(1788-1845)
The author of the 'Ingoldsby Legends' belonged to a well-defined and
delightful class of men, chiefly found in modern England, and indeed
mostly bred and made possible by the conditions of English society and
the Anglican Church. It is that of clergymen who in the public eye are
chiefly wits and diners-out, jokers and literary humorists, yet are
conscientious and devoted ministers of their religion and curators of
their religious charges, honoring their profession and humanity by true
and useful lives and lovable characters. They are men of the sort
loathed by Lewis Carroll's heroine in the 'Two Voices,'
"a kind of folk
Who have no horror of a joke,"
and indeed love it dearly, but are as firm in principle and
unostentatiously dutiful in conduct as if they were leaden Puritans or
narrow devotees.
[Illustration: RICHARD H. BARHAM]
By far the best remembered of this class, for themselves or their work,
are Sydney Smith and Richard Harris Barham; but their relative repute is
one of the oddest paradoxes in literary history. Roughly speaking, the
one is remembered and unread, the other read and unremembered. Sydney
Smith's name is almost as familiar to the masses as Scott's, and few
could tell a line that he wrote; Barham's writing is almost as familiar
as Scott's, and few would recognize his name. Yet he is in the foremost
rank of humorists; his place is wholly unique, and is likely to remain
so. It will be an age before a similar combination of tastes and
abilities is found once more. Macaulay said truly of Sir Walter Scott
that he "combined the minute learning of an antiquary with the fire of a
great poet." Barham combined a like learning in different fields, and
joined to a different outlook and temper of mind, with the quick
perceptions of a great wit, the brimming zest and high spirits of a
great joker, the genial nature and lightness of a born man of the world,
and the gifts of a wonderful improvisatore in verse. Withal, he had just
enough of serious purpose to give much of his work a certain measure of
cohesive unity, and thus impress it on the mind as no collection of
random skits could do. That purpose is the feathering which steadies the
arrows and sends them home.
It is pleasant to know that one who has given so good a time to others
had a very good time himself; that we are not, as so often happens,
relishing a farce that stood for tragedy with the maker, and
substituting our laughter for his tears. Barham had the cruel sorrows of
personal bereavement so few escape; but in material things his career
was wholly among pleasant ways. He was well born and with means, well
educated, well nurtured. He was free from the sordid squabbles or
anxious watching and privation which fall to the lot of so many of the
best. He was happy in his marriage and its attendant home and family,
and most fortunate in his friendships and the superb society he enjoyed.
His birth and position as a gentleman of good landed family, combined
with his profession, opened all doors to him.
But it was the qualities personal to himself, after all, which made
these things available for enjoyment. His desires were moderate; he
counted success what more eager and covetous natures might have esteemed
comparative failure. His really strong intellect and wide knowledge and
cultivation enabled him to meet the foremost men of letters on equal
terms. His kind heart, generous nature, exuberant fun, and entertaining
conversation endeared him to every one and made his company sought by
every one; they saved much trouble from coming upon him and lightened
what did come. And no blight could have withered that perennial fountain
of jollity, drollery, and light-heartedness. But these were only the
ornaments of a stanchly loyal and honorable nature, and a lovable and
unselfish soul. One of his friends writes of him thus:--
"The profits of agitating pettifoggers would have materially
lessened in a district where he acted as a magistrate; and
duels would have been nipped in the bud at his regimental
mess. It is not always an easy task to do as you would be
done by; but to think as you would be thought of and thought
for, and to feel as you would be felt for, is perhaps still
more difficult, as superior powers of tact and intellect are
here required in order to second good intentions. These
faculties, backed by an uncompromising love of truth and fair
dealing, indefatigable good nature, and a nice sense of what
was due to every one in the several relations of life, both
gentle and simple, rendered our late friend invaluable,
either as an adviser or a peacemaker, in matters of delicate
and difficult handling."
Barham was born in Canterbury, England, December 6th, 1788, and died in
London, June 17th, 1845. His ancestry was superior, the family having
derived its name from possessions in Kent in Norman days. He lost his
father--a genial _bon vivant_ of literary tastes who seems like a
reduced copy of his son--when but five years old; and became heir to a
fair estate, including Tappington Hall, the picturesque old gabled
mansion so often imaginatively misdescribed in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,'
but really having the famous blood-stained stairway. He had an expensive
private education, which was nearly ended with his life at the age of
fourteen by a carriage accident which shattered and mangled his right
arm, crippling it permanently. As so often happens, the disaster was
really a piece of good fortune: it turned him to or confirmed him in
quiet antiquarian scholarship, and established connections which
ultimately led to the 'Legends'; he may owe immortality to it.
After passing through St. Paul's (London) and Brasenose (Oxford), he
studied law, but finally entered the church. After a couple of small
curacies in Kent, he was made rector of Snargate and curate of Warehorn,
near Romney Marsh; all four in a district where smuggling was a chief
industry, and the Marsh in especial a noted haunt of desperadoes (for
smugglers then took their lives in their hands), of which the 'Legends'
are rich in reminiscences. In 1819, during this incumbency, he wrote a
novel, 'Baldwin,' which was a failure; and part of another, 'My Cousin
Nicholas,' which, finished fifteen years later, had fair success as a
serial in Blackwood's Magazine.
An opportunity offering in 1821, he stood for a minor canonry in St.
Paul's Cathedral, London, and obtained it; his income was less than
before, but he had entered the metropolitan field, which brought him
rich enjoyment and permanent fame. He paid a terrible price for them:
his unhealthy London house cost him the lives of three of his children.
To make up for his shortened means he became editor of the London
Chronicle and a contributor to various other periodicals, including the
notorious weekly John Bull, sometime edited by Theodore Hook. In 1824 he
became a priest in the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace, and soon
after gained a couple of excellent livings in Essex, which put him at
ease financially.
He was inflexible in principle, a firm Tory, though without rancor. He
was very High Church, but had no sympathy with the Oxford movement or
Catholicism. He preached careful and sober sermons, without oratorical
display and with rigid avoidance of levity. He would not make the church
a field either for fireworks or jokes, or even for displays of
scholarship or intellectual gymnastics. In his opinion, religious
establishments were kept up to advance religion and morals. And both he
and his wife wrought zealously in the humble but exacting field of
parochial good works.
He was, however, fast becoming one of the chief ornaments of that
brilliant group of London wits whose repute still vibrates from the
early part of the century. Many of them--actors, authors, artists,
musicians, and others met at the Garrick Club, and Barham joined it. The
names of Sydney Smith and Theodore Hook are enough to show what it was;
but there were others equally delightful,--not the least so, or least
useful, a few who could not see a joke at all, and whose simplicity and
good nature made them butts for the hoaxes and solemn chaff of the rest.
Barbara's diary, quoted in his son's (Life,) gives an exquisite
instance.
In 1834 his old schoolmaster Bentley established Bentley's Miscellany;
and Barham was asked for contributions. The first he sent was the
amusing but quite "conceivable" (Spectre of Tappington); but there soon
began the immortal series of versified local stories, legendary church
miracles, antiquarian curios, witty summaries of popular plays, skits on
London life, and so on, under the pseudonym of 'Thomas Ingoldsby,' which
sprang instantly into wide popularity, and have never fallen from public
favor since--nor can they till appreciation of humor is dead in the
world. They were collected and illustrated by Leech, Cruikshank, and
others, who were inspired by them to some of their best designs: perhaps
the most perfect realization in art of the Devil in his moments of
jocose triumph is Leech's figure in 'The House-Warming.' A later series
appeared in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine in 1843.
He wrote some excellent pieces (of their kind) in prose, besides the one
already mentioned: the weird and well-constructed 'Leech of Folkestone'
and the 'Passage in the Life of Henry Harris,' both half-serious tales
of mediaeval magic; the thoroughly Ingoldsbian 'Legend of Sheppey,' with
its irreverent farce, high animal spirits, and antiquarianism; the
equally characteristic 'Lady Rohesia,' which would be vulgar but for his
sly wit and drollery. But none of these are as familiar as the versified
'Legends,' nor have they the astonishing variety of entertainment found
in the latter.
The 'Ingoldsby Legends' have been called an English naturalization of
the French metrical _contes;_ but Barham owes nothing to his French
models save the suggestion of method and form. Not only is his matter
all his own, but he has _Anglified_ the whole being of the metrical form
itself. His facility of versification, the way in which the whole
language seems to be liquid in his hands and ready to pour into any
channel of verse, was one of the marvelous things of literature. It did
not need the free random movement of the majority of the tales, where
the lines may be anything from one foot to six, from spondaic to
dactylic: in some of them he tied himself down to the most rigid and
inflexible metrical forms, and moved as lightly and freely in those
fetters as if they were non-existent. As to the astonishing rhymes which
meet us at every step, they form in themselves a poignant kind of wit;
often double and even treble, one word rhyming with an entire phrase or
one phrase with another,--not only of the oddest kind, but as nicely
adapted to the necessities of expression and meaning as if intended or
invented for that purpose alone,--they produce on us the effect of the
richest humor.
One of his most diverting "properties" is the set of "morals" he draws
to everything, of nonsensical literalness and infantile gravity, the
perfection of solemn fooling. Thus in the 'Lay of St. Cuthbert,' where
the Devil has captured the heir of the house,
"Whom the nurse had forgot and left there in his chair,
Alternately sucking his thumb and his pear,"
the moral is drawn, among others,--
"Perhaps it's as well to keep children from plums,
And pears in their season--and sucking their thumbs."