Volume Ii Part 50 (2/2)

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.'

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