For some remarks that should properly introduce much of the contents of
the present volume, the reader is referred to the Preface published with
a previous number of the Series, entitled “Pencillings by the Way.” A
portion of the original “Pencillings” is here given, the size of the
work having compelled an unequal division of it, and the remaining and
smaller part serving to complete another volume, with some additional
sketches of the same character.
The _personal portrayings of distinguished contemporaries_, of which
this volume is mainly composed, will, (as has been abundantly proved in
their previous shapes of publication,) ensure its readableness. It will
have a value, from the same quality, that will increase with time, and
be, also, independent, to a certain degree, of its literary merits.
Sketches of the men of mark of any period are eagerly devoured—more
eagerly as the subjects pass away, and are beyond farther seeing and
describing—the public requiring less that they should be ably done than
that they should be _true to the life_. Correctness, in such pencilling,
is more important than grace in the art. And this I claim to have been
proved for these sketches. In the years that they have been before the
public, _not a single incorrectness_ has ever been proved or even
charged upon them. I sketched what I saw at the time, and, to the best
of my ability, sketched _truly_. With the acrid and persevering warfare
that has been waged upon them by the critics, their _truth_ would have
been invalidated long ago, if flaw or blemish in this shield of their
chief merit could have been found. Expecting vague charges of
incorrectness from the malice of criticism, however, I have accumulated
testimonials that have never yet been called forth—no friend or
acquaintance having ever been estranged or offended by the descriptions
I have ventured to give, and subsequent intimacy or exchange of
courtesies furnishing ample proof, that, to such sharing of my
admiration and opportunities to see more nearly, the world was welcome.
I will add a few remarks, upon somewhat the same point, from a previous
Preface:—
For the living portraitures of the book I have a word to say. That
sketches of the whim of the hour, its manners, fashions, and those
ephemeral trifles, which, slight as they are, constitute in a great
measure its “form and pressure”—that these, and familiar traits of
persons distinguished in our time, are popular and amusing, I have the
most weighty reasons certainly to know. _They sell._ “Are they
innocent?” is the next question. And to this I know no more discreet
answer than that mine have offended nobody but the critics. It has been
said that sketches of contemporary society require little talent, and
belong to an inferior order of literature. Perhaps. Yet they must be
well done to attract notice at all; and if true and graphic, they are
not only excellent material for future biographers, but to all who live
out of the magic circles of fashion and genius, they are more than
amusing—they are instructive. To such persons, living authors, orators,
and statesmen, are as much characters of history, and society in cities
is as much a subject of philosophic curiosity, as if a century had
intervened. The critic who finds these matters “stale and unprofitable,”
lives in the circles described, and the pictures drawn at his elbow lack
to his eye the effect of distance; but the same critic would delight in
a familiar sketch of a supper with “my lord of Leicester” in Elizabeth’s
time, of an evening with Raleigh and Spenser, or perhaps he would be
amused with a description by an eye-witness of Mary Queen of Scots,
riding home to Holyrood with her train of admiring nobles. I have not
named in the same sentence the ever-deplored blank in our knowledge of
Shakspere’s person and manners. What would not a trait by the most
unskilful hand be worth now—if it were nothing but how he gave the
good-morrow to Ben Jonson in Eastcheap?
How far sketches of the living are a breach of courtesy committed by the
author toward the persons described, depends, of course, on the temper
in which they are done. To select a subject for complimentary
description is to pay the most undoubted tribute to celebrity, and, as
far as I have observed, most distinguished persons sympathize with the
public interest in them and their belongings, and are willing to have
their portraits drawn, either with pen or pencil, by as many as offer
them the compliment. It would be ungracious to the admiring world if
they were not.
The outer man is a debtor for the homage paid to the soul which inhabits
him, and he is bound, like a porter at the gate, to satisfy all
reasonable curiosity as to the habits of the nobler and invisible
tenant. He owes his peculiarities to the world.
* * * * *
For myself, I am free to confess that no age interests me like the
present; that no pictures of society since the world began, are half so
entertaining to me as those of English society in our day; and that,
whatever comparison the living great men of England may sustain with
those of other days, there is no doubt in my mind that English social
life, at the present moment, is at a higher pitch of refinement and
cultivation than it was ever here or elsewhere since the world
began—consequently it, and all who form and figure in it, are dignified
and legitimate subjects of curiosity and speculation. The Count Mirabel
and Lady Bellair of D’Israeli’s last romance, are, to my mind, the
cleverest portraits, as well as the most entertaining characters, of
modern novel-writing; and D’Israeli, by the way, is the only English
author who seems to have the power of enlarging his horizon, and getting
a perspective view of the times he lives in. His novels are far more
popular in America than in England, because _the Atlantic is to us a
century_. We picture to ourselves England and Victoria as we picture to
ourselves England and Elizabeth. We relish an anecdote of Sheridan
Knowles as we should one of Ford or Marlowe. This immense ocean between
us is like the distance of time; and while all that is minute and
bewildering is lost to us, the greater lights of the age and the
prominent features of society stand out apart, and we judge of them like
posterity. Much as I have myself lived in England, I have never been
able to remove this long perspective from between my eye and the great
men of whom I read and thought on the other side of the Atlantic. When I
find myself in the same room with the hero of Waterloo, my blood creeps
as if I had seen Cromwell or Marlborough; and I sit down afterward to
describe how he looked, with the eagerness with which I should
communicate to my friends some disinterred description of these renowned
heroes by a contemporary writer. If Cornelius Agrippa were _redivivus_,
in short, and would show me his magic mirror, I should as soon call up
Moore as Dryden—Wordsworth or Wilson as soon as Pope or Crichton.
* * * * * * *