Volume I Part 28 (1/2)

”I have not heard more of the notices of my book in 'The Dublin University Magazine,' and now that a new contribution of mine will appear there, it would be too late, and look too like a puff, to print a critique on me in the same sheet with myself. Tell M'Glashan that however anxious [? I may be] for a review, I'd rather forgo it now than incur such a malapropos.

”I have repeated a.s.surances sent special to me of the high estimate of my books entertained by the directors of 'The Quarterly,' but from some underhand proceeding--some secret influence of whose machinery I can obtain no information--they never have noticed me publicly. I have been given to understand that the d.i.c.kens and Thackeray cliques have conspired to this end. Of course I have never hinted this to any one, nor shown any feeling on the subject, but the injury is considerable even in a pecuniary point.

”You would scarcely believe how much I have sacrificed in not being a regular member of the Guild of Letters,--dining at the Athenaeum, getting drunk at The Garrick, supping with 'Punch,' and steaming down to a Whitebait feed at Blackwall with reporters, reviewers, and the other [? acolytes] of the daily press. This you will say is no such fascinating society. Very true; but it pays--or, what is worse, nothing else will pay. The 'Pressgang' take care that no man shall have success independent of them. Or if he do--_gare a lui_--let him look to himself!

”I am now cudgelling my brains about a new story for Chapman, to be called 'The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life,' in which I have attempted--G.o.d knows with what chance of success!--the quiet homely narrative style of German romance-writers. I shall be very anxious to know what you will think of it, and you shall see the first No. as soon as it is printed.

”Scott says that to write well you must write unceasingly, and that the well of imagination does not go dry from exhaustion but from want of pumping. Mine is not likely to fail if I only intend to keep bread in our mouths.”

The circle of Anglo-Florentine society was widened in 1850 by the advent of Richard Lalor s.h.i.+el,* who came to Florence as British Minister. In Ireland Lever and s.h.i.+el had been bitterly opposed to each other, but meeting in a foreign city, their political animosities were forgotten, and they fraternised as Irish exiles and Irish humourists. Lever enjoyed wit as keenly as whist; and he declared that s.h.i.+el had lost none of his wit by being transplanted, and that he could make a _bon mot_ in French with as much readiness and grace as he could make one in English.

s.h.i.+el, unfortunately, had a short tenure of office in Florence. He died suddenly in 1851.

* Richard Lalor s.h.i.+el had enjoyed a checkered career. He had studied for the Catholic priesthood. Then, with a view to the Bar, he entered Trinity College. When he was only about twenty years of age he wrote a tragedy. He followed this up with other plays, the most popular being ”Evadne, or the Statue.” In 1822 he was called to the Bar. In the same year he allied himself with Daniel O'Connell. He entered Parliament in 1831. Later he was Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and subsequently Master of the Mint Gladstone, in 1877, described s.h.i.+el as ”a great orator with a very fervid imagination and an enormous power of language and strong feeling.”--E. D.

Another of Lever's Irish friends of this period was Catharine Hayes: a biographical sketch of the famous soprano appeared in 'The Dublin University' for November 1850.

'Maurice Tiernay' commenced its magazine career in May 1850. The story bore no author's name, but the authors.h.i.+p must have been more than suspected by the readers of 'The Dublin University.' Lever was very diligent during this year. In addition to 'Tiernay' he had 'The Daltons'

in hand. M'Glashan was anxious to procure short contributions from the busy man's pen. He applied to him for a memoir of Samuel Lover,* but Lever declined to undertake anything so onerous as biography. Failing to obtain this memoir, M'Glashan inquired if Lever would furnish materials for a sketch of the author of 'Harry Lorrequer.' But Lorrequer was not to be drawn. He explained that though his taste was sufficiently gross to crave laudation, he would be expected to enter into a defence of his Irish character-sketching, and this he would not do. ”I will not be a sign-post to myself,” he wrote. ”Like old Woodc.o.c.k in the play, my cry is--'No money till I die.'”

* The memoir of the author of 'Handy Andy'--a brief one-- was written by another hand: it appeared in the D. U. M. for February 1861.--E. D.

Writing to Miss Mitford, in November 1850, Mrs Browning makes a sad complaint of the Irish novelist. ”We never see him,” she says; ”it is curious. He made his way to us with the sunniest of faces and the cordialest of manners at Lucca; and I, who am much taken by manner, was quite pleased with him, and wondered why it was that I didn't like his books. Well, he only wanted to see that we had the right number of eyes and no odd fingers. Robert, in return for his visit, called on him three times, I think, and I left my card on Mrs Lever; but he never came again. He had seen enough of us, he could put down in his private diary that we had neither claw nor tail,--and there an end, properly enough.

In fact, he lives a different life from ours; he is in the ball-room and we in the cave,--nothing could be more different; and perhaps there are not many subjects of common interest between us.”

Mrs Browning was unquestionably and not unreasonably offended. In a later letter to Miss Mitford, railing against English society, she says: ”People in Florence come together to gamble or dance, and if there's an end, why, so much the better; but there's _not_ an end in most cases, by any manner of means, and against every sort of innocence. Mind, I imply nothing about Mr Lever, who lives irreproachably with his wife and family, rides out with his children in a troop of horses to the Cascine, and yet is as social a person as his joyous temperament leads him to be. But we live in a cave, and peradventure he is afraid of the damp of us.”*

* Dr Fitzpatrick a.s.serts in his 'Life of Lever' that Lever was intimately a.s.sociated with the Brownings in Florence, and ”found a real charm in the companions.h.i.+p.” And pity 'tis tis untrue!--E. D.

The only plausible explanation of Lever's neglect of the Brownings is that he did not feel quite at ease in the presence of the author of 'Aurora Leigh.' When he sought mental relaxation, after a hard day's work, he sought it in the society of those who were content to listen to his agreeable rattle rather than in the society of those to whom he should lend his ears. He was by no means insensible to feminine charms, mental or physical. He gloried in praise coming from the mouths of intellectual women. But the woman of genius was not the comrade he coveted in his hours of ease: the companions.h.i.+p of men--of good talkers or good listeners--was what he craved. He had a peculiar reverence for women. He idealised the gentler s.e.x: his heroines are refined, beautiful, pure. He abhorred the intricacies of s.e.xuality in fiction as strongly as he abhorred modern ”sensationalism.” Feminine intellectuality of the most exalted type did not attract him--possibly because it was likely to freeze the genial current of his conversation.

The opening of the New Year--1851--did not bring monetary relief. He invited M'Glashan to make him an offer for the copyright of 'Maurice Tiernay,' and he told him that he was willing to contribute a new serial to the Magazine when 'Tiernay' had run its course. 'The Daltons' was still moving slowly along. Mortimer O'Sullivan wrote encouragingly about this novel. Adverting to O'Sullivan's favourable criticism, the author said that his own feeling was, he had spent too much time dallying among the worthless characters. For this he had an apology to offer--namely, that the good people in the book were fict.i.tious, while the unworthy ones were drawn from life.

M'Glashan was slow to reply, and Lever bombarded him for remittances, vowing that he was so crippled for want of cash that he could not put any heart into his work. It was almost impossible, he declared, to retrench in Florence, ”where” (he somewhat naively observes) ”we have lived in the best, and consequently in the most expensive, set. To leave it would incur great expense.... I am alternately fretting, hoping, riding, dining, and talking away,--to all seeming the most easy-minded of mortals; but, as Hood said, sipping champagne on a tight-rope.”

But whether you feel angry with him for his improvidence, or whether you are moved to compa.s.sion by contemplating his difficulties, you cannot help smiling at his excuses or parables. A friend upon one solemn occasion tendered advice on the score of his extravagance. He pointed out that Lever kept too many horses and too many servants, gave too many dinners, and played too highly at cards. The friend--a personage--wound up his homily by saying, ”Begin your reformation with small economies.”

The novelist determined to economise, and he tried to think where it would be easiest to begin. He racked his brain throughout the night in the endeavour to hit upon a starting-point in the proposed career of reformation. At length a happy thought occurred to him. He was in the habit of indulging in pistol-practice at a shooting-gallery, and he used to give a franc to a man who held his horse while he was amusing himself in the gallery. Now it would be an admirable effort in the scheme of economy to do away with the splendour of hiring a man to hold his horse. Henceforth he would fasten the bridle to one of the hooks of the jalousies. When he arrived next morning at the gallery the man who usually held the horse was in waiting. Lever informed him that he did not require his services. The dismay of the man smote the economist to the heart, but he had been told that he might expect to endure many pangs in the effort to inaugurate the campaign of frugality. He hitched his horse to the hook, shamefacedly, and entered the gallery. The effort to economise steeled his nerves, and at the first shot he hit the centre of the target. This excellent example of shooting had the effect of ringing a bell denoting the triumph of the marksman. The bell startled the horse outside, and the animal broke away, ”carrying the window-frame with him,” according to Lever. ”Altogether,” he says, ”the repairs amounted to eighty-seven francs.... This was my first and last attempt at economy.”

A small turn of fortune's wheel cheered him in March. A man to whom he had loaned a considerable sum of money gave him a series of bills which he managed to discount at a large sacrifice for cash. During the same month a trouble, not of his own making, disturbed him--the threat of a fresh outbreak in Florence. This, however, blew over, and he was able to continue his literary labour until the heat of August drove him, limp and desk-weary, from the Tuscan capital.

He turned his steps towards Spezzia (destined to be his official place of residence at a later period), and here he enjoyed to its full extent the luxury of lotus-eating. He offered a deaf ear to appeals for ”copy.”

He could do nothing, he told his publishers, except to sit on the rocks with his children and dream away the whole day. When he did arouse himself from this form of lethargy, it was only to indulge in another variety of _dolce far niente_--swimming. One day he was aroused from a half dream, as he lay floating on the bosom of the bay, by the sting of an electric-fish. His arm became swollen and inflamed, and he suffered excruciating pain. Leeching and blistering, and subsequently ma.s.sage, pulled him through, but left him weak and querulous.

”The piano-playing, guitar-tw.a.n.ging, sol-fahing, and yelling” which went on at his hotel drove him out of Spezzia in September.