same direction, and _Charles O’Malley, or The Irish Dragoon_, was given
to the world. The very name sounds “boot and saddle”—rings of the spur
and clanks of the sabre. What a romance: the high-spirited lad who leads
his rival to the jaws of the grave in the hunting-field, and follows him
in a ride of death against the unbroken front of Cambronne’s battalions
on the blood-stained field of Waterloo! What a picture of the old
Peninsular days! What portraits of _Le petit Caporal_, as the French
army loved to call Napoleon, of the “Iron Duke,” the gallant Picton, and
the great captains of that eventful period! What glimpses of dark-eyed
señoritas and haughty hidalgos; of lion-hearted sons of Erin charging to
the cry of _Faugh a ballagh_, and leading forlorn hopes with saucy jokes
upon their laughing lips; of “Connaught Robbers,” as the Connaught
Rangers were jocosely called, on account of the number of prisoners
which they invariably made, and for the most part single-handed; of
Brussels the night before Waterloo; and of the Duchess of Richmond’s
celebrated ball:
“There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.”
What pictures of old Ireland—of Daly’s Club-House, the resort of the
Irish members in College Green, still standing, but now converted into
insurance offices. “I never pass the old club,” said Sir Thomas Staples,
the last surviving member of the Irish House of Commons, to the writer,
“without picturing it as I remember it, when Grattan, and Curran, and
Ireland’s best blood strolled in after a fiery debate, or rushed out on
the whisper of that awful word, ‘division.’ Very little would restore
Daly’s to its original shape; and who knows but it may yet be revived,
if repeal of the Union be carried?” Sir Thomas Staples is dead some
years, and the Home-Rule question had not come to the front whilst he
was yet numbered amongst the living. Shall we behold an Irish Parliament
sitting once again in College Green? Shall Daly’s club be restored to
its former splendor? Shall we see Mr. Butt, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Mitchell
Henry, with many other earnest sons of Ireland, enrolled amongst its
members?
Who can forget the account of Godfrey O’Malley’s election, when, in
order to avoid arrest for debt, he announced his own death in the
papers, and, having travelled in the hearse to Connemara, reached his
stronghold in the west, where bailiffs and process-servers foolhardy
enough to cross the Shannon were compelled to eat their own writs under
penalty of tar and feathers, and from whence he triumphantly addressed
his constituents, appealing to their sympathies and support on the very
powerful plea of _having died for them_? There is a story extant of
Jackey Barrett which has not travelled far, if at all, beyond the walls
of Trinity. Upon one occasion the vice-provost was dining off roast
turkey in the glorious old Commons Hall, and next to him sat his nephew,
the heir expectant to his enormous wealth. The turkey was somewhat
underdone, and the nephew sent the drumsticks to be devilled. Some
little delay occurred, which caused the vice-provost to observe to his
kinsman with a malicious grin: “That devil is keeping you a long time
waiting.” “Not half as long as _you_ are keeping the devil waiting,” was
the retort. Jackey never forgave him. What a creation is Mickey Free,
that devoted, warm-hearted, rollicking Irish follower, that son of song
and story, who, by his own account, sang duets with the
commander-in-chief in the Peninsula, and wore a masterpiece of Murillo
for a seat to his trousers! Mickey was quoted recently, during a debate
in the British House of Commons on the Eastern question by Major
O’Gorman, the jester-in-chief, _vice_ Mr. Bernal Osborne, the rejected
of Irish constituencies:
“For I haven’t a janius for work—
It was never a gift of the Bradies;
But I’d make a most illigant Turk,
For I’m fond of tobacco and ladies.”
The House roared, and even Mr. Disraeli, that was, allowed his parchment
visage to snap into smiling. Charles Lever informed the writer that he
originally intended Mickey Free for a mere stage servant, who comes on
with a tray or exits with a chair or a table; but upon discovering that
Mr. Free had made his mark he wrote him up. “I never could give a
publisher a complete novel all at once,” said Mr. Lever, “although I
have been offered very large sums of money for one; I always wait to see
how my public like me, and write from month to month, trimming my sails
to suit the popular breeze.”
_Charles O’Malley_ was a brilliant success. A spirit of martial
enthusiasm inflated the minds of the rising generation, until to be a
dragoon became the day-dream of existence, and many an embryo warrior
who failed in obtaining a commission compromised with a cruel destiny by
accepting the queen’s shilling. The charm of the book is complete; and
for break-neck, dashing narrative, for wit, sparkle, and genuine Irish
drollery, interspersed here and there with tender touches of pathos and
soft gray tones of sorrow, _Charles O’Malley_ stands unrivalled, and
will hold its own when hundreds of so-called Irish romances shall have
returned to the dust out of which they should never have emerged, even
into a spasmodic vitality.
Perhaps the only smart thing ever uttered by King George III. was when
he taxed Sheridan with being afraid of the author of the _School for
Scandal_; and perhaps Lever was afraid of the author of _Charles
O’Malley_, as he published _Con Cregan_, _Maurice Tiernay_, _Sir Jasper
Carew_, and one or two other novels anonymously; but a quickwitted
public, detecting the ring of the true metal, compelled “Harry
Lorrequer” to stand revealed. Novel followed novel in quick succession,
Ireland providing the mine from which he dug his golden ore; and
although he carries his readers to fairer climes and sunnier skies,
somehow or other he contrives to land them safely and soundly in the
“ould counthry” at last. We have not space, nor is it our province, to
deal with Lever’s works in detail. No modern productions of fiction have
gained a greater or more popular reputation for their writer. By no
Irish author is he equalled in Irish humor, by no author is he surpassed
in unwearying narrative. The foreign tone infused into some of his later
productions is due to his residence in Italy. “You wish to have nothing
to do, Lever? There is eight hundred a year; go and do it,” said the
late Lord Derby, bestowing the vice-consulship of Spezzia upon him.
Later on he was promoted to Trieste.
For a time Charles Lever edited the _Dublin University Magazine_, then a
coruscation of all that was brilliant in literature. He resided at the
village of Templeogue, situated in the lap of the Dublin mountains, with
Sugar Loaf at one extremity, and Mount Pelier, with its ruined castle
renowned for the orgies of the infamously-celebrated “Hell-fire Club,”
at the other. Templeogue Lodge was the Mecca towards which all “choice
spirits” devoutly turned, and the wit, repartee, song, jest, and story
circulated within its walls made the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ but dull
affairs in comparison. “One little room rises to recollection, with its
quaint old sideboard of carved oak, its dark-brown cabinets, curiously
sculptured, its heavy old brocade curtains, and all its queer devices of
knick-knackery, where such meetings were once held, and where, throwing
off the cares of life—shut out from them, as it were, by the massive
folds of the heavy drapery across the door—we talked in all the fearless
freedom of old friendship.” There are a few still surviving who will
recognize that room, and recall with a throb of painful pleasure the
nights at the little lodge at Templeogue.
Lever was fond of portraying banished heroes, misanthropes—men who had
dug their own graves, or, overtaken by some whirlwind of misfortune,
“gave signs that all was lost.” The character of Lord Glencore is
admirably drawn, and his life of torture in his mad cry for vengeance
fearfully vivid. _Luttrell of Arran_ is the story of a disappointed
life, from out of which springs a bright flower of maidenhood—Kate, one
of Lever’s most charming creations. Again, we have the _Knight of
Gwynne_, over whose gentle head wave after wave of hard fortune
pitilessly breaks, and, driven from the lordly home of his ancestors to
a sheeling by the sad sea-wave, he is as cheerful in adversity as he was
noble in prosperity. The portrait of the fire-eating Bagenal Daly is not
overdrawn, and the introduction of Freeny the robber, although highly
melodramatic, is not only possible but probable. Freeny’s “character”
stood remarkably high. He would rob a rich miser to save a poor family
from starvation, and his word was as good as his bond; ‘98 turned many a
man upon the king’s highway who, but for being “out,” would have lived
respecting and respected. The _Martins of Cro’ Martin_ is another
ghastly narrative of the wreck and ruin of a proud old Irish race. It is
“an owre true” story. A few miles outside of the town of Galway, on the
road to Oughterard, stand two gaunt pillars surmounted by granite
globes. The gates have disappeared, as also the armorial bearings; but
this was formerly the entrance to Ballinahinch, the seat of the “ould,
anshint” Martins, and from that gate to Ballinahinch Castle was a drive
of forty Irish miles. The castle, situated in one of the loneliest and
loveliest valleys in Connemara, was maintained in a style of regal
magnificence, the stables, marble-stalled, affording accommodation for
sixty hunters. On an island, in the centre of a small lake opposite the
castle, stands a desolate, half-ruined keep, within the four walls of
which such of his retainers or neighbors as proved refractory were
imprisoned by “The Martin” of the period. Recklessness and improvidence
scattered the broad acres, mortgage overlapped mortgage, and every inch
of the grand old estate became the property of the London Law Life
Assurance Society. Notably the last of the family was Richard Martin,
commonly known as “Humanity Dick,” in reference to a bill introduced by
him into the British House of Commons for the repression of cruelty to
animals. Upon the occasion of its introduction the English members
essayed to cough him down. “I perceive,” said Mr. Martin, “that many of
you seem troubled with severe coughs; now, if any _one_ gentleman will
cough distinctly, so that I may be able to recognize him, I can give him
a pill which may, perhaps, effectually prevent his ever being again
troubled with a cough on this side of the grave.” Mr. Martin’s
prescription was at once effectual.
With “Humanity Dick’s” granddaughter perished the race; and her name is
still breathed in Connemara as a prayer, as one “who never opened a
cabin-door without a blessing, nor closed it but to shut hope within.”
The farm-house where she was nursed is still fondly pointed out, and
“Miss Martin’s lep”—she was a superb horsewoman—is proudly shown to
every “spalpeen” of an Englishman who travels that wild, bleak, and
desolate road between Oughterard and Clifden. Mr. Lever, with that magic
all his own, has told the sad story. _His_ Mary Martin is but the
portrait of that fair young Irish girl who dearly loved “her people”
unto the last, and who, in the bright blossom of her life, died an exile
from that western home which was at once her idol and her pride. Where
but in Ireland could this sad and solemn gathering around the bedside of
a dying girl take place?
“And yet there was a vast multitude of people there. The whole
surface of the lawn that sloped from the cottage to the river
was densely crowded with every age, from the oldest to the very
infancy; with all conditions, from the well-clad peasant to the
humblest ‘tramper’ of the highroads. Weariness, exhaustion, and
even hunger were depicted on many of their faces. Some had
passed the night there, others had come long distances, faint
and foot-sore; but, as they sat, stood, or lay in groups around,
not a murmur, not a whisper, escaped them. With aching eyes they
looked towards an open window where the muslin curtains were
gently stirred in the faint air. The tidings of Mary Martin’s
illness had spread rapidly; far-away glens down the coast,
lonely cabins on the bleak mountains, wild, remote spots out of
human intercourse, had heard the news, and their dwellers had
travelled many a mile to satisfy their aching hearts.”
This is Ireland. This is the undying affection of the people for the
“rale ould stock.” This is the imperishable sentiment, as fresh at this
hour as the emerald verdure upon the summit of Croagh Patrick.
In _A Day’s Ride: a Life’s Romance_, Mr. Lever has given us Algernon
Sydney Potts—one of those romantic visionaries who believe in destiny,
bow to their _Kismet_, and, going with the tide, clothe the meanest
accidents of life in dreamy panoply. The adventures which befall the
Dublin apothecary’s son, from his ride in Wicklow to his imprisonment in
an Austrian fortress, are as varied as they are exciting, and we are
strongly inclined to believe that Lever, “letting off” a good deal of
Bohemia, is at his best in the wild vagaries of this reckless
day-dreamer. _Tom Burke of Ours_ is a dashing military story, as is also
_Jack Hinton, the Guardsman_. _The O’Donoghue_ is charmingly written and
is thoroughly Irish. _That Boy of Norcott’s_ is unsatisfactory.
Commencing in Ireland, it wanders from the old country with the evident
intention of returning to it; but a change came o’er the spirit of the
author’s dream, and it bears all the imprint of having been hastily
written, a changed venue, and of being “hurried up” at its conclusion.
_Sir Brook Fosbrooke_, on the other hand, bears traces of the utmost
care, the details of character being worked out with microscopic
minuteness. The old lord chief-justice is supposed to have been meant
for Lord Chief-Justice Lefroy, of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Ireland,
who died at a very advanced age a few years since, in full possession of
the astounding legal acumen which marked his extended career at the bar,
and subsequently upon the bench.
The writer spent a long-to-be-remembered day with Charles Lever in the
April before his death. He was stopping in Dublin at Morrison’s Hotel,
Dawson Street. We found him seated at an open window, a bottle of claret
at his right hand and the proof-sheets of _Lord Kilgobbin_ before him.
It was a beautiful morning borrowed from the month of May; the hawthorns
in the college park were just beginning to bloom, and nature was young
and warm and lovely.
At the date of our visit he looked a hale, hearty, laughter-loving man
of sixty. There was mirth in his gray eye, joviality, in the wink that
twittered on his eyelid, saucy humor in his smile, and bon mot, wit,
repartee, and rejoinder in every movement of his lips. His hair very
thin, but of a silky brown, fell across his forehead, and when it
curtained his eyes he would jerk back his head—this, too, at some
telling crisis in a narrative when the particular action was just the
exact finish required to make the story perfect. Mr. Lever’s teeth were
all his own, and very brilliant, and, whether from habit or accident, he
flashed them upon us in company with his wonderful eyes—a battery at
once both powerful and irresistible. He spoke slowly at first, but
warming to his work, and candying an idea in a short, contagious,
musical laugh, his story told itself all too rapidly, and the light
burned out with such a glare as to intensify the succeeding darkness.
Like all good _raconteurs_, he addressed himself deferentially to his
auditor in the beginning, and as soon as the fish was hooked, the
attention enthralled, he would speak as if thinking aloud. Mr. Lever
made great use of his hands, which were small and white and delicate as
those of a woman. He made play with them—threw them up in ecstasy or
wrung them in mournfulness, just as the action of the moment demanded.
He did not require eyes or teeth with such a voice and such hands; they
could tell and illustrate the workings of his brain. He was somewhat
careless in his dress, but clung to the traditional high shirt-collar,
merely compromising the unswerving stock of the Brummel period. “I stick
to my Irish shoes,” he said, thrusting upwards about as uncompromising a
“bit of leather” as we have ever set eyes on right under our nose, “and
until a few years ago I got them from a descendant of the celebrated
Count Lally, who cobbled at Letterkenny. There is no shoe in the world
equal to the Irish brogue.”
“You are ‘taking time by the forelock,’ as we say in the play,” said the
writer, pointing to the rough copy of the _Cornhill Magazine_, in which
the story was running.
“Always at the heel of the hunt,” he replied. “This is the May number,
and not corrected yet.”
“I consider _Lord Kilgobbin_ as good as, if not better than, anything
you have written.”
There was unutterable sadness in his tone and gesture as he said, with a
weary sigh:
“Ah! I have been tilting the cask so long that the lees are coming out
very muddy.”
“Which of your novels do you like best?” was asked.
“Well, my most careful work is _Sir Brook Fosbrooke_, but I prefer the
_Dodd Family Abroad_, and all for the sake of Carry Dodd, who is my
ideal of a pure, bright, charming Irish girl.”
Further on:
“You are the same reckless, rollicking, warm-hearted, improvident people
as when I left you, and the lower orders entertain the same hatred of
Saxon supremacy. I was walking down College Green yesterday, and as I
stood opposite the old Parliament House, a troop of dragoons, in all
their panoply of glancing helmets, blood-red coats, and prancing steeds,
trotted past. A ragged, tatterdemalion carman was feeding a horse only
fit for the knacker’s yard, attached to an outside car, with a wisp of
hay.
“‘What regiment is that?’ I asked, partly from curiosity, partly for the
sake of a conversation.
“‘Sorra a know I know,’ was the gruff response.
“‘Where are they going to?’
“Without raising his head, and giving a vicious chuck to the hay:
“‘To h—l, I hope.’
“I will give you another illustration,” continued Mr. Lever, “of how
determinedly the lower order of my countrymen disparage anything and
everything English. I was invited to spend some days with the late Lord
Carlisle, twice your Lord Lieutenant, at Castle Howard, in Yorkshire. I
had at that time an Irish servant, a son of Corny Delany, to whom
grumbling was chronic. As we drove through the magnificent avenue
beneath the extending branches of giant oaks and lordly elms, I observed
to my follower: ‘What do you think of those trees?’
“‘I see thim.’
“‘Are they not splendid?’
“‘Och! threes is threes anywhere.’
“‘But the Howards are proud of these trees; they are the finest in
England. Lord Carlisle sets great store by them.’
“‘Arrah, thin, why wudn’t he have the hoighth av fine threes? Shure
hadn’t he the _pick av the Phaynix Park_?’
“I was dining with Judge —— on Sunday, who, as you know, is a very
diminutive, shrivelled-up-looking little man,” continued Mr. Lever, “and
he told me an amusing story. When attorney-general, he purchased an
estate in Tipperary near Clonmel. Shortly after the purchase he resolved
upon paying the place a visit to take a look at his recent acquisition.
As he was proceeding with his agent through a _boreen_ which led to
mearings of his property, he overheard the following conversation
between two old women:
“‘Wisha, thin, d’ye tell me that’s the new landlord, Missis Mulligan?’
“‘Sorra a lie in it, ma’am.’
“‘That dawny little bit av a crayture?’
“‘A leprechaun, no less.’
“‘_Why, begorra, the boys might as well be shootin’ at a jacksnipe._’”
Mr. Lever’s conversational powers were simply marvellous; his anecdotes
fell like ripe fruit from an overladen tree. In London his great delight
was a night at the Cosmopolitan Club, Berkeley Square. This club is only
open upon Wednesday and Sunday nights during the Parliamentary session.
The members stroll in from eleven o’clock at night to about three
o’clock A.M. Cabinet ministers, ambassadors of all nations, members of
the legislature, eminent _littérateurs_, Royal Academicians, repair
thither for a gossip; and here, amidst the best talkers in the world,
Charles Lever stood pre-eminent. As the wits and _raconteurs_ at Will’s
Coffee House were silent whilst Joseph Addison talked _Spectator_, so
the members of the Cosmopolitan maintained a breathless attention when
Charles Lever talked _Cornelius O’Dowd_; and many a man has “dined out
considerably” upon a _mot_, and has, perhaps, established a reputation,
by the retailing of an anecdote recounted within the _salons_ of the
club by the inimitable and fascinating “Harry Lorrequer.” When the
writer parted with Lever upon that evening, he felt justifiably elated
at being enabled to amuse, if not astonish, the most brilliant man of
the day, but, upon a rigid self-examination, was somewhat disappointed
upon discovering that, instead of his having been engaged in
entertaining Lever, Lever had been entertaining _him_, and that he had
not uttered a single sentence out of the veriest commonplace. Such was
the charm of Lever’s manner that he took you, as it were, from out
yourself, and for the time infused his own groove of thought, causing
your ideas to mingle with his and float joyously onward upon the
glittering current of his conversation. Lever was a devoted worshipper
of the “sad solemnities of whist,” playing rubber after rubber up to any
and all hours. It is related that an eminent wearer of the ermine, a
fellow of Trinity College, a gallant field officer, and Lever met, dined
early, and played whist until the hour at which the train departed for
Kingston by which “Harry Lorrequer” was to leave _en route_ for London.
“Come on to Kingston,” said Lever, “sleep at the Anglesea Arms Hotel,
and I will not go until the morning boat.” They played all night and
until one o’clock next day. _Si non e vero e ben trovato_, but the
writer has the story from unimpeachable authority.
Charles Lever’s _last_ novel, concluded shortly before his death, is
_Lord Kilgobbin_. Let its unutterably sad preface speak for itself:
“To the memory of one whose companionship made the happiness of a long
life, and whose loss has made me helpless, I dedicate this book, written
in breaking health and broken spirits. The task that once was my joy and
my pride I have lived to find associated with my sorrow. It is not,
then, without a cause I say, I hope this effort may be my last.—TRIESTE,
January 20, 1872.”
It is with a pang of regret that we peruse the _Cornelius O’Dowd_
papers. They are tinged with that abominable spirit which is sending
Italy at the present hour to perdition, and we greatly fear that Mr.
Lever wrote them for the London market. He was no bigot, however; on the
contrary, his life was passed amongst Catholics, and his dearest and
best friends were of the true church; consequently, the pain is
intensified when we come to stand face to face with the fact that these
papers were, if not the outcome of a pecuniary necessity, at least the
result of a craving for money, and the hollow effusions of a
hirelingpen. His Italian sojourn led him gradually away from the more
kindly tone towards Catholics which pervaded his earlier Irish novels.
Lever and Griffin have been compared as writers of Irish fiction. We
would rather have been the author of _The Collegians_ than of any work
of Mr. Lever’s. There is a virgin simplicity in Gerald Griffin’s style
that “Harry Lorrequer” could not touch; an atmosphere which he could not
breathe; a purity which, while the _morale_ of Lever’s writings is
unimpeachable, is of that order that is so rarely attained by the most
chaste and most elevated amongst our writers of fiction. Griffin’s Irish
is not stagy—it is real; so, too, is Lever’s. But while the former
paints the portrait, leaving the imagination of the reader to put in the
finishing touches, the latter rubs in a laugh here or a keen thrust
there, so as to dramatize the picture; and, while it is more vivid
during perusal, the mind falls back upon the other for less exciting
_pabulum_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ORDER.
FROM A POEM BY ST. FRANCIS D’ASSISI.
_Our Lord Speaks_: