Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters Volume Ii Part 50

The favour with which the public received 'Charles O'Malley,' and the pleasant notices forwarded to me by my publisher, gave me great courage; and when asked if I could be ready by a certain date with a new story, I never hesitated to say Yes. My first thought was that in the campaign of the Great Napoleon I might find what would serve as a "pendant" to the story I had just completed, and that by making--as there would be no impropriety in doing--an Irishman a soldier of France, I could still have on my side certain sympathies of my reader which would not so readily attach to a foreigner. I surrounded myself at once with all the histories and memoirs I could find of the Consulate and the Empire; and, so far as I could, withdrew my mind from questions of home interest, and lived entirely amidst the mighty events that began at Marengo and ended at Waterloo. Whether I failed to devise such a narrative as I needed, or whether--and I suspect this must have been the real reason--I found that the vast-ness of the theme overpowered me, I cannot at this distance of time remember. But so it was, that I found much time had slipped over, and that beyond some few notes and some scattered references, I had actually done nothing; and my publisher had applied to me for the t.i.tle of my story for advertis.e.m.e.nt before I had begun or written a line of it. Some disparaging remarks on Ireland and Irishmen in the London press, not very unfrequent at the time, nor altogether obsolete now, had provoked me at the moment; and the sudden thought occurred of a reprisal by showing the many instances in which the Englishman would almost of necessity mistake and misjudge my countrymen, and that out of these blunders and misapprehensions, situations might arise that, if welded into a story, might be made to be amusing. I knew that there was not a cla.s.s nor a condition in Ireland which had not marked differences from the correlative rank in England; and that not only the Irish squire, the Irish priest, and the Irish peasant were unlike anything in the larger island, but that the Dublin professional man, the official, and the shopkeeper, had traits and distinctions essentially their own. I had frequently heard opinions p.r.o.nounced on Irish habits which I had easily traced to that quizzing habit of my countrymen, who never can deny themselves the enjoyment of playing on the credulity of the traveller,--all the more eagerly when they see his note-book taken out to record their shortcomings and absurdities. These thoughts suggested 'Jack Hinton,' and led me to turn from my intention to follow the French arms, or rather to postpone the plan, for it had got too strong a hold on me to be utterly abandoned. I have already acknowledged that I strayed from the path I had determined on, and, with very little reference to my original intention, suffered my hero to take his chance among the natives. Indeed I soon found him too intensely engaged in the cares of self-preservation to have much time or taste for criticism on his neighbours. I have owned elsewhere that for Mr Paul Rooney, Father Tom Loftus, Bob Mahon, O'Grady, Tipperary Joe, and even Corny Delaney, I had not to draw on imagination, but I never yet heard one correct guess as to the originals. While on this theme, I may recall an incident which occurred about three years after the story was published, and which, if only for the trait of good-humour it displayed, is worth remembering.

I was making a little rambling tour through Ireland with my wife, following for the most part the sea-board, and only taking such short cuts inland as should bring us to some spot of especial interest.

We journeyed with our own horses, and consequently rarely exceeded five-and-twenty or thirty miles in a day. While I was thus refres.h.i.+ng many an old memory, and occasionally acquiring some new experience, the ramble interested me much. It was in the course of this almost capricious journey--for we really had nothing like a plan--we reached the little town of Gort, where, to rest our horses, we were obliged to remain a day. There was not much to engage attention in the place. It was perhaps less marked by poverty than most Irish towns of its cla.s.s, and somewhat cleaner and more orderly; but the same distinctive signs were there of depression, the same look of inertness that one remarks almost universally through the land. In strolling half listlessly about on the outskirts of the town, we were overtaken by a heavy thunder-storm, and were driven to take shelter in a little shop where a number of other people had also sought refuge. As we stood there, an active-looking but elderly man in the neat black of an ecclesiastic, and with a rosette in his hat, politely addressed us, and proposed that, instead of standing there in the crowd, we would accept the hospitality of his lodging, which was in the same house, till such time as the storm should have pa.s.sed over. His manner, his voice, and his general appearance convinced me he was a dignitary of our Church. I thanked him at once for his courtesy, and accepted his offer. He proceeded to show us the way, and we entered a very comfortably-furnished sitting-room, where a pleasant fire was burning, and sat down well pleased with our good fortune. While we chatted freely over the weather and the crops, some chance expression escaped me to show that I had regarded him as a clergyman of the Established Church. He at once, but with peculiar delicacy, hastened to correct my mistake, and introduce himself as the Roman Catholic Dean O'Shaughnessy. "I am aware whom I am speaking to,"

added he, p.r.o.nouncing my name. Before I could express my surprise at being recognised where I had not one acquaintance, he explained that he had read--in some local paper which described our mode of travelling--of my being in the neighbourhood, and this led him at once to guess our ident.i.ty. After a few flattering remarks on the pleasure something of mine had afforded him, he said, "You are very hard upon _us_, Mr Lever.

You never let _us_ off easily, but I a.s.sure you for all that we bear you no ill-will. There is a strong national tie between us, and we can stand a good deal of quizzing for the sake of that bond." I knew he was alluding to his order; and when I said something--I cannot remember what--about the freedoms that fiction led to, he stopped, saying, "Well, well! the priests are not angry with you after all, if it wasn't for one thing."

"Oh, I know," cried I, "that stupid story of Father D'Array and the Pope."*

"No, no, not that; we laughed at that as much as any Protestant of you all. What we could not bear so well was an ugly remark you made in 'Harry Lorrequer,' where--when there was a row at a wake and the money was scattered over the floor--you say that the priest gathered more than his share because--and here was the bitterness--old habit had accustomed him to sc.r.a.pe up his corn in low places! Now, Mr Lever, that was not fair; it was not generous, surely!" The good temper and the gentleman-like quietness of the charge made me very uncomfortable at the time; and now, after many years, I recall the incident to show the impression it made on me--the only atonement I can make for the flippancy. I had begun this story of 'Jack Hinton' at Brussels, but on a proposition made to me by the publisher and proprietor of 'The Dublin University Magazine' to take the editors.h.i.+p of that periodical, I determined to return to Ireland. To do this, I was not alone to change my abode and my country, but to alter the whole destiny of my life. I was at the time a practising physician attached to the British Legation, with the best practice of any Englishman in the place, a most pleasant society, and, what I valued not less than them all, the intimacy of the most agreeable and companionable man** I ever knew in my life, whose friends.h.i.+p I have never ceased to treasure with pride and affection.

* A story told in 'Harry Lorrequer.'

** Sir George Hamilton Seymour.

I dedicated to him my first book, and it is with deep grat.i.tude and pleasure I recall him while I give the last touches to these volumes.

There is one character in this story to which imagination contributed scarcely anything in the portraiture, though I do not pretend to say that the situations in which I have placed him are derived from facts.

Tipperary Joe was a real personage; and if there are, among my readers, any who remember the old coaching days between Dublin and Kilkenny, they cannot fail to recall the curious figure, clad in a scarlet hunting-coat and black velvet cap, who used, at the stage between Carlow and the Royal Oak, to emerge from some field beside the road, and, after a trot of a mile or so beside the horses, crawl up at the back of the coach and over the roof, collecting what he called his rent from the pa.s.sengers,--a very humble tribute generally, but the occasion of a good deal of jest and merriment, not diminished if by any accident an English traveller were present, who could neither comprehend the relations between Joe and the gentlemen, nor the marvellous freedom with which this poor ragged fellow discussed the pa.s.sengers and their opinions.

Joe--I must call him so, for his real name has escaped me--once came to see me in Trinity College, and was curious to visit the Chapel, the Library, and the Examination Hall. I will not pretend that I undertook my office of cicerone without some misgivings, for though I was prepared to endure all the quizzings of my friends and acquaintances, I was not quite at my ease as to how the authorities--the dons, as they are called elsewhere--would regard this singular apparition within academic precincts. Joe's respectful manner, and an air of interest that bespoke how much the place engaged his curiosity, soon set me at my ease; while the ready tact with which he recognised and uncovered to such persons as held rank or station at once satisfied me that I was incurring no risk whatever in my office as guide. The kitchen and the sight of those gigantic spits, on which a whole series of legs of mutton were turning slowly, overcame all the studied reserve of his manner, and he burst into a most enthusiastic encomium on the merits of an inst.i.tution so admirably suited to satisfy human requirements. When he learned, from what source I do not know, that I had put him in a book, he made it--not unreasonably, perhaps--the ground of a demand on my purse; and if the talented artist who had ill.u.s.trated the tale had been accessible to him, I suspect that he, too, would have had to submit to the levy of a blackmail, all the more heavily as Joe was by no means pleased with a portrait which really only self-flattery could have objected to. Hablot K. Browne never saw him, and yet in his sketch of him standing to say his "good-bye" to Jack Hinton at Kingston, he has caught the character of his figure and the moping lounge of his att.i.tude to perfection.

Indeed, though there is no resemblance in the face to Joe, the pose of the head and the position of the limbs recall him at once. I have already said elsewhere that the volume amused me while I was writing it.

Indeed I had not at the time exhausted, if I had even tapped, the cask of a buoyancy of temperament which carried me along through my daily life in the sort of spirit one rides a fresh horse over a swelling sward. If this confession will serve to apologise for the want of studied coherency in the narrative, and the reckless speed in which events succeed events throughout, I shall deem myself indebted to the generous indulgence of my readers.

'THE O'DONOGHUE.'

It was in wandering through the south of Ireland I came to visit the wild valley of Glennesk--a scene of loneliness and desolation with picturesque beauty I have never seen surpa.s.sed. The only living creature I met for miles of the way was a very old man, whose dress and look bespoke extreme poverty, but who, on talking with him, I discovered to be the owner of four cows that were grazing on the rocky sides of the cliff. He had come some miles, he told me, to give his cows the spare herbage that cropped up amongst the granite boulders. As I had seen no house or trace of habitation as I came along, I was curious to know where he lived, but his answer, as he pointed to the mountain, was, "There, alone," and this with evident unwillingness to be more freely communicative. Though not caring to be interrogated, nor, like most Irish peasants, much inclined to have a talk with a stranger, he made no scruple to ask for alms, and pleaded his wretched rags--and they were very miserable--as a proof of his poverty. I did not think that the pittance I gave him exactly warranted me in asking how the owner of the cows we saw near us could be in that condition of want he represented; at all events I preferred not to dash the pleasure I was giving him by the question. We parted, therefore, on good terms, but some miles farther on in the glen I learned from a woman, who was "bulling" her clothes in the river, that "ould Mat," as she called him, was one of the most well-to-do farmers in that part of the country; that he had given his daughters, of whom he had several, good marriage portions, and that his son was a thriving attorney in the town of Tralee. "Maybe yer honor's heard of him," said the woman,--"Tim O'Donoghue." It was no new thing to me to know the Irish peasant in his character as a h.o.a.rder and a saver. There is no one trait so indicative of the Celt as acquisitiveness, nor does Eastern story contain a man more given to the castle-building that grows out of some secret h.o.a.rd--however small--than Paddy. He is to add half an acre to his potato-garden, or to buy another pig, or to send the "gossoon" to a school in the town, or to pay his pa.s.sage to New York. This tendency to construct a future, so strong in the Irish nature, has its rise in a great reliance on what he feels to be the goodness of G.o.d: a firm conviction that all his struggles are watched and cared for, and that every little turn of good fortune has been given him by some especial favour, lies deep in his nature, and suggests an amount of hope to him which a less sanguine spirit could never have conceived. While I thought over the endless contrarieties of this mysterious national character, where good and evil eternally lay side by side, I wondered within myself whether the new civilisation of latter years was likely to be successful in dealing with men whose temperaments and manners were so unlike the English, or were we right in extinguis.h.i.+ng the old feudalism that bound the peasant to the landlord, ere we had prepared each for the new relations of mere gain and loss that were in nature to subsist between them? Between the great families--the old houses of the land and the present race of proprietors--there lay a couple of generations of men who, with all the traditions and many of the pretensions of birth and fortune, had really become in ideas, modes of life, and habits, very little above the peasantry about them. They inhabited, it is true, the "great house,"

and they were in name the owners of the soil, but, crippled by debt and overborne by mortgages, they subsisted in a s.h.i.+fty conflict with their creditors, rack-renting their miserable tenants to maintain it.

Survivors of everything but pride of family, they stood there like stumps, blackened and charred, the last remnants of a burnt forest, their proportions attesting the n.o.ble growth that preceded them. What would the descendants of these men prove when, dest.i.tute of fortune and helpless, they were thrown upon a world that actually regarded them as blamable for the unhappy condition of Ireland? Would they stand by "their order" in so far as to adhere to the cause of the gentry? Or would they share the feelings of the peasant to whose lot they had been reduced, and charging on the Saxons the reverses of their fortune, stand forth as rebels to England? Here was much food for speculation and something for a story. For an opening scene what could I desire finer than the gloomy grandeur and the rugged desolation of Glenflesk! And if some patches of bright verdure here and there gleamed amidst the barrenness,--if a stray sunbeam lit up the granite cliffs and made the heather glow,--might there not be certain reliefs of human tenderness and love to show that no scene in which man has a part is utterly dest.i.tute of those affections whose home is the heart? I had now got my theme and my locality. For my name I took 'The O'Donoghue'; it had become a.s.sociated in my mind with Glenflesk, and would not be separated from it. Here, then, in one word, is the history of this book. If the performance bears but slight relation to the intention,--if, indeed, my story seems to have little reference to what suggested it,--it will only be another instance of a waywardness which has beset me through life, and left me never sure when I started for Norway that I might not find myself in Naples. It is not necessary, perhaps, for me to say that no character in this tale was drawn from a model. I began the story, in so far as a few pages went, at a little inn at Killarney, and I believe I stole the name of Kerry O'Leary from one of the boatmen on the lake; but, so far as I am aware, it is the only theft in the book. I believe that the very crude notions of an English tourist for the betterment of Ireland, and some exceedingly absurd comments he made me on the habits of people which an acquaintances.h.i.+p of three weeks enabled him to p.r.o.nounce on, provoked me to draw the character of Sir Marmaduke; but I can declare that the traveller aforesaid only acted as tinder to a mine long prepared, and afforded me a long-sought-for opportunity--not for exposing, for I did not go that far, but--for touching on the consummate effrontery with which a mere pa.s.sing stranger can settle the difficulties and determine the remedies for a country in which the resident sits down overwhelmed by the amount, and utterly despairing of a solution. I have elsewhere recorded that I have been blamed for the fate I reserved for Kate O'Donoghue, and that she deserved something better than to have her future linked to one who was so unworthy of her in many ways. Till I re-read the story after a long lapse of years, I had believed that this charge was better founded than I am now disposed to think it. First of all, judging from an Irish point of view, I do not consent to regard Mark O'Donoghue as a bad fellow. The greater number of his faults were the results of neglected training, irregular--almost utter want of--education, and the false position of an heir to a property so swamped by debt as to be valueless. I will not say these are the ingredients which go to the formation of a very regular life or a very perfect husband, but they might all of them have made a worse character than Mark's if he had not possessed some very sterling qualities as a counterbalance. Secondly, I am not of those who think that the married life of a man is but the second volume of his bachelor existence. I rather incline to believe that he starts afresh in life under circ.u.mstances very favourable to the development of whatever is best, and to the extinguishment of what is worst in him. That is, of course, where he marries well, and where he allies himself to qualities of temper and tastes which will serve as the complement, or, at times, the correctives, of his own. Now Kate O'Donoghue would instance what I mean in this case. Then I keep my best reason for the last: they liked each other. This, if not a guarantee for their future happiness, is still the best "martingale" the game of marriage admits of. I am free to own that the book I had in my head to write was a far better one than I have committed to paper, but as this is a sort of event which has happened to better men than myself, I bear it as one of the accidents that authors.h.i.+p is heir to. A French critic--one far too great to have his dicta despised--has sneered at my making a poor ignorant peasant child find pleasure in the resonance of a Homeric verse; but I could tell him of barefooted boys in the South, running errands for a scanty subsistence, with a knowledge of cla.s.sical literature which would puzzle many a grown student to cope with.

'THE KNIGHT OF GWYNNE.'

I wrote this story in the Tyrol.* The accident of my residence there was in this wise: I had travelled about the Continent for a considerable time, in company with my family, and with my own horses. Our carriage was a large and comfortable _caleche_, and our team four horses, the leaders of which, well-bred and thriving-looking, served as saddle-horses when needed. There was something very gipsy-like in this roving uncertain existence (that had no positive bent or limit, and left every choice of place an open question) which gave me intense enjoyment.

It opened to me views of Continental life, scenery, people, and habits which I should certainly never have attained by other modes of travel.

* As a matter of fact--though the fact in itself is of little importance,--Lever composed about one-half of 'The Knight' at Carlsruhe. The novel began to appear in monthly parts early in the year 1846.--E. D.

Not only were our journeys necessarily short each day, but we frequently sojourned in little villages and out-of-the-way spots where, if pleased by the place itself and the accommodation afforded, we would linger on for days, the total liberty of our time at our disposal, and all our nearest belongings around us. In the course of these rambles we had arrived at the town of Bregenz, on the Lake of Constance, where the inn-keeper, to whom I was known, accosted me with all the easy freedom of his calling, and half-jestingly alluded to my mode of travelling as a most unsatisfactory and wasteful way of life, which could never turn out profitably to me or mine. From the window where we were standing as we talked I could descry the tall summit of an ancient castle or _schloss_, about two miles away; and, rather to divert my antagonist from his argument than with any more serious purpose, I laughingly told my host, if he could secure me such a fine old chateau as that I then looked at, I should stable my nags and rest where I was. On the following day, thinking of nothing less than my late conversation, the host entered my room to a.s.sure me that he had been over to the castle, had seen the baron, and learned that he would have no objection to lease me his chateau, provided I took it for a fixed term, and with all its accessories, not only of furniture but cows and farm-requisites. One of my horses, accidentally p.r.i.c.ked in shoeing, had obliged me at the moment to delay a day or two at the inn, and for want of better to do, though without the most remote intention of becoming a tenant of the castle, I yielded so far to my host's solicitation as to walk over and see it.

If the building itself was far from faultless it was s.p.a.cious and convenient, and its position on a low hill in the middle of a lawn finer than anything I can convey, the four sides of the _schloss_ commanding four distinct and perfectly dissimilar views. By the north it looked over a wooded plain, on which stood the Convent of Mehreran, and beyond this, the broad expanse of the Lake of Constance. The south opened on a view towards the Upper Rhine and the valley that led to the Via Mala.

On the east you saw the Gebhardsberg and its chapel, and the lovely orchards that bordered Bregenz; while to the west rose the magnificent Lenten and the range of the Swiss Alps--their summits lost in the clouds. I was so enchanted by the glorious panorama around me, and so carried away by the thought of a life of quiet labour and rest in such a spot, that, after hearing a very specious account of the varied economies I should secure by this choice of a residence, and the resources I should have in excursions on all sides, I actually contracted to take the chateau, and became the master of the Bieder Schloss from that day.*

* Dr Fitzpatrick, in his 'Life of Lever,' furnishes a more prosaic account of the annexing of the Tyrolean castle,--Mr Stephen Pearce being given as the authority for the unromantic statement that the _schloss_ was advertised "to let," and that while the Levers were sojourning in Carlsruhe negotiations were opened with Baron Pollnitz, and Mr Pearce was despatched to Bregenz, where he entered into an agreement for a short lease of "the premises." This, of course, spoils the story which Charles Lever tells; but I have in my possession a letter written by Mr Pearce at Riedenburg on May 26,1846, quoted at p. 210 of vol i., which would seem to bear out the tale told by the author of 'The Knight of Gwynne' in 1872.--E. D.

Having thus explained by what chance I came to pitch my home in this little-visited spot, I have no mind to dwell further on these Tyrol experiences than so far as they concern the story I wrote there. If the scene in which I was living, the dress of the peasants, the daily wants and interests, had been my prompters, I could not have addressed myself to an Irish theme; but long before I had come to settle at Riedenburg, when wandering among the Rhine villages, on the vine-clad slopes of the Bergstra.s.se, I had been turning over in my mind the Union period of Ireland as the era for a story. It was a time essentially rich in the men we are proud of as a people, and peculiarly abounding in traits of self-denial and devotion which, in the corruption of a few, have been totally lost sight of, the very patriotism of the time having been stigmatised as factious opposition or unreasoning resistance to wiser counsels. That nearly every man of ability in the land was against the Minister; that not only all the intellect of Ireland but all the high spirit of its squirearchy and the generous impulses of the people were opposed to the Union,--there is no denying. If eloquent appeal and powerful argument could have saved a nation, Henry Grattan or Plunkett would not have spoken in vain; but the measure was decreed before it was debated, and the annexation of Ireland was made a Cabinet decision before it came to Irishmen to discuss it. I had no presumption to imagine I could throw any new light on the history of the period, or ill.u.s.trate the story of the measure by any novel details; but I thought it would not be uninteresting to sketch the era itself; what aspect society presented; how the country gentleman of the time bore himself in the midst of solicitations and temptings the most urgent and insidious,--what, in fact, was the character of that man whom no national misfortunes could subdue, no ministerial blandishments corrupt; of him, in short, that an authority with little bias to the land of his birth has called--The First Gentleman in Europe. I know well, I feel too acutely, how inadequately I have pictured what I desired to paint; but even, after the interval of years, I look back on my poor attempt with the satisfaction of one whose aim was not ign.o.ble. A long and deep experience of life permits me to say that in no land nor amongst any people have I ever found the type of what we love to emblematise by the word gentleman so distinctly marked out as in the educated and travelled Irishman of that period. The same unswerving fidelity of friends.h.i.+p, the same courageous devotion to a cause, the same haughty contempt for all that was mean or unworthy: these, with the lighter accessories of a genial temperament, joyous disposition, and a chivalrous respect for women, made up what, at least, I had in my mind when I tried to present to my reader my Knight of Gwynne. That my character of him was not altogether ideal, I can give no better proof than the fact that during the course of publication I received several letters from persons unknown to me, asking whether I had not drawn my portrait from this or that original,--many concurring in the belief that I had taken as my model The Knight of Kerry, whose qualities, I am well a.s.sured, fully warranted the suspicion. For my attempt to depict the social habits of the period I had but to draw on my memory. In my boyish days I had heard much of the period, and was familiar with most of the names of its distinguished men. Anecdotes of Henry Grattan, Flood, Parsons, Ponsonby, and Curran jostled in my mind with stories of their immediate successors, the Burkes and the Plunketts, whose fame has come down to the very day we live in. As a boy it was my fortune to listen to the narratives of the men who had been actors in the events of that exciting era, and who could even show me in modern Dublin the scenes where memorable events occurred, and not infrequently the very houses where celebrated convivialities had taken place. Thus, from Drogheda Street, the modern Sackville Street, where the beaux of the day lounged in all their bravery, to the Circular Road, where a long file of carriages, six-in-hand, evidenced the luxury and tone of display of the capital, I was deeply imbued with the features of the time, and I ransacked the old newspapers and magazines with a zest which only great familiarity with the names of the leading characters could have inspired. Though I have many regrets on the same score, there is no period of my life in which I have the same sorrow for not having kept some sort of notebook, instead of trusting to a memory most fatally unretentive and uncertain.

Through this omission I have lost traces of innumerable epigrams _jeux-d'esprit_; and even where my memory has occasionally relieved the effort, I have forgotten the author. To give an instance: the witty lines--

"With, a name that is borrowed, a t.i.tle that's bought, Sir William would fain be a gentleman thought: His wit is but cunning, his courage but vapour, His pride is but money, his money but paper."

These lines, wrongfully attributed to a political leader in the Irish House, were in reality written by Lovell Edgeworth on the well-known Sir William Gladdowes, who became Lord Newcomen; and the verse was not only poetry but prophecy, for on his bankruptcy, some years afterwards, the sarcasm became fact--his money _was_ but paper. The circ.u.mstance of the authors.h.i.+p of the lines was communicated to me by Miss Edgeworth, whose letter was my first step in acquaintance with her, and gave me a pleasure and a pride which long years have not been able to obliterate.

I remember in that letter she told me that she was in the habit of reading my story aloud to the audience of her nephews and nieces,--a simple announcement that imparted such a glow of proud delight to me that I can yet recall the courage with which I resumed the writing of my tale, and the hope it suggested of my being able one day to win a place of honour amongst those who, like herself, had selected Irish traits as the characteristics to adorn fiction. For Con Heffernan I had an original. For Bagenal Daly, too, I was not without a model. His sister is purely imaginary, but that she is not unreal I am bold enough to hope, since several have a.s.sured me that they know where I found my type. In my brief sketch of Lord Castlereagh I was not, I need scarcely say, much aided by the journals and pamphlets of the time, where his character and conduct were ruthlessly and most falsely a.s.sailed. It was my fortune to have possessed the close intimacy of one who had acted as his private secretary, and whose abilities have since raised him to a high station and great employment; and from him I came to know the real nature of one of the ablest statesmen of his age, as he was one of the most attractive companions and most accomplished gentlemen. I have no vain pretence to believe that by my weak and unfinished sketch I have in any way vindicated the Minister who carried the Union, but I have at least tried to represent him as he was in the society of his intimates: his gay and cheerful temperament, his frank nature, and--what least the world is disposed to concede to him--his sincere belief in the honesty of men whose convictions were adverse to him, and who could not be won over to his opinions. I have not endeavoured to conceal the gross corruption of an era which remains to us a national shame, but I would wish to lay stress on the fact that not a few resisted offers and temptations which, to men struggling with humble fortune and linked for life with the fate of the weaker country, must redound to their high credit. All the n.o.bler their conduct, as around them on every side were the great names of the land trafficking for t.i.tle and place, and shamelessly demanding office for their friends and relatives as the price of their own adhesion. For that degree of intimacy which I have represented as existing between Bagenal Daly and Freney the Robber, I have been once or twice reprehended for conveying a false and unreal view of the relations of the time; but the knowledge I myself had of Freney, of his habits and his exploits, was given to me by a well-known and highly connected Irish gentleman who represented a county in the Irish parliament, and who was a man of unblemished honour, and conspicuous alike in station and ability. And there is still--and once the trait existed more markedly in Ireland--a wonderful sympathy between all cla.s.ses and conditions of people, so that the old stories and traditions that amuse the crouching listener round the hearth of the cottage find their way into luxurious drawing-rooms; and by their means a brotherhood of sentiment was maintained between the highest cla.s.s in the land and the humblest peasant who laboured for his daily bread. I tried to display the effect of this strange teaching on the mind of a cultivated gentleman when I was describing The Knight of Gwynne. I endeavoured to show the "Irishry" of his nature was no other than the play of those qualities by which he appreciated his countrymen and was appreciated by them. So powerful is this sympathy and so strong the sense of national humour through all cla.s.ses of the people, that each is able to entertain a topic from the same point of view as his neighbour, and the subtle _equivoque_ in the polished witticism which amuses the gentleman is never lost on the untutored ear of the peasant. Is there any other land of which one can say so much? If this great feature of attractiveness pertains to the country and adds to its adaptiveness as the subject of fiction, I cannot but feel that to un-Irish ears it is necessary to make an explanation which will serve to show that what would elsewhere imply a certain blending of station and condition is here but a proof of that widespread understanding by which, however divided by race, tradition, and religion, Irishmen are always able to appeal to certain sympathies and dispositions held in common, and to feel the tie of a common country. At the period in which I placed my story the rivalry between the two nations was, with all its violence, by no means ungenerous. No contemptuous estimate of Irishmen formed the theme of English journalism; and between the educated men of both countries there was scarcely a jealousy. The character which political strife subsequently a.s.sumed changed much of this spirit, and dyed nationalities with an amount of virulence which, with all its faults and all its shortcomings, we do not find in the times of "The Knight of Gwynne."

'ROLAND CASHEL.'

I first thought of this story--I should say I planned it, if the expression were not misleading--when living at the Lake of Como. There, in a lovely little villa--the Cima--on the border of the lake, with that glorious blending of Alpine scenery and garden-like luxuriance around me, and little or none of interruption and intercourse, I had abundant time to make acquaintance with my characters, and follow them into innumerable situations and through adventures far more extraordinary and exciting than I dared afterwards to recount. I do not know how it may be with other storytellers, but I have to own for myself that the personages of a novel gain over me at times a degree of interest very little inferior to that inspired by living and real people, and that this is especially the case when I have found myself in some secluded spot and seeing little of the world. To such an ascendancy has this deception attained, that more than once I have found myself trying to explain why this person should have done that, and by what impulse that other was led into something else. In fact, I have found that there are conditions of the mind in which purely imaginary creations a.s.sume the characters of actual people, and act positively as though they were independent of the will that invented them. Of the strange manner in which imagination can thus a.s.sume the mastery, and for a while, at least, have command over the mind, I cannot give a stronger instance within my own experience than the mode in which 'Roland Cashel' was first conceived. When I began I intended that the action should be carried on in the land where the story opened. The scene on every side of me had shed its influence; the air was weighty with the perfume of the lime and the orange. To days of dazzling brilliancy there succeeded nights of tropical splendour, with stars of almost preternatural magnitude streaking the calm lake with long lines of light. To people a scene like this with the sort of characters that might befit it, was rather a matter of necessity with me than of choice, and it was then that Maritana revealed herself to me with a charm of loveliness I have never been able to repicture. It was there I bethought me of those pa.s.sionate natures in which climate, and soil, and vegetation reproduce themselves, glowing, ardent, and voluptuous as they are. It was there my fancy loved to stray among the changeful incidents of lives of wild adventure and wilder pa.s.sion; and to imagine strange discords that could be evoked between the traits of a land that recalled Paradise and the natures that were only angelic in the fall. I cannot trust to my memory to remind me of the sort of tale I meant to write. I know there was to have been a perfect avalanche of adventure on land and on sea. I know that through a stormy period of daily peril and excitement the traits of the Northern temperament in Roland himself were to have a.s.serted their superiority over his more impulsive comrades; I know he was to have that girl's love against a rivalry that set life in the issue; and I have a vague impression of how such a character might come by action and experience to develop such traits as make men the rulers of their fellows. Several of the situations occur to me, but not a single clue to the story. There are even now scenes before me of prairie life and lonely rides in pa.s.ses of the Pampas,--of homes where the civilised man had never seen a brother nor heard a native tongue. It is in vain I endeavour to recall anything like a connected narrative. All that I can well remember is the great hold the characters had taken in my mind--how they peopled the landscape around me, and followed me wherever I went.

This was in autumn. As winter drew nigh we moved into an Italian city,* much frequented by foreigners, and especially the resort of our countrymen.

* Florence.

The new life of this place and the interest they excited, so totally unlike all that I had left at my little villa, effected a complete revolution in my thoughts, utterly routing the belief I had indulged in as to the characters of my story, and the incidents in which they displayed themselves. Up to this all my efforts had been, as it were, to refresh my mind as to a variety of events and people I had once known, and to try if I could not recall certain situations which had interested me. Now the spell was broken, all the charm of illusion gone, and I woke to the dreary consciousness of my creatures being mere shadows, and their actions as unreal as themselves. There is a sort of intellectual bankruptcy in such awakenings; and I know of few things so discouraging as this sudden revulsion from dreamland to the cold _terra firma_ of unadorned fact. There was little in the city we now lived in to harmonise with "romance." It was, in fact, all that realism could accomplish with the aids of every taste and pa.s.sion of modern society.

That this life of present-day dissipation should be enacted in scenes where every palace, and every street, every monument, and, indeed, every name, recalled a glorious past, may not impossibly have heightened the enjoyment of the drama, but most unquestionably it vulgarised the actors. Instead of the Orinoco and its lands of feathery palms, I had before me the Arno and its gay crowds of loungers, the endless tide of equipages, and the strong pulse-beat of an existence that even, in the highways of life, denotes pleasure and emotion. What I had of a plan was lost to me from that hour. I was again in the whirlpool of active existence, and the world around me was deep--triple deep--in all cases of loving and hating, and plotting and gambling, of intriguing, countermining, and betraying, as very polite people would know how to do,--occupations to watch which inspire an intensity of interest unknown in any other condition of existence. Out of these impressions thus enforced came all the characters of my story. Not one was a portrait, though in each and all were traits taken from life. If I suffered myself on one single occasion to ama.s.s too many of the characteristics of an individual into a sketch, it was in the picture of the Dean of Drumcondra; but there I was drawing from recollection, and not able to correct, as I should otherwise have done, what might seem too close adherence to a model. I have been told that in the character of Linton I have exaggerated wickedness beyond all belief. I am sorry to reply that I made but a faint copy of him who suggested that personage, and who lives and walks the stage of life as I write. One or two persons--not more--who know him whose traits furnished the picture, are well aware that I have neither overdrawn my sketch nor exaggerated my drawing. The Kennyf.e.c.k young ladies, I am anxious to say, are not from life; nor is Lady Kilgoff, though I have heard surmises to the contrary. These are all the explanations and excuses that occur to me I have to make of this story. Its graver faults are not within the pale of apology, and for these I only ask indulgence--the same indulgence that has never been denied me.

'CON CREGAN.'

An eminent apothecary of my acquaintance once told me that to each increase of his family he added ten per cent to the price of his drugs; and as his quiver was full of daughters, a "black-draught," when I knew him, was a more costly cordial than curacoa. To apply this: I may mention that I had a daughter born to me about the time that 'Con Cregan' dates from, and not having at my command the same resources as my friend the chemist, I adopted the alternative of writing another story, to be published contemporaneously with 'The Daltons'; and in order not to incur the reproach--so natural in criticism--of over-writing myself, I took care that the work should come out without a name. I am not sure that I made any attempt to disguise my style. I was conscious of scores of blemishes--I decline to call them mannerisms--that would betray me; but I believe I trusted most of all to the fact that I was making my monthly appearance in another story and with another publisher,* and I hoped my small duplicity would escape undetected. I was aware that there was a certain amount of peril in running an opposition coach on the line I had, in some degree, made my own; not to say that it might be questionable policy to glut the public with a kind of writing more remarkable for peculiarity than for perfection. I remember that excellent Irishman, Bianconi**--not the less Irish that he was born at Lucca (which was simply a "bull")--once telling me that in order to popularise a road on which few people were then travelling, and on which his daily two-horse car was accustomed to go its journey with two (or at most three) pa.s.sengers, the idea occurred to him of starting an opposition conveyance--of course in perfect secrecy and with every outward show of its being a genuine rival.

He effected his object with such success that his own agents were completely "taken in," and never wearied of reporting, for his gratification, all the shortcomings and disasters of the rival company.

At length, when the struggle between the compet.i.tors was crucial, one of Bianconi's drivers rushed frantically into his office one day crying out, "Give me a crown piece to drink your honour's health for what I have done to-day."

* 'Con Cregan' was published by W. S. Orr & Co., Paternoster Bow. 'The Daltons' was published by Chapman & HalL--E. D.

** Charles Bianconi, an Italian who revolutionised road traffic in Ireland.--E. D. I pa.s.sed her on the long hill when she was blown, and I bruk her heart before she reached the top."

"What was it, Larry?"

"I killed the yallow mare of the opposition car.

"After this I gave up the opposition," said my friend. "Mocking was catching, as the old proverb says, and I thought that one might carry a joke a little too far." I had this experience before me, and I will not say that it did not impress me. I imagined, however, that I did not care on which horse I stood to win: in other words, I persuaded myself it was a matter of perfect indifference to me which book took best with the public--whether the reader thought better of 'The Daltons' or 'Con Cregan.' That I totally misunderstood myself, or misconceived the case before me, I am now quite ready to own. For one notice of 'The Daltons'

by the press there were at least three or four of 'Con Cregan'; and while the former was dismissed with a few polite and measured phrases, the latter was largely praised and freely quoted. Nor was this all. The critics discovered in 'Con Cregan' a freshness and a vigour which were so sadly deficient in 'The Daltons.' It was, they averred, the work of a less practised writer, but of one whose humour was more subtle, and whose portraits, roughly sketched as they were, indicated a far higher intellect than that of the well-known author of 'Harry Lorrequer.' The unknown--for there was no attempt made to guess who the writer was--was p.r.o.nounced not to be an imitator of Mr Lever,--though there were certain small points of resemblance. He was clearly original in his conception of character, in his conduct of his story, and in his dialogue; and there was displayed a knowledge of life in certain scenes and under certain conditions to which Mr Lever could lay no claim. One critic, who had discovered some features of resemblance between the two writers, uttered a friendly caution to Mr Lever to look to his laurels, for there was a rival in the field possessing many of the characteristics by which he first won public favour, but the unknown author possessed a racy drollery in description and a quaintness in his humour all his own. It was the amus.e.m.e.nt of one of my children at the time to collect these sage comments and to torment me with them; and I remember a droll little note-book in which they were pasted, and from which quotations were read from time to time with no small display of merriment. It may sound very absurd to confess it, but I was excessively amazed at the superior success of the unacknowledged book, and I felt the rivalry as painfully as though I had never written a line of 'Con Cregan.' Was it that I thought well of one story and meanly of the other, and in consequence was angry with my critics? I suspect not. I imagine that I was hurt at discovering how little hold I had, in my acknowledged name, on a public with whom I fancied I was on such good terms, and that it pained me to see with what ease a new and a nameless man could push me from the place I had believed to be my own.

'THE DALTONS'

I always wrote, after my habit, in the morning. I never turned to 'Con Cregan' until nigh midnight; and I can still remember the widely different feelings with which I addressed myself to the task I liked--to a story which, in the absurd fas.h.i.+on I have mentioned, was a.s.sociated with wounded self-love. It is scarcely necessary for me to say that there was no plan whatever in 'Con Cregan.' My notion was that the hero, once created, would not fail to find adventures. The vicissitudes of daily poverty would beget s.h.i.+fts and contrivances: with his successes would come ambition and daring. Meanwhile a growing knowledge of life would develop his character, and I should soon see whether he would win the silver spoon or spoil the horn. I ask pardon in the most humble manner for presuming for a moment to a.s.sociate my hero with the great original of Le Sage.*

* This refers to the sub-t.i.tle of 'The Confessions of Con Cregan'--The Irish Gil Bias.'--E. D.

But I used the word Irish adjectively and with the same amount of qualification that one employs to a diamond, and indeed, as I have read it in a London paper, to a lord. An American officer, of whom I saw much at the time, was my guide to the interior of Mexico: he had been in the Santa Fe expedition, was a man of most adventurous disposition, with a love for stirring incident and peril which even broken health and a failing const.i.tution could not subdue. It was often very difficult for me to tear myself away from his Texan and Mexican experiences,--his wild scenes of prairie life, or his sojourn amongst Indian tribes--and to keep to the more commonplace events of my own story. Nor could all my entreaties confine him to descriptions of those places and scenes which I needed for my own characters. The saunter after tea-time with this companion, generally along that little river that tumbles through the valley of the Bagni di Lucca, was the usual preparation for my night's work; and I came to it as intensely possessed by Mexico--dress, manner, and landscape--as though I had been drawing on the recollections of a former journey. So completely separated in my mind by the different parts of the day were the two tales, that no character of 'The Daltons'

ever crossed my mind after nightfall, nor was there a trace of 'Con Cregan' in my head at breakfast next morning. None of the characters of 'Con Cregan' has been taken from life. The one bit of reality is in the sketch of Anticosti, where I myself suffered once a very small s.h.i.+pwreck, of which I retain a very vivid recollection to this hour.

I have already owned that I bore a grudge to the story; nor have I outlived the memory of the chagrin it cost me, though it is many a year since I acknowledged that 'Con Cregan' was written by the author of 'Harry Lorrequer.'

'THE MARTINS OF CRO-MARTIN.'