Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters Volume I Part 28

"I have not heard more of the notices of my book in 'The Dublin University Magazine,' and now that a new contribution of mine will appear there, it would be too late, and look too like a puff, to print a critique on me in the same sheet with myself. Tell M'Glashan that however anxious [? I may be] for a review, I'd rather forgo it now than incur such a malapropos.

"I have repeated a.s.surances sent special to me of the high estimate of my books entertained by the directors of 'The Quarterly,' but from some underhand proceeding--some secret influence of whose machinery I can obtain no information--they never have noticed me publicly. I have been given to understand that the d.i.c.kens and Thackeray cliques have conspired to this end. Of course I have never hinted this to any one, nor shown any feeling on the subject, but the injury is considerable even in a pecuniary point.

"You would scarcely believe how much I have sacrificed in not being a regular member of the Guild of Letters,--dining at the Athenaeum, getting drunk at The Garrick, supping with 'Punch,' and steaming down to a Whitebait feed at Blackwall with reporters, reviewers, and the other [? acolytes] of the daily press. This you will say is no such fascinating society. Very true; but it pays--or, what is worse, nothing else will pay. The 'Pressgang' take care that no man shall have success independent of them. Or if he do--_gare a lui_--let him look to himself!

"I am now cudgelling my brains about a new story for Chapman, to be called 'The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life,' in which I have attempted--G.o.d knows with what chance of success!--the quiet homely narrative style of German romance-writers. I shall be very anxious to know what you will think of it, and you shall see the first No. as soon as it is printed.

"Scott says that to write well you must write unceasingly, and that the well of imagination does not go dry from exhaustion but from want of pumping. Mine is not likely to fail if I only intend to keep bread in our mouths."

The circle of Anglo-Florentine society was widened in 1850 by the advent of Richard Lalor Shiel,* who came to Florence as British Minister. In Ireland Lever and Shiel had been bitterly opposed to each other, but meeting in a foreign city, their political animosities were forgotten, and they fraternised as Irish exiles and Irish humourists. Lever enjoyed wit as keenly as whist; and he declared that Shiel had lost none of his wit by being transplanted, and that he could make a _bon mot_ in French with as much readiness and grace as he could make one in English.

Shiel, unfortunately, had a short tenure of office in Florence. He died suddenly in 1851.

* Richard Lalor Shiel had enjoyed a checkered career. He had studied for the Catholic priesthood. Then, with a view to the Bar, he entered Trinity College. When he was only about twenty years of age he wrote a tragedy. He followed this up with other plays, the most popular being "Evadne, or the Statue." In 1822 he was called to the Bar. In the same year he allied himself with Daniel O'Connell. He entered Parliament in 1831. Later he was Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and subsequently Master of the Mint Gladstone, in 1877, described Shiel as "a great orator with a very fervid imagination and an enormous power of language and strong feeling."--E. D.

Another of Lever's Irish friends of this period was Catharine Hayes: a biographical sketch of the famous soprano appeared in 'The Dublin University' for November 1850.

'Maurice Tiernay' commenced its magazine career in May 1850. The story bore no author's name, but the authorship must have been more than suspected by the readers of 'The Dublin University.' Lever was very diligent during this year. In addition to 'Tiernay' he had 'The Daltons'

in hand. M'Glashan was anxious to procure short contributions from the busy man's pen. He applied to him for a memoir of Samuel Lover,* but Lever declined to undertake anything so onerous as biography. Failing to obtain this memoir, M'Glashan inquired if Lever would furnish materials for a sketch of the author of 'Harry Lorrequer.' But Lorrequer was not to be drawn. He explained that though his taste was sufficiently gross to crave laudation, he would be expected to enter into a defence of his Irish character-sketching, and this he would not do. "I will not be a sign-post to myself," he wrote. "Like old Woodc.o.c.k in the play, my cry is--'No money till I die.'"

* The memoir of the author of 'Handy Andy'--a brief one-- was written by another hand: it appeared in the D. U. M. for February 1861.--E. D.

Writing to Miss Mitford, in November 1850, Mrs Browning makes a sad complaint of the Irish novelist. "We never see him," she says; "it is curious. He made his way to us with the sunniest of faces and the cordialest of manners at Lucca; and I, who am much taken by manner, was quite pleased with him, and wondered why it was that I didn't like his books. Well, he only wanted to see that we had the right number of eyes and no odd fingers. Robert, in return for his visit, called on him three times, I think, and I left my card on Mrs Lever; but he never came again. He had seen enough of us, he could put down in his private diary that we had neither claw nor tail,--and there an end, properly enough.

In fact, he lives a different life from ours; he is in the ball-room and we in the cave,--nothing could be more different; and perhaps there are not many subjects of common interest between us."

Mrs Browning was unquestionably and not unreasonably offended. In a later letter to Miss Mitford, railing against English society, she says: "People in Florence come together to gamble or dance, and if there's an end, why, so much the better; but there's _not_ an end in most cases, by any manner of means, and against every sort of innocence. Mind, I imply nothing about Mr Lever, who lives irreproachably with his wife and family, rides out with his children in a troop of horses to the Cascine, and yet is as social a person as his joyous temperament leads him to be. But we live in a cave, and peradventure he is afraid of the damp of us."*

* Dr Fitzpatrick a.s.serts in his 'Life of Lever' that Lever was intimately a.s.sociated with the Brownings in Florence, and "found a real charm in the companionship." And pity 'tis tis untrue!--E. D.

The only plausible explanation of Lever's neglect of the Brownings is that he did not feel quite at ease in the presence of the author of 'Aurora Leigh.' When he sought mental relaxation, after a hard day's work, he sought it in the society of those who were content to listen to his agreeable rattle rather than in the society of those to whom he should lend his ears. He was by no means insensible to feminine charms, mental or physical. He gloried in praise coming from the mouths of intellectual women. But the woman of genius was not the comrade he coveted in his hours of ease: the companionship of men--of good talkers or good listeners--was what he craved. He had a peculiar reverence for women. He idealised the gentler s.e.x: his heroines are refined, beautiful, pure. He abhorred the intricacies of s.e.xuality in fiction as strongly as he abhorred modern "sensationalism." Feminine intellectuality of the most exalted type did not attract him--possibly because it was likely to freeze the genial current of his conversation.

The opening of the New Year--1851--did not bring monetary relief. He invited M'Glashan to make him an offer for the copyright of 'Maurice Tiernay,' and he told him that he was willing to contribute a new serial to the Magazine when 'Tiernay' had run its course. 'The Daltons' was still moving slowly along. Mortimer O'Sullivan wrote encouragingly about this novel. Adverting to O'Sullivan's favourable criticism, the author said that his own feeling was, he had spent too much time dallying among the worthless characters. For this he had an apology to offer--namely, that the good people in the book were fict.i.tious, while the unworthy ones were drawn from life.

M'Glashan was slow to reply, and Lever bombarded him for remittances, vowing that he was so crippled for want of cash that he could not put any heart into his work. It was almost impossible, he declared, to retrench in Florence, "where" (he somewhat naively observes) "we have lived in the best, and consequently in the most expensive, set. To leave it would incur great expense.... I am alternately fretting, hoping, riding, dining, and talking away,--to all seeming the most easy-minded of mortals; but, as Hood said, sipping champagne on a tight-rope."

But whether you feel angry with him for his improvidence, or whether you are moved to compa.s.sion by contemplating his difficulties, you cannot help smiling at his excuses or parables. A friend upon one solemn occasion tendered advice on the score of his extravagance. He pointed out that Lever kept too many horses and too many servants, gave too many dinners, and played too highly at cards. The friend--a personage--wound up his homily by saying, "Begin your reformation with small economies."

The novelist determined to economise, and he tried to think where it would be easiest to begin. He racked his brain throughout the night in the endeavour to hit upon a starting-point in the proposed career of reformation. At length a happy thought occurred to him. He was in the habit of indulging in pistol-practice at a shooting-gallery, and he used to give a franc to a man who held his horse while he was amusing himself in the gallery. Now it would be an admirable effort in the scheme of economy to do away with the splendour of hiring a man to hold his horse. Henceforth he would fasten the bridle to one of the hooks of the jalousies. When he arrived next morning at the gallery the man who usually held the horse was in waiting. Lever informed him that he did not require his services. The dismay of the man smote the economist to the heart, but he had been told that he might expect to endure many pangs in the effort to inaugurate the campaign of frugality. He hitched his horse to the hook, shamefacedly, and entered the gallery. The effort to economise steeled his nerves, and at the first shot he hit the centre of the target. This excellent example of shooting had the effect of ringing a bell denoting the triumph of the marksman. The bell startled the horse outside, and the animal broke away, "carrying the window-frame with him," according to Lever. "Altogether," he says, "the repairs amounted to eighty-seven francs.... This was my first and last attempt at economy."

A small turn of fortune's wheel cheered him in March. A man to whom he had loaned a considerable sum of money gave him a series of bills which he managed to discount at a large sacrifice for cash. During the same month a trouble, not of his own making, disturbed him--the threat of a fresh outbreak in Florence. This, however, blew over, and he was able to continue his literary labour until the heat of August drove him, limp and desk-weary, from the Tuscan capital.

He turned his steps towards Spezzia (destined to be his official place of residence at a later period), and here he enjoyed to its full extent the luxury of lotus-eating. He offered a deaf ear to appeals for "copy."

He could do nothing, he told his publishers, except to sit on the rocks with his children and dream away the whole day. When he did arouse himself from this form of lethargy, it was only to indulge in another variety of _dolce far niente_--swimming. One day he was aroused from a half dream, as he lay floating on the bosom of the bay, by the sting of an electric-fish. His arm became swollen and inflamed, and he suffered excruciating pain. Leeching and blistering, and subsequently ma.s.sage, pulled him through, but left him weak and querulous.

"The piano-playing, guitar-tw.a.n.ging, sol-fahing, and yelling" which went on at his hotel drove him out of Spezzia in September.

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Casa Capponi, Florence, _Nov_. 21, 1851.

"'Maurice Tiernay' being completed, I want to know how I stand. If I remember aright, M'Glashan advanced me 60 here, and paid two other sums for insurance, amounting to about 160 or 170 more, leaving a surplus sufficient, I hope, for the accruing insurance of next Xmas. In addition to this I have proposed to him to purchase out my copyright of 'Tiernay,' to which he replied by stating that he is 'engaged in making certain calculations on the subject, and will give me the result in a speedy letter.' Now I am so aware of his procrastinations that I would rather intrust the negotiations to you, and ask of you to find out his resolve and let me hear it. I want to learn if he desires another serial from me, to begin about the same month as before--April. If so (and that he makes me any acceptable offer about the copyright of 'Tiernay '), I would wish to know if he would feel disposed to take the story altogether off my hands at once,--I mean, to give me a certain monthly sum for the tale, surrendering my copyright, so that I should attain no subsequent lien upon it, my object being to have a little more money for present purposes, which the education of my children and other outlays render needful.

"Even with both oars [this refers to 'The Dal-tons'] I have barely kept my bark in motion for the past year, and these anxious inquiries will show you how anxious I feel about the year to come. _Hinc illo lachrymo_ thus tormenting of you!

"With so much of actual Peter Daltonism in my own affairs, I have little courage to ask you what you think of my fict.i.tious woes, but I hope you go with me in the chief views I take of priestly craft and priestly political meddling. O'Sullivan writes me many encouraging things about the story generally, and in parts; and I believe it is not worse than some, and is better than many of its fellows,--its chief errors (which I see too late) being an undue dalliance among the more worthless _dramatis persono_, and less stress consequently on the better features of the piece. More of Nelly and less of Haggerstone & Coy. would have been better. My own apology is, I have lived only among the Haggerstone cla.s.s latterly, and that Nelly is pure fiction while the others are naked facts,--indeed they are portraits drawn from the life, and in some cases so close as to make the original manifestly uneasy.

"'Tiernay' is of course a poor performance--sketchy-meat [? or meal] and skim-milky; but here, again, I am ready with an excuse. I cannot be good for 20 a sheet!--just as I should revoke if I played whist for shilling points.

"O'Sullivan wishes me to take time for a really good effort in three vols., and so on. But how am I to live meanwhile? While I am training for the match I'll die of hunger.

"As to a new M'Glashan serial, I have a thing _en tete_ that would do; but of course he would trust me as to my giving him value without any question as to the colour of the cloth. Believe me, my dear friend, that if I knew how, I should not have inflicted upon you all this surplus labour nor given you more of my tiresomeness than you see in my red-bound Nos. ill.u.s.trated by Phiz. But so it is: an author is an unlucky friend, whether it be his life or works that are under consideration."

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Florence, _Dec_ 24, 1861.

"As to the 'Tiernay' copyright, it is somewhat equivocal in him [M'Glashan] to talk to me for three months of calculations and then ask a proposition from me. Now such is my necessity that I will take absolutely anything for it. If he thinks 200 too much, then 150--nay 100--say one hundred, as Mr [O'] Connell observed. I repeat, my urgent necessity is such that I would make any sacrifice for the use of that sum at once. I leave it to your diplomacy to make the proposal in any shape you can,--the great object being M'Glashan's permission to draw on him at three months for whatever he may deem the suitable price. You will see, my dear friend, that I am driven to my last resources--and for this reason: that at this season a deluge of duns await me, who, whatever their forbearance before, give me no quarter at the end of the year. I need not tell you, then, that days are very precious to me.

I have no occasion to stimulate your kindness and affection. I am overdrawn with Chapman, and have actually no immediate resource, this procrastination of M'Glashan from the early part of October last having occupied me with the hopes of a settlement, and thus taken me off the track by which I might possibly have extricated myself.

"As to the future, let us, if he will, renew the old contract--20 per sheet; and I will begin with the April quarter--if I don't jump into the Arno before--a brand new serial as jocose and comical as can well be expected from a mind so thoroughly easy and well-to-do as mine. I will complete it in twelve or twenty parts monthly, and it shall be at his discretion to say which. I cannot yet give him the text, because I am vacillating between two themes,--and to predict a plan is with me to make the whole effort pall and disgust me. So much so is this the case, that when the children guess a _denoument_ that I intend, I am never able to write it after; and when you read this to M'Glashan he will recognise a fact that he knew well once, though he may have forgotten it. If I am to go to work, let him tell me this,--or, rather, let him tell you at once,--for our Carnival begins here next week, and for a month at least all quiet and repose is at an end, but still I could pick up some of the raw material for future fabrication.

"Now, my dear friend, for my first proposition, _l'affaire_ Tiernay. Get me something--anything--out of him. Let me know M'Glashan's reply to the new Story proposal as soon as he can make up his mind, but _do not wait for the answer_ if you have any tidings for me _re_ 'Tiernay.'

"My little people are all well,--and this, thank G.o.d, is a piece of good fortune that goes far to reconcile me to many a hard rub."

Early in 1852 Lever heard of the tragic fate of his friend Eliot Warburton, who had perished in the Amazon, the ill-starred steamer which was burned on her voyage to the west coast of America. Warburton had made Lever's acquaintance through sending to the editor of 'The Dublin University' some brilliant sketches of travel: these were published in the Magazine in 1843, under the t.i.tle of 'Episodes of Eastern Travel.'

Subsequently the author of 'The Crescent and the Cross' was a guest at Templeogue, and Lever entertained for him the warmest feelings.

War-burton's violent end, following closely upon the sudden death of Shiel,--who was to have dined with Lever the very day of his death,--gave the novelist a rude shock. He indulged in some very gloomy moralisings about the uncertainty of all human things, and engineered himself into a state in which work was impossible. In February he thought a journey southwards might give him a mental fillip which he sadly needed. He paid his first visit to Rome, his wife and children accompanying him. The daily expenditure increased seven-fold: but had he not forsworn small economies?

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Hotel De Minerva, Rome, _Feb_. 24, 1852.

"As to the tale for the Magazine. If left entirely to myself as to place, &c., I could begin about the June or July No., but as yet my ideas are in anything but a story-telling vein. My head is actually whirling with its sound of odd and incongruous a.s.sociations--the ancient Rome of statues and temples jostling with the modern one of bonbons and _confetti_,--for it is the height of the Carnival, and the population has gone clean mad with tomfoolery.

"Old Rome is infinitely grander than I looked for,--the Colosseum and the Pantheon far beyond all I could conceive.

"We stay only a few days and then on to Naples--to see that (e poi?)t then back to Florence, for the expense is ruinous. The hotels are crammed; and as we are all here, and what with ciceroni, carriage hire, &c, every day is like a week of common living.

"This would do very well if I could afford it. There is everything to make this a place of intense interest, but one defect as a place of residence is insuperable--it cannot be inhabited in the summer months."