British Consulate, Norfolk, Virginia,7th April, 1855.
British Consulate, Norfolk, Virginia,7th April, 1855.
British Consulate, Norfolk, Virginia,7th April, 1855.
British Consulate, Norfolk, Virginia,
7th April, 1855.
My dear Ollier:—It has been impossible for me to write to you and it is now only possible for me to write a few lines as I have already had to do more than my tormented and feeble hands could well accomplish. For 10 weeks I was nailed to my chair with rheumatic gout in knees, feet, hips, hands, shoulder. For some time I could only sign my dispatches with my left hand and to some letters put my mark. Happily my feet, knees, &c., are well, but I cannot get the enemy out of my hands and arms. My shoulder is Sebastapol and will not yield.
Another letter, also in my possession, I have caused to be printed elsewhere. It is addressed to Ollier, and was written from Farnham, Surrey, on July 26, 1848.
My dear Ollier: I do not suppose that I shall be in town for a few days, and I think in the meantime it would be better to send me down the sheets with any observations you may have to make. I shall be very happy to cut, carve, alter and amend to the best of my ability. The ‘sum’ can only be described as ‘Heaven, Hell and Earth’, or if you like it better, ‘upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber.’ But I suppose neither of these descriptions would be very attractive and therefore perhaps you had better put ‘The Sky, the hall of Eblis, South Asia’. When it maketh its appearance you had better for your own sake take care of the reviewing; for I cannot help thinking that with the critics at least, my name attached to it is likely to do it more harm than good, unless friendly hands undertake the reviewing. The literary world always puts me in mind of the account which naturalists give of the birds called Puffs and Rees which alight in great bodies upon high downs and then each bird forms a little circle in which he runs round and round. As long as each continues this healthful exercise on the spot he has first chosen, all goes on quietly; but the moment any one ventures out of his own circle, all the rest fall upon him and very often a general battle ensues. I wish you could do anything for my bookGowrie or the King’s Plot. I had a good deal of money embarked in it.
Yours faithfully,G. P. R. James.
Yours faithfully,G. P. R. James.
Yours faithfully,G. P. R. James.
Yours faithfully,
G. P. R. James.
My letter of latest date indicates the time when he was transferred to Richmond.
British Consulate, Norfolk, Va.3 May, 1856.
British Consulate, Norfolk, Va.3 May, 1856.
British Consulate, Norfolk, Va.3 May, 1856.
British Consulate, Norfolk, Va.
3 May, 1856.
My Dear Mr. Kennedy: *** Lord Clarendon has ordered me to make every preparation formoving the Consulate of Virginia up to Richmond but not to do so until he has nominated a Vice Consul for Norfolk. He also wishes me to send him a detailed report regarding the late epidemic here and what between house hunting, office hunting, and trying to run down those foxes called rumors into their holes and to draw truth up from the bottom of her well in a place where people are as fanatical upon contagion and non-contagion as if they were articles of faith, I have had no peace of my life. My book I would have sent you but I could not get a copy worth sending. It has found favor in the South and is powerfully abused in the North, both which circumstances tend to increase the sale so that it has been wonderfully well read.***
I am sorry I did not think of taking notes of all the winning conversations at Berkeley. We might have made out together some few from the Noctes Berkelianae.
Yours ever,G. P. R. James.
Yours ever,G. P. R. James.
Yours ever,G. P. R. James.
Yours ever,
G. P. R. James.
I was interested not long ago in a remark of the accomplished literary reviewer of theProvidence Journalabout reading for boys. He said: “As a matter of fact, there is plenty of good, healthy reading for boys if parents and teachers would do more to bring it to their attention. To say nothing of Scott—whom some degenerate youngsters in these days profess to find stupid—there are Ainsworth, G. P. R. James, Mayne Reid and hosts of others who can tell stories of adventure that any healthy minded boy will enjoy.” I know well the sound and refined judgments of my Providence friend,—who castigated me once for my opinion that Cowper was not much read in these times—but I do not understand how he can imagine a boy of the twentieth century condescending to read Ainsworth or James. First and foremost, the novels are too long. The conventionalthree volumes demanded by the English public are revolting to the minds of the modern boys who want their fiction condensed and flavored with tabasco sauce. The Providence critic and I know—or think we know—what they ought to read, what would be good for their intellectual digestion; but we might as well offer them pre-digested tablets in lieu of chocolate creams. The young person will not now subsist on a diet of Ainsworth or of James. The long-spun dialogue would bore him. He calls for something more piquant; revels in slang; wants “sensation” and plenty of it, compressed in a small compass. As for the parents, they do not know much better themselves. The man of Providence well says: “The trouble is, as was pointed out in these columns recently in discussing the reading of girls, that the home atmosphere is all against any intelligent selection of books.” The prevalent antagonism to all that is called “old-fashioned” is not limited to the young people, and the novels of James are, in comparison with the novels of to-day as old-fashioned as are the plays of Massinger in comparison with those of Bernard Shaw.
James has been compared to Dumas, and there are many things in common between the two authors—their voluminous publications, their bent towards the historical, and their use of an amanuensis. A critic, not very well disposed towards James, says in regard to this comparison, “both had a certain gift of separating from the picturesque parts of history what could without difficulty be worked up into picturesque fiction, and both were possessed of a ready pen. Here, however, the likeness ends. Of purely literary talent, James had little. His plots are poor, his descriptions weak, his dialogue often below even a fair average, and he was deplorablyprone to repeat himself.”[68]This harsh judgment appears to me to be far too severe. His descriptions are not weak, and he surely had an advantage over Dumas in the matter of decency and morality.
But the most ardent admirers of this hard-working and conscientious toiler in the fields of literature must own that in all his multitudinous pages he has not given to the world a single character which has endured in the popular mind, and the Podsnap virtue of having written no word which could bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, cannot remedy this flaw in his title. Writers who rival him in productiveness but who are in respects inferior to him, have nevertheless secured a more permanent place in the hall of fame, because they have been able to give to some of their personages a real and distinctive life. Leather-Stocking and Long Tom Coffin shine forth from the many wearisome chapters of Fenimore Cooper, Count Fosco and Captain Wragge from the ephemeral volumes of Wilkie Collins, and Mrs. Proudie from the placid chronicles of Anthony Trollope, but they have no kinsmen in the works of James. Even in the historical stories no individual stands forth like Louis XI. inQuentin Durwardor Rienzi in Bulwer’s stirring tale. Nor has he left to posterity any brillianttour de forcelike the “Dick Turpin’s Ride” of Harrison Ainsworth.
Whatever may be said of the diffuseness and sameness of the stories, of their want of definite plan, their lack of strength in the development of the characters who throng their pages, and the evidence they afford of hasty composition, it must be admitted that they areclean and dignified in tone and that they display a wonderful acquaintance with history as well as a faithful and conscientious use of materials gathered with infinite pains and laborious research. These qualities, however, are not those which ensure literary immortality; and while it is possible that the best of the books may find from time to time readers incited to peruse them by a certain curiosity, and while the lovers of good stories may enjoy them, it is not likely that they will ever rank with the novels of Scott, of Thackeray, of Dickens, or even of Marryat and Lever, although they may occupy a place on the shelves of our libraries by the side of the old romances of the period ofAmadis de Gaulor the forgotten tales of the younger Crébillon.