IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND
CHAPTER II.
JOURNEY IN BRITTANY
CHAPTER III.
AT PENRITH.--AT PARIS
CHAPTER IV.
IN WESTERN FRANCE.--AGAIN IN PARIS
CHAPTER V.
IN IRELAND.--AT ILFRACOMBE--IN FLORENCE
CHAPTER VI.
IN FLORENCE
CHAPTER VII.
CHARLES DICKENS
CHAPTER VIII.
AT LUCCA BATHS
CHAPTER IX.
THE GARROWS.--SCIENTIFIC CONGRESSES.--MY FIRST MARRIAGE
CHAPTER X
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
CHAPTER XI.
REMINISCENCES AT FLORENCE
CHAPTER XII.
REMINISCENCES AT FLORENCE
CHAPTER XIII.
LETTERS FROM PEARD--GARIBALDI--LETTERS FROM PULSZKY
CHAPTER XIV.
WALTER S. LANDOR.--G.P. MARSH
CHAPTER XV.
MR. AND MRS. LEWES
CHAPTER XVI.
LETTERS FROM MR. AND MRS. LEWES
CHAPTER XVII.
MY MOTHER.--LETTERS OF MARY MITFORD.--LETTERS OF T.C. GRATTAN
CHAPTER XVIII.
THEODOSIA TROLLOPE
CHAPTER XIX.
DEATH OF MR. GARROW--PROTESTANT CEMETERY.--ANGEL IN THE HOUSE NO MORE
CHAPTER XX.
CONCLUSION
INDEX
CHAPTER I.
No! as I said at the end of the last chapter but one, before I was led
away by the circumstances of that time to give the world the benefit
of my magnetic reminiscences--_valeat quantum!_--I was not yet bitten,
despite Colley Grattan's urgings, with any temptation to attempt
fiction, and "passion, me boy!" But I am surprised on turning over my
old diaries to find how much I was writing, and planning to write,
in those days, and not less surprised at the amount of running about
which I accomplished.
My life in those years of the thirties must have been a very busy
one. I find myself writing and sending off a surprising number of
"articles" on all sorts of subjects--reviews, sketches of travel,
biographical notices, fragments from the byeways of history, and the
like, to all kinds of periodical publications, many of them long since
dead and forgotten. That the world should have forgotten all these
articles "goes without saying." But what is not perhaps so common an
incident in the career of a penman is, that _I_ had in the majority
of cases utterly forgotten them, and all about them, until they were
recalled to mind by turning the yellow pages of my treasured but
almost equally forgotten journals! I beg to observe, also, that all
this pen-work was not only printed, but _paid for_. My motives were of
a decidedly mercenary description. "_Hic scribit famâ ductus, at ille
fame._" I belonged emphatically to the latter category, and little
indeed of my multifarious productions ever found its final resting
place in the waste-paper basket. They were rejected often, but
re-despatched a second and a third time, if necessary, to some other
"organ," and eventually swallowed by some editor or other.
I am surprised, too, at the amount of locomotion which I contrived to
combine with all this scribbling. I must have gone about, I think,
like a tax-gatherer, with an inkstand slung to my button-hole! And
in truth I was industrious; for I find myself in full swing of some
journey, arriving at my inn tired at night, and finishing and sending
off some article before I went to my bed. But it must have been only
by means of the joint supplies contributed by all my editors that
I could have found the means of paying all the stage-coaches,
diligences, and steamboats which I find the record of my continually
employing. "_Navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere!_" And
I succeeded by their means in living, if not well, at least very
pleasantly.
For I was born a rambler.
I heard just now a story of a little boy, who replied to the common
question, "What he would like to be when he grew up?" by saying that
he should like to be either a giant or a _retired_ stockbroker! I find
the qualifying adjective delicious, and admire the pronounced taste
for repose indicated by either side of the alternative. But my
propensities were more active, and in the days before I entered my
teens I used always to reply to similar demands, that I would be a
"king's messenger"! I knew no other life which approached so nearly to
perpetual motion. "The road" was my paradise, and it is a true saying
that the child is father to the man. The Shakespearian passage which
earliest impressed my childish mind and carried with it my heartiest
sympathies was the song of old Autolycus:
"Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
Your merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a."
Over how many miles of "foot-path way," under how many green hedges,
has my childish treble chanted that enlivening ditty!
But that was in much earlier days to those I am now writing of.
During the years between my dreary time at Birmingham and my first
departure for Italy, I find the record of many pedestrian or other
rambles in England and abroad. There they are, all recorded day by
day--the qualities of the inns and the charges at them (not so much
less than those of the present day as might be imagined, with the
exception of the demands for beds), the beauty and specialties of the
views, the talk of wayfaring companions, the careful measurements of
the churches, the ever-recurring ascent of the towers of them, &c. &c.
Here and there in the mountains of chaff there may be a grain worth
preserving, as where I read that at Haddon Hall the old lady who
showed the house, and who boasted that her ancestors had been
servitors of the possessors of it for more than three hundred
years, pointed out to me the portrait of one of them, who had been
"forester," hanging in the hall. She also pointed out the window from
which a certain heiress had eloped, and by doing so had carried the
hall and lands into the family of the present owners, and told me that
Mrs. Radcliffe, shortly before the publication of her _Mysteries
of Udolpho_, had visited Haddon, and had sat at that window busily
writing for a long time.
I seem to have been an amateur of sermons in those days, from the
constant records I find of sermons listened to, by no means always,
or indeed generally, complimentary to the preachers. Here is an entry
criticising, with young presumption, a sermon by Dr. Dibdin, whose
bibliophile books, however, I had much taste for.
"I heard Dr. Dibdin preach. He preached with much gesticulation,
emphasis, and grimace the most utterly trashy sermon I ever heard;
words--words--words--without the shadow of an idea in them."
I remember, as if it were yesterday, a shrewd sort of an old lady, the
mother, I think, of the curate of the parish, who heard me, as we were
leaving the church, expressing my opinion of the doctor's discourse,
saying, "Well, it is a very old story, young gentleman, and it is
mighty difficult to find anything new to say about it!"
The bibliomaniacal doctor, however, seems to have pleased me better
out of the pulpit than in it, for I find that "he called in the
afternoon and chatted amusingly for an hour. He fell tooth and nail
upon the Oxford Tracts men, and told us of a Mr. Wackerbarth, a curate
in Essex, a Cambridge man, who, he says, elevates the host, crosses
himself, and advocates burning of heretics. It seems to me, however,"
continues this censorious young diarist, "that those who object to the
persecution, even to extermination of heretics, admit the uncertainty
and dubiousness of all theological doctrine and belief. For if it be
_certain_ that God will punish disbelief in doctrines essential to
salvation, and _certain_ that any Church possesses the knowledge what
those doctrines are, does it not follow that a man who goes about
persuading people to reject those doctrines should be treated as we
treat a mad dog loose in the streets of a city?" Thus fools, when they
are young enough, rush in where wise men fear to tread!
I had entirely forgotten, but find from my diary that it was our
pleasant friend but indifferent preacher, Dr. Dibdin, who on the 11th
of February, 1839, married my sister, Cecilia, to Mr., now Sir John,
Tilley.
It appears that I was not incapable of appreciating a good sermon
when I heard one, for I read of the impression produced upon me by an
"admirable sermon preached by Mr. Smith" (it must have been Sydney, I
take it) in the Temple Church. The preacher quoted largely from Jeremy
Taylor, "giving the passages with an excellence of enunciation and
expression which impressed them on my mind in a manner which will not
allow me to forget them." Alack! I _have_ forgotten every word of
them!
I remember, however, perfectly well, without any reference to my
diary, hearing--it must have been much about the same time--Sydney
Smith preach a sermon at St. Paul's, which much impressed me. He took
for his text, "Knowledge and wisdom shall be the stability of thy
times" (I write from memory--the memory of half a century ago--but I
think the words ran thus). Of course the gist of his discourse may be
readily imagined. But the manner of the preacher remains more vividly
present to my mind than his words. He spoke with extreme rapidity, and
had the special gift of combining extreme rapidity of utterance with
very perfect clearness. His manner, I remember thinking, was unlike
any that I had ever witnessed in the pulpit, and appeared to me to
resemble rather that of a very earnest speaker at the hustings than
the usual pulpit style. His sentences seemed to run downhill, with
continually increasing speed till they came to a full stop at the
bottom. It was, I think, the only sermon I ever heard which I wished
longer. He carried me with him completely, for the century was in
those days, like me, young. But if I were to hear a similarly fervid
discourse now on the same subject, I should surely desire some clearer
setting forth of the difference between "knowledge" and "wisdom."
It was about this time, _i.e._, in the year 1839, that my mother, who
had been led, by I forget what special circumstances, to take a great
interest in the then hoped-for factory legislation, and in Lord
Shaftesbury's efforts in that direction, determined to write a novel
on the subject with the hope of doing something towards attracting the
public mind to the question, and to visit Lancashire for the purpose
of obtaining accurate information and local details.
The novel was written, published in the then newly-invented fashion of
monthly numbers, and called _Michael Armstrong_. The publisher, Mr.
Colburn, paid a long price for it, and did not complain of the result.
But it never became one of the more popular among my mother's novels,
sharing, I suppose, the fate of most novels written for some
purpose other than that of amusing their readers. Novel readers are
exceedingly quick to smell the rhubarb under the jam in the dose
offered to them, and set themselves against the undesired preachment,
as obstinately as the naughtiest little boy who ever refused to be
physicked with nastiness for his good.
My mother neglected no means of making the facts stated in her book
authentic and accurate, and the _mise en scène_ of her story graphic
and truthful. Of course I was the companion of her journey, and was
more or less useful to her in searching for and collecting facts in
some places where it would have been difficult for her to look
for them. We carried with us a number of introductions from Lord
Shaftesbury to a rather strange assortment of persons, whom his
lordship had found useful both as collectors of trustworthy
information, and energetic agitators in favour of legislation.
The following letter from the Earl of Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley,
to my mother on the subject, is illustrative of the strong interest he
took in the matter, and of the means which he thought necessary for
obtaining information respecting it:
* * * * *
"MADAM,--The letters to Macclesfield and Manchester shall be sent by
this evening's post. On your arrival at Macclesfield be so kind as
to ask for Reuben Bullock, of Roe Street, and at Manchester for John
Doherty, a small bookseller of Hyde's Cross in the town. They will
show you the secrets of the place, as they showed them to me.
"Mr. Wood himself is not now resident in Bradford, he is at present in
Hampshire; but his partner, Mr. Walker, carries out all his plans with
the utmost energy. I will write to him to-night. The firm is known
by the name of 'Wood and Walker,' Mr. Wood is a person whom you may
easily see in London on your return to town. With every good wish and
prayer for your success,
"I remain your very obedient servant,
"ASHLEY.
"P.S.--The _Quarterly Review_ of December, 1836, contains an article
on the factory system, which would greatly assist by the references to
the evidence before Committee, &c. &c."
* * * * *
It is useless here and now to say anything of the horrors of
uncivilised savagery and hopeless abject misery which we witnessed.
They are painted in my mother's book, and should any reader ever refer
to those pages for a picture of the state of things among the factory
hands at that time, he may take with him my testimony to the fact that
there was no exaggeration in the outlines of the picture given. What
we are there described to have seen, we saw.
And let doctrinaire economists preach as they will, and Radical
socialists abuse a measure, which helps to take from them the fulcrum
of the levers that are to upset the whole existing framework of
society, it is impossible for one who _did_ see those sights, and
who has visited the same localities in later days, not to bless Lord
Shaftesbury's memory, ay, and the memory, if they have left any, of
the humble assistants whose persistent efforts helped on the work.
But the little knot of apostles to whom Lord Shaftesbury's letters
introduced us, and into whose intimate _conciliabules_ his
recommendations caused our admittance, was to my mother, and yet more
to me, to whom the main social part of the business naturally fell, a
singularly new and strange one. They were all, or nearly all of them,
men a little raised above the position of the factory hands, to the
righting of whose wrongs they devoted their lives. They had been at
some period of their lives, in almost every case, factory workers
themselves, but had by various circumstances, native talent, industry,
and energy, or favouring fortune--more likely by all together--managed
to raise themselves out of the slough of despond in which their
fellows were overwhelmed. One, I remember, a Mr. Doherty, a very small
bookseller, to whom we were specially recommended by Lord Shaftesbury.
He was an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and a furious Radical, but a
_very_ clever man. He was thoroughly acquainted with all that had been
done, all that it was hoped to do, and with all the means that were
being taken for the advancement of those hopes, over the entire
district.
He came and dined with us at our hotel, but it was, I remember, with
much difficulty that we persuaded him to do so, and when at table his
excitement in talking was so great and continuous that he could eat
next to nothing.
I remember, too, a Rev. Mr. Bull, to whom he introduced us
subsequently at Bradford. We passed the evening with this gentleman at
the house of Mr. Wood, of the firm of Walker and Wood, to whom also we
had letters from Lord Shaftesbury. He, like our host, was an ardent
advocate of the ten hours' bill, but unlike him, had very little hope
of legislative interference. Messrs. Walker and Wood employed three
thousand hands. At a sacrifice of some thousands per annum, they
worked their hands an hour less than any of their neighbours, which
left the hours, as Mr. Wood strongly declared, still too long. Those
gentlemen had built and endowed a church and a school for their hands,
and everything was done in their mill which could humanise and improve
the lot of the men, women, and children. Mr. Bull, who was to be the
incumbent of the new church, then not quite finished, was far less
hopeful than his patron. He told me that he looked forward to some
tremendous popular outbreak, and should not be surprised any night to
hear that every mill in Bradford was in flames.
But perhaps the most remarkable individual with whom this Lancashire
journey brought us into contact, was a Mr. Oastler. He was the Danton
of the movement. He would have been a remarkable man in any position
or calling in life. He was a very large and powerfully framed man,
over six feet in height, and proportionately large of limb and
shoulder. He would, perhaps, hardly have been said to be a handsome
man. His face was coarse, and in parts of it heavy. But he had a most
commanding presence, and he was withal a picturesque--if it be not
more accurate to say a statuesque--figure. Some of the features, too,
were good. He had a very keen and intelligent blue eye, a mass of iron
grey hair, lips, the scornful curl of which was terrible, and with all
this a voice stentorian in its power, and yet flexible, with a flow
of language rapid and abundant as the flow of a great river, and as
unstemmable--the very _beau-idéal_ of a mob orator.
"In the evening," says my diary, "we drove out to Stayley Bridge to
hear the preaching of Stephens, the man who has become the subject of
so much newspaper celebrity," (Does any one remember who he was?) "We
reached a miserable little chapel, filled to suffocation, and besieged
by crowds around the doors. We entered through the vestry with very
great difficulty, and only so by the courtesy of sundry persons who
relinquished their places, on Doherty's representing to them that we
were strangers from a distance and friends to the cause. Presently
Stephens arrived, and a man who had been ranting in the pulpit,
merely, as it seemed, to occupy the people till he should come,
immediately yielded his place to him. Stephens spoke well, and said
some telling words in that place, of the cruel and relentless march of
the great Juggernauth, Gold. But I did not hear anything which seemed
to me to justify his great reputation. Really the most striking part
of the performance, and that which I thought seemed to move the people
most, was Oastler's mounting the pulpit and giving out the verses of a
hymn, one by one, which the congregation sang after him." So says my
diary. Him I remember well, though Stephens not at all. I remember,
too, the pleasure with which I listened to his really fine delivery of
the lines; his pronunciation of the words was not incorrect, and when
he spoke, as I heard him on sundry subsequent occasions, his language,
though emphasised rather, as it seemed, than marred by a certain
roughness of Lancashire accent, was not that of an uncultivated man.
Yes! Oastler, the King of Lancashire as the people liked to call
him, was certainly a man of power, and an advocate whom few platform
orators would have cared to meet as an adversary.
When my mother's notes for her projected novel were completed, we
thought that before turning our faces southwards, we would pay a
flying visit to the lake district, which was new ground to both of
us. I remember well my intense delight at my first introduction to
mountains worthy of the name. But I mean to mention here two only of
my reminiscences of that first visit to lake-land.
The first of these concerns an excursion on Windermere with Captain
Hamilton, the author of _Cyril Thornton_, which had at that time made
its mark. He had recently received a new boat, which had been built
for him in Norway. He expected great performances from her, and as
there was a nice fresh wind idly curling the surface of the lake, he
invited us to come out with him and try her, and in a minute or two we
were speeding merrily before the breeze towards the opposite shore.
But about the middle of the lake we found the water a good deal
rougher, and the wind began to increase notably. Hamilton held the
tiller, and not liking to make fast the haulyard of the sail, gave me
the rope to hold, with instructions to hold on till further orders. He
was a perfect master of the business in hand, and so was the new boat
a perfect mistress of _her_ business, but this did not prevent us from
getting thoroughly ducked. My attention was sufficiently occupied in
obeying my orders, and keeping my eye on him in expectation of fresh
ones. The wind meanwhile increased from minute to minute, and I could
not help perceiving that Hamilton, despite his cheery laughter, was
becoming a little anxious. We got back, however, to the shore we had
left after a good buffeting, and in the condition of drowned rats. My
mother was helped out of the boat, and while she was making her way
up the bank, and I was helping him to make the boat secure, I said,
"Well! the new boat has done bravely!" "Between you and me, my dear
fellow," said he, as he laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip, that
I think must have left his thumb-mark on the skin, "if the boat had
not behaved better than any boat of her class that I ever saw, there
would have been a considerable probability of our being dined on by
the fishes, instead of dining together, as I hope we are going to do!
I have been blaming myself for taking your mother out; but the truth
is that on these lakes it is really impossible to tell for half an
hour what the next half hour may bring forth."
The one other incident of our visit to lake-land which I will record,
was our visit to Wordsworth.
For my part I managed to incur his displeasure while yet on the
threshold of his house. We were entering it together, when observing
a very fine bay-tree by the door-side, I unfortunately expressed
surprise at its luxuriance in such a position. "Why should you be
surprised?" he asked, suddenly turning upon me with much displeasure
in his manner. Not a little disconcerted, I hesitatingly answered
that I had imagined the bay-tree required more and greater warmth of
sunshine than it could find there. "Pooh!" said he, much offended at
the slight cast on his beloved locality, "what has sunshine got to do
with it?"
I had not the readiness to reply, that in truth the world had
abundance of testimony that the bay could flourish in those latitudes!
But I think, had I done so it might have made my peace--for the
remainder of that evening's experiences led me to imagine that the
great poet was not insensible to incense from very small and humble
worshippers.
The evening, I think I may say the entire evening, was occupied by
a monologue addressed by the poet to my mother, who was of course
extremely well pleased to listen to it. I was chiefly occupied in
talking to my old schoolfellow, Herbert Hill, Southey's nephew, who
also passed the evening there, and with whom I had a delightful walk
the next day. But I did listen with much pleasure when Wordsworth
recited his own lines descriptive of Little Langdale. He gave them
really exquisitely. But his manner in conversation was not impressive.
He sat continuously looking down with a green shade over his eyes even
though it was twilight; and his mode of speech and delivery suggested
to me the epithet "maundering," though I was ashamed of myself for the
thought with reference to such a man. As we came away I cross-examined
my mother much as to the subjects of his talk. She said it had been
all about himself and his works, and that she had been interested. But
I could not extract from her a word that had passed worth recording.
I do not think that he was popular with his neighbours generally.
There were stories current, at Lowther among other places, which
imputed to him a tendency to outstay his welcome when invited to visit
in a house. I suspect there was a little bit of a feud between him and
my brother-in-law, Mr. Tilley, who was the Post Office surveyor of the
district. Wordsworth as receiver of taxes, or issuer of licenses or
whatever it was, would have increased the profits of his place if the
mail coach had paid its dues, whether for taxes or license, at his end
of the journey instead of at Kendal, as had been the practice. But of
course any such change would have been as much to the detriment of the
man at Kendal as to Wordsworth's advantage. And my brother-in-law,
thinking such a change unjust, would not permit it.
I cannot say that on the whole the impression made on me by the poet
on that occasion (always with the notable exception of his recital of
his own poetry) was a pleasant one. There was something in the manner
in which he almost perfunctorily, as it seemed, uttered his long
monologue, that suggested the idea of the performance of a part got
up to order, and repeated without much modification as often as
lion-hunters, duly authorised for the sport in those localities, might
call upon him for it. I dare say the case is analogous to that of the
hero and the valet, but such was my impression.