OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT IN ENGLAND.
The boy's vague dream of foreign adventure had passed away; my purpose
was of a tamer and more practical cast; it was resolved to this problem:
"How could I travel abroad and pay my expenses?"
Evidently no money could be made by home correspondence. The new order
of journals had no charity for fine moral descriptions of church
steeples, ruined castles, and picture galleries; I knew too little of
foreign politics to give the Republic its semi-weekly "sensation;" and
exchange was too high at the depreciated value of currency to yield me
even a tolerable reward. But might I not reverse the policy of the
peripatetics, and, instead of turning my European experiences into
American gold, make my knowledge of America a bill of credit for
England?
What capital had I for this essay? I was twenty-one years of age; the
last three years of my minority had been passed among the newspapers; I
knew indifferently well the distribution of parties, the theory of the
Government, the personalities of public men, the causes of the great
civil strife. And I had mounted to my saddle in the beginning of the
war, and followed the armies of McClellan and Pope over their sanguinary
battle-fields. The possibility thrilled me like a novel discovery, that
the Old World might be willing to hear of the New, as I could depict it,
fresh from the theatre of action. At great expense foreign
correspondents had been sent to our shores, whose ignorance and
confidence had led them into egregious blunders; for their travelling
outlay merely, I would have guaranteed thrice the information, and my
sanguine conceit half persuaded me that I could present it as
acceptably. I did not wait to ponder upon this suggestion. The guns of
the second action of Bull Run growled a farewell to me as I resigned my
horse and equipments to a successor. With a trifle of money, I took
passage on a steamer, and landed at Liverpool on the first of October,
1862.
Among my acquaintances upon the ship was a semi-literary adventurer from
New England. I surmised that his funds were not more considerable than
my own; and indeed, when he comprehended my plans, he confessed as much,
and proposed to join enterprises with me.
"Did you ever make a public lecture?" he asked.
Now I had certain blushing recollections of having entertained a
suburban congregation, long before, with didactic critiques upon Byron,
Keats, and the popular poets. I replied, therefore, misgivingly, in the
affirmative, and Hipp, the interrogator, exclaimed at once--
"Let us make a lecturing tour in England, and divide the expenses and
the work; you will describe the war, and I will act as your agent."
With true Yankee persistence Hipp developed his idea, and I consented to
try the experiment, though with grave scruples. It would require much
nerve to talk to strange people upon an excitable topic; and a camp
fever, which among other things I had gained on the Chickahominy, had
enfeebled me to the last degree.
However, I went to work at once, inditing the pages in a snug parlor of
a modest Liverpool inn, while Hipp sounded the patrons and landlord as
to the probable success of our adventure. Opinions differed; public
lectures in the Old World had been generally gratuitous, except in rare
cases, but the genial Irish proprietor of the _Post_ advised me to go on
without hesitation.
We selected for the initial night a Lancashire sea-side town, a summer
resort for the people of Liverpool, and filled at that time with
invalids and pleasure-seekers. Hipp, who was a sort of American
Crichton, managed the business details with consummate tact. I was
announced as the eye-witness and participator of a hundred actions,
fresh from the bloodiest fields and still smelling of saltpetre. My
horse had been shot as I carried a General's orders under the fire of a
score of batteries, and I was connected with journals whose reputations
were world-wide. Disease had compelled me to forsake the scenes of my
heroism, and I had consented to enlighten the Lancashire public, through
the solicitation of the nobility and gentry. Some of the latter had
indeed honored the affair with their patronage.
We secured the three village newspapers by writing them descriptive
letters. The parish rector and the dissenting preachers were waited upon
and presented with family tickets; while we placarded the town till it
was scarcely recognizable to the oldest inhabitant.
On the morning of the eventful day I arrived in the place. The best room
of the best inn had been engaged for me, and waiters in white aprons,
standing in rows, bowed me over the portal. The servant girls and
gossips had fugitive peeps at me through the cracks of my door, and I
felt for the first time all the oppressiveness of greatness. As I walked
on the quay where the crowds were strolling, looking out upon the misty
sea, at the donkeys on the beach, and at the fishing-smacks huddled
under the far-reaching pier, I saw my name in huge letters borne on the
banner of a bill-poster, and all the people stopping to read as they
wound in and out among them.
How few thought the thin, sallow young man, in wide breeches and
square-toed boots, who shambled by them so shamefacedly, to be the
veritable Mentor who had crossed the ocean for their benefit. Indeed,
the embarrassing responsibility I had assumed now appeared to me in all
its vividness.
My confidence sensibly declined; my sensitiveness amounted to
nervousness; I had half a mind to run away and leave the show entirely
to Hipp. But when I saw that child of the Mayflower stolidly, shrewdly
going about his business, working the wires like an old operator, making
the largest amount of thunder from so small a cloud, I was rebuked of my
faintheartedness. In truth, not the least of my misgivings was Hipp's
extraordinary zeal. He gave the townsmen to understand that I was a
prodigy of oratory, whose battle-sketches would harrow up their souls
and thrill them like a martial summons. It brought the blush to my face
to see him talking to knots of old men after the fashion of a town crier
at a puppet-booth, and I wondered whether I occupied a more reputable
rank, after all, than a strolling gymnast, giant, or dwarf.
As the twilight came on my position became ludicrously unenviable. The
lights in the town-hall were lit. I passed pallidly twice or thrice, and
would have given half my fortune if the whole thing had been over. But
the minutes went on; the interval diminished; I faced the crisis at last
and entered the arena.
There sat Hipp, taking money at the head of the stairs, with piles of
tickets before him; and as he rose, gravely respectful, the janitor and
some loiterers took off their hats while I passed. I entered the little
bare dressing-room; my throat was parched as fever, my hands were hot
and tremulous; I felt my heart sag. How the rumble of expectant feet in
the audience-room shook me! I called myself a poltroon, and fingered my
neck-tie, and smoothed my hair before the mirror. Another burst of
impatient expectation made me start; I opened the door, and stood before
my destiny.
The place was about one third filled with a representative English
audience, the males preponderating in number. They watched me intently
as I mounted the steps of the rostrum and arranged my port-folio upon a
musical tripod; then I seated myself for a moment, and tried to still
the beating of my foolish heart.
How strangely acute were my perceptions of everything before me! I
looked from face to face and analyzed the expressions, counted the lines
down the corduroy pantaloons, measured the heavily-shod English feet,
numbered the rows of benches and the tubes of the chandeliers, and
figured up the losing receipts from this unremunerative audience.
Then I rose, coughed, held the house for the last time in severe review,
and repeated--
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN--A grand contest agitates America and the world.
The people of the two sections of the great North American Republic,
having progressed in harmony for almost a century, and become a
formidable power among the nations, are now divided and at enmity; they
have consecrated with blood their fairest fields, and built monuments of
bones in their most beautiful valleys," etc.
For perhaps five minutes everything went on smoothly. I was pleased with
the clearness of my voice; then, as I referred to the origin of the war,
and denounced the traitorous conspiracy to disrupt the republic, faint
mutterings arose, amounting to interruptions at last. The sympathies of
my audience were, in the main, with the secession. There were cheers and
counter cheers; storms of "Hear, hear," and "No, no," until a certain
youth, in a sort of legal monkey-jacket and with ponderously
professional gold seals, so distinguished himself by exclamations that I
singled him out as a mark for my bitterest periods.
But while I was thus the main actor in this curious scene, a strange,
startling consciousness grew apace upon me; the room was growing dark;
my voice replied to me like a far, hollow echo; I knew--I knew that I
was losing my consciousness--that I was about to faint! Words cannot
describe my humiliation at this discovery. I set my lips hard and
straightened my limbs; raised my voice to a shrill, defiant pitch, and
struggled in the dimming horror to select my adversary in the
monkey-jacket and overwhelm him with bitter apostrophes. In vain! The
novelty, the excitement, the enervation of that long, consuming fever,
mastered my overtaxed physique. I knew that, if I did not cease, I
should fall senseless to the floor. Only in the last bitter instant did
I confess my disability with the best grace I could assume.
"My friends," I said, gaspingly, "this is my first appearance in your
country, and I am but just convalescent; my head is a little weak. Will
you kindly bear with me a moment while the janitor gets me a glass of
water?"
A hearty burst of applause took the sting from my mortification. A bald
old gentleman in the front row gravely rose and said, "Let me send for a
drop of brandy for our young guest." They waited patiently and kindly
till my faintness passed away, and when I rose, a genuine English cheer
shook the place.
I often hear it again when, here in my own country, I would speak
bitterly of Englishmen, and it softens the harshness of my condemnation.
But I now addressed myself feverishly to my task, and my disgrace made
me vehement and combative. I glared upon the individual in the
monkey-jacket as if he had been Mr. Jefferson Davis himself, and read
him a scathing indictment. The man in the monkey-jacket was not to be
scathed. He retorted more frequently than before; he was guilty of the
most hardy contempt of court. He was determined not to agree with me,
and said so.
"Sir," I exclaimed at last, "pray reserve your remarks till the end of
the lecture, and you shall have the platform."
"I shall be quite willing, I am sure," said the man in the monkey-jacket
with imperturbable effrontery.
Then, as I continued, the contest grew interesting; explosions of "No,
no," were interrupted with volleys of "Ay, ay," from my adherents.
Hipp, who had squared accounts, made all the applause in his power,
standing in the main threshold, and the little auditory became a ringing
arena, where we fought without flinching, standing foot to foot and
drawing fire for fire. The man in the monkey-jacket broke his word:
silence was not his forte; he hurled denials and counter-charges
vociferously; he was full of gall and bitterness, and when I closed the
last page and resumed my chair, he sprang from his place to claim the
platform.
"Stop," cried Hipp, in his hard nasal tone, striding forward; "you have
interrupted the lecturer after giving your parole; we recall our
promise, as you have not stood by yours. Janitor, put out the lights!"
The bald old gentleman quietly rose. "In England," he said, "we give
everybody fair play; tokens of assent and dissent are commonly made in
all our public meetings; let us have a hearing for our townsman."
"Certainly," I replied, giving him my hand at the top of the stairs,
"nothing would afford me more pleasure."
The man in the monkey-jacket then made a sweeping speech, full of loose
charges against the Americans, and expressive of sympathy with the
Rebellion; but, at the finishing, he proposed, as the sentiment of the
meeting, a vote of thanks to me, which was amended by another to include
himself. Many of the people shook hands with me at the door, and the
bald old gentleman led me to his wife and daughter, whose benignities
were almost parental.
"Poor young man!" said the old lady; "a must take care of 'is 'ealth;
will a come hoom wi' Tummas and me and drink a bit o' tea?"
I strolled about the place for twenty-four hours on good terms with many
townsmen, while Hipp, full of pluck and business, was posting me against
all the dead walls of a farther village. Again and again I sketched the
war-episodes I had followed, gaining fluency and confidence as by
degrees my itinerant profession lost its novelty, but we as steadily
lost money. The houses were invariably bad; we had the same fiery
discussions every evening, but the same meagre receipts, and in every
market town of northwestern Lancashire we buried a portion of our little
capital, till once, after talking myself hoarse to a respectable
audience of empty benches, Hipp and I looked blankly into each other's
faces and silently put our last gold pieces upon the table. We were
three thousand miles from home, and the possessors of ten sovereigns
apiece. I reached out my hand with a pale smile:--
"Old fellow," I said, "let us comfort ourselves by the assurance that we
have deserved success. The time has come to say good by."
"As you will," said Hipp: "it is all the fault of this pig-headed
nation. Now I dare say if we had brought a panorama of the war along, it
would have been a stunning success; but standing upon high literary and
forensic ground, of course they can't appreciate us. Confound 'em!"
I think that Hipp has since had but two notions,--the exhibition of that
panorama, or, in the event of its failure, a declaration of war against
the British people. He followed me to Liverpool, and bade me adieu at
Birkenhead, I going Londonward with scarcely enough money to pay my
passage, and he to start next day for Belfast, to lecture upon his own
hook, or, failing (as he afterward did), to recross the Atlantic in the
steerage of a ship.
My feelings, as the train bore me steadily through the Welsh border, by
the clustering smoke-stacks of Birmingham, by the castled tower of
Warwick, and along the head waters of the Thames and Avon, were not of
the most enthusiastic description. I had no money and no friends; I had
sent to America for a remittance, but in the interval of six weeks
required for a reply, must eat and drink and lodge, and London was wide
and pitiless, even if I dared stoop to beg assistance.
Let no young man be tempted to put the sea between his home and himself,
how seductive soever be the experiences of book-makers and poetic
pedestrians. One hour's contemplation of poverty in foreign lands will
line the boy's face with the wrinkles of years, and burn into his soul
that withering dependency which will rankle long after his privations
are forgotten.
In truth, my circumstances were so awkward that my very desperation kept
me calm. I had a formal letter to one English publisher, but not any
friendly line whatever to anybody; and as the possibilities of sickness,
debt, enemies, came to mind, I felt that I was no longer the hero of a
romance, but face to face with a hard, practical, terrible reality. It
was night when I landed at the Paddington Station, and taking an omnibus
for Charing Cross, watched the long lines of lamps on Oxford Street, and
the glitter of the Haymarket theatres, and at last the hard plash of the
fountains in Trafalgar Square, with the stony statues grouped so rigidly
about the column to Nelson.
I walked down Strand with my carpet-bag in my hands, through Fleet
Street and under Temple Bar, till, weary at last from sheer exercise, I
dropped into a little ale-house under a great, grinning lantern, which
said, in the crisp tone of patronage, the one word, "beds." They put me
under the tiles, with the chimney-stacks for my neighbors, and I lay
awake all night meditating expedients for the morrow: so far from regret
or foreboding, I longed for the daylight to come that I might commence
my task, confident that I could not fail where so many had succeeded.
They were, indeed, inspirations which looked in upon me at the dawn. The
dome of St. Paul's guarding Paternoster Row, with Milton's school in the
background, and hard by the Player's Court, where, in lieu of
Shakespeare's company, the American presses of the _Times_ shook the
kingdom and the continent. I thought of Johnson, as I passed Bolt Alley,
of Chatterton at Shoe Lane, of Goldsmith as I put my foot upon his grave
under the eaves of the Temple.
The public has nothing to do with the sacrifices by which my private
embarrassment received temporary relief. Though half the race of authors
had been in similar straits, I would not, for all their success, undergo
again such self-humiliation. It is enough to say that I obtained
lodgings in Islington, close to the home of Charles Lamb, and near
Irving's Canterbury tower; and that between writing articles on the
American war, and strategic efforts to pay my board, two weeks of
feverish loneliness drifted away.
I made but one friend; a young Englishman of radical proclivities, who
had passed some years in America among books and newspapers, and was now
editing the foreign column of the _Illustrated London News_. He was a
brave, needy fellow, full of heart, but burdened with a wife and
children, and too honestly impolitic to gain money with his fine
abilities by writing down his own unpopular sentiments. He helped me
with advice and otherwise.
"If you mean to work for the journals," he said, "I fear you will be
disappointed. I have tried six years to get upon some daily London
paper. The editorial positions are always filled; you know too little of
the geography and society of the town to be a reporter, and such
miscellaneous recollections of the war as you possess will not be
available for a mere newspaper. But the magazines are always ready to
purchase, if you can get access to them. In that quarter you might do
well."
I found that the serials to which my friend recommended me shared his
own advanced sentiments, but were unfortunately without money. So I made
my way to the counter of the Messrs. Chambers, and left for its junior
partner an introductory note. The reply was to this effect. I violate no
confidence, I think, in reproducing it:--
"SIR,--I shall be glad to see any friend of----, and may be
found," etc., etc. "I fear that articles upon the American war,
written by an American, will not, however, be acceptable in this
journal, as the public here take a widely different view of the
contest from that entertained in your own country, and the feeling
of horror is deepening fast."
Undeterred by this frank avowal, I waited upon the publisher at the
appointed time,--a fine, athletic, white-haired Scotchman, whose name is
known where that of greater authors cannot reach, and who has written
with his own hand as much as Dumas _pere_. He met me with warm
cordiality, rare to Englishmen, and when I said--
"Sir, I do not wish the use of your paper to circulate my
opinions,--only my experiences," he took me at once to his editor, and
gave me a personal introduction. Fortunately I had brought with me a
paper which I submitted on the spot; it was entitled, "Literature of the
American War," collated from such campaign ballads as I could remember,
eked out with my own, and strung together with explanatory and critical
paragraphs. The third day following, I received this announcement in
shockingly bad handwriting:--
"D'r S'r,
"Y'r article will suit us.
"The ed. C. J."
For every word in this communication, I afterward obtained a guinea. The
money not being due till after the appearance of the article, I
anticipated it with various sketches, stories, etc., all of which were
largely fanciful or descriptive, and contained no paragraph which I wish
to recall. In other directions, I was less successful. Of two daily
journals to which I offered my services, one declined to answer my
letter, and the other demanded a quarto of credentials.
So I lived a fugitive existence, a practical illustration of Irving's
"Poor Devil Author," looking as often into pastry-shop windows, testing
all manner of cheap Pickwickian veal-pies, breakfasting upon a chop, and
supping upon a herring in my suburban residence, but keeping up pluck
and _chique_ so deceptively, that nobody in the place suspected me of
poverty.
I went for some American inventors, to a rifle ground, and explained to
the Lords of the Admiralty the merits of a new projectile; wrote letters
to all the Continental sovereigns for an itinerant and independent
embassador, and was at last so poor that my only writing papers were a
druggist's waste bill-heads. An article with no other "backing" than
this was fortunate enough to stray into the _Cornhill Magazine_. I found
that its proprietor kept a banking-house in Pall Mall, and doubtful of
my welcome on Cornhill, ventured one day in my unique American
costume,--slouched hat, wide garments, and squared-toed boots,--to send
to him directly my card. He probably thought from its face that a
relative of Mr. Mason's was about to open an extensive account with him.
As it was, once admitted to his presence, he could not escape me. The
manuscript lay in his hands before he fully comprehended my purpose. He
was a fine specimen of the English publisher,--robust, ruddy,
good-naturedly acute,--and as he said with a smile that he would waive
routine and take charge of my copy, I knew that the same hands had
fastened upon the crude pages of Jane Eyre, and the best labors of
Hazlitt, Ruskin, Leigh Hunt, and Thackeray.
Two more weary weeks elapsed; I found it pleasant to work, but very
trying to wait. At the end my courage very nearly failed. I reached the
era of self-accusation; to make myself forget myself I took long, ardent
marches into the open country; followed the authors I had worshipped
through the localities they had made reverend; lost myself in
dreaminesses,--those precursors of death in the snow,--and wished myself
back in the ranks of the North, to go down in the frenzy, rather than
thus drag out a life of civil indigence, robbing at once my brains and
my stomach.
One morning, as I sat in my little Islington parlor, wishing that the
chop I had just eaten had gone farther, and taking a melancholy
inventory of the threadbare carpet and rheumatic chairs, the
door-knocker fell; there were steps in the hall; my name was mentioned.
A tall young gentleman approached me with a letter: I received him with
a strange nervousness; was there any crime in my record, I asked
fitfully, for which I had been traced to this obscure suburb for condign
arrest and decapitation? Ha! ha! it was my heart, not my lips, that
laughed. I could have cried out like Enoch Arden in his dying
apostrophe:--
"A sail! a sail!
I am saved!"
for the note, in the publisher's own handwriting, said this, and more:--
"DEAR SIR,--I shall be glad to send you fifteen guineas
immediately, in return for your article on General Pope's Campaign,
if the price will suit you."
But I suppressed my enthusiasm. I spoke patronizingly to the young
gentleman. Dr. Johnson, at the brewer's vendue, could not have been more
learnedly sonorous.
"You may say in return, sir, that the sum named will remunerate me."
At the same time the instinct was intense to seize the youth by the
throat, and tell him that if the remittance was delayed beyond the
morning, I would have his heart's-blood! I should have liked to thrust
him into the coal-hole as a hostage for its prompt arrival, or send one
of his ears to the publishing house with a warning, after the manner of
the Neapolitan brigands.
That afternoon I walked all the way to Edmonton, over John Gilpin's
route, and boldly invested two-pence in beer at the time-honored Bell
Inn. I disdained to ride back upon the omnibus for the sum of
threepence, but returned on foot the entire eight miles, and thought it
only a league. Next day my check came duly to hand,--a very formidable
check, with two pen-marks drawn across its face. I carried it to
Threadneedle Street by the unfrequented routes, to avoid having my
pockets picked, and presented it to the cashier, wondering if he knew me
to be a foreign gentleman who had written for the _Cornhill Magazine_.
The cashier looked rather contemptuous, I thought, being evidently a
soulless character with no literary affinities.
"Sir," he said, curtly, "this check is crossed."
"Sir!"
"We can't cash the check; it is crossed."
"What do you mean by crossed?"
"Just present it where you got it, and you will find out."
The cashier regarded me as if I had offered a ticket of leave rather
than an order for the considerable amount of seventy-five dollars. I
left that banking-house a broken man, and stopped with a long, long face
at a broker's to ask for an explanation.
"Yesh, yesh," said the little man, whose German silver spectacles sat
upon a bulbously Oriental nose; "ze monish ish never paid on a crossed
shequc. If one hash a bank-account, you know, zat ish different. Ze
gentleman who gif you dis shequc had no bishness to crosh it if you have
no banker."
I was too vain to go back to Cornhill and confess that I had neither
purse nor purser; so I satisfied the broker that the affair was correct,
and he cashed the bill for five shillings.
That was the end of my necessities; money came from home, from this and
that serial; my published articles were favorably noticed, and opened
the market to me. Whatever I penned found sale; and some correspondence
that I had leisure to fulfil for America brought me steady receipts.
Had I been prudent with my means, and prompt to advantage myself of
opportunities, I might have obtained access to the best literary
society, and sold my compositions for correspondingly higher prices.
Social standing in English literature is of equal consequence with
genius. The poor Irish governess cannot find a publisher, but Lady
Morgan takes both critics and readers by storm. A duchess's name on the
title-page protects the fool in the letter-press; irreverent
republicanism is not yet so great a respecter of persons. I was often
invited out to dinner, and went to the expense of a dress-coat and kids,
without which one passes the genteel British portal at his peril; but
found that both the expense and the stateliness of "society" were
onerous. In this department I had no perseverance; but when, one
evening, I sat with the author of "Vanity Fair," in the concert rooms at
Covent Garden, as Colonel Newcome and Clive had done before me, and took
my beer and mutton with those kindly eyes measuring me through their
spectacles, I felt that such grand companionship lifted me from the
errantry of my career into the dignity of a renowned art.
I moved my lodgings, after three months, to a pleasant square of the
West End, where I had for associates, among others, several American
artists. Strange men were they to be so far from home; but I have since
found, that the poorer one is the farther he travels, and the majority
of these were quite destitute. Two of them only had permanent
employment; a few, now and then, sold a design to a magazine; the mass
went out sketching to kill time, and trusted to Providence for dinner.
But they were good fellows for the most part, kindly to one another, and
meeting in their lodgings, where their tenure was uncertain, to score
Millais, or praise Rosetti, or overwhelm Frith.
My own life meantime passed smoothly. I had no rivals of my own
nationality; though one expatriated person, whose name I have not heard,
was writing a series of prejudiced articles for _Fraser_, which he
signed "A White Republican." I thought him a very dirty white. One or
two English travellers at the same time were making amusingly stupid
notices of America in some of the second-rate monthlies; and Maxwell, a
bustling Irishman, who owns _Temple Bar_, the _Saint James_, and
_Sixpenny Magazine_, and some half dozen other serials, was employing a
man to invent all varieties of rubbish upon a country which he had never
beheld nor comprehended.
After a few months the passages of the war with which I was cognizant
lost their interest by reason of later occurrences. I found myself, so
to speak, wedged out of the market by new literary importations. The
enforcement of the draft brought to Europe many naturalized countrymen
of mine, whose dislike of America was not lessened by their
unceremonious mode of departure from it; and it is to these, the mass of
whom are familiarly known in the journals of this country, that we owe
the most insidious, because the best informed, detraction of us.
_Macmillan's Magazine_ did us sterling service through the papers of
Edward Dicey, the best literary _feuilletonist_ in England; and
Professor Newman, J. Stuart Mill, and others, gave us the limited
influence of the _Westminster Review_. The _Cornhill_ was neutral;
_Chambers's_ respectfully inimical; _Bentley_ and _Colburn_
antagonistically flat; Maxwell's tri-visaged publications grinningly
abusive; _Good Words_ had neither good nor bad words for us; _Once a
Week_ and _All the Year Round_ gave us a shot now and then. _Blackwood_
and _Fraser_ disliked our form of Government, and all its
manifestations. The rest of the reviews, as far as I could see, pitied
and berated us pompously. It was more than once suggested to me to write
an experimental paper upon the failure of republicanism; but I knew only
one American--a New York correspondent--who lent himself to a systematic
abuse of the Government which permitted him to reside in it. He obtained
a newsboy's fame, and, I suspect, earned considerable. He is dead: let
any who love him shorten his biography by three years.
However, I at last concluded a book,--if I may so call what never
resulted in a volume,--at which, from the first, I had been pegging
away. I called it "The War Correspondent," and made it the literal
record of my adventures in the saddle. When some six hundred MS. pages
were done I sent it to a publisher; he politely sent it back. I
forwarded it to a rival house; in this respect only both houses were
agreed. Having some dim recollection of the early trials of authors I
perseveringly gave that copy the freedom of the city; the verdict upon
it was marvellously identical, but the manner of declension was always
soothing. They separately advised me not to be content with one refusal,
but to try some other house, though I came at last to think, by the
regularity of its transit to and fro, that one house only had been its
recipient from the first.
At last, assured of its positive failure, I took what seemed to be the
most philosophic course,--neither tossing it into the Thames, after the
fashion of a famous novelist, nor littering my floor with its fragments,
and dying amidst them like a _chiffonnier_ in his den: I cut the best
paragraphs out of it, strung them together, and published it by separate
articles in the serials. My name failed to be added to the British
Museum Catalogue; but that circumstance is, at the present time, a
matter of no regret whatever.
When done with the war I took to story-writing, using many
half-forgotten incidents of American police-reporting, of border
warfare, of the development of civilization among the pioneers, of
thraldom in the South, and the gold search on the Pacific. The majority
of these travelled across the water, and were republished. And when
America, in the garb of either fact or fiction, lost novelty, I entered
the wide field of miscellaneous literature among a thousand competitors.
An author's ticket to the British Museum Reading-room put the whole
world so close around me that I could touch it everywhere. I never
entered the noble rotunda of that vast collection without an emotion of
littleness and awe. Lit only from the roof, it reminded me of the Roman
Pantheon; and truly all the gods whom I had worshipped sat, not in
statue, but in substance, along its radiating tables, or trod its
noiseless floors. Half the literature of our language flows from thence.
One may see at a glance grave naturalists knee-deep in ichthyological
tomes, or buzzing over entomology; pale zealots copying Arabic
characters, with the end to rebuild Bethlehem or the ruins of Mecca;
biographers gloating over some rare original letter; periodical writers
filching from two centuries ago for their next "new" article. The
Marquis of Lansdowne is dead; you may see the _Times_ reporter yonder
running down the events of his career. Poland is in arms again, and the
clever compiler farther on means to make twenty pounds out of it by
summing up her past risings and ruins. The bruisers King and Mace fought
yesterday, and the plodding person close by from _Bell's Life_ is
gleaning their antecedents. Half the _literati_ of our age do but like
these bind the present to the past. A great library diminishes the
number of thinkers; the grand fountains of philosophy and science ran
before types were so facile or letters became a trade.
The novelty of this life soon wore away, and I found myself the creature
of no romance, but plodding along a prosy road with very practical
people.
I carried my MSS. into Paternoster Row like anybody's book-keeper, and
accused the world of no particular ingratitude that it could not read my
name with my articles, and that it gave itself no concern to discover
me. Yet there was a private pleasure in the congeniality of my labor,
and in the consciousness that I could float upon my quill even in this
vast London sea. Once or twice my articles went across the Channel and
returned in foreign dress. I wonder if I shall ever again feel the
thrill of that first recognition of my offspring coming to my knee with
their strange French prattle.
I was not uniformly successful, but, if rejected, my MSS. were
courteously returned, with a note from the editor. As a sample I give
the following. The original is a lithographed fac-simile of the
handwriting of Mr. Dickens, printed in blue ink, the date and the title
of the manuscript being in another handwriting.
OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND."
A WEEKLY JOURNAL CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
NO. 26 WELLINGTON STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W. C.
_January 27, 1863._
Mr. Charles Dickens begs to thank the writer of the paper entitled
"A Battle Sunday" for having done him the favor to offer it as a
contribution to these pages. He much regrets, however, that it is
not suited to the requirements of "All the Year Round."
The manuscript will be returned, under cover, if applied for as
above.
The prices of miscellaneous articles in London are remunerative.
Twenty-four shillings a magazine page is the common valuation: but
specially interesting papers rate higher. Literature as a profession, in
England, is more certain and more progressive than with us. It is not
debased with the heavy leaven of journalism. Among the many serial
publications of London, ability, tact, and industry should always find a
liberal market. There is less of the vagrancy of letters,--Bohemianism,
Mohicanism, or what not,--in London than in either New York or Paris.
I think we have the cleverer fugitive writers in America, but those of
England seemed to me to have more self-respect and conscientiousness.
The soul of the scribe need never be in pledge if there are many
masters.
While a good writer in any department can find work across the water, I
would advise no one to go abroad with this assurance solely. My
success--if so that can be called which yielded me life, not
profit--was circumstantial, and cannot be repeated. I should be loth to
try it again upon purely literary merits.
After nine months of experiment I bade the insular metropolis adieu, and
returned no more. The Continent was close and beckoning; I heard the
confusion of her tongues, and saw the shafts of her Gothic Babels
probing the clouds, and for another year I roamed among her cities, as
ardent and errant as when I went afield on my pony to win the spurs of a
War Correspondent.