Transcriber's Notes:
(1) Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text
by =equal signs=.
(2) Obvious punctuation, spelling and typographical errors
have been corrected.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Green Bros., Grasmere._
DOVE COTTAGE, GRASMERE.
As it was when the Home of the Wordsworths (1799-1808)
and De Quincey (1808-1830).
_Frontispiece._]
LITERARY CELEBRITIES
OF THE
ENGLISH LAKE-DISTRICT
BY
FREDERICK SESSIONS, F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF 'ISAIAH, POET-PROPHET AND REFORMER'
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
'There is scarcely anything so interesting to man as his brother
man; because there is nothing else which so acts on his sympathies;
and sympathy is perhaps the most powerful of forces. We may feel
much interest in a Thing, more in a Truth, but most of all only in a
Man.'
MYERS' 'LECTURES ON GREAT MEN'
LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1905
PREFACE
This is neither a handbook nor a guide to the haunts of our Lake
Celebrities. Yet it may, perhaps, serve in some sort the purposes of
both.
It is not the result of any fresh or original research. I claim only to
have condensed many biographies, and to have provided an index to the
literary status of the men and women of whom I treat, some of whose
works are scarce, and some too voluminous for ordinary readers.
These essays were written during leisure hours towards the close of a
busy life. They were published first in two different newspapers. This
will account for their form, and for the absence of either alphabetical
or chronological sequence. The earlier ones were written for friends in
my old home in the South; the later ones for my new friends in the
North. In bringing them together into book form I have remembered the
increasing number of tourists who require food for the mind as well as
for the body, and I have remembered my own want, in years past, of some
concise account of those whose names were perpetually before me while
moving from place to place in these attractive regions.
To such tourists especially I respectfully dedicate my biographic
sketches, though not without a hope that they may reach, and be of use
to, a still wider circle of readers.
FREDERICK SESSIONS.
THE BRANT,
KENDAL.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Author's Preface iii
I. THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER: THOMAS DE QUINCEY:
1.--THE MAN 3
2.--HIS BOOKS 11
II. A PIONEER OF POLITICAL REFORM: HARRIET
MARTINEAU 21
III. A LOVER OF BEAUTY: GERALD MASSEY 29
IV. A POET ENGRAVER: WILLIAM JAMES LINTON:
1.--THE MAN 37
2.--HIS BOOKS AND HIS ART 43
V. A SUCCESSFUL NOVELIST: ELIZA LYNN LINTON:
1.--THE WOMAN 51
2.--HER BOOKS 57
VI. THE PHILOSOPHER OF BRANTWOOD: JOHN RUSKIN:
1.--THE MAN 65
2.--HIS ART-TEACHING AND HIS BOOKS 75
VII. A GREAT LIFE MARRED: SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 85
VIII. A LIFE TO PITY: HARTLEY COLERIDGE 95
IX. GEORGE THE FOURTH'S LAUREATE: ROBERT SOUTHEY 103
X. VICTORIA'S FIRST LAUREATE: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 113
XI. A FRIEND OF GREAT POETS: CHARLES LLOYD 123
XII.'CHRISTOPHER NORTH': JOHN WILSON 131
XIII. THE CHAMPION OF LORD BACON: JAMES SPEDDING 141
XIV. TWO BEAUTIFUL LIVES: WILLIAM AND LUCY SMITH 149
XV. TWO BROAD THINKERS: FREDERIC AND F. W. H. MEYER
(FATHER AND SON) 157
XVI. A RELIGIOUS MEDIEVALIST: FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER:
1.--THE MAN 167
2.--HIS BOOKS 177
XVII. JOHN RUSKIN'S FRIENDS: THE SISTERS OF THE
THWAITE, AND THEIR BROTHER 187
XVIII. A LEARNED YOUNG LADY: ELIZABETH SMITH 195
XIX. A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS STORIES (FOLK-SPEECH):
DR. ALEXANDER CRAIG GIBSON 203
XX. TWO PIONEER EDUCATIONISTS: THOMAS AND
MATTHEW ARNOLD 213
XXI. 'DRUNKEN BARNABY': RICHARD BRAITHWAITE 223
XXII. LAST WORDS ABOUT OUR CELEBRITIES 233
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DOVE COTTAGE, GRASMERE _Frontispiece_
THOMAS DE QUINCEY _facing page_ 3
THE KNOLL, AMBLESIDE " 21
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON LAKE " 29
JOHN RUSKIN IN OLD AGE " 65
THE HOUSE AT HERNE HILL IN WHICH RUSKIN WAS
BORN IN 1819 " 75
MEDALLION ON THE RUSKIN MEMORIAL, DERWENTWATER " 82
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE " 85
NAB COTTAGE, RYDAL " 95
WINE STREET, BRISTOL " 103
SOUTHEY'S MONUMENT IN CROSTHWAITE CHURCH,
KESWICK " 109
JOSEPH COTTLE, OF BRISTOL " 113
OLD BRATHAY " 123
CHARLES LLOYD AND HIS WIFE " 128
ELLERAY, WINDERMERE " 131
VIEW OF WINDERMERE " 167
YEWDALE " 187
HAWKESHEAD, FROM ESTHWAITE WATER " 203
FOX HOW, AMBLESIDE " 213
BURNESIDE HALL, NEAR KENDAL " 223
SWARTHMORE HALL, ULVERSTONE " 233
GRASMERE AND DOVE COTTAGE
'Once I absolutely went forwards from Coniston to the very verge of
Hammerscar, from which the whole Vale of Grasmere suddenly breaks upon
the view in a style of almost theatrical surprise, with its lovely
valley stretching before the eye in the distance, the lake lying
immediately below, with its solemn ark-like island of four and a half
acres in size seemingly floating on its surface, and its exquisite
outline on the opposite shore, revealing all its little bays and wild
sylvan margins, feathered to the edge with wild flowers and ferns. In
one quarter, a little wood, stretching for about half a mile towards the
outlet of the lake; more directly in opposition to the spectator, a few
green fields; and beyond them, just two bowshots from the water, a
little white cottage gleaming from the midst of trees, with a vast and
seemingly never-ending series of ascents, rising above it to the height
of more than three thousand feet. That little cottage was Wordsworth's
from the time of his marriage, and earlier; in fact, from the beginning
of the century to the year 1808. Afterwards, for many a year it was
mine.'--THOMAS DE QUINCEY: _Autobiographic Sketches_.
[Illustration:
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
By A. C. Lucchesi.]
THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
I.--THE MAN
'Oh! Mr. de Quinshy--sir, but you're a pleasant cretur--and were I
ask't to gie a notion o' your mainners to them that had never seen
you, I should just use twa words, Urbanity and Amenity.'--The
ETTRICK SHEPHERD in _Noctes Ambrosianæ_.
Had you been in Edinburgh on a certain day of the early spring in the
year 1850, you might have met a little, undersized, slight-framed man,
with a somewhat stealthy tread, and shy, furtive glances--like one who
dreads being watched and overtaken--stepping quickly along the streets.
He is dressed in an overcoat, buttoned close to the chin, beneath which
is no other coat. At first sight you think him a youth. On a nearer
approach you notice his hair is turning gray, and that his
fair-complexioned face and massive brow are mapped all over with the
finest of fine wrinkles, denoting his age, which is actually almost
sixty-five. Let us see where he goes. Presently he reaches the
publishing office of _Hogg's Instructor_, and the weird little man is
shown into the editor's office, and as he seems tired out with the ten
miles' walk he says he has taken from his village home, he is kindly
told to seat himself. No sooner has he done so, than he produces from
one of his pockets a packet of manuscript sheets and a small handbrush
from another. He tells the astonished editor that he is Thomas De
Quincey, whose name by that time was known all over the English-speaking
world, and that he wishes to contribute to the new periodical. As he
talks, he unfolds each separate sheet, and, carefully wiping it with his
brush, lays it on the desk. Editor Hogg goes to his safe and places a
sufficient sum in the hands of the shy stranger, and thus begins a fast
friendship and a literary connection which results in the publication of
some fourteen volumes of scattered essays--essays the like of which are
not to be found elsewhere in our mother tongue either for learning or
for inimitable force and elegance of style. The friendship only ended
with the death of De Quincey nine years later.
Now let us follow him to his home. His wife has been dead some years. On
her death the eldest daughter, still a mere girl, took upon herself the
care of the other children and their loving and famous, but most
eccentric, father. She removed the household to the village of Lasswade,
and their cottage made for them and all their visitors a bright and
happy centre of attraction. It is night ere he reaches his home, but
that is no matter, for he is in the habit of taking long and lonely
rambles far into the night and early morning, flitting about so silently
as to startle benighted travellers as if they had seen a ghost. This
night he has walked enough, and retires to his own room--a room crowded
with a confused mass of books, which leave only a narrow passage along
which he can just screw himself into his chair by the fire. A
wineglassful of laudanum is poured out by him from a decanter close at
hand, and he drinks it off, though it is of strength sufficient to kill
two or three ordinary people. Now, for a while, is his season of
recuperation and brilliant writing, till, as daylight approaches, he
turns into his simple bedroom and sleeps. Next day, probably, and for
many days thereafter we should seek him in vain at these his
headquarters, for he has other lodgings, two or three of them, in the
City, each simply running over with books. Into one of these
hiding-places we are introduced by one of his own essays, wherein he
amusingly describes his efforts, aided by his daughters, to discover a
manuscript which he desired to publish, and which was found at last at
the bottom of a metal bath crammed with papers, receipts, letters, and
folios of his own neat handwriting. He has left some other bundles of
valuable books and essays at some booksellers, whose very name and
address he has forgotten, for he has literally no memory at all for such
mundane things, and no kind of idea of the value of money. He would sue
for the loan of a few shillings _in forma pauperis_ when scores of
pounds were due to him from publishers who would have been only too glad
to settle with him promptly. A bank bill or a large note would lie
inside some book till its hiding-place was forgotten, simply because he
had not the remotest idea how to turn it into cash. On the other hand,
when it was cashed he was lavishly generous to every beggar and impostor
whom he came across, being one of the most genuinely sympathetic of men,
ready to talk with the unfortunates of the pavements, with no thought
of sin or shame in his heart, and to do them a good turn; and so fond of
little children that one of his greatest griefs--the death of
Wordsworth's infant daughter--was undoubtedly amongst the acutest pains
of his life. Earning money, after his early struggles were over, more
freely than most literary men of the day, so careless and so
simple-minded was he that he had to fly for sanctuary from his creditors
within the precincts of Holyrood, from whence he was only free to come
forth on Sundays, and if perchance he was decoyed into some friend's
house, and stayed late unwittingly, entrancing the company with his
torrents of living eloquence and unexampled knowledge, there he had to
lie _perdu_ till Sunday came round again.
Loving, and beloved of all who knew him, unsophisticated and child-like
as he was in middle and later manhood, he had had as rough an experience
of the dark and troublous side of the world as any man of his century.
He was born in Manchester, where his father, who died early of
consumption, was a well-to-do manufacturer. His mother, who was of a
socially higher grade, and of a rigid Puritan character, never
understood her sensitive son, and never took him to her heart or entered
his. Very touching are the autobiographic accounts he gives of his
sensations on the death of a little sister; how he stole into the silent
chamber and kissed the cold lips, and fell apparently into a kind of
trance, which, young as he was, made his eyes fill 'with the golden
fulness of life'; 'a vault,' he says, 'seemed to open in the zenith of
the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up for ever. I, in spirit, rose as
if on billows that also ran up the shaft for ever; and the billows
seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ran before us and fled
away for ever,' and so he goes on, 'till,' says he, 'I slept ... and
when I awoke I found myself standing, as before, close to my sister's
bed.' Later, too, in church, the organ music awoke within him the deep
mysticism of his nature, and he beheld with inner vision, as the solemn
notes pealed and sobbed, dreams and visions, and heard oracles, and had
with God, as he supposed, 'communion undisturbed.' These dream-echoes
haunted him more or less all his life. And it was this delicate, refined
nature which was terrorized and domineered over by a rough, fighting
elder brother, who forced him into conflict with town boys and
victimized him incessantly at home. It was this quick-learning,
preternaturally intelligent boy--who could beat all his schoolmates at
Greek and other book-knowledge--who was sent to dull and cruel masters,
who misused him and drove him in the end to run away and hide himself in
Wales, and afterwards in London. In the great Metropolis, in a desolate
old house at the corner of Greek Street and Soho Square, with only a
little waif of a girl to share his misery and solitude, he spent many
months, his only other acquaintances a hard old lawyer, who made him a
tool, and a girl of the streets, whom he calls 'Poor Ann of Oxford
Street,' who had rescued him from death when he lay famishing on a
doorstep.
How he was discovered by his family; how he was sent to Oxford, and how
when there his sensitiveness led him to shirk the examinations for his
degree; how he went to the lakes of Westmorland to live, edited a Kendal
newspaper, associated with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Professor
Wilson, and many another celebrity of the day; how he married a farmer's
daughter, who made him an exemplary wife; how he had contracted the
terrific opium habit, and how he fought it, conquered it, and fell again
before it; how he filled, even in the days of his poverty and struggling
life, one cottage after another with precious volumes of ancient and
modern lore; and how he migrated northward, and lived in and near
Edinburgh, as he was doing when we first met him--all these things you
must read for yourselves in his 'English Opium Eater,' and in his
entrancing 'Autobiographic Sketches,' or else in a Life of him by Dr.
Japp or by Professor Masson.
His death came not unawares to terminate a period of helpless weariness
with some delirium, the after-effects of opium doses. But even in
delirium his dreams, though they greatly tried him, revealed the gentle
spirit of the man. Telling his daughter one of them, he said: 'You know
I and the children were invited to the Great Supper--the Great Supper of
Jesus Christ. So, wishing the children to have suitable dresses for such
an occasion, I had them all dressed in white. They were dressed from
head to foot in white. But some rough men in the streets of Edinburgh,
as we passed on our way to the Supper, seeing the little things in
complete white, laughed and jeered at us, and made the children much
ashamed.' His daughter records: 'As the waves of death rolled faster and
faster over him, suddenly out of the abyss we saw him throw up his arms,
which to the last retained their strength, and he said distinctly, and
as if in great surprise, "Sister, sister, sister!"' So he fell on
sleep.
OF BOOKS AND CONVERSATION
'A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who
depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and
electrical power of combination, bringing together from the four
winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from
dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life.
'And of this let everyone be assured--that he owes to the
impassioned books which he has read, many a thousand more of
emotions than he can consciously trace back to them. Dim by their
origination, these emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through
life like the forgotten incidents of childhood.
'Books teach by one machinery, conversation by another; and if these
resources were trained into correspondence to their own separate
ideals, they might become reciprocally the complements of each
other.'--THOMAS DE QUINCEY: _Essay on Pope_.
THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
II.--HIS BOOKS
'De Quincey! farewell! Many pleasing hours have we spent in the
perusal of thy eloquent page, and not a few in listening to thy
piercing words. Not a few tears have we given to thy early sorrows.
With no little emotion have we followed the current of thy romantic
narrative.' --GILFILLAN'S _Literary Portraits_.
We have already seen that De Quincey's collected essays filled, in the
edition prepared by himself, as many as fourteen volumes. How many there
are in the more recent edition by Professor Masson I do not at the
moment remember, but they are in most public libraries, and can be
heartily commended both for their careful annotation and the excellence
of their typography. This latter point is a great one for the
book-lover, who believes that everything he reads should be pleasant to
handle and a delight to the eyes, provided always that its price is
within reach of a moderately-filled purse.
Of the quality of the contents of the fourteen volumes there are diverse
critical opinions. Let me appraise a few of them before offering my own.
Dr. Traill ('Social England'), while speaking highly of our author's
remarkable powers of literary expression, his wit, pathos, and humour,
considers him 'unequal' in merit, and is almost absurdly wrong when he
talks of De Quincey dividing a certain portion of his life 'between
Bohemianizing in London and lion-hunting in the Lake District.' Two more
utterly unsuitable words could hardly have been found with which to
describe the early experiences of our quaint, little, oversensitive
'Thomas Paperverius,' as Hill Burton calls him in 'The Book Hunter,'
than 'Bohemianizing' and 'lion-hunting.' We will, however, forgive Dr.
Traill, since one who was by nature an unsympathetic critic could not
possibly rise above his own customary level, and also because he gives
De Quincey a place of honour as the originator of the modern school of
'prose poets,' represented by Professor Wilson, his contemporary, and in
later years by John Ruskin.
The Professor Wilson here named is, of course, he who is still known by
his _nom de plume_ of 'Christopher North.' Close friends were these two
great walkers, great talkers, and great writers. At first sight an
ill-assorted pair must they have seemed to anyone who met them together
on the hills above Windermere, the Celtic giant striding along, like one
of Ossian's heroes, with 'his yellow hair streaming upon the wind,' and
his undersized comrade half running by his side. As they climbed the
mountain they were fain to discourse of all things in heaven and on
earth, for they were both eclectics of a high order, both deeply versed
in German literature and metaphysics, both keenly observant of Nature
and of current events, and both excellent classical and English
scholars. The more Wilson knew of De Quincey the better he liked and
appreciated him, even though an occasional little breeze ruffled the
calmness of their intercourse. The latter owed to 'Kit' his introduction
to _Blackwood's Magazine_, of which he was then editor-in-chief. You
will also remember--you, at any rate, who are familiar with the charming
'Noctes Ambrosianæ' (though, I fear, you are in a sad minority in these
days of scrappy periodicals and flimsy popular fiction)--but you of the
elect few will remember the genial fun which Wilson pokes at 'The Opium
Eater,' and how cleverly he imitates his all but inimitable style, and
banters him on his out-of-the way bits of Attic or Teutonic lore, as
well as on his habits of tagging on one idea to another till he bids
fair to lay the whole universe under contribution to his analytical and
illuminative conversation. You will remember, further, that he puts into
the mouth of 'The Ettrick Shepherd' many such passages as the following,
professing to tease pleasantly the subject of them: 'As for "The Opium
Eater," he lives in a world o' his ain, where there are nae magazines o'
ony sort, but o' hail and sleet, and thunder, and lichtnin', and
pyramids, and Babylonian terraces, covering wi' their fallen gardens,
that are now naething but roots and trunks o' trees, and bricks o'
pleasure houses, the unknown tombs o' them that belonged once to the
Beasts o' the Revelation,' and much more of the same sort of chaff,
running into a paragraph three times the length of this quotation.
Crabbe Robinson, in his 'Diary,' that wonderful repertoire of chit-chat
about the celebrities of his day, says 'all that De Quincey wrote is
curious if not valuable; commencing with his best-known "Confessions of
an English Opium Eater," and ending with his scandalous but
painfully-interesting autobiography in _Tait's Magazine_.' Scandalous
quotha! This most 'valuable' production has passed into our choicest
literature, while Mr. Robinson's own memoranda are barely known, if at
all, beyond a small circle of bookworms. The 'Diary' has become a mere
quarry in which historians and biographers dig for their building
materials, while De Quincey's life is a more enduring monument to his
fame than if it had been of marble.
George Gilfillan has far more nearly hit the mark when he pens this
critique: 'In all his writings we find a lavish display of learning. You
see it bursting out, whether he will or no; never dragged in as by
cart-ropes; and his allusions, glancing in all directions, show even
more than his direct quotations that his learning is encyclopædic. His
book of reference is the brain. Nor must we forget his style. It is
massive, masculine, and energetic; ponderous in its construction, slow
in its motion, thoroughly English, yet thickly sprinkled with archaisms
and big words, peppered to just the proper degree with the condiments of
simile, metaphor, and poetic quotation; select, without being
fastidious; strong, without being harsh; elaborate, without being
starched into formal and false precision.'
We will pass now from these critical estimates to our own mere likings
and preferences among De Quincey's very voluminous 'Selections Grave and
Gay.' I give the first place--the place of vantage and of honour--to the
autobiography already alluded to above, for it burns and scintillates
with the fire of genius, kindled by the action of unique experiences
upon a unique temperament. Next must come, of course, the
'Confessions,' which made him famous in the first instance. This is a
volume from which, in my limited space, I can make no typical extracts,
meandering as the pages do among golden visions and uncanny dreams
begotten by the hideous narcotic drug, and lingering lovingly among
picturesque sketches of the men and maidens of the villages and country
towns he strayed to during his flight from school and home, giving us
glimpses now of 'elaborate and pompous sunsets hanging over the
mountains of Wales,' and anon plunging us into the profoundest depths of
German philosophy and theology. Sometimes he makes us smile at a curious
and unexpected phrase, or some simile that is apt, and yet at first
sight seems incongruous, with a spice of exaggeration, such as the
statement that the shoulders of the porter who carried away his trunk
were 'broad as Salisbury Plain.'
One of the most characteristic of his tales is that of 'The Spanish
Military Nun,' a true narrative, unearthed by him from the authentic
lore of Spain, of an episode in the conquest of South America, and
relating to a certain Catarina (prettily called by him 'our dear Kate')
who escaped from a convent in the mother country, donned armour, fought
battles and duels, was beloved by marriageable girls, forced a passage
across the Andes, and finally was drowned in the Western Atlantic. The
story is told with humour and much feeling, and has no counterpart,
except in the narrative similarly discovered and freely translated by
Southey, called 'The Expedition of Orsua, and the Crimes of Aguirre.'
Perhaps the most celebrated of his essays, though, I fancy, better
known by its title than actually read, is that 'On Murder considered as
one of the Fine Arts.' It is an elaborate _jeu d'esprit_, of which the
grave introduction, brimming over with fun, not a muscle of the author's
face moving in the telling, commences thus: 'Most of us who read books
have probably heard of a Society for the Promotion of Vice, of the
Hell-fire Club, founded in the last century by Sir Francis Dashwood. At
Brighton, I think it was, that a society was formed for the suppression
of virtue. That society was itself suppressed; but I am sorry to say
that another exists in London of a character still more atrocious. In
tendency it may be denominated a Society for the Encouragement of
Murder, but according to their own delicate euphemismos is styled "The
Society of Connoisseurs in Murder." They profess to be curious in
homicide; amateurs and dilettante in the various modes of carnage, and,
in short, murder-fanciers.'
Probably to the majority of his readers his 'English Mail-Coach,' with
its sub-chapters on 'The Glory of Motion,' 'The Vision of Sudden Death,'
and 'Dream Fugue,' will be the most attractive of all his pieces. We who
are old enough to remember 'The Arrow,' 'The Rival,' 'The Tally-Ho,' and
other four-horse mail-coaches, on which we rode seventy miles to and
from boarding-school, or to visit far-off country relatives, can enter
into the spirit of these sketches _con amore_. The young folk, who have
ridden only in hansom-cabs and excursion trains, have little idea of the
perils and pains, and the pleasures, of old coaching days, on the old
coaching roads, or at the old coaching inns, in weary winter rides, or
glorious sunny jaunts in summer time. They should certainly read these
essays, and learn how their parents and grandparents travelled in days
antecedent to steam and electricity.
If sterner qualities are needed by more laborious readers, let me
commend to their attention that marvel of historic picture-writing, 'The
Revolt of the Tartars'; or 'The Essenes' may suit them, if they be
biblical students, even though they may not agree with De Quincey's
conclusions; or there is that painstaking, minutely-descriptive chapter
on 'The Toilet of a Hebrew Lady.' If they inquire for political
knowledge--and, indeed, this is sadly lacking, not only among working
men, but even more by professional men, who live outside the contact and
struggle with the hardships and necessities of business life--where will
you find anything more convincing, anywhere any severer logic, than that
in the dissertations on Political Economy? I say nothing of his other
historical, philosophical, and theological writings--his theories,
speculations, and researches--for I would advise none to begin the
systematic study of De Quincey with these. I would recommend beginners
to taste first his sketches of contemporary writers and his lighter
papers, and then, if they find they acquire a liking for these, to pass
on to the more recondite. I confess that, however fascinating his
literary style may be, it requires some little culture to appreciate it
at the outset. If a first attempt prove no success, let the
'Miscellanies' be laid aside for a while, till the man himself has
become well known and companionable. Then a second attempt can hardly be
a failure.
Let me finish this article by inviting my readers' perusal of that
masterpiece of Jean Paul Richter's, so ably translated by our 'old man
eloquent,' and forming the appendix to his essay on the system of the
heavens. It begins, 'And God called up from dreams a man into the
vestibule of heaven, saying, "Come thou hither, and see the glory of My
house." And to His angels He said, "Take him and undress him from his
robes of flesh, and put a new breath into his nostrils, and arm him with
sail-broad wings for flight. Only touch not with any change his human
heart--the heart that weeps and trembles." It was done, and with a
mighty angel for his guide, the man stood ready for his infinite voyage,
and from the terraces of heaven, without sound or farewell, at once they
wheeled away into endless space.'
THE BRATHAY VALLEY, AMBLESIDE
'It is the place for the earliest flowers of the spring, and
distinguished by the broom growing thickly on the bank of the river,
and yellow globe-ranunculus flourishing on the rocks at the brink,
or in the midst of the stream. In the autumn, the side of Loughrigg,
which overhangs the valley, is splendid with flowering heather. The
opposite character of this and the sister valley is striking, and
led to the remark of a resident of Ambleside that if one wants a
meditative walk in winter, one goes round the Brathay Valley--sure
to meet nobody but the postman, whereas, if one needs recreation
after a morning of study, the walk should be round the Rothay
Valley, where one is sure to meet all one's acquaintances. The
finest view in this valley, one of the finest in the whole district,
is from Skelwith Fold.... The stranger will hardly aver that he ever
saw a more perfect picture than this, with the fall (Skelwith Force)
in the centre, closed in by rock and wood on either hand, and by
Langdale Pikes behind.'--HARRIET MARTINEAU: _Guide to the Lakes_.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Herbert Bell, Ambleside._
THE KNOLL, AMBLESIDE.
The Home of Harriet Martineau (1855-1876).]
II
A PIONEER OF POLITICAL REFORM
HARRIET MARTINEAU
'She was born to be a destroyer of slavery, in whatever form, in
whatever place, all over the world, wherever she saw or thought of
it ... in the degraded offspring of former English poor-law ... in
English serfdom forty years ago ... in the fruits of any
abuse--social, legislative, or administrative--or in actual
slavery.'--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
Perhaps the most instructive and reliable book ever written about the
actual condition of England, and about her people's struggles for light,
liberty, and better conditions of life during the first half of the
nineteenth century is Miss Martineau's 'History of the Thirty Years'
Peace.' It is emphatically a citizen's history as distinguished from a
partizan politician's, and it ought to be read, together with her
'Introduction' to it, by every young man who desires to possess an
intelligent acquaintance with the social problems of his age and
country. The ignorance of the present generation of youthful electors,
when compared with the knowledge of their parents at a similar time of
life, often astounds me. It is probably due to two causes--first, to the
fact that their fathers were, forty or fifty years ago, only just
emerging from the dust and smoke of hard-fought political battles, and
so had the causes of them well engrained into their minds, while they of
this generation have not yet so much as 'smelt powder' in the struggle
against still-existing grievances; and, secondly, that the present-day
education in elementary schools practically ignores the teaching of
history, while ordinary secondary schools teach English history only in
'samples,' and those seldom of the most modern periods. No other of
Harriet Martineau's works will take rank with her 'Thirty Years' Peace,'
yet they all had a great reputation when she was reckoned the greatest
living English woman, and they nearly all had a wide sale, though,
having been written for passing purposes, they naturally died
out of the popular memory when their purposes were accomplished,
and fresh interests had come into view. They were mostly
stories--novelettes--written to illustrate such questions as the then
burning ones of free trade, colonization by emigration of the pauper and
the criminal, the incidence and amendment of the Poor Laws, the
repression and punishment of crime, actual and ideal systems of
taxation, the relationships of capital and labour, and the like. In
addition to these, she wrote a few volumes of pure fiction, some
reminiscences of travel in the East--through Egypt, across the Sinaitic
desert, and northwards past Jerusalem to Damascus--and some others
respecting her stay in the United States of America in the troublous
anti-slavery times preceding the Civil War. In her earlier days she also
wrote some religious and theological essays and sketches for Unitarian
magazines. Of her fictions, two may be mentioned--'Deerbrook,' which she
considered her masterpiece, and 'Feats on the Fjord.' The latter was
favourite reading of my own boyhood. I took it to Norway with me in
later days, and found it in every way a most accurate description of
Scandinavian farm life, as well as of coast and mountain scenery--in
fact, quite as much so as the stories of Björnstjerne Björnson himself.
The extraordinary thing about this is that the authoress had never been
in Norway, and took all the settings of her hero's adventures from
narratives of other people's travels.
Her autobiography--written when, in advancing age, heart-disease had
marked her for its victim at no distant date--with the appendix thereto,
compiled by her devoted friend, Mrs. Chapman--furnishes us with all the
available materials for a sketch of her life; and, indeed, it is the
most valuable of all her multitudinous productions, with the exception
already noted. It is the story of a noble and unceasing struggle,
successfully carried through, against internal difficulties, both mental
and physical of no ordinary character, and against external ones that
would have beaten any commonplace person. It is, however, also a
revelation of spiritual processes and of gradual abandonment of
once-cherished beliefs that does not fascinate us, and leaves us with
grave doubts as to the acuteness of her philosophical insight, and of
her grasp of real Christian teaching. Perhaps, too, it was natural that
her independence of character, and her constant overwork and overstrain,
should lead her into impatience of the frailties of others, and quicken
her contempt for many of the celebrities she knew personally.
Born in 1802 of Unitarian parents, in Norwich, she grew to be a shy,
sensitive, but quietly-observant and clever girl. Her upbringing was on
the repressive lines of a conscientious but narrow-minded mother, who
was without sympathy for, or knowledge of, her 'ugly duckling's'
yearnings or capacity. The last thing the mother dreamed of was that the
'ugly duckling' was in truth a cygnet, whose swan-plumage the world
would one day recognise. The daughter longed inexpressibly for words and
deeds of parental love which never came to her, and so she grew silent,
introspective, and morbid. In mature age she became morbidly ashamed of
her childhood's, perhaps inevitable, morbidness. When her literary
instincts were bound to find a vent, her first venture in magazine
articles had to be made in secret, and, when they were discovered,
efforts were made to repress any continuation of them, and she was
sternly told to stick to her sewing-needle. She was fortunate in being
sent to a good day-school, which counteracted by its learned and genial
atmosphere the influences of home. It was, too, a blessing in disguise
when, her never robust health failing, her parents sent her to relatives
in Bristol, whose joyous spirits and cultured tastes were an inspiration
to her. A tendency to deafness, which became chronic, and at last
compelled the habitual use of an ear-trumpet, did not, till she
conquered the disadvantage by her brave fortitude, make her desirous of
company or help her to make much way in it.
The one trusted friend of her youth was her beloved younger brother
James, afterwards the eminent Unitarian minister and theologian. To him
she confided her secret aspirations, and he encouraged her finally to
proceed to London and try and find a publisher for the series of
political economy stories she projected writing. Her heroic efforts to
find someone who would risk putting them on the market is one of the
romances of literary biography.
Her father was dead. The manufacturing firm in which her mother's monies
were invested had failed. She was alone in London, and without knowledge
or influence. How she 'trudged many miles through the clay of the
streets, and the fog of the gloomiest December,' only to be rejected,
sometimes politely, and sometimes rudely, by everyone to whom she showed
her MSS. and explained her scheme; and how at last she despairingly
accepted what seemed almost impossible, and certainly were unreasonable,
terms, offered by a young bookseller without business connections; how a
wealthy relative unexpectedly stepped in to guarantee a portion of her
personal risk; and how she suddenly sprang into fame--are not all these
things faithfully set forth in her autobiographical chapter headed 'Aged
Twenty-nine'? From depths of discouragement that would have effectually
damped most aspiring authors she at once became a 'society lion,' or
rather, to retain our former metaphor, she was hailed as one of the
swans of literature, and, as was said of the royal bird in Andersen's
parable, 'the most beautiful of them all.' She endured a long and
terrible strain, while for several years producing a story a month,
which broke down her health seriously, yet she attended nearly every
evening some social function, which brought her into intimacy with the
most celebrated men and women of her generation.
It is in her records of this period that the most unpleasant traits in
her disposition become apparent. Almost every page betokens a spirit of
captious criticism of her acquaintances, and almost every one is
belittled by her.
About this time, too, Unitarianism lost altogether its slackening hold
of her. She saw that its dogmas were entirely contrary to Scripture
revelation and teaching, but instead of rectifying her faith to the
Christian standard, she abandoned the standard itself, and became an
avowed Positivist. She writes herself down as a convinced
'Necessitarian,' though if anyone's life and conduct effectually belied
such a creed it was hers. No one ever gave stronger proofs of a
self-determined will, free from all external or internal compulsion,
than she.
Money as well as fame became now her well-earned portion, and she found
herself able to purchase an annuity, spend some time abroad, and buy
land and build a house thereon at Ambleside, by the shores of beautiful
Winander. In this charming home she spent her declining years, following
her favourite pursuits, advocating mesmerism, which she considered had
raised her up from a long-endured nervous prostration, and playing with
success the part of the Lady Bountiful to the neighbourhood. It was
whilst at this place that she translated the works of Comte, and lost
thereby, what she valued most in the world--the intimacy of her beloved
brother James, who, like herself, a model of conscientiousness, publicly
reviewed her introductions and comments with some severity. Both brother
and sister had opinions, held them tenaciously, and expressed them
fearlessly. On her side no sign of change from Positivism was ever
given. The same dauntless spirit which bore her through the anti-slavery
campaign, when in America she was threatened by the slave-owners with
personal violence, upheld her now in her championship of the philosophy
of altruism without a Divine Fatherhood. We believe her mistaken, but
admire her unflinching adhesion to what she deemed the truth.
It was in her beautiful house, The Knoll, that she passed behind the
veil, and entered into the clear seeing of eternity. She died, says her
closest friend and biographer, 'in the summer sunset of her home amid
the Westmorland mountains, on June 27, 1876, after twenty-one years of
diligent, devoted, suffering, joyful years there, attended by the family
friends she most loved, and in possession of all her mental powers up
till the last expiring day, aged seventy-four years.' She lies among her
kindred, descendants of French refugees, in the old cemetery at
Birmingham.
In her maidenhood she had once loved, and been beloved by one of the
other sex, but events occurred to prevent the consummation of her love
by marriage, and it proved a happy escape. Thenceforward she lived only
to endure
'Many a lofty struggle for the sake
Of duties, sternly, faithfully fulfilled,
For which the anxious mind must watch and wake,
And the strong feelings of the heart be stilled.'
THE TRUE POET
'Who wears a singing-robe is richly dight;
The Poet, he is richer than a King.
He plucks the veil from hidden loveliness;
His gusts of music stir the shadowing boughs,
To let in glory on the darkened soul.
Upon the hills of light he plants his feet
To lure the people up with heart and voice;
At humblest human hearths drops dews divine
To feed the violet virtues nestling there.
His hands adorn the poorest house of life
With rare abiding shapes of loveliness.
All things obey his soul's creative eye;
For him earth ripens fruit-like in the light;
Green April comes to him with smiling tears,
Like some sweet maiden who transfigured stands
In dewy light of first love's rosy dawn,
And yields all secret preciousness, his Bride.
He reaps the Autumn without scythe or sickle;
And in the sweet low singing of the corn
Hears Plenty hush the pining Poor.'
GERALD MASSEY.
[Illustration:
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON LAKE.
Successively the Home of Gerald Massey, William J. and
Eliza Lynn Linton, and John Ruskin.]
III
A LOVER OF BEAUTY
GERALD MASSEY
'Like the Norseman of whom he sings, he is everywhere true, brave,
generous, and free. He is before all things a patriot. He has an
intense belief in the genius of England as the champion of liberty,
and the pioneer of freedom.'--_The Poets and the Poetry of the
Century._
He is still living, some seventy-five years of age, and it is difficult
to write anything of the nature of a biography of one still amongst us.
There are a few facts, however, patent to all the world, which may be
fitly reproduced. Perhaps the most striking of these is that, like
'Festus Bailey,' he did his best poetical work in his young manhood, and
the early promise of ripening in power and of richer fruit-bearing has
not been fulfilled. Massey, writing some sweet and inspiring lyrics, and
giving evidence of acute appreciation of the masters of literature in
his once well-known lectures, seems to have lost himself in a maze of
Egyptian and anti-Christian pseudo-philosophies even less edifying than
the science evolved from the 'inner consciousness' of such holy men as
Jacob Behmen, Peter Sterry, or Swedenborg, and as incomprehensible to
the ordinary mind as the strange mysticism of William Blake. He has, as
a poet, which was his true function in life, committed intellectual
suicide, and his resurrection into mythical regions and pamphleteering
on 'Luniolatry,' 'The Seven Souls of Man,' 'The Coming Religion,' and
other such subjects, will not only fail to add to his fame, but in the
future will be remembered merely by curiosity-hunters as the vagaries of
a capable but erratic genius. Like his own Atle the Fur-Hunter in
chasing the squirrel, he has lost his sledge-load of treasures. I know
that he does not personally think so, and that some, at least, of his
friends agree with him. He found verse-making insufficient for
subsistence--as, indeed, might have been expected--and it has been
written of him that in turning to his final career he began to
'Dredge the old sea-bottoms of the Past,
Lover of Beauty who gave up all for Truth.'
Still, we shall ever regret the change.
Some of his best life-work was done by Massey at Brantwood, on the
shores of Coniston Water, including 'The Ballad of Babe Christabel,'
'Craig-crook Castle,' and 'War-Waits.' He had come here after a period
of stress necessitated by his outward circumstances, which had been of
the poorest. His father was a canal-boatman of Tring, in Hertfordshire,
and for him, as for all of the wage-earners of those evil days of the
Corn Laws and other oppressions, there was virtually no education. He
was sent to work in a mill when eight years of age, for twelve hours a
day, at 9d. to 1s. 6d. per week. It was the sorrows and sufferings
of such little ones as he which inspired Mrs. Browning's
never-to-be-forgotten 'Cry of the Children.' Possessed of a resolute
will and an inquiring spirit, he taught himself all he could from the
very few books accessible to him. While passing through years of poverty
and hardship, engaged in straw-plaiting, he associated himself with
like-minded youths of his own and a somewhat better social class, threw
himself ardently into the progressive movements of the day, and
soon found his way into print in some of the restricted and
Government-worried local newspapers. When but twenty-one years old he
was actually editing a serial called _The Spirit of the Age_. A year
later he became one of the secretaries of the Christian Democratic
movement headed by Maurice and Kingsley, wrote verses for various
publications, and by-and-by mustered courage to issue his 'Voices of
Freedom and Lyrics of Love.' This little book and his next brought him
into contact or correspondence with Hepworth Dixon, W. Savage Landor,
'George Eliot,' and Tennyson. Tennyson writes him respecting the 'fine
lyrical impulse, and the rich, half-Oriental imagination' he found in
his poems. 'George Eliot' is said to have taken him for her model of
'Felix Holt the Radical.' She describes her hero as a somewhat
eccentric-mannered young man, shaggy-headed, large-eyed, and
strong-limbed, wearing neither waistcoat nor cravat, and in abrupt
sentences denouncing unreality and humbug, though amenable to softening
social and intellectual influences. This, at any rate, is her
introduction of him to her readers. Massey's first love-story (he was
happily married) was, at least, as much an idyll, it would appear, as
that of Holt, and the deep home love, the consecrated affection of the
wedded life, were the inspirations of some of his sweetest lyrics, just
as his intense yearnings for the betterment of the common people were
that of his patriotic ones. Later in life, after he had left Coniston,
we find him an accepted essayist in some leading literary magazines, and
a lecturer on literary subjects, living in Edinburgh. Another volume or
two, with war songs and ballads among them, evoked by what England has
long ago become ashamed of--the Crimean War--completed the first stage
of his career, and the only one that concerns us here. He has collected
into a volume--adopting a description of himself as 'the most
unpublished of authors'--a few of his best poems, which one critic
thinks contains everything of his worth preserving. I do not agree with
this dictum. Some of his best are omitted, though we have to thank this
self-same critic for preserving them for us.
Now comes for me the ungrateful task of selecting from his garden of
delights, not posies, but a few blossoms and a few typical petals that
may serve to show the form and hue of the blossoms. In doing so, many of
the best must of necessity be passed over. Do you know 'Babe
Christabel'? Is it not pathetically true to experience? Has it not set
many a chord of many a mother's riven heart vibrating as she reads of
'A merry May morn,
All in the prime of that sweet time
When daisies whiten, woodbines climb,
When the dear Babe Christabel was born'?
and how, coming through the 'golden gates of morn' to what seemed a
glorious destiny, and touching the earth with a fresh romance for the
happy parents, she grew in loveliness only to be caught away, ere
reaching womanhood, by angels who gathered her 'delighted as the
children do the primrose that is first in spring.' And do you know
'Cousin Winnie'? It is almost as pathetic, and quite as true, only in a
different way. It narrates a lad's love for a cousin, married, when she
reached maturity, to a friend of his, who brought trouble upon her, and
for whom he suffered as she suffered, unable to help, and never telling
out his affection for fear of causing division and dissension.
His songs are far from being all sad. They are mostly redolent of bright
fancy.