A Publisher and His Friends Part 35

In 1822 Irving, who liked to help his literary fellow-countrymen, tried to induce Mr. Murray to republish James Fenimore Cooper's novels in England. Mr. Murray felt obliged to decline, as he found that these works were pirated by other publishers; American authors were then beginning to experience the same treatment in England which English authors have suffered in America. The wonder was that Washington Irving's works so long escaped the same doom.

In 1819 Mr. Murray first made the acquaintance of Ugo Foscolo. A native of Zante, descended from a Venetian family who had settled in the Ionian Islands, Foscolo studied at Padua, and afterwards took up his residence at Venice. The ancient aristocracy of that city had been banished by Napoleon Bonaparte, and the conqueror gave over Venice to Austria.

Foscolo attacked Bonaparte in his "Lettere di Ortis." After serving as a volunteer in the Lombard Legion through the disastrous campaign of 1799, Foscolo, on the capitulation of Genoa, retired to Milan, where he devoted himself to literary pursuits. He once more took service--under Napoleon--and in 1805 formed part of the army of England a.s.sembled at Boulogne; but soon left the army, went to Pavia (where he had been appointed Professor of Eloquence), and eventually at the age of forty took refuge in England. Here he found many friends, who supported him in his literary efforts. Among others he called upon Mr. Murray, who desired his co-operation in writing for the _Quarterly_. An article, on "The Poems of the Italians" was his first contribution. Mr. Thomas Mitch.e.l.l, the translator of "Aristophanes," desired Mr. Murray to give Foscolo his congratulations upon his excellent essay, as well as on his acquaintance with our language.

_Mr. Thomas Mitch.e.l.l to John Murray_.

"The first time I had the pleasure of seeing M. Foscolo was at a _table d'hote_ at Berne. There was something in his physiognomy which very much attracted nay notice; and, for some reason or another, I thought that I seemed to be an object of his attention. At table, Foscolo was seated next to a young Hanoverian, between whom and me a very learned conversation had pa.s.sed on the preceding evening, and a certain degree of acquaintance was cemented in consequence. The table was that day graced with the appearance of some of the Court ladies of Stuttgard, and all pa.s.sed off with the decorum usually observed abroad, when suddenly, towards the conclusion of the feast a violent hubbub was heard between M. Foscolo and his Hanoverian neighbour, who, in angry terms and with violent gestures, respectively a.s.serted the superior harmonies of Greek and Latin. This ended with the former's suddenly producing a card, accompanied with the following annunciation: 'Sir, my name is Ugo Foscolo; I am a native of Greece, and I have resided thirty years in Italy; I therefore think I ought to know something of the matter. This card contains my address, and if you have anything further to say, you know where I am to be found.' Whether Foscolo's name or manner daunted the young Hanoverian, or whether he was only a bird of pa.s.sage, I don't know, but we saw nothing more of him after that day. Foscolo, after the ladies had retired, made an apology, directed a good deal to me, who, by the forms of the place, happened to be at the head of the table; a considerable degree of intimacy took place between us, and an excellent man I believe him to be, in spite of these little ebullitions."

Ugo Foscolo, who was eccentric to an excess, and very extravagant, had many attached friends, though he tried them sorely. To Mr. Murray he became one of the troubles of private as well as publishing life. He had a mania for building, and a mania for ornamentation, but he was very short of money for carrying out his freaks. He thought himself at the same time to be perfectly moderate, simple, and sweet-tempered. He took a house in South Bank, Regent's Park, which he named Digamma Cottage--from his having contributed to the _Quarterly Review_ an article on the Digamma--and fitted it up in extravagant style.

Foscolo could scarcely live at peace with anybody, and, as the result of one of his numerous altercations, he had to fight a duel. "We are," Lady Dacre wrote to Murray (December 1823), "to have the whole of Foscolo's duel to-morrow. He tells me that it is not about a 'Fair lady': thank heaven!"

Foscolo was one of Mr. Murray's inveterate correspondents--about lectures, about translations, about buildings, about debts, about loans, and about borrowings. On one occasion Mr. Murray received from him a letter of thirteen pages quarto. A few sentences of this may be worth quoting:

_Mr. Foscolo to John Murray_.

SOUTH BANK, _August_ 20, 1822.

"During six years (for I landed in England the 10th September, 1816) I have constantly laboured under difficulties the most distressing; no one knows them so well as yourself, because no one came to my a.s.sistance with so warm a friendship or with cares so constant and delicate. My difficulties have become more perplexing since the Government both of the Ionian Islands and Italy have precluded even the possibility of my returning to the countries where a slender income would be sufficient, and where I would not be under the necessity of making a degrading use of my faculties. I was born a racehorse; and after near forty years of successful racing, I am now drawing the waggon--nay, to be the teacher of French to my copyists, and the critic of English to my translators!-to write sophistry about criticism, which I always considered a sort of literary quackery, and to put together paltry articles for works which I never read. Indeed, if I have not undergone the doom of almost all individuals whose situation becomes suddenly opposed to their feelings and habits, and if I am not yet a lunatic, I must thank the mechanical strength of my nerves. My nerves, however, will not withstand the threatenings of shame which I have always contemplated with terror. Time and fortune have taught me to meet all other evils with fort.i.tude; but I grow every day more and more a coward at the idea of the approach of a stigma on my character; and as now I must live and die in England, and get the greater part of my subsistence from my labour, I ought to reconcile, if not labour with literary reputation, at least labour and life with a spotless name."

He then goes on to state that his debts amount to 600 or thereabouts, including a sum of 20 which he owed to Mr. Murray himself. Then he must have the money necessary for his subsistence, and he "finds he cannot live on less than 400 per annum."

"My apartments," he continues, "decently furnished, encompa.s.s me with an atmosphere of ease and respectability; and I enjoy the illusion of not having fallen into the lowest circ.u.mstances.

I always declare that I will die like a gentleman, on a decent bed, surrounded by casts (as I cannot buy the marbles) of the Venuses, of the Apollos, and of the Graces, and the busts of great men; nay, even among flowers, and, if possible, with some graceful innocent girl playing an old pianoforte in an adjoining room. And thus dies the hero of my novel.

Far from courting the sympathy of mankind, I would rather be forgotten by posterity than give it the gratification of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. preposterous sighs because I died like Camoens and Ta.s.so on the bed of an hospital.

And since I must be buried in your country, I am happy in having insured for me the possession during the remains of my life of a cottage built after my plan, surrounded by flowering shrubs, almost within the tumpikes of the town, and yet as quiet as a country-house, and open to the free air. Whenever I can freely dispose of a hundred pounds, I will also build a small dwelling for my corpse, under a beautiful Oriental plane-tree, which I mean to plant next November, and cultivate _con amore_. So far I am indeed an epicure; in all other things I am the most moderate of men."

The upshot of the letter is, that he wishes Mr. Murray to let him have 1,000, to be repaid in five years, he meanwhile writing articles for the _Quarterly_--one-half of the payment to be left with the publisher, and the remaining half to be added to his personal income. He concludes:

"In seeking out a way of salvation, I think it inc.u.mbent on me to prevent the tyranny of necessity, that I might not be compelled by it to endanger my character and the interest of a friend whose kindness I have always experienced, and whose a.s.sistance I am once more obliged to solicit."

Mr. Murray paid off some of his more pressing embarra.s.sments--30 to Messrs. Bentley for bills not taken up; 33 7_s_. to Mr. Kelly the printer; 14 to Mr. Antonini; and 50 to Foscolo's builder--besides becoming security for 300 to his bankers (with whom Foscolo did business), in order to ensure him a respite for six months. On the other hand, Foscolo agreed to insure his life for 600 as a sort of guarantee.

"Was ever" impecunious author "so trusted before"? At this crisis in his affairs many friends came about him and took an interest in the patriot; Mr. Hallam and Mr. Wilbraham offered him money, but he would not accept "gratuities" from them, though he had no objection to accepting their "loans." Arrangements were then made for Foscolo to deliver a series of lectures on Italian Literature. Everything was settled, the day arrived, the room was crowded with a distinguished a.s.sembly, when at the last moment Foscolo appeared without his MS., which he had forgotten.

The course of lectures, however, which had been designed to relieve him from the pressure of his debts, proved successful, and brought him in, it is said, as much as 1,000; whereupon he immediately set to work to squander his earnings by giving a public breakfast to his patrons, for which purpose he thought it inc.u.mbent on him, amongst other expenses, to make a new approach and a gravelled carriage road to Digamma Cottage.

Ugo Foscolo lived on credit to the end of his life, surrounded by all that was luxurious and beautiful. How he contrived it, no one knew, for his resources remained at the lowest ebb. Perhaps his friends helped him, for English Liberals of good means regarded him as a martyr in the cause of freedom, one who would never bow the knee to Baal, and who had dared the first Napoleon when his very word was law. But Foscolo's friends without doubt became tired of his extravagance and his licentious habits, and fell away from him. Disease at last found him out; he died of dropsy at Turnham Green, near Hammersmith, in 1827, when only in the fiftieth year of his age, and was buried in Chiswick churchyard; but in June 1871 his body was exhumed and conveyed to Florence, where he was buried in Santa Croce, between the tomb of Alfieri and the monument of Dante.

Lady Caroline Lamb had continued to keep up her intimacy with Mr.

Murray; and now that she was preparing a new work for the press, her correspondence increased. While he was at Wimbledon during summer, she occasionally met literary friends at his house. She had already published "Glenarvon," the hero of which was supposed to represent Lord Byron, and was now ready with "Penruddock." "I am in great anxiety," she wrote to Mr. Murray, "about your not informing me what Gifford says. I think it might be a civil way of giving me my death-warrant--if 'Penruddock' does not."

Whether the criticism of Mr. Gifford was too severe, or whether Mr.

Murray was so much engaged in business and correspondence as to take no notice of Lady Caroline Lamb's communication, does not appear; but she felt the neglect, and immediately followed it up with another letter as follows:

_Lady Caroline Lamb to John Murray_.

_December 8, 1822_.

MY DEAR AND MOST OBSTINATELY SILENT SIR,

From one until nine upon Tuesday I shall be at Melbourne House waiting for you; but if you wish to see the prettiest woman in England,--besides myself and William--be at Melbourne House at quarter to six, at which hour we dine; and if you will come at half-past one, or two, or three, to say you will dine and to ask me to forgive your inexorable and inhuman conduct, pray do, for I arrive at twelve in that said home and leave it at nine the ensuing morning. What can have happened to you that you will not write?

The following letter from William Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne), the long-suffering and generous husband of this wayward lady, refers to a novel ent.i.tled "Ada Reis."

_The Honble. William Lamb to John Murray_.

_December 20, 1822_.

"The incongruity of, and objections to, the story of 'Ada Reis' can only be got over by power of writing, beauty of sentiment, striking and effective situation, etc. If Mr. Gifford thinks there is in the first two volumes anything of excellence sufficient to overbalance their manifest faults, I still hope that he will press upon Lady Caroline the absolute necessity of carefully reconsidering and revising the third volume, and particularly the conclusion of the novel.

"Mr. Gifford, I dare say, will agree with me that since the time of Lucian all the representations of the infernal regions, which have been attempted by satirical writers, such as 'Fielding's Journey from this World to the Next,' have been feeble and flat. The sketch in "Ada Reis"

is commonplace in its observations and altogether insufficient, and it would not do now to come with a decisive failure in an attempt of considerable boldness. I think, if it were thought that anything could be done with the novel, and that the faults of its design and structure can be got over, that I could put her in the way of writing up this part a little, and giving it something of strength, spirit, and novelty, and of making it at once more moral and more interesting. I wish you would communicate these my hasty suggestions to Mr. Gifford, and he will see the propriety of pressing Lady Caroline to take a little more time to this part of the novel. She will be guided by his authority, and her fault at present is to be too hasty and too impatient of the trouble of correcting and recasting what is faulty."

"Ada Reis" was published in March 1823.

Another of England's Prime Ministers, Lord John Russell, had in contemplation a History of Europe, and consulted Mr. Murray on the subject. A first volume, ent.i.tled "The Affairs of Europe," was published without the author's name on the t.i.tle-page, and a few years later another volume was published, but it remained an unfinished work. Lord John was an ambitious and restless author; without steady perseverance in any branch of literature; he went from poems to tragedies, from tragedies to memoirs, then to history, tales, translations of part of the "Odyssey," essays (by the Gentleman who left his Lodgings), and then to memoirs and histories again. Mr. Croker said of his "Don Carlos": "It is not easy to find any poetry, or even oratory, of the present day delivered with such cold and heavy diction, such distorted tropes and disjointed limbs of similes worn to the bones long ago."

Another work that excited greater interest than Lord John Russell's anonymous history was Mr. James Morier's "Hajji Baba." Mr. Morier had in his youth travelled through the East, especially in Persia, where he held a post under Sir Gore Ouseley, then English Amba.s.sador. On his return to England, he published accounts of his travels; but his "Hajji Baba" was more read than any other of his works. Sir Walter Scott was especially pleased with it, and remarked that "Hajji Baba" might be termed the Oriental "Gil Bias." Mr. Morier afterwards published "The Adventures of Hajji Baba in England," as well as other works of an Eastern character. The following letter, written by the Persian Envoy in England, Miiza Abul Ha.s.san, shows the impression created by English society on a foreigner in April 1824:

_Letter from the Persian Envoy, Mirza Abul Ha.s.san, to the London Gentleman without, who lately wrote letter to him and ask very much to give answer_.

_April 3, 1824._

SIR, MY LORD,

When you write to me some time ago to give my thought of what I see good and bad this country, that time I not speak English very well. Now I read, I write much little better. Now I give to you my think. In this country bad not too much, everything very good. But suppose I not tell something little bad, then you say I tell all flattery--therefore I tell most bad thing. I not like such crowd in evening party every night. In cold weather not very good, now hot weather, much too bad. I very much astonish every day now much hot than before, evening parties much crowd than before. Pretty beautiful ladies come sweat, that not very good. I always afraid some old lady in crowd come dead, that not very good, and spoil my happiness. I think old ladies after 85 years not come to evening party, that much better. Why for take so much trouble? Some other thing rather bad. Very beautiful young lady she got ugly fellow for husband, that not very good, very shocking. I ask Sr Gore [Sir Gore Ouseley] why for this. He says me--"perhaps he very good man, not handsome; no matter, perhaps he got too much money, perhaps got t.i.tle."

I say I not like that, all very shocking. This all bad I know. Now I say good. English people all very good people. All very happy. Do what they like, say what like, write in newspaper what like. I love English people very much, they very civil to me. I tell my King English love Persian very much. English King best man in world, he love his people very good much; he speak very kind to me, I love him very much. Queen very best woman I ever saw. Prince of Wales such a fine elegant beautiful man. I not understand English enough proper to praise him, he too great for my language. I respect him same as my own King. I love him much better, his manner all same as talisman and charm. All the Princes very fine men, very handsome men, very sweet words, very affable. I like all too much.

I think the ladies and gentlemen this country most high rank, high honour, very rich, except two or three most good, very kind to inferior peoples. This very good. I go to see Chelsea. All old men sit on gra.s.s in shade of fine tree, fine river run by, beautiful place, plenty to eat, drink, good coat, everything very good. Sir Gore he tell me King Charles and King Jame. I say Sir Gore, They not Musselman, but I think G.o.d love them very much. I think G.o.d he love the King very well for keeping up that charity. Then I see one small regiment of children go to dinner, one small boy he say thanks to G.o.d for eat, for drink, for clothes, other little boys they all answer Amen. Then I cry a little, my heart too much pleased. This all very good for two things--one thing, G.o.d very much please; two things, soldiers fight much better, because see their good King take care of old wounded fathers and little children. Then I go to Greenwich, that too good place, such a fine sight make me a little sick for joy. All old men so happy, eat dinner, so well, fine house, fine beds--all very good. This very good country.

English ladies very handsome, very beautiful. I travel great deal. I go Arabia, I go Calcutta, Hyderabad, Poonah, Bombay, Georgia, Armenia, Constantinople, Malta, Gibraltar. I see best Georgia, Circa.s.sian, Turkish, Greek ladies, but nothing not so beautiful as English ladies, all very clever, speak French, speak English, speak Italian, play music very well, sing very good. Very glad for me if Persian ladies like them.

But English ladies speak such sweet words. I think tell a little story--that not very good.

One thing more I see but I not understand that thing good or bad. Last Thursday I see some fine horses, fine carriages, thousand people go to look that carriages. I ask why for? They say me, that gentleman on boxes they drive their own carriages. I say why for take so much trouble? They say me he drive very well; that very good thing. It rain very hard, some lord some gentleman he get very wet. I say why he not go inside? They tell me good coachman not mind get wet every day, will be much ashamed if go inside; that I not understand.

Sir, my Lord, good-night,

ABUL Ha.s.sAN.

Mr. Murray invariably consulted Mr. Barrow as to any works on voyages or travels he was required to publish, and found him a faithful adviser.

The following expression of opinion, from one with so large an experience, is interesting:

_Mr. J. Barrow to John Murray_.

_March 28, 1823._