Pot-Boilers Part 3

"About the time of the publication of 'Palmyra,' the young poet went back to Chertsey to live. His grandfather, Thomas Love, died December 10, 1805, and Mrs. Love, thus left alone, probably desired the companionship of her daughter and grandson. A letter to Hookham, dated two years later, testifies that Peac.o.c.k soon extended one of his walking tours much farther than he had hitherto gone, in an excursion to Scotland."

Here follows an extract from a rather gushing and quite unimportant letter about the beauties of Scotch scenery, after which the paragraph concludes as follows:

"Nothing further is known of this Scottish tour, but from it probably dates Peac.o.c.k's inveterate prejudice against the Scotch."

This is Mr. Van Doren at his worst and hack biography at normal. At his best he gives a straightforward account of the little that industry can unearth concerning a writer of first-rate importance who died but fifty-five years ago and whose life is yet more obscure than that of many a smaller man who has been dead twice or thrice as long. Industry in quest of facts is, indeed, Mr. Van Doren's chief merit, which only aggravates our surprise and regret at his having concluded his researches without discovering that Old Sarum is not in Cornwall. Still, he has written a readable book. His knowledge of English is superior to that of the majority of his compatriots; and when he is not trying to be caustic or facetious he is often quite sensible. We can say no more for him however.

Mr. Freeman aims higher, and though he comes short of his mark his is a valuable book. He can write well, and will write better; at present he is set upon being witty and clever, which is the more to be regretted in that he is both by nature. He has a view of life and letters which, if it be literary and rather superficial, is, at all events, personal.

Perceiving the insufficiency of material for a biography, he has attempted an appreciation of Peac.o.c.k's art. As we set ourselves a similar task so recently as February last, when reviewing Dr. Young's edition of the plays, we feel no call to restate our estimate or pit it against that of this new critic. It need only be said that he realizes, as does Mr. Van Doren, the singularity of Peac.o.c.k's genius; that, though neither has succeeded in showing precisely why it is unique, the English critic has brought forward some highly illuminating suggestions; and that reduction by a half would be the greatest improvement that either book could undergo.

In the circ.u.mstances, our interest tends to centre on the biographical parts of both works. For both are biographical: only Mr. Freeman, who claims attention for judgment rather than for learning, has been at less pains to sift and record the minute evidence that contemporary literature and journalism afford. Fresh evidence, in the shape of letters and memoirs, may, of course, be brought forward; until then these two volumes will be final. So far as external evidence goes, the student is now in possession of all that is known about the author of "Headlong Hall."

It is surprising that Mr. Freeman's tact did not rescue him from the temptation into which Mr. Van Doren's industry led him inevitably--the temptation of finding in Peac.o.c.k's mature work definable traces of childish memories and impressions. Still more surprising is it that, when both have quoted much that is worthless, neither should have printed the one significant doc.u.ment amongst the surviving fragments of his boyhood. This is a letter in verse to his mother, which not only gives promise of the songs that, above all else, have made their author famous, but is also worth quoting for its peculiar charm and fancy.

Unless we mistake, it has only once been printed, and is hardly known to the literary public, so here it is:

Dear Mother,

I attempt to write you a letter In verse, tho' in prose I could do it much better; The Muse, this cold weather, sleeps up at Parna.s.sus, And leaves us poor poets as stupid as a.s.ses.

She'll tarry still longer, if she has a warm chamber, A store of old ma.s.sie, ambrosia, and amber.

Dear mother, don't laugh, you may think she is tipsy And I, if a poet, must drink like a gipsy.

Suppose I should borrow the horse of Jack Stenton-- A finer ridden beast no muse ever went on-- Pegasus' fleet wings perhaps now are frozen, I'll send her old Stenton's, I know I've well chosen; Be it frost, be it thaw, the horse can well canter; The sight of the beast cannot help to enchant her.

All the boys at our school are well, tho' yet many Are suffered, at home, to suck eggs with their granny.

"To-morrow," says daddy, "you must go, my dear Billy, To Englefield House; do not cry, you are silly."

Says the mother, all dressed in silk and in satin, "Don't cram the poor boy with your Greek and your Latin, I'll have him a little longer before mine own eyes, To nurse him and feed him with tarts and mince-pies; We'll send him to school when the weather is warmer; Come kiss me, my pretty, my sweet little charmer!"

But now I must banish all fun and all folly, So doleful's the news I am going to tell ye: Poor Wade, my schoolfellow, lies low in the gravel, One month ere fifteen put an end to his travel; Harmless and mild, and remark'd for good nature; The cause of his death was his overgrown stature: His epitaph I wrote, as inserted below; What tribute more friendly could I on him bestow?

The bard craves one shilling of his own dear mother, And, if you think proper, add to it another.

That epitaph is better known, but deserves to be better still:

Here lies interred, in silent shade, The frail remains of Hamlet Wade; A youth more promising ne'er took breath; But ere fifteen laid cold in death!

Ye young, ye old, and ye of middle age, Act well your part, for quit the stage Of mortal life, one day you must, And, like him, crumble into dust.

Surely the boy of nine years old who wrote this was destined to be something better than a minor poet. And did not the delightful mother who encouraged him to express himself deserve something better for her son? Indeed, he must have been an enchanting child, with his long, flaxen curls, bright colouring, and fine, intelligent head. One fancies him a happy creature, making light work of his Greek and Latin grammar at Mr. Wicks's school on Englefield Green, at home spoilt and educated, in the best and most literal sense of the word, by his pretty mother and his gallant old grandfather. No wonder Queen Charlotte, driving in Windsor Park, stopped her carriage and got down to kiss the winsome little boy.

From Peac.o.c.k's youth and early writings (he was born in 1785 and published "Palmyra" in 1806) we can gather some idea of his character.

The obvious thing about him is his cleverness. The question is, What will he make of it? He tries business for a short time; the sea for an even shorter; and then he settles down in the country to a life of study and composition: he will be a man of letters. His poems are what we should expect a clever lad to write. Had they been written at the end of the nineteenth century doubtless they would have been as fashionably decadent as, written at the beginning, they are fashionably pompous. It was clear from the first that Peac.o.c.k would not be a poet; he lacked the essential quality--the power of feeling deeply. Before he was twenty it must have been clear that he possessed a remarkable head and an ordinary heart. He had wits enough for anything and sufficient feeling and imagination to write a good song; but in these early days his intellect served chiefly to save him from sentimentality and the grosser kinds of rhetoric. It gained him a friend too, and that friend was Sh.e.l.ley.

To think of Peac.o.c.k's youth is to think of his relations with Sh.e.l.ley.

He seems to have given more than he received: his nature was not receptive. He made the poet read Greek, and persuaded him that he was not infected with elephantiasis by quoting Lucretius "to the effect that the disease was known to exist on the banks of the Nile, _neque praeterea usquam_." These words were "the greatest comfort to Sh.e.l.ley." The two young men did a vast amount of walking, arguing, and miscellaneous reading together, in which Peac.o.c.k, partly from conviction and partly from affectation, seems to have been pretty consistent in performing the office of a wet blanket. Testing his intellect on other people's enthusiasms, falling sedately and whimsically in love with various ladies, amongst them his future wife, but keeping such feelings as he had for the most part to himself, Peac.o.c.k slipped through all the critical stages of youth till in 1816 he published "Headlong Hall."

Brains will not make a poet, but they made a superb satirist.

There is nothing to puzzle us in Peac.o.c.k's accepting a post under the East India Company. An unusually strong inclination toward Miss Jane Gryffydh, his "milk-white Snowdonian Antelope" as Sh.e.l.ley calls her, whom he had not seen for more than eight years, and to whom he became engaged without further inspection, may possibly have counted for something in his decision. But the obvious explanation is that a man who lives by the head needs regular employment, and only he who lives by the emotions has anything to lose by it. Peac.o.c.k's feelings were not so fine that routine could blunt them, nor so deep that an expression of them could give a satisfactory purpose to life. He entered the Company's service at the age of four-and-thirty; he found in it congenial friends, congenial employment, and a salary that enabled him to indulge his rather luxurious tastes. He kept chambers in London, a house on the Thames, a good cellar we may be sure, and a wife. Of this part of his life we know little beyond the fact that he was an able and industrious official. Probably, we shall not be far wrong in supposing him to have been much like other officials, only more intelligent, more witty, more sceptical, more learned, and more "cranky": also he kept stored somewhere at the back of his mind a spark of that mysterious thing called genius. At any rate, his recorded opinion, "There has never been anything perfect under the sun except the compositions of Mozart,"

smacks strongly of cla.s.sical concerts and the Treasury.

Though during this period he wrote his most entertaining, and perhaps his most brilliant novel, "Crotchet Castle," the years were heavy with misfortune. His mother, the human being for whom he seems to have cared most, died in 1833; before that date his wife had become a hopeless invalid. Three of his four children were dead before he retired from affairs. Already he had outlived many of his companions. Sorrow does not seem to have embittered but neither did it sweeten greatly his temper.

His reticence stiffened, so did his prejudices. Only emotion enables a man to make something n.o.ble and lovely of pain; but intellect teaches him to bear it like a gentleman.

It is easy to draw a pleasant picture of Peac.o.c.k's old age; deeply considered, however, it is profoundly sad. He had stood for many great causes but for none had he stood greatly. Good nature and benevolence had done duty for love and pity. He had been more intimate with books than with men. And so, at the end, he found himself alone. His tragedy is not that he was lonely, but that he preferred to be so. He retired with a handsome pension to a sheltered life at Halliford. The jolly old pagan, the scholar, and the caustic satirist were still alive in him. He wrote "Gryll Grange." He packed poor Robert Buchanan out of the house for smoking in it. He terrified a meek curate, who came to persuade him to leave his burning home, by shouting at him, "By the immortal G.o.ds I will not move." He carried on a desultory correspondence with Lord Broughton, full of literary humour and literary sentiment. He practised small benevolences and small tyrannies, liked to see smiling faces about him, and declined to believe seriously in the unhappiness of others. He was a thoroughly good-natured, selfish old man.

In old age he had to pay the penalty that awaits those who live by the head and not by the heart. He had kind acquaintances, but he had no real friends. He had nothing to look back upon but a series of more or less amusing events and a tale of successful achievements--no high enterprises, no splendid failures, no pa.s.sionate affections. Before him lay nothing but his books, his dinner, and a literary reputation.

Capable biographers can make pretty pictures of the white-haired scholar surrounded by his favourite authors. They can turn his petulant limitations and querulous prejudices into exquisite foibles, his despotisms into quaint impetuosity, his insensibility to human want and misery into mellow wisdom. But we cannot forget that the last years of those who have never pa.s.sionately pursued impossible ideals or loved imperfect human beings are probably more attractive to the biographers who record than to the men and women who have to endure them.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] "The Plays of Thomas Love Peac.o.c.k." Published for the first time.

Edited by A. B. Young. (David Nutt.)

[5] The week after this article appeared Sir Frederick Pollock wrote to the _Athenaeum_ complaining of my having called Spedding a prig. Well, here is a sample of what Spedding has to say about "Melincourt":

"Had the business ended here we should have thought that the author's better genius had prevailed. We might indeed have questioned many of his doctrines, both social and political; and shown cause to doubt whether in the faithful bosom of real nature they would yield so fair a harvest as in the more accommodating soil of fiction. But we should have met him with undivided sympathy, as no idle talker on no idle theme. This, however, his worst genius interferes to prevent. He has only a half faith in the cause he has espoused, and dares not let go his interest with the other party. It is as if, having, in sport or curiosity, raised the veil of truth, he had felt rebuked by the severity of her aspect, and turned for relief to more than usual levity and mockery. Hence the perpetual interruption of the serious and affecting, and sometimes even awful, interest which belongs to the main argument of the piece, by scenes of farcical and extravagant caricature which might be pleasant enough as varieties in that farce of unreason with which he usually entertains us, but which, coming upon the mind in a state of serious emotion, are offensive and disagreeable. The two styles appear two opposite and incompatible moods; and it is impossible so to govern the imagination or the sympathies as to be in the humour for both.

If you are not disgusted with the lighter, you cannot but be wearied with the graver."

And again:

"As it is, this affected contrast [the contrast which Spedding thinks Peac.o.c.k may have intended between the beauty of Forester and Anthelia's view of life, and the "gross pictures of corruption, quackery, and worldliness" with which he surrounds them], instead of bringing the virtue of his hero into stronger relief, serves only to make more conspicuous his own want of constancy in his purpose and faith in his principles."

Spedding solemnly proceeds to give Peac.o.c.k a little advice about the construction of his novels, and recommends that "Melincourt" should be divided into two stories: one to deal with the adventures of Sir Oran Haut-ton and his election for the borough of Onevote; the other to treat of "the graver questions concerning the realizations of the spirit of chivalry under the forms of modern society ... with Forester and Anthelia for the central figures."

"If he would but set about this latter task in a faithful spirit, we do not fear to predict, from the specimen which the tale before us, even in its present state, exhibits, that he would produce a work of far higher and more enduring interest than any he has yet attempted."

Let the reader consider "Melincourt," what manner of work it is, and then judge faithfully between me and Sir Fred.

[6] "The Life of Thomas Love Peac.o.c.k," By Carl Van Doren. (Dent and Sons.)

"Thomas Love Peac.o.c.k." By A. Martin Freeman. (Martin Secker.)

BOSWELL'S LETTERS[7]

[Sidenote: _Athenaeum Feb. 1909_]

Boswell's letters enjoy the advantage of a mysterious history. They were written between 1758 and 1795, not without a view to publication, but were lost for more than fifty years. At Boulogne in 1850 Major Stone, of the East India Company, had the fortunate curiosity to examine a sc.r.a.p of paper in which was wrapped some small purchase; it turned out to be a letter signed by James Boswell, and was traced to the store of an itinerant paper-vendor, where the letters published in 1856 were discovered. The anonymous editor of this issue is conjectured--with good reason, as we think--by Mr. Seccombe, who introduces the volume, to have been a Philip Francis of the Middle Temple who became later Sir Philip of the Supreme Consular Court of the Levant; but this matter also is obscure. The strangest mystery of all, however, is that these interesting, entertaining, in fact delightful letters, though on their first appearance they created a mild literary sensation, till last December had never been reprinted.