At Riedenburg Lever closed a correspondence, commenced in 1843,
with Miss Edgeworth. In 1843 the author of ‘Castle Rackrent,’ in
her seventy-seventh year, was still working assiduously in her
Edgeworthstown home.
_To Miss Edgeworth_.
“Templeogue House, Co. Dublin, _Nov_. 10, 1843.
“Madam,--I have a great favour to ask at your hands--and, like most
people in similar circumstances, not any claim whatever to support
the prayer of my petition. My desire is to obtain your permission to
dedicate to you a book of mine called ‘Tom Burke,’ the first volume of
which will appear early in December. To associate, even on such
slender terms, my humble effort with a name confessedly the first in my
country’s literature, is the motive which prompts me to this request,
while I gladly embrace the occasion to assure you that you have no more
ardent admirer of your goodness and your genius than your very humble
and devoted servant.”
_To Miss Edgeworth._
“Templeogue House, Co. Dublin, _Nov_. 13, 1843.
“Madam,--It may be, that while asking a favour I may be obliged to ask
your pardon for importunity. About a week since I addressed a few lines
to you requesting your permission to dedicate to you a book of mine
called ‘Tom Burke of Ours,’ but not having heard from you in reply,
I conclude my letter has not reached you. I cannot, however,
relinquish--without another endeavour--a hope I have long cherished to
write your name within a volume of mine, and be, even on such slender
terms, associated with one whom I feel to be the first of Irish writers.
If you will accord me this permission, I shall deem it a very great
favour conferred on your very humble and obedient servant.”
In his ‘Life of Lever’ Dr Fitzpatrick states that Lever set out in 1844
on his driving tour through Ireland, with the intention of paying a
formal visit to Miss Edgeworth. There is no evidence that this visit was
paid. In a preface to ‘The Knight of Gwynne,’ the author declares his
acquaintanceship with Miss Edgeworth arose out of a letter she wrote to
him correcting a mistake he had made as to the authorship of an epigram
on Sir William Gladowes (afterwards Lord Newcomen). Almost in the same
breath he admits that he has no memory for dates, and he couples this
admission with a regret that he never kept a note-book. Miss Edgeworth’s
tardy reply did not reach Charles Lever till the summer of 1845, when he
was lingering at Carlsruhe.
_To Miss Edgeworth._
“Carlsruhe in Baden, Hof von Holland, _Aug_. 19, 1845.
“Dear Madam,--Your letter addressed to me in Dublin followed me here
into the heart of the Black Forest, where I have been sojourning for
some time past. I have really no words to speak my gratitude for
the kindness which dictated such a letter,--so full of flattering
encouragement, so abounding in expressions of good cheer. It is not
because I have met with so little approval from the Press of my own
country that I set great store by your criticisms,--though even the
contrast has its consolations,--but that I begin to feel confidence
under an approval from you, which no praise from one less competent
could inspire. Your kindness, too,--like every real kindness,--had the
merit of an _apropos_. I was beginning to feel unusually depressed
about the fortunes of my book. I had received so many hints, based on
misconceptions, of the characters and the plot, that I found, or fancied
I found, I had been misrepresenting my own intentions, praising what I
deprecated, and apologising for what I felt condemnatory. Fancy, then,
the delight I experienced on hearing that you had read me aright--nay,
more, developed in full the shadowy and vague forms my weaker hand only
dared to trace, but could not venture to colour! I am not able to tell
you how full of hope, how full of ambition, you have left me,--how
totally you have routed the growing despondency against which,
unassisted, I struggled in vain. It is not, believe me, that your
flattery has made me _tête montée_; but, even taking it as mere
flattery, I can say to myself, ‘It is Miss Edgeworth, after all.’ If I
am destined to do what may be worthy, I shall date the effort from the
day I received your letter,--a day which made me prouder than I ever
felt before, and happier than any praise hereafter can make me.”
After the lapse of a year we find Lever thirsting for further praise or
encouragement. There is something almost pitiful in his timid appeal
to Miss Edgeworth for her opinions concerning ‘The O’Donoghue’ and
‘The Knight of Gwynne,’--the latter novel was at the time appearing in
monthly parts. Lever was always able to form a very shrewd estimate of
the merits or demerits of his own writings, and in his later days press
criticism, adverse or laudatory, seems to have affected him but little.
It was different, however, in his earlier days, when abuse or neglect
caused him grave disappointment and vexation, and when a laudatory
review unduly elated him.
_To Miss Edgeworth._
“Riedenburg, Bregenz, l’Autriche, _July_ 14, 1846.
“Dear Madam,--It is exactly a year since you wrote to me the kindest and
most flattering letter it has ever been my fortune to receive. I have
read it over so often that I almost have it by heart, and yet I never
recur to the precise phrases of your brilliant note without renewed
pleasure, renewed encouragement. It may be that you have long since
forgotten both the epistle and the object of it. It cannot be an
isolated piece of kindness on your part, and may well have escaped your
memory. Let me recall the circumstance by saying it was an allusion to
a book of mine called ‘The O’Donoghue,’ of whose earlier numbers you
augured well, but of whose later ones I will not dare to tax your
opinion. My present object is to thank you for a piece of kindness,
whose effect is as fresh this instant as when first conferred. I recur
to the expression of your encouragement as a certain relief in hours of
doubt and despondency; and as the prisoner in Schundau only permitted
himself the relaxation of looking out on the Elbe in days of unusual
depression, I have kept your letter for times when a failing heart and
ebbing hope have made me need the voice of encouragement.
“May I ask if you have chanced upon the book called ‘The Knight
of Gwynne’? I will not ask your opinion--nor do I wish one word of
criticism. I feel too sensibly it should have been very different, for
I _had_ in my head a good subject and wandered from it, but I would like
to know that it reached you.
“I am living in a wild valley of the Austrian Tyrol, away from every
source of information of what passes in the world--away equally from
critical reproof or the word of cheering hope. I will not tell you with
what pleasure I take up the lines whenever you bid me go forward, nor
how anxiously I would learn what may be your present judgment, while
I would willingly spare you (and myself) the pain of an unfavourable
verdict should conscience dictate one.”
_To Miss Edgeworth_.
“Riedenburg, Bregenz, Lac De Constance,
_New Year’s Day_, 1847.
“Dear Madam,--That a letter of mine should have gone astray is of
little moment to any one, but that I should be under the imputation of
ingratitude for your most kind letter of last August is of very
great consequence to me, and to prevent this possible event I write
now--uncertain whether a note I had unluckily intrusted to a private
hand may have ever reached you. I was travelling in the Tyrol when your
letter found me, and I replied to it at once, giving my letter to a
person returning to England, with several others, one of which I know
for certain did not come to hand. By the same occasion I directed my
publisher to send you a little volume called ‘St Patrick’s Eve’--has
this miscarried?
“I am uncertain whether I should not prefer the unjust reproach of
neglect to the possible offence of boring you in duplicate. Still, it
is better to incur this _risque_, for not two nor twenty letters would
convey my thankfulness for all your kindness and encouragement. It is
not because your two letters are my only literary triumphs that I
set such store by them, though such is truly the case; but that I see
reflected in my own little children the eager delight with which I
myself as a child read your writings and learned to love them. Your
praise is then doubly dear, as it partakes of the character of a reward
to one of your _élèves_. Let me add that there is a domestic triumph in
this too, and that my little people felt proud of Papa when he told them
what Miss Edgeworth said of him. I am afraid to speak of my ‘Knight of
Gwynne,’ lest my former letter should be already before you, and all
the [? gossip] about my intentions and how I lapsed from them be a
twice-told tale. One thing is certain, however the story would have
inclined, the same faults would cling to it. I have no constructiveness
in my head; the most I am capable of is the portraiture of certain
characters with more or less of contrast or ‘relief’ between them. These
once formed, I put them _en scène_, to die out in an early chapter
when their vitality is weak,--if stronger, to survive to the end of
the volume. That such halting incoherency would make very slovenly
inartistic narratives, I have only to look back on what I have written
to see. My own deficiencies, added to the fatal facility of No.
publication, have combined to make this a grave and, I fear,
irremediable fault with me, and even when I strive after better things,
I invariably find that every step upwards is made at the cost of injury
to my popularity, and when my friends encourage, my publisher is sure to
upbraid me.
“The epigram I quoted in ‘The Knight’ was repeated to me at least twenty
years back by a singularly agreeable and gifted conversationalist,
the late Wm. Gouldersby, my brother’s predecessor in the Rectory of
Tullamore. I was only a boy when I heard it, and need not say how strong
was the impression made that has endured to the present.
“Your kindness--like all real kindnesses--emboldens, and I would, if I
dared, ask your permission to say something of my next story,--I
mean, of one that I intend to write at a future day. As I have already
confessed to my inability to construct a plot and continue all the
tortuous difficulties and surprises of a well-imagined tale, the most I
could inflict upon you would be a meagre outline of my object, and the
purpose for which my narrative is constructed: so much--if I had your
permission--I should certainly like [to do].
“The post-mortem recollections you are good enough to notice in
‘O’Leary’ were little else than a transcript of my own feeling during
recovery from the only severe illness I ever had. [They] have so much
of truth about them that they were actually present to my mind day after
day.
“I have little doubt that volition, powerfully exerted under the
pressure of religious fervour and faith, is the secret agency of those
miraculous cures whose occasional authenticity is beyond question.
“My present task is writing a little volume of Tyrol sketches--partly to
illustrate some of the national proverbs of that simple people. We have
been living amongst them now for above a year, and hourly growing more
and more attracted to their unaffected kindliness and sincerity. The
little tales I am endeavouring to shape out have the veracity of real
scenes and real people in their favour, so far as I can convey them,
but are quite devoid of all high interest. But if you will allow me,
whenever they appear, to send you a copy, it will give me sincere
gratification.
“I will not trespass on the goodness which has already given me such
heartfelt pleasure by asking you to write to me. I will only say that I
have never felt at the same time so proud and so happy as when reading
those [letters] you have sent me, and that I thank you again and again
for the happiness in which I write myself.”
_To Miss Edgeworth_.
“Riedenburg, Bregenz, Lac De Constance, _Jan_. 28, 1847.
“Dear Madam,--Your letter is now before me, and although I can fancy
how tired you are of _my_ gratitude, I am never weary of telling you
how much I feel _your_ kindness. As a manager returns thanks for the
_dramatis persona_ of his corps, I beg to repeat mine for Miss Darcy,
Daly, Freney, and Co.,* who, I beseech you to believe, have derived
any spirit of life they possess from the genial breath of your
encouragements. Like the ‘Bourgeois Gentilhomme,’ who spoke prose
without knowing, I find I really had a story to tell, and, however late
came the knowledge, your criticism set me about seeing how best to do
it.
* Characters in ‘The Knight of Gwynne.’--E. D.
“Pray accept my excuses for what must have been a very bungling
expression in my last note, and which has caused you an apprehension
that, although only momentary, I am sincerely sorry for,--sorry, I will
own not only on your account, but on my own--my _amour propre_, having
no more tender point than the dread of being a bore. I never intended
to inflict my MS. on you, for after some ninety-nine good and sufficient
reasons comes the hundredth,--I never wrote more at any time than was
sufficient for the monthly call of my printers, and that only at the
spur of the emergency. In taking what I felt to be the great liberty of
asking your counsel, I had still a sense of moderation for an author,
and would not worry you by what is called a sketch. Indeed, it is your
opinion as to the _intention_ of the tale I would sue for, and
your judgment of how far the story seems suited to such a hand as
mine,--whether in itself it contains enough of romantic and dramatic
element to be a good theme to work out.
“And now _à l’ouvrage!_ It occurred to me when attached to a British
Embassy to learn that the whole scheme and game of Irish politics were
not only known to the members of the Roman Catholic clergy, but that
they took the very deepest interest in the cause and progress of events,
and, strangest of all, were informed thoroughly on all the points of
social distinctions at issue amongst us--knowing the very names of such
localities and obscure people as were the scenes or actors in outrage
or disturbance,--were conversant with the petty details of magisterial
justice, and aware of all that terrible machinery of crime which for
years back has been at work in Ireland. That such knowledge should have
originated in mere curiosity would be absurd to conceive; that it sprung
from a deep interest in the events is far easier to see, and in some
cases I even believe from a controlling, regulating power that, if not
exercised to promote actual crime, yet could watch its progress and
effect, withholding the opposing influences the Church could supply if
she would. This, of course, is surmise, and mere surmise,--the former
part I _know_. I know also that details of Irish outrage have been
transmitted to Rome, not by post, but by a secret system of transmission
from priest to priest, from Belgium to the Vatican, by _journées
d’étapes_. This, to say the least, is very curious, but I think it is
more. I believe it to be highly dangerous. I do not know whether you
will smile at my fancies that the days of Hildebrand might yet be in
store for us, but I feel if I were known to you personally I should
scarcely be supposed likely to be regarded as an alarmist, and least of
all on such grounds. My friends generally accuse me of having, from long
foreign residence, a very tolerant feeling towards Romanism.
“Now, without tormenting you with any details, my idea would be to
take this theme as the groundwork of a story, whose scene should lie
alternatively in Ireland and abroad, the characters being home and
foreign as occasion required. My priest (Machiavellian, of course) would
be the _cheval de bataille_--not attempted, I need scarcely say, in any
rivalry with Eugene Sue, whose vast superiority in every way as a writer
refutes such a presumption, but because the object would open up a very
different class of character and interest. My people would be enlisted
from various ranks and conditions of men, and afford contrasts of
country as well as of individuality.
“This meagre outline it is I would ask your opinion of. Indeed, I scarce
knew how shadowy and vague it was till I wrote it down here, and yet
there is that _within_ it which a really strong hand might turn to
account. Will you kindly say if this be the kind of material that such
[? a hand] as mine could work out with interest?
“I told you I would not inflict a MS. upon you, and here I have been
doing something so very like it that I am ashamed to look back. However,
if you knew how much more prosy and tedious I could have been, and on
the very same subject, too, you would be gratified to be let off so
easily.
“My best thanks for the hints about the two books. I have already
written for them. Strange enough you should have suggested Spain as a
likely _locale_ for interest, at a time when I was actually meditating
a visit to the Peninsula, my former chief being made Ambassador at the
Court of Lisbon, and having pressed me to visit him.
“Your last letter put me into such good-humour with my ‘Knight,’ that
I set about writing a new No., and with your criticism so fully in my
head, I believe I did better than at any previous stage of his monthly
existence.
“There is no part of your praise I set more value on than what you
observe as to the good-breeding of certain characters, for while
our fashionable (!) writers depict ladies and gentlemen by a hundred
distinctive traits of manners and taste, all evidencing the most vulgar
views of life, there is another class who love to represent every person
of station as a species of moral monster, made of sensuality, deceit,
and utter selfishness. If I have avoided these opposite errors, I wish
I may have hit the middle course without at the same time making good
manners insipid. Your praise lets me hope this, and I could not wish
for a more competent authority. I need not now say with what eagerness
I will read any remarks you are so kind as to make on my ‘Knight.’ The
book only occupies any place in my esteem by reason of your opinion. If
you see cause to continue it, I am but too happy to be reconciled to my
unworthy offspring.
“My Tyrol stories* I have shelved for the present. They grew to be
_triste_ in spite of me, so I resolved to wait for better weather and
better spirits, or in other words (such as my children tell me), ‘until
Papa gets another pleasant letter from Miss Edge worth.’”
* Two of these tales of Tyrol, probably the only Tyrol
stories written by him, were subsequently included in
‘Horace Templeton.’--E. D.
For many years Lever had been engaged in rough passages-at-arms with
the Catholic Church militant in Ireland, and though he was by no means a
bigoted Anti-Romanist, he regarded “the priest in politics” as a highly
dangerous factor. It is greatly to the credit of Miss Edgeworth’s sense
of proportion, and to her level-headedness and her acumen, that she saw
that if Charles Lever made “priestcraft” his pivot, he would be tempted
to outstrip the limits of fair-play in fiction. And it is creditable
to Lever that he was so easily dissuaded from undertaking the novel in
which the Irish priesthood--then his sworn foe--was to figure as the
conglomerate villain of the piece. No doubt the book which Lever had
in his mind was one which he proposed to his Dublin publisher, James
M’Glashan, giving it the provisional title of ‘Corrig O’Neill.’ Some of
the material for this abandoned novel he used in ‘The Daltons,’ in which
the Abbé D’Esmonde has a prominent part, though this ecclesiastic’s
intriguing (which is almost purely political) has little concern with
affairs Hibernian.
_To Miss Edgeworth_.
“Riedenburg, Bregenz, Lac De Constance, _April_ 6, 1847.
“My dear Miss Edgeworth,--I am not quite certain that in now thanking
you--and thank you I do most cordially and gratefully--for your kind
letter, I am not imitating the obtrusive and old-fashioned politeness of
people who will not slip away without saying the ‘good nights.’ Not even
the fear of being classed with these _rococos_, however, shall prevent
me from saying how I feel the extreme good-nature that dictated your
delightful letter, and I now see--I own I never did see so clearly till
now--the difficulties of my new story, and in your warnings I already
read the censure, anticipatory as it is, of the very faults I should
inevitably have committed. I do not fear, indeed, that I should have
fallen into any imitation of Eugene Sue--for whose genius I entertain
nothing like the admiration I feel for Balzac’s, and for whose false
morality and no principle I have a hearty contempt; but I do feel that
my prejudices might have easily led me away to father on my priest
evils, social and political, which in all likelihood he could never have
been answerable for, and, in my anxiety to make out my case, prove too
much.
“I am, then, if not deterred, at least checked as to the projected
story, and will not adventure on it without more thought and reflection.
Perhaps the tone towards Ireland at this moment is not very favourable
to such portraiture: indeed, I am told that anything Irish is an
ungracious theme to English ears just now, and I am reminded of the man
who could never laugh at Liston, for remembering that the actor owed him
ten pounds.
“If I fear to ask, I hope no less that my ‘Knight’ holds his place in
your good opinion. I am aware that some of the late numbers introduce
the reader to less agreeable companionship than is always pleasant, but
I felt that the tableland was too even and unbroken, and that strong
contrasts were needed to relieve some of the uniformity, even at the
hazard of damaging my picture by false keeping. After all, there is
nothing so bad as being tiresome, and I can see that this dread evil was
spreading over my story. Heavens knows if, endeavouring to avert it, I
have not made bad worse!
“I am not unreasonable enough to ask you to write to me again--but this
much I will say, that I know of no favour for which I am more grateful,
nor for any kindness on which I set such store, as a letter from Miss
Edgeworth.”
This letter seems to have closed the correspondence. In May 1849 Miss
Edgeworth died at the advanced age of eighty-three years.