Will you tell me where that Punch is to be bought, what one is to ask
for, and what the cost is. It has made me very uneasy in my mind.
Mind—I deny the beer. It is very excellent; but that it surpasses that
meeker, and gentler, and brighter ale of mine (oh how bright it is!) I
never will admit. My gauntlet lies upon the earth.
Yours, in defiance,
CHARLES DICKENS.”
One of my Thackeray letters is addressed to Ainsworth, dated in 1844,
inviting him to dine at the Garrick, with the characteristic remark, “I
want to ask 3 or 4 of the littery purfession.” Tom Moore in his Journal
(November 21, 1838) mentions a dinner at Bentley’s where the company was
“all the very _haut ton_ of the literature of the day,” including
himself (named first), Jerdan, Ainsworth, Lever, Dickens, Campbell, and
Luttrell. We read in Mackay’s “Breakfasts with Rogers” of a breakfast
where he met Sydney Smith, Daniel O’Connell, Sir Augustus D’Este and
Ainsworth. These references might be multiplied almost indefinitely.
According to Hazlitt, Ainsworth had one rule, as a host, which in these
days of studied unpunctuality might be considered unduly vigorous; when
he had friends to dinner he locked his outside gate at the stroke of the
clock, and no late comer was admitted.
It is not to be denied that he had his foibles and that he also had his
quarrels—few men of any force or strength of will and character can
escape quarrels. That he fell out with Cruikshank and Bentley is not to
be wondered at, for almost everybody did that, sooner or later. His
passage at arms with Francis Mahony—the Father Prout of “Bells of
Shandon” fame—is more to be regretted, but he was in no way to blame. He
behaved very well under trying conditions. The trouble dated from
Ainsworth’s secession from _Bentley’s Miscellany_—what Mr. Bates calls
his “dis-Bentleyfication,” and, ignoring their past intimacy and cordial
companionship, Mahony sneered at the man “who left the tale of Crichton
half told, and had taken up with ‘Blueskin,’ ‘Jack Sheppard,’ ‘Flitches
of Bacon,’ and ‘Lancashire Witches,’ and thought such things were
‘literature,’”—following it up with some rather poor and clumsy
verse-libels, flat, stale and unprofitable—utterly unworthy of a
moment’s time. Ainsworth replied most courteously in a parody of Prout,
called “The Magpie of Marwood; an humble Ballade,” which none could
condemn as either coarse or brutal. When Mahony came back at his former
friend with quotations from private letters asking eulogistic notices
and literary aid, and when he said “Has he forgotten that he was fed at
the table of Lady Blessington? not merely for the sake of companionship,
for a duller dog never sat at a convivial board,” he showed himself a
despicable cad, a perfidious creature, well deserving the name of
“Jesuit scribe,” which was about all the retort which Ainsworth thought
fit to make.
The kindly and forgiving nature of Ainsworth is shown by a letter in my
collection, written on February 24, 1880, to Charles Kent. He says: “I
always regret the misunderstanding that occurred between myself and
Mahony, but any offence that was given him on my part was unintentional,
and I cannot help thinking he was incited to the attack he made upon me
by Bentley. Be this as it may, I have long ceased to think about it, and
now only dwell upon the agreeable parts of his character. He was an
admirable scholar, a wit, a charming poet, and generally—not always—a
very genial companion.” These pleasant remarks about the man who had
grossly insulted him, are quite characteristic and demonstrate the sweet
reasonableness with which he treated men like Cruikshank and Father
Prout.
As Blanchard Jerrold says, _Punch_ was often quite severe on Ainsworth.
Spielmann in his _History of Punch_ confirms the statement:
“Harrison Ainsworth, as much for his good looks and his literary vanity,
as for his tendency to reprint his romances in such journals as came
under his editorship, was the object of constant banter. An epigram put
the case very neatly:
“Says Ainsworth to Colburn,
‘A plan in my pate is,
To give my romance as
A supplement, _gratis_.’
Says Colburn to Ainsworth,
‘Twill do very nicely,
For that will be charging
It’s value precisely.’
“Harrison Ainsworth could not have his portrait painted, nor write a
novel of crime and sensation, without being regarded as a convenient peg
for pleasantry.”
There seems to have been, unluckily, a shadow of a difference with
William Jerdan, of the _Literary Gazette_, whose diffuse and often
tedious _Autobiography_ was published in 1853. “Among incipient
authors,” says Jerdan, “whom (to use a common phrase) it was in my power
to ‘take by the hand’ and pull up the steep, few had heartier help than
Mr. William Harrison Ainsworth, whose literary propensities were strong
in youth, and who has since made so wide a noise in the world of
fictitious and periodical literature. From some cause or another, which
I cannot comprehend, he has given a notice to my publishers, to forbid
the use of any of his correspondence in these Memoirs, though on looking
over a number of his letters I can discover nothing discreditable to
him, or aught of which he has reason to be ashamed.” I think it is not
difficult to understand what Jerdan seemed unable to comprehend.
Ainsworth did not care to have his confidential requests for good
notices go out to the public. It was a weakness of his to beg for
complimentary reviews and Father Prout had made the most of it; small
wonder that he dreaded a repetition of the experience. Jerdan gives,
however, a very kindly estimate of Ainsworth.[22]
In Mr. Axon’s memoir, he says that an engraving by W. C. Edwards of a
portrait of Ainsworth by Maclise appeared on the frontispiece of Laman
Blanchard’s biographical sketch in the first number of “Ainsworth’s
Magazine”. A second portrait by the same artist, which was exhibited at
the Royal Academy in 1844, was the frontispiece of the fifth volume of
the magazine. A portrait by Count D’Orsay dated November 21, 1844,
appeared in the seventh volume. To this period belong the full-length
portrait by the elder Pickersgill, the property of Chetham’s Hospital,
but now in the Manchester Reference Library, and a portrait by R. J.
Lane. The good looks of Ainsworth have been referred to several times;
they were the good looks of the days of William IV, but the Maclise and
Pickersgill portraits as well as the later Fry photograph have a
dandified appearance which in our modern eyes detracts from true
dignity. The sketch in the _Maclise Gallery_ shows him at his best, in
his Fraser days, a fine and gallant figure, without the hideous whiskers
of the type beloved by Tittlebat Titmouse. “This delicately drawn
portrait of the novelist” comments Mr. Bates, “just at the time that he
had achieved his reputation,’—hair curled and oiled as that of an
Assyrian bull, the gothic arch coat-collar, the high neckcloth, and the
tightly strapped trousers—exhibits as fine an example as we could wish
for, of the dandy of the D’Orsay type and pre-Victorian epoch.”
He lived at one time at the “Elms” at Kilburn, and later at Kensal Manor
House on the Harrow Road. Afterwards he lived at Brighton and at
Tunbridge Wells. When he grew old he resided with his oldest daughter,
Fannie, at Hurstpierpoint. He had also a residence at St. Mary’s Road,
Reigate, Surrey, and there he died, on Sunday, January 3d, 1882. On
January 9th, he was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, with a quiet and
simple ceremonial as he wished. His widow and three daughters by his
first marriage survived him.
Ainsworth had no power to portray character or to analyze motives; his
genius was purely descriptive. He had a strong literary bent, and he was
a man of letters in the true sense. He did not possess the spark which
gives immortality, but he toiled faithfully and his work was well done
even if he did not reach the standard of the greatest of his
contemporaries.
Perhaps his merits were characterized rather too ornately in the _Sun_
of August 2, 1852, where a reviewer said:
“His romances yield evidence, in a thousand particulars, that his
temperament is exquisitely sensitive, not less of the horrible than of
the beautiful. We have it in those landscapes variously coloured with
the glow of Claude and the gloom of Salvator Rosa—in those lyrics grave
as the songs of the Tyrol, or ghastly as the incantations of the
Brocken; but still more in those creations, peopling the one and
chaunting the other, namely, some of them as the models of Ostade, and
others wild as the wildest dreams of Fuseli. Everywhere, however, in
these romances a preference for the _grimlier_ moods of imagination
renders itself apparent. The author’s purpose, so to speak, gravitates
towards the preternatural. Had he been a painter instead of a romancist,
he could have portrayed the agonies of Ugolino, as Da Vinci portrayed
the ‘_rotello del fico_,’ in lines the most haggard and lines the most
cadaverous. As a writer of fiction, his place among his contemporaries
may, we conceive, be very readily indicated. He occupies the same
position in the present that Radcliffe occupied in a former generation.”
Mr. Axon’s estimate is less gorgeous but more convincing. “The essence
of his power was that same faculty by which the Eastern story-teller
holds spellbound a crowd of hearers in the street of Cairo. It is this
fascination which enables Ainsworth, at his best, to compel the reader’s
attention, and hurries him forward from the first page to the last of
some tale of ‘daring-do’, of crime, adventure, sorrow and love. The
reader who has listened to the beginning does not willingly turn aside
until the story is completed and he has seen all the puppets play their
part with that skilful semblance of truth that seems more real than
reality itself.”
It is to be hoped that the forthcoming biography will do ample justice
to the memory of this charming literary personage, and may revive the
fading interest in him and in his works.