ago who still clung to the swallow-tailed coat as a garment to
be worn by daylight. It never occurred to them to “take a cab,” possibly
because there was no cab which a decent person would willingly occupy
unless it had been ordered in advance from a livery stable. There are
many reasons why this land of freedom—modified freedom—is preferable to
any other land; but when we come to cabs, we must, in all fairness,
admit the superiority of the London hansom over a New York “growler,”
the hansoms now vanishing, we learn, before the all-conquering horde of
motor-cars.
The old-fashioned magazines—how few ever turn their pages now, and yet
how much in them is of interest, even to a casual reader. Far be it from
me to whisper the slightest word of disparagement about our gorgeous and
innumerable “monthlies,” with their pomp and pride of illustration,
extending from text to the copious advertisements, those soul-stirring
and lucrative adjuncts to a magazine of the present. Do not tell me that
a man who buys the thick, paper-covered book does not read the
advertisements; he pretends that he does not, but he does. According to
my experience he follows them from soap to steam-yachts, from
refrigerators to railway routes, but he would rather die than confess
it. Much as I admire these products of our later civilization, I
nevertheless maintain that there is more charm in an ancient number of
any worthy periodical than is to be found in the latest issue. Time
seems to add a mellow flavor to the good things of the past. There is
not much to say in praise of the solemn _Whig Review_ or of O’Sullivan’s
portentous _Democratic Review_, but take from the shelf a shabbily bound
volume of _Graham’s Magazine of Literature and Art_, published in the
forties, and there will be discovered a wilderness of delights. The
fashion-plates alone are dreams of comical beauty, and the steel plates
of “The Shepherd’s Love,” “The Proffered Kiss,” and “Lace Pattern with
Embossed View” far surpass—in a sense—the boasted work of Pyle and of
Abbey. What soul will decline to be thrilled at the lovely skit entitled
“Born to Love Pigs and Chickens” by that butterfly of literature,
Nathaniel Parker Willis, which you will find in the number of February,
1843. Consider the portrait of Charles Fenno Hoffman, with his exquisite
coatlet, his wonderful legs attired in what appear to be tights, and his
mild but intellectual countenance beaming upon us as he sits,
bare-headed, upon a convenient stage rock, holding in one hand an object
which may be a pie, a boxing-glove or a hat, according to the
imagination of the beholder. Contemplate the list of contributors,
including Bryant, Cooper, Longfellow, Lowell, and “Edgar A. Poe, Esq.,”
the “Esq.” adding a delicious dignity to each of the illustrious names.
It was only “sixty years since,” but can any magazine of to-day rival
that catalogue? Almost every one knows that Poe was editor of _Graham_
for a year and that _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_ as well as
Longfellow’s _Spanish Student_ first appeared in that magazine. Coming
to a later day, recall the _Harper_ of the fifties. No pleasure of the
present can equal that which we felt when we revelled in Abbott’s
Napoleon, which turned us lads into enthusiastic admirers of the great
Emperor; or when we enjoyed the jovial Porte Crayon, whose drawing was
consistently as bad as Thackeray’s, but whose fascinating humor had a
quality peculiarly its own. Not long ago Mr. Janvier, to the
gratification of the surviving members of the brotherhood of early
_Harper_ readers, gave to Strother the tribute of his judicious praise.
One may not gossip lightly about the _Atlantic_, but the _Knickerbocker_
is distinctly old-fashioned. Longfellow’s _Psalm of Life_ first saw the
light in its pages; immortal, even if Barrett Wendell does truthfully
say that it is full not only of outworn metaphor but of superficial
literary allusion. Old New York, adds Professor Wendell, expressed
itself in our first school of renascent writing, which withered away
with the _Knickerbocker Magazine_. But there was a Knickerbocker school,
and the brothers Willis and Gaylord Clark helped to sustain its glories.
The magazine began in 1832, faded in 1857 and died in 1864; and out of
it sprang many of the authors whose names are inseparably associated
with a golden period of our literature.
It was only a short time ago that one of the men of those by-gone times
departed this life, and the scanty mention of him in the public press
compelled a sad recognition of the familiar truth that in order to
retain popular attraction one must pose perpetually under the
lime-light. Parke Godwin, who belonged to the order of scholarly,
high-minded Americans, had outlived his fame, except among the
Centurions of West Forty-third Street and a few old people of the same
class. Perhaps he did not concentrate his powers sufficiently. Editor,
writer of political essays, author of _Vala, a Mythological Tale_,
biographer of his father-in-law, William Cullen Bryant, and by virtue of
his _History of France_, historian,—but he published only one volume
more than forty years ago and then abandoned the task—he had that broad
culture which sometimes disperses itself and fails to win for its
possessor the highest place in the literary hierarchy. He was a
delightful example of what we now regard as the old-fashioned, and his
address on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Century Club
is a mine of good things for one who is interested in the past of New
York. “I have stood once more” said he “beside the easel of Cole as he
poured his ideal visions of the Voyage of Life and the Course of Empire
in gorgeous colors upon the canvas. I have seen the boyish Kensett
trying to infuse his own refinement and sweetness into the wild woods of
the wold. I have watched the stately Gifford as he brought the City of
the Sea out of its waters, in a style that Cavaletto and Ziem would envy
and with a brilliancy of color that outshone even its native Italian
skies. I have stood beside the burly Leutze as he portrayed our
Washington among the ice of the Delaware, or depicted the multitudinous
tramp of immigrants making their western way through the wilderness to
the shores of the Oregon, that ‘hears no sound save its own dashings.’
All have come back for a moment, but they are gone, oh whither? Into the
silent land, says Von Salis; yet how silent it is! We speak to them, but
they answer us not again.” He brought back to us the beginning of
things, when he told us of the incipient conditions of the Academy of
Design. “They took a room—was it suggestive?—in the old Alms House in
the Park, and they worked under a wick dipped in whale-oil which gave
out more smoke than light.” He spoke of Halleck, of Gulian Verplanck, of
Bryant, of Charles Fenno Hoffman, of Robert C. Sands, and of old Tristam
Burges, “who had swallowed Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary;” and he
closed with a brief flight of eloquence such as in these days of
new-fashioned chilliness it is seldom vouchsafed to us to hear.
Of the same order was William Allen Butler, the friend of Halleck and of
Duyckinck, of Andrew Jackson and of Martin Van Buren, who knew Samuel
Rogers and visited him in London. He was nine years the junior of
Godwin. He might have won the highest eminence in the world of books if
he had not made the law his chief occupation and literature only his
recreation. The bar does not among its rewards number that of enduring
fame, unless occasionally some great political or criminal trial
perpetuates the name of the advocate chiefly concerned in it. Of course,
Mr. Butler’s early essay in verse, “Nothing to Wear,” will never be
entirely forgotten. A humorous skit as it was, its enduring merit is
shown by the fact that in spite of the old-fashioned terms descriptive
of woman’s dress and of the fashionable life of fifty years ago, in its
general tone it is curiously contemporaneous. Scarcely less witty and
amusing were his poems, “General Average” and “The Sexton and the
Thermometer,” the former being more highly esteemed by many than its
popular predecessor. I suppose that he left it out of the later
collection of his poems because, with his gentle and kindly nature, he
feared that a few of its passages might give offense to some of his
friends of the Jewish faith whom he esteemed and respected. His
translations of Uhland are marked by graceful and poetic fervor, and his
prose style was lucidity itself. His humor, always attractive and
appropriate, lightened even his most serious work, from an address on
Statutory Law to an argument in the Supreme Court in Washington City. It
was well said of him by a jurist now living, that “no man of his time,
either in England or America, held an equally high rank both as a lawyer
and a literary man.”
Another of the old-fashioned literary men, who was, however,
considerably the senior of both Godwin and Butler, was George Perkins
Morris, who died in 1864. He was at once a general of militia, an
editor, a favorite song-writer, and the composer of an opera libretto.
His title to immortality rests mainly upon the sentimental verses known
as “Woodman, Spare that Tree,” which had a flavor about them very dear
to our grandparents. To look at his manly countenance in the portrait
engraved by Hollyer (who at the present writing is still extant and
vigorous) after the Elliott painting, we can scarcely imagine him as the
author of such lines as “Near the Lake Where Drooped the Willow,” “We
Were Boys Together,” “Land-Ho,” “Long Time Ago” and “Whip-poor-will.”
But James Grant Wilson says that for above a score of years he could,
any day, exchange one of his songs unread for a fifty dollar cheque,
when some of _literati_ of New York (possibly Poe) could not sell
anything for the one-fifth part of that sum. In the presence of Morris,
I confess I cannot quite give myself up to adoring admiration of the
taste of our predecessors. This stanza indicates his ordinary quality:
The star of love now shines above,
Cool zephyrs crisp the sea;
Among the leaves, the wind-harp weaves
Its serenade for thee.
Notwithstanding this rather trifling vein, admirably satirized by
Orpheus C. Kerr, and a certain tone of commonplace, Morris had a genuine
lyrical quality in his verse, although it was devoid of startling bursts
of inspiration, and English literature affords many examples of less
deserving poesy. Morris was an industrious editor, appreciative of
others, and he had a personal charm which endeared him to those who had
the good fortune to come within the pale of his friendship, and
particularly to those who were permitted to enjoy the generous
hospitality of his sweet and dignified home at Undercliff opposite West
Point. Smile as we may at his little conceits and his obvious rhymes, we
must recognize the sincere and genial nature of the kindly General, so
long conspicuous in the social and literary life of old New York.
These men, it may be said, do not prove the permanent value of the
literature of the fifties. Godwin and Morris were editors and Butler a
busy lawyer, none of them able to give their undivided attention to
authorship. I suppose that Irving and Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow,
Hawthorne and Bayard Taylor were more distinctly the ornaments of the
time, and there are other names which more judicious and discriminating
men might substitute for some of those I have chosen. Bayard Taylor’s
greatest work was done in later years, but he had already won his first
fame—not a giant, but a poet with “the spontaneity of a born singer,” as
Stedman said. Irving, the most charming and amiable of writers, had not
the most forceful intellect, but he was calm and graceful, with a gentle
and bewitching humor and a strong appreciation of the beautiful—a good
man, beloved and honored at home and abroad. His fame is paler now than
it was forty years gone by, but he has the immortality of a classic.
Emerson had a powerful influence over the minds of men, but, viewed in
the perspective of time, he does not loom so largely now. I am not
competent to venture far into the territory of criticism, having only
the equipment of a general reader who timidly expresses his personal
feelings and leaves to trained and experienced judges the task of
scientific analysis; but we general readers are the jury, after all.
As time slips by there is a tendency to merge the decades of the past,
and to the young people of 1909 the period of 1850–1860 is every bit
as remote as the period of 1830–1840. The university undergraduate
does not differentiate between the alumnus of 1870 and him of 1855, as
I know by experience. A melancholy illustration of this well-known
fact was afforded of late in a popular play, the scene of which was
laid in a time supposed to be exceedingly far distant, and the
programme announced it as “the early eighties.” The representation was
enlivened by such antiquated melodies as “Old Zip Coon,” “Maryland, My
Maryland,” and “Old Dan Tucker,” as well as “Pretty as a Picture,” “Ye
Merry Birds,” and “How Fair Art Thou,” all as appropriate to the early
eighties as Dr. Arne’s “Where the Bee Sucks” and “Rule Britannia.” It
was almost as abominably anachronistic as the naive declaration of a
pseudo-Princetonian who asserted a membership in the Class of 1879 and
assured me that he had been, while in college, a devoted disciple of
Doctor Eliphalet Nott. If I have mingled my old-fashioned decades
unduly, it has been because of that tendency to merger which no
Sherman Act can suppress.
Few there are who cling with affection to the memory of the
old-fashioned. Most of us prefer to spin with the world down the ringing
grooves of change, to borrow the shadow of a phrase which has itself
become old-fashioned. The flaming sword of the Civil War severed the
latest century of America in two unequal parts, and its fiery blade
divided the old and the new as surely and as cleanly as the guillotine
cleft apart the France of the old monarchy from the France of modern
days. To stray back in recollection to the land of fifty years ago is
almost like treading the streets of some mediæval town. But for some of
us there is a melancholy pleasure in the retrospect and a lingering
fondness for the life which we thought so earnest and so vigorous then,
but which now seems so placid and so drowsy.
WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH
Reviewers, critics and students of literature are inclined to resent the
assertion with respect to a writer once eminent, that he is
substantially forgotten. But it is safe to say that if we regard the
millions of readers in this country whose literary nutriment is made up
chiefly of works of fiction or of biography of the lighter sort, as “the
reading public of America”, the name of William Harrison Ainsworth is by
no means familiar in the United States. There are many book-owners who
keep his “Works” upon their shelves, and know the backs of the volumes,
and some of the omnivorous have doubtless read “Jack Sheppard”,
“Crichton”, “The Tower of London”, and perhaps “Rookwood”; yet thousands
who are well acquainted with their Scott, their Dickens and their
Thackeray would be sorely puzzled if they were asked to tell us who
Ainsworth was, and exactly when he lived, or to give a synopsis of the
plot of a single one of his numerous stories; and he has been dead not
quite thirty years.
Allibone gives him but fourteen lines of biography, mostly bitter
censure, with a few words of qualified praise for such historical tales
as “St. Paul’s” and “The Tower”. The indifference to him is not limited
to general readers or to America. Chamber’s _Encyclopædia of English
Literature_ begrudges him twenty-nine lines of depreciative comment,
conceding to him dramatic art and power, but denying to him “originality
or felicity of humor or character”. He is not even mentioned in Mr.
Edmund Gosse’s _Modern English Literature_, and Taine does not
condescend to give his name. In the _History_ of Nicoll and Seccombe no
reference to him can be found. In the pretentious volumes of the
_History of English Literature_ edited by Garnett and Gosse a portrait
of him is given with a rough draft of a Cruikshank drawing; and this is
what is said of him: “A very popular exponent of the grotesque and the
sensational in historical romance was William Harrison Ainsworth
(1805–1882), a Manchester solicitor, who wrote _Rookwood_, 1834, _Jack
Sheppard_, 1839, and _The Tower of London_, 1840. He was a sort of
Cruikshank of the pen, delighting in violent and lurid scenes, crowded
with animated figures”. This is rather an absurd mess of misinformation.
One would scarcely believe that there was a time when he was esteemed to
be a worthy rival of Charles Dickens, and when in the eyes of the
critics and of the public he far outshone Edward Lytton Bulwer.
In a note to the sketch in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, Mr.
W. E. A. Axon says that “no biography of Ainsworth has appeared or is
likely to be published.” The fact is correctly stated, but the
prediction may not be fulfilled. In 1902, Mr. Axon himself expanded the
_Dictionary_ article and made it into an excellent memoir of forty-three
pages, but only a few copies were printed. It contains five portraits. A
devoted admirer of Ainsworth has been for some years engaged in the
preparation of an extended biography. I do not give his name, for he
probably prefers to make the announcement at his own time and in his own
way. A few years ago I became the possessor of a considerable number of
autographic relics of Ainsworth, including a memorandum book and a
manuscript volume containing an account of his travels in Italy in 1830,
dedicated to his wife, with a poem; some letters to him from Cruikshank;
thirty-six pages of the draft of “Jack Sheppard”, and more than two
hundred of his own letters. It is gratifying to know that my friend who
is at work on the “Life” has been aided by this little collection.
The only published records of Ainsworth’s life, other than those to
which I have referred, are, as far as I have been able to discover, a
brief memoir by Laman Blanchard which appeared in the _Mirror_ in 1842
and was reproduced in later editions of “Rookwood”; a chapter in
Madden’s _Life of Lady Blessington_; a sketch by James Crossley
contributed to the Routledge edition of the _Ballads_ in 1855; and an
account of him by William Bates, accompanying a semi-caricature portrait
in the _Maclise Portrait Gallery_.
Ainsworth was born in his father’s house on King Street, Manchester,
February 4, 1805. His family was “respectable” in the English sense, for
his grandfather on his mother’s side was a Unitarian minister, and his
father a prosperous solicitor. It was from the mother that he inherited
in 1842 some “landed property” to use another distinctively English
phrase, and it is amusing to observe the pride of Madden when he boasts
that Ainsworth’s name appears in _Burke’s Landed Gentry_. He attended
the Free Grammar School in Manchester, where it is said that he was
proficient in Latin and Greek, and as he was expected to succeed to his
father’s practice, he became an articled clerk in the office of Mr.
Alexander Kay, at the age of sixteen. He was a handsome boy, full of
ambition, but his ambition did not lead him in the dull and dusty paths
which solicitors tread. He had already written a drama, for private
production, which was printed in _Arliss’s Magazine_, and a number of
sketches, translations and minor papers for a serial called _The
Manchester Iris_, and he subsequently conducted a periodical styled _The
Boeotian_, which had a short existence of six months. Before he was
nineteen, he was a regular contributor to the _London Magazine_ and the
_Edinburgh Magazine_. Some of these youthful efforts were collected in
“December Tales” (1823), which also contained sketches by James Crossley
and John Partington Aston. In 1822 he issued a pamphlet of “Poems, by
Cheviot Tichborn”, which as Mr. Axon informs us, is quite distinct from
another pamphlet called “The Works of Cheviot Tichborn”, printed in
1825, apparently for private circulation.
The Tichborn book of verses was dedicated to Charles Lamb. The author
was a devoted admirer of Elia, and as early as 1822 Lamb had lent him a
copy of Cyril Tourneur’s play or plays. On May 7, 1822, Lamb wrote to
him a letter, (printed in _The Lambs_, by William Carew Hazlitt, 1897)
referring to the book and saying, among other things, “I have read your
poetry with pleasure. The tales are pretty and prettily told. It is only
sometimes a little careless, I mean as to redundancy.” The letter
mentions the proposed dedication deprecatingly and modestly.
Talfourd, Canon Ainger and Fitzgerald in their collections give two
other letters, written respectively on December 9 and December 29, 1823,
one thanking Ainsworth for “books and compliments,” and the other giving
Lamb-like excuses for not leaving beloved London to pay a visit to
Manchester.[6] It was something of an honor for a lad of seventeen to
receive the praise of Charles Lamb, who appears to have discovered one
of his young correspondent’s besetting sins—redundancy. But it may not
have meant much, for in those days they exchanged compliments more
profusely than is customary at the present time.
All these excursions in the field of authorship were fatal to the grave
study of the law, for which he had no taste, and although when his
father died in 1824 he went to London to finish his term with Mr. Jacob
Phillips of the Inner Temple, it was a foregone conclusion that,
whatever his career might be, it would not be that of a solicitor. About
1826, one John Ebers, a publisher in Bond Street, and also manager of
the Opera House, brought out a novel called “Sir John Chiverton,” which
received the favor of Sir Walter Scott, who said of it in his diary
(October 17, 1826), that he had read it with interest, and that it was
“a clever book,” at the same time asserting that he himself was the
originator of the style in which it was written. For many years it was
supposed that Ainsworth was its sole author, but it was claimed in 1877
by Mr. John Partington Aston, a lawyer, who had been a fellow-clerk of
Ainsworth’s in Mr. Kay’s office, and the book was probably the result of
collaboration. The dedicatory verses are supposed to have been addressed
to Anne Frances Ebers, John Ebers’ daughter, whom Ainsworth married on
October 11, 1826. Soon afterwards he seems to have been occupied in
editing one of those absurd “Annuals” so common in those days, for we
find Tom Moore recording in his journal in 1827, that he had been asked
to edit the _Forget-Me-Not_ to begin with the second number, “as the
present editor is Mr. Ainsworth (I think), the son-in-law of Ebers.” The
compensation offered to Moore was £500, which indicates that such work
was paid for liberally, but it is not likely that Ainsworth received as
much. A year or so after the marriage—within a year in fact—he followed
his father-in-law’s advice and became himself a publisher and a
bookseller; but at the end of eighteen months he decided to abandon the
business.
If we may judge by one of the letters in my collection, it is not
surprising that he was not overwhelmingly successful. He writes to
Thomas Hill for a notice in the _Chronicle_ of a book the copyright of
which he had recently purchased, adding, “the work is really a most
scientific one—indeed the only distinct treatise on Confectionery
extant.” Perhaps this was the work of Ude, the cook, whose publisher he
was; but he also “brought out” Caroline Norton as an author, of whom he
writes to Charles Ollier, in his graceful, rather lady-like chirography:
“Is it not possible [to] get me a short notice of the enclosed into the
new Monthly? By so doing you will infinitely oblige one of the most
beautiful women in the world—the Hon. Mrs. Norton, the granddaughter of
Richard Brinsley Sheridan.”
In 1827 he published for Thomas Hood two volumes of “National Tales,”
which are said to be the poorest books written by Hood. Christopher
North said of them: “I am glad to see that they are published by Mr.
Ainsworth to whom I wish all success in his new profession. He is
himself a young gentleman of talents, and his Sir John Chiverton is a
spirited and romantic performance.”[7]
It was for an annual issued by him that Sir Walter Scott wrote the
“Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee,” and the story is told by Mr. Axon that Sir
Walter received twenty guineas for it, but laughingly handed them over
to the little daughter of Lockhart, at whose house he and Ainsworth met.
He wrote some fragmentary and miscellaneous prose and verse, not of much
importance; and in 1828 he travelled through Belgium and up the Rhine,
going to Switzerland and Italy in 1830. The manuscript note-books which
lie before me, the paper foxed and the ink faded, comprise a diary of
the Italian part of the journey. I have toiled over the one hundred and
sixty-eight pages, not always easily decipherable, but have found little
which exceeds in value the ordinary guide-book of our own time. It was,
we must remember, written only for his wife—whom he considerately left
at home—and the dedicatory poem to her, consisting of fifty-eight
unrhymed lines, written in Venice in September, 1830, is quite as
commonplace as might be expected from a man of twenty-five, with little
poetic inspiration but endowed with much verbal fluency, who was not
writing for publication.
Soon after his return from the Continent, Ainsworth began the work from
which he was to derive his chief title to fame—the composing of novels.
It has been said that he was inspired by Mrs. Radcliffe, whose gloomy
mysteries, weird scenes, and supernatural machinery once made her a
favorite with fiction-lovers, and that he sought to adapt old legends to
English soil. Others have ascribed his impulse to the influence of the
French dramatic romancers, Eugène Sue, Victor Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas.
I question whether he owed his inspiration to any particular source,
although all these writers may have affected his temperament. Perhaps he
unconsciously divined the needs of the reading public, of which his
editorial experience may have taught him much. The inane, fashionable
novel had become tiresome. Moreover, it was a time, in the early
thirties, when the nation of England was absorbed in the growth of her
material prosperity, and when a country is engrossed in commerce and
manufactures, in the production of wealth, tales of adventure seem
necessary to stimulate flagging imagination. We have seen the evidence
of it in our own land during the past ten years, when casting aside the
metaphysical, the psychological, the long drawn-out analyses of
character, the public eagerly devoured story after story of fights and
wars, and daring deeds, whose lucky authors bore off rewards of fabulous
amount and grew rich upon the royalties earned by their hundreds of
thousands of copies.
We are told by Mr. Axon that “the inspiration came to him when on a
visit to Chesterfield in 1831”. He had visited Cuckfield Place, thought
by Shelley to be “like bits of Mrs. Radcliffe”, and it occurred to
Ainsworth that he might make something of an English story constructed
upon similar lines. Begun in 1831, his “Rookwood” was published in 1834.
It has generally been considered by critics to be a powerful but uneven
story, and it leaped at once into popularity, carrying with it the
youthful author. “The Romany Chant” and “Dick Turpin’s Ride to York”
were the chief features; but the Ride was the thing, like the chariot
race in _Ben-Hur_. It was actually dashed off in the glow of enthusiasm,
the white heat of imagination. It was, says George Augustus Sala, “a
piece of word painting rarely if ever surpassed in the prose of the
Victorian Era,”[8] and he said this sixty years after the novel
appeared. Ainsworth has told us the circumstances. “I wrote it” he said
“in twenty-four hours of continuous work. I had previously arranged the
meeting at Kilburn Wells, and the death of Tom King—a work of some
little time—but from the moment I got Turpin on the high road, I wrote
on and on till I landed him at York. I performed this literary feat, as
you are pleased to call it, without the slightest sense of effort. I
began in the morning, wrote all day, and as night wore on, my subject
had completely mastered me, and I had no power to leave Turpin on the
high road. I was swept away by the curious excitement and novelty of the
situation; and being personally a good horseman, passionately fond of
horses, and possessed moreover of accurate knowledge of a great part of
the country, I was thoroughly at home with my work, and galloped on with
my pet highwayman merrily enough. I must, however, confess that when my
work was in proof, I went over the ground between London and York to
verify the distances and localities, and was not a little surprised at
my accuracy.” This _tour de force_—the composition of a hundred novel
pages in so short a time, was performed at “The Elms,” a house at
Kilburn where he was then living. It brings to mind the familiar story
of Beckford, writing _Vathek_ in French, in a single sitting of three
days and two nights, which is more or less apocryphal.
It is a proof of the merit and of the success of this chapter that, like
many other successful literary efforts, it was “claimed” by some one
else. Mr. Bates refers rather indignantly to an assertion of R. Shelton
Mackenzie, made upon the authority of Dr. Kenealy, and contained in the
fifth volume of an American edition of the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, that
Doctor William Maginn, of convivial fame, wrote the “Ride” as well as
all the slang songs in “Rookwood.” But Maginn was seldom sober and
doubtless he bragged in his cups. Kenealy believed in Arthur Orton, the
Tichborne “claimant,” and was capable of believing in any claimant,
particularly if he was an Irishman; while Mackenzie was not celebrated
for acumen or accuracy. Sala says of the absurd tale: “As to the truth
or falsehood of this allegation I am wholly incompetent to pronounce;
but looking at Ainsworth’s striking and powerful pictures of the Plague
and the Fire in his ‘Old St. Paul’s,’ and the numerous studies of Tudor
life in his ‘Tower of London,’ I should say that ‘Turpin’s Ride to York’
was a performance altogether within the compass of his capacity.”
In the light of later years, it is interesting to observe the
comparisons made between Bulwer and Ainsworth. In _Fraser’s Magazine_
for June, 1834, there is a review of “Rookwood” in which the author is
praised far beyond the writer of _Eugene Aram_ and _Paul Clifford_.
Bulwer, according to Sala, was fated “to be beaten on his own ground by
another writer of fiction very much his inferior in genius; but who was
nevertheless endowed with a considerable amount of melodramatic power,
and who had acquired a conspicuous facility for dramatic description.”
It may be that the defeat drove Bulwer to those other fields in which he
won the reputation which has preserved his name while that of his
conqueror of seventy years ago has faded sadly.
It was erroneously believed by many that Ainsworth must have had some
personal acquaintance with low life in London because of the ease with
which he dealt with the thieves’ jargon, but his knowledge of it was but
second-hand for he obtained it from the autobiography of James Hardy
Vaux.[9] A second edition of “Rookwood” illustrated by George
Cruikshank, appeared in 1836.
Ainsworth was now a conspicuous man, and his celebrity as an author,
combined with his personal attractions, made him a welcome guest at many
houses, notably at Gore House, where Lady Blessington so long held
sway—“jolly old girl”, he calls her in one of my letters, written in
1836. The beauty at forty-seven was as fascinating as ever. “Everybody
goes to Lady Blessington’s”, says Haydon in his _Diary_. The
effervescent Sala tells of meeting Ainsworth there in a later time. “I
think”, he says, “that on the evening in question there were present,
among others, Daniel Maclise, the painter, and Ainsworth, the novelist.
The author of “Jack Sheppard” was then a young man of about thirty, very
handsome, but somewhat of the curled and oiled and glossy-whiskered
D’Orsay type”. The D’Orsay type was by no means distasteful to my lady.
Sala relates at second-hand the anecdote about Lady Blessington placing
herself between D’Orsay and Ainsworth, and saying that she had for
supporters the two handsomest men in London.
He was a favorite contributor to _Fraser’s Magazine_, and his portrait
appears among “The Fraserians”, indeed a goodly company, for there are
Coleridge, Southey, James Hogg, Lockhart, D’Orsay, Thackeray, Carlyle,
Washington Irving, Sir David Brewster, and Theodore Hook, with many
others. In the letter-press which accompanied the portrait,—supposed to
have been written by Maginn—the Magazine says: “May he turn out many
novels better, none worse, than ‘Rookwood’; may he, as far as is
consistent with the frailty of humanity, penetrate puffery, and avoid
the three insatiables of Solomon, King of Israel.”
In 1837, “Crichton” was published, the hero being James Crichton, the
“Admirable”, about whose name has grown so much that is fabulous, but
who was nevertheless a real person. The story was illustrated by Hablôt
K. Browne. It was fairly successful; some regard it as in many respects
his best novel; but while it did not add materially to his fame, it did
not diminish it. It was well done; the author spared no pains and as
usual with him was careful in his researches. In the introductory essay
and in the appendices, which Sidney Lee pronounces “very interesting”,
he reprinted, with translations in verse, Crichton’s Elegy on Borromeo
and the eulogy on Visconti. Madden intimates that D’Orsay occasionally
figured as the model of the accomplished hero. The author received £350
for the book—more than for “Rookwood”. He had become a figure in the
literary world and his name was something with which to conjure.
In January, 1837, Richard Bentley began the publication of _Bentley’s
Miscellany_ under the editorship of Charles Dickens. There is a familiar
story that the name originally proposed was “The Wit’s Miscellany,” and
that when the change was mentioned in the presence of “Ingoldsby” Barham
(not Douglus Jerrold, as often supposed), he remarked “Why go to the
other extreme?” In January, 1839, Dickens turned over the office of
editor to Ainsworth, with “a familiar epistle from a parent to his
child”.[10] _Oliver Twist_ had just been the feature of the
_Miscellany_, and now Ainsworth made his second and most celebrated
venture in what Sala calls “felonious fiction”—the immortal “Jack
Sheppard.”
There are some conflicting statements about dates. Madden says, in one
place, “In 1841 he [Ainsworth] became the editor of ‘Bentley’s
Miscellany’,” and on the next page, “In the spring of 1839 he replaced
Dickens in the editorship of ‘Bentley’s Miscellany,’ and continued as
editor till 1841.”[11] He also says that in 1839 the novel, to be called
“Thames Darrell,” was advertised to appear periodically in the
_Miscellany_, then edited by Charles Dickens.[12] Robert Harrison in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_ (title Bentley) says that Dickens
retired from the post of editor in January, 1839. Mr. Axon tells us in
the _Dictionary_ that Ainsworth became the editor in March, 1840, but in
the “Memoir” he assigns the event to the year 1838. Forster puts the
date 1839, which seems to be correct, and the discrepancies are no doubt
susceptible of explanation. The first number of “Jack Sheppard” appeared
in the number for January, 1839.
The success of “Rookwood” and _Oliver Twist_ led to the new essay in the
series which the sanctimonious Allibone says might be very appropriately
published under the title of the “Tyburn Plutarch”—not a very sane or
witty remark in my opinion. Ainsworth cast over the scamp Jack Sheppard
the mantle of romance, and made him “a dashing young blood of illicitly
noble descent, who dressed sumptuously and lived luxuriously”—whose
escapes from Newgate and other adventures were described with a charm
and vigor which took the public captive. The sale exceeded even that of
_Oliver Twist_, and no fewer than eight versions were produced upon the
London stage. Mr. Keeley achieved great notoriety as the hero, and Paul
Bedford first made his mark in the character of Blueskin.
It was not until these dramatic productions appeared that the sedate and
fastidious began the outcry against the so-called criminal school of
romance; an outcry perpetuated in Chambers’ _Encyclopædia_ and in
Allibone’s _Dictionary_. The author and the novel were bitterly
attacked. The main ground of denunciation seems to have been the belief
that the lower orders might be aroused to emulate the brilliant robber,
all of which is sheer nonsense. I am tempted to quote at length from a
letter of Miss Mitford, the personification of an old maid, because it
contains an epitome of the adverse criticism as well as a little
biographical note which I have not encountered elsewhere.
“I have been reading ‘Jack Sheppard,’” she writes to Miss Barrett,[13]
“and have been struck by the great danger in these times, of
representing authorities so constantly and fearfully in the wrong; so
tyrannous, so devilish, as the author has been pleased to portray it
in ‘Jack Sheppard,’ for he does not seem so much a man or even an
incarnate fiend, as a representation of power—government or law, call
it as you may—the ruling power. Of course, Mr. Ainsworth had no such
design, but such is the effect; and as the millions who see it
represented at the minor theatres will not distinguish between now and
a hundred years back, all the Chartists in the land are less dangerous
than this nightmare of a book, and I, Radical as I am, lament any
additional temptations to outbreak, with all its train of horrors.
Seriously, what things these are—the Jack Sheppards, and Squeers’s,
and Oliver Twists, and Michael Armstrongs—all the worse for the power
which except the last, the others contain! Grievously the worse! My
friend, Mr. Hughes, speaks well of Mr. Ainsworth. His father was a
collector of these old robber stories, and used to repeat the local
ballads upon Turpin, etc., to his son as he sat upon his knee; and
this has perhaps been at the bottom of the matter. A good antiquarian
I believe him to be, but what a use to make of the picturesque old
knowledge! Well, one comfort is that it will wear itself out; and then
it will be cast aside like an old fashion.”
The latter part of the prophecy has come very near to fulfillment; but
we have no proof that the awful novel caused any marked increase of
crime. The real utility and value of stories like “Jack Sheppard” may
well be questioned, for they surely do not belong to the highest and
best in literature, but that any one became a thief or a highway robber
because of them is yet to be demonstrated.
It was said, and Ainsworth believed it, that the fact that “Jack
Sheppard” had a better sale than _Oliver Twist_ was the cause of some
falling-off in the friendship which had existed between him and John
Forster, who adored Dickens; and it is true that the _Examiner_, of
which paper Forster was the chief literary critic, made an attack on the
book. It is odd that Forster should have met Dickens for the first time
at Ainsworth’s house.[14] There was some sort of friction among the
three friends about the time when “Jack Sheppard” was in the full tide
of favor and Dickens was closing the troublesome negotiations with
Bentley about the copyright of the unpublished _Barnaby Rudge_. A letter
of Dickens to Ainsworth in my collection throws some light upon the
matter. As it has never been printed, to the best of my knowledge, and
as it cannot fail to be of interest to Dickens-lovers, I may be pardoned
for giving it in full:
“Doughty Street,
Tuesday morning, March 26th, 1839.
My dear Ainsworth:
If the subject of this letter or anything contained in it, should
eventually become the occasion of any disagreement between you and me,
it would cause me very deep and sincere regret. But with this
contingency—even this—before me, I feel that I must speak out without
reserve and that every manly, honest and just consideration compels me
to do so.
By some means—by what means in the first instance I scarcely know—the
late negotiations between yourself, myself and Mr. Bentley have placed
a mutual friend of ours in a false position and one in which he has no
right to stand; and exposed him to an accusation—very rife and current
indeed just now—equally untrue and undeserved, namely that he, who a
short time before had pledged himself to Mr. Bentley (in the presence
of Mr. Follett) to see my last agreement with that person executed and
carried out, counselled me to break it and in fact entangled and
entrapped the innocent and unsuspecting bookseller—who being all
honesty himself had a child-like confidence in others—into taking such
steps as led to that result.
Now I wish to remind you—for a purpose which I will tell you
presently—that even by me no agreement whatever was broken; that I
demanded a postponement of my agreement for the term of six
months—that Forster (to whom I have been alluding of course) expressly
and positively said when you pressed upon me the hardship of my
relations with that noblest work of God, in New Burlington Street,
that he could not and would not be any party to a new disruption
between us—_that he was bound to see the old agreement performed_—that
he wrote to Mr. Bentley warning him of my dissatisfaction—that he saw
Mr. Bentley for a full hour, in his own rooms (a man must be in
earnest to do that)—read to him a letter of mine in which I had
expressed my feelings on the subject, and strongly urged upon him the
necessity and propriety of some concession—that Mr. Bentley went away
thanking him and appointing to call again—that he never called
again—that he wrote me an insulting letter dictated by his
lawyers—that Forster then washed his hands of any further interference
between us—that Mr. Bentley then went out to you at Kensal Green—and
that you and he, between you, and without any previous consultation or
advising with Forster settled upon certain terms and conditions which
were afterwards proposed to me through you, and communicated to
Forster, for the first time and to his unbounded astonishment, by both
of us.
I remind you of all this because Mr. Bentley is going about town
stating in every quarter what may or may not be his real impression of
Forster’s course—because Mr. Bentley does not appeal as an authority
to you—because you do countenance Mr. Bentley in these proceedings by
hearing him express his opinion of Forster and not contradicting
him—and have aggravated him, indeed, by such thoughtless acts as first
procuring an unfavorable notice of the Miscellany in the Examiner (by
dint of urgent solicitations) and then shewing it to him with assumed
vexation and displeasure. I remind you of all this, because Forster
must and shall be set right—not with Mr. Bentley but with the men to
whom these stories are carried and his friends as well as foes—because
there are but two persons who can set him right—and because I wish to
know distinctly from you who shall do so, _without the delay of an
instant_—you or I.
There is another reason which renders this absolutely necessary.
Forster, acting for Mr. Savage Landor, arranged with Mr. Bentley for
the publication of two tragedies by that gentleman, which were
proceeding rapidly through the press when these matters occurred, and
have since been taken from the printers by Mr. Bentley—not published,
though the time agreed upon is long past; not advertised, though they
should have been long ago—their existence not recognized in anyway—and
all this as a means of annoyance and revenge against Forster who is
placed in the most painful situation with regard to Mr. Landor that it
is possible to conceive. Mr. Landor who holds such men as Mr. Bentley
in as little consideration as the mud of the streets, and who is
violent and reckless when exasperated, is as certain by some public
act to punish the bookseller for this treatment (if he be not
prevented by an immediate atonement) as the sun is to rise to-morrow.
This would entail upon me the immediate necessity, in explanation of
the circumstances which led to it, of laying a full history of these
proceedings before the public, and the consequence would be that we
and our private affairs would be dragged into newspaper notoriety and
involved in controversy and discussion, for the pain of which nothing
could ever compensate.
But however painful it will be to me to put myself in communication
once again with Mr. Bentley, and openly appeal to you to confirm what
I shall tell him, I have no alternative unless you will frankly and
openly and for the sake of _your_ old friend as well as my intimate
and valued one, avow to Mr. Bentley yourself that he is not to blame,
that you heard him again and again refuse to interfere although deeply
impressed with the hardship of my case—and that you proposed
concessions which he—feeling the position in which he stood—could not
have suggested. Believe me, Ainsworth, that for your sake no less than
on Forster’s account, this should be done. You do not see it I know,
you do not mean it I am persuaded, but he is impressed with the idea,
and nine men out of ten would be (if these matters were stated by
anybody but you) that to enable yourself to gain your object and stand
in your present relations towards Mr. Bentley, you have used him as an
instrument by suppressing that which would have shewn his conduct in
the best and truest light, and have shrunk from the friendly and manly
avowal of feeling which your own impulses and freer and less worldly
considerations so generously prompted.
Once more let me say that I do not mean to hurt or offend you by
anything I have said, and that I should be truly grieved to find I
have done so. But I must speak strongly because I feel strongly, and
because I have a misgiving that even now I have been silent too long.
My dear Ainsworth, I am
Faithfully yours,
Charles Dickens.
William Ainsworth Esquire.”
The little quarrel, if it was a quarrel, must have been composed
amicably, for Forster in his _Life of Dickens_ refers several times to
Ainsworth in a kind and appreciative way.
In 1840 Ainsworth and George Cruikshank brought out the “Tower of
London” in monthly numbers, and were equal partners in the enterprise.
It has always been regarded as a work of merit. In 1841 the author
received £1000 from the _Sunday Times_ for “Old St. Paul’s”, and it was
later one of Cruikshank’s grievances that he was not associated in this
production, the idea of which he insisted was his own. Among my letters
is one written by Cruikshank to Ainsworth on the subject, which has not,
as far as I know, been published, and I give it because it reveals the
relations of the two men quite distinctly.
“Amwell St., March 4, 1841.
MY DEAR AINSWORTH:—
Mr. Pettigrew called here yesterday and stated your proposition. Had
that proposal been made any time between last December up to about a
fortnight back I should have been happy, _most_ happy, to have
accepted the offer—but now I am sorry to say, but I cannot—no, I have
so far committed myself with various parties that if I were to
withdraw my projected publication I am sure that I should be a
laughing stock to some and what is worse—I fear that with others I
should lose all title to honor or integrity. I do assure you, my dear
Ainsworth, I sincerely regret—that I cannot join you in this work, but
what was I to think—what conclusion was I to come to but that you had
_cut_ me. At the latter end of last year you announced that _we_ were
preparing a “new work!” in the early part of December last. I saw by
an advertisement that your “new work” was to be published in the
“Sunday Times.” You do not come to me or send for me nor send me any
explanations. I meet you at Dickens’s on “New Year’s Eve.” You tell me
then that you will see me in a few days and explain everything to my
satisfaction. I hear nothing from you. In your various notes about the
“Guy Fawkes” you do not even advert to the subject. I purposely keep
myself disengaged refusing many advantageous offers of work—still I
hear nothing from you. At lenth (_sic_) you announce a New Work as a
_companion to the “Tower”!_ without my name. I then conclude that you
do not intend to join _me_ in _any_ “New Work” and therefore determine
to do something for myself—_indeed I could hold out no longer_—to show
that others besides myself considered that you had left me, I was
applied to by Chapman & Hall to join with them and Mr. Dickens in a
speculation which indeed I promised to do should the one with Mr. Felt
be abandoned. However I have still to hope that when you are
disengaged from Mr. Bentley that some arrangements may be made which
may tend to our material benefit.
I remain, my dear Ainsworth, yours very truly,
GEO. CRUIKSHANK.”
In 1841, Ainsworth published the “Guy Fawkes” mentioned in Cruikshank’s
letter. About this time he seems to have become involved in
disagreements with Bentley. On June 22, 1841, he wrote to Ollier:
“I am scarcely surprised to learn from you that Mr. Bentley states that
I promised Mr. Barham to write two separate stories for the November and
December numbers of the Miscellany, because it is only one of those
misstatements to which that gentleman, in all the negotiations I have
had with him, has invariably had recourse. Nothing of the sort was
either expressed or implied, and I cannot believe Mr. Barham made any
such statement, because it is entirely foreign to the spirit of the
whole arrangement. I will thank you however to give Mr. Bentley
distinctly to understand that I will not write any such story or
stories, and that if he does not think fit to enter into the proposed
arrangement, I shall adhere to the original agreement and finish Guy
Fawkes in February next. I beg you will also give him to understand that
I will not allow Mr. Leech or any other artist than Mr. Cruikshank to
illustrate any portion of the work; and that I insist upon a clause to
that effect being inserted in the mem. of agreement.”
The remark about Cruikshank is significant when read in connection with
the artist’s letter of three months before, and with his subsequent
conduct. For although it is clear that the trouble about the publication
of “St. Paul’s” had been healed, through the efforts of Mr. Pettigrew,
he rehashed the old grievance thirty years later.
A rupture with Bentley was imminent and it came very soon. Ainsworth
left the _Miscellany_ in 1841, and in February, 1842, the first number
of “Ainsworth’s Magazine” made its appearance. At first he was both
editor and proprietor, and later he sold the magazine to his
publishers—another of Cruikshank’s grievances; but he afterwards bought
it back, and he continued it until 1854 when he purchased _Bentley’s
Miscellany_ and merged both magazines into one. In 1845 he had bought
for £2,500 Colburn’s _New Monthly Magazine_, of which serial he had been
an editor for a short time in 1836. In a few months he discontinued the
consolidated magazine and sold the _New Monthly_ to his cousin, Dr. W.
F. Ainsworth, closing his editorial career. For “Ainsworth’s Magazine”
he wrote “The Miser’s Daughter”, a work of considerable power, which was
long years afterward dramatized by Andrew Halliday and produced at the
Adelphi Theatre. In 1843 followed “Windsor Castle”, an historical
romance with the scene laid in the reign of Henry VIII; and in 1844 his
active pen busied itself with another story of the same class, “St.
James’s or the Court of Queen Anne”.
During the period between 1836 and 1844, Ainsworth as we have seen, was
closely associated with Cruikshank, who was destined to become a thorn
in his side. The second issue of “Rookwood” was illustrated by
Cruikshank, who furnished also the designs for “Jack Sheppard,” “The
Tower of London,” “Guy Fawkes,” “The Miser’s Daughter,” “Windsor Castle”
(in part), and “St. James’s.”
Whatever may be said of Cruikshank as an artist, he was beyond question
a vain, self-centred and disagreeable person. “He had a tendency,” says
Blanchard Jerrold, “to quarrel with all persons with whom he had
business relations, and when he did quarrel, his words knew no
bounds.”[15] He came to that stage of boundless conceit when he regarded
himself as the creator of all the works for which he supplied the
illustrations and reduced the writer to the level of an ordinary
amanuensis.
All the world knows his absurd pretensions to the origination of _Oliver
Twist_. He also asserted his claim to everything that was good in “Jack
Sheppard,” “The Miser’s Daughter,” and “The Tower of London.” But he
claimed Egan’s _Life in London_ and even a poem of Laman Blanchard’s
which he had illustrated for the _Omnibus_—as well as the pattern of the
hat worn by Russian soldiers! Blanchard Jerrold says in the _Life_ that
the controversies about Dickens and Ainsworth “arose from Cruikshank’s
habit of exaggeration in all things,” which is a biographer’s euphemism,
signifying in plain English that the man was an unmitigated liar.
If any one is curious about the history of the controversies, he will
find a full, fair and dispassionate account in Chapters VIII and IX of
Jerrold’s book. The biographer prints in full Ainsworth’s dignified
rejoinder to Cruikshank’s assault, and justly ridicules the utterances
of the eccentric designer. Austin Dobson, a competent and impartial
judge, has recently added his condemnation of Cruikshank’s
arrogance.[16] “He was not exempt” says Mr. Dobson “from a certain
‘Roman infirmity’ of exaggerating the importance of his own
performances—an infirmity which did not decrease with years. Whatever
the amount of assistance he gave to Dickens and to Ainsworth, it is
clear that it was not rated by them at the value he placed upon it. That
he did make suggestions, relevant or irrelevant, can hardly be doubted,
for it was part of his inventive and ever projecting habit of mind. It
must also be conceded that he most signally seconded the text by his
graphic interpretations; but that this aid or these suggestions were of
such a nature as to transfer the credit of the ‘Miser’s Daughter’ and
‘Oliver Twist’ from the authors to himself is more than can reasonably
be allowed.”
Mr. Frith, a friend of Cruikshank, says in his Autobiography:[17]
“Cruikshank labored under a strange delusion regarding the works of
Dickens and Ainsworth. I heard him announce to a large company assembled
at dinner at Glasgow that he was the writer of ‘Oliver Twist.’*** He
also wrote the ‘Tower of London,’ erroneously credited to Ainsworth, as
well as other works commonly understood to have been written by that
author. My intimacy with Cruikshank enables me to declare that I do not
believe he would be guilty of the least deviation from truth, and to
this day I can see no way of accounting for what was a most absurd
delusion.” In fact, there is only one way, if we concede truthfulness to
the deluded person; he was not of sound mind.
That Cruikshank was pertinaciously suggestive may be readily admitted.
“He was excessively troublesome and obtrusive in his suggestions” says
Ainsworth. “Mr. Dickens declared to me that he could not stand it and
should send him printed matter in future.” He adds, in a kindly spirit
which must appeal to every reader, considering the grossness of the
unjustifiable attack upon him, “It would be unjust, however, to deny
that there was not (_sic_) wonderful cleverness and quickness about
Cruikshank, and I am indebted to him for many valuable hints and
suggestions.” Ainsworth’s appreciation is further shown by an
unpublished letter in my possession, written on December 23, 1838, to
Mr. Jones.
“Bentley” he says “will forward you the introductory chapters and
illustrations of Jack Sheppard with this note. As it is of the utmost
consequence to me to produce a favourable impression upon the public
by this work, I venture to hope that you will lend me a helping hand
at starting.*** Cruikshank’s illustrations are, in my opinion,
astonishingly fine. The scene in the loft throws into shade all his
former efforts in this line.”
This letter also reveals what appears abundantly in the pages of my
collection,—that Ainsworth was given to calling on all his friends of
journalistic and magazine associations to praise his books. He was not
at all backward in urging them to puff the new works; and when Mr. Ebers
was the manager of the opera, he artfully threw in suggestions of “free
tickets,” which was perhaps justifiable but scarcely consistent with
dignity.
As an example of the way in which Cruikshank took pains to inflict upon
his author the details of his designs, it may not be amiss to quote a
letter which is also among my possessions, and which has not been
published, to the best of my knowledge. It is addressed to Ainsworth and
is dated “Saturday evening, 5 o’clock.
“Jonathan Wild has hold of Jack’s left arm with _his_ left hand, and
grasps the collar with his right. The Jew has both his arms round
Jack’s right arm and Quilt Arnold has hold of the right side of Jack’s
coat. This fellow in making his spring at Sheppard may upset the
gravedigger who nearly falls into the grave. I should advise the
approach of the attacking party to be thus. The Jew and some other
fellow go round the _north_ of the church and lurk there and Qt.
Arnold in that road at the N. W. corner—Wild himself to come along the
_south_ side so as to take Jack in the rear. Darrell is about to draw
his sword. In the other subject I have given Jonathan a _stout_
walking stick. I have only time to add that I am yours very truly. The
cheque all safe, many thanks.”
Cruikshank first put forth his claim publicly in 1872, by means of a
pamphlet called _The Artist and the Author_, just after the publication
of the first volume of Forster’s _Dickens_. It is likely that he was
encouraged in his folly by the flattery of foolish friends. Jerrold lays
much blame on Thackeray, from whom he quotes a long passage exalting the
artist far beyond the author. “With regard to the modern romance of
‘Jack Sheppard’,” remarks Thackeray, “it seems to us that Mr. Cruikshank
really created the tale, and that Mr. Ainsworth, as it were, only put
words to it. Let any reader of the novel think over it for awhile, now
that it is some months since he had perused and laid it down—let him
think, and tell us what he remembers of the tale. George Cruikshank’s
pictures—always George Cruikshank’s pictures.” But Thackeray had such a
poor opinion of the book that it is strange he should have ascribed any
merit to Cruikshank for having “created it”. He called it “a book quite
absurd and unreal, and infinitely more immoral than anything Fielding
even wrote,” if, as is generally supposed Thackeray was the author of
the article on Fielding in the _Times_ of September 2, 1840, reprinted
in “Stray Papers” of Thackeray, edited by Lewis Melville and published
in 1901. Thackeray wrote to his mother: “I read your views about ‘Jack
Sheppard’, and, such is the difference of taste, thought it poor stuff
and much below the mark.”[18] Mr. Jerrold expresses the opinion that
Thackeray was always unjust to Ainsworth. “He caricatured him
unmercifully in _Punch_, and never lost an opportunity of being amusing
at his expense.” I am not inclined to agree with Mr. Jerrold’s views.
The long and cordial intimacy of the two men is evidence against the
truth of the theory. I find no record of any resentment on Ainsworth’s
part against the author of _Vanity Fair_, and Ainsworth was by no means
timid in self-defense or averse to a sturdy combat with those who
assailed him. Thackeray—who never got over the conviction that he
himself was an “artist”—a picture maker—naturally gave to the
illustrator an undue meed of praise; and at the risk of denunciation by
all the scribblers who succumb to the “disease of admiration” and find
it easy to glorify a famous man as if he were perfect and infallible, I
venture to say that in grotesqueness and faulty drawing, the great Snob
and the great Cruikshank were not very dissimilar. Yet Thackeray’s
comments were wisdom itself when compared with the silly utterance of
Mr. Walter Thornbury, who thus delivers himself: “Even Dickens had his
fine gold jewelled by Cruikshank. Ainsworth’s tawdry rubbish—now all but
forgotten, and soon to sink deep in the mud-pool of oblivion,—was
illuminated with a false splendor by the great humorist,”[19] A critical
person might be disposed to inquire why the “great humorist” should
lower himself by illuminating anything with a “false splendor.” It is
not complimentary to the great humorist, but Mr. Thornbury unconsciously
told the truth; his hero was falseness personified.
In his “Few Words about George Cruikshank,” Ainsworth said: “For myself,
I desire to state emphatically that not a single line—not a word—in any
of my novels was written by their illustrator, Cruikshank. In no
instance did he even see a proof. The subjects were arranged with him
early in the month, and about the fifteenth he used to send me tracings
of the plates. That was all.” He adds: “_Ne sutor ultra crepidam._ Had
Cruikshank been capable of constructing a story, why did he not exercise
his talent when he had no connection with Mr. Dickens or myself? But I
never heard of such a tale being published.” Of course, it may be said
that Cruikshank did not pretend that he had written the books—only that
he had furnished the leading ideas; that is an easy thing to assert, a
hard thing to disprove, and an impossible thing to demonstrate.
It is fairly manifest that if there had been any real foundation for the
claims of Cruikshank, he would not have waited for thirty years before
setting up his title. He sought to account for the delay by asseverating
that he had frequently _in private_ asserted his claim, which anybody
possessed of ordinary intelligence will see in a moment was a puerile
make-shift; no sufficient reason or explanation. As nobody whose opinion
is worth accepting has ever given credence to the tale of the old
artist, it may be a waste of time to give it further attention; but it
may be permitted to show that Cruikshank needed a good deal of
instruction himself.
The fact is shown by the letter of Dickens, produced in facsimile by
Forster,[20] and it is confirmed by several of Ainsworth’s letters now
lying before me. In March, 1836, while Cruikshank was engaged on the
designs for the second edition of “Rookwood,” Ainsworth wrote to
Macrone, the publisher, “I _have_ seen some of George Cruikshank’s
designs, and it was because I thought them so _sketchy_ that I write to
you. They are anything but _full_ subjects and appear to be chosen as
much as possible for light work. He shirked the inauguration scene, for
instance, because it was too crowded. I quite agree with you that a few
good designs are better than many meagre sketches, and all I want is
that you should make George understand this. He has evidently two
styles—and one can scarcely recognize in some of his ‘Bozzes’ the hand
of the designer of the Comic Almanack.*** _Do_, I pray of you, see
George Cruikshank, and don’t let him put us off so badly.” Again, in
writing to Macrone in 1836, he makes several recommendations for
designs, and adds: “Another suggestion—and this refers to George. In
addition to the figures I suggested, I wish him to introduce as entering
my old gentleman’s chamber, Thomas Hill, Esq. (in propria persona), or
as I shall call him, Tom Vale. If George has not seen him, you can get
the sketch from Frazer’s Mag. but introduced he must be, as I mean to
carry him throughout and to make him play the part of Mr. Weller in my
story; I wish George therefore to give the portrait, easily done, as
exact as possible.” In a later letter to Cruikshank himself, while they
were at work together on “The Tower,” he writes: “Pray, when you are at
the Tower, sketch the gateway of the Bloody Tower from the south; the
chamber where the princes were murdered; the basement chamber at the
right of the gateway of the Bloody Tower, near the Round Tower.” All
this furnishes competent testimony that Cruikshank was a mere
illustrator, directed and controlled by the author.
From the time of “Jack Sheppard” until 1881, a period of over forty
years, Ainsworth was a busy man, producing book after book at regular
intervals and until 1855 closely occupied with editorial labors. After
“St. James’s” he began “Auriol,” which was by no means successful. It
dealt with a London alchemist of the sixteenth century, but the plot was
defective and it was not published in book form until near the close of
the author’s life. In 1848 he wrote “Lancashire Witches” for the _Sunday
Times_, receiving £1,000. It was dedicated to his old friend James
Crossley, President of the Chetham Society, which published many
volumes, including Potts’s _Discovery of Witches_ and the _Journals_ of
Nicolas Assheton, both furnishing much of the material for the story. In
1854, “Star Chamber” and “The Flitch of Bacon, or the Custom of Dunmow”
appeared. The “Flitch” treated of the ancient Essex custom of giving a
“Gamon of Bacon” to a married pair “who had taken an oath, pursuant to
the ancient ‘Custom of Confession,’ if ever—
“—You either married man or wife
By household brawles or contentious strife,
Or otherwise, in bed or at board,
Did offend each other in deed or word,
Or, since the Parish _clerk_ said _Amen_,
You wish’t yourselves unmarried agen,
Or in a twelve months time and a day,
Repented not in thought, any way;
But continued true and just in desire
As when you joyn’d hands in the holy quire.”
In 1851 “the lord of the manor declined to give the flitch, but the
claimants obtained one from a public subscription, and a concourse of
some three thousand people assembled in Easton Park in their
honour.”[21] In 1855 Ainsworth himself offered to give the flitch. The
candidates were Mr. James Barlow and his wife, of Chipping Ongar, and
the Chevalier de Chatelain and his wife, the last named being well known
in literary circles. They were old friends of Ainsworth. I have thirteen
letters from Ainsworth to the Chevalier and his wife, of the most
intimate character, dating from 1845 to 1880. In one of them, written at
Brighton on October 22, 1854, he says:
“My dear Chevalier: Thanks for your charming little volume, full of
graceful translations. You have done me the favor I find to include
the ‘Custom of Dunmow’ in your collection. Within the last few days I
have received another version in French of the same ballad by Jacques
Desrosiers. The Tale has been translated under the title of ‘_Un An et
un Jour_’, and published at Bruxelles. You will be glad to hear that a
worthy personage has announced his intention of bequeathing a sum
sufficient for the perpetual maintenance of the good old custom.”
On January 5, 1855, he writes to Madame de Chatelain:
“I need scarcely say, I hope, that I shall be most happy to entertain
your claim for the Flitch—and though I believe a prior claim has been
made, I will gladly give a second prize rather than you should
experience any disappointment.” On July 19, 1855, she received the
flitch of bacon in the Windmill Field, Dunmore.
In 1856 “Spendthrift” appeared, and in 1857 “Merwyn Clitheroe” which he
had begun in 1851 but had abandoned after a few weekly numbers. In 1860
he published “Ovingdean Grange, a Tale of the South Downs.” The two
books last mentioned were partly autobiographical.
It is unnecessary to do more than to enumerate his later productions,
for although they showed the scrupulous care which he exercised in
respect to details and the pains he took to be accurate in historical
references, they were never as popular as his earlier works. The list is
quite imposing: “Constable of the Tower,” 1861; “The Lord Mayor of
London,” 1862; “Cardinal Pole,” 1863; “John Law, the Projector,” 1864;
“The Spanish Match, or Charles Stuart in Madrid,” 1865; “Myddleton
Pomfret,” 1865; “The Constable de Bourbon,” 1866; “Old Court,” 1867;
“The South Sea Bubble,” 1868; “Hilary St. Ives,” 1869; “Talbot Harland,”
1870; “Tower Hill,” 1871; “Boscobel,” 1872; “The Manchester Rebels, or
the Fatal ’45.” 1873; “Merry England,” 1874; “The Goldsmith’s Wife,”
1874; “Preston Fight, or the Insurrection of 1715,” 1875; “Chetwynd
Calverley,” 1876; “The Leaguer of Lathom, a Tale of the Civil War in
Lancashire,” 1876; “The Fall of Somerset,” 1877; “Beatrice Tyldesley,”
1878; “Beau Nash,” 1879; “Auriol and other tales,” 1880; and “Stanley
Brereton,” 1881. Not a single one of this long catalogue is now
remembered. Percy Fitzgerald in an article in _Belgravia_ (November,
1881), said that the description of Ainsworth’s books in the Catalogue
of the British Museum filled no fewer than forty pages. Mr. Axon reduces
the number of pages to twenty-three, but that is very extensive. In
addition to the prose works whose titles are given above, he published
in 1855 “Ballads, Romantic, Fantastical and Humorous,” which was
illustrated by Sir John Gilbert and which contains some spirited and
picturesque verses; and in 1859 “The Combat of the Thirty,” a
translation of a Breton lay of the middle ages, which was included in
the later editions of the “Ballads.”
In 1881 Ainsworth was nearly seventy-seven, and approaching the end of
his career. On September 15 in that year, the Mayor of Manchester, Sir
Thomas Baker, gave a banquet in his honor at the town hall. In proposing
the health of the guest, the Mayor said that in the Manchester public
free libraries there were two hundred and fifty volumes of his works.
“During the last twelve months”, said the Mayor, “those volumes have
been read seven thousand six hundred and sixty times, mostly by the
artisan class of readers. And this means that twenty volumes of his
works are being perused in Manchester by readers of the free libraries
every day all the year through.”
A report of this banquet is given as an introduction to “Stanley
Brereton”, which was dedicated to the Mayor. I have a copy of the
“official” report, a pamphlet of twenty-nine pages, whereof forty copies
were printed “for private circulation only”. The speeches are
characteristic of English dinners, and some of them are funny without
any intention on the part of the speakers. The Mayor rather astonishes
us by saying that the six of the most popular works, in the order in
which they were most read, were “The Tower of London”, “The Lancashire
Witches”, “Old St. Paul’s”, “Windsor Castle”, “The Miser’s Daughter”,
and “The Manchester Rebels”. But this was in Manchester. Ainsworth’s
response was modest and graceful, and he dwelt upon his delight in being
styled “the Lancashire novelist”. His old friend Crossley and Edmund
Yates were among the orators of the occasion, the latter responding to
the toast of “The Press”, and saying of “after-dinner Manchester” that
“even in the midst of enjoyment he would hazard the friendly criticism
that though it was eloquent it was not concise.” The account ends with
these significant words: “This concluded the list of toasts, and the
company shortly afterwards broke up.” One who reads the story of the
feast is not surprised at this, for the speeches were enough to break up
any company; but the tribute to Ainsworth was well-meant and sincere.
My English friend, the prospective biographer of Ainsworth, takes issue
with me on my assertion that his favorite is an author who has fallen
into oblivion and whose books are not read by the present generation. He
refers of course to English readers, and assures me that the stories are
still popular in England. “Routledge”, he says, “issues a vast number of
cheap editions of his works, and in addition many other publishing firms
have recently issued editions of the better known novels. This has been
done by Methuen, Newnes, Gibbings, Mudie, Treherne, and Grant Richards,
to mention a few that I recollect at the minute.” It is doubtless true
that there is a demand for the tales among the less cultivated English
readers, but it can not, I think, be maintained successfully that the
author has a permanent and enduring literary fame. Perhaps I am
influenced in my opinion by the American lack of acquaintance with
Ainsworth and his works.
Contemporaneous memoirs and records are full of testimony to the
personal popularity of Ainsworth in the social life of the day. He
entertained freely, and was a favorite guest. Dickens and Thackeray were
both fond of him, although Blanchard Jerrold, as we have seen, doubted
Thackeray’s friendship. Forster says in his _Dickens_, referring to the
period _circa_ 1838, “A friend now especially welcome, too, was the
novelist, Mr. Ainsworth, who shared with us incessantly for the three
following years in the companionship which began at his house; with whom
we visited, during two of these years, friends of arts and letters in
his native Manchester, from among whom Dickens brought away his Brothers
Cheeryble, and to whose sympathy in tastes and pursuits, accomplishments
in literature, open-hearted, generous ways, and cordial hospitality,
many of the pleasures of later years are due.” I have a little note of
his, addressed to Dickens, saying: “Don’t forget your engagement to dine
with me on Tuesday next. I shall send a refresher to Forster the
unpunctual.” There is also this letter from Dickens—strangely enough in
black ink and not the blue which he employed in later days.
“Devonshire Terrace,
Fifth February, 1841.
MY DEAR AINSWORTH—
Will you tell me where that Punch is to be bought, what one is to ask
for, and what the cost is. It has made me very uneasy in my mind.
Mind—I deny the beer. It is very excellent; but that it surpasses that
meeker, and gentler, and brighter ale of mine (oh how bright it is!) I
never will admit. My gauntlet lies upon the earth.
Yours, in defiance,
CHARLES DICKENS.”
One of my Thackeray letters is addressed to Ainsworth, dated in 1844,
inviting him to dine at the Garrick, with the characteristic remark, “I
want to ask 3 or 4 of the littery purfession.” Tom Moore in his Journal
(November 21, 1838) mentions a dinner at Bentley’s where the company was
“all the very _haut ton_ of the literature of the day,” including
himself (named first), Jerdan, Ainsworth, Lever, Dickens, Campbell, and
Luttrell. We read in Mackay’s “Breakfasts with Rogers” of a breakfast
where he met Sydney Smith, Daniel O’Connell, Sir Augustus D’Este and
Ainsworth. These references might be multiplied almost indefinitely.
According to Hazlitt, Ainsworth had one rule, as a host, which in these
days of studied unpunctuality might be considered unduly vigorous; when
he had friends to dinner he locked his outside gate at the stroke of the
clock, and no late comer was admitted.
It is not to be denied that he had his foibles and that he also had his
quarrels—few men of any force or strength of will and character can
escape quarrels. That he fell out with Cruikshank and Bentley is not to
be wondered at, for almost everybody did that, sooner or later. His
passage at arms with Francis Mahony—the Father Prout of “Bells of
Shandon” fame—is more to be regretted, but he was in no way to blame. He
behaved very well under trying conditions. The trouble dated from
Ainsworth’s secession from _Bentley’s Miscellany_—what Mr. Bates calls
his “dis-Bentleyfication,” and, ignoring their past intimacy and cordial
companionship, Mahony sneered at the man “who left the tale of Crichton
half told, and had taken up with ‘Blueskin,’ ‘Jack Sheppard,’ ‘Flitches
of Bacon,’ and ‘Lancashire Witches,’ and thought such things were
‘literature,’”—following it up with some rather poor and clumsy
verse-libels, flat, stale and unprofitable—utterly unworthy of a
moment’s time. Ainsworth replied most courteously in a parody of Prout,
called “The Magpie of Marwood; an humble Ballade,” which none could
condemn as either coarse or brutal. When Mahony came back at his former
friend with quotations from private letters asking eulogistic notices
and literary aid, and when he said “Has he forgotten that he was fed at
the table of Lady Blessington? not merely for the sake of companionship,
for a duller dog never sat at a convivial board,” he showed himself a
despicable cad, a perfidious creature, well deserving the name of
“Jesuit scribe,” which was about all the retort which Ainsworth thought
fit to make.
The kindly and forgiving nature of Ainsworth is shown by a letter in my
collection, written on February 24, 1880, to Charles Kent. He says: “I
always regret the misunderstanding that occurred between myself and
Mahony, but any offence that was given him on my part was unintentional,
and I cannot help thinking he was incited to the attack he made upon me
by Bentley. Be this as it may, I have long ceased to think about it, and
now only dwell upon the agreeable parts of his character. He was an
admirable scholar, a wit, a charming poet, and generally—not always—a
very genial companion.” These pleasant remarks about the man who had
grossly insulted him, are quite characteristic and demonstrate the sweet
reasonableness with which he treated men like Cruikshank and Father
Prout.
As Blanchard Jerrold says, _Punch_ was often quite severe on Ainsworth.
Spielmann in his _History of Punch_ confirms the statement:
“Harrison Ainsworth, as much for his good looks and his literary vanity,
as for his tendency to reprint his romances in such journals as came
under his editorship, was the object of constant banter. An epigram put
the case very neatly:
“Says Ainsworth to Colburn,
‘A plan in my pate is,
To give my romance as
A supplement, _gratis_.’
Says Colburn to Ainsworth,
‘Twill do very nicely,
For that will be charging
It’s value precisely.’
“Harrison Ainsworth could not have his portrait painted, nor write a
novel of crime and sensation, without being regarded as a convenient peg
for pleasantry.”
There seems to have been, unluckily, a shadow of a difference with
William Jerdan, of the _Literary Gazette_, whose diffuse and often
tedious _Autobiography_ was published in 1853. “Among incipient
authors,” says Jerdan, “whom (to use a common phrase) it was in my power
to ‘take by the hand’ and pull up the steep, few had heartier help than
Mr. William Harrison Ainsworth, whose literary propensities were strong
in youth, and who has since made so wide a noise in the world of
fictitious and periodical literature. From some cause or another, which
I cannot comprehend, he has given a notice to my publishers, to forbid
the use of any of his correspondence in these Memoirs, though on looking
over a number of his letters I can discover nothing discreditable to
him, or aught of which he has reason to be ashamed.” I think it is not
difficult to understand what Jerdan seemed unable to comprehend.
Ainsworth did not care to have his confidential requests for good
notices go out to the public. It was a weakness of his to beg for
complimentary reviews and Father Prout had made the most of it; small
wonder that he dreaded a repetition of the experience. Jerdan gives,
however, a very kindly estimate of Ainsworth.[22]
In Mr. Axon’s memoir, he says that an engraving by W. C. Edwards of a
portrait of Ainsworth by Maclise appeared on the frontispiece of Laman
Blanchard’s biographical sketch in the first number of “Ainsworth’s
Magazine”. A second portrait by the same artist, which was exhibited at
the Royal Academy in 1844, was the frontispiece of the fifth volume of
the magazine. A portrait by Count D’Orsay dated November 21, 1844,
appeared in the seventh volume. To this period belong the full-length
portrait by the elder Pickersgill, the property of Chetham’s Hospital,
but now in the Manchester Reference Library, and a portrait by R. J.
Lane. The good looks of Ainsworth have been referred to several times;
they were the good looks of the days of William IV, but the Maclise and
Pickersgill portraits as well as the later Fry photograph have a
dandified appearance which in our modern eyes detracts from true
dignity. The sketch in the _Maclise Gallery_ shows him at his best, in
his Fraser days, a fine and gallant figure, without the hideous whiskers
of the type beloved by Tittlebat Titmouse. “This delicately drawn
portrait of the novelist” comments Mr. Bates, “just at the time that he
had achieved his reputation,’—hair curled and oiled as that of an
Assyrian bull, the gothic arch coat-collar, the high neckcloth, and the
tightly strapped trousers—exhibits as fine an example as we could wish
for, of the dandy of the D’Orsay type and pre-Victorian epoch.”
He lived at one time at the “Elms” at Kilburn, and later at Kensal Manor
House on the Harrow Road. Afterwards he lived at Brighton and at
Tunbridge Wells. When he grew old he resided with his oldest daughter,
Fannie, at Hurstpierpoint. He had also a residence at St. Mary’s Road,
Reigate, Surrey, and there he died, on Sunday, January 3d, 1882. On
January 9th, he was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, with a quiet and
simple ceremonial as he wished. His widow and three daughters by his
first marriage survived him.
Ainsworth had no power to portray character or to analyze motives; his
genius was purely descriptive. He had a strong literary bent, and he was
a man of letters in the true sense. He did not possess the spark which
gives immortality, but he toiled faithfully and his work was well done
even if he did not reach the standard of the greatest of his
contemporaries.
Perhaps his merits were characterized rather too ornately in the _Sun_
of August 2, 1852, where a reviewer said:
“His romances yield evidence, in a thousand particulars, that his
temperament is exquisitely sensitive, not less of the horrible than of
the beautiful. We have it in those landscapes variously coloured with
the glow of Claude and the gloom of Salvator Rosa—in those lyrics grave
as the songs of the Tyrol, or ghastly as the incantations of the
Brocken; but still more in those creations, peopling the one and
chaunting the other, namely, some of them as the models of Ostade, and
others wild as the wildest dreams of Fuseli. Everywhere, however, in
these romances a preference for the _grimlier_ moods of imagination
renders itself apparent. The author’s purpose, so to speak, gravitates
towards the preternatural. Had he been a painter instead of a romancist,
he could have portrayed the agonies of Ugolino, as Da Vinci portrayed
the ‘_rotello del fico_,’ in lines the most haggard and lines the most
cadaverous. As a writer of fiction, his place among his contemporaries
may, we conceive, be very readily indicated. He occupies the same
position in the present that Radcliffe occupied in a former generation.”
Mr. Axon’s estimate is less gorgeous but more convincing. “The essence
of his power was that same faculty by which the Eastern story-teller
holds spellbound a crowd of hearers in the street of Cairo. It is this
fascination which enables Ainsworth, at his best, to compel the reader’s
attention, and hurries him forward from the first page to the last of
some tale of ‘daring-do’, of crime, adventure, sorrow and love. The
reader who has listened to the beginning does not willingly turn aside
until the story is completed and he has seen all the puppets play their
part with that skilful semblance of truth that seems more real than
reality itself.”
It is to be hoped that the forthcoming biography will do ample justice
to the memory of this charming literary personage, and may revive the
fading interest in him and in his works.
GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES
In a vainglorious mood I said not long ago to a well-dressed and
apparently intelligent gentleman whom I met in the house of an
accomplished lawyer in Washington City, that I had just had the
privilege of conversing with the extremely modern novelist, Mr. Henry
James. He smiled amiably and remarked airily, “Oh, the two horsemen
fellow”.
The remark was not without significance, because it betrayed the fact
that my casual acquaintance, who might well be presumed to represent
what is called “the average citizen” of this enlightened country; who
was fairly well educated; who had read enough to know of the famous
horsemen and of their habitual appearance in the opening chapter; who
assuredly had skimmed the book-notices in our wonderful newspapers; was,
after all, more distinctly impressed by the writer of sixty years ago
than by the contemporaneous author whose volumes bid fair to rival in
number those of his namesake—an author whose style defies definition and
bewilders the simple-minded searcher after a good story.
I confess that I am puzzled by these subtle writers with their involved
sentences, their clouds of verbiage, and their incomprehensible
wanderings in speculative mysteries. There is a delight about the direct
and there is often disappointment about the indirect. The true lover of
fiction revels in the directness of Dumas and of Dickens, but he usually
accepts the intricacies of the modern school because he is told that he
ought to do so or because, alone and unaided, he can discover nothing
better in the product of the day.
To my Washington friend I replied, with that offensive assumption of
superiority which marks the man familiar with his encyclopædia, that the
writer of whom he was thinking had closed his career and finished the
last chapter of his life nearly half a century ago, when Henry James was
only seventeen and had not yet dreamed of Daisy Miller or forecasted the
genesis of the two closely printed volumes of _The Golden Bowl_. I
discerned the truth, however, that the subject was not interesting and
we changed the topic of conversation.
The earlier James has not been favored by the men who compile histories
of English literature. Nicoll and Seccombe merely call him “the prolific
James”, but devote large space to many inferior writers. Garnett and
Gosse ignore him entirely. It seems to be a rule among self-constituted
critics to speak of him with indifference; I think he deserves more
respectful treatment. It may be that he has been a victim of that
merciless propensity of men to throw stones at him who has been the
subject of ridicule by those who have won popularity; when one cur
barks, the whole pack joins vigorously. As Mr. Stapleton in _Jacob
Faithful_ profoundly observes, it is “human natur”. When Macaulay damned
poor Montgomery to lasting ignominy, he deliberately consigned the
luckless poet to undeserved contempt; and Macaulay’s essay will live
while but for its caustic condemnation Montgomery would be utterly
forgotten.
The “horseman” tag has for many years attached itself to G. P. R. James
and has done much to bring him into ridicule. It is strange how such
tags preserve immortality, despite the fact that they are often unjust
and deceiving. What is printed, remains. A New York journal said
recently: “An error once made in print, it seems will never die; a
mis-statement may be corrected within the hour, but it goes on its
travels without the correction and becomes a bewildering part of written
history”. It is true also concerning a “tag”. In literature, Bret
Harte’s parodies, the _Rejected Addresses_, and the many clever things
contained in Mr. Hamilton’s amusing compilation, show how easy it is to
discover a mannerism and to attach to an author a label which will
always identify him.
Possibly the popularity of the “horseman” remark is due in some degree
to Thackeray, who began “that fatal parody,” the burlesque “Barbazure,
by G. P. R. Jeames Esq. etc.” in this wise: “It was upon one of those
balmy evenings of November which are only known in the valleys of
Languedoc and among the mountains of Alsace, that two cavaliers might
have been perceived by the naked eye threading one of the rocky and
romantic gorges that skirt the mountain land between the Marne and the
Garonne.” Our own John Phœnix in his review of the “Life of Joseph
Bowers the Elder”—I quote from the original edition, and not from the
one printed’ by the Caxton Club which omits this gem—says of one of Mr.
Bowers’s supposititious works: “The following smacks, to us, slightly of
‘Jeems.’ ‘It was on a lovely morning in the sweet spring time, when two
horsemen might have been seen slowly descending one of the gentle
acclivities that environ the picturesque valley of San Diego.’” Mr.
Edmund Gosse continues the tradition when in his _Modern English
Literature_, he tells us of the days when “the cavaliers of G. P. R.
James were riding down innumerable roads”; while Justin McCarthy in the
_History of Our Own Times_ remarks pleasantly—“Many of us can remember,
without being too much ashamed of the fact, that there were early days
when Mr. James and his cavaliers and his chivalric adventures gave
nearly as much delight as Walter Scott could have given to the youth of
a preceding generation. But Walter Scott is with us still, young and
old, and poor James is gone. His once famous solitary horseman has
ridden away into actual solitude, and the shades of night have gathered
over his heroic form”. Here we perceive a variation from the familiar
allusion. The “two horsemen” have condensed themselves into a single
rider.
While we are speaking of the horsemen, it may not be amiss to recall
what James thought of them. In 1851 he published a story called “The
Fate,” and in the sixteenth chapter he deals with them in a manner quite
amusing but also quite pathetic. He is talking about plagiarism and he
wanders into other fields. He says:
“As to repeating one’s self, it is no very great crime, perhaps, for I
never heard that robbing Peter to pay Paul was punishable under any
law or statute, and the multitude of offenders in this sense, in all
ages, and in all circumstances, if not an excuse, is a palliation,
showing the frailty of human nature, and that we are as frail as
others—but no more. The cause of this self-repetition, probably, is
not a paucity of ideas, not an infertility of fancy, not a want of
imagination or invention, but like children sent daily to draw water
from a stream, we get into the habit of dropping our buckets into the
same immeasurable depth of thought exactly at the same place; and
though it be not exactly the same water as that which we drew up the
day before it is very similar in quality and flavor, a little clearer
or a little more turbid, as the case may be.
Now this dissertation—which may be considered as an introduction or
preface to the second division of my history—has been brought about,
has had its rise, origin, source, in an anxious and careful endeavor
to avoid, if possible, introducing into this work the two solitary
horsemen—one upon a white horse—which, by one mode or another, have
found their way into probably one out of three of all the books I have
written and I need hardly tell the reader that the name of these books
is legion. They are, perhaps, too many; but, though I must die, some
of them will live—I know it, I feel it; and I must continue to write
while this spirit is in this body.
To say truth, I do not know why I should wish to get rid of my two
horsemen, especially the one on the white horse. Wouvermans always had
a white horse in all his pictures; and I do not see why I should not
put my signature, my emblem, my monogram, in my paper and ink pictures
as well as any painter of them all. I am not sure that other authors
do not do the same thing—that Lytton has not always, or very nearly, a
philosophizing libertine—Dickens, a very charming young girl, with
dear little pockets; and Lever a bold dragoon. Nevertheless, upon my
life, if I can help it, we will not have in this work the two horsemen
and the white horse; albeit, in after times—when my name is placed
with Homer and Shakespeare, or in any other more likely position—they
may arise serious and acrimonious disputes as to the real authorship
of the book, from its wanting my own peculiar and distinctive mark and
characteristic.
But here, while writing about plagiarism, I have been myself a
plagiary; and it shall not remain without acknowledgment, having
suffered somewhat in that sort myself. Here, my excellent friend,
Leigh Hunt, soul of mild goodness, honest truth, and gentle
brightness! I acknowledge that I stole from you the defensive image of
Wouverman’s white horse, which you incautiously put within my reach,
on one bright night of long, dreamy conversation, when our ideas of
many things, wide as the poles asunder, met suddenly without clashing,
or produced but a cool, quiet spark—as the white stones which children
rub together in dark corners emit a soft phosphorescent gleam, that
serves but to light their little noses.”[23]
I hold no brief for James. I cannot assert truthfully that I am
particularly well acquainted with more than four or five of his
numerous books, although I remember with delight the perusal of some
of them when I was a boy, reading for the story alone. But I am
confident that he had his merits, and that much of the abuse showered
upon him by critics has been undeserved; that he was a careful and
conscientious writer whose novels are fit to be read, and that while
he may no longer be ranked among “the best sellers”, he deserves a
high place of honor among those who have entertained, amused and
instructed their fellow men. It is only about two years ago that the
Routledges of London considered it wise to begin the new career of
their house by re-issuing in twenty-five volumes the historical
novels, and cheaper reproductions are widely circulated. In a recent
number of a New York magazine the editor says that “the fact is that
James has always had a big public of his own—the public in fact that
does _not_ consult the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’”—referring
to the disparaging article in the Dictionary about which I will have
something to say later on. There are authors who are always praised by
the critics but ignored by the proletariat of readers; there are
authors whom the critics affect to despise but who have many readers
whose judgments are not embalmed in print. James seems to belong to
the last-mentioned class. Yet few are acquainted with the man himself,
and I have thought that it might not be amiss to give a short account
of him, referring to the estimates of his character and ability by
those of his own time and also to some autograph letters of his which
are in my possession and which have not been published.
The details of his life are not very well known; it was not a stirring
or an eventful one. It was the life of a quiet, dignified and
unostentatious man of letters, unmarked by fierce controversies and
wholly devoid of domestic troubles. If his reputation has not long
survived him among the critical it is because of a law of literature
which Mr. Brander Matthews says is inexorable and universal. The man who
has the gift of story telling and nothing else, who is devoid of humor,
who does not possess the power of making character, who is a “spinner of
yarns” only, has no staying power, and “however immense his immediate
popularity may be, he sinks into oblivion almost as soon as he ceases to
produce”.[24] James seems to have had only in a small degree “the power
of making character”, and although he had a sense of humor, it manifests
itself in his novels only in a mildly unobtrusive way.
George Payne Rainsford James was born in George Street, Hanover Square,
London, on August 9th, 1799. His father was a physician who had seen
service in the navy and was in America during the Revolution, serving in
Benedict Arnold’s descent on Connecticut. The son of the novelist, who
is still living in Wisconsin, tells me that his grandfather (as he
hinted) shot a man with his own hands to stop the atrocities of the
siege in which Ledyard fell. The physician was also in the vessel which
brought Rodney the news of De Grasse and enabled him to win the great
naval victory which assisted England to make peace creditably. His
paternal grandfather was Dr. Robert James, whose “powders” for curing
fevers enjoyed great celebrity at one time,[25] but his chief title to
fame is that he was admired by Samuel Johnson who said of him, “no man
brings more mind to his profession.”[26] I regret that there is a cruel
insinuation by the great personage which implies that Doctor Robert was
not sober for twenty years, but there is some doubt whether Johnson was
really referring to James.[27] Those were days of free indulgence, and
much may be pardoned; at all events, no one could ever accuse the
grandson of such an offence.
Young George attended the school of the Reverend William Carmalt at
Putney, but he was not fortunate enough to have the advantage of a
university education, which despite the sneers of those who never
attended a university, is an important element in the life of any man
who devotes himself to literature. It is a great corrective, and those
who regard the subject from a point of view wholly utilitarian do not
comprehend in the least degree what is meant by it. James soon developed
a fondness for the study of languages, not only what are called “the
classics,” but of Persian and Arabic although he says he “sadly failed
in mastering Arabic.” This taste of his may account in part for his
extensive vocabulary, and it may be that his diffuseness, so much
criticised, was due in some degree to his ready command of an unusual
number of words. In his younger days, he studied medicine, as might have
been expected, but his inclination was in a different direction. He
wanted to go into the navy, but says Mr. C. L. James, “his father, who
had a sailor’s experience and manners, said, ‘you may go into the army
if you like—it’s the life of a dog; but the navy is the life of a d——d
dog, and you shan’t try it.’”
He did accordingly go into the army for a short time during the “One
Hundred Days,” and was wounded in one of the slight actions which
followed Waterloo; but he never rose beyond the rank of lieutenant. His
son writes: “The British and Prussian forces were disposed all along the
frontier to guard every point, and Wellington, with whom my father was
acquainted, did not like the arrangement—it was Blucher’s. When Napoleon
crossed the Sambre at Charlevoi, the Duke saw his purpose of taking
Quatre Bras, between the English and Prussians, so he sent word to all
his own detachments to fall in, ‘running as to a fire.’*** My father’s
company was among those too late for the great battle. I have heard him
tell how the cuirassiers lay piled up, men and horses, to the tops of
lofty hedges.*** My father also said that he saw a dead cuirassier
behind our lines, showing there must have been a time when they actually
pierced the allied centre. When he was on the field they were bringing
in French prisoners, who would have been massacred by the Prussians but
that English soldiers guarded them. Many years afterwards the Duke of
Wellington said to my father, in his abrupt way, ‘You were at Waterloo,
I think?’ ‘No,’ he replied ‘I am sorry to say.’ ‘Why sorry to say,’
rejoined Wellington, ‘if you had been there, you might not have been
here.’ Another of his anecdotes about the Duke is that just after
Waterloo, where it is well known that a great part of the allied army
was wholly routed, some officers were talking about who ‘ran’, when
Wellington, who had been quietly listening to these unhopeful
personalities, cut in thus: ‘Run! who wouldn’t have run under a fire
like that? I am sure I should—if I had known any place to run to.’”
One incident in his army life is of interest. Some thirty years ago Mr.
Maunsell B. Field, a gentleman whose title to fame is somewhat dubious,
published a book called “Memories of Many Men.” He knew James well, and
collaborated with him in one of his books—“Adrian, or the Clouds of the
Mind.” Mr. Field says, after mentioning an alleged fact which is not a
fact, viz: that James was taken prisoner before the battle of Waterloo
and detained until after the battle, “The incident which occurred during
his confinement there cast a gloom upon the rest of his life. For some
cause which he never explained to me, he became engaged in a duel with a
French officer. He escaped unhurt himself, but wounded his adversary who
died, after lingering for months. I have still in my possession the
old-fashioned pistols with which this duel was fought, which my deceased
friend presented to me at the time of our early acquaintance.”[28]
Field’s story is made up in a ridiculously inaccurate way. James was not
captured before Waterloo, or after it, for that matter. During his later
travels he became involved in a difficulty with a French officer and
found himself compelled, according to the absurd practice of the time,
to fight a duel with him. The Frenchman was not killed, but only wounded
in the arm, and the duel was fought with swords, not with pistols! The
truth is, that after the sword-duel, James was challenged to fight again
with pistols. Mr. C. L. James writes me thus: “It made him (G. P. R.
James) very angry; and, being a good shot then, he felt confident of the
result if he should accept but said he would put the point of honor to
the French officer’s regiment. They replied by inviting him to dine at
the mess. On receiving this message, he took up his pistols which were
ready, loaded, saying ‘then we shall have no use for these,’ and at that
moment one of them went off, sending the bullet through the floor close
to his foot, though he felt sure they were not cocked.” Mr. Field
undoubtedly meant to tell the truth, but his reminiscences cannot be
relied upon in regard to James or to any one else.
As a lad of seventeen he wrote a number of sketches, afterwards
published under the title of “A String of Pearls,” which were rather
free translations from the oriental tales he had studied so fondly.[29]
He travelled extensively for those times, visiting France and Spain soon
after the abdication of Napoleon. These early travels and adventures
supplied him with the idea of _Morley Ernstein_. He became acquainted
with Cuvier and other men of eminence, and it is gratifying to Americans
to know that Washington Irving liked him and gave him encouragement. It
has been said that his first work was the _Life of Edward the Black
Prince_, said to have been produced in 1822, but one of my letters,
written in 1835, indicates that it was not produced earlier than 1836.
The son thinks it must have been written before 1830. He had a
disposition to enter political life, but he abandoned the idea in 1827.
He was a mild Tory. His ambition was in the direction of a diplomatic
career. His father had some influence with Lord Liverpool, who offered
him the post of Secretary to an Embassy to China,—a temporary
appointment only, and one which promised him no preferment. It was
declined, and a week later Lord Liverpool died suddenly.
In 1828 he married the daughter of Honoratus Leigh Thomas, an eminent
physician of that day. She survived her husband exactly thirty-one
years, dying at Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on June 9th, 1891. The assertion
made in some accounts of him that James married in the United States is
wholly untrue. After the marriage, they lived in France, Italy and
Scotland.
In 1825 he wrote his first novel, _Richelieu_, which was not published
until 1829. Regarded by many as the best of his novels, it is an
excellent example of his strength and of his weakness. It deals with
elementary emotions, and makes but slight attempts to portray character
except in the simplest and most obvious way. Although it bears the name
of the great Cardinal, it might as well have been called “Louis XIII”,
or “Chavigni,” or “The Count de Blenau”, for Richelieu himself appears
but seldom on the scene and is not the hero or the central figure. The
narrative runs briskly on, plentifully seasoned with deeds of daring and
hairbreadth escapes, culminating in the familiar climax of the almost
miraculous arrival of a pardon when the hero has bared his neck to
receive the axe of the executioner. It is evident from the outset that
the nobleman whose fortunes are the subject of the story and the
conventional lady of his love will marry and “be happy ever after.” The
abundant historical and antiquarian padding is admirably devised and
executed, well placed and never tiresome. The tale is skilfully
constructed and if it teaches any lesson, it is that of courage, truth,
honor and loyalty. Our modern “historical novels” are in many respects
distinctly inferior to _Richelieu_. Singularly enough, he did not
include it in the revised edition of his Works.
After reading _Richelieu_, Sir Walter Scott advised him to adopt
literature as a profession, and as he imitated Scott, the value of the
advice is not to be underestimated. As Mr. Field’s story goes, James had
kept the manuscript concealed from his father, but he managed to get an
introduction to Scott, who promised to give him his opinion. After six
months no news had come from Scotland. James was riding one day in Bond
Street, when, his horse shying, his carriage was pressed against
another. The occupant of the other carriage was Scott, and he invited
James to call upon him. To his surprise and delight, Scott praised the
book highly, and wrote his opinion, which enabled the lucky author to
find a publisher, to whom he sold the copyright for a song. In his
General Preface to the Works (1844–1849) James himself gives a very
different account of the matter. He says that a friend showed Sir Walter
one volume of a romance written long before, and he himself sent a
letter to Scott asking advice in regard to persevering in a literary
career. Some months passed, and James “felt somewhat mortified and a
good deal grieved” at receiving no response, but one day, on returning
from the country to London, he found a packet on his table containing
the volume and a note. “The opinion expressed in that note” adds James
“was more favourable than I had ever expected, and certainly more
favourable than I deserved; for Sir Walter was one of the most lenient
of critics, especially to the young. However, it told me to persevere,
and I did so.”[30] Irving and Scott united in encouraging him to produce
his next novel, _Darnley_, with another great Cardinal as a principal
character. _Darnley_ was sketched and drafted at Montreuil-sur-Mer in
December, 1828, and was completed in a few months. It is still popular
with readers of fiction and has much of the charm which pervades its
predecessor. James lived for a time at Evreux, and _De l’Orme_, written
there in 1829, appeared in 1830. _Philip Augustus_ was produced in less
than seven weeks, and was published in 1831. Under William IV he was
appointed Historiographer Royal, and published several pamphlets
officially.[31] In 1842 he lived at Walmer, and was frequently a guest
of the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle—a fact jocosely mentioned in
the _Life of Charles Lever_, where it is recorded that Lever said to
McGlashan that he must beware of James, who had become dangerous from
irritation, but suggested that as James had been dining twice a week
with the Duke, “he had eaten himself into a more than ordinary bilious
temper.”[32] In 1845 he went to Germany, partly for recreation and
partly to obtain information to be used in the _History of Richard Cœur
de Lion_, upon which he was then engaged. The illness of his children
detained him for a year; and at Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden he wrote
_Heidelberg_ and the _Castle of Ehrenstein_. On his return to England he
lived for some time near Farnham, Surrey, where he wrote voluminously.
He was accustomed to rise at five in the morning, to write with his own
hand until nine, and later in the day to dictate to an amanuensis,
walking to and fro meanwhile.
Towards 1850 he decided to leave England and go to America. His original
intention was to settle in Canada. He had met with severe pecuniary
reverses. The collected edition of his works was illustrated with steel
engravings, but after a few volumes had appeared the publisher failed.
The engraver sued James as a partner in the enterprise, and poor James
had to pay several thousand pounds. In this plight he sought his friend,
the Duke of Northumberland, who endeavored to dissuade him from leaving
England and offered him a signed check, with the amount left blank,
asking him to accept it and fill the blank himself. To his credit, James
declined the generous gift.[33]
When he reached New York in July, 1850, he took lodgings in the old New
York Hotel. He had many letters of introduction, including one to Horace
Greeley, who, he said, had “the head of a Socrates and the face of a
baby.” Hotel life proving unsatisfactory, he rented Charles Astor
Bristed’s house at Hell Gate, opposite Astoria. Of his many troubles in
getting into his new home, he wrote an amusing account in verse which
Mr. Field prints.[34] Field tells a story of a wealthy man of New York
who was introduced to James, and remarked that he was a great admirer of
the works, that he believed he had read all that were published, and
that there was one “which he vastly preferred to all the others.” “And
which is that?” asked James. “The Last Days of Pompeii,” was the answer.
“That is Bulwer’s, not mine,” replied the mortified novelist. He also
tells of a lady who found in a village library what she supposed to be a
copy of an English edition of one of James’s novels in two volumes. She
read them with much enjoyment, and did not discover until she had
finished them, that she had been reading the first volume of one and the
second volume of another. With admirable tact and discretion Field told
this to James, and says “he winced under it.”
In 1851 he hired a furnished house at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and
later he bought property there, making some laudable efforts at farming,
Mr. Field says:
“In the meantime he was also industriously pegging away at
book-making, although to the casual observer he appeared to be the
least occupied man in the place. He never did any literary work after
eleven o’clock A. M. until evening. He was not accustomed to put his
own hand to paper, when composing, but always employed an amanuensis.
At this time he had in his service in that capacity the brother of an
Irish baronet, who spoke and wrote English, French, German and
Italian, and whom I had procured for him at the modest stipend of five
dollars a week. When James was dictating, he always kept a paper of
snuff upon the table on which his secretary wrote, and he would stride
up and down the room, stopping every few minutes for a fresh supply of
the titillating powder. He never looked at the manuscript, or made any
corrections except upon proof-sheets.”
During that summer James and Field produced _Adrian_, finishing it in
five weeks. Notwithstanding Field’s assertion that “it was very kindly
received by the critics,” it does not appear to have enjoyed any marked
success.
In 1852 he was appointed British Consul at Norfolk, Virginia. He was not
contented there, as we may see from his letters; but he received many
kindnesses, and on the last night he spent in the United States he spoke
to Field of the Virginians, as “a warm hearted people.” His health
suffered and his spirits also; the yellow fever raged in the city and
caused him great trouble and anxiety. While in the United States he
wrote _Ticonderoga_, _The Old Dominion_, and other novels; his fertile
pen was always busy. His latest work was _The Cavalier_, published in
1859. In 1856 the Consulate was removed to Richmond. At his earnest
request he was transferred from Virginia in September, 1858, and was
appointed Consul General at Venice, where it was hoped that his health
would improve. The war between France and Austria soon broke out, his
labors and anxieties were increased and in April, 1860, his illness
became serious. On June 9, 1860, he died of an apoplectic stroke, “an
utter break up of mind preceding the end” as Lever wrote. He was buried
in Venice—some accounts say in the Lido cemetery, but the monument,
erected by the English residents in Venice, is in the Protestant portion
of the cemetery of St. Michele, which is on an island not far from the
Lido. Laurence Hutton, in his _Literary Landmarks of Venice_, refers to
a vague tradition among the older alien residents that he was buried in
the Lido, where, Hutton says, there are a few very ancient stones and
monuments marking the graves of foreign visitors to Venice, none of them
seeming to be of a later date than the middle of the eighteenth century.
But Sir Francis Vincent, the last British Ambassador to the Venetian
Republic, is buried there. Mr. Hutton adds that the stone in St. Michele
is “a tablet blackened by time, broken and hardly decipherable”; but
when I saw it in the summer of 1906 it was only slightly discolored, and
not broken at all. It showed no evidence of restoration, and was
blackened only as much as much as might be expected of a stone
forty-five years old in a climate like that of Venice. The epitaph,
written by Walter Savage Landor, is absolutely distinct and easily read.
“George Payne Rainford James.
British Consul General in the Adriatic.
Died in Venice, on the 9th day of June, 1860.
His merits as a writer are known wherever the English language is, and
as a man they rest on the hearts of many.
A few friends have erected this humble and perishable monument.”
Hutton attempts to give the epitaph in full but makes an unaccountable
error in substituting “heads” for “hearts.” It is another illustration
of the ill will of the fates that even on his tombstone his name should
be inscribed incorrectly. “_Rainford_” is doubtless the mistake of the
Italian who prepared the monument.[35]
Mr. J. A. Hamilton, in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, says: “An
epitaph, in terms of somewhat extravagant eulogy, was written by Walter
Savage Landor.” The epitaph, which I copied word for word, scarcely
deserves Mr. Hamilton’s censure. Surely there is nothing extravagant
about it. I regret that in such a valuable work as the _Dictionary_, the
account of James is so slight, perfunctory, and in many respects
inaccurate. It could have been made much better, and it is in marked
contrast with most of the biographical sketches included in that
admirable compendium.
Mr. Hamilton sums up in a careless and indifferent way the literary
career of James. “Flimsy and melodramatic as James’s romances are, they
were highly popular. The historical setting is for the most part
laboriously accurate, and though the characters are without life, the
moral tone is irreproachable; there is a pleasant spice of adventure
about the plots, and the style is clear and correct. The writer’s
grandiloquence and artificiality are cleverly parodied by Thackeray in
‘Barbazure, by G. P. R. Jeames, Esq., &c.,’ in ‘Novels by Eminent
Hands,’ and the conventional sameness of the opening of his novels, ‘so
admirable for terseness,’ is effectively burlesqued in ‘The Book of
Snobs,’ chap. ii. and xvi.” It is the old story: Thackeray made fun of
him, and so—away with him! Yet there was a time when everybody read
James and few read Thackeray. I venture to assert that the romances are
neither flimsy nor melodramatic, unless Scott’s romances are flimsy and
melodramatic. I find no grandiloquence in them.
Probably the best and most authoritative sketch of his life is contained
in the preface which he wrote for the collected edition of his novels,
published, in twenty-one volumes, in 1844–1849. Of course this includes
no account of the last ten years of his career. The number of volumes he
gave to the world was enormous, as may be seen from the list of his
works compiled from the _Dictionary_ and from Allibone’s laboriously
minute record.[36] They tell of his untiring industry; evidently he
loved to write for the sake of writing. His books brought him a goodly
income, but although he seems to have had a small fortune at one time,
he was generally poor; careless about his expenditure; ever ready and
willing to give aid to those who needed it, particularly to his literary
brethren; a noble, honest Christian gentleman, devoid of selfishness; a
good husband and father, simple and direct in his ways, charitable,
open-hearted, deserving of the esteem and affection of all who knew him.
It was said of him by a writer who deplored “the fatal facility” of the
novels, that “there is a soul of true goodness in them—no maudlin
affectation of virtue, but a manly rectitude of aim which they derive
directly from the heart of the writer. His enthusiastic nature is
visibly impressed upon his productions. They are full of his own frank
and generous impulses—impulses so honorable to him in private life. Out
of his books, there is no man more sincerely beloved. Had he not even
been a distinguished author, his active sympathy in the cause of letters
would have secured to him the attachment and respect of his
contemporaries.”
His activity was by no means limited to the field of prose fiction. In
poetry, he produced _The Ruined City_ in 1828; _Blanche of Navarre_, a
five act play, in 1839, and _Camaralzaman_, a “fairy drama” in three
acts, in 1848. My “first edition” of _Blanche of Navarre_, a pamphlet of
ninety-eight pages, with a dedication to Talfourd,—until it came into my
hands. After an existence of sixty-six years, unvexed by the
paper-knife, and in that “unopened” condition so dear to the heart of a
collector—does not disclose any good reason for its creation. The finale
of Act III is an example of its “lofty poetic tone”—
“DON JOHN (_pointing to the gallery_).
We have spectators there! A lady points!
Let us go succour her!
DON FERDINAND (_stopping him_).
Nay, I beseech!
Most likely ’tis my sister!—Foolish child!
She has maids there enow,—Lo, they are gone!
We’ll close the night with wine.
[_The drop scene descends to dumb-show_].”
So we might suppose. The hospitable suggestion of Don Ferdinand has a
flavor of reckless rioting about it which brings to mind the one time
favorite amusement of a Tammany Hall leader—“opening wine.”
It is only fair to let him tell his own story about his literary
fecundity. He says:
“Before I close my present task, I may be permitted to say a few words
in regard to the observations which are uniformly made upon every
author who writes rapidly and often. I will not repeat the frequently
noticed fact, that the best writers have generally been the most
voluminous; for I must contend that neither the number of an author’s
works, nor the rapidity with which they are produced, affords any
criterion whatsoever by which to judge of their merit. They may be
numerous and excellent, like those of Voltaire, Scott, Dryden, Vega,
Boccacio and others; they may be rapidly written, and yet accurate,
like the great work of Fénélon, and they may be quite the reverse.***
I may mention, in my own case, a few circumstances which may account
for the number and rapidity of my works. In the first place, all the
materials for the tales I have written, and for many more than I ever
shall write, were collected long before this idea of entering upon a
literary career ever crossed my mind. In the next place, I am an early
riser, and any one who has that habit must know that it is a grand
secret for getting through twice as much as lazier men can perform.
Again, I write and read during some portion of every day, except when
I am travelling, and even then if possible. I need not point out, that
regular application in literary, as well as all other kinds of labour,
will effect results which no desultory efforts, however energetic, can
obtain. Then, again, the habit of dictating instead of writing with my
own hand, which I first attempted at the suggestion of Sir Walter
Scott, relieves me of the manual labour which many authors have to
undergo, leaves the mind clear and free to act, and affords facilities
inconceivable to those who have not tried, or, having tried, have not
been able to attain it.”[37]
I am not convinced that the custom of dictating is one which should be
observed by an author who aims at the highest excellence.
In the accounts of his life and his work there are many discrepancies
and contradictions. For example Mr. Allibone—who is not altogether
trustworthy in details—tells us that his first book was _A Life of
Edward the Black Prince_, published in 1822; but the _Dictionary of
National Biography_ ascribes that publication to the year 1836, and the
_Dictionary_ is undoubtedly right, for he said in 1835 “The _Black
Prince_ comes on but slowly,”[38] The _Dictionary_ says that as
“historiographer royal”—a sonorous title which must have afforded great
pleasure to its bearer—he published in 1839 a _History of the United
States Boundary Question_, but Mr. Allibone insists that it was not his
production. I have an autograph letter of James which, I think, warrants
the belief that Allibone is wrong. The letter is a good example of his
serious epistolary style.
“FAIR OAK LODGE, PETERSFIELD
HANTS, 4th November, 1837.
MY LORD:—
A few months previous to the death of his late Majesty, he was pleased
to appoint me Historiographer in ordinary for England into which
office I was duly sworn. On the accession of Her Majesty our present
Queen, although I was informed that the office did not necessarily
lapse on the death of the monarch who conferred it, I applied to Her
Majesty through her Lord Chamberlain for her gracious confirmation of
the honor her Royal Uncle had conferred upon me. Many months have now
elapsed even since Lord Conyngham did me the honor of writing to
inform me that the time had not then arrived for Her Majesty to take
into consideration that class of offices and I am induced in
consequence to apply directly to your Lordship as I understand that
your department of the government embraces such matters. I should have
waited longer ere I thus intruded upon your valuable time but that I
am about to publish a new Historical work of some importance in the
title to which must appear whether I am or am not still
Historiographer. If I am to understand by the silence which has been
maintained upon the subject that it is Her Majesty’s determination to
deprive me of the office which her royal uncle conferred I must bow to
her gracious pleasure and neither my station in society, my fortune,
or my views of what is right require or permit me to say one word to
alter such a resolution. Should that determination however not have
been formed allow me to submit to your Lordship that to dismiss me
from a post to which I was so lately appointed is to cast a stigma of
which I am not deserving. If I have ever written anything that is
calculated to injure society; if I have ever debased my pen to pander
to bad appetites of any kind; if I have ever failed to dedicate its
efforts to the promotion of truth, virtue, and honor, not only let the
dismissal be made public but the cause of that stigma be assigned. But
if on the contrary to have done my best, and that perhaps with more
reputation than my writings merit, to promote all that is good and
noble; if to have bestowed vast labour, anxious research, valuable
time, and many hundreds of pounds for which I can hope no return on
such works as the History of Charlemagne, the History of Edward the
Black Prince, the History of Chivalry, and my letters to Lord Brougham
on the system of Education in the higher German States—if these
circumstances afford any claim to honor or distinction, I think in my
case they may stand in the way of an act which I cannot yet make up my
mind to believe that Her Majesty’s present ministers would advise. I
have given up the expectation indeed that a fair share of honors and
distinctions—or in fact any share at all—should be bestowed upon
literary men in this country, even when a high education, upright
conduct, and a fortune not ill employed combine with literary
reputation; but I still trust that that which has been given will not
be taken away.
I have now to apologize, my Lord—and I feel that an apology is very
necessary—for addressing this letter to your private house; but your
kindness and courtesy when, as a result of some communications between
my friend Sir David Brewster and myself, I addressed you on the state
of literature in England have encouraged me to trespass upon you in
some manner.
I have the honor to be, my Lord, your Lordship’s most obedient servant
G. P. R. JAMES.”
I have not been able to discover what effect this letter had, but it is
evident that the ‘Historical work’ was the pamphlet on the Boundary
Question as I do not find a record of any other “historiographical” work
to which the language of the letter is applicable.
The _Dictionary of National Biography_ credits James with _Memoirs of
Celebrated Women_ (three volumes, 1837), but Allibone says that he had
no share in it, further than writing a preface or “something of that
kind.” The _Dictionary_ further informs us that “about 1850 he was
appointed British Consul for Massachusetts”—an impossible office—and
that he was transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, in 1852, becoming Consul
General at Venice in 1856. Allibone makes him Consul at Richmond,
Virginia, in 1852 and Consul General at Venice in September, 1858. His
friend Hall places him at Norfolk in 1852 and in Venice in 1859.
_Appleton’s Cyclopædia_ follows Allibone as to dates, but very properly
ignores Richmond in favor of Norfolk. The _Encyclopædia Britannica_ says
that Irving encouraged him to produce the _Life of the Black Prince_ in
1822 (an evident error), sends him as “Consul to Richmond” in 1852 and
transfers him to Venice in September, 1858. The truth is that he went to
Norfolk in 1852, to Richmond in 1856, and to Venice in 1858. As we have
seen, even the place of his interment is not without uncertainty. These
variances in regard to the facts of his life are due to the comparative
neglect which has befallen his memory. Perhaps they are not of much
importance. Although he had numerous friends and acquaintances, none of
them, except Mr. S. C. Hall and Maunsell B. Field, left anything
approaching an account of his life, and even Mr. Hall’s reminiscences
are meagre and cursory, while Mr. Field’s are largely apocryphal.
He surely possessed the art of making friends. Before his marriage he
knew not only Scott and Irving, but Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Walter Savage
Landor, his friendship with Hunt and Landor continuing to the end of his
life. Probably he never saw Shelley, but he admired greatly the writings
of that radical enthusiast. He knew Thackeray, but did not like him;
perhaps the parody galled him. He detested the brilliant, showy, shallow
Count D’Orsay. His son says that he never heard his father speak of
Dickens as if they had met.[39] “He fully acknowledged the power and
versatility of Dickens’s works, but there was something in them which
did not please him. He had detected, if it is there—suspected, if it is
not—the essential vulgarity which this master of pathos and humor is
said to have shown those who came in personal contact with him.” He had
some acquaintance with Bulwer Lytton. “It is odd” remarks the younger
James “but his tone towards this eminent author, who at some points
(_Richelieu_ and the historic novels) approached near enough his own
line for rivalry, was rather one of compassion. He knew the personal and
domestic sorrows of one whom unfriendly critics accused of soulless
dandyism; and he seemed to have a sort of friendly feeling for that
partially unsuccessful ambition which made the author of books as unlike
as _Pelham_ and _Pausonias_ attempt so many things without reaching the
highest rank in any.” The Duke of Northumberland, the Duke of
Wellington, Charles Lever, Thomas Campbell, and Allan Cunningham, were
also friends. In America, he was known and well received by President
Pierce, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Charles Sumner, Farragut, Barron, Henry
A. Wise, Roger A. Pryor, John Tyler, Winder, General Scott, Edward
Everett, Marcy, Caleb Cushing and a host of others. His gentle, modest
nature, his cultivated taste, and his frank, pleasant ways seem to have
attracted all who came within the circle of his friendship. He had much
conversation with Marcy. Each had some idea of sounding the other
diplomatically; both took snuff and neither proposed to be sounded. When
James asked Marcy something which the latter did not choose to answer,
Marcy would ask him for a pinch of snuff, and he readily perceived that
this evasion was as good for two as for one.
The late Donald G. Mitchell speaks of him as “an excellent, industrious
man, who drove his trade of novel-making—as our engineers drive
wells—with steam, and pistons, and borings, and everlasting clatter”,
adding that “what he might have done, with a modern typewriter at
command, it is painful to imagine. But he gives us the best account I
have seen of the personal appearance of James.
“I caught sight of this great necromancer of ‘miniver furs,’ and
mantua-making chivalry—in youngish days, in the city of New York—where
he was making a little over-ocean escape from the multitudinous work
that flowed from him at home; a well-preserved man, of scarce fifty
years, stout, erect, gray-haired, and with countenance blooming with
mild uses of mild English ale—kindly, unctuous—showing no signs of
deep thoughtfulness or of harassing toil. I looked him over, in boyish
way, for traces of the court splendor I had gazed upon, under his
ministrations, but saw none; nor anything of the ‘manly beauty of
features, rendered scarcely less by a deep scar upon the forehead’,
nor ‘of the gray cloth doublets slashed with purple;’ a stanch honest,
amiable, well-dressed Englishman—that was all.”[40]
Mr. Mitchell surely did not expect to see Mr. James attired in armor,
with a scarred face, because he wrote of armed knights, and his remarks
certainly appear to be boyish in the extreme. But he atones for them by
saying:
“And yet, what delights he had conjured for us! Shall we be ashamed to
name them, or to confess it all? Shall the modern show of new
flowerets of fiction, and of lilies—forced to the front in
January—make us forget utterly the old cinnamon roses, and the homely
but fragrant pinks, which once regaled and delighted us, in the April
and May of our age?”
Mr. Field says of him: “If he was sometimes a tedious writer, he was
always the best story-teller that I ever listened to. He had known
almost everybody in his own country, and he never forgot anything. The
literary anecdotes alone which I have heard him relate would suffice to
fill an ordinary volume. He was a big hearted man, too—tender, merciful,
and full of religious sentiment; a good husband, a devoted father, and a
fast friend.” Such is the testimony of all his acquaintances who have
left any record of their impressions.
It is not my purpose to present any critical study of James or of his
works, but only to submit a few of his unpublished letters, in which his
easy grace of style and his frank and simple nature are manifest; to
give some of the contemporary estimates of him; and to recall to the
minds of readers of our own day a literary personality which should not
be entirely forgotten.
Among the good friends of James of whom I have spoken was that other
novelist, almost as prolific in production, but better remembered by
modern readers—Charles Lever. When the author of _Charles O’Malley_ was
the editor of the Dublin University Magazine, he wrote to a certain
Reverend Edward Johnson, now wholly lost to fame, requesting him to
contribute to the magazine and inviting him to visit the editor; but by
mistake he addressed the letter to James. “Though he liked the man” says
Mr. Fitzpatrick, “he rather pooh-poohed the stereotyped ‘two cavaliers’
of G. P. R. James, who of a fine autumnal day might be seen, etc.”[41]
Lever was too kind-hearted to explain the error, and James not only
contributed to the magazine but visited Lever at Templeogue. The story
“_De Lunatico Inquirendo_” was supposed to have been written by Lever,
who wrote only the preface. “_Arrah Neil_” was published in the
Magazine, a work which has peculiar merit and one character, Captain
Barecolt, who is among James’s best people. It is said that James abused
McGlashan for having “emasculated his jokes”. “Where be they? as we used
to say in the Catechism” was Lever’s comment. One Major Dwyer, referred
to in Fitzpatrick’s _Life of Lever_, says: “Lever would sometimes say
that he wanted powder for his magazine. ‘It is doubtful whether James’s
contributions’ he said, ‘were James’s powders at all, or merely that
inferior substitute which the Pharmacopœia condemns.’” Chamber’s
Cyclopædia stated, twenty years before the death of James, that he was
in the habit of dictating to minor scribes his thick-coming fancies. Mr.
R. H. Horne would have it that he always dictated his novels, but that
was a very exaggerated statement. He dictated only at intervals. Major
Dwyer tells of a novel composed by James at Baden, that “it was penned
by an English artist who resided at Lichtenthal, and also spoke the
purest South Devonian, and moreover wrote English nearly as he
pronounced it. James’s flowery language thus rendered, was highly
amusing; I had an opportunity of reading some pages of copy.”
In spite of his disparaging remarks, Lever was attached to the man
himself, and we find the two romance writers together in 1845, at
Karlsruhe—where, as Mr. Downey says in his _Life of Lever_, “G. P. R.
James and himself were the cynosure of all eyes”—and later at Baden.
Lever dedicated to James his novel _Roland Cashel_, in 1849—“a Roland
for your Oliver, or rather for your Stepmother,” said Lever, for James
had dedicated to him the novel with that title in 1846. Soon afterwards,
however, they became separated, as James went to the United States where
he remained about eight years. One incident connected with the _Dublin_
is worthy of remembrance. In Volume XXVII of the Magazine (1846)
appeared some verses beginning “A cloud is on the western sky.” They
were said to be “Lines by G. P. R. James” and were prefaced by a note:
‘My dear L——, I send you the song you wished to have. The Americans
totally forgot, when they so insolently calculated upon aid from Ireland
in a war with England, that their own apple is rotten at the core. A
nation with five or six million slaves who would go to war with an
equally strong nation with no slaves is a mad people. Yours, G. P. R.
James.’ ‘The Cloud,’ (amongst other things not intended to be pleasant
to Americans) called upon the dusky millions to ‘shout,’ and the author
of the ‘Lines’ declared that Britain was ready to “draw the sword in the
sacred cause of liberty.” It was Lever’s joke. Poor James had never
heard of the poem until years later, in 1853, an attempt was made to
drive him out of Norfolk, Virginia, because of it. “God forgive me” said
Lever, “it was my doing.” Lever declared that he had no more notion of
James’s ‘powder’ exciting a national animosity than that Holloway’s
Ointment could absorb a Swiss glacier.[42] The son says that during the
first winter they spent in Norfolk there were no less than eight fires
in the house, or in other parts of the block, which James attributed to
deliberate attempts to burn him out on account of his supposed
abolitionist views.
Lever was Consul at Spezzia when James was in Venice, and they renewed
their old intimacy. The younger James says that Lever was a very
eccentric genius—a thorough specimen of the wild Irishman. Among his
traits was chronic impecuniosity. Another was that he and all his family
delighted in out-door life and could do everything athletic. “When he
was at Venice he told us he was threatened with a visit from a British
war vessel, which it would be his duty to receive in state, and (of
course) he had no boat or other means of doing so with proper pomp.
‘But,’ he said, ‘we can take the British flag in our mouth and swim out
to meet her, singing Rule Britannia.’”
Notwithstanding the manifestations of hostility by the good people of
Norfolk, it may be remembered that when James was transferred to Venice,
the Virginian poet, John R. Thompson, addressed to him some farewell
verses, published in the _Southern Literary Messenger_, beginning:
Good bye! they say the time is up—
The “solitary horseman” leaves us,
We’d like to take a “stirrup cup”,
Though much indeed the parting grieves us:
We’d like to hear the glasses clink
Around a board where none was tipsy,
And with a hearty greeting drink
This toast—The Author of the Gipsey!
The same Major Dwyer relates at some length the conversations of the
guests at Lever’s home in Ireland. Speaking of a visit of Thackeray
about 1842, he says: “James had been living at Brussels previously, and
an intimacy had sprung up between Lever and him. Thackeray’s star was
then barely peeping over the eastern horizon; Lever’s had attained an
altitude that rendered it clearly visible to the uncharmed eye, whilst
James’s had already passed its point of culmination, and was in its
descending node.” I do not know what the eloquent Major meant by an
“uncharmed eye,” but his figures of speech are quite luxuriant. He does
not think that Thackeray and James met at Lever’s house, but he tells of
a dinner there, where a Captain Siborne, Doctor Anster, and the Major
were asked to meet James. It appears that after dinner, James took a
very decided lead in the conversation on horsemanship and military
tactics. “James” remarks the Major, “was not horsey looking; one would
at first sight be inclined to set him down as an exception to the
general rule, that ‘all Britons are born riders’; he looked more like a
seaman than a soldier.” This is deliciously fatuous—as if a man could
not talk well about horses unless he had a horsey look or drive fat oxen
unless he himself were fat. It is like the Mitchell prattle about his
having no scar and wearing no doublet. In talking about horses and
riders, James evidently did not foresee that in the future his name
would be so closely associated with “one horseman” or even two,
threading romantic gorges. Perhaps it would have been better for his
fame, if he had eschewed horsemen. “Why,” continues the Major, “he
should have selected two such topics puzzled both Siborne and myself,
but I subsequently found that James liked to seize upon and talk
categorically about things which other individuals of the company
present might be suspected of considering their own peculiar hobbies.”
This device for enlivening post-prandial dullness by stirring up solemn
and conceited prigs is quite familiar, but it does not seem to have
occurred to the Major that the clever novelist was making game of the
two military magnates. He tells us further how Siborne declined “to
discuss professional matters with a civilian,” and closes his pompous
and heavy remarks with this gem of concentrated wisdom: “James, so fond
of horseflesh, finished his career as Consul General at Venice _where
the sight of a horse is never seen_.” I suppose that the Major would
have considered it more fitting if James had selected some place to die
in where ‘the sight of a horse could be seen’ at all times by merely
looking out of the window. It is not difficult to imagine the joy with
which the nimble-minded James put through their paces the heavy-witted
and cumbrous Captain and Major at the pleasant dinner-table of Charles
Lever. It reminds me of an occasion when a sincere and simple-minded
Briton undertook to engage in single combat with Mark Twain over a
statement thrown out by the equally sincere and simple-minded Clemens
that the people of the Phillipine Islands had a perfect right to make
arson and murder lawful if they considered it proper to incorporate in
their constitution a provision to that effect. His powerful arguments
did not produce the slightest change in the convictions of Mr. Clemens.
However severely the sapient compilers of _Chambers’ Cyclopædia_ or the
critics of our own generation may sneer at the novels—the fiction of the
twentieth century being in the estimation of our contemporaries so
vastly superior to all that has gone before—it is something to have had
the approval of Christopher North, who was not given to bestowing lavish
commendation upon the work of mere Englishmen. If you will take from the
shelves the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, you will find these words:
“_North_: Mr. Colburn has lately given us two books of a very
different character, [from that of some previously mentioned],
_Richelieu_ and _Darnley_—by Mr. James. _Richelieu_ is one of the
most spirited, amusing and interesting romances I ever read;
characters well drawn—incidents—well managed—story perpetually
progressive—catastrophe at once natural and unexpected—moral good,
but not goody—and the whole felt, in every chapter, to be the work
of a—gentleman.
_Shepherd_: And what o’_Darnley_?
_North_: Read and judge.”[43]
Edgar Allan Poe, who thought himself a critic while he was an original
genius absolutely unfitted for just or accurate criticism, said that
James was lauded from mere motives of duty, not of inclination—duty
erroneously conceived. “His sentiments are found to be pure,” wrote Poe,
“his morals unquestionable and pointedly shown forth—his language
indisputably correct.” But he calls him an indifferent imitator of
Scott, accuses him of having little pretension to genius, and adds that
we “seldom stumble across a novel emotion in the solemn tranquillity of
his pages.”[44] Elsewhere Poe says: “James’s multitudinous novels seem
to be written upon the plan of the songs of the Bard of Schiraz, in
which, we are assured by Fadladeen, ‘the same beautiful thought occurs
again and again in every possible variety of phrase.’” This is perhaps,
a fair comment upon the work of a writer who produced too many books.
Samuel Carter Hall, who knew James well, and who gossips with garrulous
freedom about everybody, speaks of him in an admiring way. After
observing that very little was known of James’s life, he says: “I knew
him and esteemed him as an agreeable and kindly gentleman, somewhat
handsome in person, and of very pleasant manners. He had the aspect, and
indeed the character, that usually marks a man of sedentary occupations.
His work all day long, and often into the night, must have been
untiring, for he by no means drew exclusively on his fancy; he must have
resorted much to books and have been a great reader, not only of
English, but of continental histories; and he travelled a good deal in
the countries in which the scenes of his historic fictions were
principally laid. His novels have always been popular—they are so now,
although many competitors for fame, with higher aims and perhaps loftier
genius, have of late years supplied the circulating libraries. It was no
light thing to run a race with Sir Walter Scott, and not to be
altogether beaten out of the field. His great charm was the interest he
created in relating a story, but he had masterly skill in delineating
character, and in ‘chivalric essays’ none of his brethren surpassed
him.”[45] He gives to James more praise for character-drawing than most
of the critics bestow.
Hall quotes from Alison: “There is a constant appeal in his brilliant
pages, not only to the pure and generous, but to the elevated and noble
sentiments. He is imbued with the very soul of chivalry, and all his
stories turn on the final triumph of those who are influenced by such
feelings. Not a word or a thought which can give pain to the purest
heart ever escapes from his pen.”
The genial journalist, William Jerdan, in his Autobiography, pays a
deserved tribute to James. He says:
“Among the warm friendships to which I may allude, there is not one
more sincere, more lasting, or more grateful to my feelings, than that
which I have the honour and delight to couple with the admired and
estimable name of G. P. R. James. I think it was the production of
‘The Ruined City’, for private circulation, which first introduced us
to each other; and from that hour (I remember the pleasure I received
from his volunteering a trial of his skill occasionally in the
‘Gazette’) I now look back on a quarter of a century upon a close
intercourse of minds and hearts without a passing shade to dull its
bright and cheering continuity. I need not dwell on those voluminous
writings which have placed Mr. James in the foremost rank of our
national fictitious literature, nor need I, in his case, illustrate my
theme of the uncertainty of literature as a remunerative pursuit—with
a private fortune, and the genius which has produced so many admirable
works, the author has now fallen back upon a consulate at Norfolk, in
America, where, if report speaks truth, he is exposed even to danger
in consequence of petty resentment against something he wrote long ago
about Slavery!—but, I may say, from nearer and more abundant
observation than the world could attain, that the utmost appreciation
of his genius must fall short of what is due to his personal worth and
nobility of nature. As no author ever excelled him in the purity and
rectitude of his publications—every tone of which tends to inspire
just moral sentiment, and exalted virtue, and brotherly love, and
universal benevolence, and the improvement carrying with it the
progress and happiness of his fellow creatures—so no man in private
life ever more zealously practiced the precepts which he taught, and
was charitable, liberal, and generous, aye, beyond the measure of cold
prudence, and without an atom of selfish reserve. To his
fellow-labourers on the oft-ungrateful soil of letters, he was ever
indulgent and munificent; and were this the fitting time, I could
record acts of his performing that would shed a lustre on any
character, however celebrated in merited biographical panegyric. I
trust I may state, without compromising the privacy of friendly
confidence, that I knew him, as he was ever ready to make sacrifices
to friendship, sacrifice half a fortune, legally in his possession, to
a mere point of honorable, I might say, romantically honourable
feeling, and founded indeed on one of those family romances in which
we find fact more extraordinary than fiction; and amongst lesser
instances of his general sympathies for all who stood in need of
succour, I may mention his procuring me the gratification of handing
over £75 to the Literary Fund, as the price received from Messrs.
Colburn and Bentley for a manuscript entitled “The String of
Pearls.””[46]
I have referred to the remark in _Chambers’ Cyclopædia_ about the custom
of James to dictate to an amanuensis, a custom he attempted to defend.
The writers for this useful work, now rather antiquated, were quite
given to the exercise of censorious judgment about authors who did not
preserve their popularity. They say of James, however, that he was
perhaps the best of the numerous imitators of Scott, and that if he had
concentrated his powers on a few congenial subjects or periods of
history, and “resorted to the manual labor of penmanship as a drag-chain
on the machine, he might have attained to the highest honors of this
department of composition. As it is, he has furnished many light,
agreeable and picturesque books, none of questionable tendency.” The
Cyclopædia breaks into exclamation points when it chronicles the fact
that the original works of Mr. James “extend to one hundred and
eighty-nine volumes,” and that he edited almost a dozen more. It then
quotes from some unnamed critic whom it calls a “lively writer,”[47] and
as I am endeavoring to present the contemporary estimates of James, I
venture to reproduce the quotation:
“There seems to be no limit to his ingenuity, his faculty of getting
up scenes and incidents, dilemmas, artifices, _contretemps_, battles,
skirmishes, disguises, escapes, trials, combats, adventures. He
accumulates names, dresses, implements of war and peace, official
retinues, and the whole paraphernalia of customs and costumes, with
astounding alacrity. He appears to have exhausted every imaginable
situation, and to have described every available article of attire on
record. What he must have passed through—what triumphs he must have
enjoyed—what exigencies he must have experienced—what love he must
have suffered—what a grand wardrobe his brain must be! He has made
some poetical and dramatic efforts, but this irresistible tendency to
pile up circumstantial particulars is fatal to those forms of art
which demand intensity of passion. In stately narratives of chivalry
and feudal grandeur, precision and reiteration are desirable rather
than injurious—as we would have the most perfect accuracy and finish
in a picture of ceremonials; and here Mr. James is supreme. One of his
court romances is a book of brave sights and heraldic magnificence—it
is the next thing to moving at our leisure through some superb and
august procession.”
The lively writer has a style which displays the worst faults of the
middle nineteenth century, but he is really not far wrong in his
conclusions. The Cyclopædia sums up the matter in a sentence which tells
the story and signifies that the man wrote too much:
“The sameness of the author’s style and characters is, however, too
marked to be pleasing.”
I timidly venture to suggest that the same thing may be true of Kipling
and hope that I may not be annihilated by the bolts of Jupiter for such
a daring piece of sacrilege. Having gone so far—but I will refrain from
mentioning some other makers of novels with regard to whom the same
fable might be narrated.
We may easily understand that the accusation of “sameness” is one which
is not very serious when preferred against the author of nearly two
hundred volumes. As Allibone says, “he who composes a library is not to
be judged by the same standard as he who writes but one book.” We must
remember that not only Professor Wilson, but Leigh Hunt, about whose
taste and discrimination there can be no question, says of him:
“I hail every fresh publication of James, though I half know what he
is going to do with his lady, and his gentleman, and his landscape,
and his mystery, and his orthodoxy, and his criminal trial. But I am
charmed with the new amusement which he brings out of old materials. I
look on him as I look on a musician famous for ‘variations.’ I am
grateful for his vein of cheerfulness, for his singularly varied and
vivid landscapes, for his power of painting women at once lady-like
and loving, (a rare talent,) for making lovers to match, at once
beautiful and well-bred, and for the solace which all this has
afforded me, sometimes over and over again in illness and in
convalescence, when I required interest without violence, and
entertainment at once animated and mild.”
Allan Cunningham, in his _Biographical and Critical History of the
Literature of the Last Fifty Years_ (1833) refers to his excellent
taste, extensive knowledge of history, right feeling of the chivalrous,
and heroic and ready eye for the picturesque, adding that his
proprieties are admirable and his sympathy with whatever is high-souled
and noble, deep and impressive. Cunningham was on terms of intimacy with
him, as a number of letters from James addressed to him abundantly
prove. The _Edinburgh Review_ estimated highly his abilities as a
romance writer, declaring that his works were lively and interesting,
and animated by a spirit of sound and healthy morality in feeling and of
natural deliberation in character which should secure for them a calm
popularity which would “last beyond the present day.”
He was not regarded so favorably by the _London Athenæum_, which said of
him: “The first and most obvious contrivance for the attainment of
quantity, is, of course, dilution; but this recourse has practically its
limit, and Mr. James had reached it long ago. Commonplace in its best
day, anything more feeble, vapid—_sloppy_ in fact, (for we know not how
to characterize this writer’s style but by some of its own
elegancies)—than Mr. James’s manner has become, it were difficult to
imagine. Every literary grace has been swamped in the spreading marasmus
of his style.”[48]
The bewildered reader of reviews is often at a loss to reconcile the
censure of one and the praise of another; and it was not very long
before the appearance of this slashing article that the _Dublin
University Magazine_ had thus expressed its opinions: “His pen is
prolific enough to keep the imagination constantly nourished; and of
him, more than of any modern writer, it may be said, that he has
improved his style by the mere dint of constant and abundant practice.
For, although so agreeable a novelist, it must not be forgotten that he
stands infinitely higher as an historian.*** The most fantastic and
beautiful coruscations which the skies can exhibit to the eyes of
mankind dart as if in play from the huge volumes that roll out from the
crater of the volcano.*** The recreation of an enlarged intellect is
ever more valuable than the highest efforts of a confined one. Hence we
find in the works before us, lightly as they have been thrown off, the
traces of study—the footsteps of a powerful and vigorous
understanding.”[49] The works were _Corse de Léon_, _The Ancient
Régime_, and _The Jacquerie_—none of them as deserving as _Richelieu_,
_Henry Masterton_, or _Mary of Burgundy_. James was a member of the
_Dublin_ staff and his friend Lever may have inspired the compliments.
One more review may be noticed. Mr. E. P. Whipple, whose criticisms have
not become immortal, evidently disapproved of James, and did not
hesitate to say so. It is the old charge of sameness and overproduction.
Whipple scored James in the North American Review of April, 1844.
“He is a most scientific expositor of the fact that a man may be a
maker of books without being a maker of thoughts; that he may be the
reputed author of a hundred volumes and flood the market with his
literary wares, and yet have very few ideas and principles for his
stock in trade. For the last ten years he has been repeating his own
repetitions and echoing his own echoes. His first novel was a shot
that went through the target, and he has ever since been assiduously
firing through the hole.*** When a man has little or nothing to say,
he should say it in the smallest space. He should not, at any rate,
take up more room than suffices for a creative mind. He should not
provoke hostility and petulance by the effrontery of his demands upon
time and patience. He should let us off with a few volumes, and gain
our gratitude for his benevolence, if not our praise for his
talents.”[50]
Whipple’s _critiques_ are far more obsolete than James’s novels; and a
good deal of what he says of James is fairly applicable to his own
essays. Even Whipple concedes the excellence of _Richelieu_,
notwithstanding the fact that it did not emanate from New England.
Back in the forties, there was a magazine, published in Philadelphia,
known as _Graham’s American Monthly Magazine_, in which the chief
American writers of the day, including Poe, Bryant, Cooper, Longfellow,
Willis, and Lowell occasionally figured as contributors. It had its page
of reviews and in the number of November, 1848, it enlightened its
readers with a disquisition on “Vanity Fair”; by W. M. _Thackerway_
(_sic_), beginning “This is one of the most striking novels of the
season.” If Lamb could only have met that reviewer, he surely would have
danced about, as on a memorable occasion, singing “diddle, diddle
dumpling, my son John” and endeavored to examine the reviewer’s bumps.
_Graham_ (November, 1844) was very severe with poor James, in a notice
of _Arrah Neil_. The reviewer says: “In our opinion, there is hardly an
instance on record of an author who has contrived to earn an extensive
reputation as a writer of works of imagination, with such slender
intellectual materials as Mr. James. No one has ever written so many
books, purporting to be novels, with so small a stock of heart, brain,
and invention. He is continually infringing his own copyright, by
reproducing his own novels. Far from being surprised that he has written
so much, we are astonished that he has not written more. From his first
novel, all the rest can be logically deduced; and the reason that they
have not appeared faster, may be found in the fact that he has been
economical in the employment of amanuenses.” More of this kind of talk
is indulged in without a single word about the book itself or its
merits; which proves quite clearly that the reviewer was merely
following the path marked out by some other critic, and there is no
evidence whatever that he had ever read the work he was reviewing. Thus
it is to-day; a parrot-cry of “diffuseness, dilution, re-copying,
repetition,”—so easy to proclaim, so difficult to answer, all born of
the disposition of newspaper and magazine critics to accept the view
which needs no exercise of brains to approve and to announce. It is not
without significance that when James was in America, he was a
contributor to this same magazine, which had scored him so unmercifully;
for example, in the volume for 1851 I find two stories by him—_Christian
Lacy, a Tale of the Salem Witchcraft_, and _Justinian and Theodora_,—as
well as a rather graceful sonnet to Jenny Lind.
James C. Derby mentions the fact that James was a friend of Philip
Pendleton Cooke, the Virginian poet, and relates that Thackeray visited
James when in the South, but that James “resented the latter’s
[Thackeray’s] flings at him as a ‘solitary horseman’, the meaning of
which those who have read James’s novels will understand. James once
told Cooke of his intention to write his own memoirs—a purpose never
fulfilled. Incidentally, he told Cooke a story of Washington Irving, his
early adviser, who amiably approved of his earliest essays in
literature. It seems that James was in Bordeaux, and after strolling all
day, returned to his inn. On his way through a long, dark passage he saw
some one in front carrying a candle, a man in black slowly ascending the
old-fashioned staircase. On the landing the man stopped, and holding up
his candle looked at a cat lying on the window-sill, regarding the gazer
with a surprised and frightened expression. The stranger in black looked
at the cat for some time mutely and then muttered sadly, ‘Ah, pussy!
pussy! If you had seen as much trouble as I have, you would not be
surprised at anything.’ After which he went on up the stairs,’ said
James, ‘and as I heard that Irving was in Bordeaux, I said to myself:
‘That can be nobody in the world but Irving’, which turned out to be a
fact.[51]
Frederick Locker-Lampson visited Walter Savage Landor at Fiesole in the
early sixties, and found him reading a Waverly novel. Lampson
congratulated the old poet on having so pleasant a companion in his
retirement, and Landor, with a winning dignity, replied: “Yes, and there
is another novelist whom I equally admire, my old friend [G. P. R.]
James.”[52] Locker-Lampson does not seem to have shared Landor’s
appreciation of James. He says, later in his memoirs: “It is a law of
literature that every generation should be industrious in burying its
own, especially novels. What has become of Smollett and Mackenzie—the
cockpit of the ‘Thunder’ or the sentimental Harley? Where is the shadowy
Mr. G. P. R. James and where is that witty old ghost of the Silver Fork
school, Mrs. Gore?*** Yet they all had vogue.”[53] It is odd that almost
every one, in speaking of James, recites his numerous initials and
bestows upon him the title of “Mr.” which carries with it the suggestion
of a sneer.
In my small collection of Gladstone letters I find one addressed to
James which shows not only that the statesman liked the books but that
he and the author were on terms of some intimacy.
“WHITEHALL, May 17, ’43.
MY DEAR SIR: I thank you very much for your renewed kindness. The
perusal of your last work gave me very great pleasure, most of all
(though that is but a very slender testimony in their favour) Evesham
and Simon de Montfort, of whom I never had before an adequate
conception. It is true I am adopted into the Cabinet, & will I fear be
alleged as a proof of its poverty. In point of form I cannot succeed
Lord Ripon until the Queen holds a Council.[54] The true and whole
secret of the difficulty about Canada corn (and I do not mean that we
can wonder at it) is, as I believe, that wheat, without great
abundance, is at 46 / a quarter.
I remain, my dear sir,
Yours faithfully & obliged,
W. E. GLADSTONE.
G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,
The Shrubbery,
Walmer.
Donald G. Mitchell, describing the little red cottage of Hawthorne, in
the Berkshire hills, reminds us that among those who used to come
a-visiting the great American romancer, was “G. P. R. James, that kindly
master of knights ‘in gay caparison’;” and elsewhere says that at the
Cooper Memorial meeting in Metropolitan Hall, on February 25, 1852,
where Webster, Bryant and Hawks paid their tribute to the author of the
Leatherstocking tales, “Mr. G. P. R. James—then chancing to be a visitor
in New York,—lent a little of his rambling heroics to the interest of
the occasion.”[55] I have before me the _Memorial_, printed by Putnam in
1852, containing a full report of the meeting, including the remarks of
James, and I do not find anything which may fairly be called “heroics”,
rambling or otherwise. The speech was manifestly extemporaneous. He
began by expressing his pride in being an Englishman, a romance writer,
and a man of the people, and his pleasure in paying an humble tribute to
an American romance writer and a man of the people. He praised the
addresses of those who preceded him, corrected a trifling error of
Bryant’s in regard to a Mr. James, a surgeon, and declared that the
proposed statue to Cooper was not merely to a novelist, but to a
genius—to truth—to truth, genius and patriotism combined. He closed by
urging all present to use every exertion to procure contributions for
the purpose of erecting such a statue. To any unprejudiced mind, what
James said was appropriate and dignified; well suited to the occasion;
wholly natural and unaffected; and compared favorably, to say the least,
with the dull and ponderous commonplaces of Daniel Webster who had the
chair and who was singularly unfitted to preside over such a meeting. Of
Webster’s platitudes, Professor Lounsbury is quite contemptuous,
remarking that the distinguished orator “had nothing to say and said it
wretchedly.”[56] I believe that the projected statue was never built.
James was evidently a favorite dinner-speaker. It is pleasant to know
that he spoke at a ‘printer’s banquet’ in New York in the latter part of
1850, and that he paid a well-merited tribute to a man destined to
become a distinguished figure in literature. Bayard Taylor, writing to
his friend George H. Boker, on January 1, 1851, says: “By the bye, James
paid me a very elegant compliment, in his speech at the ‘printer’s
banquet’ the other night, referring to me as the best landscape painter
in words that he had ever known. This is something from an
Englishman.”[57] He always said kind and appreciative words about his
fellow-authors, if they were deserving.
Returning to the Hawthorne cottage, Julian Hawthorne gives a brief
account of one of the visits of James, who, it appears, was living near
by during the summer of 1851. As the narrator was five years old at the
time of this visit, his estimate of the visitors must have been founded
upon something other than his personal observation. He says:
“James was a commonplace, meritorious person, with much blameless and
intelligent conversation, but the only thing that recalls him
personally to my memory is the fact of his being associated with a
furious thunderstorm.”
He relates how the storm raged and how the door burst open,—his father
and he were alone in the cottage—
“and behold! of all persons in the world—to be heralded by such
circumstances—G. P. R. James! Not he only, but close upon his heels
his entire family, numerous, orthodox, admirable, and infinitely
undesirable to two secluded gentlemen without a wife and mother to
help them out.*** They dripped on the carpet, they were conventional
and courteous; we made conversation between us but whenever the
thunder rolled, Mrs. James became ghastly pale. Mr. James explained
that this was his birthday, and that they were on a pleasure
excursion. He conciliated me by anecdotes of a pet magpie, or raven,
who stole spoons. At last the thunderstorm and the G. P. R. Jameses
passed off together.[58]
It is not uninteresting to compare this rather patronizing and
supercilious narration of a trivial incident with that which is given in
his own Journal by the father of this precocious young gentleman of five
years; and it is probably the fact that the story was related by the son
not from his own memory but from the record of the Journal, reproduced
in “Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife,” by Julian Hawthorne.[59]
Nathaniel Hawthorne evidently liked James. Under date of July 30, 1851,
he says:
“We walked to the village for the mail, and on our way back we met a
wagon in which sat Mr. G. P. R. James, his wife and daughter, who had
just left their cards at our house. Here ensued a talk, quite pleasant
and friendly. He is certainly an excellent man; and his wife is a
plain, good, friendly, kind-hearted woman, and his daughter a nice
girl. Mr. James spoke of ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ and of
‘Twice-Told Tales,’ and then branched off upon English literature
generally.”[60] The acquaintance between the two authors must have
been deemed to be of advantage to both, for the supercilious Master
Julian takes care to present in full a note of invitation addressed by
James to the elder Hawthorne asking the latter ‘with his two young
people’ to visit him, saying: “We are going to have a little haymaking
after the olden fashion, and a syllabub under the cow; hoping not to
be disturbed by any of your grim old Puritans, as were the poor folks
of Merrymount. By the way, you do not do yourself justice at all in
your preface to the ‘Twice-Told Tales,’—but more on that subject
anon.”[61]
Under the date of August 9, 1851, Hawthorne gives his own version of the
thunderstorm episode, in marked contrast with the condescending remarks
of his hopeful son. It reveals the difference between parent and child.
“The rain was pouring down,” says Hawthorne senior, “and from all the
hillsides mists were steaming up, and Monument Mountain seemed to be
enveloped as if in the smoke of a great battle. During one of the
heaviest showers of the day there was a succession of thundering
knocks at the front door. On opening it, there was a young man on the
doorstep, and a carriage at the gate, and Mr. James thrusting his head
out of the carriage window, and beseeching shelter from the storm! So
here was an invasion. Mr. and Mrs. James, their eldest son, their
daughter, their little son Charles, their maid-servant, and their
coachman;—not that the coachman came in; and as for the maid, she
stayed in the hall.[62] Dear me! where was Phoebe in this time of
need? All taken aback as I was, I made the best of it. Julian helped
me somewhat, but not much. Little Charley is a few months younger than
he, and between them they at least furnished subject for remark. Mrs.
James, luckily, happened to be very much afraid of thunder and
lightning; and as these were loud and sharp, she might be considered
_hors de combat_. The son, who seemed to be about twenty, and the
daughter, of seventeen or eighteen, took the part of saying nothing,
which I suppose is the English fashion as regards such striplings. So
Mr. James was the only one to whom it was necessary to talk, and we
got along tolerably well. He said that this was his birthday, and that
he was keeping it by a pleasure excursion, and that therefore the rain
was a matter of course.[63] We talked of periodicals, English and
American, and of the Puritans, about whom we agreed pretty well in our
opinions; and Mr. James told how he had recently been thrown out of
his wagon, and how the horse ran away with Mrs. James; and we talked
about green lizards and red ones. And Mr. James told Julian how, when
he was a child, he had twelve owls at the same time; and, at another
time, a raven, who used to steal silver spoons and money. He also
mentioned a squirrel, and several other pets; and Julian laughed most
obstreperously. As to little Charles, he was much interested with
Bunny (who had been returned to us from the Tappans, somewhat the
worse for wear), and likewise with the rocking-horse, which luckily
happened to be in the sitting-room. He examined the horse most
critically, and finally got upon his back, but did not show himself
quite as good a rider as Julian. Our old boy hardly said a word.
Finally the shower passed over, and the invaders passed away; and I do
hope that on the next occasion of the kind my wife will be there to
see.”[64]
I give the story in full, not only because of its relation to James and
his family, but for its revelation of Hawthorne himself; the little
touch of parental pride is amusing as well as affecting. What Nathaniel
Hawthorne thought of James in those days is far more important than what
Julian Hawthorne thinks of him now.
Mr. Charles L. James writes to me:
“Yes, I have read Hawthorne’s account of our visit in a thunderstorm;
and what is more, I remember the occurrence. I was little Charley,
whom he mentions. I remember not only getting upon Julian’s
rocking-horse, but pulling out his tail and being aghast at what I had
done, for I did not possess a wooden horse and it had not occurred to
me that the tail was movable.”
I am glad that Charles pulled out that tail; perhaps the memory of the
outrage inspired the owner of the steed when he wrote his little story.
Longfellow regarded James with a degree of kindness and esteem quite
comparable to that with which Hawthorne looked upon him. In his Journal
for September 17, 1850, he says, after mentioning several visitors:
“Then Fields, with G. P. R. James, the novelist, and his son. He is a
sturdy man, fluent and rapid, and looking quite capable of fifty more
novels.”[65] Later, on November 17, he says: “James, the novelist, came
out to dinner with Sumner. He is a manly, middle-aged man, _tirant sur
le grison_, as Lafontaine has it, with a gray mustache; very frank,
off-hand, and agreeable. In politics he is a Tory, and very
conservative.”[66] James certainly had no reason to complain of his
reception by the best of our own literary men of that day.
It is an evidence of the fact that James was admired and his ability
appreciated by other authors, that he was suspected by no less a person
than William Harrison Ainsworth of being the writer of _Jane Eyre_. I
have before me an autograph letter from Ainsworth to James (November 14,
1849), in which he says: “Anything I can do for you at any time you know
you may command, and I shall only be too happy in the opportunity of
making kindly mention in the N. M. M. of your Dark Scenes of History.
The times are not propitious to us veterans and literature generally has
within the last two years suffered a tremendous depreciation.*** Do you
know I took it into my head that you were the author of ‘Jane Eyre,’ but
I have altered my opinions since I read a portion of ‘Shirley.’ Currer
Bell, whoever he or she may be, has certainly got some of your ‘trick’
*** but ‘Shirley’ has again perplexed me.”
Robert Louis Stevenson had a modified fondness for James, which is
expressed in a letter written by him from Saranac, February, 1888, to E.
L. Burlingame. He says:
“Will you send me (from the library) some of the works of my dear old
G. P. R. James? With the following especially I desire to make or to
renew acquaintance: _The Songster_, _The Gipsey_, _The Convict_, _The
Stepmother_, _The Gentleman of the Old School_, _The Robber_. _Excusez
du peu._ This sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an
accident. The Franklin County Library contains two works of his, _The
Cavalier_ and _Morley Ernstein_. I read the first with indescribable
amusement—it was worse than I had feared, and yet somehow engaging;
the second (to my surprise) was better than I had dared to hope; a
good, honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine old-fashioned
talent in the invention when not strained, and a genuine old-fashioned
feeling for the English language. This experience awoke appetite, and
you see I have taken steps to stay it.
R. L. S.”
I have a number of holograph letters of James, some of which show his
pleasant ways and attractive playfulness. They constitute the _raison d’
étre_ of this commentary and so I will not apologize for giving them
almost in full. He speaks for himself far better than I can speak for
him. He was surely not a Siborne or a Major Dwyer. To my mind these
letters reveal the man, and they tell of an honest, genial man who was
able to write.
He writes to C. W. H. Ranken, at Bristol, thus:
RENNES, 16 January, 1826.
RANKENO AMICO CARISSIMO:
That unfortunate Gentleman upon whose back all the evils of this world
have been laid from time immemorial, I mean the Devil, has certainly
(to give him his due) been tormenting my poor friend and schoolfellow
pretty handsomely. What with your cough in the first place and your
abscess in the second you have been quite a martyr, but remember the
martyrs always reach heaven at last and I doubt not that your
sufferings will soon be over and that in the little Paradise you have
planned for yourself some five or six miles from London (rather a
cockney distance by the by) you will enjoy the happiness of the blest
with those you love best. I think I shall make the same compact with
you that I have made with Becknell namely that in after years when
time has laid his heavy hand upon us all and when you are happy in
your children and your children’s children you will still give the
crusty old Bachelor a place at your fireside and your Sophia shall
furnish me with strong green tea and I will take my pinch of snuff and
tell you Graddam’s tales to amuse the little ones or recount the
wonderful things I have seen in my travels or growl at the degeneracy
of the world and praise the good old days when I was young and gay and
did many a wondrous deed for “Ladye love and pride of Chivalrie” and
you shall forgive many a cross word and ill tempered remark for old
friendship’s sake and say “He was not always so but this world’s
sorrows have soured his temper, poor old Man.”
You tell me to continue my history of Bretagne, but in sooth I know
not where I left off. Memory, that lazy slut, has forgot to mend her
pocket which has had a hole in it for some time and the consequence is
that, of all I give her to keep for me, the dross alone remains and
the better part is dropped by the wayside. But I am not at all in the
mood to give any descriptions. I am philosophical and therefore will
tell you a story.
In that mighty empire which exceeds all others as much in wisdom as it
does in size—in the time of Fo Whang, who was the six hundredth
emperor of the ninety-seventh dynasty which has sat on the throne of
Cathay, there lived a philosopher whose doctrine was such that every
Chinese from the mandarin who enjoys the light of the celestial
presence to the waterman who paddles his Junk in the river of Canton
became proselytes.
Every one knows that every Chinese from generation to generation is in
manners, customs, dress, and appearance so precisely what his father
was before him that a certain Mandarin who had thought proper to fall
into a trance for a century or so, waking from his sleep and entering
his paternal mansion, found his great grandson, who was at dinner, so
strikingly like himself that he was struck dumb with astonishment.
There were the same wide thin eye-brows, there were the same beautiful
black eyes no bigger than peas, there was the same delicate
tea-colored complexion. He wore the same silk his ancestor had worn
and the same chopsticks carried his food to his mouth. The Great
Grandson instantly recognized his predecessor, but the resuscitated
Mandarin, forgetting the lapse of years, mistook his descendant for
his own grandfather and each casting themselves on their belly
wriggled towards each other with all symptoms of respect. Such being
the laudable reverence of this people for all customs sanctified by
time, it may be well supposed that that doctrine was magnificent which
could take a Chinese by the ear, and such indeed was the doctrine of
the Philosopher, namely, that wisdom is folly and folly is wisdom.
Which he proved thus: “The end of wisdom” said the Philosopher, “is to
be happy. And the fewer are our wants the fewer can be our
disappointments and consequently the happier we are. The fool has
fewer wants than the wise man and the ignorant less wishes than the
learned, and therefore the fool being the happiest is the wisest and
the wise man is but a fool.” Now the wise men (even in China) being
lamentably in the minority the Philosopher had all the voices for
himself. Now there was a young Man named To-hi, who never pretended to
be a wise man but was nevertheless not a fool, and going to the
Philosopher he said to him—“Father, I cannot help thinking that your
doctrine means more than it appears to mean and I think I have found
its explication.” “Speak freely, my Son” replied the Philosopher, “and
tell me what you suppose it to be.” “I imagine,” said To-hi, “that you
wish to inculcate that Men seek for wisdom above their power and
destroy their happiness by examining too near the objects which
produce it. For I remark that all that is beautiful in nature as well
as in life is little better than a delusion which to be enjoyed must
be seen from a distance. When I look at the hills of Tartary, they
seem from here grand and soft and blue and changing all sorts of
colors from the reflection of the Sun, but when I approach them I find
nothing but heaps of barren rocks and frightful deserts. If we regard
the finest skin with a magnifying glass, it is like coarsest cloth of
Surat and the sunset that we admire for its soft splendor to the
nations on the edge of the horizon is but the glare of midday. Thus
then we ought to enjoy whatever the world offers us without searching
for faults and be as happy as we can without seeking to be too wise.
Is not this what you meant?” “My Son,” replied the Philosopher “like
many other Philosophers I did not well know what I meant and you, like
many other commentators, have given an explanation which the author
never intended.”
Rennes, first of Feby.
As you will see, my Dear Ranken, this letter has been written half a
century but I have been wandering about the country and forgot to
finish it before I went. Long before this however I hope you are
fundamentally cured and prepared to set up on your own bottom.
Doubtless you will find a vast fund of nonsense in the former part of
this ’pistle but if it serves to give you a minute’s amusement it will
answer the object of
Yours sincerely
G. P. R. JAMES.
Everybody seems to have written affectionately to Charles Ollier, the
publisher—Lamb, Hunt, Keats, Shelley, and a host of others. His son,
Edmund, ‘beheld Charles Lamb with infantile eyes and sat in poor Mary
Lamb’s lap.’[67] James writes to the elder Ollier, from the Chateau du
Buisson, Garumbourg, _près_ Evreux, on August 7, 1829:
“MY DEAR MR. OLLIER.
I take advantage of a friend’s departure for London, to write to you
though I have nothing to say. I have done so much of my new book as I
permit myself to do per diem and having nothing else to do my vile
_cacoethes scribendi_ prompts me to indite this epistle to your
manifest trouble and annoyance. My father informs me you have been ill
and calls your complaint ‘nothing but Dis-pep-sia.’ I hope and trust
however that you have no such long word in your stomach, but if you
have, nothing can be so good for it as crossing the water and visiting
a friend in France. One of my visitors lately brought me over about
twenty newspapers and also the information that my unfortunate _Adra_
had never made her appearance. Incontinent, I fell into one of my
accustomed fits of passion which was greatly increased by finding that
in none of the twenty journals was any advertisement or mention
whatever of _Richelieu_ which together with the news that about four
and twenty people had asked for _Richelieu_ and could not get it in
England, Scotland or Ireland, made me write instantly to Mr. Bentley a
very flaming letter about printing _Adra_ &c. &c. &c. I had written to
Mr. Colburn sometime ago without his doing me the _honor_ to answer
me, and therefore I write not there again. I have since received an
answer from Mr. R. Bentley and all has gone right. But I am most
profanely ignorant of all news and therefore will beg you to answer me
the following Qys. if you can.
Has _Richelieu_ been reviewed in the New Monthly? Has it ever been
advertised? Does the sale proceed as successfully as when I left
London? Will you see that its first success does not make Mr. Colburn
relax in his efforts in its favor? Will you manage the reviewing of
Adra and take care that it be sent to and noticed by as many
publications as possible? Will you see that the list of persons to
whom I desired it to be sent and which I left in Burlington street be
attended to? Will you let me know whether there be anything in which I
can in any way serve or pleasure you? I am sincere and ever yours.
G. P. R. JAMES.
This letter dated at Maxpoffle, near Melrose, Roxburghshire, 14th June
1832, is addressed to Allan Cunningham.
MY DEAR SIR:
When you were in this country last year, I told you not to forget me;
and you promised that you would not; yet I doubt not that when you see
the signature to this, memory will have much ado to call up the person
who writes. Nevertheless I cannot forbear—even at the distance of time
which has since elapsed, and the distance of space which
intervenes—from telling you how much delighted I have been with your
Maid of Elnar. I have not seen the whole; but various passages in
various reviews, have shown me so much surpassing beauty, that I do
not wait even till I have been delighted with the whole, to tell you
how great has been the pleasure I have felt from a part.
I do not know very well how or why, but I have been lately sickening
of poetry; and though once as great a dreamer as ever felt the sweet
music of imagination in his heart of hearts, within the last four or
five years I have found it all flat, stale, and unprofitable; and
began to fancy myself a devout adorer of dull prose. I thank you then
for showing me that there is still such a thing as poetry; and it
would not at all surprise me to feel myself—after reading the Maid of
Elnar through—taking the top of the wave, and going over every poet
again from Chaucer to Byron. Can you tell me what it is that causes
such a strange revolution in tastes? I declare for the last five years
since the Byron mania was upon me, I have looked upon poetry as the
most sappy, senseless misapplication of good words, that ever the
whimsical folly of the universal fool, mankind, devised. A spark or
two of the old faggot was rekindled in my heart about six weeks ago,
by hearing a sonnet of Wordsworth’s read aloud; and that I believe
induced me to read the extracts from your book; and now I am all
ablaze. What I like in the various scattered passages of the Maid of
Elnar, would be endless to tell without writing a review; but there is
something throughout the whole which has enchanted me—a mingling of
the fine spirit of old chivalry, with the sweet home feeling of calm
happy nature that is something newer than even Spenser. As Oliver
Cromwell used to say, I would say something—Ay verily—but I won’t for
fear you should think me exaggerating and therefore I will bid you
farewell. It is natural of course for me to hate you; for every author
is bound to detest any other person who writes what is good. I would
therefore fain pay you that compliment, but your book will not let me;
and I must beg you to believe me
Ever yours most truly
G. P. R. JAMES.
I send this to your Bookseller, because I do not know where else to
send it; and I pay it, because many a good wholesome letter which has
been addressed to the care of mine, has never reached me for want of
that precaution on the part of my correspondents. Before the letter
reaches you, I shall have got and read the whole book; and by heaven,
if the rest does not come up to the extracts, I shall either lampoon
you or your critics.
Another letter to Cunningham follows:
MAXPOFFLE NEAR MELROSE ROXBURGHSHIRE
17th May 1833.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
To show you how little the fault that you notice is attributable to
myself, I have only to tell you that I could not get a copy of _Mary
of Burgundy_ till three days after you had received it and my sister
in law writes to Mrs. James, by the post that brought your letter,
that although she had ordered the book through her own bookseller, she
has not yet been able to get it, while friends of hers have obtained
it at the circulating libraries. Not having lived in London for many
years, I am quite unacquainted with all the ins and outs of these
affairs and do not even know who is the Editor of the Athenæum; but I
think it somewhat hard measure on his part to make an author pay for
the sins of his Bookseller and very different indeed from the usual
liberal spirit that I have seen in his paper.
However, I never courted a Journalist in my life and although I know
that I have suffered greatly on this account, yet I shall pursue the
same plan; and only by endeavoring to make my works better than they
have been, force all honest writers to give them their due share
whatever it may be. At the same time I will endeavour as far as in me
lies to prevent any such instances of neglect as those of which you
complain taking place for the future, especially in regard to a paper
which deserves so well of the public. Having done so, whatever be the
result the Editor must “tak his wull o’t, as the cat did o’ the
haggis.” I never reply to criticism unless it be very absurd which is
not likely to be the case with his; so let him “pour on, I will
endure.”
In regard to the _String of Pearls_ I not only begged a copy to be
sent to you before any one else; I wrote you a long letter to be sent
with it; but this is only one out of the many shameful pieces of
negligence which Mr. Bentley has shown in my affairs.
I trust that the Editor of the Athenæum got a copy of _Mary of
Burgundy_ independent of that sent to you for I wish it clearly to be
understood that I send you my leather and prunella, as a man for whom
I have a high admiration and esteem, and not at all as a critic. When
you get them, review them yourself, let others review, praise, abuse
them, or let others abuse them as you find need; but still receive
them as a mark of regard from me; and be sure that nothing you can say
of them will diminish that regard. Whenever I have any one of them for
which I wish a little lenity I will write you a note with it and tax
your friendship upon the occasion; but still exculpate me in your own
generous mind and plead my exculpation to others, of all intriguing to
gain undue celebrity for my works or of dabbling with literary
coteries. I give in to my bookseller a list of my friends—amongst whom
your name stands high and I leave all the rest to him. For the _String
of Pearls_ I _was_ anxious both because it was given to a charity and
because I was afraid the Publisher might lose by it; but this as far
as I can remember is the only book for which I ever asked a review.
Thanks however, many thanks, for your critique in the Athenæum which
is calculated to do my book much good and is much more favorable than
it deserves. Of your light censure I will speak to you when we meet
which I am happy to say will be soon—at least I trust soon. On the
twenty-eighth we leave this place for London on our way to Germany and
Italy. My liver and stomach have become so deranged of late that I
find it necessary to put myself under the hands of a physician whose
prescription is an agreeable one. “Take the waters of Ems for two
seasons and spend the intermediate time in traveling through Italy.”
This plan I am about to pursue, and in our way we shall spend a month
in London when I will find you out.
The country round us is lovely at present. After a cold lingering
spring, summer has set in, in all its radiance and the world has burst
at once into green beauty. You cannot fancy how lovely the Cheviots
looked yesterday evening, as Mrs. James and I rode over the shoulder
of the Eildons. The sky was full of the broken fragments of a past
thunder storm and the lights and shadows were soft, superb and
dreamlike. I know I may rave about beautiful scenery to you without
fear or compunction for the Maid of Elnar made me know that you love
it as well as
My Dear Allan,
Ever yours truly,
G. P. R. JAMES.
P. S.—I have not yet got your last volume but if it be as good as its
predecessors you will have no occasion to whip your Genius.
He writes again to Cunningham:
10 JULY, 1835.
1 LLOYDS PLACE, BLACKHEATH.
MY DEAR FRIEND:
A thousand thanks for your kind letter and all the kind things it
contains. I am glad that you like my friend the Gipsey, because your
approval is worth much and though I think it tolerable myself, yet I
have attributed a great part of its success to the name. In answer to
the question you put, I do not think he was drowned; but I do not know
with certainty. I have told all I do know and farther this deponent
sayeth not. I have long been thinking of writing to you to tell you
that the name of Chaucer appears in the Scroop and Grosvenor roll in
the year 1386 but all that I dare say you know. The best sketch of the
real events of Chaucer’s life is certainly that in Sir H. Nicholas’
comments on that roll, Vol. II., page 404, wherein he probably states
all that can be learned with certainty of his life and proceedings. I
tell you all this, although I dare say you are already acquainted with
it because you asked me if I found any thing concerning our poet to
let you know. The _Black Prince_ comes on but slowly. So much
examination and research is necessary that it is a most laborious and
very expensive work. It has already cost me in journeys,
transcriptions, books, MSS., &c., many hundred pounds without at all
calculating my individual labour and do you know, my dear Allan, what
I expect as my reward. Clear loss; and two or three reviews written by
ignorant blockheads upon a subject they do not understand, for the
purpose of damning a work which throws some new light upon English
History. I am very much out of spirits in regard to historical
literature and though I would willingly devote my time and even my
money to elucidate the dark points of our own history yet
encouragement from the public is small and from the Government does
not exist, so that I lay down the pen in despair of ever seeing
English history any thing but what it is—a farrago of falsehoods and
hypotheses covered over with the tinsel of specious reasoning from
wrong data. And so you tell Lord Melbourne when you see him. But to
speak of a personage, you are more likely to see namely Mr. Chantry.
There is a bust which I wish him very much to see and wish you would
take a look at it first as I have not seen the original myself. I have
a cast of it given me by my Banker at Florence, to whom the original
belongs, and if the head be equal to the cast it is the most beautiful
antique I have ever seen. It is to be seen at Mr. Brown’s in
University Street, Gower Street _marble works_. Ask to see the antique
head belonging to Mr. Johnstone and write me but three lines to tell
me what you think of it. He paid, I believe, two hundred pounds for it
and would take I believe three or four. If it be as I think, it
(pedestal and all) is worth double.
Yours ever with best Compliments to your family
G. P. R. JAMES
Excuse a scrawl but I am not very well.
1 LLOYDS PLACE, BLACKHEATH
5th Decr 1835
MY DEAR ALLAN,—I have sent you a book and have ten times the pleasure
in sending you one now that ever I had, because I hear you have
detached yourself from all reviews. Heaven be praised therefor; for
now you can sit down quietly by your own ingle nook and pick out all
that is good—if there be any—in my One in a Thousand and palate it
all, without the prospect, the damning prospect, of a broad sheet and
small print before your eyes, and without wracking your honest brain
to find out any small glimmerings of wit and wisdom in your friend’s
book in order to set it forth as fairly as may be to the carping
world.
By the way, I thought you were honest and true; and yet you have
deceived me wofully. You promised to come down to Blackheath and you
have not appeared. I have been writing night and day or I should have
presented myself to call you to account. Will you come down even yet,
and take a family dinner with me? Any Sunday at five you will be sure
to find me but if you come on another day, let me have a day’s notice
by post, lest I be engaged, which would be a great disappointment to
Yours ever truly,
G. P. R. JAMES
He always wrote frankly and freely to Cunningham. This letter deals with
_Attila_.
THE COTTAGE, GREAT MARLOW, BUCKS,
15th April 1837
MY DEAR ALLAN,
Many thanks for your letter and kind words upon _Attila_. I do believe
that he is a good fellow, at all events he is very successful in
society and though there are not as you well know twenty people in
London who know who Attila was, he is as well received, I understand,
as if he had the entrée. Conjectures as to who Attila was are various
in the well _informed circles_ of the Metropolis, and ever since the
book was advertised two principal opinions have prevailed, some people
maintaining that He, Attila, was Platoff; others asserting that he was
a Lady, first cousin to Boru the Backswoodsman, and the heroine of a
romance by Chateaubriand. This may look like a joke, but I can assure
you, it is a fact and that out of one hundred people of the highest
rank in Europe you will not find five who know who Attila was; setting
aside the groveling animals who, as the Duke of Somerset says,
_addict_ themselves to Literature.
I am very sorry to hear you say that these well informed and
enlightened times have not done justice to your romances. I’ll tell
you one great fault they have, which is probably that which prevents
the world from liking them as much as it should do: they have too much
poetry in them, Allan, one and all from _Michael Scott to Lord
Roldan_. But you must not expect to succeed in all walks of art. You
are a lyric poet and a biographer; how can you expect that the critics
would ever let you come near romances. No, no; they feel it their
bounden duty to smother all such efforts of your genius and they
fulfil that duty with laudable zeal. Did you see how the Athenæum
attempted to dribble its small beer venom upon _Attila_. If you have
not, read that sweet and gramatical (_sic_) article, when you will
find that because a man has succeeded in one style of writing he
cannot succeed in another, and apply the critics dictum to yourself.
One half of this world is made up of idiocy, insanity, humbug, and
peculation, and the other half (very nearly) of envy, hatred, malice,
and all uncharitableness.
Yours ever truly
G. P. R. JAMES
This letter is directed to “Charles Ollier, Esq., Richard Bentley, Esq.,
New Burlington street, London.”
FAIR OAK LODGE, PETERSFIELD,
HANTS, 25th December, 1837.
MY DEAR OLLIER:
Mr. Bentley I think usually gives me six copies of a work such as
Louis XIV. I have already had one copy of the two first volumes for
the Duke of Sussex, and you will very much oblige me by having the
copies sent to the following persons with my compliments written in
the front leaf and dated Fair Oak Lodge, Petersfield. Lord John
Russell, Wilton Crescent; S. M. Phillipps, Esq., Home Office; The
Marquis Conyngham, Dudley House, Park Lane; The Lady Polwarth, 9 John
Street, Berkeley Square; and also one to G. P. R. James, Fair Oak
Lodge, which will make the six copies. I must also have another copy
sent to my friend Seymour as soon as you can, addressed as follows:
“Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, G. C. H. Brussels, In the care of the Under
Secretary of State F. O. Downing Street.” For this last I will pay as
soon as you let me know what is the price. Mr. Bentley charges me for
the copy; I should like it to be accompanied by a copy of _Henry
Masterton_, the small edition of which by the [way] I have not
received any copies and should like some. Pray let me know what Mr. B.
charges _me_ for Louis per copy as there are several other friends to
whom I should like to give it, but as Sancho would say I must not
stretch my feet beyond the length of my sheet.
Yours ever,
G. P. R. JAMES.
P. S. I am anxious to get on with the two last volumes, but I suppose
it is the merry season which prevents my having any proofs as yet.
A letter to Alaric Watts refers to the Boundary Question pamphlet:
FAIR OAK LODGE, PETERSFIELD, HANTS,
9th April, 1839.
MY DEAR WATTS,
I write you ten lines in the greatest bustle that ever man was in to
tell you that the death of poor Sir Charles Paget turns me out of my
house. This is not of necessity indeed, for I have a lease of it for
some time yet unexpired, but Lady Paget sent to ask if I would let her
come in again and I felt not in my heart to refuse the widow under
such circumstances. I go before the first of May, but I do sincerely
wish that between this and then I may have the pleasure of seeing you
here. I think that you will believe me to be a sincere man; a
tolerably bitter enemy as long as I think there is cause for enmity, a
very pertinacious friend when I do like. From this place we go to
London, or rather to Brompton, Mrs. James’s sister who is in town for
the winter, having lent her her house there, for a short time. It is
called the Hermitage and is nearly opposite Trevor Square, which
perhaps you may know. Do not suffer yourself or Mrs. Watts to fancy
that it will put us to any inconvenience to receive you here if you
can manage it, as I assure you it will not. I sell all my horses by
auction on the 25th and you could help to bid them up. After we quit
the Hermitage, we have not the slightest idea where we shall go but
there at least I trust to see you if you cannot leave your weighty
employments ere then. I was delighted with your parthian shots, which
were exquisitely truly aimed and though the arrows were not poisoned
by your hand, the corruption of the flesh in which they have stuck,
depend upon it, will produce gangrene. You were made for a reviewer:
only you are honest. How was it else that I escaped even when we did
not fully understand each other?
I have told the booksellers to send you a little pamphlet on the
American Boundary question. It is merely a brief and unpretending
summary of the early history of that bone of contention, only worth
your looking into as a saving of time.
Pray let me hear from you a few words and believe me with Mrs. James’s
and my own best Compliments to Mrs. Watts.
Yours ever
G. P. R. JAMES
P. S. I am making a little collection of my works in their new edition
for Mrs. Watts’s book-case and I send _Richelieu_ with this. It is odd
Bulwer should have just published a play under the same title when the
third edition of mine had been announced for months. I have not seen
his, but I should like to compare the two.
ALARIC A. WATTS ESQRE
Crane Court
Fleet Street
2 VERULAM PLACE HASTINGS
10th January 1840
MY DEAR ALLAN,
It is very grievous to me to hear that you have been suffering and it
would be as grievous to hear _the how_ if I were not quite sure that
at your age and with temperance in all things such as yours, the
enemy—if so we can venture to call him—will pass away and leave you,
perhaps more useful, but not less comfortable for many a long year.
Within my own recollection this has happened to many that I still know
in health and vigor but while any vestige remains of the disease it
always leaves a despondency as its footprint which makes us look upon
the attack as worse than it really has been. Though a successful man,
I know—I am sure,—you have been an anxious man; and there is nothing
has so great a tendency to produce all kind of nervous affections as
anxiety. I trust however that you have now no cause for any kind of
anxiety but _that_ regarding your health, and that it will soon regain
its tone. Pray my good friend take exercise, not of a violent or
fatiguing nature, but frequent and tranquilly, and remember that
anything which hurries the circulation is very detrimental. You will
also find everything that sits heavy or cold upon the stomach also bad
for you; I know, for I have seen much mischief done by even a small
quantity of the cold sorts of fruit. It gives me great pleasure to
hear you like my books. You are one of those who can understand and
appreciate the plan which I have laid down for myself in writing them.
If I chose to hazard thoughts and speculations that might do evil, to
run a tilt at virtue and honor, to sport with good feelings and to
arouse bad ones, the field being far wider, the materials more ample,
I might perhaps be more brilliant and witty, but I would rather build
a greek temple or a gothic church than the palace of Versailles with
all its frog’s statues and marbles. If the books give you
entertainment, you are soon likely to have another for there is one
now in the press called the “_King’s Highway_” but which is not quite
so Jack Sheppardish as the name implies. With our best regards to all
yours believe me ever
Yours truly
G. P. R. JAMES
ALLAN CUNNINGHAM ESQRE
Belgrave Place
Pimlico
I do not know to whom this letter was written.
HOTEL DE L’EUROPE, BRUSSELS,
30th July, ’40.
MY DEAR SIR,
The grief and anxiety I have suffered have brought upon me an
intermittent fever and various concomitant evils amongst which has
been an affection of the face and eyes. Had this not been the case I
should have written to you ere I left England, although it has cost me
a great effort to write to any one. I am now a good deal better and
will immediately correct the proofs I have received; but for the
future will you tell Mr. Shaw to send the proofs in as large a mass as
possible, addressed as follows and given in to the French diligence
office, à Monsieur G. P. James _chez_ M: C. A. Fries, Heidelberg en
Basle, _aux soins de_ Messrs. Eschenauer Cie, Strasburg, Via Paris,
_Pressé_.
This is a somewhat long address, but if it be not followed and the
proofs be sent by Rotterdam I shall never get one half of them till
two or three years after, for such was the case with many proofs of
_Edwd. the Black Prince_.
Any letter for me you had better direct at once to me “_aux soins de_
Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, G. C. H. Brussels.” When I am a little better
I will write you a longer letter telling you all our movements and
also what progress I have made in my plan for stopping continental
piracy; in which if you will give me your assistance and influence I
do not despair of succeeding although the Government will do nothing.
I have already made some way for I can talk without using my eyes.
Yours ever faithfully
G. P. R. JAMES.
This letter was written to McGlashan, in Lever’s care, at Brussels:
THE SHRUBBERY, WALMER,
2nd August, 41.
MY DEAR SIR,—
I did not write to you as I had full occupation for every minute and
of a kind that could not be neglected. The same will be the case for
the next three weeks, as I am just concluding a new work which I can
of course lay aside for no other undertaking till it is finished. It
will give me very great pleasure to see you here on your way back from
Brussels and we can talk over the whole of my plan but as to having
even one number completed that is quite out of the question as in
order to accomplish it I should be obliged to lay aside a work which
had reached the beginning of the last volume before you made up your
mind and to do so would be highly disadvantageous to both books. I can
tell you quite sufficient however regarding the first two numbers to
answer your views as to illustrations.
Pray give my best wishes to Dr. Lever and tell him that we are all
going on well; though for the last fortnight I have had no small
anxiety upon my shoulders regarding Mrs. James and the baby.
Believe me to be
Dear Sir
Yours faithfully
G. P. R. JAMES.
On May 17, 1842, he wrote to Mr. Bretton:
“*** I am very glad you were pleased with what I said at the Literary
Fund dinner. I could have said a great deal more upon the same subject
and opened my views for the benefit of the arts in this country,
including literature of course, as one of the noblest branches of
art—but the hour was so late that I made my speech as short as
possible and yet perhaps it was too long.*** I think if I can bring
the great body of literary men to act with me, especially the much
neglected and highly deserving writers for the daily and weekly press,
I shall be enabled to open a new prospect for literature. Should you
have any oportunity (_sic_) of hinting that such are my wishes and
hopes, pray do: for this is no transient idea, but a fixed and long
meditated purpose which, however inadequate may be my own powers to
carry it out, may produce great things by the aid of more powerful
minds than that of
Yours very faithfully G. P. R. JAMES.
The name of the person to whom the following letter was written is not
given:
THE OAKS NR. WALMER KENT
22ND AUGT. 1844
SIR:
I have been either absent from home or unwell since your letter
arrived or I should have answered it sooner. I do not exactly
understand the sort of use you desire to make of the _Life of Edward
the Black Prince_ written by myself. Of course I can have no possible
objection to your making as long quotations from it as you like, or to
your grounding your own statements upon those which it contains which
I think you may rely upon with full confidence; but if it was your
purpose to make the projected Work a mere sort of Abridgement of mine,
I am sorry to say I cannot give you the permission you desire, however
much I might personally wish to do so, as Messrs. Longman published a
Second Edition of it not long ago, a part of which remains unsold and
I could not venture, of course to interfere with their sale. They
could not of course object to any quotations you might think fit to
make or any reasonable use of the facts stated, as I cannot but think
that each historian has a full right to employ the information
collected by all his predecessors.
I have the honor to be,
Sir
Your most obedt. Servant
G. P. R. JAMES
THE SHRUBBERY WALMER KENT
1ST JUNE 1847
MY DEAR WORTHINGTON,
I received your letter yesterday and would have answered it
immediately; but we are in the midst of an election business here. I
am not a candidate; and, disgusted with public men, had resolved not
to take any part on behalf of others; but I have been led on and when
once in the business go on, as you know, heart and hand.
Let me hear a little more about the Ecclesiastical History Society. I
am a churchman you know, but far from Puseyitical and I should not
like to be mixed up with any legends except such as Ehrenstein or any
Saints except St. Mary le bonne.
I am glad to hear that you have moved your dwelling; for Pancras was
so completely out of my beat that it was impossible for me to get
there when in town. Indeed during my visits to that famed city of
London I always put myself in mind of an American orator’s description
of himself when he said “I am a right down regler Steam Engine, I go
slick off right ahead and never stop till I get to the tarnation back
of nothing at all.”
I shall be delighted to see you and Mr. Christmas here any time you
can come and will with a great deal of pleasure board and educate you
but as to lodging you I am unable for what with babies, nurses, and
one thing or another I can hardly lodge myself. I do not propose to be
in London for some days or I should rather say weeks, as I was there
very lately.
As to Marylebone, any body may propose me for any where and I will be
the representative of any body of men always provided nevertheless
that I do not spend a penny and maintain my own principles to the end
of the chapter. I am not yet inscribable in the _dictionnaire des
Girouettes_; but I trust soon to be for it seems to me that the Jim
Crow system is the only one that succeeds in England.
Believe me with best regards to all your household
Yours truly
G. P. R. JAMES
In a letter dated April 1, 1849, and addressed to Mr. Davison, he says:
“I understand you have got a potato. Can you spare half of it, for we
have not that. But to speak seriously, which is not my wont, Mrs.
James has heard from Mrs. H. that on your farm there are some capital
praties, and as we have been languishing for some of the jewels for
the last month without being able to get anything edible or
digestible, if this rumor of your _riches_ is correct, will you spare
a sack or two to a poor man in want, and what will be the cost of the
same, delivered in Farnham safe, sound and in good condition—wind and
weather permitting. The truth is I have no horse to send for them; and
neither cow nor calf have learned to draw yet. I have had no time to
teach them, or to buy a horse either. I wish any one else had half my
work and I half of theirs—I’d take it and give a premium.”
How busy he was after his arrival in America may be seen from a letter
dated October 27, 1850:
“I fear that it would be quite impossible for me to rewrite the first
four numbers of the tale you speak of. Applications for lectures have
come in so rapidly that I have not one single evening vacant and the
evening would be the only time which I could devote to such a purpose
as all my mornings must be given up to the fulfilment of my
engagements with England and to traveling from place to place. You may
easily imagine how much I am occupied when I tell you that during the
whole month I am about to stay in Boston, there is not one night which
has not its lecture fixed there or at some place in the neighborhood.
The delay in London however, of which I had not heard till I received
your letters is favorable, as it will enable me to get the proofs over
in good time. The four parts are in type, I understand, and I have
written over two thumping letters to the printers scolding them for
not sending the proof as they are bound by contract to do. One of
these letters was posted three weeks ago, so that we may expect the
proofs in a week or ten days. In regard to the name, it is certainly
curious that one name should have been taken three times but I do not
see how it is possible for me to alter it now when it is announced in
London. I was not at all aware that any work had before appeared under
a similar title, but you could head it _James’s_ story without a name
in the Magazine, but if any other title is given it must be by
yourselves and not by
“Yours faithfully,
“G. P. R. JAMES.”
Soon after his arrival in America he appears to have become involved in
some trouble with publishers. He writes from New York on October 24,
1850, to Ollier:
*** “Send no more sheets to Mr. Law till you hear from me again. My
eyes have been opened since my arrival here. Four times the sum now
paid can be obtained from Messrs. Harper, and negotiations are going
on with them in which they must not have the advantage of having the
sheets. You shall not lose by any new arrangement—of that you may
trust to the word of one who has I think never failed you.”
He adds, in a postscript: “Tell him [Mr. Newby] I have been shamefully
imposed upon by false statements of the sale here and if I had taken his
advice I should have been some hundreds of pounds richer.”
On October 5, 1851, he writes from Stockbridge to Ollier:
“I have not written to you earlier because I wanted to find the treaty
with Russia in regard to Copyright, and also to see the head of a
great German house here in America so as to put you in the way of
negotiating for the sale of my next book in Germany. But I have been
too lame to leave my own house for anything but a morning drive. I am
so far better that I can now walk out for a mile or two, but my right
hand and arm remain very painful. However, I think I shall be able to
go to New York in ten days and will write to you from that place.*** I
am anxious to dedicate the first book I write to my own satisfaction,
to Lord Charles Clinton. He is one of the noblest-minded men I ever
met with—all truth and honor and straightforwardness. If you see him
will you ask him for me whether he has any objection. The Fate is
highly popular here—considered the best book I ever wrote—by the
critics at least. The whole of the first chapter was read in the
Supreme Court the other day before Chief Justice SHAW to prove what
was the state of England in the reign of James II. So says the ‘N. Y.
Evening Post’ and I suppose it is true. I wish I had you here with me
to see the splendor of an American autumn in the most lovely scene.
The landscape is all on fire with the coloring of the foliage and yet
so harmoniously blended are the tints, from the brightest crimson to
the deep green of the pines that the effect is that of a continuous
sunset. Mountains, forests, lakes, streams are all in a glow round.”
A letter to Ollier, written at Stockbridge on March 22, 1852, deals with
some financial matters and then proceeds:
“I am glad to hear what you say of _Revenge_—though the title is not
one I would myself have chosen, there being a tale of that name in the
book of the Passions. I think it is a good book, better in conception
than in execution perhaps. Your comparison of Richardson and Johnson
with myself and you will not hold. You are scantily remunerated for
much trouble. Johnson had done nothing that I can remember for
Richardson. As to Richardson’s parsimony towards the great, good man,
you explain it all in one word. The former was rich. Do you remember
the fine poem of Gaffer Grey—Holcrofft’s I believe—
‘The poor man alone,
To the poor man’s moan,
Of his morsel a morsel will give Gaffer Grey.’
“But this rule is not without splendid exceptions, of which I will one
day give you an instance, which I think will touch you much. At
present I am writing in great haste in the grey of the morning with
snow all around me, the thermometer at 18, and my hand nearly frozen.
Verily, we have here to pay for the hot summer and gorgeous autumn in
the cold silver coinage of winter.”
Another letter of his written from Winchester, Virginia, November 6,
1853, to Ollier, has some interest. He writes thus:
“MY DEAR OLLIER: Long before the arrival of your kind letter, which
reached me only two days ago, I had directed Messrs. Harper to send me
a revise of the first page of _Ticonderoga_, in order to transmit it
to you for the correction of errors which had crept into the Ms.
through the stupidity of the drunken beast who wrote it under my
dictation. Harpers have never sent the revise, but I think it better
to write at once in order to have one correction and one alteration
made, which must be effected even at the cost of a cancel of the
page—which of course I will pay for. The very first sentence should
have inverted commas before it. These have been omitted in the copy
left here, as well as the words ‘so he wrote’ or something tantamount,
inserted at the end of the first clause of that sentence.***
I cannot feel that an appointment of any small value, to the dearest
and most unhealthy city in the United States (with the exception of
New Orleans) is altogether what I had a right to hope for or expect.
You must recollect that I never asked for the consulate of Virginia,
where there is neither society for my family, resources or
companionship for myself, nor education to be procured for my little
boy—where I am surrounded by swamps and marsh miasma, eaten up by
mosquitoes and black flies, and baked under an atmosphere of molten
brass, with the thermometer in the shade at 103—where every article of
first necessity, with the exception of meat, is sixty per cent. dearer
than in London—where the only literature is the ledger, and the arts
only illustrated in the slave market.
I hesitated for weeks ere I accepted; and only did so at length upon
the assurances given that this was to be a step to something better,
and upon the conviction that I was killing myself by excessive
literary labors. Forgive me for speaking somewhat bitterly; but I feel
I have not been well used. You have known me more than thirty years,
and during that time I do not think you ever before heard a complaint
issue from my lips. I am not a habitual grumbler; but ‘the galled jade
will wince.’
I am very grateful to Scott for his kind efforts, and perhaps they may
be successful; for Lord Clarendon, who is I believe a perfect
gentleman himself, when he comes to consider the society in which I
have been accustomed to move, my character, my habits of thought, and
the sort of place which Norfolk is—if he knows anything about it—must
see that I am not in my proper position there. He has no cause of
enmity or ill will towards me, and my worst enemy could not wish me a
more unpleasant position. If I thought that I was serving my country
there better than I could elsewhere, I would remain without asking for
a change; but the exact reverse is the case. The slave dealers have
got up a sort of outcry against me—I believe because under Lord
Clarendon’s own orders I have successfully prosecuted several cases of
kidnapping negroes from the West Indies—and the consequence is that
not a fortnight passes but an attempt is made to burn my house down.
The respectable inhabitants of Norfolk are indignant at this treatment
of a stranger, and the authorities have offered a reward of three
hundred dollars for the apprehension of the offenders; but nothing has
proved successful. This outcry is altogether unjust and unreasonable;
for I have been perfectly silent upon the question of slavery since I
have been here, judging that I had no business to meddle with the
institutions of a foreign country in any way. But I will not suffer
any men, when I can prevent or punish it, to reduce to slavery British
subjects without chastisement.
You will be sorry to hear that this last year in Norfolk has been very
injurious to my health; and I am just now recovering from a sharp
attack of the fever and ague peculiar to this climate. It seized me
just as I set out for the West—the great, the extraordinary West.
Quinine had no effect upon it, but I learned a remedy in Wisconsin
which has cured the disease entirely though I am still very weak.***
He seems to have been tormented by ill health during all his period of
residence at Norfolk. He writes to Ollier:
BRITISH CONSULATE, NORFOLK, VIRGINIA,
7th April, 1855.
MY DEAR OLLIER:—It has been impossible for me to write to you and it
is now only possible for me to write a few lines as I have already had
to do more than my tormented and feeble hands could well accomplish.
For 10 weeks I was nailed to my chair with rheumatic gout in knees,
feet, hips, hands, shoulder. For some time I could only sign my
dispatches with my left hand and to some letters put my mark. Happily
my feet, knees, &c., are well, but I cannot get the enemy out of my
hands and arms. My shoulder is Sebastapol and will not yield.
Another letter, also in my possession, I have caused to be printed
elsewhere. It is addressed to Ollier, and was written from Farnham,
Surrey, on July 26, 1848.
My dear Ollier: I do not suppose that I shall be in town for a few
days, and I think in the meantime it would be better to send me down
the sheets with any observations you may have to make. I shall be very
happy to cut, carve, alter and amend to the best of my ability. The
‘sum’ can only be described as ‘Heaven, Hell and Earth’, or if you
like it better, ‘upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber.’ But I
suppose neither of these descriptions would be very attractive and
therefore perhaps you had better put ‘The Sky, the hall of Eblis,
South Asia’. When it maketh its appearance you had better for your own
sake take care of the reviewing; for I cannot help thinking that with
the critics at least, my name attached to it is likely to do it more
harm than good, unless friendly hands undertake the reviewing. The
literary world always puts me in mind of the account which naturalists
give of the birds called Puffs and Rees which alight in great bodies
upon high downs and then each bird forms a little circle in which he
runs round and round. As long as each continues this healthful
exercise on the spot he has first chosen, all goes on quietly; but the
moment any one ventures out of his own circle, all the rest fall upon
him and very often a general battle ensues. I wish you could do
anything for my book _Gowrie or the King’s Plot_. I had a good deal of
money embarked in it.
Yours faithfully,
G. P. R. JAMES.
My letter of latest date indicates the time when he was transferred to
Richmond.
BRITISH CONSULATE, NORFOLK, VA.
3 May, 1856.
MY DEAR MR. KENNEDY: *** Lord Clarendon has ordered me to make every
preparation for moving the Consulate of Virginia up to Richmond but
not to do so until he has nominated a Vice Consul for Norfolk. He also
wishes me to send him a detailed report regarding the late epidemic
here and what between house hunting, office hunting, and trying to run
down those foxes called rumors into their holes and to draw truth up
from the bottom of her well in a place where people are as fanatical
upon contagion and non-contagion as if they were articles of faith, I
have had no peace of my life. My book I would have sent you but I
could not get a copy worth sending. It has found favor in the South
and is powerfully abused in the North, both which circumstances tend
to increase the sale so that it has been wonderfully well read.***
I am sorry I did not think of taking notes of all the winning
conversations at Berkeley. We might have made out together some few
from the Noctes Berkelianae.
Yours ever,
G. P. R. JAMES.
I was interested not long ago in a remark of the accomplished literary
reviewer of the _Providence Journal_ about reading for boys. He said:
“As a matter of fact, there is plenty of good, healthy reading for boys
if parents and teachers would do more to bring it to their attention. To
say nothing of Scott—whom some degenerate youngsters in these days
profess to find stupid—there are Ainsworth, G. P. R. James, Mayne Reid
and hosts of others who can tell stories of adventure that any healthy
minded boy will enjoy.” I know well the sound and refined judgments of
my Providence friend,—who castigated me once for my opinion that Cowper
was not much read in these times—but I do not understand how he can
imagine a boy of the twentieth century condescending to read Ainsworth
or James. First and foremost, the novels are too long. The conventional
three volumes demanded by the English public are revolting to the minds
of the modern boys who want their fiction condensed and flavored with
tabasco sauce. The Providence critic and I know—or think we know—what
they ought to read, what would be good for their intellectual digestion;
but we might as well offer them pre-digested tablets in lieu of
chocolate creams. The young person will not now subsist on a diet of
Ainsworth or of James. The long-spun dialogue would bore him. He calls
for something more piquant; revels in slang; wants “sensation” and
plenty of it, compressed in a small compass. As for the parents, they do
not know much better themselves. The man of Providence well says: “The
trouble is, as was pointed out in these columns recently in discussing
the reading of girls, that the home atmosphere is all against any
intelligent selection of books.” The prevalent antagonism to all that is
called “old-fashioned” is not limited to the young people, and the
novels of James are, in comparison with the novels of to-day as
old-fashioned as are the plays of Massinger in comparison with those of
Bernard Shaw.
James has been compared to Dumas, and there are many things in common
between the two authors—their voluminous publications, their bent
towards the historical, and their use of an amanuensis. A critic, not
very well disposed towards James, says in regard to this comparison,
“both had a certain gift of separating from the picturesque parts of
history what could without difficulty be worked up into picturesque
fiction, and both were possessed of a ready pen. Here, however, the
likeness ends. Of purely literary talent, James had little. His plots
are poor, his descriptions weak, his dialogue often below even a fair
average, and he was deplorably prone to repeat himself.”[68] This harsh
judgment appears to me to be far too severe. His descriptions are not
weak, and he surely had an advantage over Dumas in the matter of decency
and morality.
But the most ardent admirers of this hard-working and conscientious
toiler in the fields of literature must own that in all his
multitudinous pages he has not given to the world a single character
which has endured in the popular mind, and the Podsnap virtue of having
written no word which could bring a blush to the cheek of the young
person, cannot remedy this flaw in his title. Writers who rival him in
productiveness but who are in respects inferior to him, have
nevertheless secured a more permanent place in the hall of fame, because
they have been able to give to some of their personages a real and
distinctive life. Leather-Stocking and Long Tom Coffin shine forth from
the many wearisome chapters of Fenimore Cooper, Count Fosco and Captain
Wragge from the ephemeral volumes of Wilkie Collins, and Mrs. Proudie
from the placid chronicles of Anthony Trollope, but they have no kinsmen
in the works of James. Even in the historical stories no individual
stands forth like Louis XI. in _Quentin Durward_ or Rienzi in Bulwer’s
stirring tale. Nor has he left to posterity any brilliant _tour de
force_ like the “Dick Turpin’s Ride” of Harrison Ainsworth.
Whatever may be said of the diffuseness and sameness of the stories, of
their want of definite plan, their lack of strength in the development
of the characters who throng their pages, and the evidence they afford
of hasty composition, it must be admitted that they are clean and
dignified in tone and that they display a wonderful acquaintance with
history as well as a faithful and conscientious use of materials
gathered with infinite pains and laborious research. These qualities,
however, are not those which ensure literary immortality; and while it
is possible that the best of the books may find from time to time
readers incited to peruse them by a certain curiosity, and while the
lovers of good stories may enjoy them, it is not likely that they will
ever rank with the novels of Scott, of Thackeray, of Dickens, or even of
Marryat and Lever, although they may occupy a place on the shelves of
our libraries by the side of the old romances of the period of _Amadis
de Gaul_ or the forgotten tales of the younger Crébillon.
APPENDIX
A LIST OF THE WORKS OF G. P. R. JAMES
It is difficult to give an accurate list of James’s books with the dates
of their publication. The one given by Allibone is the most complete,
but it is not always correct. The catalogue of the British Museum
enumerates sixty-seven novels. The following does not include merely
edited works or those prepared in collaboration with others, with a few
exceptions. Those marked with an asterisk are reprinted in the collected
edition of 1844–1849. I was much helped not only in correcting the
Allibone list, but in the preparation of the sketch of James, by the
late G. H. Sass of Charleston, S. C., who was probably better informed
about the subject than any one else in this country.
Life of Edward the Black Prince: 2 vols.: 1822. [Some accounts give
1836: See _ante_, page 136.]
The Ruined City: a poem.
Richelieu: 3 vols.: 1829.
*Darnley: 3 vols.: 1830.
*Del’Orme: 3 vols.: 1830.
*Philip Augustus: 3 vols.: 1831.
Memoirs of Great Commanders: 3 vols.: 1832.
*Henry Masterton: 3 vols.: 1832.
History of Charlemagne. 1832.
*Mary of Burgundy: 3 vols.: 1833.
*Delaware: 3 vols.: 1833: (reprinted under title of “Thirty Years
Since,” 1848).
*John Marston Hall: 3 vols.: 1834: (reprinted under title of “The Little
Ball o’ Fire,” 1847).
*One in a Thousand: 3 vols.: 1835.
*The Gipsey: 3 vols.: 1835.
Educational Institutions of Germany: 1836.
Lives of the Most Eminent Foreign Statesman: 5 vols.: 4 by James, 1836,
[1832?] 1838.
Attila: 3 vols.: 1837.
Memoirs of Celebrated Women: 3 vols. (?) 1837.
*The Robber: 3 vols.: 1838.
Book of the Passions: 1838.
History of Louis XIV. 4 vols.: 1838.
*The Huguenot: 3 vols.: 1838.
Blanche of Navarre: a play: 1839.
Charles Tyrrell: 2 vols.: 1839.
*The Gentleman of the Old School: 3 vols.: 1839.
*Henry of Guise: 3 vols.: 1839.
History of the United States Boundary Question: 1839.
*The King’s Highway: 3 vols.: 1840.
The Man at Arms: 3 vols.: 1840.
Rose d’Albret: 3 vols.: 1840.
The Jacquerie: 3 vols.: 1841.
The Vernon Letters: 3 vols.: (edited). 1841.
*Castleneau; or the Ancient Régime: 3 vols.: 1841.
*The Brigand; or Corse de Léon: 3 vols.: 1841.
Corn Laws.
History of Richard Cœur de Lion: 4 vols.: 1841–42.
Commissioner; or De Lunatico Inquirendo: 1842.
*Morley Ernstein: 3 vols.: 1842.
Eva St. Clair, and Other Tales: 2 vols.: 1843.
The False Heir: 3 vols.: 1843.
*Forest Days: 3 vols.: 1843.
History of Chivalry: 1843.
*Arabella Stuart: 3 vols.: 1843.
*Agincourt: 3 vols.: 1844.
Arrah Neil: 3 vols.: 1845.
The Smuggler: 3 vols.: 1845.
Heidelberg: 3 vols.: 1846.
The Stepmother: 3 vols.: 1846.
Whim and its Consequences: 3 vols.: 1847.
Margaret Graham: 2 vols.: 1847.
The Last of the Fairies: 1847.
The Castle of Ehrenstein: 3 vols.: 1847.
The Woodman: 3 vols.: 1847.
The Convict: 3 vols.: 1847.
Life of Henry IV. of France: 3 vols.: 1847.
Russell: 3 vols.: 1847.
Sir Theodore Broughton: 3 vols.: 1847.
Beauchamp: 3 vols.: 1848.
Carmazalaman; a Fairy Drama: 1848.
The Fight of the Fiddlers: 1848.
Forgery; or Best Intentions: 3 vols.: 1848.
*Gowrie; or the King’s Plot: 1848.
Dark Scenes of History: 3 vols.: 1849.
John Jones’ Tales from English History: 2 vols.: 1849.
A String of Pearls: 2 vols.: 1849. [His first written book; published
1833 (?); Allibone assigns its publication to 1849].
Ireland’s “David Rizzio”: 1849: (edited).
Heathfield’s “Means of Relief from Taxation”: 1849: (edited).
Henry Smeaton: 3 vols.: 1850.
The Fate: 3 vols.: 1851.
Revenge: (sometimes called A Story Without a Name): 3 vols.: 1851.
Pequinillo: 3 vols.: 1852.
Adrian; or the Clouds of the Mind: (jointly with M. B. Field): 2 vols.:
1852.
Agnes Sorel: 3 vols.: 1853.
Ticonderoga; or the Black Eagle: 3 vols.: 1854.
Prince Life: 1855.
The Old Dominion; or the Southampton Massacre: 3 vols.: 1856.
Lord Montagu’s Page: 1858.
The Cavalier: (Bernard March?): 1859.
Adra; or the Peruvians: a poem: (_circa_, 1829).
The City of the Silent: a poem.
The Desultory Man: 3 vols.
Life of Vicissitudes.
My Aunt Pontypool: 3 vols.
The Old Oak Chest: 3 vols.
-----
Footnote 1:
Trevelyan’s Life of Macaulay, I, 93.
Footnote 2:
Tennyson: E. L. Cary, 19.
Footnote 3:
A Great Punch Editor, London, 1907.
Footnote 4:
My Study Windows, 337.
Footnote 5:
See a review in _The Literary Collector_, September, 1905.
Footnote 6:
See Temple Bar Edition, iii, 51–52.
Footnote 7:
Blackwood, April, 1827.
Footnote 8:
Sala’s Life and Adventures (1896), 83.
Footnote 9:
Axon’s Memoir, xxiii: _The World_, March 28, 1878.
Footnote 10:
Forster’s Dickens, i. 141.
Footnote 11:
Life of Lady Blessington, iii. 226, 227.
Footnote 12:
_Idem._, iii. 224.
Footnote 13:
January 3, 1840: Letters, Am. Edition, 1870, ii. p. 218.
Footnote 14:
Forster’s _Life of Dickens_, I, 118.
Footnote 15:
Life of Cruikshank (1882), i, 48–49.
Footnote 16:
Dictionary of National Biography, _Cruikshank_.
Footnote 17:
Vol. I, 211.
Footnote 18:
See introduction to Biographical Edition of Thackeray, IV. 19.
Footnote 19:
British Artists from Hogarth to Turner, ii, 59.
Footnote 20:
Vol. ii, 321–322.
Footnote 21:
Dict. Nat. Biog., i, 198.
Footnote 22:
Autobiography, iv, 390–393.
Footnote 23:
As a matter of curiosity, I examined the twenty-one novels composing
the “Revised Edition” of 1844–1849 to ascertain just how many
introduced the horseman or horsemen in the first chapter. Seven
disclose them; in eight they are absent; in four, the horsemen are “a
party”; in two, they appear in the second chapter, the first being
merely introductory.
Footnote 24:
Brander Matthews: Aspects of Fiction, 153.
Footnote 25:
They are said to have caused the death of Oliver Goldsmith, and
pamphlets were published on the subject. Foster’s _Oliver Goldsmith_,
II. 461–463.
Footnote 26:
Boswell (Geo. Birkbeck Hill’s Edition), I. 183.
Footnote 27:
_Id._, III. 442.
Footnote 28:
Memories: by M. B. Field p. 188—Harper’s, 1874.
Footnote 29:
Allibone gives the date of publication as 1849; but it must have been
published in some form prior to May 17, 1833. See _post_, page 184.
Footnote 30:
Works Vol. I. “The Gipsey,” vii.
Footnote 31:
Dictionary of National Biography, xxix, 209–210.
Footnote 32:
Fitzpatrick’s Life of Lever, II. 21.
Footnote 33:
This is all according to Field, and may be taken for what it is worth.
Footnote 34:
Memoirs, 191–195.
Footnote 35:
It is said, but on rather dubious authority, that he was sometimes
called “George Prince Regent James,” and that many believed it to be
his real name.
Footnote 36:
See Appendix.
Footnote 37:
Works, Vol. I. xiv.
Footnote 38:
Letter to Cunningham, _post_, page—.
Footnote 39:
Letter of C. L. James.
Footnote 40:
English Lands, Letters and Kings, 284.
Footnote 41:
Life of Lever, II. 21.
Footnote 42:
Fitzpatrick’s Life of Lever II. 418.
Footnote 43:
Noctes Ambrosianæ, II. 370—Blackwood Edition, 1887.
Footnote 44:
Marginalia, Black’s Edition—III. 393.
Footnote 45:
Hall’s Book of Memories, 263.
Footnote 46:
Jerdan’s Autobiography, iv 210.
Footnote 47:
It was R. H. Horne. A New Spirit of the Age (1844) p. 136.
Footnote 48:
London Athenæum, April 11, 1846.
Footnote 49:
Dublin University Magazine, March, 1842.
Footnote 50:
Essays and Reviews, ii, 116, 137.
Footnote 51:
Derby’s Fifty Years Among Authors, etc. 405.
Footnote 52:
My Confidences, 161.
Footnote 53:
My Confidences, 533, 534.
Footnote 54:
Mr. Gladstone succeeded Lord Ripon as President of the Board of Trade
and took his seat in the Cabinet on May 19, 1843.
Footnote 55:
American Lands and Letters, II. 252.
Footnote 56:
Life of Cooper, 268.
Footnote 57:
Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, I, 203.
Footnote 58:
Hawthorne and his Circle, 33, 34.
Footnote 59:
Vol. I, 422–423.
Footnote 60:
Hawthorne and his Wife, I. 415.
Footnote 61:
_Id._ 397, 398.
Footnote 62:
A little bit snobbish for a Hawthorne, is it not?
Footnote 63:
Observe how Mr. Julian Hawthorne wholly omits the point of the
observation about the pleasure excursion.
Footnote 64:
Life of Hawthorne and his Wife, I. 422–424.
Footnote 65:
Life of H. W. Longfellow, by Stephen Longfellow, II. 177.
Footnote 66:
_Id._, 182.
Footnote 67:
Charles Ollier, 1788–1859.
Footnote 68:
Encyclopædia Britannica, XIII. 561 (Ninth Edition).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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