Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters Volume I Part 32

"The opening of 'Glencore' having already appeared in the Magazine, will, I now find, seriously damage its continuance elsewhere, since no periodical will republish the past chapters, nor can they take up a story thus interrupted, and when commencement must be sought for elsewhere.... Now Mr Wardlaw knows, and the books will prove, that my terms with M'Glashan were 20 per sheet. By a dodge in a mere laughing conversation at breakfast he made a sheet to mean sixteen or seventeen pages, and as I never haggled about anything, he actually took advantage of my easiness, and paid me 20 per seventeen pages.... In a pure matter of business I have no right to dwell upon the want of consideration towards an old friend and supporter of the Magazine like myself, but I do feel deeply the scant courtesy with which I have been treated, and the little regard paid either to my interests or my sentiments as an author."

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Florence, _Dec._ 5, 1865.

"I thank you most heartily for keeping me _au courant_ to the destinies of the Magazine. I have just learned that H[urst] & B[lackett] have become the proprietors, with the intention of publis.h.i.+ng in future in England, as I see 'The Dublin Evening Mail' has already announced. H.

& B. are also, as I am informed, about to write to me,--probably about 'Glencore,' but not impossibly about editors.h.i.+p. Many of the difficulties and 'disagreeables' which my friends antic.i.p.ate for me as editor of the Magazine would be probably obviated by publis.h.i.+ng in England. Indeed from that moment the journal would cease to be Irish--at least, in all the acrimonious attributes of that unhappy adjective; and if H. & B. would propose such terms as I could accept, I'd accede, if only as a valid and sufficient reason to draw nearer to England, wherefrom I have, for my own and my children's interests, too long separated myself. I also think that with capital, and London publis.h.i.+ng to back it, the Magazine might be raised into a very worthy rivalry with 'Blackwood's,' its one solitary compet.i.tor. However, I am merely speculating on all this, and rather weaving a web of hopes and wishes than of solid reason and sound expectation.

"It would be well if the Dublin people (in 50 Sackville St.) could be brought to book for the part 'Glencores' at once. There are also a few pp. about politics in the August No., written at M'Glashan's request.

They cost me more work than double as much fiction.

"I hope you continue to like 'Cro-Martin.' They say in England it is the best I've done,--but I scarcely hope it myself."

The year 1855 closed, with plenty of work to do and plenty of interest in the work, with the usual shortage of supplies, with hopes and fears and projects chasing each other through the brain which had coined them.

'The Martins' was rapidly advancing towards its close. The serial course of 'Glencore' had been interrupted by the difficulties which had beset the Magazine, and these difficulties were not surmounted until the spring of 1856, when Lever made a journey to London and entered into an arrangement with Hurst & Blackett to continue the story, payment to be at the rate of 20 per sheet. In London he heard that his brother was seriously ill. He intended to cross over to Ireland, but John Lever's doctors warned him that he must not visit his brother, as his only chance of recovery depended upon perfect rest; so the novelist returned, gloomily, to Italy. By this time 'The Martins' had been published in volume form. He was more sensitive than usual about criticisms of this book, and the opinion of a London literary weekly that "Mr Lever had committed his one dull novel" caused him intense chagrin. His own opinion was that the more reflective characters would please his friends; and Mary Martin was one of his best-loved heroines--therefore his friends should admire her.

He was able now to devote his attention exclusively to 'Glencore,' and all would have been well with him, only that he was very much disturbed about his son. The young soldier had been sowing a considerable crop of wild oats.

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Casa Capponi, Florence, _Nov_. 21, 1856.

"I have just learnt that Charley is idling about in Dublin, his regiment having been disbanded, and he himself, having pa.s.sed some bills and contracted other debts, being probably unwilling to face us here at home. I say probably, because he has not written to any of us, and it is only through Maxwell having met him that I know of his being in Dublin.

"Pa.s.sing over the distress and disappointment that this has occasioned me, I address myself at once to the question--What is to be done with him? Now, as he must earn his bread in some fas.h.i.+on, and as he has himself closed the [? gates] against him by his misconduct, I want to ascertain if he is disposed to work at any career, and what? If medicine, I can, through my Dublin professional connection, have him apprenticed, and will do my best to support him--not in extravagance and debauchery, but suitably and becomingly--as long as I am able.

"To broach this myself directly to him would be to weaken any influence his past misconduct should exert over him, so that the suggestion, to be effectual, ought to come from another,--none so fit as you, whose attachment to me he well knows. Now if you would sound him, and say that if he were really disposed to make amends for all he has done and steadily to devote himself to study and application, you would at once acquaint me with this resolve and endeavour to effect an arrangement to carry it out. We could thus at least approximate the knowledge of whether he desires to be of use to himself, and in what capacity. Had he come straight back here at once I should have set him down to read with a tutor, but as this has not happened, and as I see great disadvantages in his coming to a place like this with such habits as he has now acquired, I deem the best thing will be to try if he can be settled down to learn in Dublin either the rudiments of a career or to prepare himself for a merchant's office.

"If he has not called on you ere this, he will of course be heard of through Miss Baker or Mr Saunders of Mount Street; but I trust that you have already seen him. If you find that he rejects the overtures as to a profession, and will not give such pledges as may lead us to hope for amendment, you must give him 20 to come home at once (there is something now due to me from the Magazine). At the same time, it is essential that he should come at once home, and not remain to spend the money at hotels.

"But the chances are that he may prefer to embrace a career, and I have only to hope that he may be taught by past experience that a life of debt and dissipation cannot lead to credit or honour. His present liabilities have thrown me into great, almost too great, embarra.s.sment.

How I am to pay them and support myself and my family is a problem that will depend upon my gaining back a little of that tranquillity of head without which no man can work. I will, however, do my best and hope for the best.

"Of course you must not suffer it to escape you that this idea of a profession originates with me. It must be, as it were, _your_ suggestion; and while you promise to write and consult me upon it, you could recommend him to go down and stay at Ardnucker, where I am sure they would kindly have him until I write you again.

"I hope I have already expressed all I mean, but my head is sorely troubled while I write."

Young Lever did not relish the idea of visiting a father whose purse and whose patience he had taxed so severely. He preferred to retire upon his uncle at Ardnucker, and later to quarter himself upon the Rev. Mortimer O'Sullivan at Tanderagee.

'The Fortunes of Glencore' was out of hand early in 1857. It was published in three volumes by Chapman & Hall--the first work (bearing the author's name on the t.i.tle-page) by Lever which was issued in three-volume form. Of Glencore' he says: "I am unwilling to suffer this tale to leave my hands without a word of explanation.... If I have always had before me the fact that to movement and action, to the stir of incident, and to a certain light-heartedness and gaiety of temperament (more easy to impart to others than to repress in one's self), I have owned much, if not all, of whatever popularity I enjoyed, I have felt (or fancied I felt) that it would be in the delineation of very different scenes, and in the portraiture of very different emotions, that I should reap what I would reckon as a real success. This conviction--or impression, if you will--has become stronger with years and with fuller knowledge of life; and time has confirmed me in the notion that any skill I possess lies in the detection of character and in the unravelment of that tangled skein which makes up human motives."

Opportunities of beholding the game played by Society (he further declares), as well as his inclination to study the game, helped him to give a picture of the manners, and to describe the modes and moods, of the age he lived in. If he had often grinned because of the narrow fortune which had prevented him from "cutting in," he was able to console himself with the thought that he might have risen from the table a loser. He goes on to say that though the incidents which are noticeable in the world of the well-bred are fewer, because the friction is less than in cla.s.ses where vicissitudes of fortune are more frequent, yet the play of pa.s.sion, though shadowed by polished conventionalities, is often more highly developed.

To trace and to mark these developments was, he a.s.sures us, one of the great pleasures of his life. "Certain details, certain characteristics, I have of course borrowed--as he who would mould a human face must needs have copied an eye, a nose, a chin from some existent model,--but beyond this I have not gone; nor indeed have I ever found, in all my experiences of life, that fiction ever suggests what has not been implanted unconsciously by memory--originality in the delineation of character being little more than a new combination of old materials derived from that source."

'Glencore' being disposed of, its author planned out a new tale, going again to Ireland for his scenery and his characters. He took for his hero, or leading villain, John Sadlier,* the once famous banker and politician, who put an end to his own career in 1856 by committing suicide on Hampstead Heath. Lever did not attempt to keep closely to the true story of Sadlier, or to depict the man as he had lived and moved: he merely used incidents in his career and traits in his character, and as he warmed to his work Davenport Dunn bore but a slight resemblance to John Sadlier. By this time the novelist had all but abandoned the portrayal of comic personages,--'Glencore' harboured Billy Traynor, but Billy was only a faint echo of Mickey Free or Darby the Blast,--and 'Davenport Dunn,' though it was full of spirit, bristled with character sketches, and was packed with adventure, was on the whole a much graver and possibly a stronger performance than anything which had preceded it. The story appeared in the monthly part form, Phiz's ill.u.s.trations embellis.h.i.+ng it.

* It is said that Sadlier was one of the models for d.i.c.kens's Mr Merdle.--E. D.

Lever paid another visit to London in the spring of 1857: it was chiefly a business visit He wished to discuss his forthcoming novel with Chapman & Hall and with Phiz. While he was in London he received some disturbing news of his son (who was still idling in Ireland), and he was half inclined to cross the Irish Sea, but he found he had lingered too long in London--a city in which he always managed to accomplish more card-playing than was good for his health or his pocket,--so he hurried back to Florence and 'Davenport Dunn.' Although there is no evidence to bear out the conjecture, it is most likely that he endeavoured during this visit to England to further his cause as a prospective diplomatist.

On the whole, 1857 was a comparatively uneventful year.

Again--early in 1858--did the pressure of his financial affairs stir him to the exertion of "working double tides," and, looking around him for a subject, it occurred to him that a highly romantic tale could be woven out of the adventures of a supposit.i.tious son and heir of Charles Edward Stuart, the offspring of a secret marriage with a daughter of the Geraldines. He found a sufficiently plausible groundwork for the theory of this marriage and its consequences in the letters of Sir Horace Mann.*

* He quotes Sir Horace as his authority for the pitiful tragedy which concludes the adventures of his 'Chevalier': "Any anxiety we might ever have felt on the score of a certain individual alleged to have been the legitimately born son of Charles Edward is now over. He was murdered last week.... Many doubted that there was any, even the slightest, claim on his part to Stuart blood, but Mr Pitt was not of this number. He had taken the greatest pains to obtain information on the subject, and had, I am told, in his possession copies of all the doc.u.ments which substantiated the youth's rights."--E. D.

Poor M'Glashan died in 1858, and 'The Dublin University' pa.s.sed into the hands of Mr Digby Starkey and Mr Cheyne Brady. They proposed to Lever that he should renew his relations with the Magazine, and he arranged with them to contribute to it the adventures of 'Gerald Fitzgerald the Chevalier.'

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Casa Capponi, Florence, _July_ 4, 1858

"After repeated promises of place from the present Government, I am put off with an offer so small and contemptible that I answered it by indignant refusal.

"The Yankees have come to something like--but not exactly--a definite offer. If it be put in a real, tangible, and unevasive way I shall accept, pitching my friends the Tories to the winds.

"Have you read 'D. D.' and 'Fitzgerald'? If so, what do you say to them?"

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Spezzia, _Aug_. 10, 1858.

"I cannot tell you how gratified I was by what you say of 'Cro-Martin.'

Independently of all a man's natural misgivings about his own failing powers, it is unspeakably encouraging to be judged favourably by one's oldest and best of friends, whose true-heartedness would not suffer him to flatter or say more than he felt. I know--I feel--that my old vein is worked out. I am as much aware of it as I am of scanty hair and the _fifty_ other signs of age about me, but I don't despair of finding other shafts to work, and of making my knowledge of life and mankind available,--even though I have lost the power to make my books droll or laughable.

"We have come down here for the bathing to the most beautiful spot on the Mediterranean, and are boating and swimming to our heart's content,--everything but working, which really I cannot do in this most fascinating of all idling localities."

_To Mr Alexander Spencer_.

"Casa Capponi, Florence, _Nov_. 1,1858.

"Yesterday I had a civil note from Lord Malmesbury stating that the regulation for consular appointments required that no candidate should be above fifty, and all should submit to a rigid examination. He saw no better means of introducing me into 'the line' than by creating for me a vice-consulate at a place I am much attached to--Spezzia. The rule as to age and examination did not apply to vice-consular appointments nor to their promotion, so that once a V.-C. I can be advanced, if opportunity serve, to something worth having. Spezzia will not be 300 a-year; but as I like the place, and there is nothing--actually nothing--to do, I have thought it best to accept it. In fact, to refuse would be to exclude myself totally from all hope of F. O. patronage, and this I did not deem wise to do. The whole negotiation is yet secret, and until I am gazetted I wish it to remain so. The consuls.h.i.+p at Naples is what I look to, and what, if negotiations should open to a renewal of relations there, I might hope to obtain.

"I hope you like 'D. Dunn.' I have hardly courage to say the same for 'Fitzgerald,' though some say it is better than the other.

"I have been solicited to give Readings _a la_ d.i.c.kens; but though pecuniarily a temptation, there is much I dislike in the exhibition....