I have not been able to discover what effect this letter had, but it is
evident that the ‘Historical work’ was the pamphlet on the Boundary
Question as I do not find a record of any other “historiographical” work
to which the language of the letter is applicable.
The _Dictionary of National Biography_ credits James with _Memoirs of
Celebrated Women_ (three volumes, 1837), but Allibone says that he had
no share in it, further than writing a preface or “something of that
kind.” The _Dictionary_ further informs us that “about 1850 he was
appointed British Consul for Massachusetts”—an impossible office—and
that he was transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, in 1852, becoming Consul
General at Venice in 1856. Allibone makes him Consul at Richmond,
Virginia, in 1852 and Consul General at Venice in September, 1858. His
friend Hall places him at Norfolk in 1852 and in Venice in 1859.
_Appleton’s Cyclopædia_ follows Allibone as to dates, but very properly
ignores Richmond in favor of Norfolk. The _Encyclopædia Britannica_ says
that Irving encouraged him to produce the _Life of the Black Prince_ in
1822 (an evident error), sends him as “Consul to Richmond” in 1852 and
transfers him to Venice in September, 1858. The truth is that he went to
Norfolk in 1852, to Richmond in 1856, and to Venice in 1858. As we have
seen, even the place of his interment is not without uncertainty. These
variances in regard to the facts of his life are due to the comparative
neglect which has befallen his memory. Perhaps they are not of much
importance. Although he had numerous friends and acquaintances, none of
them, except Mr. S. C. Hall and Maunsell B. Field, left anything
approaching an account of his life, and even Mr. Hall’s reminiscences
are meagre and cursory, while Mr. Field’s are largely apocryphal.
He surely possessed the art of making friends. Before his marriage he
knew not only Scott and Irving, but Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Walter Savage
Landor, his friendship with Hunt and Landor continuing to the end of his
life. Probably he never saw Shelley, but he admired greatly the writings
of that radical enthusiast. He knew Thackeray, but did not like him;
perhaps the parody galled him. He detested the brilliant, showy, shallow
Count D’Orsay. His son says that he never heard his father speak of
Dickens as if they had met.[39] “He fully acknowledged the power and
versatility of Dickens’s works, but there was something in them which
did not please him. He had detected, if it is there—suspected, if it is
not—the essential vulgarity which this master of pathos and humor is
said to have shown those who came in personal contact with him.” He had
some acquaintance with Bulwer Lytton. “It is odd” remarks the younger
James “but his tone towards this eminent author, who at some points
(_Richelieu_ and the historic novels) approached near enough his own
line for rivalry, was rather one of compassion. He knew the personal and
domestic sorrows of one whom unfriendly critics accused of soulless
dandyism; and he seemed to have a sort of friendly feeling for that
partially unsuccessful ambition which made the author of books as unlike
as _Pelham_ and _Pausonias_ attempt so many things without reaching the
highest rank in any.” The Duke of Northumberland, the Duke of
Wellington, Charles Lever, Thomas Campbell, and Allan Cunningham, were
also friends. In America, he was known and well received by President
Pierce, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Charles Sumner, Farragut, Barron, Henry
A. Wise, Roger A. Pryor, John Tyler, Winder, General Scott, Edward
Everett, Marcy, Caleb Cushing and a host of others. His gentle, modest
nature, his cultivated taste, and his frank, pleasant ways seem to have
attracted all who came within the circle of his friendship. He had much
conversation with Marcy. Each had some idea of sounding the other
diplomatically; both took snuff and neither proposed to be sounded. When
James asked Marcy something which the latter did not choose to answer,
Marcy would ask him for a pinch of snuff, and he readily perceived that
this evasion was as good for two as for one.
The late Donald G. Mitchell speaks of him as “an excellent, industrious
man, who drove his trade of novel-making—as our engineers drive
wells—with steam, and pistons, and borings, and everlasting clatter”,
adding that “what he might have done, with a modern typewriter at
command, it is painful to imagine. But he gives us the best account I
have seen of the personal appearance of James.
“I caught sight of this great necromancer of ‘miniver furs,’ and
mantua-making chivalry—in youngish days, in the city of New York—where
he was making a little over-ocean escape from the multitudinous work
that flowed from him at home; a well-preserved man, of scarce fifty
years, stout, erect, gray-haired, and with countenance blooming with
mild uses of mild English ale—kindly, unctuous—showing no signs of
deep thoughtfulness or of harassing toil. I looked him over, in boyish
way, for traces of the court splendor I had gazed upon, under his
ministrations, but saw none; nor anything of the ‘manly beauty of
features, rendered scarcely less by a deep scar upon the forehead’,
nor ‘of the gray cloth doublets slashed with purple;’ a stanch honest,
amiable, well-dressed Englishman—that was all.”[40]
Mr. Mitchell surely did not expect to see Mr. James attired in armor,
with a scarred face, because he wrote of armed knights, and his remarks
certainly appear to be boyish in the extreme. But he atones for them by
saying:
“And yet, what delights he had conjured for us! Shall we be ashamed to
name them, or to confess it all? Shall the modern show of new
flowerets of fiction, and of lilies—forced to the front in
January—make us forget utterly the old cinnamon roses, and the homely
but fragrant pinks, which once regaled and delighted us, in the April
and May of our age?”
Mr. Field says of him: “If he was sometimes a tedious writer, he was
always the best story-teller that I ever listened to. He had known
almost everybody in his own country, and he never forgot anything. The
literary anecdotes alone which I have heard him relate would suffice to
fill an ordinary volume. He was a big hearted man, too—tender, merciful,
and full of religious sentiment; a good husband, a devoted father, and a
fast friend.” Such is the testimony of all his acquaintances who have
left any record of their impressions.
It is not my purpose to present any critical study of James or of his
works, but only to submit a few of his unpublished letters, in which his
easy grace of style and his frank and simple nature are manifest; to
give some of the contemporary estimates of him; and to recall to the
minds of readers of our own day a literary personality which should not
be entirely forgotten.
Among the good friends of James of whom I have spoken was that other
novelist, almost as prolific in production, but better remembered by
modern readers—Charles Lever. When the author of _Charles O’Malley_ was
the editor of the Dublin University Magazine, he wrote to a certain
Reverend Edward Johnson, now wholly lost to fame, requesting him to
contribute to the magazine and inviting him to visit the editor; but by
mistake he addressed the letter to James. “Though he liked the man” says
Mr. Fitzpatrick, “he rather pooh-poohed the stereotyped ‘two cavaliers’
of G. P. R. James, who of a fine autumnal day might be seen, etc.”[41]
Lever was too kind-hearted to explain the error, and James not only
contributed to the magazine but visited Lever at Templeogue. The story
“_De Lunatico Inquirendo_” was supposed to have been written by Lever,
who wrote only the preface. “_Arrah Neil_” was published in the
Magazine, a work which has peculiar merit and one character, Captain
Barecolt, who is among James’s best people. It is said that James abused
McGlashan for having “emasculated his jokes”. “Where be they? as we used
to say in the Catechism” was Lever’s comment. One Major Dwyer, referred
to in Fitzpatrick’s _Life of Lever_, says: “Lever would sometimes say
that he wanted powder for his magazine. ‘It is doubtful whether James’s
contributions’ he said, ‘were James’s powders at all, or merely that
inferior substitute which the Pharmacopœia condemns.’” Chamber’s
Cyclopædia stated, twenty years before the death of James, that he was
in the habit of dictating to minor scribes his thick-coming fancies. Mr.
R. H. Horne would have it that he always dictated his novels, but that
was a very exaggerated statement. He dictated only at intervals. Major
Dwyer tells of a novel composed by James at Baden, that “it was penned
by an English artist who resided at Lichtenthal, and also spoke the
purest South Devonian, and moreover wrote English nearly as he
pronounced it. James’s flowery language thus rendered, was highly
amusing; I had an opportunity of reading some pages of copy.”
In spite of his disparaging remarks, Lever was attached to the man
himself, and we find the two romance writers together in 1845, at
Karlsruhe—where, as Mr. Downey says in his _Life of Lever_, “G. P. R.
James and himself were the cynosure of all eyes”—and later at Baden.
Lever dedicated to James his novel _Roland Cashel_, in 1849—“a Roland
for your Oliver, or rather for your Stepmother,” said Lever, for James
had dedicated to him the novel with that title in 1846. Soon afterwards,
however, they became separated, as James went to the United States where
he remained about eight years. One incident connected with the _Dublin_
is worthy of remembrance. In Volume XXVII of the Magazine (1846)
appeared some verses beginning “A cloud is on the western sky.” They
were said to be “Lines by G. P. R. James” and were prefaced by a note:
‘My dear L——, I send you the song you wished to have. The Americans
totally forgot, when they so insolently calculated upon aid from Ireland
in a war with England, that their own apple is rotten at the core. A
nation with five or six million slaves who would go to war with an
equally strong nation with no slaves is a mad people. Yours, G. P. R.
James.’ ‘The Cloud,’ (amongst other things not intended to be pleasant
to Americans) called upon the dusky millions to ‘shout,’ and the author
of the ‘Lines’ declared that Britain was ready to “draw the sword in the
sacred cause of liberty.” It was Lever’s joke. Poor James had never
heard of the poem until years later, in 1853, an attempt was made to
drive him out of Norfolk, Virginia, because of it. “God forgive me” said
Lever, “it was my doing.” Lever declared that he had no more notion of
James’s ‘powder’ exciting a national animosity than that Holloway’s
Ointment could absorb a Swiss glacier.[42] The son says that during the
first winter they spent in Norfolk there were no less than eight fires
in the house, or in other parts of the block, which James attributed to
deliberate attempts to burn him out on account of his supposed
abolitionist views.
Lever was Consul at Spezzia when James was in Venice, and they renewed
their old intimacy. The younger James says that Lever was a very
eccentric genius—a thorough specimen of the wild Irishman. Among his
traits was chronic impecuniosity. Another was that he and all his family
delighted in out-door life and could do everything athletic. “When he
was at Venice he told us he was threatened with a visit from a British
war vessel, which it would be his duty to receive in state, and (of
course) he had no boat or other means of doing so with proper pomp.
‘But,’ he said, ‘we can take the British flag in our mouth and swim out
to meet her, singing Rule Britannia.’”
Notwithstanding the manifestations of hostility by the good people of
Norfolk, it may be remembered that when James was transferred to Venice,
the Virginian poet, John R. Thompson, addressed to him some farewell
verses, published in the _Southern Literary Messenger_, beginning:
Good bye! they say the time is up—
The “solitary horseman” leaves us,
We’d like to take a “stirrup cup”,
Though much indeed the parting grieves us:
We’d like to hear the glasses clink
Around a board where none was tipsy,
And with a hearty greeting drink
This toast—The Author of the Gipsey!
The same Major Dwyer relates at some length the conversations of the
guests at Lever’s home in Ireland. Speaking of a visit of Thackeray
about 1842, he says: “James had been living at Brussels previously, and
an intimacy had sprung up between Lever and him. Thackeray’s star was
then barely peeping over the eastern horizon; Lever’s had attained an
altitude that rendered it clearly visible to the uncharmed eye, whilst
James’s had already passed its point of culmination, and was in its
descending node.” I do not know what the eloquent Major meant by an
“uncharmed eye,” but his figures of speech are quite luxuriant. He does
not think that Thackeray and James met at Lever’s house, but he tells of
a dinner there, where a Captain Siborne, Doctor Anster, and the Major
were asked to meet James. It appears that after dinner, James took a
very decided lead in the conversation on horsemanship and military
tactics. “James” remarks the Major, “was not horsey looking; one would
at first sight be inclined to set him down as an exception to the
general rule, that ‘all Britons are born riders’; he looked more like a
seaman than a soldier.” This is deliciously fatuous—as if a man could
not talk well about horses unless he had a horsey look or drive fat oxen
unless he himself were fat. It is like the Mitchell prattle about his
having no scar and wearing no doublet. In talking about horses and
riders, James evidently did not foresee that in the future his name
would be so closely associated with “one horseman” or even two,
threading romantic gorges. Perhaps it would have been better for his
fame, if he had eschewed horsemen. “Why,” continues the Major, “he
should have selected two such topics puzzled both Siborne and myself,
but I subsequently found that James liked to seize upon and talk
categorically about things which other individuals of the company
present might be suspected of considering their own peculiar hobbies.”
This device for enlivening post-prandial dullness by stirring up solemn
and conceited prigs is quite familiar, but it does not seem to have
occurred to the Major that the clever novelist was making game of the
two military magnates. He tells us further how Siborne declined “to
discuss professional matters with a civilian,” and closes his pompous
and heavy remarks with this gem of concentrated wisdom: “James, so fond
of horseflesh, finished his career as Consul General at Venice _where
the sight of a horse is never seen_.” I suppose that the Major would
have considered it more fitting if James had selected some place to die
in where ‘the sight of a horse could be seen’ at all times by merely
looking out of the window. It is not difficult to imagine the joy with
which the nimble-minded James put through their paces the heavy-witted
and cumbrous Captain and Major at the pleasant dinner-table of Charles
Lever. It reminds me of an occasion when a sincere and simple-minded
Briton undertook to engage in single combat with Mark Twain over a
statement thrown out by the equally sincere and simple-minded Clemens
that the people of the Phillipine Islands had a perfect right to make
arson and murder lawful if they considered it proper to incorporate in
their constitution a provision to that effect. His powerful arguments
did not produce the slightest change in the convictions of Mr. Clemens.
However severely the sapient compilers of _Chambers’ Cyclopædia_ or the
critics of our own generation may sneer at the novels—the fiction of the
twentieth century being in the estimation of our contemporaries so
vastly superior to all that has gone before—it is something to have had
the approval of Christopher North, who was not given to bestowing lavish
commendation upon the work of mere Englishmen. If you will take from the
shelves the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, you will find these words:
“_North_: Mr. Colburn has lately given us two books of a very
different character, [from that of some previously mentioned],
_Richelieu_ and _Darnley_—by Mr. James. _Richelieu_ is one of the
most spirited, amusing and interesting romances I ever read;
characters well drawn—incidents—well managed—story perpetually
progressive—catastrophe at once natural and unexpected—moral good,
but not goody—and the whole felt, in every chapter, to be the work
of a—gentleman.
_Shepherd_: And what o’_Darnley_?
_North_: Read and judge.”[43]
Edgar Allan Poe, who thought himself a critic while he was an original
genius absolutely unfitted for just or accurate criticism, said that
James was lauded from mere motives of duty, not of inclination—duty
erroneously conceived. “His sentiments are found to be pure,” wrote Poe,
“his morals unquestionable and pointedly shown forth—his language
indisputably correct.” But he calls him an indifferent imitator of
Scott, accuses him of having little pretension to genius, and adds that
we “seldom stumble across a novel emotion in the solemn tranquillity of
his pages.”[44] Elsewhere Poe says: “James’s multitudinous novels seem
to be written upon the plan of the songs of the Bard of Schiraz, in
which, we are assured by Fadladeen, ‘the same beautiful thought occurs
again and again in every possible variety of phrase.’” This is perhaps,
a fair comment upon the work of a writer who produced too many books.
Samuel Carter Hall, who knew James well, and who gossips with garrulous
freedom about everybody, speaks of him in an admiring way. After
observing that very little was known of James’s life, he says: “I knew
him and esteemed him as an agreeable and kindly gentleman, somewhat
handsome in person, and of very pleasant manners. He had the aspect, and
indeed the character, that usually marks a man of sedentary occupations.
His work all day long, and often into the night, must have been
untiring, for he by no means drew exclusively on his fancy; he must have
resorted much to books and have been a great reader, not only of
English, but of continental histories; and he travelled a good deal in
the countries in which the scenes of his historic fictions were
principally laid. His novels have always been popular—they are so now,
although many competitors for fame, with higher aims and perhaps loftier
genius, have of late years supplied the circulating libraries. It was no
light thing to run a race with Sir Walter Scott, and not to be
altogether beaten out of the field. His great charm was the interest he
created in relating a story, but he had masterly skill in delineating
character, and in ‘chivalric essays’ none of his brethren surpassed
him.”[45] He gives to James more praise for character-drawing than most
of the critics bestow.
Hall quotes from Alison: “There is a constant appeal in his brilliant
pages, not only to the pure and generous, but to the elevated and noble
sentiments. He is imbued with the very soul of chivalry, and all his
stories turn on the final triumph of those who are influenced by such
feelings. Not a word or a thought which can give pain to the purest
heart ever escapes from his pen.”
The genial journalist, William Jerdan, in his Autobiography, pays a
deserved tribute to James. He says:
“Among the warm friendships to which I may allude, there is not one
more sincere, more lasting, or more grateful to my feelings, than that
which I have the honour and delight to couple with the admired and
estimable name of G. P. R. James. I think it was the production of
‘The Ruined City’, for private circulation, which first introduced us
to each other; and from that hour (I remember the pleasure I received
from his volunteering a trial of his skill occasionally in the
‘Gazette’) I now look back on a quarter of a century upon a close
intercourse of minds and hearts without a passing shade to dull its
bright and cheering continuity. I need not dwell on those voluminous
writings which have placed Mr. James in the foremost rank of our
national fictitious literature, nor need I, in his case, illustrate my
theme of the uncertainty of literature as a remunerative pursuit—with
a private fortune, and the genius which has produced so many admirable
works, the author has now fallen back upon a consulate at Norfolk, in
America, where, if report speaks truth, he is exposed even to danger
in consequence of petty resentment against something he wrote long ago
about Slavery!—but, I may say, from nearer and more abundant
observation than the world could attain, that the utmost appreciation
of his genius must fall short of what is due to his personal worth and
nobility of nature. As no author ever excelled him in the purity and
rectitude of his publications—every tone of which tends to inspire
just moral sentiment, and exalted virtue, and brotherly love, and
universal benevolence, and the improvement carrying with it the
progress and happiness of his fellow creatures—so no man in private
life ever more zealously practiced the precepts which he taught, and
was charitable, liberal, and generous, aye, beyond the measure of cold
prudence, and without an atom of selfish reserve. To his
fellow-labourers on the oft-ungrateful soil of letters, he was ever
indulgent and munificent; and were this the fitting time, I could
record acts of his performing that would shed a lustre on any
character, however celebrated in merited biographical panegyric. I
trust I may state, without compromising the privacy of friendly
confidence, that I knew him, as he was ever ready to make sacrifices
to friendship, sacrifice half a fortune, legally in his possession, to
a mere point of honorable, I might say, romantically honourable
feeling, and founded indeed on one of those family romances in which
we find fact more extraordinary than fiction; and amongst lesser
instances of his general sympathies for all who stood in need of
succour, I may mention his procuring me the gratification of handing
over £75 to the Literary Fund, as the price received from Messrs.
Colburn and Bentley for a manuscript entitled “The String of
Pearls.””[46]
I have referred to the remark in _Chambers’ Cyclopædia_ about the custom
of James to dictate to an amanuensis, a custom he attempted to defend.
The writers for this useful work, now rather antiquated, were quite
given to the exercise of censorious judgment about authors who did not
preserve their popularity. They say of James, however, that he was
perhaps the best of the numerous imitators of Scott, and that if he had
concentrated his powers on a few congenial subjects or periods of
history, and “resorted to the manual labor of penmanship as a drag-chain
on the machine, he might have attained to the highest honors of this
department of composition. As it is, he has furnished many light,
agreeable and picturesque books, none of questionable tendency.” The
Cyclopædia breaks into exclamation points when it chronicles the fact
that the original works of Mr. James “extend to one hundred and
eighty-nine volumes,” and that he edited almost a dozen more. It then
quotes from some unnamed critic whom it calls a “lively writer,”[47] and
as I am endeavoring to present the contemporary estimates of James, I
venture to reproduce the quotation:
“There seems to be no limit to his ingenuity, his faculty of getting
up scenes and incidents, dilemmas, artifices, _contretemps_, battles,
skirmishes, disguises, escapes, trials, combats, adventures. He
accumulates names, dresses, implements of war and peace, official
retinues, and the whole paraphernalia of customs and costumes, with
astounding alacrity. He appears to have exhausted every imaginable
situation, and to have described every available article of attire on
record. What he must have passed through—what triumphs he must have
enjoyed—what exigencies he must have experienced—what love he must
have suffered—what a grand wardrobe his brain must be! He has made
some poetical and dramatic efforts, but this irresistible tendency to
pile up circumstantial particulars is fatal to those forms of art
which demand intensity of passion. In stately narratives of chivalry
and feudal grandeur, precision and reiteration are desirable rather
than injurious—as we would have the most perfect accuracy and finish
in a picture of ceremonials; and here Mr. James is supreme. One of his
court romances is a book of brave sights and heraldic magnificence—it
is the next thing to moving at our leisure through some superb and
august procession.”
The lively writer has a style which displays the worst faults of the
middle nineteenth century, but he is really not far wrong in his
conclusions. The Cyclopædia sums up the matter in a sentence which tells
the story and signifies that the man wrote too much:
“The sameness of the author’s style and characters is, however, too
marked to be pleasing.”
I timidly venture to suggest that the same thing may be true of Kipling
and hope that I may not be annihilated by the bolts of Jupiter for such
a daring piece of sacrilege. Having gone so far—but I will refrain from
mentioning some other makers of novels with regard to whom the same
fable might be narrated.
We may easily understand that the accusation of “sameness” is one which
is not very serious when preferred against the author of nearly two
hundred volumes. As Allibone says, “he who composes a library is not to
be judged by the same standard as he who writes but one book.” We must
remember that not only Professor Wilson, but Leigh Hunt, about whose
taste and discrimination there can be no question, says of him:
“I hail every fresh publication of James, though I half know what he
is going to do with his lady, and his gentleman, and his landscape,
and his mystery, and his orthodoxy, and his criminal trial. But I am
charmed with the new amusement which he brings out of old materials. I
look on him as I look on a musician famous for ‘variations.’ I am
grateful for his vein of cheerfulness, for his singularly varied and
vivid landscapes, for his power of painting women at once lady-like
and loving, (a rare talent,) for making lovers to match, at once
beautiful and well-bred, and for the solace which all this has
afforded me, sometimes over and over again in illness and in
convalescence, when I required interest without violence, and
entertainment at once animated and mild.”
Allan Cunningham, in his _Biographical and Critical History of the
Literature of the Last Fifty Years_ (1833) refers to his excellent
taste, extensive knowledge of history, right feeling of the chivalrous,
and heroic and ready eye for the picturesque, adding that his
proprieties are admirable and his sympathy with whatever is high-souled
and noble, deep and impressive. Cunningham was on terms of intimacy with
him, as a number of letters from James addressed to him abundantly
prove. The _Edinburgh Review_ estimated highly his abilities as a
romance writer, declaring that his works were lively and interesting,
and animated by a spirit of sound and healthy morality in feeling and of
natural deliberation in character which should secure for them a calm
popularity which would “last beyond the present day.”
He was not regarded so favorably by the _London Athenæum_, which said of
him: “The first and most obvious contrivance for the attainment of
quantity, is, of course, dilution; but this recourse has practically its
limit, and Mr. James had reached it long ago. Commonplace in its best
day, anything more feeble, vapid—_sloppy_ in fact, (for we know not how
to characterize this writer’s style but by some of its own
elegancies)—than Mr. James’s manner has become, it were difficult to
imagine. Every literary grace has been swamped in the spreading marasmus
of his style.”[48]
The bewildered reader of reviews is often at a loss to reconcile the
censure of one and the praise of another; and it was not very long
before the appearance of this slashing article that the _Dublin
University Magazine_ had thus expressed its opinions: “His pen is
prolific enough to keep the imagination constantly nourished; and of
him, more than of any modern writer, it may be said, that he has
improved his style by the mere dint of constant and abundant practice.
For, although so agreeable a novelist, it must not be forgotten that he
stands infinitely higher as an historian.*** The most fantastic and
beautiful coruscations which the skies can exhibit to the eyes of
mankind dart as if in play from the huge volumes that roll out from the
crater of the volcano.*** The recreation of an enlarged intellect is
ever more valuable than the highest efforts of a confined one. Hence we
find in the works before us, lightly as they have been thrown off, the
traces of study—the footsteps of a powerful and vigorous
understanding.”[49] The works were _Corse de Léon_, _The Ancient
Régime_, and _The Jacquerie_—none of them as deserving as _Richelieu_,
_Henry Masterton_, or _Mary of Burgundy_. James was a member of the
_Dublin_ staff and his friend Lever may have inspired the compliments.
One more review may be noticed. Mr. E. P. Whipple, whose criticisms have
not become immortal, evidently disapproved of James, and did not
hesitate to say so. It is the old charge of sameness and overproduction.
Whipple scored James in the North American Review of April, 1844.
“He is a most scientific expositor of the fact that a man may be a
maker of books without being a maker of thoughts; that he may be the
reputed author of a hundred volumes and flood the market with his
literary wares, and yet have very few ideas and principles for his
stock in trade. For the last ten years he has been repeating his own
repetitions and echoing his own echoes. His first novel was a shot
that went through the target, and he has ever since been assiduously
firing through the hole.*** When a man has little or nothing to say,
he should say it in the smallest space. He should not, at any rate,
take up more room than suffices for a creative mind. He should not
provoke hostility and petulance by the effrontery of his demands upon
time and patience. He should let us off with a few volumes, and gain
our gratitude for his benevolence, if not our praise for his
talents.”[50]
Whipple’s _critiques_ are far more obsolete than James’s novels; and a
good deal of what he says of James is fairly applicable to his own
essays. Even Whipple concedes the excellence of _Richelieu_,
notwithstanding the fact that it did not emanate from New England.
Back in the forties, there was a magazine, published in Philadelphia,
known as _Graham’s American Monthly Magazine_, in which the chief
American writers of the day, including Poe, Bryant, Cooper, Longfellow,
Willis, and Lowell occasionally figured as contributors. It had its page
of reviews and in the number of November, 1848, it enlightened its
readers with a disquisition on “Vanity Fair”; by W. M. _Thackerway_
(_sic_), beginning “This is one of the most striking novels of the
season.” If Lamb could only have met that reviewer, he surely would have
danced about, as on a memorable occasion, singing “diddle, diddle
dumpling, my son John” and endeavored to examine the reviewer’s bumps.
_Graham_ (November, 1844) was very severe with poor James, in a notice
of _Arrah Neil_. The reviewer says: “In our opinion, there is hardly an
instance on record of an author who has contrived to earn an extensive
reputation as a writer of works of imagination, with such slender
intellectual materials as Mr. James. No one has ever written so many
books, purporting to be novels, with so small a stock of heart, brain,
and invention. He is continually infringing his own copyright, by
reproducing his own novels. Far from being surprised that he has written
so much, we are astonished that he has not written more. From his first
novel, all the rest can be logically deduced; and the reason that they
have not appeared faster, may be found in the fact that he has been
economical in the employment of amanuenses.” More of this kind of talk
is indulged in without a single word about the book itself or its
merits; which proves quite clearly that the reviewer was merely
following the path marked out by some other critic, and there is no
evidence whatever that he had ever read the work he was reviewing. Thus
it is to-day; a parrot-cry of “diffuseness, dilution, re-copying,
repetition,”—so easy to proclaim, so difficult to answer, all born of
the disposition of newspaper and magazine critics to accept the view
which needs no exercise of brains to approve and to announce. It is not
without significance that when James was in America, he was a
contributor to this same magazine, which had scored him so unmercifully;
for example, in the volume for 1851 I find two stories by him—_Christian
Lacy, a Tale of the Salem Witchcraft_, and _Justinian and Theodora_,—as
well as a rather graceful sonnet to Jenny Lind.
James C. Derby mentions the fact that James was a friend of Philip
Pendleton Cooke, the Virginian poet, and relates that Thackeray visited
James when in the South, but that James “resented the latter’s
[Thackeray’s] flings at him as a ‘solitary horseman’, the meaning of
which those who have read James’s novels will understand. James once
told Cooke of his intention to write his own memoirs—a purpose never
fulfilled. Incidentally, he told Cooke a story of Washington Irving, his
early adviser, who amiably approved of his earliest essays in
literature. It seems that James was in Bordeaux, and after strolling all
day, returned to his inn. On his way through a long, dark passage he saw
some one in front carrying a candle, a man in black slowly ascending the
old-fashioned staircase. On the landing the man stopped, and holding up
his candle looked at a cat lying on the window-sill, regarding the gazer
with a surprised and frightened expression. The stranger in black looked
at the cat for some time mutely and then muttered sadly, ‘Ah, pussy!
pussy! If you had seen as much trouble as I have, you would not be
surprised at anything.’ After which he went on up the stairs,’ said
James, ‘and as I heard that Irving was in Bordeaux, I said to myself:
‘That can be nobody in the world but Irving’, which turned out to be a
fact.[51]
Frederick Locker-Lampson visited Walter Savage Landor at Fiesole in the
early sixties, and found him reading a Waverly novel. Lampson
congratulated the old poet on having so pleasant a companion in his
retirement, and Landor, with a winning dignity, replied: “Yes, and there
is another novelist whom I equally admire, my old friend [G. P. R.]
James.”[52] Locker-Lampson does not seem to have shared Landor’s
appreciation of James. He says, later in his memoirs: “It is a law of
literature that every generation should be industrious in burying its
own, especially novels. What has become of Smollett and Mackenzie—the
cockpit of the ‘Thunder’ or the sentimental Harley? Where is the shadowy
Mr. G. P. R. James and where is that witty old ghost of the Silver Fork
school, Mrs. Gore?*** Yet they all had vogue.”[53] It is odd that almost
every one, in speaking of James, recites his numerous initials and
bestows upon him the title of “Mr.” which carries with it the suggestion
of a sneer.
In my small collection of Gladstone letters I find one addressed to
James which shows not only that the statesman liked the books but that
he and the author were on terms of some intimacy.
“WHITEHALL, May 17, ’43.
MY DEAR SIR: I thank you very much for your renewed kindness. The
perusal of your last work gave me very great pleasure, most of all
(though that is but a very slender testimony in their favour) Evesham
and Simon de Montfort, of whom I never had before an adequate
conception. It is true I am adopted into the Cabinet, & will I fear be
alleged as a proof of its poverty. In point of form I cannot succeed
Lord Ripon until the Queen holds a Council.[54] The true and whole
secret of the difficulty about Canada corn (and I do not mean that we
can wonder at it) is, as I believe, that wheat, without great
abundance, is at 46 / a quarter.
I remain, my dear sir,
Yours faithfully & obliged,
W. E. GLADSTONE.
G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,
The Shrubbery,
Walmer.
Donald G. Mitchell, describing the little red cottage of Hawthorne, in
the Berkshire hills, reminds us that among those who used to come
a-visiting the great American romancer, was “G. P. R. James, that kindly
master of knights ‘in gay caparison’;” and elsewhere says that at the
Cooper Memorial meeting in Metropolitan Hall, on February 25, 1852,
where Webster, Bryant and Hawks paid their tribute to the author of the
Leatherstocking tales, “Mr. G. P. R. James—then chancing to be a visitor
in New York,—lent a little of his rambling heroics to the interest of
the occasion.”[55] I have before me the _Memorial_, printed by Putnam in
1852, containing a full report of the meeting, including the remarks of
James, and I do not find anything which may fairly be called “heroics”,
rambling or otherwise. The speech was manifestly extemporaneous. He
began by expressing his pride in being an Englishman, a romance writer,
and a man of the people, and his pleasure in paying an humble tribute to
an American romance writer and a man of the people. He praised the
addresses of those who preceded him, corrected a trifling error of
Bryant’s in regard to a Mr. James, a surgeon, and declared that the
proposed statue to Cooper was not merely to a novelist, but to a
genius—to truth—to truth, genius and patriotism combined. He closed by
urging all present to use every exertion to procure contributions for
the purpose of erecting such a statue. To any unprejudiced mind, what
James said was appropriate and dignified; well suited to the occasion;
wholly natural and unaffected; and compared favorably, to say the least,
with the dull and ponderous commonplaces of Daniel Webster who had the
chair and who was singularly unfitted to preside over such a meeting. Of
Webster’s platitudes, Professor Lounsbury is quite contemptuous,
remarking that the distinguished orator “had nothing to say and said it
wretchedly.”[56] I believe that the projected statue was never built.
James was evidently a favorite dinner-speaker. It is pleasant to know
that he spoke at a ‘printer’s banquet’ in New York in the latter part of
1850, and that he paid a well-merited tribute to a man destined to
become a distinguished figure in literature. Bayard Taylor, writing to
his friend George H. Boker, on January 1, 1851, says: “By the bye, James
paid me a very elegant compliment, in his speech at the ‘printer’s
banquet’ the other night, referring to me as the best landscape painter
in words that he had ever known. This is something from an
Englishman.”[57] He always said kind and appreciative words about his
fellow-authors, if they were deserving.
Returning to the Hawthorne cottage, Julian Hawthorne gives a brief
account of one of the visits of James, who, it appears, was living near
by during the summer of 1851. As the narrator was five years old at the
time of this visit, his estimate of the visitors must have been founded
upon something other than his personal observation. He says:
“James was a commonplace, meritorious person, with much blameless and
intelligent conversation, but the only thing that recalls him
personally to my memory is the fact of his being associated with a
furious thunderstorm.”
He relates how the storm raged and how the door burst open,—his father
and he were alone in the cottage—
“and behold! of all persons in the world—to be heralded by such
circumstances—G. P. R. James! Not he only, but close upon his heels
his entire family, numerous, orthodox, admirable, and infinitely
undesirable to two secluded gentlemen without a wife and mother to
help them out.*** They dripped on the carpet, they were conventional
and courteous; we made conversation between us but whenever the
thunder rolled, Mrs. James became ghastly pale. Mr. James explained
that this was his birthday, and that they were on a pleasure
excursion. He conciliated me by anecdotes of a pet magpie, or raven,
who stole spoons. At last the thunderstorm and the G. P. R. Jameses
passed off together.[58]
It is not uninteresting to compare this rather patronizing and
supercilious narration of a trivial incident with that which is given in
his own Journal by the father of this precocious young gentleman of five
years; and it is probably the fact that the story was related by the son
not from his own memory but from the record of the Journal, reproduced
in “Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife,” by Julian Hawthorne.[59]
Nathaniel Hawthorne evidently liked James. Under date of July 30, 1851,
he says:
“We walked to the village for the mail, and on our way back we met a
wagon in which sat Mr. G. P. R. James, his wife and daughter, who had
just left their cards at our house. Here ensued a talk, quite pleasant
and friendly. He is certainly an excellent man; and his wife is a
plain, good, friendly, kind-hearted woman, and his daughter a nice
girl. Mr. James spoke of ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ and of
‘Twice-Told Tales,’ and then branched off upon English literature
generally.”[60] The acquaintance between the two authors must have
been deemed to be of advantage to both, for the supercilious Master
Julian takes care to present in full a note of invitation addressed by
James to the elder Hawthorne asking the latter ‘with his two young
people’ to visit him, saying: “We are going to have a little haymaking
after the olden fashion, and a syllabub under the cow; hoping not to
be disturbed by any of your grim old Puritans, as were the poor folks
of Merrymount. By the way, you do not do yourself justice at all in
your preface to the ‘Twice-Told Tales,’—but more on that subject
anon.”[61]
Under the date of August 9, 1851, Hawthorne gives his own version of the
thunderstorm episode, in marked contrast with the condescending remarks
of his hopeful son. It reveals the difference between parent and child.
“The rain was pouring down,” says Hawthorne senior, “and from all the
hillsides mists were steaming up, and Monument Mountain seemed to be
enveloped as if in the smoke of a great battle. During one of the
heaviest showers of the day there was a succession of thundering
knocks at the front door. On opening it, there was a young man on the
doorstep, and a carriage at the gate, and Mr. James thrusting his head
out of the carriage window, and beseeching shelter from the storm! So
here was an invasion. Mr. and Mrs. James, their eldest son, their
daughter, their little son Charles, their maid-servant, and their
coachman;—not that the coachman came in; and as for the maid, she
stayed in the hall.[62] Dear me! where was Phoebe in this time of
need? All taken aback as I was, I made the best of it. Julian helped
me somewhat, but not much. Little Charley is a few months younger than
he, and between them they at least furnished subject for remark. Mrs.
James, luckily, happened to be very much afraid of thunder and
lightning; and as these were loud and sharp, she might be considered
_hors de combat_. The son, who seemed to be about twenty, and the
daughter, of seventeen or eighteen, took the part of saying nothing,
which I suppose is the English fashion as regards such striplings. So
Mr. James was the only one to whom it was necessary to talk, and we
got along tolerably well. He said that this was his birthday, and that
he was keeping it by a pleasure excursion, and that therefore the rain
was a matter of course.[63] We talked of periodicals, English and
American, and of the Puritans, about whom we agreed pretty well in our
opinions; and Mr. James told how he had recently been thrown out of
his wagon, and how the horse ran away with Mrs. James; and we talked
about green lizards and red ones. And Mr. James told Julian how, when
he was a child, he had twelve owls at the same time; and, at another
time, a raven, who used to steal silver spoons and money. He also
mentioned a squirrel, and several other pets; and Julian laughed most
obstreperously. As to little Charles, he was much interested with
Bunny (who had been returned to us from the Tappans, somewhat the
worse for wear), and likewise with the rocking-horse, which luckily
happened to be in the sitting-room. He examined the horse most
critically, and finally got upon his back, but did not show himself
quite as good a rider as Julian. Our old boy hardly said a word.
Finally the shower passed over, and the invaders passed away; and I do
hope that on the next occasion of the kind my wife will be there to
see.”[64]
I give the story in full, not only because of its relation to James and
his family, but for its revelation of Hawthorne himself; the little
touch of parental pride is amusing as well as affecting. What Nathaniel
Hawthorne thought of James in those days is far more important than what
Julian Hawthorne thinks of him now.
Mr. Charles L. James writes to me:
“Yes, I have read Hawthorne’s account of our visit in a thunderstorm;
and what is more, I remember the occurrence. I was little Charley,
whom he mentions. I remember not only getting upon Julian’s
rocking-horse, but pulling out his tail and being aghast at what I had
done, for I did not possess a wooden horse and it had not occurred to
me that the tail was movable.”
I am glad that Charles pulled out that tail; perhaps the memory of the
outrage inspired the owner of the steed when he wrote his little story.
Longfellow regarded James with a degree of kindness and esteem quite
comparable to that with which Hawthorne looked upon him. In his Journal
for September 17, 1850, he says, after mentioning several visitors:
“Then Fields, with G. P. R. James, the novelist, and his son. He is a
sturdy man, fluent and rapid, and looking quite capable of fifty more
novels.”[65] Later, on November 17, he says: “James, the novelist, came
out to dinner with Sumner. He is a manly, middle-aged man, _tirant sur
le grison_, as Lafontaine has it, with a gray mustache; very frank,
off-hand, and agreeable. In politics he is a Tory, and very
conservative.”[66] James certainly had no reason to complain of his
reception by the best of our own literary men of that day.
It is an evidence of the fact that James was admired and his ability
appreciated by other authors, that he was suspected by no less a person
than William Harrison Ainsworth of being the writer of _Jane Eyre_. I
have before me an autograph letter from Ainsworth to James (November 14,
1849), in which he says: “Anything I can do for you at any time you know
you may command, and I shall only be too happy in the opportunity of
making kindly mention in the N. M. M. of your Dark Scenes of History.
The times are not propitious to us veterans and literature generally has
within the last two years suffered a tremendous depreciation.*** Do you
know I took it into my head that you were the author of ‘Jane Eyre,’ but
I have altered my opinions since I read a portion of ‘Shirley.’ Currer
Bell, whoever he or she may be, has certainly got some of your ‘trick’
*** but ‘Shirley’ has again perplexed me.”
Robert Louis Stevenson had a modified fondness for James, which is
expressed in a letter written by him from Saranac, February, 1888, to E.
L. Burlingame. He says:
“Will you send me (from the library) some of the works of my dear old
G. P. R. James? With the following especially I desire to make or to
renew acquaintance: _The Songster_, _The Gipsey_, _The Convict_, _The
Stepmother_, _The Gentleman of the Old School_, _The Robber_. _Excusez
du peu._ This sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an
accident. The Franklin County Library contains two works of his, _The
Cavalier_ and _Morley Ernstein_. I read the first with indescribable
amusement—it was worse than I had feared, and yet somehow engaging;
the second (to my surprise) was better than I had dared to hope; a
good, honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine old-fashioned
talent in the invention when not strained, and a genuine old-fashioned
feeling for the English language. This experience awoke appetite, and
you see I have taken steps to stay it.