My Life as an Author Part 21

"Surrey Blackheath! old scene of beginnings Humble enough some dozen years back, Gather to-day's rich harvest of winnings, Sprung of that sowing in Memory's track; Reap your revenges in honour and pleasure;-- Thousands of riflemen arm'd to the teeth-- Crowds by ten thousands, in holiday leisure, Throng the wild beauties of Surrey Blackheath!

"We were the first our rifles to shoulder, First to wake England (though voted a bore); First in this nation who roused her, and told her She must go arm'd to be safe, as of yore!

Those were the days before corps and their drilling, When the true patriot was check'd with a snub,-- So, on Blackheath, devotedly willing, Stood your first riflemen--Albury Club!

"Yes, we stood _here_, in spite of their coldness, Duty's first marksmen--whate'er should betide,-- Conquering Success--the sure fruit of boldness-- World-witnessed now by this field-day of pride!

And though they laugh'd at Tom Wydeawake's fancies, Olives and laurels combine in his wreath; For, the world's peace--in England's and France's-- Sprung of that sowing on Surrey Blackheath!"

_March 5, 1864._

Lord Lovelace will remember how much he opposed our rifle-club,--as in those days illegal, and so the Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey might not sanction it: but now his Lordship is our leading volunteer. Besides the three ballads above, I wrote seven others which rang round the land, and some of them, as "Hurrah for the Rifle," and "In days long ago when old England was young," have been sung at Wimbledon and other gatherings.

It may be worth while, seeing the ballads are hopelessly out of print, if I here transcribe a few stanzas from divers other staves I penned in the early days of Rifledom. First, from "Rise, Britannia," before mentioned, which was "written and printed in 1846, and then headed, by a strange antic.i.p.ation, a stirring song for patriots in the year 1860:"

reproduced in my now extinct "Cithara," in 1863: I wrote it to be sung to the tune of "Wha wouldna fecht for Charlie:" even as afterwards I adapted my "In days long ago when old England was young" to "The roast-beef of old England," published with my own ill.u.s.tration by c.o.c.ks & Co.:--

"Rise! ye gallant youth of Britain, Gather to your country's call, On your hearts her name is written, Rise to help her, one and all!

Cast away each feud and faction, Brood not over wrong nor ill, Rouse your virtues into action, For we love our country still, Hail, Britannia! hail, Britannia!

Raise that thrilling shout once more, Rise, Britannia! rule, Britannia!

Conqueror over sea and sh.o.r.e!"

After three stanzas which I will omit, the last is

"Rise then, patriots I name endearing,-- Flock from Scotland's moors and dales, From the green glad fields of Erin, From the mountain homes of Wales,-- Rise! for sister England calls you, Rise! our commonweal to serve, Rise! while now the song enthrals you Thrilling every vein and nerve,-- Hail, Britannia! hail, Britannia!

Conquer, as thou didst of yore; Rise, Britannia! rule, Britannia!

Over every sea and sh.o.r.e!"

Another noted alarum, sounded in January 1852, commences thus:--

"Englishmen, up! make ready your rifles!

Who can tell now what a day may bring forth?

Patch up all quarrels, and stick at no trifles,-- Let the world see what your loyalty's worth!

Loyalty?--selfishness, cowardice, terror Stoutly will multiply loyalty's sum, When to astonish presumption and error Soon the shout rises--the brigands are come!"

After four stanzas of happily unfulfilled prognostication, the last is--

"Up then and arm! it is wisdom and duty; We are too tempting a prize to be weak: Lo, what a pillage of riches and beauty, Glories to gain and revenges to wreak!

Run for your rifles, and stand to your drilling; Let not the wolf have his will, as he might, If in the midst of their trading and tilling Englishmen cannot--or care not to--fight!"

One only stanza more, the last of another also in 1852.

"Arm then at once! If no one attack us Better than well, for the rifle may rust; But if the pirates be coming to sack us, Level it calmly, and G.o.d be your trust!

Only, while yet there's a moment, keep steady; Skilfully, duteously, quickly prepare,-- Then with a nation of riflemen ready, n.o.body'll come because no one will dare!"

In those days of a generation back, so great was the scare everywhere of Napoleon's rabid colonels a-coming that I remember my brother Arthur counselling me to sink our plate down a well for safety; and Mr.

Drummond in a pamphlet exhorted the creation of refuges round the coast by getting the owners of mansions to fortify them as strongholds, filling the windows with grates and mattresses, and loopholing garden-walls for shots at marauders on the roads!

Yet, so sleepy was the British Lion that neither Drummond nor I, nor even the _Times_, which I invoked, could wake him up for many years: and the Volunteer movement did not take effect till Louis Napoleon kindly urged Palmerston to check his rabid colonels by a bold front of preparation.

I am minded to finish with a mild anecdote which carries its moral. Now, understand that I never pretended to be a crack shot, though I did make fair practice through "the Indian twist," the sling supporting one's arm; if I hit the target occasionally, I was satisfied. But it once happened (at Teignmouth, where I was a casual visitor) that, seeing a squad of volunteers practising at a mark on the beach, I went to look on, and was courteously offered a shot, being not unknown by fame to some of them. The target was at some 500 yards (say about a third of a mile), so it was not likely I could hit it, with a chance rifle, perhaps carelessly sighted; yet, when I did let fly, to the loud admiration of the others and to my own astonishment (which of course I did _not_ reveal), the marker signalled for a bull's eye! Entreated to do it again, this prudent rifleman modestly declined, for he remembered Sam Slick's lucky shot at the floating bottle; it was manifestly his wisdom not to risk fame won by a fluke. So the moral is, don't try to do twice what you've done well once.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

AUTOGRAPHS AND ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nTS.

A word or two about autographs, surely a topic suitable to this book: in fact, I have sometimes preferred to spell it authorgraphs: most public men are troubled nowadays with this sort of petty homage, and I more than suspect that some collectors make merchandise of them; "my valuable collection" being often the form in which strangers solicit the flattering boon. Once I had a queer proof as to the money value of my own,--as thus: I went quite casually into an auctioneer's in Piccadilly, to a book-sale; a lot of some half-dozen volumes were just being knocked down for next to nothing (such is our deterioration in these newspaper days) when the wielder of Thor's fateful hammer, dissatisfied at the price, asked for the lot to look at,--and coming amongst others to a certain book with handwriting in it, said, "Why, here's one with Martin Tupper's autograph,"--on which a buyer called out, "I'll give you eighteenpence more for that,"--suggestive to me of my auction value,--as I have sometimes said. If, however, the more than hundreds (thousands) I have been giving for these fifty years, really have so easily gratified friends known or unknown, I am glad to be in that way so much a gainer.

Americans in particular ask frequently, and sometimes with wisely enclosed stamped and addressed envelopes, which is a thing both considerate and praiseworthy; but a very different sort and not easily to be excused are those who send registered alb.u.ms by post for one's handwriting, expecting to have them returned similarly at no small cost.

Longfellow told me of this kind of young lady taxation, and mentioned that he once had to pay twelve shillings for a registered return quarto.

I dare say that our popular Laureate has had similar experiences.

The most "wholesale order" for my signature was at New York in 1851, when at a party there my perhaps too exacting hostess put a large pack of plain cards into my hand, posted me at a corner table with pen and ink, and flatteringly requested an autograph for each of her 100 guests!

of course, even this was graciously conceded,--though rather too much of a good thing, I thought.

There is wisdom (some have hinted to me) in preferring a card to a sheet of paper; not only because "I promise to pay" might possibly be written _ab extra_ over one's signature, but also because (and far more probably) any special "fad," political, social, or religious, might be added above--to all seeming--your written approbation: _e.g._, I was told in America that my autographed opinion in favour of Unitarianism had been so seen at Boston. Some zealots for a "cause" even go so far as that. My safe course is to write "the handwriting of so-and-so," where from total ignorance of my correspondent I cannot honestly say "I am truly yours."

Other forms of authorial homage are to be met with in the way of complimentary photographs, and oil or water-colour portraits. Like all other book celebrities, I have had to stand for minutes or sit for days, dozens of times; and seeing that, wherever I have been on my Reading Tours, on this side of the Atlantic or the other, photographic "artists"

have continually "solicited the honour," the result has been that I used to keep "a book of horrors," proving how variously and oftentimes how vulgarly one's features come out when the impartial sun portrays them.

As with the contradictory critiques about one's writings, so also is it with the conflicting apparitions of comeliness or ugliness in the heliotyped exploits of different--some of them indifferent--photographers. Several, however, have succeeded well with me; as Sarony in New York, Elliott & Fry of Baker Street and Brighton, Negretti & Zambra at the Crystal Palace, and divers others; but one need not reckon up "our failures," as Brummell's valet has it.

As to the several oil portraitures of me, there is extant a splendid full-length of myself and my brother Dan, with large frilled collars and the many-b.u.t.toned suits of the day, when we were severally ten and nine years old, now hanging at Albury, painted by my great-uncle, Arthur William Devis, the celebrated historical painter: this has been exhibited among works of the British old masters in Pall Mall. Also, there is one by T.W. Guillod, in my phase as an author at twenty-seven; another is by the older Pickersgill, so dark and lacking in Caucasian comeliness that the engraving therefrom in one of my books makes me look like a n.i.g.g.e.r, insomuch that some Abolitionists claimed me as all the more their favourite for my black blood! On the other hand, Mr. Edgar Williams has made me much too florid; while recently that rising young artist, Alfred Hartley, has caught my true likeness, and has depicted me aptly and well, as may now be seen in the picture-gallery of the Crystal Palace. Then Mr. Willert Beale (Walter Maynard by literary _nom de pinceau et de plume_, for he is both a painter and an author) has lately portrayed me in crayons, life-sized, an unmistakable likeness; and years ago Monsieur Rochard, in a large water-coloured drawing, made me look very French, quite a _pet.i.t-maitre_, in which disguise I was engraved for some book of mine: all the above, except Rochard's, having been done complimentarily. In America Mr. Pett.i.t's life-sized oil portrait is the most noticeable.

Two queer anecdotes I must give about another form of author-worship to which we poor vain mortals are occasionally exposed, viz., what Pope called in Belinda's case "The Rape of the Lock." I can remember (as once by Lady---- in London) more than one such ravishment attempted if not accomplished; but most especially was I in peril at the Philadelphian Exhibition when three duennas who guarded some lady exhibitors (too modest to ask themselves) pursued a certain individual, scissors in hand, like Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, in vain hope of sheared tresses; had they been, like many of our American sisters, both juvenile and lovely, very possible success might have crowned their daring; or, instead of the three seductive graces, had they posed as three intellectual muses, I might have succ.u.mbed; but a leash of fates obliged a rapid retreat. And for a second queer anecdote take this: a 'cute negro barber had persuaded me to have my hair cut, to which suggestion, as it was hissing hot weather, I agreed. He had a neat little shop close to a jeweller's; next morning I pa.s.sed that shop and noticed my name placarded there, surrounded by gold lockets, for that cunning n.i.g.g.e.r and his gilded friend were making a rich harvest of my shaved curls. Sambo can be as sharp as Jonathan, when a freeman, if he likes.

"Interviewing" is another sort of homage nowadays to popular authorship; in America it is very rife,--and I never came to any city but, immediately on arrival, two or three representatives of opponent editors would call, and very courteously request to be allowed to turn me inside out, and then to report upon me: I only remember one or two cases (which I will not specify) wherein my inquisitor was not all I could have wished, or treated his patient victim more unkindly than perhaps a venial native humour might make necessary. Almost always the scribes were fair and gentlemanly. And in next morning's papers it was a pleasing excitement to find that one's extorted opinions on all manner of topics--social, religious, and political--were published by tens of thousands in conflicting newspapers, which took partisan views of the _obiter dicta_ of an ill.u.s.trious being. I have many of these recorded conversations and comments thereon pasted down in the sc.r.a.p-books aforesaid. In England, also, one does not escape; and indeed the pleasure of being examined for publication is here less mixed; for on this side of the Atlantic it has been found dangerous to report what might be damaging to a man socially or financially; although, however, no judicial notice is taken of ridicule or false criticism; and therein an author (however little he may care for it) can be libelled to any extent and without all remedy. Not but that some of the society papers have treated my unworthiness generously enough,--in particular, Edmunds'

_World_, which, with too great severity and too little justice, has been taught to tell all truths charitably, if smartly,--and therefore I was glad to welcome his pleasant accredited interviewer, Mr. Becker, a year or two ago at Albury, who compliments me, not quite accurately perhaps, on "good looks and a pa.s.sion for heart's-eases." Also, the gentleman who represents the _Glasgow Mail_ did his work wisely and kindly: and Mr.

Meltzer of the _New York Herald_; and I might name some others, not excepting my Sydenham friend, Mr. Leyland, who lately wrote a very pleasant paper about me at Norwood for a Philadelphian journal.

As to Advertising.

A word about advertis.e.m.e.nts, surely an authorial topic. The absurdly extravagant profusion in which thousands of pounds are now being continually flung away in advertising, is one which was never approved by me, and as long as my books remained in print, at my suggestion they all got sold without it. At present there are almost none in the market except Proverbial Philosophy, my Poems, Stephan Langton, and Dramas, and these still live and sell as before, after a silent life of many years.

I suppose advertising must answer, or it would not be persisted in; and certainly the newspapers (that chiefly live thereby) exhort all to crowd their columns, if they wish to win fortune: but how the perpetual and reiterated obtrusion of such single words as Oopack, or Syndicates, or Beecham's Pills, or Argosy Braces, or Grateful and Comforting, &c. &c., can prove seductive baits, I do not see nor feel: the shameless amount of s.p.a.ce they fill in our newspapers, and especially the impertinent way in which they intrude upon us while reading, as interleaved into books and magazines, so entirely disgusts me that I have often declared I would rather go without "tea, coffee, tobacco, or snuff" (this is a phrase, for the two latter I abominate) than deign to patronise those persistent advertisers A, B, C, D, or E. And yet I do know a splendid church at Eastbourne wholly built of pills,--and Professor Holloway's ointment has produced a palatial inst.i.tute, and another wholesale advertiser tells me he spends 30,000 a year on notices and paragraphs, to gain thereby 50,000,--and so one cannot but acquiesce in Carlyle's cynical dictum, so cruelly alluded to by Dean Stanley in his funeral sermon at Westminster, that there are in our community "26,000,000, mostly fools," otherwise how can folks be weak enough to be forced to pay for "goods," or "bads," merely by dint of reiteration?

There is, however, one form of advertis.e.m.e.nt which I have found to pay,--and that is not praise, but abuse. A certain article, written as I was told by Alaric Watts, and stigmatising my readers as idiots, and their author as a bellman, was said to have actually sold off 3000 copies at a run; and Hepworth Dixon's attack in some other paper--I forget the name--was so lucrative to me in its results that I entreated him at Moxon's one day to do it again.

Once I took it into my head to collect and publish a page of adverse criticisms (if I can find a copy it shall be printed here) to excellent sale-effect as regarded my tales. And I remember hearing at a publisher's, that when a book didn't sell through puffing, their Herald of Fame upstairs was directed to abuse it, and in one case a society novel by a lady of t.i.tle was prosecuted (by management) for libel, in order to get off the edition. That publishing-house used to advertise in "five figures"--that is, upwards of 10,000 a year, and was professionally antagonistic to another, from which it had sprung originally. The critical organs of the one house always used to run down the publications of the other. And I daresay other Sosii are aware of the like mutual warfare going on even now.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

KINDNESS TO ANIMALS.