My Life as an Author Part 6

The victims of water consumed to excess.

"To conclude: The first miracle, wonder Divine, Wasn't wine changed to water, but water to wine, That wine of the Kingdom, the water of life Trans.m.u.ted, with every new excellence rife, The wine to make glad both body and soul, To cheer up the sad, and make the sick whole.

And when the Redeemer was seen among men, He drank with the sinners and publicans then, Exemplar of Temperance, yea, to the sot, In use of good wine, but abusing it not!

We dare not pretend to do better than He; But follow the Master, as servants made free To touch, taste, and handle, to use, not abuse, All good to receive, but all ill to refuse!

It is thus the true Christian with temperance lives, Giving G.o.d thanks for the wine that He gives."

I once heard Mr. Gough, the temperance lecturer: it was at the Brooklyn Concert Hall in 1877. A handsome and eloquent man, his life is well known, and that his domestic experiences have made him the good apostle he is. I remember how well he turned off the argument against himself as to the miracle of the marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee: "Yes, certainly, drink as much wine made of water as you can." It was a witty quip, but is no reply to that miracle of hospitality. _Apropos_,--I do not know whether or not the following anecdote can be fathered on Mr.

Gough, but it is too good to be lost, especially as it bears upon the fate of a poor old friend of mine in past days who was fatally a victim to total abstinence. The story goes that a teetotal lecturer, in order to give his audience ocular proof of the poisonous character of alcohol, first magnifies the horrible denizens of stagnant water by his microscope, and then triumphantly kills them all by a drop or two of brandy! As if this did not prove the wholesomeness of _eau de vie_ in such cases. If, for example, my poor friend above, the eminent Dr.

Hodgkin of Bedford Square, had followed his companion's example, the still more eminent Moses Montefiore, by mixing water far too full of life with the brandy that killed them for him, he would not have died miserably in Palestine, eaten of worms as Herod was! Another such instance I may here mention. When I visited the cemetery of Savannah, Florida, in company with an American cousin, I noticed it graven on the marble slab of a relation of ours, a Confederate officer, to the effect that "he died faithful to his temperance principles, refusing to the last the alcohol wherewith the doctor wanted to have saved his life!"

Such obstinate teetotalism, I said at the time, is criminally suicidal.

Whereat my lady cousin was horrified, for she regarded her brother as a martyr.

I cannot help quoting here part of a letter just received from an excellent young clergyman, who had been reading my "Temperance," quite, to the point. After some compliments he says, "I need scarcely say I entirely agree with the scope and arguments of this vigorous poem.

Nothing is more clear, and increasingly so, to my own perception than the terrible tendency of modern human nature to run into extremes"

(quoting some lines). "Your reference to 'thrift' is especially true. I have often smiled at the pious fervour with which the heads of large families with small incomes have embraced teetotalism! I have long thought that the motto '_in vino veritas_' contains in it far more of '_veritas_' than is dreamt of in most people's philosophy, and that the age of rampant total abstinence is the age of special falseness. Of course, the evils of drunkenness can scarcely be exaggerated,--and yet they can be and are so when they are spoken of as equal to the evils of dishonesty: the former is indeed brutal, but the latter is devilish, and far more effectually destroys the souls of men than the former.

Nevertheless in our poor money-grubbing land, the creeping paralysis of tricks of trade, &c., is thought little of; and the shopman who has just sold a third-rate article for a first-cla.s.s price goes home with respectable self-complacency and glances with holy horror at the man who reels past him in the street.

"I desire to say this with reverence and caution. For we all need the restraining influences of the blessed Spirit of G.o.d, as well as the atonement and example of His dear Son. But when we see the present tendency to anathematise open profligacy, and to ignore the hidden Pharisaism (the very opposite to our Lord's own course), and the subtle lying of the day, it seems as if those who ponder sadly over it ought to speak out."

Doubtless, there are many more fads and fancies, many other sorts of perils and trials that might be spoken of as an author's or any other man's experiences: but I will pa.s.s on.

CHAPTER XI.

"SACRA POESIS" AND "GERALDINE."

With the exception of "Rough Rhymes," my first Continental Journal as aforesaid, and a song or two, and a few juvenile poems, my first appearance in print, the creator of a real bound volume (though of the smallest size) was as author of a booklet called "Sacra Poesis;"

consisting of seventy-five little poems ill.u.s.trative of engravings or drawings of sacred subjects, and intended to accompany a sort of pious alb.u.m which I wished to give to my then future wife. Most of it was composed in my teens, though it found no technical "compositor" of a printing sort until I was twenty-two (in 1832), when Nisbet published the pretty little 24mo, with a picture by myself of Hope's Anchor on the t.i.tle. The booklet is now very rare, and a hundred years hence may be a treasure to some bibliomaniac. Of its contents, speaking critically of what I wrote between fifty and sixty years ago, some, of the pieces have not been equalled by me since, and are still to be found among my Miscellaneous Poems: but, many are feeble and faulty. Some of the reviews before me received the new poetaster with kindly appreciation; some with sneers and due disparagement,--much as Byron's "Hours of Idleness" had been treated not very many years before: though another cause for hatred and contempt may have operated in my case, namely this: Ever since youth and now to my old age I have been exposed to the "_odium theologic.u.m_," the strife always raging between Protestant and Papist, Low Church and High, Waldo and Dominic, Ulster and Connaught: hence to this hour the frequent rancour against me and my writings excited by sundry hostile partisans.

My next volume was "Geraldine and other Poems," published by Joseph Rickerby in 1838. The origin thereof was this,--as I now extract it from my earliest literary notebook:--

"In August 1838 I was at Dover, and from a library read for the first time Coleridge's Christabel;" it was the original edition, before the author's afterward improvements. "Being much taken with the poem, the thought struck me to continue it to a probable issue, especially as I wanted a leading subject for a new volume of miscellaneous verse. The notion was barren till I got to Heine Bay a fortnight after, and then I put pen to paper and finished the tale. It occupied me about eight days, an innocent fact which divers dull Zoili have been much offended withal, seeing that Coleridge had thought proper to bring out his two Parts at a sixteen years' interval; a matter doubtless attributable either to accident or indolence,--for to imagine that he was diligently polis.h.i.+ng his verses the whole time (as some blockheads will have it) would indeed be a verification of the _parturiunt montes_ theory. The fact is, these things are done at a heat, as every poet knows. Pegasus is a racer, not a cart-horse; Euterpe trips it like the hare, while dogged criticism is the tortoise, &c." The book had a fair success, both here and in America, and has been many times reprinted. Critiques of course were various, for and against; the shuttlec.o.c.k of fame requires conflicting battledores: but, as I now again quote from that early notebook, "It is amusing to notice, and instructive also to any young author who may chance to see this, how thoroughly opposite many of the reviews are, some extolling what others vilify; it just tends to keep a sensible man of his own opinion, unmoved by such seemingly unreasonable praise or censure. When Coleridge first published Christabel (intrinsically a most melodious and sweet performance) it was positively hooted by the critics; see in particular the _Edinburgh Review_. Coleridge left behind him a very much improved and enlarged version of the poem, which I did not see till years after I had written the sequel to it: my Geraldine was composed for an addition to Christabel, as originally issued."

Another note of mine, in reply to a critic of _The Atlas_, runs thus:--"n.o.body who has not tried it can imagine the difficulties of intellectual imitation: it is to think with another's mind, to speak with another's tongue: I acknowledge freely that I never was satisfied with Geraldine as a mere continuation of a story, but as an independent poem, I will yet be the champion of my child, and think with _The Eclectic_ that I have succeeded as well as possible: as honest Pickwick says, 'And let my enemies make the most of it.' At this time of day it is not worth my while by any modern replies to attempt to quench such long extinct volcanoes as 'The Conservative' and 'The Torch,' nor to reproduce sundry glorifications of the new poet and his verses from many other notices, long or short, duly pasted down for future generations in my Archive-book. As to critical verdicts in this case, black and white are not more contradictory: _e.g._, let _Blackwood_ be contrasted with the _Monthly Review_, or the _Church of England Quarterly_ with the _Weekly True Sun_, &c. &c."

It is a pity (at least the author of sold-out volumes may be forgiven for the sentiment) that most of my books are not to be bought: they are not in the market and are only purchasable at old-literature stores, such as Reeves' or Bickers': some day, I hope to find a publisher spirited enough to risk money in a ten-volumed "Edition of my Prose and Poetry complete," &c.; but in the past and present, the subscription system per Mudie and Smith, buying up whole editions at cost price whereby to satiate the reading public, starves at once both author and publisher, and makes impossible these expensive crown octavo editions, "which no gentleman's library ought to be without." Some of the beat smaller pieces in my "Geraldine and other Poems" will be found in Gall & Inglis's Miscellaneous Tupper before mentioned: but my two Oxford Prize Poems, The African Desert and The Suttees, are printed only in the Geraldine volume.

Anecdotes innumerable I could tell, if any cared to hear them, connected with each of my books, as friends or foes have commented upon me and mine in either hemisphere. In this place I cannot help recording one, as it led to fortunate results. In 1839 I was travelling outside the Oxford coach to Alma Mater, and a gentleman, arrayed as for an archery party with bow and quiver, climbed up at Windsor for a seat beside me. He seemed very joyous and excited, and broke out to me with this stanza,--

"How fair and fresh is morn!

The dewbeads dropping bright Each humble flower adorn, With coronets bedight, And jewel the rough thorn With tiny globes of light,-- How beautiful is morn!

Her scattered gems how bright!"

There,--isn't that charming? he said,--little aware of whom he asked the amiable query. But when I went on with the second verse, he opened his eyes wider and wider as I added:

"There is a quiet gladness On the waking earth, Like the face of sadness Lit with chastened mirth; There is a mine of treasure In those hours of health, Filling up the measure Of creation's wealth!"

Of course, discovery of the author was unavoidable: so we collided and coalesced, and I rejoiced to find in this "Angel unaware" no less a celebrity than John Hughes of Donnington Priory, father of the still greater celebrity (then a youth) Tom Hughes of Rugby and "Tom Brown's Schooldays." Some time after I spent several pleasant days at his fine old place in Berks, and made happy acquaintance with the brightest old lady I ever met, his mother, who had known Burns and Byron and Scott; as also with his pleasant good wife and her clever sons, one of whom, in the ripeness of time, married a then charming little girl, the heiress-ward of my host, and since well appreciated in society as a _grande dame_; wife also to one famous for a Rugby in both hemispheres, for rifledom, the White Horse of Wilts, and now full-fledged county judges.h.i.+p. These excellent friends.h.i.+ps survive many long years and will be transplanted elsewhere hereafter. All this grew from a casual encounter outside a coach: but such is life; what we call accidents are all providences, and we are guided inch by inch and minute by minute.

Tom Hughes succeeded as a county judge in Yorks.h.i.+re my old schoolfellow, St. John Yates, mentioned on a recent page in connection with Andrew Irvine's turkeyc.o.c.k irascibility.

"Watch little providences: if indeed Or less there be, or greater, in the sight Of Him who governs all by day and night, And sees the forest hidden in the seed: Of all that happens take thou reverent heed, For seen in true Religion's happier light (Though not unknown of Reason's placid creed) All things are ordered; all by orbits move, Having precursors, satellites, and signs, Whereby the mind not doubtfully divines What is the will of Him who rules above, And takes for guidance those paternal hints That all is well, that thou art led by Love, And in thy travel trackest old footprints."

CHAPTER XII.

PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.

And this may well be a fitting place wherein to record the origin, progress, and after long years the full completion of what is manifestly my chief authorial work in life, "Proverbial Philosophy." To ensure accuracy, and not leave all the details to oftentimes unfaithful memory, I will give a few extracts from "a brief account" of the book, set down in 1838, at the beginning of Volume I. of "My Literary Heirloom," now grown to many volumes, containing newspaper cuttings, anecdotes, and letters and sc.r.a.ps of all sorts relating to my numerous works.

"In the year 1828, when under Mr. Holt's roof at Albury (anno aetatis meae 18), I bethought myself, for the special use and behoof of my cousin Isabella, who seven years after became my wife, that I would transcribe my notions on the holy estate of matrimony; a letter was too light, and a formal essay too heavy, and I didn't care to versify my thoughts, so I resolved to convey them in the manner of Solomon's Proverbs or the 'Wisdom' of Jesus the Son of Sirach: and I did so,--successively, in the Articles first on Marriage, then Love, then Friends.h.i.+p, and fourthly on Education: several other pieces growing afterwards. Whilst at Albury, my cousin showed some of these to our rector, Hugh M'Neile, who warmly praised them, and recommended their publication; but, regarding them as private and personal, I would not hear of it, and in fact it was nine years before they saw print; thus literally, though I meant it not then, exemplifying the Horatian advice, 'nonumque premantur in annum.'

However, one day in August 1838, Mr. Stebbing, whose chapel, in the Hampstead Road I used to attend when living at Gothic Cottage, Regent's Park, in my first years of marriage, visiting me and urging me to write something for the _Athenaeum_, which he was then editing, I was induced to show him these earliest essays; but I declined to _give_ them to him, whereat he was angered; perhaps the rather in that I objected to piecemeal publication, possibly also casting some reproach (as the fas.h.i.+on of the day then was) upon magazine and journalistic literature generally. That I made an enemy of him was evidenced by a spiteful little notice in the _Athenaeum_ of April 21st (three months after my first series was published) stating that it was 'a book not likely to please beyond the circle of a few minds as eccentric as the author's.'

The same false friend excluded me altogether from any notice in the _Examiner_ wherein he had some literary influence." To this day these reviews have been my foes, which I regret.

"Still, Mr. Stebbing did me substantial good; he praised the idea as 'new, because a resuscitation of what was very old,'--and as of my own origination in these latter days, and as a good vehicle for thoughts on many matters: and he promised his valuable a.s.sistance to a young author's fame,--performing as above. So, after a last interview with him at his house, wherein I conclusively refused him, I wrote my Preface at once, jotting down (as I recollect at the street corner post opposite Hampstead Road Chapel) on the back of an old letter my opening paragraph,--

"'Thoughts that have tarried in my mind, and peopled its inner chambers,' &c., &c.

"In ten weeks from that day I had my first series ready,--supposing it then all I should ever write;--the same a.s.surance of a final end having been my delusion at the close of each of my four series. My first publisher was Rickerby of Abchurch Lane, who produced a beautifully printed small folio volume with ornamental initials, and now very scarce: it came to a second edition, but brought me no money,--and the third edition failing to sell, it was in great part sent to America; where N.P. Willis finding a copy, fancied the book that of some forgotten author of the Elizabethan era, and quoted it week after week in a periodical of his, _The Home Journal_, as such: years afterwards, when he met me in London, he was scared to find that one whom he had thought dead three hundred years was still alive and juvenile and ruddy.

"It might be thought indelicate in me to quote at length the many pleasant greetings of the press to my first odd volumes; suffice it to say, that the kind critics were with few exceptions unanimous in commendation; and some great names, as Heraud, Leigh Hunt, and St. John particularly favoured me,--the latter prophesying a tenth edition: but I must still condescend to pick out at the end of this paper a few of the plums of praise wherewith my early publication was indulged, if only to please the numerous admirers of my chief 'lifework.' One comfort is that no one of my reviewers all my life through has ever been bought or rewarded. As to the less fulsome style of criticism, I was supposed by the _Spectator_ to have 'written in hexameters,'--as if David or Solomon had ever imitated Homer or some more ancient predecessor of his; and the _Sun_ fancied that I had 'culled from Erasmus, Bacon, Franklin, and Saavedra,' whereas I was totally ignorant of their wisdoms: Saavedra I have since learned is Cervantes. The _Sunday Times_ finds 'Proverbial Philosophy' 'very like Dodsley's "Economy of Human Life,"' but I may say I never saw that neat little book of maxims till my brother Dan gave it to me fourteen years after my Philosophy was public property; I am also by this critic supposed to have 'imitated the Gulistan or Bostan of Saadi,'--whereof I need not profess my total ignorance: however, the writer kindly says of me, 'if he fail to make himself heard, the fault will be rather in the public than in him.' The _Metropolitan_ propounds that 'a book like this would make a man's fortune in the East, but we are afraid that philosophy in proverbs has no great chance in the West: we should recommend the author to get it translated into Arabic.'" [I have since heard that some of it has been.] Let this be enough as to those first fruits of criticism, which might be extended to satiety; but I decline to become "inebriated with the exuberance of my own verbosity," as Beaconsfield has it about Gladstone.

To carry on the story of my old book, its second series was due to Harrison Ainsworth, at all events instrumentally. For, just as he was establis.h.i.+ng his special magazine, he asked me to help him with a contribution in the style of that then new popularity, my Proverbs. This I st.u.r.dily declined; for in my young days, it was thought ungentlemanlike to write in magazines, though dukes, archbishops, and premiers do so now: even authors.h.i.+p for money was thought vulgar: but, when there greeted me at home a parcel of well-bound books as a gift from the author, being all that were then extant of Ainsworth's, I was so taken aback by his kindly munificence that I somewhat penitentially responded thereto by an impromptu chapter on "Gifts," wherewith I made the quarrel up and he was delighted: one or two others following.

However, I was too quick and too impatient to wait for piecemeal publication month by month,--seeing I soon had my second series ready: and so, leaving Rickerby as an unfruitful publisher (though, as will soon appear, he produced other books for me) I went to Hatchards; with whom I had a long and prosperous career--receiving annually from 500 to 800 a year, and in the aggregate having benefited both them and myself--for we shared equally--by something like, 10,000 a piece. But in the course of time, the old grandfather and the father of the house, excellent men both, went severally to the Better Land, and I had published other books elsewhere, as will be seen, anon: and, amongst other things, Mr. Bertrand Payne, who represented the respectable poetic house of Moxon, desired to include me in his Beauties of the Poets, and in order to that, having previously obtained license both from me and Messrs. Hall & Virtue to select specimens of my lyrics for his volume, asked me to let him add a few bits of Proverbial; to this I willingly a.s.sented, but found myself repulsed by the temporary chief at Hatchards'--lately a subordinate--with a direct refusal to permit any portion of my book, of which they had a three years' lease then nearly out, to be included in the specimen volume until, the whole remainder copies were sold off. Mr. Payne on that immediately bought all they had, writing a cheque of 900 in payment down,--whereof I got one-half, as I should have done if sold at Hatchards'. I then of course went equitably over to Moxon's,--and not long after published my third series with that house, at Mr. Payne's suggestion and solicitation: it was not a financial success, any more than others in that quarter; but I was paid by having my later thoughts on topics of the day so handsomely published at no cost of mine. The house of Moxon having its reverses,--and a fourth and final series of "Proverbial Philosophy" having grown up meanwhile, I concluded to go to Ward & Lock, that my four series might for wider circulation be all included in one cheap volume, beautifully got up, and with them I have since had some small success: for though the royalty is only about a penny a volume, the numbers licensed have been an edition of 20,000 succeeded in the course of years by another of 30,000; and I still leave the book with them so far as that cheap issue is concerned.

As, however, I desired to meet the wish of many friends and others of the public who often asked for a handsomer form, suggesting a reproduction of Hatchards' quarto, with additional ill.u.s.trations for the new matter, I applied to Ca.s.sell, and made arrangements to have the whole four series issued piecemeal in weekly or monthly parts, so as to meet (as Ca.s.sell's manager suggested) a certain demand from the middle and artisan cla.s.s; seeing that the aristocracy and gentry had bought the whole volume so freely, but sixpenny parts in a wider field might bring on a new sale. I did not then know that Ca.s.sell's had numerous serials already on hand, and that many of them were unremunerative; and so I was a little surprised and vexed to find that my book was after all to appear as a whole and not in numbers, and that at a higher price, half-a-guinea, in these cheap times quite prohibitive, I protested vainly as to this; as I did also at the unsatisfactory character of the ill.u.s.trations to the third and fourth series, promised to be equal to Hatchards' first and second, which had cost 2000: but Ca.s.sell's additions were cheaply and insufficiently supplied by old German plates, adapted as much as might be to my words for ill.u.s.tration. This manifest inferiority of the last half of the volume, as well as its too great price, stopped the sale,--and after a time with a high hand all the copies were sold off by auction, to the loss of both publisher and author. As I had supplied gratis the plates of Hatchards' edition, buying up the half not mine and giving the other, I found myself thus mulcted in a large sum, for which I have only to show in return about a hundredweight of wood-blocks and stereotypes:--which may be bought by any publisher at bargain price. Altogether the whole affair was unsatisfactory and disappointing. Individuals may be genial, honest, and considerate, but a company or a partners.h.i.+p simply looks to the hardest bargain in the shrewdest way. Of all this I'll complain, vainly enough, no more.

In their several places, many anecdotes about "Proverbial Philosophy"

shall duly appear: I may mention one or two now, as timely. When that good old man, Grandfather Hatchard, more than an octogenarian, first saw me, he placed his hand on my dark hair and said with tears in his eyes, "You will thank G.o.d for this book when your head comes to be as white as mine." Let me gratefully acknowledge that he was a true prophet. When I was writing the concluding essay of the first series, my father (not quite such a prophet as old Hatchard) exhorted me to burn it, as his ambition was to make a lawyer of me, the Church idea having failed from my stammering, and he had very little confidence, as a man of the world, in poetry bringing fortune. However, it did not get burnt, though I had some difficulty in persuading him to let me get it printed instead. The dear good man lived to bless me for it, especially for my essay on Immortality, which I know affected him seriously, and he gave me 2000 as a gift in consequence.

As I may have been only too faithfully frank in mentioning this curious literary anecdote,--which, as known to others, I could scarcely have suppressed,--it is only fair to the memory of my dear and honoured father that I should here produce one of his very few letters to me, just found among my archives and bearing upon this same subject. It was written to me at Brighton, and is dated Laura House, Southampton, October 16, 1842:--

"My dearest Martin,--Anything that I could say, or any praise that I could give respecting your last volume would, in my estimation, fall very far short indeed of its merits. I shall therefore merely say that I look upon your chapter upon Immortality, not only as a most exquisite specimen of fine, sound, and learned composition, but as combating in the most satisfactory manner the _wisdom_ of infidelity, almost perfect. I only hope that you may receive the just tribute of the literary community: your own feelings as the author of that chapter must be very enviable.

G.o.d bless you, dearest, dearest Martin.--Believe me, ever your affectionate father and sincere friend,

Martin Tupper."

I need not say that these are "_ipsissima verba_," and that I here insert the letter in full, as the warmest and most honourable palinode I could have received from a man so usually reserved and reticent as was my revered and excellent father.

The brother of my friend Benjamin Nightingale (to be more spoken of hereafter) was so fascinated with the book that he copied it all out in his own handwriting, word for word, and was jocularly accused of pretending to its authors.h.i.+p. I once met an enthusiast who knew both the two first series by heart,--and certainly he went on wherever I tried to pose him from the open volume,--my own memory being far less faithful.

Similarly my more recent friend William Hawkes claims to have read the whole book sixty times; whereof this impromptu of mine is a sort of half proof:--