There is no portrait in my possession more satisfactory than the small
one of Barry Cornwall, made purposely for me in England, from life. It
is a thoroughly honest resemblance.
I first saw the poet five-and-twenty years ago, in his own house in
London, at No. 13 Upper Harley Street, Cavendish Square. He was then
declining into the vale of years, but his mind was still vigorous and
young. My letter of introduction to him was written by Charles Sumner,
and it proved sufficient for the beginning of a friendship which existed
through a quarter of a century. My last interview with him occurred in
1869. I found him then quite feeble, but full of his old kindness and
geniality. His speech was somewhat difficult to follow, for he had been
slightly paralyzed not long before; but after listening to him for half
an hour, it was easy to understand nearly every word he uttered. He
spoke with warm feeling of Longfellow, who had been in London during
that season, and had called to see his venerable friend before
proceeding to the Continent. "Wasn't it good of him," said the old man,
in his tremulous voice, "to think of _me_ before he had been in town
twenty-four hours?" He also spoke of his dear companion, John Kenyon, at
whose house we had often met in years past, and he called to mind a
breakfast party there, saying with deep feeling, "And you and I are the
only ones now alive of all who came together that happy morning!"
A few months ago,[*] at the great age of eighty-seven, Bryan Waller
Procter, familiarly and honorably known in English literature for sixty
years past as "Barry Cornwall," calmly "fell on sleep." The schoolmate
of Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel at Harrow, the friend and companion of
Keats, Lamb, Shelley, Coleridge, Landor, Hunt, Talfourd, and Rogers, the
man to whom Thackeray "affectionately dedicated" his "Vanity Fair," one
of the kindest souls that ever gladdened earth, has now joined the great
majority of England's hallowed sons of song. No poet ever left behind
him more fragrant memories, and he will always be thought of as one whom
his contemporaries loved and honored. No harsh word will ever be spoken
by those who have known him of the author of "Marcian Colonna,"
"Mirandola," "The Broken Heart," and those charming lyrics which rank
the poet among the first of his class. His songs will be sung so long as
music wedded to beautiful poetry is a requisition anywhere. His verses
have gone into the Book of Fame, and such pieces as "Touch us gently,
Time," "Send down thy winged Angel, God," "King Death," "The Sea," and
"Belshazzar is King," will long keep his memory green. Who that ever
came habitually into his presence can forget the tones of his voice, the
tenderness in his gray retrospective eyes, or the touch of his
sympathetic hand laid on the shoulder of a friend! The elements were
indeed so kindly mixed in him that no bitterness or rancor or jealousy
had part or lot in his composition. No distinguished person was ever
more ready to help forward the rising and as yet nameless literary man
or woman who asked his counsel and warm-hearted suffrage. His mere
presence was sunshine to a new-comer into the world of letters and
criticism, for he was always quick to encourage, and slow to disparage
anybody. Indeed, to be _human_ only entitled any one who came near him
to receive the gracious bounty of his goodness and courtesy. He made it
the happiness of his life never to miss, whenever opportunity occurred,
the chance of conferring pleasure and gladness on those who needed kind
words and substantial aid.
[Footnote *: October, 1874.]
His equals in literature venerated and loved him. Dickens and Thackeray
never ceased to regard him with the deepest feeling, and such men as
Browning and Tennyson and Carlyle and Forster rallied about him to the
last. He was the delight of all those interesting men and women who
habitually gathered around Rogers's famous table in the olden time, for
his manner had in it all the courtesy of genius, without any of that
chance asperity so common in some literary circles. The shyness of a
scholar brooded continually over him and made him reticent, but he was
never silent from ill-humor. His was that true modesty so excellent in
ability, and so rare in celebrities petted for a long time in society.
His was also that happy alchemy of mind which transmutes disagreeable
things into golden and ruby colors like the dawn. His temperament was
the exact reverse of Fuseli's, who complained that "_nature_ put him
out." A beautiful spirit has indeed passed away, and the name of "Barry
Cornwall," beloved in both hemispheres, is now sanctified afresh by the
seal of eternity so recently stamped upon it.
It was indeed a privilege for a young American, on his first travels
abroad, to have "Barry Cornwall" for his host in London. As I recall the
memorable days and nights of that long-ago period, I wonder at the good
fortune which brought me into such relations with him, and I linger
with profound gratitude over his many acts of unmerited kindness. One of
the most intimate rambles I ever took with him was in 1851, when we
started one morning from a book-shop in Piccadilly, where we met
accidentally. I had been in London only a couple of days, and had not
yet called upon him for lack of time. Several years had elapsed since we
had met, but he began to talk as if we had parted only a few hours
before. At first I thought his mind was impaired by age, and that he had
forgotten how long it was since we had spoken together. I imagined it
possible that he mistook me for some one else; but very soon I found
that his memory was not at fault, for in a few minutes he began to
question me about old friends in America, and to ask for information
concerning the probable sea-sick horrors of an Atlantic voyage. "I
suppose," said he, "knowing your infirmity, you found it hard work to
stand on your immaterial legs, as Hood used to call Lamb's quivering
limbs." Sauntering out into the street, he went on in a quaintly
humorous way to imagine what a rough voyage must be to a real sufferer,
and thus walking gayly along, we came into Leadenhall Street. There he
pointed out the office where his old friend and fellow-magazinist,
"Elia," spent so many years of hard work from ten until four o'clock of
every day. Being in a mood for reminiscence, he described the Wednesday
evenings he used to spend with "Charles and Mary" and their friends
around the old "mahogany-tree" in Russell Street. I remember he tried to
give me an idea of how Lamb looked and dressed, and how he stood bending
forward to welcome his guests as they arrived in his humble lodgings.
Procter thought nothing unimportant that might serve in any way to
illustrate character, and so he seemed to wish that I might get an exact
idea of the charming person both of us prized so ardently and he had
known so intimately. Speaking of Lamb's habits, he said he had never
known his friend to drink immoderately except upon one occasion, and he
observed that "Elia," like Dickens, was a small and delicate eater. With
faltering voice he told me of Lamb's "givings away" to needy,
impoverished friends whose necessities were yet greater than his own.
His secret charities were constant and unfailing, and no one ever
suffered hunger when he was by. He could not endure to see a
fellow-creature in want if he had the means to feed him. Thinking, from
a depression of spirits which Procter in his young manhood was once
laboring under, that perhaps he was in want of money, Lamb looked him
earnestly in the face as they were walking one day in the country
together, and blurted out, in his stammering way, "My dear boy, I have a
hundred-pound note in my desk that I really don't know what to do with:
oblige me by taking it and getting the confounded thing out of my
keeping." "I was in no need of money," said Procter, "and I declined the
gift; but it was hard work to make Lamb believe that I was not in an
impecunious condition."
Speaking of Lamb's sister Mary, Procter quoted Hazlitt's saying that
"Mary Lamb was the most rational and wisest woman he had ever been
acquainted with." As we went along some of the more retired streets in
the old city, we had also, I remember, much gossip about Coleridge and
his manner of reciting his poetry, especially when "Elia" happened to be
among the listeners, for the philosopher put a high estimate upon Lamb's
critical judgment. The author of "The Ancient Mariner" always had an
excuse for any bad habit to which he was himself addicted, and he told
Procter one day that perhaps snuff was the final cause of the human
nose. In connection with Coleridge we had much reminiscence of such
interesting persons as the Novellos, Martin Burney, Talfourd, and Crabb
Robinson, and a store of anecdotes in which Haydon, Manning, Dyer, and
Godwin figured at full length. In course of conversation I asked my
companion if he thought Lamb had ever been really in love, and he told
me interesting things of Hester Savory, a young Quaker girl of
Pentonville, who inspired the poem embalming the name of Hester forever,
and of Fanny Kelly, the actress with "the divine plain face," who will
always live in one of "Elia's" most exquisite essays. "He had a
_reverence_ for the sex," said Procter, "and there were tender spots in
his heart that time could never entirely cover up or conceal."
During our walk we stepped into Christ's Hospital, and turned to the
page on its record book where together we read this entry: "October 9,
1782, Charles Lamb, aged seven years, son of John Lamb, scrivener, and
Elizabeth his wife."
It was a lucky morning when I dropped in to bid "good morrow" to the
poet as I was passing his house one day, for it was then he took from
among his treasures and gave to me an autograph letter addressed to
himself by Charles Lamb in 1829. I found the dear old man alone and in
his library, sitting at his books, with the windows wide open, letting
in the spring odors. Quoting, as I entered, some lines from Wordsworth
embalming May mornings, he began to talk of the older poets who had
worshipped nature with the ardor of lovers, and his eyes lighted up with
pleasure when I happened to remember some almost forgotten stanza from
England's "Helicon." It was an easy transition from the old bards to
"Elia," and he soon went on in his fine enthusiastic way to relate
several anecdotes of his eccentric friend. As I rose to take leave he
said,--
"Have I ever given you one of Lamb's letters to carry home to America?"
"No," I replied, "and you must not part with the least scrap of a note
in 'Elia's' handwriting. Such things are too precious to be risked on a
sea-voyage to another hemisphere."
"America ought to share with England in these things," he rejoined; and
leading me up to a sort of cabinet in the library, he unlocked a drawer
and got out a package of time-stained papers. "Ah," said he, as he
turned over the golden leaves, "here is something you will like to
handle." I unfolded the sheet, and lo! it was in Keats's handwriting,
the sonnet on first looking into Chapman's Homer. "Keats gave it to me,"
said Procter, "many, many years ago," and then he proceeded to read, in
tones tremulous with delight, these undying lines:--
"Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many Western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
I sat gazing at the man who had looked on Keats in the flush of his
young genius, and wondered at my good fortune. As the living poet folded
up again the faded manuscript of the illustrious dead one, and laid it
reverently in its place, I felt grateful for the honor thus vouchsafed
to a wandering stranger in a foreign land, and wished that other and
worthier votaries of English letters might have been present to share
with me the boon of such an interview. Presently my hospitable friend,
still rummaging among the past, drew out a letter, which was the one,
he said, he had been looking after. "Cram it into your pocket," he
cried, "for I hear ---- coming down stairs, and perhaps she won't let
you carry it off!" The letter is addressed to B.W. Procter, Esq., 10
Lincoln's Inn, New Square. I give the entire epistle here just as it
stands in the original which Procter handed me that memorable May
morning. He told me that the law question raised in this epistle was a
sheer fabrication of Lamb's, gotten up by him to puzzle his young
correspondent, the conveyancer. The coolness referred to between himself
and Robinson and Talfourd, Procter said, was also a fiction invented by
Lamb to carry out his legal mystification.
"_Jan'y_ 19, 1829.
"My Dear Procter,--I am ashamed to have not taken the drift of your
pleasant letter, which I find to have been pure invention. But jokes
are not suspected in Boeotian Enfield. We are plain people, and our
talk is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Besides I was a
little out of sorts when I received it. The fact is, I am involved
in a case which has fretted me to death, and I have no reliance
except on you to extricate me. I am sure you will give me your best
legal advice, having no professional friend besides but Robinson and
Talfourd, with neither of whom at present I am on the best terms. My
brother's widow left a will, made during the lifetime of my brother,
in which I am named sole Executor, by which she bequeaths forty
acres of arable property, which it seems she held under Covert
Baron, unknown to my Brother, to the heirs of the body of Elizabeth
Dowden, her married daughter by her first husband, in fee simple,
recoverable by fine--invested property, mind, for there is the
difficulty--subject to leet and quit rent--in short, worded in the
most guarded terms, to shut out the property from Isaac Dowden the
husband. Intelligence has just come of the death of this person in
India, where he made a will, entailing this property (which seem'd
entangled enough already) to the heirs of his body, that should not
be born of his wife; for it seems by the Law in India natural
children can recover. They have put the cause into Exchequer Process
here, removed by Certiorari from the Native Courts, and the question
is whether I should as Executor, try the cause here, or again
re-remove to the Supreme Sessions at Bangalore, which I understand I
can, or plead a hearing before the Privy Council here. As it
involves all the little property of Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious
to take the fittest steps, and what may be the least expensive. For
God's sake assist me, for the case is so embarrassed that it
deprives me of sleep and appetite. M. Burney thinks there is a Case
like it in Chapt. 170 Sect. 5 in Fearn's _Contingent Remainders_.
Pray read it over with him dispassionately, and let me have the
result. The complexity lies in the questionable power of the husband
to alienate in usum enfeoffments whereof he was only collaterally
seized, etc."
[On the leaf at this place there are some words in another hand.--F.]
"The above is some of M. Burney's memoranda, which he has left here,
and you may cut out and give him. I had another favour to beg, which
is the beggarliest of beggings. A few lines of verse for a young
friend's Album (six will be enough). M. Burney will tell you who she
is I want 'em for. A girl of gold. Six lines--make 'em eight--signed
Barry C----. They need not be very good, as I chiefly want 'em as a
foil to mine. But I shall be seriously obliged by any refuse scrap.
We are in the last ages of the world, when St. Paul prophesied that
women should be 'headstrong, lovers of their own wills, having
Albums.' I fled hither to escape the Albumean persecution, and had
not been in my new house 24 hours, when the Daughter of the next
house came in with a friend's Album to beg a contribution, and the
following day intimated she had one of her own. Two more have sprung
up since. If I take the wings of the morning and fly unto the
uttermost parts of the earth, there will Albums be. New Holland has
Albums. But the age is to be complied with. M.B. will tell you the
sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast
what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that
cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate
judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if
you have not burnt your returned letter pray re-send it me as a
monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you
to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed
Annuals I have become a by-word of infamy all over the kingdom. I
have sicken'd decent women for asking me to write in Albums. There
be 'dark jests' abroad, Master Cornwall, and some riddles may live
to be clear'd up. And 'tisn't every saddle is put on the right
steed. And forgeries and false Gospels are not peculiar to the age
following the Apostles. And some tubs don't stand on their right
bottom. Which is all I wish to say in these ticklish Times ---- and
so your servant,