Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters Volume I Part 1

Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters.

Vol. I.

by Edmund Downey and Charles James Lever.

PREFACE.

When Charles Lever died (in 1872), his daughters were anxious that his biography should be written by Major Frank Dwyer, but Dwyer was unwilling to undertake the task, and Dr W. J. Fitzpatrick volunteered his services.

In 1896 I asked Mrs Nevill, the novelist's eldest daughter, if she would be willing to furnish a new biography of her father. In replying to me, Mrs Nevill said that although she felt "most intensely the utter inefficiency of Mr Fitzpatrick's 'Life,'" she feared her health would not permit her to undertake a task so serious as the one I proposed, but she would willingly give me any help in her power either for a new biography or for a revised edition of the existing 'Life.'

Mrs Nevill died, somewhat suddenly, in 1897, and, so far as I could ascertain, she left no material for a new or for a revised biography of her father. Shortly after her death I obtained from Mr Crafton Smith--a son-in-law of Charles Lever--a collection of letters written by the novelist. Amongst this collection was a series (addressed to Mr Alexander Spencer, a lifelong friend of the author of 'Harry Lorrequer,'

residing in Dublin) covering, practically, the whole period of the novelist's literary career. Other letters written by Lever to his friends also came into my hands; and last year Mr William Blackwood was good enough to place at my disposal Lever's correspondence with the House of Blackwood during the years 1863-1872.

After due consideration, it seemed to me that a Life of Lever wrought out of his letters and other autobiographical material would present the man and the story-writer in a more intimate and pleasing light than the picture which is furnished by Dr Fitzpatrick. In the present work I have endeavoured to let Charles Lever speak for himself whenever it is possible to find authentic utterances. Incidentally many errors into which Dr Fitzpatrick had fallen are corrected, but I am not making any attempt to supersede his painstaking, voluminous, and interesting biography. Dr Fitzpatrick declares that his book "largely embraces the earlier period of Lever's life"; the present work deals mainly with his literary life, and contains, especially in the second volume, fresh and illuminating material which was not disclosed to Lever's previous biographer, and which affords an intimate view of the novelist as he saw himself and his work.

I am indebted to Mr Crafton Smith for the series of letters addressed to Alexander Spencer, and for other letters and doc.u.ments; to Mr T.

W. Spencer for his permission to use certain letters in his possession addressed to Dr Burbidge; to Mr James Holt for letters written by Charles Lever's father; and to Mrs Blackwood Porter and Mr William Blackwood for the letters written to Mr John Blackwood. Also I have to thank Messrs T. and A. Constable for their permission to avail myself of the autobiographical prefaces which Lever wrote during the last year of his life.

EDMUND DOWNEY.

London, 1906.

CHARLES LEVER: HIS LIFE IN HIS LETTERS.

I. EARLY DAYS 1806-1828

With that heroic heedlessness which distinguished him throughout his career, Charles Lever allowed 'Men of the Time' to state that he was born in 1809. The late W. J. Fitzpatrick, when he was engaged (thirty years ago) upon his biography of Lever, found it difficult to obtain accurate information concerning the birth-date of the Irish novelist.

The records of his parish church--St Thomas's, Dublin--were searched unavailingly. Finally Dr Fitzpatrick decided to pin his faith to a mortgage-deed (preserved in the Registry Office, Dublin), in which it is set forth that certain "premises"--a dwelling-house, outhouses, yard, and garden--situated at North Strand* are leased of 1802 to James Lever for the term of his life and the lives of his sons, John, aged thirteen years, and Charles James, aged three years.

* Dr Fitzpatrick, in his 'Life of Lever,' declares that the name "North Strand" was changed to "Amiens Street" after the treaty.

A correspondent points out to me that, according to maps of Dublin published in 1800, the street was then called Amiens Street, and that it derived its name from Viscount Amiens, minor t.i.tle of the Earl of Aldborough, who built Aldborough House in the neighbourhood.--E. D.

This is dated 1809. Apart from this deed, however, there are in existence letters written by James Lever which fix the year 1806 as being the birth-date of his younger son. The day and the month are of comparatively little importance, but it is interesting to note that here also is there cloudiness. Dr Fitzpatrick was satisfied that the 31st of August was the day. For this he had the authority of Charles Lever himself: in one of his moments of depression he expressed a wish that August had only thirty days; he would then have been saved from the wear and tear of an anxious life. But James Lever speaks of September as being the month in which his famous son was born; and in 1864 the novelist, writing on the 2nd of September, says that his birthday--presumably the previous day--"pa.s.sed over without any fresh disaster." Possibly there may have been a dispute in the family circle as to the exact hour,--the birth may have occurred "upon the midnight."

The year of Charles Lever's birth is unquestionably 1806; the place, No.

35 Amiens Street (formerly North Strand), Dublin.* The house in which he was born was subsequently converted into a shop. At the suggestion of Dr Fitzpatrick, a tablet was inserted in the front wall of this building, bearing the name and the dates of the birth and death of Charles James Lever.* Recently, in making railway extensions in the neighbourhood, the house was demolished. A railway bridge spans Amiens Street at the place where No. 35 was situated.

*'The Irish Builder' published in 1891 a long letter from a correspondent who professed to have been a companion of Charles Lever. It is mentioned here only to point to the peculiar mistiness which obscures many important facts in the early life of a man whose father was a popular and prosperous citizen of Dublin, and who was himself one of the best known of the men who nourished in the Irish capital about half a century ago.--E. D.

In this letter it is a.s.serted that the author of 'Harry Lorrequer' was born in Mulberry Lodge, Philipsburgh Lane, but the communication, while chronicling some undoubted facts, is so full of obvious and absurd blunders that it cannot be considered seriously.

* It has been suggested that Lever was named after Charles James Fox, who died in September 1806, but it is more likely that his Christian names were those of his uncle and his father.--E. D.

In addition to the perplexity about the birth-date of the author of 'Harry Lorrequer,' and to the absence of any official record, it is not easy to arrive at satisfactory conclusions concerning his ancestry. A pedigree furnished by a relative of Charles Lever traces the family to one Livingus de Leaver, who flourished in the twelfth century, but some difficulties seem to arise when the eighteenth century is reached. In the Leaver (or Lever) line there are many men of distinction. In 1535 Adam de Leaver's only daughter married Ralph Ashton (or a.s.sheton), second son of Sir Ralph Ashton of Middleton, Kent, endowing her husband with an agnomen as well as with an estate, the Ashtons thenceforward styling themselves Ashton-Levers. Another member of the Lever family--the name was altered to Lever in the reign of Henry VI.--was Robert, who was an Adventurer in Ireland during the Cromwellian era.

Perhaps the most interesting personage in the line was Sir a.s.sheton (or Ashton) Lever, who flourished in the eighteenth century. This worthy knight was born in 1729. He was the eldest son of Sir James Darcy Lever, and when he succeeded to his estate he achieved notoriety as a collector of "curios." He founded the Leverian Museum, an inst.i.tution devoted chiefly to exhibits o sh.e.l.ls, fossils, and birds, to which at a later period was added a collection of savage costumes and weapons. In 1774 Sir Ashton brought his famous collection to London, and housed it in a mansion in Leicester Square. He styled it the Holophusikon, and advertised that his museum was open to the public daily, the fee for admission being five shillings and threepence. In a short time Sir Ashton discovered that his exhibition was not a financial success, and that he himself had outrun the constable. He offered the contents of Holophusikon to the British Museum in 1783, valuing his collection at 53,000. The British Museum authorities declined the offer, and some five years later the Holophusikon was advertised for sale by lottery.

Out of 36,000 tickets, price one guinea each, offered to the public, only 8000 were sold. Eventually the museum--or what remained of it--was bought by a Mr James Parkinson, who placed the curiosities in a building called the Rotunda, situated at the south side of Blackfriars Bridge, and in 1806--the year of Charles Lever's birth--the collection was sold by public auction, the sale lasting for sixty-five days, and the lots numbering 7879.

Charles Lever claimed Sir Ashton* as a grand-uncle, and described him as an "old hermit who squandered a fortune in stuffed birds, founded a museum, and beggared his family."

* Sir Ashton died in Manchester, eighteen years before the final disposal of his old cariosity shop.--E. D.

The Levers seem to have fallen into narrow ways in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The novelist's father, James Lever, came to Ireland in 1787. He was then about twenty-seven years of age. In his youth he had been apprenticed to the joinery business, and he had drifted from his native Lancashire to London. Judging him by some letters of his which are now in the possession of Mr James Lever of Swinton,* he was a shrewd steady young man, possessed of an affectionate disposition and of a sub-acid humour. In Dublin he entered the business of a Mr Lowe, a Staffordshire man, who was engaged in building operations, and in the course of seven or eight years he was in business on his own account, styling himself "architect and builder." In 1795 he married Miss Julia Candler, a member of an Irish Protestant family who dwelt in the Co. Kilkenny, where they held land granted to their ancestors for services rendered during the Cromwellian wars. John, the eldest son of this marriage, was born in 1796.

* These letters were written to his brother Charles, who resided at Clifton, near Manchester.--E. D.

In the same year James Lever was occupied in a very considerable undertaking--the building of the Roman Catholic College at Maynooth.

His Dublin address was now Marlborough Green. The "green" was a piece of waste ground: the existing railway terminus at Amiens Street is built upon its site. Lever's house faced the Green, and hard by was the famous "riding-school" of John Claudius Beresford. Here it was that Beresford used to exercise his yeomanry, and also, as Sir John Barrington tells us, where he used to whip persons suspected of disloyalty in order "to make them discover what in all probability they never knew."

James Lever was soon in a fair way to success. He made money and saved some of it; and, better still, prosperity did not spoil him. A few years before the birth of his son Charles he speaks of "building two churches, besides a vast quant.i.ty of barrack-work." In addition to the building of churches, colleges, and barracks, he was engaged in making alterations in the Custom-House and in the old Parliament House when it was handed over to the Bank of Ireland. These operations brought him into close relationship with a variety of interesting people. He had a clear head, a ready tongue, and a pleasant manner. The first of these gifts enriched him; the last conduced to popularity. It is told of him that his reputation as a clever and upright man of business and as a genial companion caused him to be selected as an arbitrator in commercial disputes. He held his court usually in a tavern in Capel Street, and here after supper he heard the evidence and delivered the verdict. He demanded no fee for his services, and his method of apportioning costs was truly Leverian. The victor was mulcted for the price of the supper.

The man who lost his cause could eat and drink himself into contentment at the cost of his successful adversary.

James Lever sent his second son to school when the youth was only four years of age. Charles's first preceptor was one Ford, who had a habit of flogging his pupils with almost as much ferocity as John Claudius Beresford flogged the children of the larger growth at his Marlborough Green Academy. Ford's school was broken up suddenly. The father of a child who had been subjected to a severe handling paid a surprise visit to the school, and, seizing the offending birch-rod, he flogged the pedagogue with such violence that Mr Ford "rushed into the street, yelling." After this _debacle_young Lever was introduced to Florence McCarthy, whose school was situated at 56 William Street. McCarthy is said to have been "an accomplished man with a fine presence." He had been a student at Trinity College, but as he belonged to the proscribed faith he was debarred from taking a scholarship. It speaks volumes for James Lever's liberal-minded-ness that he should have sent his son to a school presided over by a Roman Catholic. The future author of 'Harry Lorrequer' is described at this period as being a handsome fair-haired boy, noted for his tendency to indulge in practical joking.

Writing to his brother in Lancashire during the year 1812, James Lever says: "Charles is at school, and is full of mischief as ever you were, and resembles you much in his tricks." A couple of years later Mr Lever reports Charles as "a very fine boy now--eight years old last September.

I think to make him an architect." Possibly with a view to this, the father took his son from Florence McCarthy's school and sent him to the academy of "a noted mathematician." William O'Callaghan, of 113 Abbey Street. Here Charles Lever met John Ottiwell, who was later to be one of his models for Frank Webber. Ottiwell, who was some years older than Lever, was the boyish beau-ideal of a hero: he rode, swam, fenced, composed songs and sang them, was a clever ventriloquist, and played the wildest of pranks.

When Lever was eleven years of age he paid a visit to his cousins the Inneses, who lived at Inistiogue in the Co. Kilkenny. He attended the cla.s.ses of the tutor who was instructing his cousins, a Mr James Cotterall, "schoolmaster and land-surveyor." Cotterall was the son of a well-to-do farmer, and had received an excellent training in Catholic colleges in Ireland and on the Continent.

On his return to Dublin he was sent to "The Proprietary School," Great Denmark Street. The head of this establishment was the Rev. George Newenham Wright, a gentleman who was almost as free with the birch as Mr Ford had been. His suffering pupils eventually discovered a weak point in his armour--namely, that he had broken down sadly in his examination in the Greek Testament when seeking for holy orders. When Wright was made aware that his pupils had heard of his deficiency in cla.s.sical knowledge he grew tamer. But though he was a bad Greek scholar and a tyrant, the Rev. Mr Wright was by no means a bad teacher. He appears to have had a great liking for Lever, and the youth seems to have entertained a liking and a respect for his master. At Great Denmark Street the pupils were coached in other matters beside cla.s.sics and mathematics. After the ordinary curriculum of the school had been gone through, young Lever took lessons in fencing and dancing, and won distinction in those arts. His father, writing at this period to Lancashire, says: "Charles is still at school. I don't know what to make of him;... he is a very smart fellow."

As his business grew, James Lever found himself advancing in social paths. He was fond of good company, and of this there was a plenitude in Dublin. The commercial depression which followed the union of the parliaments, though it had undermined many of the city's sources of wealth, tarnished its brilliancy, and destroyed its life as a political capital, had not succeeded in crushing the high spirits of the citizens.

Many of the guests who enjoyed the hospitality of James Lever had suffered sadly from the political and other changes which had occurred in the early years of the nineteenth century, but they could still enjoy a good dinner and a good story, and could appreciate a good host. Much of the conversation which took place at Lever's supper or dinner-parties was of the brilliant era immediately preceding the Union. Tales of the Parliament House, of its orators, its wits, its eccentrics; reminiscences of the clubs, anecdotes of duelling and drinking and hard riding, went the round of the table; and as a mere child the future author of 'Charles O'Malley' listened now and again to hilarious gossip which he moulded later into hilarious fiction.

Mrs Lever was an excellent housewife,--very tidy, very orderly, and deeply devoted to her husband and to her two children. She is described as a pleasant coquettish little woman, whose sole desire was to make every one in her circle happy. Charles Lever's early days were spent in a bright and cheerful home--an inestimable blessing to any youth, but especially to an imaginative boy. He did not stand much in awe of his good-humoured parents: he was by no means shy of playing upon them mild practical jokes. One of these--it was frequently repeated, yet it never seemed to miss fire--was to read aloud the details of some wonderful event supposed to be recorded in a newspaper, leaving his father and mother to discover at their leisure that the wonderful event was a coinage of Charlie's brain.

During his schooldays he had a theatre of his own at the back of the house: he produced stock pieces--"Bombastes Furioso" was one of his favourites--and improvised dramas. He painted the necessary scenery, designed the costumes, was the leading actor, and occasionally his own orchestra. As much of his pocket-money as he could spare, after satisfying the demands upon it for theatrical pursuits, was expended on books--chiefly novels. In addition to this love of literature and the drama, young Lever evinced at a very early age a fondness for military heroes and military affairs. Occasionally military men were to be encountered under his father's roof, and at times the youth was to be found haunting some convenient barrack. James Lever had expressed a desire that his second son should become an architect, but he was not infrequently fearful that the lad might one fine morning take it into his wild head to seek the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.

Charles, however, decided, in his sixteenth year, that he would not become an architect or a soldier. He was desirous of qualifying for the medical or the legal profession; and his father, although he was anxious that his son should take up his own business, made no protest against the selection of a more learned avocation. On October 14, 1822, Charles Lever entered Trinity College, Dublin,* as a pensioner, taking up his quarters at No. 2 Botany Bay Square. His college chum was Robert Torrens Boyle.

* Lever's writing-table and study-chair are kept in the librarian's room at Trinity College. They were presented to the University in 1874 by Lever's eldest daughter, Mrs Nevill--E. D.

They played almost as many pranks in Trinity as Charles O'Malley and Webber* played there; but though he was the leading spirit in all the mischief that was afoot, young Lever was never guilty of any discreditable conduct or of any personal excesses. One might be led to think, in reading his early novels, that their author had been a wild liver; but it is stated on trustworthy authority that at no period was he otherwise than moderate in the use of stimulants. He is described as being, during his college era, tall, athletic, and mercurial, with wonderfully expressive eyes, sometimes flashing fire, sometimes twinkling with mirth. Notwithstanding his love of fun and frolic he found time for reading--light reading as well as heavy reading. In later years he speaks of the days when he was a freshman: "We talked of 'Ivan-hoe' or 'Kenilworth,' and I can remember too, when the glorious spirit of these novels had so possessed us, that we were elevated and warmed to an unconscious imitation of the n.o.ble thoughts and deeds of which we had been reading." This boyish enthusiasm, he goes on to say, was better than the spirit of mockery engendered by the insensate craving for stimulus which was produced by the reading of sensation stories. "The glorious heroism of Scott's novels was a fine stream to turn into the turbid waters of our worldliness. It was of incalculable benefit to give men even a pa.s.sing glance of n.o.ble devotion, of high-hearted courage, and unsullied purity." His admiration of Sir Walter Scott's romances, and his contempt for "sensational novels,"

remained with him to the end.

* Frank Webber was an amalgam of Boyle and of John Ottiwell (who had been the Trinity chum of Charles Lever's brother, John).--E. D.

Notwithstanding his tendency to play "O'Malley" pranks, young Lever was held in as high favour by the dons as by his fellow-students. Though he was not a hard worker yet he was by no means an idler: when he was not absorbed in his studies he was astonishingly busy with his amus.e.m.e.nts.

His leisure hours were amply occupied--"training horses for a race in the Phoenix, arranging a rowing match, getting up a mock duel between two white-feathered friends, or organising the a.s.sociation for Discountenancing Watchmen."

Even at the early period of his career--though so far he evinced no powers of story-weaving and was not burdened with a desire "to commence author"--he had a great love for ballads and ballad-writing. On one occasion he attired himself as a mendicant ballad-monger, singing in the streets s.n.a.t.c.hes of political verses composed by himself.. He was accompanied by some college friends, who luckily were at hand when certain unpopular sentiments in his doggerels provoked a street row. It is stated that he returned from this expedition with thirty shillings in coppers, collected from admirers of his minstrelsy.