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[Illustration: Martin F. Tupper. _Elliott & Fry, Photographers._]
Martin Tupper's Autobiography
MY LIFE
AS AN AUTHOR
BY
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
D.C.L. F.R.S.
_Viri, vivo, vivam._
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET, E.C.
1886
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Page
Preliminary--Sonnet--Public Life, not Private--Benjamin
Franklin--Samples from Books--Self-judgment 1-6
CHAPTER II.
Infancy and Schooldays--Parentage--Germany and Guernsey,
America and Canada--Winsor's Patent Gaslights--King George
III.'s Blessing--My Father's Dream--Second
Sight--Heredity--First School at Brentford--Next at Brook
Green--Third Charterhouse--Dr. Russell--Parson
Schoolmasters--Coins and Hoops--Andrew
Irvine--Cockshies--Harpies at the Feast--Dr.
Stocker--Holt's--M'Neile--Harold Browne 7-25
CHAPTER III.
Young Authorship in Verse and Prose--Melite--Rough
Rhymes--Carthage--Umbrella Sapphics--Height of Honesty--Holkar
Hall--Melrose Abbey--Heidelberg--Pterodactyles--The
Buckstone--Scotch Journal--Vitrified Forts--Ireland--Kingston
Caverns--Cornish Letter and Sketches--Penzance--The
Logan--Land's End--St. Michael's Mount--Rapid Travel 26-51
CHAPTER IV.
College Days--Voice from the Cloister--Gladstone--Aristotle
Class--Giants in those Days--Studentship--A
Reading-Man--College Larks--D.C.L.--Dr. Bliss 52-61
CHAPTER V.
Failure as to Orders--Stammering--Blewbury Vicarage--Lincoln's
Inn--Lewin's Critique--Brodie's Cacography--Inkpen's
Entomology--Duke of Wellington--Walters'--Letter as to
India--Barrister and Benedict--A Hoax--Theodore Hook--Old Lady
Cork 62-71
CHAPTER VI.
Stammering--Man's Privilege of Speech--Chess
Playing--Anecdotes--Angling--Fishing Sonnets 72-78
CHAPTER VII.
Oxford Prize Poems--Verses in the Schools--Parodies--Rhyme
and Rhythm--Scriptural Science--Classic Parallels 79-85
CHAPTER VIII.
Sundry Providences--The Small Semisuicide--A Concussion--Horse
Accidents--Perils by Land and Sea--Lydstep Cavern 86-89
CHAPTER IX.
Yet more Escapes--White Cross Guild--Evils and
Temptations--Potipheras--Heresies--Creeds 90-94
CHAPTER X.
Fads and Fancies--Vegetarian--Teetotalism--The
Anglo-Saxon--Opera Colonnade--Moderation--America
Revisited--Poem on Temperance and Total
Abstinence--Gough--Dr. Hodgkin--A Martyr--Clerical Letter
on Pharisaism 95-104
CHAPTER XI.
Sacra Poesis--Geraldine--Critiques--John and Tom
Hughes--Donnington Priory--Little Providences 105-110
CHAPTER XII.
Origin of "Proverbial Philosophy"--M'Neile and Stebbing--N.P.
Willis--Harrison Ainsworth--Hatchard's--Moxon's--Cassell's--A
Prophecy--My Father's Letter and Gift--Sixty
Times--Politeuphuia--Parallels--Mr. Orton's Volume--American
Laudations, and English--As to _per contra_--Copyright
Question--Wedding Gifts--An Elizabethan Author--Seldom
Seen, and Few Adventures 111-133
CHAPTER XIII.
A Modern Pyramid--The Vision--A Fearful
Flight--Imagination--The Crystal Cubes and Mud
Bricks--Sonnets and Sonneteering--Mackay and Shakespeare's 134-144
CHAPTER XIV.
An Author's Mind--Prefatory Ramble--Addled Eggs--The Mental
Cathedral--Probabilities--Job's Trials 145-152
CHAPTER XV.
The Crock of Gold--Dramatised in Boston and London--Origin
of the Story--The Twins--Heart: drawn from Living
Models--Critiques from Ollier and St. John 153-158
CHAPTER XVI.
Æsop Smith--Mudie's--Rabelaisian Hints--The Early
Gallop--Alfred, or Albert Order--Fables 159-162
CHAPTER XVII.
Stephan Langton--King Alfred's Poems--The Silent Pool--Hard
Reading for the History--The Book still in Print--Curious
Metrical Translation of Anglo-Saxon Poetry--The Jubilee at
Wantage and at Liverpool 163-169
CHAPTER XVIII.
Shakespeare Commemoration--Lord Carlisle--Lord Houghton,
Leigh Court--Stratford Church--The Baptismal Font--An
American Autograph Hunter--Sonnet 170-172
CHAPTER XIX.
Translations and Pamphlets--Homer, _lib._ A.--Tennyson's
Vivien--Classical Versions--Hymn for All Nations--Protestant
Ballads--Fifteen Pamphlets 173-179
CHAPTER XX.
Paterfamilias's Diary--Courier Pierre--Devil's
Bridge--Major Hely--Guernsey--The Haro that saved Castle
Cornet--Night-Sail in the Race of Alderney--Durham's
Statue of Prince Albert--Isle of Man--King Orry--Walter
Montgomery--Bishop Powys 180-189
CHAPTER XXI.
Never Give Up, at Dr. Kirkland's--Harvest Hymns--Gordon
Ballads--The Good Earl--John Brown--My Brother--Memory--Evil
not Endless 190-199
CHAPTER XXII.
Protestant Ballads--"So help me, God!"--Nun's Appeal, &c. 200-203
CHAPTER XXIII.
Plays--Alfred--Raleigh--Washington--Twelve Scenes--Family
Records 204-207
CHAPTER XXIV.
Antiquariana--Lockhart and my Coin Article in
the _Quarterly_--Farley Finds--Mummy Wheat and Faraday 208-212
CHAPTER XXV.
Honours--_Times'_ Letter--A Peerage and Baronetcy--Prussian
Medal and Chevalier Bunsen's Letter--Authorship a Rank by
Itself--Many Inventions and Literary Discoveries, as Punch,
Humpty Dumpty, 666, &c. 213-220
CHAPTER XXVI.
Courtly: Prophetic Sonnet on our Empress--Many Royal
Poems--Modern Court Suit _v._ Queen Anne's--A Greeting
to Prince Albert Victor 221-228
CHAPTER XXVII.
F.R.S.--Lord Melbourne's Carelessness--Spectrum
Analysis--Spiritualism--Vivisection--Painted
Windows--Parabolic Teaching 229-233
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Personation--Bignor--The Greyhound--Alibis--A Rescue
on Snowdon--Fraudulent Collections--Forged
Authorials--Boston Unitarianism--Pictures Falsely Signed 234-237
CHAPTER XXIX.
Hospitalities--Farnham Castle--Orchids and Pines--Bishop
Sumner--Garibaldi at Gladstone's--Parham and
Curzon--Ghosts--Purple Parchments--Uncut
Elzevirs--Shenstone's Leasowes--"Little
Testy"--Sonnet--Isle of Wight--Sojourns--City
Feasts--Ostentatious Hospitality 238-244
CHAPTER XXX.
Social and Rural--No Scandals--Hawthorne's Visit--Alexander
Smith's--Jerdan's Haycock--Otto Goldschmidt and
Macdougall--Dark Visitors--Liberian Gold
Medal--Noviomagians--Lucky Angling--Albury Waltz--Rustic
Stupidity--Redmen--The Drinking Fountain--Our House a
Hive of Bees--Foxhunt in Drawing-room--The Donkey
Burglar--Anthony Devis--Irvingism 245-256
CHAPTER XXXI.
American Ballads: "Ho, Brother! I'm a Britisher"--The
Quasi-Inspiration--"Thirty Noble Nations," and
Thirty-three--Many Others--Ground-baiting the Transatlantic 257-259
CHAPTER XXXII.
First American Visit--Too Temperate for 1851; not Temperate
enough for 1876--Grand Dinner at Baltimore, and Great
Speech--The Astor Dinner--"Amice Davis"--Mayor Kingsland and
the Mile-long Procession--Willis, at Golden Square--The
Fillmore Dinner at the White House--Jenny Lind's
Concert--Gordon Bennet--Squier--Barnum 260-270
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Second American Visit--Extreme
Gold--Talmage--Bryant--Cooper--"Immortality" at the
Tabernacle--Lotus Club--Lord Rosebery--Dr. Levis--Mr.
Pettit's Portrait--The Listers at Hamilton--Toronto--Sir
Charles Tupper--Elgin--Dufferin--Mackay and Sleighing--Dawson
and Eozoa--Vaughan-Tuppers--The Grand John Hopkins'
Banquet--Charleston Tuppers--My Palinode to the South--Visit
to Williams Middleton--Parting Stanzas--Ruined
Mansion--Valete 271-280
CHAPTER XXXIV.
English and Scotch Readings, very rapid, from Isle of Wight
to Peterhead--My Entrepreneur D.: his Experiences: I Failed
with Him, but Succeeded Alone--Specimen of Readings--Local
Critiques--Many Friends Unrecorded--Miscellaneous Poems--Mr.
Gall's Primeval Man--Arbroath--Mill the Atheist--Mr.
Boyd's Piety--Hamilton Mausoleum--Wild Cattle--Burns's
Country--James Baird the Millionaire and the Hodman 281-288
CHAPTER XXXV.
Electrics--Sir Culling Eardley at Erith--Atlantic
Telegraph--The First Message--Meddlesome Revisers--Antique
Telegraphy--Addison and Strada--Professor Morse--A
Telegram-Sonnet 289-295
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Rifle, a Patriotic Prophecy in 1845--Early
Pamphlet--Defence not Defiance--Albury Club--Blackheath
Review--Lord Lovelace--Alarums--Drummond's Scare--A
Lucky Shot 296-303
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Autographs and Advertisements--Worth Eighteenpence each--A
Hundred at Once--Photographs--Oil Paintings--Locks of
Hair--Interviewers--Puffs and Anti-puffs 304-311
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Kindness to Animals--Louis Napoleon and
Alfort--Vivisection--Pontrilas Court--The Omnibus
Hack--Divers Ballads 312-315
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Orkney and Shetland--Our Voyage--Wick Herring Fair--Balfour
at Shapinshay--Kirkwall--Aytoun--Gulf Stream--Snuff-Boxes
and Corals--Fair Isle Hosiery--Stennis--Scalloway--Lerwick
Literature--Artificial Flora--Thurso Castle--Robert
Dick--Cape Wrath--Stornoway--Callanish--Pipers--The brooch
of Lorne, &c. 316-321
CHAPTER XL.
Literary Friends--Mrs. Somerville, Miss Granville, Mrs.
Jameson, Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Ouida, Miss Braddon, Mrs.
Carter Hall, Mrs. Grote, Lady Wilde, Miss Mackay, Rogers,
Carlyle, Haweis, Tennyson, Browning, Mortimer Collins,
Dickens and Son, Owen, Austen, Pengelley, Bowerbank, S.
Mackenzie, M. Arnold, S. Brooks, Albert Smith, Mark Lemon,
Tenniel, Cooper, P.B. Cole, E. Yates, Frank Smedley, J.G. Wood,
Cuthbert Collingwood, Mr. and Mrs. Zerffi, Birch, Miss Hooper,
Miss Barlee, G. MacDonald, Ronald Gower, Fred. Burnaby,
Charles Marvin--A Diner-Out--A Mormon Guest--Apostles--Frank's
Ranche--Twelve Anecdotes--Thackeray and Leech,
Longfellow, C. Kingsley, Ainsworth, Lord Elgin 322-350
CHAPTER XLI.
Some Older Friendships--Nightingale, and Farley Heath--Walter
Hawkins--His Tomb--Anchor--Anagrams--Christmas Largesse--Sham
Antiques--Joseph Durham--Alice's Statue--"Sir
Joe" and the Noviomagians--Prince Albert at St. Peter's
Port--Baroness Barnekow--Swedish Proverbial--King Oscar's
Poems--Geo. Metivier--French Proverbial--John Sullivan--Canon
Jenkins--Barnes, De Chatelain, De Pontigny--Correspondents,
&c. 351-362
CHAPTER XLII.
Political--A Dark Horse--No Party-Man--Gladstone--Ambidextrous
Stanzas--Liberal and Tory--The One-Vote System--Fancy
Franchises--The Voter's Motto--Fair Trade _v._ Free
Trade--Radically Conservative--Strikes, &c. 363-372
CHAPTER XLIII.
A Cure for Ireland--Racial Difficulties--The Unsunned
Corner--Æsop Smith's Prescription--An Irish Balmoral in
1858--My Anti Celtic Ballads--Adventures 373-379
CHAPTER XLIV.
Some Spiritist Experiences--Not a Spiritualist, but an Honest
Recorder of Facts--Alexis--Howell--Vernon's Mesmerised
Child--Mrs. Cora Tappan--Chauncey Townsend's
Book--Spirit-Drawings--Planchette--Showers of Flowers, and
Sugar-Plums, and Pearls--Mr. Home--Prayer before
_Séance_--The Table in the Air--Live Coals in My Hand--The
Vitalised Accordion--The Colonel's Ghost--Iamblicus--Query
Electrical Influence--Our Mysterious Key--Miss
Hudson--Thought-Reading 380-399
CHAPTER XLV.
Fickle Fortune--Losses and Failures--Testimonial--"L'espoir
est ma force"--My _Levée_ in 1851--The Missed Codicil--Life
and Death 400-403
CHAPTER XLVI.
Henry De Beauvoir, killed in Africa--Archdeacon Kitton--Our
Old Chancery Suit: A Lost Fortune--Belgravian Five Fields,
another Missed Chance--Earl Grosvenor 404-407
CHAPTER XLVII.
Flying: my Lecture at the Royal Aquarium with Fred. Burnaby
as Chairman--Henry Middleton's Invention--De Lisle Hay's
"Conquest of the Air"--Ezekiel's Angels--Ovid, and
Tennyson--Claude Hamilton--Extracts 408-412
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Luther--The Peroration as to his Life and
Exploits--Anniversary Stanzas, in many Languages--Bullinger's
Music--Wycliffe Ballad--Wondrous Parallel 413-416
CHAPTER XLIX.
Final--Whatever is, is Right--Sick-bed
Repentance--Intuitions--What We Shall Be--Protest Against
Atheism--The Infinities--A Childlike Hymn--Eternal
Hope--Mercy for Ever--The Assurance of Ovid 417-431
MY LIFE AS AN AUTHOR.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
I have often been asked to prepare an autobiography, but my objections
to the task have ever been many and various. To one urgent appeal I sent
this sonnet of refusal, which explains itself:--
"You bid me write the story of my life,
And draw what secrets in my memory dwell
From the dried fountains of her failing well,
With commonplaces mixt of peace and strife,
And such small facts, with good or evil rife,
As happen to us all: I have no tale
Of thrilling force or enterprise to tell,--
Nothing the blood to fire, the cheek to pale:
My life is in my books: the record there,
A truthful photograph, is all I choose
To give the world of self; nor will excuse
Mine own or others' failures: glad to spare
From blame of mine, or praise, both friends and foes,
Leaving unwritten what God only knows."
In fact I always rejected the proposal (warned by recent volumes of
pestilential reminiscences) and would none of it; not only from its
apparent vainglory as to the inevitable extenuation of one's own faults
and failures in life, and the equally certain amplification of
self-registered virtues and successes,--but even still more from the
mischief it might occasion from a petty record of commonplace troubles
and trials, due to the "changes and chances of this mortal life," to the
casual mention or omission of friends or foes, to the influence of
circumstances and surroundings, and to other revelations--whether
pleasant or the reverse--of matters merely personal, and therefore more
of a private than a public character.
Indeed, so disquieted was I at the possible prospect of any one getting
hold of a mass of manuscript in old days diligently compiled by myself
from year to year in several small diaries, that I have long ago
ruthlessly made a holocaust of the heap of such written self-memories,
fearing their posthumous publication; and in this connection let me now
add my express protest against the printing hereafter of any of my
innumerable private letters to friends, or other MSS., unless they are
strictly and merely of a literary nature.
Biography, where honest and true, is no doubt one of the most
fascinating and instructive phases of literature; but it requires a
higher Intelligence than any (however intimate) friend of a man to do it
fairly and fully; so many matters of character and circumstance must
ever be to him unknown, and therefore will be by him unrecorded. And
even as to autobiography, who, short of the Omniscient Himself, can take
into just account the potency of outward surroundings, and still more of
inborn hereditary influences, over both mind and body? the bias to good
or evil, and the possession or otherwise of gifts and talents, due very
much (under Providence) to one's ancient ancestors and one's modern
teachers? We are each of us morally and bodily the psychical and
physical composite of a thousand generations. Albeit every individual
possesses as his birthright a freewill to turn either to the right or to
the left, and is liable to a due responsibility for his words and
actions, still the Just Judge alone can and must make allowance for the
innate inclinings of heredity and the outward influences of
circumstance, and He only can hold the balance between the guilt and
innocence, the merit or demerit, of His creature.
So far as my own will goes, I leave my inner spiritual biography to the
Recording Angel, choosing only to give some recollections and memories
of my outer literary life. For spiritual self-analysis in matters of
religion and affection I desire to be as silent as I can be; but in such
a book as this absolute taciturnity on such subjects is practically
impossible.
For the matter, then, of autobiography, I decline its higher and its
deeper aspects; as also I wish not to obtrude on the public eye mere
domesticities and privacies of life. But mainly lest others less
acquainted with the petty incidents of my career should hereafter take
up the task, I accede with all frankness and humility to what seems to
me like a present call to duty, having little time to spare at
seventy-six, so near the end of my tether,--and protesting, as I well
may, against the charge of selfish egotism in a book necessarily spotted
on every page with the insignificant letter I; and while, of course on
human-nature principles, willing enough to exhibit myself at the best,
promising also not to hide the second best, or worse than that, where I
can perceive it.
That shrewd old philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, thus excuses his own
self-imposed task of "autobiography," and I cannot do better than quote
and adopt his wise and just remarks:--
"In thus employing myself, I shall yield to the inclination so natural
to old men, of talking of themselves and their own actions, and I shall
indulge it without being tiresome to those who, from respect to my age,
might conceive themselves obliged to listen to me, since they will
always be free to read me or not. And (I may as well confess it, as the
denial would be believed by nobody) I shall, perhaps, not a little
gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I never heard or saw the introductory
words, 'Without vanity I may say,' &c., but some vain thing immediately
followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they may
have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with
it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the
possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action; and
therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man
were to thank God for his _vanity_ among the other comforts of life.
"And now I speak of thanking God, I desire, with all humility, to
acknowledge that I attribute the happiness of my past life to His divine
providence, which led me to the means I used, and gave the success. My
belief of this induces me to _hope_, though I must not _presume_, that
the same goodness will still be exercised towards me in continuing that
happiness or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience
as others have done; the complexion of my future fortune being known to
Him only in whose power it is to bless us, even in our afflictions."
Thus speaketh the honest wisdom of Benjamin Franklin.
* * * * *
I do not see that a better plan can be chosen for carrying out the title
of this book than the one I have adopted, namely, tracing from the
earliest years to old age the author's literary lifework, illustrated by
accounts of, and specimens from, his various books and writings,
especially those which are absolutely out of print, or, haply have never
been published. No doubt, in such excerpts, exhibited at their best, the
critical accusations of unfairness, self-seeking, and so forth, will be
made, and may be met by the true consideration that something of this
sort is inevitable in autobiography. However, for the matter of vanity,
all I know of myself is the fact that praise, if consciously undeserved,
only depresses me instead of elating; that a noted characteristic of
mine through life has been to hide away in the rear rather than rush to
the front, unless, indeed, forced forward by duty, when I can be bold
enough, if need be; and that one defect in me all know to be a dislike
to any assumption of dignity--surely a feeling the opposite to
self-conceit; whilst, if I am not true, simple, and sincere, I am worse
than I hope I am, and all my friends are deceived in their kind judgment
of me.
But let this book speak for itself; I trust it is honest, charitable,
and rationally religious. If I have (and I show it through all my
writings) a shrinking from priestcraft of every denomination, that
feeling I take to be due to some ancient heredity ingrained, or, more
truly, inburnt into my nature from sundry pre-Lutheran confessors and
martyrs of old, from whom I claim to be descended, and by whose spirit I
am imbued. Not but that I profess myself broad, and wide, and liberal
enough for all manner of allowances to others, and so far as any narrow
prejudices may be imagined of my idiosyncrasy, I must allow myself to be
changeable and uncertain--though hitherto having steered through life a
fairly straight course--and that sometimes I can even doubt as to my
politics, whether they should be defined Whig or Tory; as to my
religion, whether it is most truly chargeable by the epithet high or
low; as to my likings, whether I best prefer solitude or society; as to
literature, whether gaieties or gravities please me most. In fact, I
recognise good in everything, though sometimes hidden by evil, right (by
intention, at least) in sundry doctrines and opinions otherwise to my
judgment wrong, and I am willing to believe the kindliest of my
opponents who appear to be honest and earnest. This is a very fair creed
for a citizen of the world, whose motto is Terence's famous avowal,
"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto."