The story of young Charles Lever--such of it as may be evolved from his
father’s letters and from other sources--is by no means uninteresting in
itself, and it is intimately concerned, for a period, with the story of
his father, who loved him dearly, and who looked forward to seeing the
youth making a distinguished figure in the world. The profession of
engineering did not hold him long. He was smitten with the military
fever which had smitten his father before he had adopted medicine as
a profession; but the novelist’s son was trained in a school which
differed widely from the school in which the novelist had been trained.
Everything that could conduce to unsettle a high-spirited youth fell to
the lot of young Charles Lever. Moreover, he could, and did, imbibe
from his father’s books a passion for military adventure. This in itself
would have been nothing to cause uneasiness to a parent, but in addition
to his longings for the adventurous career of a soldier, the novelist’s
son had developed, at an early stage, a thorough contempt for “the
simple life.” The only son of a father to whom reckless generosity
was an easy virtue, who looked upon thrift--or anything resembling
it--merely as a subject for ridicule, it would have been wellnigh
impossible for young Lever to have regarded money except as a commodity
difficult at times to obtain, but imperative to spend as quickly and
as lavishly as possible. Early in 1855 the young engineer decided to
abandon his civil profession; and seeing that there was no use in trying
to keep him out of the army, his father purchased a commission for him,
and he was gazetted to a cornetcy in the Royal Wilts Regiment, then
stationed at Corfu. “I own to you,” Lever writes to Spencer, “I do not
fancy the career, but he does not, and will not, settle down to anything
else. We must only let him take his chance and try to be a Field
Marshal, which in these times ought not to be so very difficult a
matter, if one only thought of the competitorship.”
Having had his attention drawn to military affairs, Lever now conceived
a literary project in connection with them--a work to be entitled ‘The
Battlefields of Europe.’ He submitted the idea to M’Glashan, but
the publisher was in no condition to offer advice or to enter into
speculations off the regular track.
A serious attack of gout in the stomach prostrated the novelist in June,
and for weeks he was unable to sit at his desk. He describes himself
as being “covered with rugs and leeches, and warm-bathed to half his
weight.” He was so ill and so depressed that he felt he was going to
die. When he was able to hold a pen he wrote to M’Glashan imploring
him to send sixty pounds for his life insurance premiums. “I had almost
hoped,” he said, “that I was going to cheat the company and give them
the slip.” He had now concluded a bargain--a somewhat loose one--for
the new serial for ‘The Dublin University.’ The novel was entitled
‘The Fortunes of Glencore.’ Soon after he had despatched the first
instalment, he was disturbed by receiving a letter from Dublin which
contained ill news of M’Glashan.
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Florence, Casa Capponi, _July_ 5, 1856.
“This is to thank you for so promptly answering Chapman. The delay was
not _his_ fault, but mine,--at least, so far as anything can be culpable
which a man cannot help. Two feet of water would suffice to drown a
baby; and though it takes a quarter of a million to smash Strahan &
Paul, a very few hundreds would do all that mischief to Charles Lever.
“I have just made arrangements for a story to be contributed to ‘The
Dublin University Magazine,’ but at the same instant I have received
the most alarming tidings of M’Glashan’s health. I am, in fact,
informed--and on such authority as I must believe--that disease of the
brain has displayed itself, and aberration already become apparent.
Total loss of memory I could collect from his letters to myself,--they
were latterly nothing but a repetition of the same queries, and
occasionally almost incoherent.
“It is a great pity, for, without being an original mind or one of
high order, it was the rarest intellect I ever met for the gift of
identifying others, looking out for the right man, and making him do the
thing he was capable of. He overworked to a dreadful extent, and then,
by gradual cultivation, he had so elevated his faculties above those
of his associates, that he left himself companionless. Hence all the
mischief.
“I hope--but I scarcely have courage to assure myself--that you like
‘Cro-Martin.’ At the same time, I think its more reflective characters
will please you, and I own I wrote it with due thought.
“It is just possible that events might bring the Magazine into the
market. If so, there is nothing I’d make such an effort to obtain. It
would be in my hands a property--a great one.
“Charley is dallying at Corfu, and anxiously hoping to see the Crimea.
I tell him not to hurry: he’ll be in good time for the taking of
Sebastopol--in ‘56 or ‘57.”
Early in September Lever received a pitiful letter from M’Glashan: “I am
utterly ruined in health and fortune; they have given me a pittance to
live on, but taken away the Magazine and all that I care to live for.
You have always treated me generously and never made hard bargains with
me. Now I hope you will look to yourself, and not give ‘Glencore’ away
without being well and handsomely paid.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Spezzia, _Sept_. 1855.
“My contract for ‘Tiernay’ and ‘Carew’ was £20 a sheet, the copyright
remaining mine, and my name not to be disclosed as author. These were
terms conceded to M’Glashan out of personal regard to himself. So
disadvantageous were they to me, that when pressing me to contribute my
present tale of ‘Glencore’ M’Glashan said, ‘Make the arrangement as will
suit and fairly reimburse you, and do in all respects what you
think right between us.’ In this way, and without any more definite
understanding, I began, nor have we to this hour any real contract
between us.
“I want you to see Mr Wardlaw, and (amongst other inquiries) demand £2
per page--£32 per sheet--for ‘Glencore,’ copyright to be preserved to
me.
“In your conversation with Wardlaw could you ascertain whether the
present proprietors, whoever they are, might be disposed to treat with
me for the editorship? You might suggest that such an arrangement would
be very likely to meet liberal acceptance at my hands. The state of
the Magazine when before under my management might be referred to for
evidence of its success.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Spezzia, _Sept_. 12, 1855.
“The deaths in Tuscany [from cholera] are reported at 700 a-day. I am
not myself afraid of the disease, but I am more than usually anxious
about my children.
“As to M’Glashan: the last letter said the Magazine had been reserved to
him by some arrangement, and would, he hoped, yield him wherewithal to
live on; but my impression is that the creditors have only done this in
the prospect that his days are numbered, and not wishing to do anything
like severity to a man so painfully placed.... Wardlaw, who encloses the
proofs, says, ‘M’Glashan grows more and more helpless.’ I believe his
malady is softening of the brain--and if so, incurable.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Spezzia, _Sept_. 17, 1855.
“If I could obtain the Magazine for myself it would be a great object.
I’m sure Chapman would assist in the purchase, or take some share in it.
“My fear is that J. F. Waller, at present acting as editor, will step
into it before any one can interfere, and the assignees may not know
that I would willingly resume it--either as editor or owner.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Spezzia, _Sept. 27_, 1855.
“A letter written by M’Glashan and merely addressed ‘Charles Lever’ was
posted in Dublin on the 15th of August last, and by some accident was
included in the American mail, and arrived duly in New York on September
1st, when by an equally strange accident it was re-directed there, and
addressed ‘Spezzia,’ and to-day it came to my house here.
“How M’Glashan forgot to append my address is easy enough to see.
How any one in New York knew it, and re-directed the letter, is more
difficult to explain.
“If my demand [for ‘Glencore’] be thought too high, I have no
alternative save leaving ‘Glencore’ as a ‘payment’ to the Magazine,
reserving to myself its completion elsewhere. Wardlaw must be distinctly
given to understand that I never contributed this story even to
M’Glashan on my previous terms, still less would I do so to those with
whom I have no ties of personal intimacy or friendship. You can, I know,
learn much from Mr Wardlaw, whom I have ever found a straightforward
honest man,--cold as a Scotchman, but to be depended on.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Florence, _Oct_. 16,1865.
[Lever instructs his correspondent to request that his MS.
for the November portion be at once returned, and Mr W. be
informed that Mr L. will now consider himself free to make
arrangements for the continuance of the story of ‘Glencore’
in any magazine or in any quarter that may suit him.]
“I almost fancy I can read the whole web of this small intrigue, and
detect the hand of J. F. Waller throughout it.
“The trustees might, by a reference to the Magazine account, have seen
that while I myself edited the Magazine I paid for a story extending
through 18 Nos., and to a nameless author who had never written fiction
before, £20 a sheet.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Casa Capponi, _Nov_. 7, 1856.
“The opening of ‘Glencore’ having already appeared in the Magazine,
will, I now find, seriously damage its continuance elsewhere, since
no periodical will republish the past chapters, nor can they take up
a story thus interrupted, and when commencement must be sought for
elsewhere.... Now Mr Wardlaw knows, and the books will prove, that my
terms with M’Glashan were £20 per sheet. By a dodge in a mere laughing
conversation at breakfast he made a sheet to mean sixteen or seventeen
pages, and as I never haggled about anything, he actually took advantage
of my easiness, and paid me £20 per seventeen pages.... In a pure matter
of business I have no right to dwell upon the want of consideration
towards an old friend and supporter of the Magazine like myself, but I
do feel deeply the scant courtesy with which I have been treated, and
the little regard paid either to my interests or my sentiments as an
author.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Florence, _Dec._ 5, 1865.
“I thank you most heartily for keeping me _au courant_ to the destinies
of the Magazine. I have just learned that H[urst] & B[lackett] have
become the proprietors, with the intention of publishing in future in
England, as I see ‘The Dublin Evening Mail’ has already announced. H.
& B. are also, as I am informed, about to write to me,--probably
about ‘Glencore,’ but not impossibly about editorship. Many of the
difficulties and ‘disagreeables’ which my friends anticipate for me
as editor of the Magazine would be probably obviated by publishing in
England. Indeed from that moment the journal would cease to be Irish--at
least, in all the acrimonious attributes of that unhappy adjective; and
if H. & B. would propose such terms as I could accept, I’d accede,
if only as a valid and sufficient reason to draw nearer to England,
wherefrom I have, for my own and my children’s interests, too long
separated myself. I also think that with capital, and London publishing
to back it, the Magazine might be raised into a very worthy rivalry
with ‘Blackwood’s,’ its one solitary competitor. However, I am merely
speculating on all this, and rather weaving a web of hopes and wishes
than of solid reason and sound expectation.
“It would be well if the Dublin people (in 50 Sackville St.) could be
brought to book for the part ‘Glencores’ at once. There are also a few
pp. about politics in the August No., written at M’Glashan’s request.
They cost me more work than double as much fiction.
“I hope you continue to like ‘Cro-Martin.’ They say in England it is the
best I’ve done,--but I scarcely hope it myself.”
The year 1855 closed, with plenty of work to do and plenty of interest
in the work, with the usual shortage of supplies, with hopes and fears
and projects chasing each other through the brain which had coined them.
‘The Martins’ was rapidly advancing towards its close. The serial course
of ‘Glencore’ had been interrupted by the difficulties which had beset
the Magazine, and these difficulties were not surmounted until the
spring of 1856, when Lever made a journey to London and entered into an
arrangement with Hurst & Blackett to continue the story, payment to be
at the rate of £20 per sheet. In London he heard that his brother was
seriously ill. He intended to cross over to Ireland, but John Lever’s
doctors warned him that he must not visit his brother, as his only
chance of recovery depended upon perfect rest; so the novelist returned,
gloomily, to Italy. By this time ‘The Martins’ had been published in
volume form. He was more sensitive than usual about criticisms of this
book, and the opinion of a London literary weekly that “Mr Lever had
committed his one dull novel” caused him intense chagrin. His own
opinion was that the more reflective characters would please his
friends; and Mary Martin was one of his best-loved heroines--therefore
his friends should admire her.
He was able now to devote his attention exclusively to ‘Glencore,’ and
all would have been well with him, only that he was very much disturbed
about his son. The young soldier had been sowing a considerable crop of
wild oats.
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Nov_. 21, 1856.
“I have just learnt that Charley is idling about in Dublin, his regiment
having been disbanded, and he himself, having passed some bills and
contracted other debts, being probably unwilling to face us here at
home. I say probably, because he has not written to any of us, and it is
only through Maxwell having met him that I know of his being in Dublin.
“Passing over the distress and disappointment that this has occasioned
me, I address myself at once to the question--What is to be done with
him? Now, as he must earn his bread in some fashion, and as he has
himself closed the [? gates] against him by his misconduct, I want
to ascertain if he is disposed to work at any career, and what? If
medicine, I can, through my Dublin professional connection, have him
apprenticed, and will do my best to support him--not in extravagance and
debauchery, but suitably and becomingly--as long as I am able.
“To broach this myself directly to him would be to weaken any influence
his past misconduct should exert over him, so that the suggestion, to
be effectual, ought to come from another,--none so fit as you, whose
attachment to me he well knows. Now if you would sound him, and say
that if he were really disposed to make amends for all he has done and
steadily to devote himself to study and application, you would at once
acquaint me with this resolve and endeavour to effect an arrangement
to carry it out. We could thus at least approximate the knowledge of
whether he desires to be of use to himself, and in what capacity. Had he
come straight back here at once I should have set him down to read with
a tutor, but as this has not happened, and as I see great disadvantages
in his coming to a place like this with such habits as he has now
acquired, I deem the best thing will be to try if he can be settled
down to learn in Dublin either the rudiments of a career or to prepare
himself for a merchant’s office.
“If he has not called on you ere this, he will of course be heard of
through Miss Baker or Mr Saunders of Mount Street; but I trust that you
have already seen him. If you find that he rejects the overtures as to
a profession, and will not give such pledges as may lead us to hope
for amendment, you must give him £20 to come home at once (there is
something now due to me from the Magazine). At the same time, it is
essential that he should come at once home, and not remain to spend the
money at hotels.
“But the chances are that he may prefer to embrace a career, and I have
only to hope that he may be taught by past experience that a life
of debt and dissipation cannot lead to credit or honour. His present
liabilities have thrown me into great, almost too great, embarrassment.
How I am to pay them and support myself and my family is a problem that
will depend upon my gaining back a little of that tranquillity of head
without which no man can work. I will, however, do my best and hope for
the best.
“Of course you must not suffer it to escape you that this idea of
a profession originates with me. It must be, as it were, _your_
suggestion; and while you promise to write and consult me upon it, you
could recommend him to go down and stay at Ardnucker, where I am sure
they would kindly have him until I write you again.
“I hope I have already expressed all I mean, but my head is sorely
troubled while I write.”
Young Lever did not relish the idea of visiting a father whose purse and
whose patience he had taxed so severely. He preferred to retire upon his
uncle at Ardnucker, and later to quarter himself upon the Rev. Mortimer
O’Sullivan at Tanderagee.
‘The Fortunes of Glencore’ was out of hand early in 1857. It was
published in three volumes by Chapman & Hall--the first work (bearing
the author’s name on the title-page) by Lever which was issued in
three-volume form. Of Glencore’ he says: “I am unwilling to suffer
this tale to leave my hands without a word of explanation.... If I have
always had before me the fact that to movement and action, to the
stir of incident, and to a certain light-heartedness and gaiety of
temperament (more easy to impart to others than to repress in one’s
self), I have owned much, if not all, of whatever popularity I enjoyed,
I have felt (or fancied I felt) that it would be in the delineation
of very different scenes, and in the portraiture of very different
emotions, that I should reap what I would reckon as a real success. This
conviction--or impression, if you will--has become stronger with years
and with fuller knowledge of life; and time has confirmed me in the
notion that any skill I possess lies in the detection of character and
in the unravelment of that tangled skein which makes up human motives.”
Opportunities of beholding the game played by Society (he further
declares), as well as his inclination to study the game, helped him to
give a picture of the manners, and to describe the modes and moods,
of the age he lived in. If he had often grinned because of the narrow
fortune which had prevented him from “cutting in,” he was able to
console himself with the thought that he might have risen from the
table a loser. He goes on to say that though the incidents which are
noticeable in the world of the well-bred are fewer, because the friction
is less than in classes where vicissitudes of fortune are more frequent,
yet the play of passion, though shadowed by polished conventionalities,
is often more highly developed.
To trace and to mark these developments was, he assures us, one of the
great pleasures of his life. “Certain details, certain characteristics,
I have of course borrowed--as he who would mould a human face must needs
have copied an eye, a nose, a chin from some existent model,--but
beyond this I have not gone; nor indeed have I ever found, in all
my experiences of life, that fiction ever suggests what has not been
implanted unconsciously by memory--originality in the delineation of
character being little more than a new combination of old materials
derived from that source.”
‘Glencore’ being disposed of, its author planned out a new tale, going
again to Ireland for his scenery and his characters. He took for his
hero, or leading villain, John Sadlier,* the once famous banker and
politician, who put an end to his own career in 1856 by committing
suicide on Hampstead Heath. Lever did not attempt to keep closely to
the true story of Sadlier, or to depict the man as he had lived
and moved: he merely used incidents in his career and traits in his
character, and as he warmed to his work Davenport Dunn bore but a slight
resemblance to John Sadlier. By this time the novelist had all but
abandoned the portrayal of comic personages,--‘Glencore’ harboured Billy
Traynor, but Billy was only a faint echo of Mickey Free or Darby the
Blast,--and ‘Davenport Dunn,’ though it was full of spirit, bristled
with character sketches, and was packed with adventure, was on the whole
a much graver and possibly a stronger performance than anything which
had preceded it. The story appeared in the monthly part form, Phiz’s
illustrations embellishing it.
* It is said that Sadlier was one of the models for
Dickens’s Mr Merdle.--E. D.
Lever paid another visit to London in the spring of 1857: it was chiefly
a business visit He wished to discuss his forthcoming novel with Chapman
& Hall and with Phiz. While he was in London he received some disturbing
news of his son (who was still idling in Ireland), and he was half
inclined to cross the Irish Sea, but he found he had lingered too
long in London--a city in which he always managed to accomplish more
card-playing than was good for his health or his pocket,--so he hurried
back to Florence and ‘Davenport Dunn.’ Although there is no evidence to
bear out the conjecture, it is most likely that he endeavoured during
this visit to England to further his cause as a prospective diplomatist.
On the whole, 1857 was a comparatively uneventful year.
Again--early in 1858--did the pressure of his financial affairs stir him
to the exertion of “working double tides,” and, looking around him for
a subject, it occurred to him that a highly romantic tale could be woven
out of the adventures of a supposititious son and heir of Charles
Edward Stuart, the offspring of a secret marriage with a daughter of the
Geraldines. He found a sufficiently plausible groundwork for the theory
of this marriage and its consequences in the letters of Sir Horace
Mann.*
* He quotes Sir Horace as his authority for the pitiful
tragedy which concludes the adventures of his ‘Chevalier’:
“Any anxiety we might ever have felt on the score of a
certain individual alleged to have been the legitimately
born son of Charles Edward is now over. He was murdered last
week.... Many doubted that there was any, even the
slightest, claim on his part to Stuart blood, but Mr Pitt
was not of this number. He had taken the greatest pains to
obtain information on the subject, and had, I am told, in
his possession copies of all the documents which
substantiated the youth’s rights.”--E. D.
Poor M’Glashan died in 1858, and ‘The Dublin University’ passed into the
hands of Mr Digby Starkey and Mr Cheyne Brady. They proposed to Lever
that he should renew his relations with the Magazine, and he arranged
with them to contribute to it the adventures of ‘Gerald Fitzgerald the
Chevalier.’
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _July_ 4, 1858
“After repeated promises of place from the present Government, I am
put off with an offer so small and contemptible that I answered it by
indignant refusal.
“The Yankees have come to something like--but not exactly--a definite
offer. If it be put in a real, tangible, and unevasive way I shall
accept, pitching my friends the Tories to the winds.
“Have you read ‘D. D.’ and ‘Fitzgerald’? If so, what do you say to
them?”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Spezzia, _Aug_. 10, 1858.
“I cannot tell you how gratified I was by what you say of ‘Cro-Martin.’
Independently of all a man’s natural misgivings about his own failing
powers, it is unspeakably encouraging to be judged favourably by one’s
oldest and best of friends, whose true-heartedness would not suffer him
to flatter or say more than he felt. I know--I feel--that my old vein
is worked out. I am as much aware of it as I am of scanty hair and the
_fifty_ other signs of age about me, but I don’t despair of finding
other shafts to work, and of making my knowledge of life and mankind
available,--even though I have lost the power to make my books droll or
laughable.
“We have come down here for the bathing to the most beautiful spot
on the Mediterranean, and are boating and swimming to our heart’s
content,--everything but working, which really I cannot do in this most
fascinating of all idling localities.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer_.
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Nov_. 1,1858.
“Yesterday I had a civil note from Lord Malmesbury stating that the
regulation for consular appointments required that no candidate should
be above fifty, and all should submit to a rigid examination. He saw no
better means of introducing me into ‘the line’ than by creating for me a
vice-consulate at a place I am much attached to--Spezzia. The rule as to
age and examination did not apply to vice-consular appointments nor to
their promotion, so that once a V.-C. I can be advanced, if opportunity
serve, to something worth having. Spezzia will not be £300 a-year; but
as I like the place, and there is nothing--actually nothing--to do,
I have thought it best to accept it. In fact, to refuse would be to
exclude myself totally from all hope of F. O. patronage, and this I did
not deem wise to do. The whole negotiation is yet secret, and until I am
gazetted I wish it to remain so. The consulship at Naples is what I
look to, and what, if negotiations should open to a renewal of relations
there, I might hope to obtain.
“I hope you like ‘D. Dunn.’ I have hardly courage to say the same for
‘Fitzgerald,’ though some say it is better than the other.
“I have been solicited to give Readings _à la_ Dickens; but though
pecuniarily a temptation, there is much I dislike in the exhibition....
“I ought to add that Sir J. Hudson, the Ambassador at Turin, strongly
advised my acceptance of Spezzia, offered as it was.”
No sooner had he made up his mind to accept the Spezzia post than he was
intently gazing at the Naples consulship, which he hoped would drop like
a ripe plum into his mouth when he could muster up courage to take a
step forward.
Another turn of Fortune’s wheel which cheered him in 1858 was the
appointment of his son to the 2nd Dragoon Guards. The regiment was under
the command of General Seymour, and was stationed in India.
In the spring of 1859 ‘Davenport Dunn’ had run its monthly course,
and it was published in book form. The author’s official duties were
extremely light, and did not tie him to Spezzia. He was able to visit
his vice-consulate when it pleased him, and to indulge in his favourite
pastimes of boating and bathing all through the summer months.
Young Lieutenant Lever was now winning some golden opinions in India,
though there was a little dross to be found in the gold. One of his
brother officers describes him as being “an exact facsimile of Charles
O’Malley. He was the most accomplished young man I have ever heard of or
read of,” says this witness, “not only in such gifts as would make him
conspicuous in a regiment, but he was likewise an accomplished linguist,
and possessed a vast knowledge of general literature.” “He was a
warm-hearted, generous fellow,” declares another of his brother
officers. “But,” he continues regretfully, “he was given too much to
convivial and extravagant habits. Apparently he had set before himself,
as an ideal of what a cavalry soldier should be, the bygone type of
Jack Hinton.” By no means a bad type, one might add, if only the crack
cavalry officer had sufficient means to live up to the ideal.
‘Gerald Fitzgerald’ came to the end of its irregular magazine course in
1859. For some reason which is not disclosed in Lever’s correspondence,
this novel was not published in book form in this country during
the author’s lifetime.* Amongst other graphic character-sketches,
‘Fitzgerald’ furnishes vivid studies of Alfieri and of Mirabeau. His
next novel, ‘One of Them,’ was put in hand during the autumn: it was
written wholly in the Villa Marola at Spezzia. It is said that the story
was largely autobiographical. It gives an intimate description of life
in an Ulster dispensary, and when the scene is shifted from Ireland the
reader is taken to Florence. The most outstanding character in this book
is the acute, good-humoured “Yankee.” Quackinboss.
* A “pirated” edition of it appeared in America daring
Lever’s lifetime. Its first issue in book form in this
country was in 1897, when Downey & Co. published it (by
arrangement with the author’s grandson) in one volume.--E.D.
While ‘One of Them’ was moving leisurely onwards in its monthly groove,
Charles Dickens asked Lever for a serial for ‘All the Year Round.’ Once
more did the Irish novelist adopt the dual system; while he was still
in the throes of ‘One of Them’ he commenced to write ‘A Day’s Ride: A
Life’s Romance.’ This story relates the adventures of a half-shrewd,
half-foolish day-dreamer. Through it there runs a curious vein of irony
which is quite different from the author’s early or later quality of
humour. There is an insufficiency of movement in the tale; and it proved
to be quite unsuited for serial publication in a magazine where the plot
interest has to be kept alive from month to month. Dickens was bitterly
disappointed: he complained that the circulation of his magazine was
injuriously affected. Something perilously near a quarrel arose between
the editor of ‘All the Year Round’ and the author of ‘A Day’s Ride.’
Lever did not hold a very high opinion of the novel, but he was
justified in not regarding it as an absolutely worthless performance.
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Spezzia, _Sept_. 7, 1859.
“It was only because I found myself in a maze of troubles at the moment
of what is ordinarily a pleasant family event that I had not a moment to
write to you. Chapman & Hall, in whom for years back all my confidence
has been unbounded, have behaved to me in a way to make me uneasy as
to my right in my works, and I feel the very gravest anxiety for the
future. This case yet hangs over me, and how it is to [? terminate] I
cannot foresee. This is but a sorry [excuse] for suffering you to incur
all the inconvenience I have occasioned; but when have I ceased to be a
burthen to you?
“I wrote by this post to Chapman to forward the money for the insurance,
and will immediately see to the other. Brady cannot affect any
difficulty in settling with you: his only payment to myself personally
was £100, somewhere in the present year. Therefore the number of sheets
of my contributions, multiplied by the sum per sheet (£30 or £35, I
forget which), will give the exact amount due.
“I am about to begin a new serial, which will at least provide for the
present.
“The ‘Party,’ after [?immense] pledges and compliments, went out without
giving me anything beyond this very humble sinecure; but sinecure it is,
and therefore for once ‘The right man in the right place.’
“Charley was well, and fighting up in Oude, when last I heard from him;
but all the pleasure of killing sepoys does not, it would appear, so
entirely engross him that he cannot spend money, and he draws a bill
with the same nonchalance that he draws his sword. Pussy’s husband is a
Captain Bowes-Watson,--only twenty-two years of age, but a Crimean and
Indian hero. He is of the veritable English type--blond, stiff, silent,
and upstanding, and what Colonel Haggerstoue would call ‘a perfect
gentleman,’ being utterly incapable by any effort of his own to provide
for his own support. They are for the present poorly off, but at the
death of a very old grandmother will have a fair competence,--about
£1500 a year. I am sorely sorry to part with her, but the _malheur_ is
that we lose in age the solace of those whose society we always hoped
to console us. We go through the years of training and teaching and
educating to give them up when they have grown companionable. Very
selfish regrets these, but they are my latest wounds, and they smart the
most.
“Julia is ‘contracted,’ but the event is, and must be, somewhat distant.
In other respects it is what is called a great match. And so only Baby
(as Sydney is called) remains,--a marvellously clever little damsel of
ten, whose humour and wit exceed that of all the grown folk I know.
“I hope to send you the first number of my new serial by the end of next
month. Its title is ‘One of Them.’”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Spezzia, _Sept._ 17, 1860
“I am doing my best at ‘One of Them.’ ‘The Ride’ I write as carelessly
as a common letter, but I’d not be the least astonished to find the
success in the inverse ratio to the trouble. At all events I am hard
worked just now, and as ill-luck would have it, it is just the moment
the F. O. should call upon me for details about Italy.
“The position of Sardinia is now one of immense difficulty. If she
throws herself on France she must confront the [? Revolutionary] party
at home, who are ready to seize upon Garibaldi and place him at the
head of the movement. If she adopts Garibaldi and his plans, she offends
France, and may be left to meet Austria alone and unaided. The old
story--the beast that can’t live on sand and dies in the water. To be
sure, our own newspapers assure her complacently that she has the ‘moral
aid’ of England. But moral aid in these days of steel-plated frigates
and Armstrong guns is rather out of date, not to say that at the best
it is very like looking at a man drowning and assuring him all the while
how sorry you are that he had not learned to swim when he was young.
The crisis is most interesting, particularly so to me, as I know all the
actors--Admirals, Generals, and Ministers--who are figuring _en scène_.
“One would have thought the withdrawal of the French Ambassador from
Turin would have caused great discomfiture here, but with a native
craft--not always right--the Italians think it a mere dodge, and that
the Emperor’s policy is: ‘Go on. I’m not looking at you!”’
Small as the salary was, and insignificant as the position seemed to be,
his vice-consulship was of considerable service to Lever: it gave him
work to do when he was weary of weaving the web of fiction, and
it prevented him from indulging too recklessly in the pleasures of
Florentine society. The pity of it was that the office came to him so
late, and that, when “the Party” thought fit to recognise his services,
they should have recognised them so trivially. It must be borne in mind
that Lever was no longer young: he was in his fifty-third year when the
Spezzian post was offered to him; and his manner of living had been of
such a free-and-easy character that anything in the shape of control
chafed him, especially when the controller was a jack-in-office. In 1861
a good deal of time was spent in endeavouring to make a bargain with
Chapman k Hall for the publication, in book form, of ‘A Day’s Ride,’
and to induce that firm to enter into an arrangement for the serial
publication of a new novel, ‘The Barringtons.’ ‘The Dublin University’
being practically closed as a paying vehicle for serial stories,
Lever sought to find a publishing firm which might take the place
of M’Glashan. He regarded ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ as the first of all
periodical publications, but he feared that the Editor could not
easily be induced to open his pages to the author of ‘Harry Lorrequer.’
However, he was fired with the desire to become a contributor to ‘Maga,’
and he enlisted the good offices of Lord Lytton. His brother novelist
put the matter before Mr John Blackwood, who wrote, in May 1861, this
kindly letter: “Admiring your genius cordially, as I do, I feel so
doubtful as to whether what you would write would be suitable for the
Magazine that I am unwilling to make a proposition, or to invite you to
send MS. It would go sorely against my grain to decline anything from
the friend of my youth, Harry Lorrequer.” This--though the reference to
his first book afforded him a momentary flush of pleasure--was just the
kind of letter which would cause much heart-burning. All his efforts to
weed and to prune resulted only in Blackwood’s refusal to accept a posey
from his garden! He wrote to Spencer in a melancholy tone; he was “out
of health, out of work, out of spirits.” In addition to his literary
troubles, the condition of his wife’s health had been the cause of
much anxiety. He now feared that she was likely to become a confirmed
invalid. Late in July his report to Spencer was that Mrs Lever was very
ill, and that his money troubles were more acute than ever. His son was
making no effort to lighten the burden: he was still in India, and was
still drawing recklessly upon his father. Altogether, Lever’s heart
was heavy during the greater part of 1861. Late in the year he made
a vigorous effort to pull himself together, and to try to forget his
troubles by sticking closely to his desk. He made good progress with
‘The Barringtons,’ and the first monthly part appeared in February 1862.
A visitor to the Levers in the summer of 1862 describes the novelist as
being “all animation.” But Mrs Lever was an invalid, and could not move
from her sofa. Though Lever had grown very corpulent, he had lost none
of his cunning as a swimmer or as an oarsman. He spent a considerable
portion of each day in the water, swimming with his daughters; and at
night, “when the land breeze came through the orange-groves,” he would
row himself and his daughters in their boat on the bay. On one occasion
the head of the family and his eldest daughter had a very narrow escape
from drowning. They were boating, and in endeavouring to rescue her dog,
who seemed to be in difficulties, Miss Lever capsized the boat. Father
and daughter kept themselves afloat partly with the aid of an oar,--they
were a full mile from the shore when the accident happened. A younger
daughter of the novelist witnessed from a window in the house the
capsizing of the skiff. Without alarming her mother by informing her
of the accident, she left the house and got a boat sent out to the
assistance of the swimmers, who were brought ashore little the worse
for a long immersion. This incident furnished the press with reports of
Lever’s death,--“grossly exaggerated,” as Mark Twain would put it,--and
when ‘The Barringtons’ was about to be published in book form, the
author wrote to one of his journalistic friends saying that he believed
the story was not bad,--at least, not worse than most stories of his
which had found favour with the public. “As my critics,” he went on,
“were wont to blackguard me for over-writing, let me have the (supposed)
advantage to be derived from its being a full twelvemonth since the
world has heard of me--except as having died at Spezzia.”
He finished the year well. He was anxious to show that his tiff with the
editor of ‘All the Year Round’ was forgotten. The dedication prefixed
to ‘The Barringtons,’ dated “26th December 1862,” is couched in these
terms:--
“My dear Dickens,--Among the thousands who read and re-read your
writings, you have not one who more warmly admires your genius than
myself; and to say this in confidence to the world, I dedicate to you
this story.”