1850.
Interest in the Middle Ages.--Indifference to the Greeks and Romans.--
Love for Sir Walter Scott's writings.--Interest in heraldry and
illuminations.--Passion for hawking.--Old books in the school library
at Burnley.--Mr. Edward Alexander of Halifax.--Attempts in literary
composition.--Contributions to the "Historic Times."--"Rome in
1849."--"Observations on Heraldry."
The last chapter ended by saying that my occupations in early life were
the same as they are at present, but I now remember one or two points of
difference. In those days I lived, mentally, a great deal in the Middle
Ages. This was owing to the influence of Sir Walter Scott, certainly of
all authors the one who has most influenced me, and it was also due in
some measure to a romantic interest in the history of my own family, and
of the other families in the north of England with which mine had been
connected in the past. For the Greeks and Romans I cared very little;
they seemed too remote from my own country and race, and the English
present, in which my lot was cast, seemed too dull and un-picturesque,
too prosaic and commonplace. My imagination being saturated with Scott,
I had naturally the same taste as my master. I soon learned all about
heraldry, and in my leisure time drew and colored all the coats of arms
that had been borne by the Hamertons in their numerous alliances, as
well as the arms of other families from which our own was descended. I
wrote black-letter characters on parchment and made pedigrees, and
became so much of a mediaevalist that there was considerable risk of my
stopping short in the amateur practice of such arts as wood-carving,
illumination, and painting on glass. The same taste for the Middle Ages
led me to imitate our forefathers in more active pursuits; amongst
others I had such a passion for hawking that at one time I became
incapable of opening my lips about anything else. My guardian said it
was "hawk, hawk, hawking from morning till night." Not that I ever
possessed a living falcon of any species whatever. My uncle resigned to
me a corner of the outbuildings, on the ground-floor of which was a
loose-box for my horse, and above it a room that I set apart for the
falcons when they should arrive; but in spite of many promises from
gamekeepers and naturalists and others, no birds ever came! The hoods
and jesses were ready, very prettily adorned with red morocco leather
and gold thread; the mews were ready too, with partitions in
trellis-work of my own making,--everything was ready except the
peregrines!
I knew the coats-of-arms of all the families in the neighborhood, and of
course that of the Towneleys, who had a chapel in Burnley Church for the
interment of their dead, adorned with many hatchments. Those hatchments
had a double interest for me, as heraldry in the first place, and also
because the Towneleys had a peregrine falcon for their crest! I envied
them that crest, and would willingly have exchanged for it our own
"greyhound couchant, sable."
Burnley School possesses a library which is rich in old tomes that few
people ever read. In my youth these volumes were kept in a room entirely
surrounded with dark oak wainscot, that opened on the shelves where
these old books reposed. I read some of them, more or less, but have
totally forgotten them all except a black-letter Chaucer. That volume
delighted me, and I have read in it many an hour. It is much to be
regretted that I had not the same affectionate curiosity about the Greek
and Latin classics, but it was something to have a taste for the
literature of one's own country.
My uncle's brother-in-law, Mr. Edward Alexander, of Halifax, was a
lawyer of literary and antiquarian tastes, and a great lover of
books,--not to read only, but to have around him in a well-ordered
library. He was extremely kind to me, and now, when I know better how
very rare such kindness is in the world, I feel perhaps even more
grateful for it than I did then.
Mr. Alexander was the father of the young Alexander who was my
school-fellow at Doncaster, and I am hardly exaggerating his affection
for me when I say that he had a paternal feeling towards myself. He put
his library entirely at my disposal, and gave me a room in his house at
Heath Field, near Halifax, whenever I felt inclined to avail myself of
it, and had liberty to go there.
His library had cost him several thousand pounds, and was rich in
archaeological books. Mrs. Alexander was a charming lady, always
exquisitely gentle in her way, and gifted with a quiet firmness which
enabled her to match very effectually the somewhat irascible disposition
of my friend, who had the irritability as well as the kindness of heart
which, I have since observed, are often found together in Frenchmen.
With all his goodness he was by no means an indulgent judge; he could
not endure the slightest failure or forgetfulness in good manners, and
most of his young relations were afraid of him. I only offended him
once, and that but slightly. He was walking in his own garden with my
uncle, when I had to do something that required the use of both hands,
and I was encumbered with a book. I dared not lay the book on the
ground, as I should have done if it had been my own, so I asked my uncle
to hold it. I could see an expression on Mr. Alexander's face which said
clearly enough that I had taken a liberty in requesting this little
service from a senior, and it only occurred to me as an afterthought
that I might have put my hat on the ground and laid the book on the hat.
This little incident shows one side of my dear friend's nature, but it
was not at all a bad thing for me to be occasionally under the influence
of one who was at the same time kind and severe. In early life he had
been a dandy, and a local poet had called him,--
"Elegant Extracts, the Halifax fop."
[Footnote: "Elegant Extracts" was the title of a book of miscellaneous
reading which had an extensive sale in those days. The couplet related
to a public ball,--
"Elegant Extracts, the Halifax fop,
With note-book in hand, took coach for the hop."
Mr. Alexander sometimes alluded in a pleasant way to his early
foppishness, and told some amusing anecdotes, one of which I remember.
He and a young friend having adopted some startling new fashion before
anybody else in Halifax, were going to church very proud of themselves,
when they heard a girl laughing at them, on which her companion rebuked
her, saying, "You shouldn't laugh; you might be struck so!" She thought
the dandies were two misshapen idiots.]
In his maturity all that remained of early dandyism was an intolerance
of every kind of slovenliness. He rigorously exacted order in his
library; I might use any of his books, but must put them all back in
their places. Perhaps my present strong love of order may be due in a
great measure to Mr. Alexander's teaching and example. Amongst the
friends of my youth there are very few whom I look back to with such
grateful affection.
Like most boys who have become authors, I made attempts in literary
composition independently of those which were directly encouraged by my
master. In this way I wrote a number of articles that were accepted by
the "Historic Times," a London illustrated journal of those days which
was started under the patronage of the Church of England, but had not a
great success. My first articles were on the Universities, of which I
knew nothing except by hearsay, and on "Civilization, Ancient and
Modern," which was rather a vast subject for a boy whose reading had
been so limited. However, the editor of the "Historic Times" had not the
least suspicion of my age, so I favored him with a long series of
articles on Rome in 1849, forming altogether as complete a history of
the city for that year as could have been written by one who had never
seen it, who did not know Italian, and who had not access to any other
sources of information than those which are accessible to everybody in
the newspapers.
Under these circumstances, it may seem absurd to have undertaken such a
task, but the reader may be reminded that learned historians undertake
to tell us what happened long ago from much less ample material. I got
no money for these articles (there were twelve of them), and no
publisher would reprint them because there was no personal observation
in them which publishers always expect in a narrative of contemporary
events. The work had, however, been a good exercise for me in the
digesting and setting in literary order of a mass of confused material.
My passion for heraldry and hawking led to the production of a little
book on heraldry which was an imitation of Sir John Sebright's
"Observations on Hawking," a treatise that seemed to me simple, and
clearly arranged.
My little book had no literary value, and the publisher said that only
thirty-nine copies were sold; however, on being asked to produce the
remainder of the edition, he said he was unable to do so, as the copies
had been "mislaid." The printing and binding having been done at my
expense, I compelled the publisher to reprint the book, but this brought
me no pecuniary benefit, as the demand, such as it was, had been
satisfied by the first edition.
To this day I do not feel certain in my own mind whether the publisher
was dishonest or not. It would be quite natural that a book on heraldry
should have a very small sale, but on the other hand it is inconceivable
that more than four hundred copies of a book should have been simply
lost. [Footnote: There is a third possibility: the sale may have been
exactly what the publisher stated; but he may have had no belief in the
success of the work, and have printed only one hundred copies whilst
charging me for five hundred.]
It was a very good thing for me that the printing of this treatise on
heraldry was a cause of loss and disappointment, for if it had been
successful I might easily have wasted my life in archaeology, and
corrected pedigrees--those long lists of dead people of whom nobody
knows anything but their names, and the estates they were lucky enough
to possess.
The reader will see that up to this point my tastes had been
conservative and aristocratic. Then there came a revolution which was
the most important intellectual crisis of my life, and which deserves a
chapter to itself.