_THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON_--_SIR HARRY HOTSPUR_--_AN EDITOR'S
TALES_--_CÆSAR_.
In 1869 I was called on to decide, in council with my two boys and
their mother, what should be their destination in life. In June of
that year the elder, who was then twenty-three, was called to the
Bar; and as he had gone through the regular courses of lecturing
tuition and study, it might be supposed that his course was already
decided. But, just as he was called, there seemed to be an opening
for him in another direction; and this, joined to the terrible
uncertainty of the Bar, the terror of which was not in his case
lessened by any peculiar forensic aptitudes, induced us to sacrifice
dignity in quest of success. Mr. Frederic Chapman, who was then the
sole representative of the publishing house known as Messrs. Chapman
& Hall, wanted a partner, and my son Henry went into the firm. He
remained there three years and a half; but he did not like it, nor
do I think he made a very good publisher. At any rate he left the
business with perhaps more pecuniary success than might have been
expected from the short period of his labours, and has since taken
himself to literature as a profession. Whether he will work at it so
hard as his father, and write as many books, may be doubted.
My second son, Frederic, had very early in life gone out to
Australia, having resolved on a colonial career when he found that
boys who did not grow so fast as he did got above him at school. This
departure was a great pang to his mother and me; but it was permitted
on the understanding that he was to come back when he was twenty-one,
and then decide whether he would remain in England or return to the
Colonies. In the winter of 1868 he did come to England, and had a
season's hunting in the old country; but there was no doubt in his
own mind as to his settling in Australia. His purpose was fixed, and
in the spring of 1869 he made his second journey out. As I have since
that date made two journeys to see him,--of one of which at any rate
I shall have to speak, as I wrote a long book on the Australasian
Colonies,--I will have an opportunity of saying a word or two further
on of him and his doings.
_The Vicar of Bullhampton_ was written in 1868 for publication in
_Once a Week_, a periodical then belonging to Messrs. Bradbury &
Evans. It was not to come out till 1869, and I, as was my wont, had
made my terms long previously to the proposed date. I had made my
terms and written my story and sent it to the publisher long before
it was wanted; and so far my mind was at rest. The date fixed was
the first of July, which date had been named in accordance with the
exigencies of the editor of the periodical. An author who writes
for these publications is bound to suit himself to these exigencies,
and can generally do so without personal loss or inconvenience, if
he will only take time by the forelock. With all the pages that I
have written for magazines I have never been a day late, nor have I
ever caused inconvenience by sending less or more matter than I had
stipulated to supply. But I have sometimes found myself compelled to
suffer by the irregularity of others. I have endeavoured to console
myself by reflecting that such must ever be the fate of virtue. The
industrious must feed the idle. The honest and simple will always be
the prey of the cunning and fraudulent. The punctual, who keep none
waiting for them, are doomed to wait perpetually for the unpunctual.
But these earthly sufferers know that they are making their way
heavenwards,--and their oppressors their way elsewards. If the former
reflection does not suffice for consolation, the deficiency is made
up by the second. I was terribly aggrieved on the matter of the
publication of my new Vicar, and had to think very much of the
ultimate rewards of punctuality and its opposite. About the end of
March, 1869, I got a dolorous letter from the editor. All the _Once
a Week_ people were in a terrible trouble. They had bought the right
of translating one of Victor Hugo's modern novels, _L'Homme Qui Rit_;
they had fixed a date, relying on positive pledges from the French
publishers; and now the great French author had postponed his work
from week to week and from month to month, and it had so come to
pass that the Frenchman's grinning hero would have to appear exactly
at the same time as my clergyman. Was it not quite apparent to me,
the editor asked, that _Once a Week_ could not hold the two? Would
I allow my clergyman to make his appearance in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ instead?
My disgust at this proposition was, I think, chiefly due to Victor
Hugo's latter novels, which I regard as pretentious and untrue to
nature. To this perhaps was added some feeling of indignation that
I should be asked to give way to a Frenchman. The Frenchman had
broken his engagement. He had failed to have his work finished by the
stipulated time. From week to week and from month to month he had
put off the fulfilment of his duty. And because of these laches on
his part,--on the part of this sententious French Radical,--I was
to be thrown over! Virtue sometimes finds it difficult to console
herself even with the double comfort. I would not come out in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_, and as the Grinning Man could not be got out
of the way, my novel was published in separate numbers.
The same thing has occurred to me more than once since. "You no doubt
are regular," a publisher has said to me, "but Mr. ---- is irregular.
He has thrown me out, and I cannot be ready for you till three months
after the time named." In these emergencies I have given perhaps half
what was wanted, and have refused to give the other half. I have
endeavoured to fight my own battle fairly, and at the same time not
to make myself unnecessarily obstinate. But the circumstances have
impressed on my mind the great need there is that men engaged in
literature should feel themselves to be bound to their industry as
men know that they are bound in other callings. There does exist, I
fear, a feeling that authors, because they are authors, are relieved
from the necessity of paying attention to everyday rules. A writer,
if he be making £800 a year, does not think himself bound to live
modestly on £600, and put by the remainder for his wife and children.
He does not understand that he should sit down at his desk at a
certain hour. He imagines that publishers and booksellers should keep
all their engagements with him to the letter;--but that he, as a
brain-worker, and conscious of the subtle nature of the brain, should
be able to exempt himself from bonds when it suits him. He has his
own theory about inspiration which will not always come,--especially
will not come if wine-cups overnight have been too deep. All this
has ever been odious to me, as being unmanly. A man may be frail in
health, and therefore unable to do as he has contracted in whatever
grade of life. He who has been blessed with physical strength to
work day by day, year by year--as has been my case--should pardon
deficiencies caused by sickness or infirmity. I may in this respect
have been a little hard on others,--and, if so, I here record my
repentance. But I think that no allowance should be given to claims
for exemption from punctuality, made if not absolutely on the score
still with the conviction of intellectual superiority.
The _Vicar of Bullhampton_ was written chiefly with the object of
exciting not only pity but sympathy for a fallen woman, and of
raising a feeling of forgiveness for such in the minds of other
women. I could not venture to make this female the heroine of my
story. To have made her a heroine at all would have been directly
opposed to my purpose. It was necessary therefore that she should
be a second-rate personage in the tale;--but it was with reference
to her life that the tale was written, and the hero and the
heroine with their belongings are all subordinate. To this novel I
affixed a preface,--in doing which I was acting in defiance of my
old-established principle. I do not know that any one read it; but
as I wish to have it read, I will insert it here again:--
I have introduced in the _Vicar of Bullhampton_ the character
of a girl whom I will call,--for want of a truer word that shall
not in its truth be offensive,--a castaway. I have endeavoured
to endow her with qualities that may create sympathy, and I
have brought her back at last from degradation, at least to
decency. I have not married her to a wealthy lover, and I have
endeavoured to explain that though there was possible to her a
way out of perdition, still things could not be with her as they
would have been had she not fallen.
There arises, of course, the question whether a novelist, who
professes to write for the amusement of the young of both sexes,
should allow himself to bring upon his stage a character such as
that of Carry Brattle. It is not long since,--it is well within
the memory of the author,--that the very existence of such a
condition of life as was hers, was supposed to be unknown to our
sisters and daughters, and was, in truth, unknown to many of
them. Whether that ignorance was good may be questioned; but
that it exists no longer is beyond question. Then arises the
further question,--how far the conditions of such unfortunates
should be made a matter of concern to the sweet young hearts of
those whose delicacy and cleanliness of thought is a matter of
pride to so many of us. Cannot women, who are good, pity the
sufferings of the vicious, and do something perhaps to mitigate
and shorten them without contamination from the vice? It will be
admitted probably by most men who have thought upon the subject
that no fault among us is punished so heavily as that fault,
often so light in itself but so terrible in its consequences to
the less faulty of the two offenders, by which a woman falls.
All her own sex is against her, and all those of the other sex
in whose veins runs the blood which she is thought to have
contaminated, and who, of nature, would befriend her, were her
trouble any other than it is.
She is what she is, and she remains in her abject, pitiless,
unutterable misery, because this sentence of the world has
placed her beyond the helping hand of Love and Friendship. It
may be said, no doubt, that the severity of this judgment acts
as a protection to female virtue,--deterring, as all known
punishments do deter, from vice. But this punishment, which is
horrible beyond the conception of those who have not regarded
it closely, is not known beforehand. Instead of the punishment,
there is seen a false glitter of gaudy life,--a glitter which
is damnably false,--and which, alas! has been more often
portrayed in glowing colours, for the injury of young girls,
than have those horrors which ought to deter, with the dark
shadowings which belong to them.
To write in fiction of one so fallen as the noblest of her sex,
as one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life
is happy, bright, and glorious, is certainly to allure to vice
and misery. But it may perhaps be possible that if the matter
be handled with truth to life, some girl, who would have been
thoughtless, may be made thoughtful, or some parent's heart may
be softened.
Those were my ideas when I conceived the story, and with that feeling
I described the characters of Carry Brattle and of her family. I have
not introduced her lover on the scene, nor have I presented her to
the reader in the temporary enjoyment of any of those fallacious
luxuries, the longing for which is sometimes more seductive to evil
than love itself. She is introduced as a poor abased creature, who
hardly knows how false were her dreams, with very little of the
Magdalene about her--because though there may be Magdalenes they are
not often found--but with an intense horror of the sufferings of
her position. Such being her condition, will they who naturally are
her friends protect her? The vicar who has taken her by the hand
endeavours to excite them to charity; but father, and brother, and
sister are alike hard-hearted. It had been my purpose at first that
the hand of every Brattle should be against her; but my own heart was
too soft to enable me to make the mother cruel,--or the unmarried
sister who had been the early companion of the forlorn one.
As regards all the Brattles, the story is, I think, well told. The
characters are true, and the scenes at the mill are in keeping with
human nature. For the rest of the book I have little to say. It is
not very bad, and it certainly is not very good. As I have myself
forgotten what the heroine does and says--except that she tumbles
into a ditch--I cannot expect that any one else should remember her.
But I have forgotten nothing that was done or said by any of the
Brattles.
The question brought in argument is one of fearful importance. As
to the view to be taken first, there can, I think, be no doubt. In
regard to a sin common to the two sexes, almost all the punishment
and all the disgrace is heaped upon the one who in nine cases out of
ten has been the least sinful. And the punishment inflicted is of
such a nature that it hardly allows room for repentance. How is the
woman to return to decency to whom no decent door is opened? Then
comes the answer: It is to the severity of the punishment alone that
we can trust to keep women from falling. Such is the argument used in
favour of the existing practice, and such the excuse given for their
severity by women who will relax nothing of their harshness. But in
truth the severity of the punishment is not known beforehand; it is
not in the least understood by women in general, except by those
who suffer it. The gaudy dirt, the squalid plenty, the contumely
of familiarity, the absence of all good words and all good things,
the banishment from honest labour, the being compassed round with
lies, the flaunting glare of fictitious revelry, the weary pavement,
the horrid slavery to some horrid tyrant,--and then the quick
depreciation of that one ware of beauty, the substituted paint,
garments bright without but foul within like painted sepulchres,
hunger, thirst, and strong drink, life without a hope, without the
certainty even of a morrow's breakfast, utterly friendless, disease,
starvation, and a quivering fear of that coming hell which still can
hardly be worse than all that is suffered here! This is the life to
which we doom our erring daughters, when because of their error we
close our door upon them! But for our erring sons we find pardon
easily enough.
Of course there are houses of refuge, from which it has been
thought expedient to banish everything pleasant, as though the only
repentance to which we can afford to give a place must necessarily
be one of sackcloth and ashes. It is hardly thus that we can hope to
recall those to decency who, if they are to be recalled at all, must
be induced to obey the summons before they have reached the last
stage of that misery which I have attempted to describe. To me the
mistake which we too often make seems to be this,--that the girl who
has gone astray is put out of sight, out of mind if possible, at any
rate out of speech, as though she had never existed, and that this
ferocity comes not only from hatred of the sin, but in part also from
a dread of the taint which the sin brings with it. Very low as is the
degradation to which a girl is brought when she falls through love
or vanity, or perhaps from a longing for luxurious ease, still much
lower is that to which she must descend perforce when, through the
hardness of the world around her, she converts that sin into a trade.
Mothers and sisters, when the misfortune comes upon them of a fallen
female from among their number, should remember this, and not fear
contamination so strongly as did Carry Brattle's married sister and
sister-in-law.
In 1870 I brought out three books,--or rather of the latter of the
three I must say that it was brought out by others, for I had nothing
to do with it except to write it. These were _Sir Harry Hotspur of
Humblethwaite_, _An Editors Tales_, and a little volume on Julius
Cæsar. _Sir Harry Hotspur_ was written on the same plan as _Nina
Balatka_ and _Linda Tressel_, and had for its object the telling
of some pathetic incident in life rather than the portraiture of a
number of human beings. _Nina_ and _Linda Tressel_ and _The Golden
Lion_ had been placed in foreign countries, and this was an English
story. In other respects it is of the same nature, and was not, I
think, by any means a failure. There is much of pathos in the love
of the girl, and of paternal dignity and affection in the father.
It was published first in _Macmillan's Magazine_, by the intelligent
proprietor of which I have since been told that it did not make
either his fortune or that of his magazine. I am sorry that it should
have been so; but I fear that the same thing may be said of a good
many of my novels. When it had passed through the magazine, the
subsequent use of it was sold to other publishers by Mr. Macmillan,
and then I learned that it was to be brought out by them as a novel
in two volumes. Now it had been sold by me as a novel in one volume,
and hence there arose a correspondence.
I found it very hard to make the purchasers understand that I had
reasonable ground for objection to the process. What was it to me?
How could it injure me if they stretched my pages by means of lead
and margin into double the number I had intended. I have heard the
same argument on other occasions. When I have pointed out that in
this way the public would have to suffer, seeing that they would
have to pay Mudie for the use of two volumes in reading that which
ought to have been given to them in one, I have been assured that the
public are pleased with literary short measure, that it is the object
of novel-readers to get through novels as fast as they can, and that
the shorter each volume is the better! Even this, however, did not
overcome me, and I stood to my guns. _Sir Harry_ was published in
one volume, containing something over the normal 300 pages, with
an average of 220 words to a page,--which I had settled with my
conscience to be the proper length of a novel volume. I may here
mention that on one occasion, and on one occasion only, a publisher
got the better of me in a matter of volumes. He had a two-volume
novel of mine running through a certain magazine, and had it printed
complete in three volumes before I knew where I was,--before I had
seen a sheet of the letterpress. I stormed for a while, but I had not
the heart to make him break up the type.
The _Editor's Tales_ was a volume republished from the _St. Paul's
Magazine_, and professed to give an editor's experience of his
dealings with contributors. I do not think that there is a single
incident in the book which could bring back to any one concerned the
memory of a past event. And yet there is not an incident in it the
outline of which was not presented to my mind by the remembrance of
some fact:--how an ingenious gentleman got into conversation with me,
I not knowing that he knew me to be an editor, and pressed his little
article on my notice; how I was addressed by a lady with a becoming
pseudonym and with much equally becoming audacity; how I was appealed
to by the dearest of little women whom here I have called Mary
Gresley; how in my own early days there was a struggle over an
abortive periodical which was intended to be the best thing ever
done; how terrible was the tragedy of a poor drunkard, who with
infinite learning at his command made one sad final effort to reclaim
himself, and perished while he was making it; and lastly how a poor
weak editor was driven nearly to madness by threatened litigation
from a rejected contributor. Of these stories _The Spotted Dog_,
with the struggles of the drunkard scholar, is the best. I know now,
however, that when the things were good they came out too quick one
upon another to gain much attention;--and so also, luckily, when they
were bad.
The _Cæsar_ was a thing of itself. My friend John Blackwood had
set on foot a series of small volumes called _Ancient Classics for
English Readers_, and had placed the editing of them, and the
compiling of many of them, in the hands of William Lucas Collins,
a clergyman who, from my connection with the series, became a most
intimate friend. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ had already come out
when I was at Edinburgh with John Blackwood, and, on my expressing
my very strong admiration for those two little volumes,--which I
here recommend to all young ladies as the most charming tales they
can read,--he asked me whether I would not undertake one myself.
_Herodotus_ was in the press, but, if I could get it ready, mine
should be next. Whereupon I offered to say what might be said to the
readers of English on _The Commentaries of Julius Cæsar_.
I at once went to work, and in three months from that day the little
book had been written. I began by reading through the Commentaries
twice, which I did without any assistance either by translation or
English notes. Latin was not so familiar to me then as it has since
become,--for from that date I have almost daily spent an hour with
some Latin author, and on many days many hours. After the reading
what my author had left behind him, I fell into the reading of what
others had written about him, in Latin, in English, and even in
French,--for I went through much of that most futile book by the late
Emperor of the French. I do not know that for a short period I ever
worked harder. The amount I had to write was nothing. Three weeks
would have done it easily. But I was most anxious, in this soaring
out of my own peculiar line, not to disgrace myself. I do not think
that I did disgrace myself. Perhaps I was anxious for something more.
If so, I was disappointed.
The book I think to be a good little book. It is readable by
all, old and young, and it gives, I believe accurately, both an
account of Cæsar's Commentaries,--which of course was the primary
intention,--and the chief circumstances of the great Roman's life.
A well-educated girl who had read it and remembered it would perhaps
know as much about Cæsar and his writings as she need know. Beyond
the consolation of thinking as I do about it, I got very little
gratification from the work. Nobody praised it. One very old and very
learned friend to whom I sent it thanked me for my "comic Cæsar," but
said no more. I do not suppose that he intended to run a dagger into
me. Of any suffering from such wounds, I think, while living, I never
showed a sign; but still I have suffered occasionally. There was,
however, probably present to my friend's mind, and to that of others,
a feeling that a man who had spent his life in writing English novels
could not be fit to write about Cæsar. It was as when an amateur
gets a picture hung on the walls of the Academy. What business had
I there? _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_. In the press it was most faintly
damned by most faint praise. Nevertheless, having read the book again
within the last month or two, I make bold to say that it is a good
book. The series, I believe, has done very well. I am sure that it
ought to do well in years to come, for, putting aside Cæsar, the work
has been done with infinite scholarship, and very generally with a
light hand. With the leave of my sententious and sonorous friend,
who had not endured that subjects which had been grave to him should
be treated irreverently, I will say that such a work, unless it be
light, cannot answer the purpose for which it is intended. It was not
exactly a school-book that was wanted, but something that would carry
the purposes of the school-room even into the leisure hours of adult
pupils. Nothing was ever better suited for such a purpose than the
_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, as done by Mr. Collins. The _Virgil_, also
done by him, is very good; and so is the _Aristophanes_ by the same
hand.