My Life as an Author Part 3

Let the central figure be _Gladstone_--ever from youth up the beloved and admired of many personal intimates (although some may be politically his opponents). Always the foremost man, warm-hearted, earnest, hard-working, and religious, he had a following even in his teens; and it is noticeable that a choice lot of young and keen intelligences of Eton and Christ Church formed themselves into a small social sort of club, styled, in compliment to their founder's initials, the "W.E.G."

Next to Gladstone Lord _Lincoln_ used to sit, his first parliamentary patron at Newark, and through life to death his friend. We all know how admirably in many offices of State the late Duke of Newcastle served his country, and what a good and wise Mentor he was to a grateful Telemachus in America.

_Canning_ may be mentioned thirdly; then a good-looking youth with cla.s.sic features and a florid cheek, since gone to "the land of the departed" after having healed up the wounds of India as her Governor-General. Next to the writer, one on each side, sat two more Governors-General _in futuro_, though then both younger sons and commoners, and now both also gone to their reward elsewhere; these were _Bruce_, afterwards Lord Elgin, and _Ramsay_, Lord Dalhousie; the one famous from Canada to China, the other noted for his triumphs in the Punjaub. When at Toronto in 1851, the writer was welcomed to the splendid hospitality of Lord Elgin, and the very lecture-room here depicted was mentioned as "a rare gathering of notables." Lord _Abercorn_ was of the cla.s.s, a future viceroy; Lord _Douglas_, lately Duke of Hamilton, handsome as an Apollo, and who married a Princess of Baden; and if Lord _Waterford_ was infrequent in his attendance, at least he was eligible, and should not be omitted as a various sort of eccentric celebrity. Then _Phillimore_ was there, now our Dean of the Arches; _Scott_ and _Liddell_, both heads of houses, and even then conspiring together for their great Dictionary. _Curzon_ too (lately Lord De la Zouch) was at the table, meditating Armenian and Levantine travels, and longing in spirit for those Byzantine MSS. preserved at Parham, where the writer has delighted to inspect them; how nearly Tischendorf was antic.i.p.ated in his fortunate find of that earliest Scripture, no one knows better than Lord Zouch, who must have been close upon that great and important discovery! _Doyle_, now Professor of Poetry, _Hill_, of Mathematics, _Vaughan_, of History--all were of this wonderful cla.s.s; as also the Earl of _Selkirk_, celebrated as a mathematician; Bishops _Hamilton_, _Denison_, and _Wordsworth_; and _Cornewall Lewis_, late Chancellor of the Exchequer; and _Kynaston_, Head Master of St. Paul's; and a member of Parliament or two, as, for example, _Leader_, once popular for Westminster.

Now, other names of almost equal eminence may have been here accidentally omitted, but the writer will not guess at more than he actually recollects. Sometimes--for the lecture was a famous one--members of other colleges came in; _Sidney Herbert_, of Oriel, in particular, is remembered; and if _Robert Lowe_, of University, was only occasionally seen, it must have been because he seldom went abroad till twilight.

Altogether "there were giants in those days;" and, without controversy, a casual cla.s.s, containing more than a score of such; ill.u.s.trious names as are here registered, must be memorable. The lecture-room was next to Christ Church Hall, where that delicate shaft supports its exquisite traceried roof; the book was "Aristotle's Rhetoric," ill.u.s.trated by each reader with quotations, a record whereof is still _penes me_, and the lecturer, now no longer living, was that able and accomplished cla.s.sic, the Reverend _Robert Biscoe_.

My college days are full of recollections of men, since become famous in literature, art, science, or position: of these the princ.i.p.al are already recorded as having been members of the Aristotle cla.s.s. Let me add here, that I lived for three weeks of my first term in the gaily adorned rooms in Peckwater of the wild Lord Waterford; and afterwards in Lord Ossulston's, both being then absent from college; that Frank Buckland and his bear occupied (long after I had left) my own chambers in Fells' Buildings; that I was a cla.s.s-mate and friend of the luckless Lord Conyers...o...b..rne, then a comely and ruddy youth with curly hair and gentle manners, and that I remember how all Oxford was horrified at his shocking death--he having been back-broken over an arm-chair by the good-natured but only too athletic Earl of Hillsborough in a wine-party frolic; that Knighton, early an enthusiast for art, used to draw his own left hand in divers att.i.tudes with his right every day for weeks; and that some not quite unknown cotemporary used to personate me at times for his own benefit. As he has been long dead, I may now state that he was believed to be Lord Douglas of Hamilton. Here is the true story. One day the Dean requested my presence, and thus addressed me: "I have long overlooked it, Mr. Tupper, but this must never occur again: indeed I have only waited till now, because I knew of your general good conduct."

"What have I done, Mr. Dean: be pleased to tell me."

"Why, sir, the porter states that this is the fifth time you have not come into college until past twelve o'clock."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Dean; there is some mistake: for I have never once been later than ten."

"Then, Mr. Tupper, somebody must have given your name in the dark: and I request that you will do your best to discover who did this, and report it to me."

As I failed to do it, after some days, again the Dean sent for me; and finding after question made that I pretty well guessed the delinquent but declined to expose him, the Dean kindly added--"This does you credit, sir," and I left. A few days pa.s.sed, and I was brought up again with "I think you are intended for the Church, Mr. Tupper." As well as I could manage it, I stammered out that it was impossible, as I could not speak. Then he said he was sorry for that, as he meant to nominate me for a studentship. This, however, never came to pa.s.s, and so the matter dropped; until Dean Gaisford succeeded Dean Smith, and Joseph lost his Pharaoh.

At college I lived the quiet life of a reading-man; though I varied continually the desk and the book with the "const.i.tutional" up Headington Hill, or the gallop with Mr. Murrell's harriers, or the quick scull to Iffley, or the more perilous sailing in a boat (no wonder that Isis claims her annual victims), or the gig to Blenheim or Newton-Courtnay,--or that only once alarming experience of a tandem when the leader turned round and looked at me in its nostalgic longing to return home,--or the geological ramble with Dr. Buckland's cla.s.s,--or the botanic searchings for wild rarities with some naturalist pundit whose name I have forgotten; and so forth. In matters theological, I was strongly opposed to the Tractarians, especially denouncing Newman and Pusey for their dishonest "non-naturalness" and Number Ninety: and I favoured with my approval (_valeat quantum_) Dr. Hampden. I attended Dr.

Kidd's anatomical lectures, and dabbled with some chemical experiments--which when Knighton and I repeated at his father's house, 9 Hanover Square, the baronet in future blew us up to the astonishment of the baronet _in praesenti_, his famous father. Also, I was a diligent student in the Algebraic cla.s.s of Dr. Short, afterwards the good Bishop of St. Asaph; and I have before me now a _memoria technica_ of mine in rhyme giving the nine chief rules of trigonometry, but not easily producible here as full of "sines and cosines, arcs, chords, tangents, and radii," though helpful to memory, and humorous at the time, ending with

"At least I have proved that nothing is worse Than Trigonometrical Problems in verse:"

there are also similarly to be recorded my mathematical _seances_ with that worthy and clever Professor, A.P. Saunders, afterwards headmaster of Charterhouse; and my Hebrew lectures with the mild-spoken Dr. Pusey, afterwards so notorious; and I know not whatever else is memorable, unless one condescended to what goes without saying about Hall and Chapel, and Examinations: however, some frivolous larks in the Waterford days, wherewith I need not say the present scribe had nothing to do, may amuse. Here are three I remember; 1. An edict had gone out from the authorities against hunting in pink,--and next morning the Dean's and the Canons' doors in quad were found to have been miraculously painted red in the night. 2. There was a grand party of Dons at the Deanery, and as they hung their togas in the hall (for they couldn't conveniently dine in them) there was filched from each proctorial sleeve that marvellous little triangular survival of a stole which n.o.body can explain, and all these collectively were nailed on the Dean's outer door in a star. 3. A certain garden of small yews and box trees was found one morning to have been transplanted bodily into Peckwater Quadrangle, as a matter of mystery and defiance. And there were other like exploits; as the immersion of that leaden Mercury into its own pond; and town and gown rows, wherein I remember to have seen the herculean Lord Hillsborough on one side of High Street, and Peard (afterwards Garibaldi's Englishman) on the other, clear away the crowd of roughs with their fists, scattering them like duplicates of the hero of Corioli.

Of course I duly took my degrees of B.A. and M.A.,--and long after of D.C.L., when the Cathedral chimes rang for me, as they always do for a grand compounding Doctor.

A mentionable _curio_ of authorship on that occasion is this: whatever may be the rule now, in those days the degree of D.C.L. involved a three-hours' imprisonment in the pulpit of the Bodleian Chapel, for the candidate to answer therefrom in Latin any theological objectors who might show themselves for that purpose; as, however, the chapel was always locked by Dr. Bliss, the registrar, there was never a possibility to make objection. So my three hours of enforced idleness obliged me to use pencil and paper, which I happened to have in my pocket,--and I then and there produced my poem on "The Dead"--to be found at p. 26 of my Miscellaneous Poems, still extant at Gall & Inglis's--a long one of eighteen stanzas, much liked by Gladstone amongst others. I didn't intend it certainly, but, as the poem ends with the word "bliss," it was ridiculously thought that I had specially alluded to the registrar!

CHAPTER V.

ORDERS: AND LINCOLN'S INN.

Soon after leaving Oxford, and when some attempts to help my speech seemed to be partially successful, my father wished me to take orders, which also from religious motives was my own desire (for M'Neile at Albury, and Bulteel at Oxford, had been instruments of good to me, the first since I was 15, the other as a young collegian) and as Earl Rivers, whom my father had financially a.s.sisted promised me a living, and a curacy was easy where the mere licence was enough by way of salary, I soon found myself standing for introductory approval before Bishop Burgess at his hotel in Waterloo Place, a candidate for orders by Examination. The good Bishop being a Hebrew scholar was glad enough to hear that I (with however slight a smattering) had studied that primitive tongue under Pusey and Pauli,--and I began to hope before his awful presence. But, when he told me to read, and soon perceived my only half-cured infirmity, he faithfully enough a.s.sured me with sorrow that I could not be ordained unless I had my speech. So that first and sole interview came to an untimely end: for soon after, not meaning to give up the struggle at once, I resolved, before my next Episcopal visit, to go down to Blewbury, the vicarage of my friend Mr. Evanson, who had agreed to license me to his curacy, in order that by reading the lessons in church I might practically test my competency. Of course, I prepared myself specially by diligence, and care, and prayer, to stand this new ordeal. But I failed to please even the indulgent vicar, though he got his curate for nothing, and though his fair daughter amiably welcomed the not ungainly Coelebs; and as for the severe old clerk,--he navely blurted out, "Tell'ee what, sir, it won't do: you looks well,--but what means them stops?" Alas! they meant the rebellion of tongue and lips against every difficult letter, a _t_, or a _p_, or a far too current _s_. And so I came to the wise conclusion that I was not to be a parson.

And perhaps it's as well I'm not; for my natural combativeness would never have tolerated my bishop or my rector, or even the parish churchwarden, specially in these days of Ritualism and Romanism. I was thus thrown back upon myself: and I now see gratefully and humbly how I was being schooled and forced into a mental era of silent thoughtfulness, in after years the seed of several volumes as well as innumerable ballads and poems which have flown as fly-leaves over the world.

After this clerical failure, my good father urged me to turn to the law, thinking that as a chamber counsel my intellectual attainments (and I had worked hard for many years) might yet be available to society and to myself, though on the "silent system:" but alas! verbal explanations are as necessary in a room as at the bar; I soon perceived that all could not be done on paper, and as I thoroughly hated law I speedily turned to other sorts of literature, in especial the fixing of my own rhymed or rhythmed thoughts in black and white.

There is a small chamber in the turret of No. 19 Lincoln's Inn Old Square, on the second floor of rooms then belonging to my late friend Thomas Lewin (afterwards a Master in Chancery, and well known not only for his Law books, but also for his Life of St. Paul) where I used to dream and think and jot down Proverbial morsels on odd bits of paper which gradually grew to be a book. Lewin once, I remember, picked up from the wastepaper basket these lines which he admired much, and asked me where they came from:

"For that a true philosophy commandeth an innocent life, And the unguilty spirit is lighter than a linnet's heart."

They occur in my Essay on Ridicule, first series, so I had to confess as found out.

When my book appeared Lewin offered to review it for me in the _Literary Gazette_, then edited by his friend Mr. Landon, L.E.L.'s brother. An unusual rush of business just then coming in to him, and the editor pressing for copy, Lewin begged me to write the Article myself, to which I most reluctantly a.s.sented; resolving however to be quite impartial.

The result was that when I handed the critique to my busy friend, he quickly said after a hurried glance, "Why, this won't do at all; you have cut yourself up cruelly, instead of praising, as you ought to have done. I must do it myself, I suppose. Here, copy out this Opinion for me, if you can read it: it's Mr. Brodie's, and I can't." With that he threw my MS. into the wastepaper basket, and I did his work for him, whilst he commended me with due vigour, and sent his clerk off with a too kind verdict in hot haste to the expectant editor.

The mention of Brodie reminds me that I spent a year copying old deeds in his murky chamber, 49 Lincoln's Inn Fields, where n.o.body could read his handwriting except his clerk (appropriately yclept Inkpen), and when _he_ couldn't it was handed back to Mr. Brodie for exposition, wherein if he himself failed, as was sometimes the case, he had to write a new Opinion. Inkpen was a character, as a self-taught entomologist, breeding in me then the rabies of collecting moths and beetles, as a couple of boxes full of such can still prove. He lived at Chelsea, near the Botanical Gardens there; and attributed his wonderful finds of strange insects in his own pocket-handkerchief garden to stray caterpillars and flies, &c., that came his way from among the packets of foreign plants. He used also to catch small fowl on pa.s.sengers' coats and blank walls, as he pa.s.sed on his daily walks to his office and back, having pill-boxes in his pocket, and pins inside his hat to secure the spoil. In the course of years he had ama.s.sed b.u.t.terflies and beetles to so valuable an extent, that when he was compelled by adverse fortune to sell his cabinets by auction at Stevens's, he netted 1200 for his collection: this he told me in later years himself; immediately after the sale, he commenced collecting anew,--and having been made curator of Lincoln's Inn Fields (through Mr. Brodie's interest), he soon found an infinity of new insects,--derived perhaps from the Surgeon's Hall Museum, or straying to the nine acres of that Garden,--is it not the area of Cephren's Pyramid?--as a refuge for them out of smoky London.

The good man always brought a new flower to look at every morning while at desk work; it lived in an old inkbottle of water, till one happy day I bethought me charitably of giving him a pretty China vase,--that good man, I say, is now long since gone to a world of light and beauty--whence, I am sure, flowers and b.u.t.terflies cannot be excluded.

About the same time this memorable matter may receive a notice. One day at Brodie's chambers we heard a riotous noise in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and running out, I found that the Duke of Wellington, for some political offence, was being mobbed,--and that too on the 18th of June! He was calmly walking his horse, surrounded by roaring roughs,--a groom being behind him at some distance, but otherwise alone. Disgusted at the scene, I jumped on the steps of Surgeon's Hall, and shouted out--Waterloo, Waterloo! That one word turned the tide of execrations into cheers, and the Iron Duke pa.s.sed me silently with a military salute: as the mob were thus easily converted ("mob" being, as we conveyancers say, a short form for "mobile", changeable) and escorted our national hero to his home in safety, I really think the little incident worth recording. We are just now in the throes of such a mobocracy,--and know how much one firm policeman can avail to calm a riot. While speaking of the Duke and Apsley House, let me add here another word of some interest. My uncle, Arthur W. Devis, had painted life-sized portraits of Blucher and Gneisenau, which his widow had given to me: and as the Duke had always been my father's friend, I asked his Grace if he would accept them from me; this he declined, but said, "get Colnaghi to value them and I'll buy them"--as accordingly I did, and the pictures are still I presume either at Apsley House or Strathfieldsaye.

My small memories of the Great Duke are summed up in these four monosyllables, plain, blunt, firm, kind.

After Brodie's, my liberal father would give for me another hundred pounds, this time to his cousin Mr. Walters of No. 12 in the Square, to make me more learned as a conveyancer: but it was all of no use: "He penned a stanza when he should engross:" however, I ate my terms and was duly called to the Bar. At Walters' my most eminent colleague, amongst others, was Roundel Palmer, now Lord Selborne, who, some time after, when we both had chambers in the Inn, wanted me (but I repudiated the idea) to be proposed as a candidate member for Oxford University, just before Gladstone was induced to stand; I daresay he will remember it. As to M.P.ship I may have had other chances, but I never cared for a position of endless care and toil by night and day, to say nothing of my impediment of speech, and as to the magic letters I rather despised them: this being one reason. Not very many years ago my brother Charles was offered Nottingham if he would pay 3000 for the honour,--and so I failed to appreciate any such distinction. I think too that votes were at one time purchasable even at Guildford, my county town: but that was of course at a less upright and immaculate time of day than this.

At Walters' were also three of my cotemporaries,--De Morgan, who had the business after decease of our princ.i.p.al, and whose brother is or was the famous psychological philosopher; Domville, since Sir Charles, I believe; and Gunn, a West Indian, of whom the jest was to inquire of Walters, a very nervous man, if he liked us to have a gun in chambers: all these, and there were more, were clever men and worthy, but as the tide of life flows on I have lost sight of them.

I have just found an old letter of my own, dated December 28, 1839, which (with my own permission asked and granted) I will give as to a matter quite forgotten by me, viz., that Lady Spencer promised my father to get me an Indian Writership,--as also that previously I had once hopes of the Registrarship from Lord John Russell, afterwards given to Mr. Lyster. The letter proves how much my no-speech hindered both my good father's efforts and my own;--and explains itself. In those days it cost 9d. between Albury and London.

My Dearest Father,--I can fully, though not perhaps so fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five great boys, and actuated by this sympathy I sit down to say a word more about India.--I do hope you have not yet given Lady Spencer a decisive answer, as the horizon seems a little to clear of its indigenous hurricanes. Since my last letter to you I have, I can truly say, made every effort to speak like a man, but, alas I too unsuccessfully: my tongue seems only able to say veto to the Church, and that speaking is a necessary qualification "needs no demonstration." Aunt f.a.n.n.y has strongly recommended me to think more seriously about it, and Mr. M'Neile has also given me his valuable opinion on the subject, that at least I must inquire what I am more fitted for, and not lightly put aside those opportunities which Providence places in my way. However, I would by no means be hurried in my choice either way: I must inquire what is the office of a writer; whether oratorical powers be not requisite, &c., for as yet I have a very vague and indefinite idea of what I reject or choose. I really do find my impediment most truly a grievous impediment to what appears more desirable; but I would wish to consider this, as every other const.i.tutional infirmity or affliction, as but an instrument in the hands of G.o.d to subserve some wise purpose. Let this letter therefore, if you please, serve as a preventive, if not too late, to your final decision about it, and put me, my dear father, in possession of more of the peculiar features, in a writer's employment if you can, I hope to be with you on Friday.

Till then, and ever believe me, my dear father, your affectionate son,

M.F. Tupper.

Albury, _December 28th, Wednesday._

The day after I took my degree as a barrister, I married my cousin after a nine years' engagement; my father having resolved I should not marry without a profession. I did my best at this vocation of the law much against the grain, and actually achieved, with Lewin's help, a voluminous will, and a marriage settlement, with some accessory deeds, procured for me by my mother's friend Mr. Hunt, through one Dangerfield, a solicitor. I have often felt anxious to know how far my conveyancing held water; but the thought of Lewin's skill has comforted me--and besides I have never heard a word about it now for half a century. My fee for all was fifty guineas--pretty well for a first and last exploit in the way of law and its rewards.

As I am just leaving my father's house for Park Village, and thereafter Albury, here I will insert two little memories of past days when I lived with my parents at No. 5. Here is one. Theodore Hook's famous Berners Street hoax had lately made such exploits very catching among schoolboys--and in my Charterhouse days it was repeated by "Punsonby & Co." at my father's town-house. On a certain Sat.u.r.day when I had my weekly holiday at home, I marvelled to find the street crowded with vans, coal-carts, trucks, a mourning coach, fishmongers, butchers, and confectioners with trays, and a number of servants wanting places. All these were crowding round No. 5, as ordered or advertised for by Mr.

Tupper: of course soon explained away, and rejected, to a general indignation at the hoaxers. Now, as I had my suspicions, I sat unseen at the front drawing-room window, and watched: and as more than once I had noticed P. and his friends pa.s.s down the street on the opposite side, I taxed them with their exploit on the Monday; and I rather think it cost them not a trifling sum to satisfy that crowd of disappointed tradesmen.

Happily such practical joking is now long since (or ought to be) a social outrage of the past; Hook's being first had the grace of original humour,--but imitations are dull repet.i.tion, not to be excused. I only once met Theodore Hook, and that was in his decadence; he looked puffy and only semi-sober; but I recollect with how much deference and expectation the "livener-up" was eagerly surrounded, and how sillily the dupes laughed at every word he uttered, whether humorous or not.

For another last memory of No. 5, in the dining-room whereof Lord Sandwich, who had once lived there, is said to have invented "sandwiches," I will record this.

In those days of long ago, how well I remember our next-door neighbour, old Lady Cork, "The Dowager-Countess of Cork and Orrery," as her door-plate proclaimed, some of whose peculiarities I may mention without offence, as they were notorious and (the physicians judged) innocent and venial. Whenever she found herself alone (and she kept profuse hospitality three or four days a week, with her vast illuminated conservatory full of artificial flowers and grapes and oranges tied on everything), when those famous routs were silent, and dance music no longer kept us awake at night, the little old lady would send in a message, asking "neighbour Tupper to give her a dinner to-day"--sometimes even coming unannounced. She usually appeared all in white, even to her shoes and bonnet, which latter she would keep on the whole evening; the only colour about her being rouged cheeks, sometimes decorated with a piece of white paper cut into the shape of a heart, and stuck on "to charm away the tic." Well, her ladyship was always full of society anecdotes; and I only wish that her diary may soon be published, as probably a more spicy record of past celebrities than even Pepys's in old times, or Greville's in our own; but she is said to have left instructions to her executors not to publish till every one mentioned by her was dead: so we must wait till that tontine is over. But the specialty of the aged countess, who died at past ninety but never owned to more than sixty, was a propensity to annex small properties; always it happened that next morning after a visit either her butler or her lady's-maid would bring to us a spoon or a fork or a piece of _bric-a-brac_ which she had carried off with her in seeming unconsciousness; and as she never inquired for them afterwards, possibly it was so. Let doctors decide. _Requiescat._ The forthcoming memoirs of that once famous and lovely Miss Monckton will be interesting indeed, if not over-edited.

CHAPTER VI.

STAMMERING AND CHESS.

One of the apparent calamities of my life (overruled, as I have long since seen, for good) was the before-mentioned affliction of a very bad impediment of speech, which blighted my youth and manhood from fifteen to thirty-five, obliging me to social humiliations of many kinds, to silence in cla.s.s and on examination occasions (hence my written poetries in lieu of spoken prose), and in early manhood preventing me from taking orders, and thereafter from speaking in the law courts. But I was hopelessly and practically a dumb man, except under special excitations, when I could burst into eloquent speech which surprised third persons more than myself; for when quite alone I could spout like Demosthenes; it was only nervous fear that paralysed my tongue. Accordingly, my good father placed me from time to time with well-meaning and well-paid pretenders to make a perfect cure of my affliction, and I did many things and suffered much from such false physicians. I am sure no one can truly say what I can, viz., that in a purposely monotonous note and syllable by syllable, with a crutch under my chin, and a sort of gag on the rebellious tongue, I have read all through in a loud voice Milton's whole Paradise Lost and Regained, and the most of Cowper's poems! That was the sort of tongue-drill and nerve-quieting recommended and enforced for many hours a day, through weary months, by a certain Mr. C., while Dr. P., his successor to the well-named "patient," gave, first, emulcents, and then styptics, and was fortunately prevented in time by my father from some surgical experiments on the muscles of lip and tongue. However, n.o.body could cure me, until I cured myself; rather, let me gratefully and humbly confess, until G.o.d answered constant prayer, and granted stronger bodily health, and gave me good success in my literary life, and made me to feel I was equal in speech, as now, to the most fluent of my fellows. So let any stammerer (and there are many such) take comfort from my cure, and pray against the trouble as I did, and courageously stand up against the mult.i.tude to claim before heaven and earth man's proudest prerogative--the privilege of speech. In my Proverbial Essay "Of Speaking" will be found two contrasted pictures drawn from my own experiences: one of the stifled stammerer, the other of the unbridled orator: which you can turn to as you will. As, however, some of my old groanings after utterance are not equally accessible, I will here give a few lines of mine from the "Stammerer's Complaint,"

printed in the medical book of one of my Galens:--