I held my mastership in King Edward’s School at Birmingham a year and a
half--from shortly after the first day of 1837 to the 19th of June,
1838.
At the end of that time I went back to my mother’s house at Hadley. She
had in the meantime returned from Vienna, had completed her two volumes
on that journey, and published them with such a measure of success as to
encourage her in hoping that she might vary her never-ceasing labour in
the production of novels by again undertaking other journeys. But for
this, and still more for the execution of other schemes, of which I
shall have to speak further on, my presence and companionship were
necessary to her. And after much consultation and very many walks
together round the little quiet garden at Hadley, it was decided between
us that I should send in my resignation of the Birmingham mastership,
defer all alternative steps in the direction of any other life career,
and devote myself, for the present at least, to becoming her companion
and squire.
The decision was a very momentous one. As might have been anticipated,
the “deferring” of any steps in the direction of a professional career
of any sort turned out eventually to be the final abandonment of any
such. It could hardly be otherwise in the case of a young man of
twenty-eight, which was my age at the time. I was the son of a father
who had left absolutely nothing behind him, and I had no prospect
whatever of any independent means from any other source. It is true that
property settled on my mother before her marriage would in any case
suffice to keep me from absolute destitution, but that was about all
that could be said of it. And certainly the decision to which my mother
and I came during these walks round and round the Hadley garden was
audacious rather than prudent.
I have _never_ regretted it during any part of the now well-nigh half a
century of life that has elapsed since the resolution was taken. I have
been, I have not the smallest doubt, a much happier man than I should
have been, had I followed a more beaten track. My brother Anthony used
to say of me that I should never have earned my salt in the routine work
of a profession, or any employment under the authoritative supervision
of a superior. I always dissented, and beg still to record my dissent,
from any such judgment. But, as it is, I can say with sincerely grateful
recognition in my heart, that I have been a very happy--I fear I may say
an exceptionally happy--man. Despite this, I do not think that were I
called upon to advise a young man in precisely similar circumstances to
mine at that time, I should counsel him to follow my example: for I have
been not only a happy but a singularly fortunate man. Again and again at
various turning points of my life I have been fortunate to a degree
which no conduct or prudence of my own merited.
I was under no immediate obligation to work in any way, but I cannot say
of myself I have been an idle man. I have worked much, and sometimes
very hard.
Upon one occasion--the occasion was that of sudden medical advice to the
effect that it was desirable that I should take my first wife from
Florence for a change of climate, which I was not in funds to do
comfortably--I planned and wrote from title-page to colophon and sold a
two-volume novel of the usual size in four-and-twenty days. I had a
“turn of speed” in those days in writing as well as walking. I could do
my five miles and three-quarters in an hour at a fair toe and heel walk,
and I wrote a novel in twenty-four days--it was written indeed in
twenty-three, for I took a whole holiday in the middle of the work. Of
course it may be said that the novel was trash. But it was as good as,
and was found by the publisher to be more satisfactory than, some others
of the great number I have perpetrated. And I should like those who may
imagine that the arduous nature of the feat I accomplished was made less
by the literary imperfection of the work to try the experiment of
_copying_ six hundred post octavo pages in the time. I found the
register of each day’s work the other day. The longest was thirty-three
pages. It was no great matter to have written three-and-thirty pages in
one day, but I am disposed to think that few men (or even women) could
continue for as many days at so high an average of speed. My brother
used to say that he could not do the like to save his life and that of
all those dearest to him. And he was not a slow writer. Of course when
my book was done I was nearly done too. But I do not know that I was
ever any the worse for the effort. The novel in question was called
_Beppo the Conscript_.
No, I have not been an idle man since the day when my mother and myself
decided that I was to follow no recognised profession. The long, too
long, series of works which have been published as mine will account for
probably considerably less than half the printed matter which I am
responsible for having given to the world. Nor can I say that I was
driven to work “by hunger and request of friends.” During all my long
career of authorship there was no period at which I could not have lived
an idle man--not so well as I wished, certainly; but I was not driven by
imperious necessity.
Yet I have a very pretty turn for idleness too. It is as pleasant to me
“to smoke my canaster and tipple my ale in the shade,” as Thackeray
says, as to any man. Anthony had no such turn. Work to him was a
necessity and a satisfaction. He used often to say that he envied me the
capacity for being idle. Had he possessed it, poor fellow, I might not
now be speaking of him in the past tense. And still less than of me
could it be said of him that he was ever driven to literary work
_deficiente crumenâ_. But he laboured during the whole of his manhood
life with an insatiable ardour that (taking into consideration his very
efficient discharge of his duties as Post Office surveyor) puts my
industry into the shade.
Certainly we both of us ought to have inherited, and I suppose did
inherit, an aptitude for industry. My father was, as I have said, a
remarkably laborious, though an unsuccessful man, and my mother left a
hundred and fifteen volumes, written between her fiftieth year and that
of her death.
Shortly after my final return from Birmingham my mother had a bad
illness. It could not have been a very long one; the record of her
published work shows no cessation of literary activity. Whether this
illness had anything to do with the resolution she came to much about
the same time to change her residence, I do not remember, but about this
time we established ourselves at No. 20, York Street.
Here, as everywhere else where my mother found or made a home, the house
forthwith became the resort of pleasant people; and my time in York
Street was a very agreeable one. Among other frequenters of it, my diary
makes frequent mention of Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia, better known
to the world as Sam Slick, the Clockmaker. He was, as I remember him, a
delightful companion--for a limited time. He was in this respect exactly
like his books--extremely amusing reading if taken in rather small
doses, but calculated to seem tiresomely monotonous if indulged in at
too great length. He was a thoroughly good fellow, kindly, cheery,
hearty, and sympathetic always; and so far always a welcome companion.
But his funning was always pitched in the same key, and always more or
less directed to the same objects. His social and political ideas and
views all coincided with my own, which, of course, tended to make us
better friends. In appearance he looked entirely like an Englishman, but
not at all like a Londoner. Without being at all too fat, he was large
and burly in person, with grey hair, a large ruddy face, a humorous
mouth, and bright blue eyes always full of mirth. He was an inveterate
chewer of tobacco, and in the fulness of comrade-like kindness strove to
indoctrinate me with that habit. But I was already an old smoker, and
preferred to content myself with that mode of availing myself of the
blessing of tobacco.
“Highways and Byeways” Grattan we saw also occasionally when anything
brought him to London. He also was, as will be readily believed, what is
generally called very good company. He, too, was full of fun, and
certainly it could not be said that _his_ fiddle had but one string to
it! His fault lay in the opposite direction. His funning muse “made
increment of” everything. He was intensely Irish, in manner, accent,
and mind. He had a broken, or naturally bridgeless nose, and possessed
as small a share of good looks or personal advantages as most men. He
first urged me to try my hand at a novel. He had seen some of my early
scribblings, but repeated that “Fiction, me boy, fiction and passion are
what readers want!” But I did not at that time, or for many a long year
afterwards, feel within myself any capacity for supplying such want.