“—You either married man or wifeBy household brawles or contentious strife,Or otherwise, in bed or at board,Did offend each other in deed or word,Or, since the ParishclerksaidAmen,You wish’t yourselves unmarried agen,Or in a twelve months time and a day,Repented not in thought, any way;But continued true and just in desireAs when you joyn’d hands in the holy quire.”
“—You either married man or wifeBy household brawles or contentious strife,Or otherwise, in bed or at board,Did offend each other in deed or word,Or, since the ParishclerksaidAmen,You wish’t yourselves unmarried agen,Or in a twelve months time and a day,Repented not in thought, any way;But continued true and just in desireAs when you joyn’d hands in the holy quire.”
“—You either married man or wifeBy household brawles or contentious strife,Or otherwise, in bed or at board,Did offend each other in deed or word,Or, since the ParishclerksaidAmen,You wish’t yourselves unmarried agen,Or in a twelve months time and a day,Repented not in thought, any way;But continued true and just in desireAs when you joyn’d hands in the holy quire.”
“—You either married man or wife
By household brawles or contentious strife,
Or otherwise, in bed or at board,
Did offend each other in deed or word,
Or, since the ParishclerksaidAmen,
You wish’t yourselves unmarried agen,
Or in a twelve months time and a day,
Repented not in thought, any way;
But continued true and just in desire
As when you joyn’d hands in the holy quire.”
In 1851 “the lord of the manor declined to give the flitch, but the claimants obtained one from a publicsubscription, and a concourse of some three thousand people assembled in Easton Park in their honour.”[21]In 1855 Ainsworth himself offered to give the flitch. The candidates were Mr. James Barlow and his wife, of Chipping Ongar, and the Chevalier de Chatelain and his wife, the last named being well known in literary circles. They were old friends of Ainsworth. I have thirteen letters from Ainsworth to the Chevalier and his wife, of the most intimate character, dating from 1845 to 1880. In one of them, written at Brighton on October 22, 1854, he says:
“My dear Chevalier: Thanks for your charming little volume, full of graceful translations. You have done me the favor I find to include the ‘Custom of Dunmow’ in your collection. Within the last few days I have received another version in French of the same ballad by Jacques Desrosiers. The Tale has been translated under the title of ‘Un An et un Jour’, and published at Bruxelles. You will be glad to hear that a worthy personage has announced his intention of bequeathing a sum sufficient for the perpetual maintenance of the good old custom.”
On January 5, 1855, he writes to Madame de Chatelain:
“I need scarcely say, I hope, that I shall be most happy to entertain your claim for the Flitch—and though I believe a prior claim has been made, I will gladly give a second prize rather than you should experience any disappointment.” On July 19, 1855, she received the flitch of bacon in the Windmill Field, Dunmore.
In 1856 “Spendthrift” appeared, and in 1857 “Merwyn Clitheroe” which he had begun in 1851 but hadabandoned after a few weekly numbers. In 1860 he published “Ovingdean Grange, a Tale of the South Downs.” The two books last mentioned were partly autobiographical.
It is unnecessary to do more than to enumerate his later productions, for although they showed the scrupulous care which he exercised in respect to details and the pains he took to be accurate in historical references, they were never as popular as his earlier works. The list is quite imposing: “Constable of the Tower,” 1861; “The Lord Mayor of London,” 1862; “Cardinal Pole,” 1863; “John Law, the Projector,” 1864; “The Spanish Match, or Charles Stuart in Madrid,” 1865; “Myddleton Pomfret,” 1865; “The Constable de Bourbon,” 1866; “Old Court,” 1867; “The South Sea Bubble,” 1868; “Hilary St. Ives,” 1869; “Talbot Harland,” 1870; “Tower Hill,” 1871; “Boscobel,” 1872; “The Manchester Rebels, or the Fatal ’45.” 1873; “Merry England,” 1874; “The Goldsmith’s Wife,” 1874; “Preston Fight, or the Insurrection of 1715,” 1875; “Chetwynd Calverley,” 1876; “The Leaguer of Lathom, a Tale of the Civil War in Lancashire,” 1876; “The Fall of Somerset,” 1877; “Beatrice Tyldesley,” 1878; “Beau Nash,” 1879; “Auriol and other tales,” 1880; and “Stanley Brereton,” 1881. Not a single one of this long catalogue is now remembered. Percy Fitzgerald in an article inBelgravia(November, 1881), said that the description of Ainsworth’s books in the Catalogue of the British Museum filled no fewer than forty pages. Mr. Axon reduces the number of pages to twenty-three, but that is very extensive. In addition to the prose works whose titles are given above, he published in 1855 “Ballads, Romantic, Fantastical and Humorous,” which wasillustrated by Sir John Gilbert and which contains some spirited and picturesque verses; and in 1859 “The Combat of the Thirty,” a translation of a Breton lay of the middle ages, which was included in the later editions of the “Ballads.”
In 1881 Ainsworth was nearly seventy-seven, and approaching the end of his career. On September 15 in that year, the Mayor of Manchester, Sir Thomas Baker, gave a banquet in his honor at the town hall. In proposing the health of the guest, the Mayor said that in the Manchester public free libraries there were two hundred and fifty volumes of his works. “During the last twelve months”, said the Mayor, “those volumes have been read seven thousand six hundred and sixty times, mostly by the artisan class of readers. And this means that twenty volumes of his works are being perused in Manchester by readers of the free libraries every day all the year through.”
A report of this banquet is given as an introduction to “Stanley Brereton”, which was dedicated to the Mayor. I have a copy of the “official” report, a pamphlet of twenty-nine pages, whereof forty copies were printed “for private circulation only”. The speeches are characteristic of English dinners, and some of them are funny without any intention on the part of the speakers. The Mayor rather astonishes us by saying that the six of the most popular works, in the order in which they were most read, were “The Tower of London”, “The Lancashire Witches”, “Old St. Paul’s”, “Windsor Castle”, “The Miser’s Daughter”, and “The Manchester Rebels”. But this was in Manchester. Ainsworth’s response was modest and graceful, and he dwelt upon his delight in being styled “the Lancashire novelist”. His old friend Crossley and Edmund Yateswere among the orators of the occasion, the latter responding to the toast of “The Press”, and saying of “after-dinner Manchester” that “even in the midst of enjoyment he would hazard the friendly criticism that though it was eloquent it was not concise.” The account ends with these significant words: “This concluded the list of toasts, and the company shortly afterwards broke up.” One who reads the story of the feast is not surprised at this, for the speeches were enough to break up any company; but the tribute to Ainsworth was well-meant and sincere.
My English friend, the prospective biographer of Ainsworth, takes issue with me on my assertion that his favorite is an author who has fallen into oblivion and whose books are not read by the present generation. He refers of course to English readers, and assures me that the stories are still popular in England. “Routledge”, he says, “issues a vast number of cheap editions of his works, and in addition many other publishing firms have recently issued editions of the better known novels. This has been done by Methuen, Newnes, Gibbings, Mudie, Treherne, and Grant Richards, to mention a few that I recollect at the minute.” It is doubtless true that there is a demand for the tales among the less cultivated English readers, but it can not, I think, be maintained successfully that the author has a permanent and enduring literary fame. Perhaps I am influenced in my opinion by the American lack of acquaintance with Ainsworth and his works.
Contemporaneous memoirs and records are full of testimony to the personal popularity of Ainsworth in the social life of the day. He entertained freely, and was a favorite guest. Dickens and Thackeray were both fond of him, although Blanchard Jerrold, as wehave seen, doubted Thackeray’s friendship. Forster says in hisDickens, referring to the periodcirca1838, “A friend now especially welcome, too, was the novelist, Mr. Ainsworth, who shared with us incessantly for the three following years in the companionship which began at his house; with whom we visited, during two of these years, friends of arts and letters in his native Manchester, from among whom Dickens brought away his Brothers Cheeryble, and to whose sympathy in tastes and pursuits, accomplishments in literature, open-hearted, generous ways, and cordial hospitality, many of the pleasures of later years are due.” I have a little note of his, addressed to Dickens, saying: “Don’t forget your engagement to dine with me on Tuesday next. I shall send a refresher to Forster the unpunctual.” There is also this letter from Dickens—strangely enough in black ink and not the blue which he employed in later days.
“Devonshire Terrace,Fifth February, 1841.
“Devonshire Terrace,Fifth February, 1841.
“Devonshire Terrace,Fifth February, 1841.
“Devonshire Terrace,
Fifth February, 1841.
My Dear Ainsworth—
My Dear Ainsworth—
My Dear Ainsworth—
My Dear Ainsworth—
Will you tell me where that Punch is to be bought, what one is to ask for, and what the cost is. It has made me very uneasy in my mind.
Mind—I deny the beer. It is very excellent; but that it surpasses that meeker, and gentler, and brighter ale of mine (oh how bright it is!) I never will admit. My gauntlet lies upon the earth.
Yours, in defiance,Charles Dickens.”
Yours, in defiance,Charles Dickens.”
Yours, in defiance,Charles Dickens.”
Yours, in defiance,
Charles Dickens.”
One of my Thackeray letters is addressed to Ainsworth, dated in 1844, inviting him to dine at the Garrick, with the characteristic remark, “I want to ask 3 or 4 of the littery purfession.” Tom Moore in hisJournal (November 21, 1838) mentions a dinner at Bentley’s where the company was “all the veryhaut tonof the literature of the day,” including himself (named first), Jerdan, Ainsworth, Lever, Dickens, Campbell, and Luttrell. We read in Mackay’s “Breakfasts with Rogers” of a breakfast where he met Sydney Smith, Daniel O’Connell, Sir Augustus D’Este and Ainsworth. These references might be multiplied almost indefinitely. According to Hazlitt, Ainsworth had one rule, as a host, which in these days of studied unpunctuality might be considered unduly vigorous; when he had friends to dinner he locked his outside gate at the stroke of the clock, and no late comer was admitted.
It is not to be denied that he had his foibles and that he also had his quarrels—few men of any force or strength of will and character can escape quarrels. That he fell out with Cruikshank and Bentley is not to be wondered at, for almost everybody did that, sooner or later. His passage at arms with Francis Mahony—the Father Prout of “Bells of Shandon” fame—is more to be regretted, but he was in no way to blame. He behaved very well under trying conditions. The trouble dated from Ainsworth’s secession fromBentley’s Miscellany—what Mr. Bates calls his “dis-Bentleyfication,” and, ignoring their past intimacy and cordial companionship, Mahony sneered at the man “who left the tale of Crichton half told, and had taken up with ‘Blueskin,’ ‘Jack Sheppard,’ ‘Flitches of Bacon,’ and ‘Lancashire Witches,’ and thought such things were ‘literature,’”—following it up with some rather poor and clumsy verse-libels, flat, stale and unprofitable—utterly unworthy of a moment’s time. Ainsworth replied most courteously in a parody of Prout, called “The Magpie of Marwood; an humble Ballade,” which none couldcondemn as either coarse or brutal. When Mahony came back at his former friend with quotations from private letters asking eulogistic notices and literary aid, and when he said “Has he forgotten that he was fed at the table of Lady Blessington? not merely for the sake of companionship, for a duller dog never sat at a convivial board,” he showed himself a despicable cad, a perfidious creature, well deserving the name of “Jesuit scribe,” which was about all the retort which Ainsworth thought fit to make.
The kindly and forgiving nature of Ainsworth is shown by a letter in my collection, written on February 24, 1880, to Charles Kent. He says: “I always regret the misunderstanding that occurred between myself and Mahony, but any offence that was given him on my part was unintentional, and I cannot help thinking he was incited to the attack he made upon me by Bentley. Be this as it may, I have long ceased to think about it, and now only dwell upon the agreeable parts of his character. He was an admirable scholar, a wit, a charming poet, and generally—not always—a very genial companion.” These pleasant remarks about the man who had grossly insulted him, are quite characteristic and demonstrate the sweet reasonableness with which he treated men like Cruikshank and Father Prout.
As Blanchard Jerrold says,Punchwas often quite severe on Ainsworth. Spielmann in hisHistory of Punchconfirms the statement:
“Harrison Ainsworth, as much for his good looks and his literary vanity, as for his tendency to reprint his romances in such journals as came under his editorship, was the object of constant banter. An epigram put the case very neatly:
“Says Ainsworth to Colburn,‘A plan in my pate is,To give my romance asA supplement,gratis.’Says Colburn to Ainsworth,‘Twill do very nicely,For that will be chargingIt’s value precisely.’
“Says Ainsworth to Colburn,‘A plan in my pate is,To give my romance asA supplement,gratis.’Says Colburn to Ainsworth,‘Twill do very nicely,For that will be chargingIt’s value precisely.’
“Says Ainsworth to Colburn,‘A plan in my pate is,To give my romance asA supplement,gratis.’Says Colburn to Ainsworth,‘Twill do very nicely,For that will be chargingIt’s value precisely.’
“Says Ainsworth to Colburn,
‘A plan in my pate is,
To give my romance as
A supplement,gratis.’
Says Colburn to Ainsworth,
‘Twill do very nicely,
For that will be charging
It’s value precisely.’
“Harrison Ainsworth could not have his portrait painted, nor write a novel of crime and sensation, without being regarded as a convenient peg for pleasantry.”
There seems to have been, unluckily, a shadow of a difference with William Jerdan, of theLiterary Gazette, whose diffuse and often tediousAutobiographywas published in 1853. “Among incipient authors,” says Jerdan, “whom (to use a common phrase) it was in my power to ‘take by the hand’ and pull up the steep, few had heartier help than Mr. William Harrison Ainsworth, whose literary propensities were strong in youth, and who has since made so wide a noise in the world of fictitious and periodical literature. From some cause or another, which I cannot comprehend, he has given a notice to my publishers, to forbid the use of any of his correspondence in these Memoirs, though on looking over a number of his letters I can discover nothing discreditable to him, or aught of which he has reason to be ashamed.” I think it is not difficult to understand what Jerdan seemed unable to comprehend. Ainsworth did not care to have his confidential requests for good notices go out to the public. It was a weakness of his to beg for complimentary reviews and Father Prout had made the most of it; small wonder that he dreaded a repetition of the experience. Jerdan gives, however, a very kindly estimate of Ainsworth.[22]
In Mr. Axon’s memoir, he says that an engraving by W. C. Edwards of a portrait of Ainsworth by Maclise appeared on the frontispiece of Laman Blanchard’s biographical sketch in the first number of “Ainsworth’s Magazine”. A second portrait by the same artist, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844, was the frontispiece of the fifth volume of the magazine. A portrait by Count D’Orsay dated November 21, 1844, appeared in the seventh volume. To this period belong the full-length portrait by the elder Pickersgill, the property of Chetham’s Hospital, but now in the Manchester Reference Library, and a portrait by R. J. Lane. The good looks of Ainsworth have been referred to several times; they were the good looks of the days of William IV, but the Maclise and Pickersgill portraits as well as the later Fry photograph have a dandified appearance which in our modern eyes detracts from true dignity. The sketch in theMaclise Galleryshows him at his best, in his Fraser days, a fine and gallant figure, without the hideous whiskers of the type beloved by Tittlebat Titmouse. “This delicately drawn portrait of the novelist” comments Mr. Bates, “just at the time that he had achieved his reputation,’—hair curled and oiled as that of an Assyrian bull, the gothic arch coat-collar, the high neckcloth, and the tightly strapped trousers—exhibits as fine an example as we could wish for, of the dandy of the D’Orsay type and pre-Victorian epoch.”
He lived at one time at the “Elms” at Kilburn, and later at Kensal Manor House on the Harrow Road. Afterwards he lived at Brighton and at Tunbridge Wells. When he grew old he resided with his oldest daughter, Fannie, at Hurstpierpoint. He had also a residence at St. Mary’s Road, Reigate, Surrey, and therehe died, on Sunday, January 3d, 1882. On January 9th, he was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, with a quiet and simple ceremonial as he wished. His widow and three daughters by his first marriage survived him.
Ainsworth had no power to portray character or to analyze motives; his genius was purely descriptive. He had a strong literary bent, and he was a man of letters in the true sense. He did not possess the spark which gives immortality, but he toiled faithfully and his work was well done even if he did not reach the standard of the greatest of his contemporaries.
Perhaps his merits were characterized rather too ornately in theSunof August 2, 1852, where a reviewer said:
“His romances yield evidence, in a thousand particulars, that his temperament is exquisitely sensitive, not less of the horrible than of the beautiful. We have it in those landscapes variously coloured with the glow of Claude and the gloom of Salvator Rosa—in those lyrics grave as the songs of the Tyrol, or ghastly as the incantations of the Brocken; but still more in those creations, peopling the one and chaunting the other, namely, some of them as the models of Ostade, and others wild as the wildest dreams of Fuseli. Everywhere, however, in these romances a preference for thegrimliermoods of imagination renders itself apparent. The author’s purpose, so to speak, gravitates towards the preternatural. Had he been a painter instead of a romancist, he could have portrayed the agonies of Ugolino, as Da Vinci portrayed the ‘rotello del fico,’ in lines the most haggard and lines the most cadaverous. As a writer of fiction, his place among his contemporaries may, we conceive, be very readily indicated. He occupiesthe same position in the present that Radcliffe occupied in a former generation.”
Mr. Axon’s estimate is less gorgeous but more convincing. “The essence of his power was that same faculty by which the Eastern story-teller holds spellbound a crowd of hearers in the street of Cairo. It is this fascination which enables Ainsworth, at his best, to compel the reader’s attention, and hurries him forward from the first page to the last of some tale of ‘daring-do’, of crime, adventure, sorrow and love. The reader who has listened to the beginning does not willingly turn aside until the story is completed and he has seen all the puppets play their part with that skilful semblance of truth that seems more real than reality itself.”
It is to be hoped that the forthcoming biography will do ample justice to the memory of this charming literary personage, and may revive the fading interest in him and in his works.