John Forster Part 2

Booton Rectory, Norwich,

Oct. 31st, 1864.

My dear Mr. ----.--I have been ill for some weeks past, which has prevented my writing to you. It is of the less importance that I can add nothing to your ample list of authorities, except to mention, if you are not already aware of it, that there is a good deal about Dr. Dodd and his doings, in "Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea." The contemporary characters which figure in the work are described partly by real, and partly by invented circ.u.mstances. But you at least get the view which the author entertained of the persons he introduces on the scene. I missed the first part of your Memoir of Dodd, in the _Dublin Magazine_. The second I saw, and thought it extremely interesting, and very happily written. I was surprised at the quant.i.ty of information you had got together. I cannot help you to any detailed account of the Maccaroni preachers. They are glanced at in the second book of Cowper's Task. They have existed, and will exist in every generation, but it is seldom that any record is preserved of them. They are the b.u.t.terflies of the hour. There are no means by which you can keep worthless men from making a trade of religion, and as long as there are people simple enough to be dupes, so long there will be impostors. It is strange to see what transparent acting will impose upon women. To be popular, to draw large audiences, is the avowed object of many of these preachers. The late R. Montgomery once introduced himself to an acquaintance of mine on the platform at some religious meeting. Montgomery commenced the conversation by the remark, "You have a chapel in the West End." "Yes," said my friend. "And I hope to have one soon,"

replied M., "for I am satisfied that I have the faculty for _adapting_ the Gospel to the _West End_." You may tell the story if you give no names.

You have antic.i.p.ated my Sterne anecdotes. I will just mention one circ.u.mstance. In the advertis.e.m.e.nt to the edition of Sterne's Works, in 10 vols. (1798), it is stated (Vol. I, p. iv.) "that the letters numbered 129, 130 and 131, have not those proofs of authenticity which the others possess." Now, letter 131 is very important, for it is that in which Sterne replies to the remonstrances against the freedoms in Tristram Shandy. It may be satisfactory to you to know that some years after the edition of Sterne's Works the letter was published by Richard Warner (apparently from the original) in the Appendix to his Literary Recollections.

He was not, I suppose, aware that it had been printed before. Warner was ordained in the North, and his work will throw some light upon the state of things in those regions at a period close upon Sterne's time. You will find it worth while to glance over it. If I can be of any help to you I shall only be too happy.

Believe me ever, most sincerely yours,

W. ELWIN.

There is something touching in this deep affection, exhibited by so rough and st.u.r.dy a nature and maintained without flagging for so many years. With him it was "the n.o.ble Elwin," "the good Elwin," "as ever, most delightful," "kinder and more considerate than ever." "Never were letters so pleasant to me as yours," he wrote in 1865, "and it is sad to think that from months we are now getting on to years with barely a single letter." "My dear fellow," he wrote again, "with the ranks so thinning around us, should we not close up, come nearer to each other?

None are so dear to us at home as Mrs. Elwin and yourself and all of you." One of the last entries in his diary was, "Precious letter from dearest Elwin. December 10th, 1875."

Elwin had, perhaps, a colder temperament, or did not express his devotion. But his regard would seem to have been as deep-seated; as indeed was shown in the finely drawn tribute he paid him after his death, and which is indeed the work of an accomplished writer and master of expression. "He was two distinct men," wrote Elwin to John Murray the elder, in 1876, "and the one man quite dissimilar from the other. To see him in company I should not have recognised him for the friend with whom I was intimate in private. Then he was quiet, natural, unpretending, and most agreeable, and in the warmth and generosity of his friends.h.i.+p he had no superior. Sensitive as he was in some ways, there was no man to whom it was easier so speak with perfect frankness. He always bore it with gentle good nature."[2]

[Footnote 2: To Elwin Forster left 2,000 and his gold watch, no doubt the one bequeathed by d.i.c.kens. Forster appointed him, without consulting him, one of his executors, but knowing well that he could rely on his good will, and the legacy no doubt was intended as a solatium for the labour thus enforced. Lord Lytton and Justice Chitty were the other executors. As Lord Lytton was in India the whole burden fell on the other two, and mostly on Elwin. As his son tells, the literary part of the business was most considerable; there was an edition of Landor to be "seen through" the press; there was a vast number of papers and letters to be examined, preserved or destroyed.

"His own inclination and Forster's instructions were in the direction of destroying all personal letters, however eminent the writer might be."]

At another time he wrote with warmth, "Most welcome was your letter this morning, as your letters always are to me. They come fraught with some new proof of the true, warm-hearted, generous friend who has made life worth something more to me than it was a year ago," 1857.[3]

[Footnote 3: Memoirs by Warwick Elwin.]

When Forster married, in 1856, he was eager that Elwin should officiate, and proposed going down to Norfolk. But legal formalities were in the way, and Elwin came to London instead. "He never," says Warwick Elwin, "wavered in his attachment to him. Sometimes he would be momentarily vexed at some fancied neglect, but the instant they met again it was all forgotten." Elwin was, in fact, subject to moods and "nerves," and there were times when he shrank sensitively from the world and its a.s.sociations--he would answer no letters, particularly after the period of his many sore trials. The last time I saw him was at that great _fiasco_, the production of the first Lord Lytton's posthumous play on the subject of Brutus, produced by Wilson Barrett, with extraordinary richness and pomp: a failure that led to an unpleasant dispute between Lytton's son and the lessee.

When the _Life of d.i.c.kens_ appeared, Elwin, as in duty bound, proceeded to review it in the _Quarterly_. I confess that on reading over this article there seems to be a curious reserve and rather measured stint of praise. One would have expected from the generous Elwin one enthusiastic and sustained burst of praise of his friend's great work. But it seems as though he felt so trifling a matter was scarcely worthy of solemn treatment. The paper is only twenty pages long, and, after a few lines of praise at the beginning and a line or two at the end, proceeds to give a summary of the facts. The truth was Elwin was too scrupulously conscientious a critic to stretch a point in such a matter. I could fancy that for one of his nice feeling it became an almost disagreeable duty. Were he tempted to expand in praises, it would be set down to partiality, while he was hardly free to censure. No wonder he wrote of his performance: "Forster will think it too lukewarm; others the reverse." As it happened, the amiable Forster was enchanted.

"For upwards of three-and-thirty years," says Mr. Elwin in this review (_Q. R._, vol. 132, p. 125), "Mr. Forster was the incessant companion and confidential adviser of d.i.c.kens; the friend to whom he had recourse in every difficulty, personal and literary; and before whom he spread, without reserve, every fold of his mind. _No man's life has ever been better known to a biographer...._ To us it appears that a more faithful biography could not be written. d.i.c.kens is seen in his pages precisely as he is showed in his ordinary intercourse."

Both Elwin and his friend had that inflexibility of principle in criticism and literary utterance which they adhered to as though it were a matter of high morals. This feeling contrasts with the easy adaptability of our day, when the critic so often has to shape his views according to interested aims. He indeed will hold in his views, but may not deem it necessary to produce them. I could recall instances in both men of this sternness of opinion. Forster knew no compromise in such matters; though I fancy in the case of people of t.i.tle, for whom, as already mentioned, he had a weakness, or of pretty women, he may have occasionally given way. I remember when Elwin was writing his fine estimate of his deceased friend, Mrs. Forster in deep distress came to tell me that he insisted on describing her husband as "the son of a butcher." In vain had she entreated him to leave this matter aside. Even granting its correctness, what need or compulsion to mention it? It was infinitely painful to her. But it was not true: Forster's father was a large "grazier" or dealer in cattle. Elwin, however, was inflexible: some Newcastle alderman had hunted up entries in old books, and he thought the evidence convincing.

Another incident connected with the memory of her much-loved husband, that gave this amiable woman much poignant distress, was a statement made by Mr. Furnival, the Shakesperian, that Browning had been employed by Forster to write the account of Strafford, in the collection of Lives. He had been told this by Browning himself.

Nevertheless, she set all her friends to work; had papers, letters, etc., ransacked for evidence, but with poor result. The probability was that Forster would have disdained such aid; on the other hand, the Poet had written a tragedy on the subject, and was, therefore, capable of dealing with it. Letters of vindication were sent to the papers, but no one was much interested in the point one way or the other; save, of course, the good Mrs. Forster, to whom it was vital. I am afraid, however, there was truth in the statement; for it is completely supported by a stray pa.s.sage in one of the Poet's letters to his future wife, recently published.

Forster, I fancy, must have often looked wistfully back to the old Lincoln's Inn days, when he sat in his large Tulkinghorn room, with the Roman's finger pointing down to his head. I often grieve that I did not see this Roman, as I might have done, before he was erased; for Forster was living there when I first knew him. On his marriage he moved to that snug house in Montague Square, where we had often cosy dinners. He was driven from it, he used to say, by the piano-practising on each side of him, which became "in-_tol_-erable"; but I fancy the modest house was scarcely commensurate with his ambitions. It was somewhat old-fas.h.i.+oned too. And yet in his grand palatial mansion at Kensington I doubt if he was as jocund or as irrepressible as then. I am certain the burden of an ambitious life told upon his health and spirits.

I often turn back to the day when I first called on him, at the now destroyed offices at Whitehall, when he emerged from an inner room in a press of business. I see him now, a truly brisk man, full of life and energy, and using even then his old favourite hospitable formula, "My dear sir, I am _very_ busy--very busy; I have just escaped from the commissioners. But you must dine with me to-morrow and we will talk of these things." Thus he did not ask you, but he "commanded you," even as a king would.

One of the most interesting things about Forster was his "receptivity." Stern and inflexible as he was in the case of old canons, he was always ready to welcome anything new or striking, provided it had merit and was not some imposture. I never met a better appreciator of genuine humour. He had been trained, or had trained himself; whatever shape it had, only let it have _merit_. He thoroughly _enjoyed_ a jest, and furnished his own obstreperous laugh by way of applause. As I have said, there was something truly _Johnsonian_ about him; everything he said or decided you knew well was founded on a principle of some kind; he was a solid judicial man, and even his hearty laugh of enjoyment was always based on a rational motive. This sort of solid well-trained men are rather scarce nowadays.

Forster was also a type of the old Cromwellian or Independant with reference to religious liberty. He could not endure, therefore, "Romish tyranny," as he called it, which stifled thought. Many of his friends were Roman Catholics. There were "touches" in Forster as good as anything in the old comedies.

His handsome and s.p.a.cious library, with its gallery running round, was well known to all his friends. Richly stored was it with book treasures, ma.n.u.scripts, rare first editions, autographs, in short all those things which may now be seen at South Kensington. He had a store of other fine things somewhere else, and kept a secretary or librarian, to whom he issued his instructions. For he himself did not profess to know the _locale_ of the books and papers, and I have often heard him in his lofty way direct that instructions should be sent to Mr. ---- to search out such and such doc.u.ments. He had grand ideas about his books, and spared no cost either in his purchases or bindings. I have seen one of his quarto MS. thus dressed by Riviere in plain decoration, but which he told me had cost 30.

Once for some modest private theatricals I had written a couple of little pieces to be acted by ourselves and our friends. One was called _Blotting Paper_, the other _The William Simpson_. A gay company was invited, and I recall how the performers were pleased and encouraged when the face of the brilliant author of a _Lady of Lyons_ was seen in the front row. Forster took the whole under his protection, and was looking forward to attending, but his invariable terrible cough seized on him. Mrs. Forster was sent with strict instructions to observe and report everything that did or could occur on this interesting occasion. I see her soft amiable face smiling encouragement from the stalls. I rose greatly in my friend's estimation from this attendance of the author of _Pelham_. "How did you manage it?" "He goes nowhere or to few places. It was a gr-eat compliment."

This little performance is a.s.sociated in a melancholy way with the closing days of d.i.c.kens' career. I was naturally eager to secure his presence, and went to see him at "his office" to try and persuade him to attend; he pleaded, however, his overwhelming engagements. I find in an old diary some notes of our talk. "Theatricals led to Regnier, whom I think he had been to see in _Les Vieux Garcons_. He said he found him very old. "Alas! He is _Vieux Garcon_ himself." I think of our few little dinners in my house; would we had had more! Somehow since I have been living here the image of him has been more and more stamped on me; I see and like him more. The poor, toiling, loveable fellow, to think that all is over with him now!"

[At the risk of smiles, and perhaps some suspicion of vanity, I go on to copy what follows.] When I saw Mrs. Forster during those dismal days, she was good enough to relate to me much about his personal liking for me. He would tell them how I could do anything if I only gave myself fair play. He said he was going to write to give me a sound blowing up. "And yet," he added, "I doubt if he would take it from anybody else but me. He is a good fellow." [I still doubt whether I should add what follows, but I am not inclined to sacrifice such a tribute from such a man; told me, too, only a few days after his death.] He praised a novel of mine, _No. 75, Brooke St._, and here are his words: "The last scene and winding up is one of the most powerful things I have met."

Forster, devoted to the school of Macready, and all but trained by that actor, whose bust was placed in his hall, thought but poorly of the performances of our time. He pooh-poohed them all, including even the great and more brilliant successes. Once a clever American company came over, a phenomenal thing at that time, and appeared at the St.

James's Theatre. They played _She Stoops to Conquer_, with two excellent performers as Old Hardcastle and Marlow; Brough was the Tony. I induced Forster to come and see them, and we made up a party.

He listened with an amusing air of patronage, which was habitual with him--meant to encourage--and said often that "it was very good, very fair indeed." Brough he admitted was perhaps the nearest to the fitting tone and spirit of the piece. The two American actors, as it seemed to me, were excellent comedians.

I once saw him at St. James's Hall, drawn to hear one of his friend's last readings. I saw his entrance. He came piloted by the faithful Charles Kent, who led, or rather _cleared_ the way, Forster following with a smiling modesty, as if he sought to avoid too much notice. His rotund figure was swathed in a tight fitting paletot, while a sort of nautical wrapper was round his throat. He fancied no doubt that many an eye was following him; that there was many a whisper, "That is the great John Forster." He pa.s.sed on solemnly through the hall and out at the door leading to the artistes' rooms. Alas! no one was thinking of him; he had been too long absent from the stage. It is indeed extremely strange, and I often wonder at it, how little mark he made.

The present and coming generations know nothing about him. I may add here that, at d.i.c.kens' _very_ last Reading at this place, I and Charles Kent were the two--the only two--favoured with a place on the platform, behind the screens. From that coign, I heard him say his last farewell words: "Vanish from these garish lights for evermore!"

One summer Forster and his wife came down to Bangor, I believe from a genial good-natured wish to be there with his friends--a family who were often found there. He put up at the "George," then a house of lofty pretensions, though now it would seem but a modest affair enough. What a holiday it was! The great John unbent to an inconceivable degree; he was soft, engaging even, and in a bright and constant good humour. The family consisted of the mother, two daughters, and the son, _moi qui vous parle_--all of whom looked to him with a sort of awe and reverence, which was not unpleasing to him.

The two girls he professed to admire and love; the mother, a woman of the world, had won him by her speech at his dinner party, during which a loud crash came from the hall; he said nothing, but she saw the temper working within, and quoted happily from Pope,

"And e'en unmoved hears China fall."

Immensely gratified at the implied compliment for his restraint, his angry brow was smoothed. To imagine a dame of our time quoting Pope at a dinner! at most she would have heard of him.

What walks and expeditions in that delightful Welsh district! and what unbounded hospitality! He would insist on his favourites coming to dinner every few days or so. It was impossible to refuse; equally impossible to make any excuse; he was so overpowering. Everything was swept away. At the time the dull pastime of acrostic-writing was in high vogue, and some ladies of the party thought to compliment him by fas.h.i.+oning one upon his name. He accepted the compliment with much complacent gratification; and, when the result was read aloud, it was found that the only epithet that would fit his name, having the proper number of letters, was "learned." His brow clouded. It was not what he expected. He was good-humouredly scornful. "Well, I declare, I did not expect this. I should have thought something like 'gallant,'

or 'pleasant,' or 'agreeable'--but '_learned_!' as though I were some old pundit. Thank you, ladies."

No one knew so much as Forster of the literary history of the days when d.i.c.kens first "rose"; and when such men as Lamb, Campbell, Talfourd, Theodore Hook, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and many more of that school were flouris.h.i.+ng.

I see him now seated in the stern manipulating the ropes of the rudder, with all the air of perfect knowledge; diverting the boatmen, putting questions to them, and adroitly turning their answers into pieces of original information; lecturing on the various objects of interest we pa.s.sed; yet all the time interesting, and excellent company. At times he began to talk of poetry, and would pour forth the stores of his wonderful memory, reciting pa.s.sages with excellent elocution, and delighting his hearers. I recall the fine style in which he rolled forth "Hohenlinden," and "The Royal George," and the "Battle of the Baltic." At the close he would sink his voice to a low muttering, just murmuring impressively, "be-neath the wave!" Then would pause, and say, as if overcome--"Fine, very, very fine!" These exercises gave his audience genuine pleasure. On sh.o.r.e, visiting the various show things, he grew frolicsome, and insisted on the visitors as "Mr. and Mrs. ----," the names of characters in some novel I had written.

It would be an interesting question to consider how far Forster's influence improved or injured d.i.c.kens' work; for he tells us everything written by the latter was submitted to him, and corrections and alterations offered. I am inclined to confess that, when in his official mood, Forster's notions of humour were somewhat forced. It is thus almost startling to read his extravagant praise of a pa.s.sage about Sapsea which the author discarded in _Edwin Drood_. Nothing better showed Boz's discretion. The well-known pa.s.sage in _The Old Curiosity Shop_ about the little marchioness and her make-believe of orange peel and water, and which d.i.c.kens allowed him to mend in his own way, was certainly altered for the worse.

I had the sad satisfaction, such as it was, of attending Forster's funeral, as well as that of his amiable wife. I had a seat in one of the mourning coaches, with that interesting man, James Anthony Froude.

Not many were bidden to the ceremonial.

Mrs. Forster's life, like that of her husband, closed in much suffering. I believe she might have enjoyed a fair amount of health had she not clung with a sort of devotion, not unconnected with the memory of her husband, to the house which he had built. Nothing could induce her to go away. She was, moreover, offered a sum of over 20,000 for it shortly after his death, but declined; it was later sold for little over a third of the amount. He had bequeathed all his treasures to the nation, allowing her the life use, but with much generosity she at once handed over the books, pictures, prints, sketches, and other things. She bore her sufferings with wonderful patience and sweetness, and I remember the clergyman who attended her, and who was at the grave, being much affected.

Mrs. Forster was a woman of more sagacity and shrewdness of observation than she obtained credit for. She had seen and noted many curious things in her course. Often of a Sunday afternoon, when I used to pay her a visit, she would open herself very freely, and reveal to me many curious bits of secret history relating to her husband's literary friends. She was very amusing on the Sage of Chelsea. I recollect she treated Mrs. Carlyle's account of her dreary life and servitude to her great husband as a sort of romance or delusion, conveying that she was not at all a lady likely to be thus "put upon."

In vulgar phrase, the boot was on the other leg.

I have thought it right to offer this small tribute to one who was in his way an interesting and remarkable man. No place has been found for him in the series known as English Men of Letters; and yet, as I have before pointed out, he had a place in literature that somewhat suggests the position of Dr. Johnson. What Forster said, or what Forster did, was at one time of importance to the community. This sort of arbiter is unknown nowadays, and perhaps would not be accepted. He will, however, ever be a.s.sociated with Charles d.i.c.kens, as his friend, adviser, admirer, corrector, and biographer. There is a conventional meaning for the term "men of letters," men, that is, who have written books; but in the stricter sense it is surely one who is "learned in letters," as a lawyer is learned in the law. Johnson is much more thought of in this way than as a writer. Forster had this true instinct, and it was a curious thing one day to note his delight when I showed him a recent purchase: a figure of Johnson, _his_ prototype, wrought in pottery, seated in chair, in an att.i.tude of wisdom, his arms extended and bent, and evidently expatiating. Looking at it, he delivered an acute bit of criticism worthy of the Doctor himself.

"The interest," he said, "of this figure is not in the modelling, which is good, but because it represents Johnson as he was, in the eye of the crowd of his day; who looked on him, not as the writer, but as the grand _argufier_ and layer-down of the law, the 'settler' of any knotty point whatever; with them the Doctor could decide anything. See how his arm is half raised, his fingers outspread, as if about to give his decision. You should show this to Carlyle, who will be delighted with it."

He often recurred to this and to the delight the Sage would have had.

I forget whether I followed his advice. On the same occasion he noticed a figure of Was.h.i.+ngton. "Ah! there he stands," he said, "with his favourite air of state and dignity, and sense of what was due to his position. You will always notice that in the portraits there was a little a.s.sumption of the aristocrat." Forster's criticism was always of this kind--instructive and acute.

Forster was the envied possessor of nearly every one of Boz's MSS.--a treasure at the time not thought very much of, even by d.i.c.kens himself, but since his death become of extraordinary value. I should say that each was worth some two or three thousand pounds at the least. How amazing has been this appreciation of what dealers call "the d.i.c.kens stuff" during these years! It is almost incredible. I mind the day when a d.i.c.kens' book, a d.i.c.kens' letter, was taken tranquilly. A relation of my own, an old bachelor, had, as we thought, an eccentric _penchant_ for early editions of Boz; and once, on the great man coming to the provincial city where he lived, waited on him to show him what he called his "Old Gold"; to wit, the earlier editions of Pickwick and Nickleby. We all smiled, and I remember Boz speaking to me good-naturedly of this enthusiasm. Not one of the party then--it was in 1865--dreamed that this old bachelor was far wiser than his generation. The original Pickwick, that is bound from the numbers, is indeed a nugget of old gold. I remember once asking Wills, his sub-editor, could I be allowed to have the original MSS. of some of Boz's short stories? He said, "To be sure, that nothing was more easy than to ask him, for the printer sent each back to him after use, carefully sealed up." What became of all these papers I cannot tell; but I doubt if anyone was then _very_ eager about them.

Lately, turning over some old papers, I came upon a large bundle of proof "slips" of a story I had written for _All the Year Round_. It was called _Howard's Son_. To my surprise and pleasure I found that they had pa.s.sed through Boz's own hands, and had been corrected throughout in his own careful and elaborate fas.h.i.+on, whole pa.s.sages written in, others deleted, the punctuation altered and improved. Here was a _trouvaille_. These slips, I may add, have extraordinary value, and in the States would fetch a considerable sum. It was extraordinary what pains Boz took with the papers of his contributors, and how diligently and laboriously he improved and polished them.

Forster's latter days, that is, I suppose, for some seven or eight years, were an appalling state of martyrdom; no words could paint it.

It was gout in its most terrible form, that is, on the chest. This malady was due, in the first place, to his early hard life, when rest and hours of sleep were neglected or set at nought. Too good living also was accountable. He loved good cheer and had an excellent taste in wines, fine clarets, etc. Such things were fatal to his complaint.