Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters Volume I Part 22

"....I am aware that the fact cannot in any way affect your views in the matter, but it is as well I should mention-- what, after all, is the only test of an author's actual repute and standing in his own country--viz., the money value of his writings,--and for this same story I receive a sum little short of 3000. I then may safely leave to your consideration the scale on which it should be estimated by you."

On July 21 he wrote: "You ask about the portrait annexed to 'Jack Hinton.' It is not--at least so say my friends--a resemblance, and I can myself a.s.sure you that _I_ do not squint, which _it_ does abominably."--E. D.

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Bregenz, _July_ 17, 1848.

"Your letter of the 8th has this day arrived, and I hasten to express my full concurrence in _your_--but not in Longfield's--view of the transaction, save where you both concur in thinking that Curry's failure may eventuate favourably for us. Is there any chance of my being able to purchase the stock and the copyrights of 'O'Malley' and 'Lorrequer'?

without which the set is incomplete. I cannot say that I antic.i.p.ate such a probability. I could only hope for it through the intervention of a publisher, and in the existing state of monetary matters few would adventure in any speculation. M'G. will, I have no doubt, try and possess himself of the books; and if such be his intention, I would be glad to be a party to his purchase. It would be well to know his views and what course he may probably take, or what [course he would] advise us to pursue.

"In the event of any composition with creditors, what is your opinion of my claim? Should I expect to be rated in Curry's a.s.sets? Or should I hope for my proportion of a.s.sets as _we_ claim?

"M'Glashan has not acknowledged a MS. sent two months ago. I can neither fathom his plans by this system nor see how his silence chimes in with his fervent protestations for a renewal of our relations.

"My meagre dedication did not, and could not, say a thousandth part of what I feel,--but even so much was pleasurable to say before the world.

I would indeed be proud to a.s.sociate you in any part of it. As it is, I believe 'The Knight' is the best of the breed, and hence the reason for calling it yours.

"I expect to leave for Italy about Aug. 4, but address me always 'Coutts et Cie,' who still will continue to exercise the sinecure of my bankers."

IX. LETTERS TO MISS EDGEWORTH. 1843-1847

At Riedenburg Lever closed a correspondence, commenced in 1843, with Miss Edgeworth. In 1843 the author of 'Castle Rackrent,' in her seventy-seventh year, was still working a.s.siduously in her Edgeworthstown home.

_To Miss Edgeworth_.

"Templeogue House, Co. Dublin, _Nov_. 10, 1843.

"Madam,--I have a great favour to ask at your hands--and, like most people in similar circ.u.mstances, not any claim whatever to support the prayer of my pet.i.tion. My desire is to obtain your permission to dedicate to you a book of mine called 'Tom Burke,' the first volume of which will appear early in December. To a.s.sociate, even on such slender terms, my humble effort with a name confessedly the first in my country's literature, is the motive which prompts me to this request, while I gladly embrace the occasion to a.s.sure you that you have no more ardent admirer of your goodness and your genius than your very humble and devoted servant."

_To Miss Edgeworth._

"Templeogue House, Co. Dublin, _Nov_. 13, 1843.

"Madam,--It may be, that while asking a favour I may be obliged to ask your pardon for importunity. About a week since I addressed a few lines to you requesting your permission to dedicate to you a book of mine called 'Tom Burke of Ours,' but not having heard from you in reply, I conclude my letter has not reached you. I cannot, however, relinquish--without another endeavour--a hope I have long cherished to write your name within a volume of mine, and be, even on such slender terms, a.s.sociated with one whom I feel to be the first of Irish writers.

If you will accord me this permission, I shall deem it a very great favour conferred on your very humble and obedient servant."

In his 'Life of Lever' Dr Fitzpatrick states that Lever set out in 1844 on his driving tour through Ireland, with the intention of paying a formal visit to Miss Edgeworth. There is no evidence that this visit was paid. In a preface to 'The Knight of Gwynne,' the author declares his acquaintances.h.i.+p with Miss Edgeworth arose out of a letter she wrote to him correcting a mistake he had made as to the authors.h.i.+p of an epigram on Sir William Gladowes (afterwards Lord Newcomen). Almost in the same breath he admits that he has no memory for dates, and he couples this admission with a regret that he never kept a note-book. Miss Edgeworth's tardy reply did not reach Charles Lever till the summer of 1845, when he was lingering at Carlsruhe.

_To Miss Edgeworth._

"Carlsruhe in Baden, Hof von Holland, _Aug_. 19, 1845.

"Dear Madam,--Your letter addressed to me in Dublin followed me here into the heart of the Black Forest, where I have been sojourning for some time past. I have really no words to speak my grat.i.tude for the kindness which dictated such a letter,--so full of flattering encouragement, so abounding in expressions of good cheer. It is not because I have met with so little approval from the Press of my own country that I set great store by your criticisms,--though even the contrast has its consolations,--but that I begin to feel confidence under an approval from you, which no praise from one less competent could inspire. Your kindness, too,--like every real kindness,--had the merit of an _apropos_. I was beginning to feel unusually depressed about the fortunes of my book. I had received so many hints, based on misconceptions, of the characters and the plot, that I found, or fancied I found, I had been misrepresenting my own intentions, praising what I deprecated, and apologising for what I felt condemnatory. Fancy, then, the delight I experienced on hearing that you had read me aright--nay, more, developed in full the shadowy and vague forms my weaker hand only dared to trace, but could not venture to colour! I am not able to tell you how full of hope, how full of ambition, you have left me,--how totally you have routed the growing despondency against which, una.s.sisted, I struggled in vain. It is not, believe me, that your flattery has made me _tete montee_; but, even taking it as mere flattery, I can say to myself, 'It is Miss Edgeworth, after all.' If I am destined to do what may be worthy, I shall date the effort from the day I received your letter,--a day which made me prouder than I ever felt before, and happier than any praise hereafter can make me."

After the lapse of a year we find Lever thirsting for further praise or encouragement. There is something almost pitiful in his timid appeal to Miss Edgeworth for her opinions concerning 'The O'Donoghue' and 'The Knight of Gwynne,'--the latter novel was at the time appearing in monthly parts. Lever was always able to form a very shrewd estimate of the merits or demerits of his own writings, and in his later days press criticism, adverse or laudatory, seems to have affected him but little.

It was different, however, in his earlier days, when abuse or neglect caused him grave disappointment and vexation, and when a laudatory review unduly elated him.

_To Miss Edgeworth._

"Riedenburg, Bregenz, l'Autriche, _July_ 14, 1846.

"Dear Madam,--It is exactly a year since you wrote to me the kindest and most flattering letter it has ever been my fortune to receive. I have read it over so often that I almost have it by heart, and yet I never recur to the precise phrases of your brilliant note without renewed pleasure, renewed encouragement. It may be that you have long since forgotten both the epistle and the object of it. It cannot be an isolated piece of kindness on your part, and may well have escaped your memory. Let me recall the circ.u.mstance by saying it was an allusion to a book of mine called 'The O'Donoghue,' of whose earlier numbers you augured well, but of whose later ones I will not dare to tax your opinion. My present object is to thank you for a piece of kindness, whose effect is as fresh this instant as when first conferred. I recur to the expression of your encouragement as a certain relief in hours of doubt and despondency; and as the prisoner in Schundau only permitted himself the relaxation of looking out on the Elbe in days of unusual depression, I have kept your letter for times when a failing heart and ebbing hope have made me need the voice of encouragement.

"May I ask if you have chanced upon the book called 'The Knight of Gwynne'? I will not ask your opinion--nor do I wish one word of criticism. I feel too sensibly it should have been very different, for I _had_ in my head a good subject and wandered from it, but I would like to know that it reached you.

"I am living in a wild valley of the Austrian Tyrol, away from every source of information of what pa.s.ses in the world--away equally from critical reproof or the word of cheering hope. I will not tell you with what pleasure I take up the lines whenever you bid me go forward, nor how anxiously I would learn what may be your present judgment, while I would willingly spare you (and myself) the pain of an unfavourable verdict should conscience dictate one."

_To Miss Edgeworth_.

"Riedenburg, Bregenz, Lac De Constance,

_New Year's Day_, 1847.

"Dear Madam,--That a letter of mine should have gone astray is of little moment to any one, but that I should be under the imputation of ingrat.i.tude for your most kind letter of last August is of very great consequence to me, and to prevent this possible event I write now--uncertain whether a note I had unluckily intrusted to a private hand may have ever reached you. I was travelling in the Tyrol when your letter found me, and I replied to it at once, giving my letter to a person returning to England, with several others, one of which I know for certain did not come to hand. By the same occasion I directed my publisher to send you a little volume called 'St Patrick's Eve'--has this miscarried?

"I am uncertain whether I should not prefer the unjust reproach of neglect to the possible offence of boring you in duplicate. Still, it is better to incur this _risque_, for not two nor twenty letters would convey my thankfulness for all your kindness and encouragement. It is not because your two letters are my only literary triumphs that I set such store by them, though such is truly the case; but that I see reflected in my own little children the eager delight with which I myself as a child read your writings and learned to love them. Your praise is then doubly dear, as it partakes of the character of a reward to one of your _eleves_. Let me add that there is a domestic triumph in this too, and that my little people felt proud of Papa when he told them what Miss Edgeworth said of him. I am afraid to speak of my 'Knight of Gwynne,' lest my former letter should be already before you, and all the [? gossip] about my intentions and how I lapsed from them be a twice-told tale. One thing is certain, however the story would have inclined, the same faults would cling to it. I have no constructiveness in my head; the most I am capable of is the portraiture of certain characters with more or less of contrast or 'relief' between them. These once formed, I put them _en scene_, to die out in an early chapter when their vitality is weak,--if stronger, to survive to the end of the volume. That such halting incoherency would make very slovenly inartistic narratives, I have only to look back on what I have written to see. My own deficiencies, added to the fatal facility of No.

publication, have combined to make this a grave and, I fear, irremediable fault with me, and even when I strive after better things, I invariably find that every step upwards is made at the cost of injury to my popularity, and when my friends encourage, my publisher is sure to upbraid me.

"The epigram I quoted in 'The Knight' was repeated to me at least twenty years back by a singularly agreeable and gifted conversationalist, the late Wm. Gouldersby, my brother's predecessor in the Rectory of Tullamore. I was only a boy when I heard it, and need not say how strong was the impression made that has endured to the present.

"Your kindness--like all real kindnesses--emboldens, and I would, if I dared, ask your permission to say something of my next story,--I mean, of one that I intend to write at a future day. As I have already confessed to my inability to construct a plot and continue all the tortuous difficulties and surprises of a well-imagined tale, the most I could inflict upon you would be a meagre outline of my object, and the purpose for which my narrative is constructed: so much--if I had your permission--I should certainly like [to do].

"The post-mortem recollections you are good enough to notice in 'O'Leary' were little else than a transcript of my own feeling during recovery from the only severe illness I ever had. [They] have so much of truth about them that they were actually present to my mind day after day.

"I have little doubt that volition, powerfully exerted under the pressure of religious fervour and faith, is the secret agency of those miraculous cures whose occasional authenticity is beyond question.

"My present task is writing a little volume of Tyrol sketches--partly to ill.u.s.trate some of the national proverbs of that simple people. We have been living amongst them now for above a year, and hourly growing more and more attracted to their unaffected kindliness and sincerity. The little tales I am endeavouring to shape out have the veracity of real scenes and real people in their favour, so far as I can convey them, but are quite devoid of all high interest. But if you will allow me, whenever they appear, to send you a copy, it will give me sincere gratification.

"I will not trespa.s.s on the goodness which has already given me such heartfelt pleasure by asking you to write to me. I will only say that I have never felt at the same time so proud and so happy as when reading those [letters] you have sent me, and that I thank you again and again for the happiness in which I write myself."

_To Miss Edgeworth_.