XXIII. LOOKING BACKWARDS 1871-1872

[The autobiographical and bibliographical notes which Lever

arranged to supply for a new edition of his novels were

written during the latter part of 1871 and the spring of

1872. Unfortunately he did not live to complete the intended

series of prefaces. They disclose highly interesting and

amusing glimpses of his career and opinions, and they

contain very open confessions of his loose literary methods,

as well as some acute criticisms of his writings.]

‘HARRY LORREQUER.’

That some thirty years after the sketches which form this volume were

written I should be called upon to revise and re-edit them is strange

enough to me, well remembering, as I do, with what little hope of

permanence they were penned, how lightly they were undertaken, and how

carelessly thrown together. But there is something still stranger in

the retrospect, and that is, that these same papers--for originally they

were contributed to ‘The Dublin University Magazine’--should mainly have

directed the course of my future life, and decided my entire career.

I may quote from a former preface that I was living in a very secluded

spot when I formed the idea of jotting down these stories, many of them

heard in boyhood, others constructed out of real incidents that occurred

to my friends in travel, and some again--‘The Adventures of Trevanion’

and ‘The French Duellist,’ for instance--actual facts, well known to

many who had formed part of the army of occupation in France. To give

what consistency I might to a mass of incongruous adventure, to such a

variety of strange situations befalling one individual, I was obliged

to imagine a character, which probably my experiences--and they were not

very mature at the time--assured me as being perfectly possible: one

of a strong will and a certain energy, rarely persistent in purpose

and perpetually the sport of accident, with a hearty enjoyment of the

pleasure of the hour, and a very reckless indifference as to the price

to be paid for it. If I looked out on my acquaintances, I believed I saw

many of the traits I was bent on depicting, and for others I am afraid I

had only to take a peep into myself. If it is an error, then, to believe

that in these Confessions I have ever recorded any incidents in my own

life, there is no mistake in supposing that in sketching Harry Lorrequer

I was in a great measure depicting myself, and becoming, allegori-cally,

an autobiographist. Here is a confession which, if thirty odd years had

not rolled over, I might be indisposed to make; but time has enabled me

to look back on my work, and even on myself, with a certain degree of

impartiality, and to feel, as regards both, as the great Paley said a

man feels after he has finished his dinner, “That he might have done

better.” It is perfectly unnecessary that I should say when and where

I wrote these sketches; no thought of future authorship of any kind

occurred to me, far less did I dream of abandoning my profession as

a physician for the precarious livelihood of the pen. Indeed their

success, such as it was, only became known to me after I had left

Ireland and gone to live abroad, and it was there--at Brussels--my

publishers wrote to me to request a continuance of my Confessions, with

the assurance that they had found favour in the world and flattering

notice from the press. Though I have been what the sarcastic French

moralist called “blessed with a bad memory” all my life, I can still

recall the delight--I cannot call it less--with which I heard my attempt

at authorship had been successful. I did not awake, indeed, “to find

myself famous,” but I well remember the thrill of triumphant joy with

which I read the letter that said “Go on,” and the entrancing ecstasy

I felt at the bare possibility of becoming known one day as a writer. I

have had, since then, some moments in which a partial success has made

me very happy and very grateful, but I do not believe that all these

put together, or indeed any possible favour the world might mete to

me, would impart a tithe of the enjoyment I felt on hearing that ‘Harry

Lorrequer’ had been liked by the public, and that they asked for more of

him. If this sort of thing amuses them, thought I, I can go on for ever;

and believing this to be true, I launched forth with all that prodigal

waste of material which, if it forms one of the reasons of success, is,

strictly speaking, one among the many demerits of this story. That I

neither husbanded my resources nor imagined that they could ever fail

me were not my only mistakes; and I am tempted to show how little I

understood of the responsibilities of authorship by repeating what

I have told elsewhere,--an incident of the last number of ‘Harry

Lorrequer.’ The MS. which contained the conclusion of the story had been

sent through the Foreign Office bag from Brussels, and possibly had been

mistaken for a despatch. At all events, like King Theodore’s letter it

had been thrown on one side and forgotten. In this strait my publishers

wrote to me in a strain that “the trade” alone knows how to employ

towards an unknown author. Stung by the reproaches (and they were not

mild) of my correspondent, I wrote back, enclosing another conclusion,

and telling him to print either or both--as he pleased. Years after, I

saw the first MS. (which came to hand at last) bound in my publisher’s

library and lettered, “Another ending to H. L.” When the great master

of fiction condescended to inform the world on what small fragments of

tradition or local anecdote the Waverley Novels were founded, he best

exalted the marvellous skill of his own handiwork in showing how genius

could develop the veriest incident of a life into a story of surpassing

power and interest. I have no such secrets to reveal, nor have I the

faintest pretension to suppose the public would care to hear about the

sources from which I drew either my characters or my incidents. I have

seen, however, such references to supposed portraiture of individuals

in this story, that I am forced to declare there is but one character

in the book of which the original had any existence, and to which I

contributed nothing of exaggeration. This is Father Malachi Brennan.

The pleasant priest was alive when I wrote the tale, and saw himself in

print and--worse still--in picture, not, I believe, without a certain

mock indignation, for he was too racy a humourist and too genuine a

lover of fun to be really angry at this caricature of him. The amusing

author of ‘The Wild Sports of the West’--Hamilton Maxwell--was my

neighbour in the little watering-place where I was living,* and our

intimacy was not the less close from the graver character of the society

around us. We often exchanged our experiences of Irish character and

life, and in our gossipings stories were told, added to, and amplified

in such a way between us that I believe neither of us could have

pronounced at last who gave the initiative of an incident, or on which

side lay the authorship of any particular event.

* Portstewart

It would have been well had our intercourse stopped at these

confidences, but, unfortunately, it did not. We often indulged in little

practical jokes on our more well-conducted neighbours, and I remember

that the old soldier from whom I drew some of the features I have

given to Colonel Kamworth was especially the mark of these harmless

pleasantries. Our Colonel was an excellent fellow, kind-hearted and

hospitable, but so infatuated with a propensity to meddle with every

one, and to be a partner in the joys, the afflictions, the failures, or

the successes of all around him, that, with the best possible intentions

and the most sincere desire to be useful to his neighbours, he became

the cause of daily misconceptions and mistakes, sowed discord where he

meant unity, and, in fact, originated more trouble and more distrust

than the most malevolent mischief-maker of the whole country-side. I am

forced to own that the small persecutions with which my friend Maxwell

and myself followed the worthy Colonel, the wrong intelligence with

which we supplied him, particularly as regarded the rank and station of

the various visitors who came down during the bathing season; the false

scents on which we sent him, and the absurd enterprises on which we

embarked him, even to the extent of a mock address which induced him to

stand for the “borough”--the address to the constituency being our joint

production,--all these follies, I say, more or less disposed me, I am

sure, to that incessant flow of absurd incident which runs through this

volume, and which, after all, was little more than the reflex of our

daily plot-tings and contrivings. I believe my old friend the Colonel

is still living: if he be, and he should read these lines, let him

also read that I have other memories of him than those of mere jest

and pleasantry--memories of his cordial hospitality and genial good

nature,--and that there are few things I would like better than to meet

and talk with him over bygones, knowing no one more likely to relish

a pleasant reminiscence than himself, no one more certain to forgive a

long-past liberty taken with him. If there are many faults and blunders

in this tale which I would willingly correct, if there be much I

would curtail or cut out altogether, and if there be also occasionally

incidents of which I could improve the telling, I am held back from any

attempts of this kind by the thought that it was by these sketches, such

as they are, I first won the hearing from the public which for more than

thirty years has never deserted me, and that the favour which has given

the chief pride and interest to my life dates from the day I was known

as Harry Lorrequer. The life of a physician has nothing so thoroughly

rewarding, nothing so cheering, so full of hearty encouragement, as in

the occasional friendships to which it opens the way. The doctor attains

to a degree of intimacy, and stands on a footing of confidence so

totally exceptional, that if personal qualities lend aid to the

position, his intercourse becomes friendship. Whether, therefore, my old

career gave me any assistance in new roads, whether it imparted to me

any habits of investigation as applicable to the full in morals as in

matter, it certainly imparted to me the happy incident of standing on

good terms with--I was going to say--my patient (and perhaps no better

word could be found for him who has heard me so long, trusted me so

much, given me so large a share in his favours, and come to look on me

with such friendliness). It would be displaying the worst in me if I did

not own that I owe to my books not only the most pleasant intimacies

of my life, but some of my closest friendships. A chance expression,

a fairly shadowed thought, a mere chord struck at random by a passing

hand, as it were, has now and then placed me, as mesmerists call it, _en

rapport_ with some one who may have thought long and deeply on what I

had but skimmed over; and straightway there was a bond between us. No

small satisfaction has it been to me occasionally to hear that out of

the over-abundance of my own buoyancy and light-heartedness--and I had a

great deal of both long ago--I have been able to share with my neighbour

and given him part of my sunshine, and only felt the warmer myself. A

great writer--one of the most eloquent historians who ever illustrated

the military achievements of his country--once told me that, as he lay

sick and careworn after a fever, it was in my own reckless stories of

soldier life that he found the cheeriest moments of his solitude: and

now let me hasten to say that I tell this in no spirit of boastfulness,

but with the heartfelt gratitude of one who has gained more by hearing

that confession than Harry Lorrequer ever gained by all his own. If to

go over again the pages that I wrote so many years ago is in a measure

to revisit in age the loved scenes of boyhood, and to ponder over

passages the very spirit of whose dictation is dead and gone,--if

all this has its sadness, I am cheered by remembering that I am still

addressing many old and dear friends, and have also for my audience

the sons and grandsons, and, what I like better, the daughters and

granddaughters, of those who once listened to Harry Lorrequer.

‘CHARLES O’MALLEY.’

The success of ‘Harry Lorrequer’ was the reason for writing ‘Charles

O’Malley.’ That I myself was in nowise prepared for the favour the

public bestowed on my first attempt is easily enough understood.

The ease with which I strung my stories together--in reality the

‘Confessions of Harry Lorrequer’ are little more than a note-book of

absurd and laughable incidents--led me to believe that I could draw on

this vein of composition without any limit whatever. I felt, or thought

I felt, an inexhaustible store of fun and buoyancy within me, and I

began to have a misty half-confused impression that Englishmen generally

laboured under a sad-coloured temperament, and were proportionately

grateful to any one who would rally them, even passingly, out of their

despondency, and give them a laugh without much trouble for going in

search of it. When I set to work to write ‘Charles O’Malley,’ I was,

as I have ever been, very low with fortune, and the success of a new

venture was pretty much as eventful to me as the turn of the right

colour at _rouge-et-noir_. At the same time, I had then an amount of

spring in my temperament, and a power of enjoying life, which I can

honestly say I never found surpassed. The world had for me all the

interest of an admirable comedy, in which the part allotted to myself,

if not a high or a foreground one, was eminently suited to my taste,

and brought me, besides, sufficiently often on the stage to enable me to

follow all the fortunes of the piece. Brussels (where I was then living)

was adorned at the period with most agreeable English society. Some

leaders of the fashionable world of London had come there to refit and

recruit, both in body and estate. There were several pleasant people,

and a great number of pretty people; and so far as I could judge,

the fashionable dramas of Belgrave Square and its vicinity were being

performed in the Rue Royale and the Boulevard de Waterloo with very

considerable success. There were dinners, balls, _déjeuners_, and

picnics in the Bois de Cambre, excursions to Waterloo, and select little

parties to Boisfort (a charming little resort in the forest), whose

intense Cockneyism became perfectly inoffensive, being in a foreign land

and remote from the invasion of home-bred vulgarity. I mention these

things to show the adjuncts by which I was aided, and the rattle of

gaiety by which I was, as it were, “accompanied” when I tried my voice.

The soldier element tinctured our society strongly, and, I will add,

most agreeably. Amongst those whom I remember best were several old

Peninsulars. Lord Combermere was of this number; and another of our set

was an officer who accompanied--if indeed he did not command--the first

boat party who crossed the Douro. It is needless to say how diligently

I cultivated a society so full of all the storied details I was eager

to obtain, and how generously disposed were they to give me all the

information I needed. On topography especially were they valuable to me,

and with such good result that I have been more than once complimented

on the accuracy of my descriptions of places which I have never seen.

When, therefore, my publishers asked me could I write a story in the

Lorrequer vein,--a story in which active service and military adventure

could figure more prominently than mere civilian life, and where

achievements of a British army might form the staple of the

narrative,--I was ready to reply: “_Not one, but fifty,_” Do not mistake

me, and suppose that any overweening confidence in my literary powers

would have emboldened me to make this reply: my whole strength lay in

the fact that I could not recognise anything like literary effort in the

matter. If the world would only condescend to read that which I wrote

precisely as I was in the habit of talking, nothing could be easier.

Not alone was it easy, but it was intensely interesting and amusing

to myself to be so engaged. The success of ‘Harry Lorrequer’ had been

freely wafted across the German Ocean: it was very intoxicating incense,

and I set to work on my second book with a thrill of hope as regards

the world’s favour which--and it is no small thing to say it--I can yet

recall. I can recall, too,--and I am afraid more vividly still,--some of

the difficulties of my task when I endeavoured to form anything like an

accurate or precise idea of some campaigning incident, or some

passage of arms, from the narratives of two distinct and separate

“eye-witnesses.” What mistrust I conceived for all eye-witnesses from my

own brief experience of their testimonies! What an impulse did it lend

to me to study the nature and the temperament of the narrator as an

indication of the peculiar colouring he might lend his narrative! And

how it taught me to measure the force of the French epigram that it was

the alternating popularity of Marshal Soult that decided whether he

won or lost the battle of Toulouse! While, however, I was sifting these

evidences, and separating, as well as I might, the wheat from the chaff,

I was in a measure training myself for what, without my then knowing it,

was to become my career in life. My training was not without a certain

amount of labour, but so light and pleasant was the labour, so full of

picturesque peeps at characters and of humorous views of human nature,

that it would be the rankest ingratitude if I did not own that I gained

all my earlier experiences of the world in very pleasant company,

highly enjoyable at the time and with matter for charming souvenirs long

afterwards. That certain traits of my acquaintances found themselves

embodied in some of the characters of this story,* I do not seek to

deny. The principle of natural selection adapts itself to novels as well

as to nature, and it would have demanded an effort above my strength

to have disabused myself at the desk of all the impressions of the

dinner-table, and to have forgotten features which interested or amused

me. One of the personages of my tale I drew, however, with very little

aid from fancy. I would go so far as to say that I took him from the

life, if my memory did not confront me with the lamentable inferiority

of my picture to the great original which it was meant to portray. With

the exception of the quality of courage, I never met a man who contained

within himself so many of the traits of Falstaff as the individual who

furnished me with “Major Monsoon.” But the Major--I must call him so,

though that rank was far beneath his own--was a man of unquestionable

bravery. His powers as a story-teller were to my thinking unrivalled;

the peculiar reflections on life which he would passingly introduce--the

wise apothegms--were of a morality essentially of his own invention; he

would indulge in the unsparing exhibition of himself in situations such

as other men would never have confessed,--all blended up with a racy

enjoyment of life, dashed occasionally with sorrow that our tenure of

it was short of patriarchal. All these idiosyncracies, accompanied by

a face redolent of intense humour and a voice whose modulations were

managed with the skill of a consummate artist, were above me to convey;

nor indeed, as I re-read any of the adventures in which he figures, am

I other than ashamed at the weakness of my drawing and the poverty of my

colouring. In order to show that I had a better chance to personify him

than is usually the lot of a novelist,--that I possessed, so to say,

a vested interest in his life and adventures,--I will relate a little

incident; and my accuracy, if necessary, can be attested by another

actor in the scene who yet survives. I was living a bachelor life at

Brussels--my family being at Ostend for the bathing--during the summer

of 1840. The city was comparatively empty, all the so-called society

being absent at the various spas or baths of Germany. One member of the

British Legation, who remained at his post to represent the mission, and

myself, making common cause of our desolation and ennui, spent much of

our time together and dined _tête-à-tête_ every day. It chanced that one

evening, as we were hastening through the park on our way to dinner, we

espied the Major--as “Major” I must speak of him--lounging about with

that half-careless, half-observant air which indicated a desire to be

somebody’s--anybody’s--guest rather than to surrender himself to the

homeliness of domestic fare.

* ‘Charles O’ Malley.’

“There’s that confounded old Monsoon!” said my diplomatist friend. “It’s

all up if he sees us, and I can’t endure him.” Now I must remark that my

friend, though very far from being insensible to the humouristic side of

the Major’s character, was not always in the vein to enjoy it, and when

he was so indisposed he could invest the object of his dislike with

something little short of repulsiveness. “Promise me,” said he, as

Monsoon came towards us, “you’ll not ask him to dinner.” Before I could

make any reply the Major was shaking a hand of either of us, rapturously

expatiating over his good luck at meeting us. “Mrs M.,” said he, “has

got a dreary party of old ladies to dine with her, and I have come out

here to find some pleasant fellow to join me and take our mutton-chop

together.”

“We’re behind our time, Major,” said my friend. “Sorry to leave you

so abruptly, but must push on. Eh, Lorrequer?” added he, to evoke

corroboration from me.

“Harry says nothing of the kind,” interrupted Monsoon. “He says, or

he’s going to say, ‘Major, I have a nice bit of dinner waiting for me at

home,--enough for two, will feed three; or, if there be a shortcoming,

nothing easier than to eke out the deficiency by another bottle of

Moulton. Come along with us then, Monsoon, and we shall be all the

merrier for your company.’” Repeating his words, “Come along, Monsoon,”

I passed my arm within his, and away we went. For a moment my friend

tried to get free and leave me, but I held him fast and carried him

along in spite of himself. He was, however, so chagrined and provoked

that till the moment we reached my door he never uttered a word nor

paid the slightest attention to Monsoon, who talked away in a vein that

occasionally made gravity all but impossible. Dinner proceeded drearily

enough: the diplomatist’s stiffness never relaxed for a moment, and my

own awkwardness damped all my attempts at conversation. Not so, however,

Monsoon; he ate heartily, approved of everything, and pronounced my

wine to be exquisite. He gave us a discourse upon sherry and the Spanish

wines in general; told us the secret of the Amontillado flavour; and

explained the process of browning, by boiling down wine, which some are

so fond of in England. At last he diverged into anecdote. “I was once

fortunate enough,” said he, “to fall upon some of that choice sherry

from the St Lucas Luentas which is always reserved for royalty. It was a

pale wine, delicious in the drinking, and leaving no more flavour in the

mouth than a faint dryness that seemed to say, ‘Another glass.’ Shall

I tell you how I came by it?” And scarcely pausing for a reply, he told

the story of having robbed his own convoy and stolen the wine he was

in charge of for safe conveyance.* I wish I could give any, even the

weakest, idea of how he narrated the incident,--the struggle between

duty and temptation, and the apologetic tone of voice in which he

explained that the frame of mind which succeeds to any yielding to

seductive influences is often in the main more profitable to a man than

is the vainglorious sense of having resisted a temptation. “Meekness is

the mother of all virtues,” said he, “and there is no meekness

without frailty.” The story, told as he told it, was too much for the

diplomatist’s gravity, and at last he fairly roared with laughter. As

soon as I myself recovered from the effects of his drollery I said,

“Major, I have a proposition to make. Let me tell that story in print

and I’ll give you five Naps.”

* The story of the stolen sherry is told in ‘Charles

O’Malley.’

“Are you serious, Harry?” said he. “Is this on honour?”

“On honour assuredly,” I replied.

“Let me have the money down on the nail and I’ll give you leave to have

me and my whole life,--every adventure that ever befell me,--ay, and if

you like, every moral reflection that my experiences have suggested.”

“Done!” cried I. “I agree.”

“Not so fast,” said the diplomatist. “We must make a protocol of this:

the high contracting parties must know what they give and what they

receive. I’ll draw out the treaty.” He did so, at full length, on a

sheet of that solemn blue-tinted paper dedicated to despatch purposes,

duly setting forth the concession and the consideration. Each of us

signed the document; it was witnessed and sealed; and Monsoon pocketed

my five Napoleons, filling a bumper to any success the bargain might

bring me. This document, along with my university degree, my commission

in a militia regiment, and a vast amount of letters (very interesting

to me), were seized by the Austrian authorities on the way from Como

to Florence in the August of 1847, being deemed part of a treasonable

correspondence--purposely allegorical in form,--and they were never

restored to me. I freely own that I’d give all the rest willingly to

repossess myself of the Monsoon treaty. To show that I did not entirely

fail in making my “Major” resemble the great original from whom I

copied, I may mention that he was speedily recognised by the Marquis

of Londonderry, the well-known Sir Charles Stuart of the Peninsular

campaign. “I know that fellow well,” said he. “He once sent me a

challenge, and I had to make him a very humble apology. The occasion was

this: I had been out with a single aide-de-camp to make a reconnaissance

in front of Victor’s division; and to avoid attracting any notice, we

covered over our uniform with two common grey overcoats which reached

to the feet, effectually concealing our rank. Scarcely, however, had

we topped a hill which commanded a view of the French, when a shower

of shells flew over and around us. Amazed to think that we had been so

quickly noticed, I looked around me and discovered, quite close in my

rear, your friend Monsoon with what he called his staff,--a popinjay

set of rascals dressed out in green and gold, and with more plumes and

feathers than ever the general staff boasted. Carried away by momentary

passion at the failure of my reconnaissance, I burst out with some

insolent allusion to the harlequin assembly which had drawn the French

fire upon us. Monsoon saluted me respectfully and retired without a

word; but I had scarcely reached my quarters when a ‘friend’ of his

waited upon me with a message,--a categorical message it was, too: ‘It

must be a meeting or an ample apology.’ I made the apology--a most full

one--for the ‘Major’ was right and I had not a fraction of reason to

sustain me. We have been the best of friends ever since.” I had heard

the story before this from Monsoon, but I did not then accord it all the

faith that was its due; and I admit that the accidental corroboration

of this one event very often served to puzzle me afterwards, when I

listened to tales in which the Major seemed to be a second Munchausen.

It might be that he was amongst the truest and most matter-of-fact of

historians. May the reader be not less embarrassed than myself! is my

sincere, if not very courteous, prayer. I have no doubt that often

in recounting some strange incident--a personal experience it always

was--he was himself carried away by the credulity of his hearers and the

amount of interest he could excite in them, rather than by the story. He

possessed the true narrative style, and there was a marvellous instinct

in the way in which he would vary a tale to suit the tastes of an

audience, while his moralisings were almost certain to take the tone

of a humouristic quiz of the company. Though fully aware that I was

availing myself of the contract that delivered him into my hands, and

though he dined with me two or three times a-week, he never lapsed

into any allusion to his appearance in print, and ‘O’Malley’had been

published some weeks when he asked me to lend him “that last thing”--he

forgot the name of it--I was writing.*

* He refers here to his last visit in 1871.--E. D.

“‘Major Monsoon’ was Commissary-General Mayne.... When he entered

a town,” Lever declared, “he hastened to the nearest church and

appropriated whatever plate or costly reliquaries he could seize. He

once had a narrow escape from hanging, after having actually undergone

a drum-head court-martial. When the allied armies entered Paris,

Wellington was of course the constant figure of attraction. At a grand

fête he took wine (or went through the form of it) with any officer

whose face was remembered by him. The Commissary-General was a guest at

this entertainment, and Wellington’s eye rested on him. Up went the hand

and glass as a signal, and bows were wellnigh exchanged, when the Duke

thundered out, ‘Oh! I thought I had hanged you at Badajoz. Never mind,

I’ll do it next time. I drink your health.’”--Fitzpatrick’s ‘Life of

Lever.’ Of Frank Webber I have said elsewhere that he was one of my

earliest friends, my chum at college, and in the very chambers in Old

Trinity where I have located Charles O’Malley. He was a man of the

highest order of abilities, with a memory that never forgot; but he

was ruined and run to seed by the idleness that came of a discursive

uncertain temperament. Capable of anything--he spent his youth

in follies and eccentricities, every one of which, however, gave

indications of a mind inexhaustible in resources and abounding in

devices and contrivances. Poor fellow! he died young; and perhaps it

is better it should have been so. Had he lived to a later day, he would

most probably have been found a foremost leader of Fenianism; and from

what I knew of him, I can say that he, would have been a more dangerous

enemy to English rule than any of those dealers in the petty larceny of

rebellion we have lately seen amongst us. Of Mickey Free I had not one,

but one thousand, types. Indeed I am not quite sure that in my late

visit to Dublin, I did not chance on a living specimen of the “Free”

family, much readier in repartee, quicker at an _apropos_, and droller

in illustration, than my own Mickey. The fellow was “boots” at a great

hotel in Sackville Street; and he afforded me more amusement and some

heartier laughs than it has always been my fortune to enjoy in a party

of wits. His criticisms on my sketches of Irish character were about the

shrewdest and the best I ever listened to; and that I am not bribed to

this opinion by any flattery, I may remark that they were often more

severe than complimentary, and that he hit every blunder of image,

every mistake in figure, of my peasant characters with an acuteness

and correctness which made me very grateful to know that his daily

occupations were limited to the blacking of boots and not to the

“polishing off” of authors. I should like to own that ‘Charles O’Malley’

was the means of according me a more heartfelt glow of satisfaction, a

more gratifying sense of pride, than anything I ever have written. My

brother, at that time the rector of an Irish parish, once forwarded to

me a letter from a lady, unknown to him, who had heard that he was the

brother of “Harry Lorrequer,” and who addressed him not knowing where

a letter might be directed to myself. The letter was the grateful

expression of a mother, who said: “I am the widow of a field-officer,

and with an only son, for whom I obtained a presentation to Woolwich;

but seeing in my boy’s nature certain traits of nervousness and timidity

which induced me to hesitate on embarking him in the career of a

soldier, I became very unhappy, and uncertain which course to decide

upon. While in this state of uncertainty I chanced to make him a

birthday present of ‘Charles O’Malley,’ the reading of which seemed to

act like a charm on his whole character, inspiring him with a passion

for movement and adventure, and spiriting him on to an eager desire

for a military life. Seeing that this was no passing enthusiasm but a

decided and determined bent, I accepted the cadetship for him, and his

career has been not alone distinguished as a student, but one which has

marked him out for an almost hare-brained courage and for a dash and

heroism that give high promise for his future. Thank your brother for

me,” she continued,--“a mother’s thanks for the welfare of an only son,

and say how I wish that my best wishes for him and his could recompense

him for what I owe him.” I humbly hope that it may not be imputed to

me as unpardonable vanity the recording of this incident. It gave me

intense pleasure when I heard it; and now, as I look back on it, it

invests the story for myself with an interest which nothing else that I

have written can afford me.

‘JACK HINTON’

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 title

of my story for advertisement 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

class 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 pronounced 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 refreshing

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 class,

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 passed 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, pronouncing 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

identity. 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 assure 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 scrape 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 editorship 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

friendship 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 gratitude 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

passengers,--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 passengers 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 institution 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 illustrated 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 attitude 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 surpassed. 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 hoarder

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 hoard--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

passage 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 God: 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

extinguishing 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 shifty 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 noble growth that preceded them. What

would the descendants of these men prove when, destitute 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

destitute 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 associated 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 acquaintanceship of three weeks enabled him to

pronounce 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 passing 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 circumstances 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 authorship 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 classical 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 _calèche_, 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 assure 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 pricked 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 spacious 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 Pôllnitz, 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 Bergstrasse, 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

illustrate 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 ignoble. 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 friendship, 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 assured, 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 title 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 circumstance of the

authorship 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 assured 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 assailed. 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 nobler their conduct, as around them on every side

were the great names of the land trafficking for title 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 classes 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 class 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 classes 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 assumed 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 assume 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 assume 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

passionate 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 passion; 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 asserted 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 passes 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 passion 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 amass 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

Kennyfeck 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 curaçoa. 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) passengers, 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 competitors 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 passed 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

pronounced 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 amusement 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 fashion I have mentioned, was associated

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 shifts 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 associate my hero with the great

original of Le Sage.*

* This refers to the sub-title 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 Fé expedition, was a man of most adventurous disposition, with

a love for stirring incident and peril which even broken health and a

failing constitution 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

shipwreck, 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.’

When I had made my arrangements with my publishers for this new story,

I was not sorry, for many reasons, to place the scene of it in Ireland.

One of my late critics, in noticing ‘Roland Cashel’ and ‘The Daltons,’

mildly rebuked me for having fallen into doubtful company, and

half-censured--in Bohemian--several of the characters in these novels.

I was not then, still less am I now, disposed to argue the point with my

censor, and show that there is a very wide difference between the people

who move in the polite world, with a very questionable morality, and

those patented adventurers whose daily existence is the product of daily

address. The more one sees of life, the more he is struck by the fact

that the mass of mankind is rarely very good or very bad, that the

business of life is carried on with mixed motives, the best people being

those who are least selfish, and the worst being little other than those

who seek their own objects with slight regard for the consequences to

others, and even less scruple as to the means. Any uniformity in good or

evil would be the death-blow to that genteel comedy which goes on around

us, and whose highest interest very often centres in the surprises we

give ourselves by unexpected lines of action and unlooked-for impulses.

As this strange drama unfolded itself before me, it had become a passion

with me to watch the actors, and speculate on what they might do. For

this Florence offered an admirable stage. It was eminently cosmopolitan,

and, in consequence, less under the influence of any distinct code of

public opinion than any section of the several nationalities I might

have found at home. There was a universal toleration abroad: and the

Spaniard conceded to the German, and the Russian to the Englishman, much

on the score of nationality, and did not question too closely a morality

which, after all, might have been little more than a conventional habit.

Exactly in the same way, however, that one hurries away from the life

of a city and its dissipations to breathe the fresh air and taste the

delicious quiet of the country, did I turn from the scenes of splendour,

from the crush of wealth, and the conflict of emotion, to that Green

Island where so many of my sympathies were intertwined, and where

the great problem of human happiness was on its trial on issues that

differed wonderfully little from those that were being tried in gilded

salons, and by people whose names were blazoned in history. Ireland, at

the time I speak of, was beginning to feel that sense of distrust and

jealousy between the owner and the tiller of the soil which, later on,

was to develop itself into open feud. The old ties that have bound the

humble to the rich man, and which were hallowed by reciprocal acts of

goodwill and benevolence, were being loosened. Benefits were canvassed

with suspicion, ungracious or unholy acts were treasured up as cruel

wrongs. The political agitator had so far gained the ear of the people

that he could persuade them that there was not a hardship or a grievance

of their lot that could not be laid at the door of the landlord. He was

taught to regard the old relation of love and affection to the owner of

the soil as the remnants of a barbarism that had had its day; and he

was led to believe that whether the tyranny that crushed him was the

Established Church or the landlord, there was a great Liberal party

ready to aid him in resisting either or both when he could summon

courage for the effort. By what prompting the poor man was brought to

imagine that a reign of terror would suffice to establish him in an

undisputed possession of the soil, and that the best lease was a loaded

musket, it is neither my wish nor my duty to here narrate; I only desire

to call my reader’s attention to the time itself as a transition period

when the peasant had begun to unclasp some of the ties that had

bound him to his landlord, and had not yet conceived the idea of that

formidable conspiracy which issues its death-warrants, and never is at a

loss for agents to enforce them. There were at the time some who, seeing

the precarious condition of the period, had their grave forebodings of

what was to come when further estrangement between the two classes was

accomplished, and when the poor man should come to see in the rich

only an oppressor and a tyrant. There was not at that time the armed

resistance to rents, nor the threatening letter system to which we were

afterwards to become accustomed, still less was there the thought that

the Legislature would interfere to legalise the demands by which the

tenant was able to coerce his landlord; and for a brief interval there

did seem a possibility of reuniting once again, by the ties of benefit

and gratitude, the two classes whose welfare depends on concord and

harmony. I have not the shadow of a pretext to be thought didactic, but

I did believe that if I recalled in fiction some of the traits which

once had bound up the relations of rich and poor, and given to our

social system many of the characteristics of a family, I should be

reviving pleasant memories if not doing something more. To this end I

sketched the character of Mary Martin. By making the opening of my story

date from the time of the Relief Bill, I intended to picture the state

of the country at one of the most memorable eras in its history, and

when an act of the Legislature assumed to redress inequalities, compose

differences, and allay jealousies of centuries’ growth, and make two

widely different races one contented people. I had not, I own, any

implicit faith in Acts of Parliament, and I had a fervent belief in

what kindness--when combined with knowledge of Ireland--could do with

Irishmen. I have never heard of a people with whom sympathy could do so

much, nor the want of it be so fatal. I have never heard of any other

people to whom the actual amount of benefit was of less moment than the

mode in which it was bestowed. I have never read of a race who, in great

poverty and many privations, attach a higher value to the consideration

that is bestowed on them than to the actual material boons, and feel

such a seemingly disproportioned gratitude for kind words and generous

actions. What might not be anticipated from a revulsion of sentiment

in a people like this? To what violence might not this passion for

vengeance be carried if the notion possessed them that they, whom she

called her betters, only traded on the weakness of their poverty and the

imbecility of their good faith? It was in a fruitful soil of this kind

that the agitator now sowed the seeds of distrust and disorder, and with

what fatal rapidity the poison reproduced itself and spread, the history

of late years is the testimony.... I have said already, and I repeat it

here, that this character of Mary Martin is purely fictitious; and there

is the more need I should say it since there was once a young lady of

this very name, many traits of whose affection for the people and their

wellbeing might be supposed to be my original. To my great regret I have

never had the happiness to meet her; however, I have heard much of

her devotion and goodness. I am not sure that some of my subordinate

characters were not drawn from life. Mrs Nelligan, I remember, had her

type in a little Galway town I once stopped at; and Dan Nelligan had

much in common with one who has since held a distinguished place on the

Bench. Of the terrible epidemic which devastated Ireland, there was much

for which I drew on my own experience. Of its fearful ravages in the

West, in the wilds of Clare, and that lonely promontory which stretches

at the mouth of the Shannon into the Atlantic, I had been the daily

witness; and even to recall some of the incidents passingly was an

effort of great pain. Of one of the features of the people at this

disastrous time I could not say enough; nor could any words of mine do

justice to the splendid heroism with which they bore up, and the noble

generosity they showed to each other in misfortune. It is but too often

remarked how selfish men are made by misery, and how fatal is a common

affliction to that charity that cares for others. There was none of

this here: I never in any condition or class recognised more traits

of thoughtful kindness and self-denial than I did amongst these

poor, famished, and forgotten people. I never witnessed, in the same

perfection, how a widespread affliction could call up a humanity great

as itself, and make very commonplace natures something actually heroic

and glorious. Nothing short of the fatal tendency I have to digression,

and the watchful care I am bound to bestow against this fault, prevented

me from narrating several incidents with which my own experience had

made me acquainted. Foreign as these were to the burden of my tale, it

was only by an effort I overcame the temptation to recall them. If a

nation is to be judged by her bearing under calamity, Ireland--and she

has had some experiences--comes well through the ordeal. That we may yet

see how she will sustain her part in happier circumstances is my hope

and prayer, and that the time be not too far off!