Chapter 7

“What claim had one of these of whom I have been speaking but genius? What return of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to all? What punishment befell those who were unfortunate among them but that which follows reckless habits and careless lives? For these faults a wit must suffer like the dullest prodigal that ever ran in debt. He must pay the tailor if he wears the coat; his children must go in rags if he spends his money at the tavern; he can’t come to London and be made Lord Chancellor if he stops on the road and gambles away his last shilling at Dublin, and he must pay the social penalty of these follies, too, and expect that the world will shun the man of bad habits; that women will avoid the man of loose life; that prudent folks will close their doors as a precaution, and before a demand should be made on their pockets by the needy prodigal.”

There is no gainsaying all this, it is so highly respectable, and I would endorse its application as heartily as those did who once so loudly applauded it, if (and there is, you know,muchvirtue in an “if”) the discouragement spoken of had really been awarded to the vices and follies and not to the genius; whereas it must be patent to all who have studied the social life of the last century, as Thackeray did, that the direct reverse of this was the case—that such bad habits and such loose lives were absolutely the chief conditions upon which the wits of society were patronised and encouraged. Therefore a degree of hardness and cruelty in the rigid and virtuous superiority of this great writer, who, happily, born in a more refined and purer time, so magnifies the vices of the unfortunate dead, in order to lessen the pity and respect which their greatness won for them. It is this which I do not like to associate with the memory of our great novelist.

Poor, half-starved Robert Burns, chained to the oar of impecuniosity, toiling like a galley-slave, as he said, for the means of supporting his parents and seizing every spare moment for such intellectual improvement as was within his reach, had written most of his finest works before the patronage of the great introduced him to their bacchanalian revels, and carried him as a wonder, and an extraordinary novelty (a peasant poet), into the very best Edinburgh society for a season; during which, by dining out with the noble and great, he ran a serious risk of dying at home through starvation.

It can hardly be said that eighteenth-century patronage and appreciation did much for him, or for us. It won him perhaps the dangerous and trying occupation of exciseman, at a salary of £70 a year: it matured, if it did not absolutely create, the bad habits which plunged him into pecuniary cares and difficulties, weakened his intellectual stamina, and destroyed his self-respect. He was witty, eloquent, amusing, a genius, and a wonder; but when he ceased to be a novelty, the idol of society was ruthlessly cast aside, to live or die, any how he could, and we find him copying music to procure food for himself and those dear to him. Dissipation and trouble carried him off in the prime of his manhood, and the full maturity of his genius, when without such patronage as Thackeray believed in, seemingly, he might have achieved triumphs loftier than those in the full pride of which every patriot has a share.

An extract from a letter written by Burns to Thomson on the 19th of July, 1796, says:

“After all my boasted independence, cursed necessity compels me to implore you for five pounds. A cruel scoundrel of a haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am dying, has commenced a process and will infallibly put me in jail. Do for God’s sake send me that sum, and by return of post. Forgive me this earnestness; but the horrors of a jail have made me half disheartened; I do not ask all this gratuitously; for upon returning health I promise, and engage to furnish you with five pounds’ worth of the neatest song-genius you have seen.”

Robert Bloomfield did not find those generous and helpful friends of genius whom the imagination of Thackeray created to people the eighteenth century. He, like Burns, was a farmer’s boy, who afterward became a shoemaker’s errand-boy, living in a garret at 7, Fisher’s Court, Coleman Street, in which he and four others, one being his brother, worked, and slept on “turn-up” beds. There he fetched the dinners from the cookshop, did the inferior part of the work, and ran errands; taught himself to read by the aid of borrowed newspapers and a little dictionary, bought for him at a second-hand stall, for fourpence, by one of his fellow-workers, and by listening to an eloquent dissenting minister named Fawcett, acquired the proper pronunciation of words. He began verse-writing at sixteen, and at that age also began to instruct his brother and his partners in the Fisher’s Court garret (for which they paid five shillings a week), and in another “parlour next the sky” in Blue Hart Court, Bell Alley, where a fellow-lodger made him inexpressibly happy by the loan of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ and Thomson’s ‘Seasons.’ When he fell in love with a young woman named Church, daughter of a boat-builder in the Government Yard at Woolwich, he sold his most precious possession (to purchase which he had practised much self-denial), his fiddle, on which he had taught himself to play. Writing to his brother, he said, “I have sold my fiddle and got a wife.”

His brother says, “Like most poor men, he got a wife first, and had to get household stuff afterwards.” It took him some years to get out of ready furnished lodgings. At length, by hard working, etc., he acquired a bed of his own, and hired the room up one pair of stairs at 14, Bell Alley, Coleman Street; and there,as he worked unaided by costly writing materials, amongst the noise and bustle of seven other workmen who, conjointly with himself, had hired a garret in the same house as their work-room, he composed his famous poem ‘The Farmer’s Boy,’ the latter portion of his ‘Autumn,’ and the whole of his ‘Winter.’ Not a line of either was committed to paper before each was corrected, altered, improved, and finally completed.

The poet Crabbe was another eighteenth-century genius who failed to find the generous, ever-ready patronage and friendship, whereof Thackeray said, “It would hardly be grateful to alter my old opinion that we (men of letters) do meet with good will and kindness, with generous and helping hands, in the time of our necessity; with cordial and friendly recognition.” Having failed in his medical practice at Aldborough, in Suffolk, where, in 1789 he was born, Crabbe borrowed five pounds, and with that sum came to London. Taking lodgings near the Exchange, he began his literary career full of hope and vigour. But the booksellers, Dodsley and Becket, civilly declined his productions; and when he published some poems cheaply at his own expense his publisher failed; and the poor poet’s little, carefully husbanded money being exhausted, he applied to Lord North for assistance,—in vain. Then he addressed verses to Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who said in reply, “his avocations did not leave him leisure to read verse.” For a time he lived by selling his clothes, and pawning his watch and surgical instruments; then his books were reluctantly sold, and then debt came, and he was threatened with imprisonment. In the midst of these anxious cares, fears, and sufferings, with starvation staring him in the face, he bade the muse a sorrowful adieu, and sought work as a druggist’s assistant. He had but eightpence in the world when he wrote to Edmund Burke, and himself left the letter at that eminent statesman’s house in Charles Street. Begging letters from starving poets and literary men were familiar enough in those days, and Burke received more than his fair share of them. Crabbe has himself told us how, weary, penniless, and hungry, being afraid to go back to his lodging, he traversed Westminster Bridge all throughout the night following the delivery of that letter until daybreak. The letter itself, a memorable curiosity of impecuniosity, I here append:

“To Edmund Burke, Esq.“Sir,—I am sensible that I need even your talents to apologize for the freedom I now take, but I have a plea which, however simply urged, will with a mind like yours, sir, procure me pardon. I am one of those outcasts on the world who are without a friend, without employment, without bread.“Pardon me a short preface. I had a partial father who gave me a better education than his broken fortune would have allowed, and a better than was necessary, as he could give me that only. I was designed for the profession of Physic; but not having the wherewithal to complete the necessary studies, the design but served to convince me of a parent’s affection and the error it had occasioned. In April last I came to London with three pounds, and flattered myself this would be sufficient to supply me with the common necessaries of life till my abilities should procure me more; of these I had the highest opinion, and a poetical vanity contributed to my delusion. I knew little of the world and had read books only. I wrote, and fancied perfection in my compositions; when I wanted bread they promised me affluence and soothed me with dreams of reputation, whilst my appearance subjected me to contempt. In time reflection and want have shown me my mistake. I see my trifles in that which I think the true light, and whilst I deem them such have yet the opinion that holds them superior to the common run of poetical publications.“I had some knowledge of the late Mr. Nassau, the brother of Lord Rochford; in consequence of which I asked his lordship’s permission to inscribe my little work to him, knowing it to be free from all political allusions and personal abuse. It was no material point to me to whom it was dedicated, his lordship thought it none to him, and obligingly consented to my request.“I was told a subscription would be the more profitable method for me, and therefore endeavoured to circulate copies of the enclosed proposals.“I am afraid, sir, I disgust you with this very drill narration, but believe me punished in the misery that occasions it. You will conclude that during this time I must have been at more expense than I could afford—indeed, the most parsimonious could not have avoided it. The printer deceived me, and my little business has had every delay. The people with whom I live perceive my situation and find me to be indigent and without friends. About ten days since I was compelled to give a note for seven pounds to avoid an arrest for about double that sum which I owe. I wrote to every friend I had, but my friends are poor likewise; the time of payment approached, and I ventured to represent my case to Lord Rochford. I begged to be credited for this sum till I received it of my subscribers, which I believe will be within one month: but to this letter I had no reply, and I have probably offended by my importunity. Having used every honest means in vain, I yesterday confessed my inability, and obtained with much entreaty and as the greatest favour aweek’s forbearance, when I am positively told that I must pay the money or prepare for a prison.“You will guess the purpose of so long an introduction. I appeal to you, sir, as a good, and let me add, a great man. I have no other pretensions to your favour than that I am an unhappy one. It is not easy to support the thought of confinement, and I am coward enough to dread such an end to my suspense.“Can you, sir, in any degree aid me with propriety?“Will you ask any demonstration of my veracity?“I have imposed upon myself, but I have been guilty of no other imposition. Let me, if possible, interest your compassion. I know those of rank and fashion are teased with frequent petitions, and are compelled to refuse the requests even of those whom they know to be in distress; it is therefore with a distant hope I ventured to solicit such favour, but you will forgive me, sir, if you do not think proper to relieve. It is impossible that sentiments like yours can proceed from any but a humane and generous heart.“I will call upon you, sir, to-morrow, and if I have not the happiness to obtain credit with you I must submit to my fate. My existence is a pain to myself, and every one near and dear to me are distressed in my distress. My connections, once the source of happiness, embitter the reverse of my fortune, and I have only to hope a speedy end to a life so unpromisingly begun, in which (though it ought not to be boasted of) I can reap some consolation from looking to the end of it.“I am, sir, with the greatest respect,“Your obedient and most humble servant,“George Crabbe.”

“To Edmund Burke, Esq.

“Sir,—I am sensible that I need even your talents to apologize for the freedom I now take, but I have a plea which, however simply urged, will with a mind like yours, sir, procure me pardon. I am one of those outcasts on the world who are without a friend, without employment, without bread.

“Pardon me a short preface. I had a partial father who gave me a better education than his broken fortune would have allowed, and a better than was necessary, as he could give me that only. I was designed for the profession of Physic; but not having the wherewithal to complete the necessary studies, the design but served to convince me of a parent’s affection and the error it had occasioned. In April last I came to London with three pounds, and flattered myself this would be sufficient to supply me with the common necessaries of life till my abilities should procure me more; of these I had the highest opinion, and a poetical vanity contributed to my delusion. I knew little of the world and had read books only. I wrote, and fancied perfection in my compositions; when I wanted bread they promised me affluence and soothed me with dreams of reputation, whilst my appearance subjected me to contempt. In time reflection and want have shown me my mistake. I see my trifles in that which I think the true light, and whilst I deem them such have yet the opinion that holds them superior to the common run of poetical publications.

“I had some knowledge of the late Mr. Nassau, the brother of Lord Rochford; in consequence of which I asked his lordship’s permission to inscribe my little work to him, knowing it to be free from all political allusions and personal abuse. It was no material point to me to whom it was dedicated, his lordship thought it none to him, and obligingly consented to my request.

“I was told a subscription would be the more profitable method for me, and therefore endeavoured to circulate copies of the enclosed proposals.

“I am afraid, sir, I disgust you with this very drill narration, but believe me punished in the misery that occasions it. You will conclude that during this time I must have been at more expense than I could afford—indeed, the most parsimonious could not have avoided it. The printer deceived me, and my little business has had every delay. The people with whom I live perceive my situation and find me to be indigent and without friends. About ten days since I was compelled to give a note for seven pounds to avoid an arrest for about double that sum which I owe. I wrote to every friend I had, but my friends are poor likewise; the time of payment approached, and I ventured to represent my case to Lord Rochford. I begged to be credited for this sum till I received it of my subscribers, which I believe will be within one month: but to this letter I had no reply, and I have probably offended by my importunity. Having used every honest means in vain, I yesterday confessed my inability, and obtained with much entreaty and as the greatest favour aweek’s forbearance, when I am positively told that I must pay the money or prepare for a prison.

“You will guess the purpose of so long an introduction. I appeal to you, sir, as a good, and let me add, a great man. I have no other pretensions to your favour than that I am an unhappy one. It is not easy to support the thought of confinement, and I am coward enough to dread such an end to my suspense.

“Can you, sir, in any degree aid me with propriety?

“Will you ask any demonstration of my veracity?

“I have imposed upon myself, but I have been guilty of no other imposition. Let me, if possible, interest your compassion. I know those of rank and fashion are teased with frequent petitions, and are compelled to refuse the requests even of those whom they know to be in distress; it is therefore with a distant hope I ventured to solicit such favour, but you will forgive me, sir, if you do not think proper to relieve. It is impossible that sentiments like yours can proceed from any but a humane and generous heart.

“I will call upon you, sir, to-morrow, and if I have not the happiness to obtain credit with you I must submit to my fate. My existence is a pain to myself, and every one near and dear to me are distressed in my distress. My connections, once the source of happiness, embitter the reverse of my fortune, and I have only to hope a speedy end to a life so unpromisingly begun, in which (though it ought not to be boasted of) I can reap some consolation from looking to the end of it.

“I am, sir, with the greatest respect,“Your obedient and most humble servant,“George Crabbe.”

Burke replied immediately, appointing an interview, from which dated the change in Crabbe’s fortune. Money was given to him, apartments provided for him at Beaconsfield, where he was treated as if he belonged to the generous statesman’s own family,—the very publisher who had refused his poems was ready enough to publish them when Edmund Burke suggested his doing so, and even Lord Thurlow gave him a hundred-pound note. Through his patron’s influence the surgeon afterwards became a clergyman and chaplain to the Duke of Rutland. In 1807 the copyright of Crabbe’s poems was sold for three thousand pounds.

Another article in Thackeray’s belief was, that “without necessity,” as he said inFraser’s Magazine(1846), “men of genius would not work at all, or very little. It does not follow,” said he, “that a man would produce a great work even if he had leisure. Squire Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon with his land, and his rents, and his arms over the porch, was not the workingShakespeare; and indolence, or contemplation if you like, is no unusual quality in literary men.”

The reader will find, in my chapter on the “Impecuniosity of Artists,” a curious contrast to this opinion in that expressed by Ruskin, in his ’Political Economy of Art.‘ Our great art critic draws a touching picture of the man of genius, toiling painfully through his early years of obscurity and neglect, yearning vainly for the peace and time requisite for producing great works. And Sir Bulwer Lytton, writing pathetically of poor Leman Blanchard, whom Thackeray knew personally, said,—

“Few men had experienced more to sour them, or had gone through the author’s hardening ordeal of narrow circumstances, of daily labour, and of that disappointment in the higher aims of ambition, which must almost inevitably befall those who retain ideal standards of excellenceto be reached but by time and leisure, and who are yet compelled to draw hourly upon immatured resources for the practical wants of life.”

Blanchard’s father was a painter and glazier in Southwark, who doubtless practised no little self-denial to give his son a good education, which could not but, as Sir Bulwer Lytton said, with a faint tinge of an old-world prejudice in his words, “unfit young Leman for the calling of his father;” “for it developed the abilities and bestowed the learning which may be said to lift a youth morally out of trade, and to refine him at once into a gentleman.” He began life at the desk as a clerk in the office of Mr. Charles Pearson, a proctor in Doctors’ Commons, and soon began to contribute some promising characteristic sketches to a publication calledThe Drama. As a clerk, he was not satisfactory nor satisfied; and his father was about to take him from it, and teach him his own trade, to avoid which Blanchard tried through the influence of the actor, Mr. Henry Johnston, to find an opening on the stage. The histrionic friend, however, painted the miseries and uncertainties of his profession in such gloomy and terrible colours, that the poor boy’s heart sank within him, and he had turned with despair to obscurity and trade when the manager of the Margate Theatre offered him an engagement, which he accepted. “A week,” says Mr. Buckstone, who was then on intimate terms with him, “was sufficient to disgust him with the beggary and drudgery of the country player’s life, and as there was no ‘Harlequin’ steaming it from Margate to London Bridge at that day, he performed his journey back on foot, havingon reaching Rochester but his last shilling—the poet’s veritable last shilling—in his pocket.”

Buckstone also wrote:

“At that time a circumstance occurred which my poor friend’s fate has naturally brought to my recollection. He came to me late one evening in a state of great excitement, informed me that his father had turned him out of doors, that he was utterly hopeless and wretched, and was resolved to destroy himself. I used my best endeavours to console him, to lead his thoughts to the future, and hope in what chance and perseverance might effect for him. Our discourse took a livelier turn, and after making up a bed on a sofa in my own room I retired to rest. I soon slept soundly, but was awakened by hearing a footstep descending the stairs. I looked towards the sofa and discovered he had left it. I heard the street-door close. I instantly hurried on my clothes and followed him. I called to him, but received no answer. I ran till I saw him in the distance, also running. I again called his name, I implored him to stop, but he would not answer me. Still continuing his pace, I became alarmed, and doubled my speed. I came up to him near Westminster Bridge; he was hurrying to the steps leading to the river. I seized him, he threatened to strike me if I did not release him. I called for the watch, I entreated him to return; he became more pacified, but still seemed anxious to escape from me. By entreaties, by every means of persuasion I could think of, by threats to call for help, I succeeded in taking him back.”

After that desperate attempt, Blanchard obtained work as a printer’s reader with Messrs. Bayliss, of Fleet Street.

Thackeray summed up his poor friend’s condition at this time thus briefly:

“The young fellow, forced to the proctor’s desk, quite angry with the drudgery, theatre-stricken, poetry-stricken, writing dramatic sketches in Barry Cornwall’s manner, spouting ‘Leonidas’ before a manager, driven away starving from home, penniless and full of romance, courting his beautiful young wife.... Then there comes that pathetic little outbreak of despair, when the poor young fellow is nearly giving up, his father banishes him, no one will buy his poetry, he has no chance on his darling theatre, no chance of the wife that he is longing for. Why not finish life at once? He has read ‘Werter,’ and can understand suicide. ‘None,’ he says in a sonnet,‘None, not the hoariest sage, may tell of allThe strong heart struggles, wills, before it fall.’If respectability wanted to point a moral, isn’t there one here? Eschew poetry—avoid the theatre—stick to your business—do not read German novels—do not marry at twenty: and yet the young poet marries at twenty in the teeth of poverty and experience, labours away notunsuccessfully, puts Pegasus into harness, rises in social rank and public estimation, brings up happily an affectionate family, gets for himself a circle of the warmest friends, and thus carries on for twenty years, when a providential calamity visits him and the poor wife almost together, and removes them both.”

‘None, not the hoariest sage, may tell of allThe strong heart struggles, wills, before it fall.’

If respectability wanted to point a moral, isn’t there one here? Eschew poetry—avoid the theatre—stick to your business—do not read German novels—do not marry at twenty: and yet the young poet marries at twenty in the teeth of poverty and experience, labours away notunsuccessfully, puts Pegasus into harness, rises in social rank and public estimation, brings up happily an affectionate family, gets for himself a circle of the warmest friends, and thus carries on for twenty years, when a providential calamity visits him and the poor wife almost together, and removes them both.”

The “providential calamity” came in the beginning of 1844, when Mrs. Blanchard, the most tenderly-loving of wives, and a devoted mother, was attacked by paralysis, which affected the brain, and terminated in madness, speedily followed by death. Partial paralysis seized her husband, and in a burst of delirium, “having his little boy in bed by his side, and having said the Lord’s prayer but a short time before, he sprang out of bed in the absence of his nurse (whom he had besought not to leave him), and made away with himself with a razor.... At the very moment of his death his friends were making the kindest and most generous exertions on his behalf.” Thackeray, whom I have quoted, adds: “Such a noble, loving, and generous creature is never without such. The world, it is pleasant to think, is always a good and gentle world to the gentle and good, and reflects the benevolence with which they regard it.” This is comfortable doctrine, and I would I were sure of its truthfulness. I wonder what poor Gerald Griffin would have said of it in the year 1825, when he was residing at 15, Paddington Street, Regent’s Park, London, and, writing to his mother in Ireland, said:

“Until within a short time back I have not had, since I left Ireland, a single moment’s peace of mind; constantly running backwards and forwards, and trying a thousand expedients, only to meet disappointments everywhere I turned.... I never will think or talk upon the subject again. It was such a year that I did not think it possible I could have outlived, and the very recollection of it puts me into the horrors.... When I first came to London my own self-conceit, backed by the opinion of one of the most original geniuses of the age, induced me to set about revolutionising the dramatic taste of the time by writing for the stage. Indeed, the design was formed and the first step taken (a couple of pieces written) in Ireland. I cannot with my present experience conceive anything more comical than my own views and measures at that time. A young gentleman totally unknown even to a single family in London coming into town with a few pounds in one pocket, and a brace of tragedies in the other, supposing that the one will set him up before the others are exhausted, is not a very novel, but a very laughable delusion. I would weary you, or I would carry you through a number of curious scenes into which it led me. Only imagine the model young Munstermanspouting his tragedy to a roomful of literary ladies and gentlemen; some of high consideration. The applause, however, of that circle on that night was sweeter, far sweeter, to me then than would be the bravos of a whole theatre at present, being united at the time to the confident anticipation of it.”

The result was his introduction to a manager—all the actors were eager to introduce him to their managers, and to one he went.

“He,” continues poor Griffin, “let down the pegs that made my music.... He was very polite, talked, and chatted about himself, and Shiel, and my excellent friend Banim. He kept my play four months, wrote me some nonsensical apologies about keeping it so long, and cut off to Ireland, leaving orders to have it sent to my lodgings without any opinion. I was quite surprised at this, and the more so that Banim, who is one of the most successful dramatic writers, at the same time saying, what indeed I found every person who had the least theatric knowledge join in, that I acted most unwisely in putting a play into an actor’s hands. It was then that I set about writing for those weekly publications, all of which, except theLiterary Gazette, cheated me most abominably. Then finding this to be the case, I wrote for the great magazines. My articles were generally inserted, but on calling for payment, seeing that I was but a poor inexperienced devil, there was so much shuffling and shabby work, that it disgusted me, and I gave up the idea of making money that way. I now lost heart for everything, got into the cheapest lodging I could make out, and there worked on, rather to divert my mind from the horrible gloom that I felt growing on me, in spite of myself, than with any hope of being remunerated. This, and the recollection of the expense I had put William to, and the fears that every moment became conviction that I should never be able to fulfil his hopes, or my own expectations, all came pressing together upon my mind and made me miserable. A thousand and a thousand times I wished that I could lie down quietly and die at once, and be forgotten for ever. I can describe to you my state of mind at this time. It was not an indolent despondency, for I was working hard as I am now, and it is only receiving money for the labour of those dreadful hours. I used not to see a face that I knew, and after sitting writing all day, when I walked in the streets in the evening, it actually seemed to me as if I was a different species altogether from the people about me. The fact was, from pure anxiety alone, I was more than half dead, and would most certainly have given up the ghost, I believe, were it not that by the merest accident on earth the library friend (Mr. Forster), who had procured me the unfortunate introduction a year before, dropped in one evening to have a talk with me. I had not seen him, nor anybody else that I knew, for some months, and he frightened me by saying I looked like a ghost. In a few days, however, a publisher of his acquaintance had got me some things to do, works to arrange, regulate, and revise, so he asked me if I would devote a few hours in the middle of every day to thepurpose for £50 a year. I did so, and among other things which I got to revise was a weekly fashionable journal.”

In this letter to his mother he said nothing of being without the commonest necessaries of life, of being ashamed to go out by daylight because his clothes were so shabby, of passing entire days without food—on one occasion no less than three.

There was in poor old Gerald Griffin no signs of that “indolence, or contemplation if you like,” which Thackeray considered “no unusual quality in the literary man.” With despair in his heart he still wrote on, simply because the labour in which he had delight physicked the pains of impecuniosity. But it was not under such conditions that even Griffin did his best work.

Mr. R. P. Gillies, in his ‘Memoirs of a Literary Veteran,’ tells how, when he was contemplating work of a higher and more ambitious character than he had then attempted, “in consequence of domestic anxieties little or nothing was accomplished.” He merely built some grand literary castles in the air (for which he was ridiculed in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ,’ under the name of “Kempferhausen”); but he says: “There were some awkward conditions attached to the basis of my aerial structures; for example, I must have unbroken tranquillity like that of an anchoret. There must be no shadow on the mind of worldly cares and perturbation, otherwise the spells would be broken.” Bread was his incentive to work, but it was the hack work of which Scott so bitterly complained, not the great work he yearned to accomplish, and could not for want of “peace and time.”

The above allusion is to Sir Walter in the zenith of his fame when, through “long-winded” publishers’ money being in immediate demand, he contemplated abandoning original fiction for the more rapid work of compilation. He wanted that to secure not only bread, but the peace and time which in common with Ruskin he thought essential to the production of great work; and he wrote in his diary, under the date December 18th, 1825: “The general knowledge that an author must write for bread, at least for improving his pittance, degrades him and his productions in the public eye. He falls into the second rank of estimation,

“‘When the harness sore galls, and the spurs his sides goad,And the high-mettled racer’s a hack on the road.’

It is a bitter thought, but, if tears start, let them flow.”

Thackeray, despite his self-satisfying opinion about the world’s being always “so good and gentle” to the “gentle and good,” here held Sir Walter’s opinion, for under the signature of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Esq., he wrote:

“Our calling is only sneered at because it is not well paid. The world has no other criterion for respectability. In Heaven’s name, what made the people talk of setting up a statue to Sir William Follet? What had he done? He had made thirty thousand pounds!... Directly the men of letters get rich they will come in for their share of honour too; and a future writer in this miscellany (Fraser’s) may be getting his guineas where we get one, and dining at Buckingham Palace while you and your humble servant, dear Padre Francisco, are glad to smoke our pipes over the sanded floor of the little D——.”

Sir Walter Scott’s opinion of writing under peaceful and under troublous circumstances was also shown in the following entry, under the same date as the above. It runs as follows:

“Poor T. S. called again yesterday. Through his incoherent miserable tale I could see that he had exhausted each access to credit, and yet fondly imagines that, bereft of all his accustomed indulgences, he can work with a literary zeal unknown to his happier days. I hope he may labour enough to gain the mere support of his family.”

Poverty is not, however, always fatal to the highest efforts of genius, even if it be not essential as an incentive to work; and there is often found in “the labour we delight in” that which “physics pain” (as Shakespeare said), even the pains of impecuniosity. Goldoni, speaking of his dramatic writings and consequent poverty, says, “Though in any other situation I might have been in easier circumstances, I should never have been so happy;” and who can doubt the happiness of the illustrious Linnæus when he was wandering a-foot with his stylus, magnifying-glass and baskets of plants, sharing the peasants’ rustic meals and homely shelter, when he gave his own name to the little Lapland flower now called the Linnæus Borealis, because it reminded him of his own position, being “a little northern plant, flowering early, depressed, abject, and long overlooked”?

Rousseau, writing of his works and life, says:

“It was in a small garret in the new street of St. Etienne du Mont, where I resided four years in the midst of physical suffering and domestic trouble, that I enjoyed the most exquisite pleasure of my life, that of writing and publishing my ‘Studies of Nature.’”

TheQuarterly Review(vol. viii.), comparing the writer who goes to his work in a spirit of love for it, and pride in it, with him who labours at it merely for the money it produces, says: “The one is like a thirsty hart that comes joyously to refresh itself at the water-brooks, and the other to the same beast panting and jaded with the dogs of hunger and necessity behind.”

When Olivet presented his elaborate edition of Cicero to the public, he said the glory and pleasure he had received in producing it were all he required by way of remuneration; money he refused. Pieresc, one of the most liberal and generous of men, although his fortune was a small one, loved learning only for its own sweet sake, and was never so happy as he was when shut up in his study amongst his books and MSS. “A literary man’s true wealth,” said he, “consists in works of art, the treasures of a library, and the affections of his fellow-students.” Lord Wodehouse, when re-writing his ‘Lectures on History,’ said: “The task rewarded him with that peculiar delight which has often been observed in the latter years of literary men, the delight of returning again to the studies of their youth and of feeling under the snows of age the cheerful memories of their spring.” Petrarch, writing of himself to a friend, said, “I read, I write, I think; such is my life and my pleasures as they were in my youth.”

Beranger, when he was living on the fifth story in the Boulevard St. Martin, “without money and with no certain prospect for the future,” as he himself said, had installed himself in his garret “with inexpressible satisfaction” because, as he wrote, “To live alone and to compose verses at my leisure appeared to me the very summit of felicity.” Speaking in the spirit of his “sky parlour,” he said: “What a beautiful prospect I enjoyed from its window! What delight I had to sit there in the evening hovering as it were over the immense city, from which a loud, hoarse murmur incessantly ascended, especially when there blended with it the noise and tumult of some great storm.” But there were two sides to this life, and time revealed both. With peace and time, bread and cheese and dreams of glory, the poet was content and happy, even when thin and pale; he grew every day so weak that his father used to say frequently, “I shall soon bury you.” But he was not dismayed, but starved and wrote on placidly enough until the fear of the conscription fell upon him. But even then, as he tells us, Providencebefriended him and out of evil brought good. He says: “I was bald at twenty-three in consequence, as I suppose, of continuous headaches. When the gendarmes came in search for conscripts I removed my hat. They looked at my bald head and were satisfied. They went away without me.”

Again he writes in his fragmentary autobiography:

“Fortune at last suffered herself to be touched by my sorrows. Three years had I been vainly seeking some humble form of employment, when, urged by a terrible necessity in the beginning of 1804, I sent a letter and verses to M. Lucien Bonaparte. My gold watch had been long where I left it pledged at the Mont de Piété. My wardrobe had dwindled to three old patched and often mended shirts, a threadbare overcoat also carefully adorned with patches, with one pair of trousers with a newly discovered hole in the knee, and a pair of boots which filled me with despair whenever I cleaned them, they grew so rapidly worse. I had posted to M. Bonaparte four or five hundred verses, and had told no one that I had done so, so many applications had been fruitless.”

One day, while sitting in his garret, needle in hand, eyeing lugubriously the rent in his trousers, and thinking over some bitter misanthropical verses which he was then writing, a letter was brought to him. It seemed a letter of consequence—the handwriting was strange. Trembling with excitement, he broke the seal. Joy! joy! joy! The Senator Bonaparte desired to see him!

“It was not,” he wrote, “my fortune that I first thought of, but Glory! My eyes were full of tears, and I thanked God, whom in my moments of prosperity I never forgot.”

And yet of such men as these Thackeray wrote: “Bread is the main incentive. Do not let us try to blink this fact or imagine that the men of the press are working for their honour and glory or go onward impelled by the inevitable afflatus of genius.”

The elder Disraeli, who said, “Great authors sustain their own genius by a sense of their own glory,” when Dr. Johnson expressed views on this subject according to some extent with Thackeray’s, called them “commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing views of human nature,” and complained that they lowered genius to the level of a machine, only to be set in action by a force exterior to itself.

But doctors disagree, and opinions on every subject alwaysdiffer. As mentioned by me elsewhere, one of the first poets who tried to live by his pen was Robert Greene, whose melancholy story is one of the most degrading and painful passages in literary biography. He lived in the days of good Queen Bess, and has left his own records of forlorn and miserable experience. Isaac Disraeli calls him “the great patriarch and primeval dealer in English literature, the most facetious, profligate, and indefatigable of the Scribleri family.” Quaint Anthony Wood, sneering at him and his entire fraternity, as he often did, said, “He wrote to maintain his wife and that high, loose course of living which poets generally follow;” one accusation being about as true as the other, for so far from maintaining his wife, he shamefully deserted both her and her child, leaving her foodless; and the Elizabethan poets are said on the whole to have been thrifty, god-fearing men, leading sober and steady lives. Charles Knight wrote of him as one who was made desperate and reckless by wrongs and neglect, but the pamphlet he wrote called ‘The Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts,’ taken with his other confession, shows him to have been, as Mr. A. H. Wall said (in his ‘Poets and Players of Shakespeare’s Time’), “an entirely bad and worthless fellow, who disgusted his fellow-poets of the Bankside, and plunged into such disgraceful excesses that he became shunned and contemned by them, finding a welcome nowhere but in the lowest haunts of vice and profligacy.” This was the man who fell foul of his fellow-players and the player-poets, calling them “apes,” “rude grooms,” “buckram gentlemen,” and “painted monsters,” who attacked young Shakespeare when he was dressing up, improving, and re-writing old plays, “as an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers,” and aroused our great bard’s many friends to anger and indignation by saying he had “a tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide, and was a bad actor, conceited enough to suppose himself as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best, one who was vain enough to imagine himself an absolute Johannes Factotum, the only Shakespeare in the country:” accusations which even Henry Cheetle, who was concerned in their publication, afterwards denounced as slanderous and spiteful, saying, “I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself hath seen his (Shakespeare’s) demeanour no less civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes, besides divers of worship have reported hisuprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art.”

Greene spent his time now in debauchery and drunkenness, now homeless, penniless, and starving, one extreme following the other with fearful frequency and rapidity. A contemporary poet, Gabriel Harvey, wrote of him as follows:

“Who in London hath not heard of his (Greene’s) dissolute and licentious living, his fond disguisinge of a Master of Arts with ruffianly hair, unseemly apparel, and more unseemly company, of his vaine glorious and Thrasonicall brassinge; his piperly extemporising and Tarletonizing; his apeish counterfeiting of every ridiculous and absurd toy ... hys villainous cogging and foisting, his monstrous swearinge and horrible forswearing, his impious profaning of sacred textes; his other scandalous and blasphemous ravinge: his riotous and outrageous surfeitinge: his continual shifting of lodgings; his plausable musteringe and banquettynge of roysterly acquaintance at his first comminge; his beggarly departing in every hostesses debt; his infamous resorting to the Banckside, Shoreditch, Southwarke, and other filthy haunts; his obscure lurkinge in basest corners; his pawning of his sword, cloake, and what not, when money came short?” etc.

a catalogue of monstrous crimes, vices, and follies (which fills page after page) fully borne out by Greene’s own confessions.

He wrote of himself,

“In prime of youth a rose, in age a weed,That for a minute’s joy payes endless meed.”

His last letter to the poor Lincolnshire lady whom he married, ill-used, and cruelly abandoned, was dated from a squalid lodging in Dowgate, where he died of want and disease. It ran as follows:

“Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth and by my soules rest that thou wilt see this man (the shoemaker) paide; for if hee and his wife had not succoured me I had died in the streetes.“Robert Greene.”

“Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth and by my soules rest that thou wilt see this man (the shoemaker) paide; for if hee and his wife had not succoured me I had died in the streetes.

“Robert Greene.”

Doll was the amiable and worthy woman to whom he had previously written:

“The remembrance of many wrongs offered thee and thy unreproved virtues add greater sorrow to my miserable state than I can utter or thou conceive, neither is it lessened by consideration of thy absence (though shame would hardly let me behold thy face) but exceedingly aggravated.”

Akin in character to Greene was John Skelton, a popular poetin the reign of the seventh Henry, and King Henry the Eighth’s poet laureate, who wrote of himself:

“A King to me mine habit gaveAt Oxford the University,Advanced I was to that degree:By whole consent of their Senate,I was made Poet Laureate.”

The title being then a university degree, and the habit a robe of white and green, embroidered in silk and gold. He took holy orders in 1498, and, as old Anthony Wood said, “having been guilty of many crimes, as most poets are,” Bishop Wykke suspended him from his benefice. In 1501 he was in prison for marrying and keeping a mistress, “a crime amongst the clergy of the Romish persuasion both in those days and these,” says Cibber, “more subjected to punishment than adultery.” He was a fierce and bitter assailant of the clergy, the Dominicans, and Cardinal Wolsey. Many of his productions were never printed, but were chanted at markets and fairs, in village ale-houses, and in the streets by itinerant ballad-singers, who learned them by heart and sent them abroad like floating seeds borne hither and thither by the vagrant winds. The author of the ‘Lives of the Laureates’ said of this poet: “The brief glance we have of him, the scholar and the buffoon, a priest with his married concubine and bastardized children, mocking, half in anger half in jest, or it might be in the wantonness of sorrow, at the falsehoods by which he was surrounded, may justly awaken our sympathy nor fail to suggest a moral.”

The misfortunes of poor Spenser I have referred to in dealing with the sad side of the subject, but another of the laureates who tasted the full bitterness of poverty was Ben Jonson, who began life as a bricklayer, became a soldier, and a brave one too, abandoned arms to tread the stage, and strolled about the country, trudging beside the waggon containing the players’ scenes, and “properties,” many a weary mile. From acting plays he took to writing plays, the two arts being then more intimately and nobly associated than they ever have been since, for the stage has fallen out of the hands of poets and players into those of showmen and buffoons. He was married and had a son, to whom some of the players stood sponsors. Shakespeare, it is traditionally said,was one of them, and what his necessities were may be readily guessed from the entry in Henslowe’s diary preserved at Dulwich College, in which small sums are entered as advanced to Ben Jonson for work he was then doing. A story is related of how he came, after many other vain efforts, to the Globe Theatre on the Bankside with his play ofEvery Man in His Humour, which after the manager had superficially glanced at he coldly returned as unsuitable. Shakespeare, it is said, stood by, and noting, we presume, the melancholy and despairing way in which his future dear friend and rival turned to leave the theatre, spoke to him, begging leave to read his play, with which he was so well pleased that he brought about its acceptance. Poverty haunted Ben with more or less closeness all through his career (often it must be confessed through the extravagance of his hospitality to brother poets) and was, it is said, sadly too intimate with him when he died. When sick in 1629, Charles I., who had been generous to him, being supplicated in his favour, sent him ten guineas, of which mean gift Smollett says, Jonson spoke as follows to the messenger of whom he received it:

“His Majesty has sent me ten guineas because I am poor and live in an alley. Go and tell him his soul lives in an alley.”

Jonson died on the 6th August, 1637, having long outlived his wife and all his children.

It is curious still to note how many of our literary lions began to make their way in the world, as Jonson did, on the stage. It was so with William Leman Rede, who, starting as an actor at Margate (the Margate boards formed indeed the porch through which a very large number of histrionic aspirants entered the theatrical profession), became an itinerant actor, at one time playing Hamlet in a barn and at another Rover on a billiard-table; sometimes foodless and hungry, travelling on foot and sometimes luxuriating in a waggon, but always light-hearted and gay. Once when he was laughing merrily at the plight he was in on a “treasury day,” when, in the phraseology of the profession, “the ghost didn’t walk,” that is to say when there was no money in hand to pay the actors’ salaries, some one asked how he continued to be jolly under such miserably depressing circumstances. He replied, “I drink spring water and dance.” Rede was always a sober, abstemious man. Coming to London in 1825, he published his first novel, ‘The Wedded Wanderer,’ which was followed by a second, ‘TheWhite Tower,’ each in three volumes. This was followed by his ‘Crimes and Criminals in Yorkshire,’ and his connection with a weekly publication belonging to his brother Thomas, calledOxberry’s Dramatic Biography—Thomas having married the widow of Oxberry the comedian, by whom the serial had been started.

As actor, magazine writer, dramatist, journalist and novelist Rede acquired fame but not wealth. One evening he was arrested for debt while acting on the stage, by a sheriff’s officer, who sprang from the pit over the orchestra and footlights to secure his prisoner. Rede originated the Dramatic Authors’ Society.

Sheridan, to whom I have previously alluded, was another famous literary man familiar with the boards and—need I say?—with impecuniosity. He was, according to Haydon, “in debt all round to milkman, grocer, baker, and butcher. Sometimes his wife would be kept waiting for an hour or more while the servants were beating up the neighbourhood for coffee, butter, eggs and rolls. While Sheridan was Paymaster of the Navy, a butcher one day brought a leg of mutton; the cook took it and clapped it in the pot to boil and went upstairs for the money, but the cook not returning, the butcher removed the pot-lid, took out the mutton, and walked away with it.” On another occasion Michael Kelly, the musical celebrity, was complaining to him of a wine merchant at Hochheim who instead of six dozen of wine had sent him sixteen. Sheridan said he would take some off his hands if he were not quite able to pay for it, but, said he, “you can get rid of it easily, put up a sign over your door and write on it, ‘Michael Kelly, Composer of Wines and Importer of Music;’” a sly rub which the composer received with a laugh, wittily retorting that there was one wine so poisonous and intoxicating that he would neither compose nor import, and that was “Old Sherry” (Sheridan’s nickname).

One night when Sheridan was at home in a cottage he had about a mile from Hounslow Heath, his son Tom asked him for some cash. “Money, I have none,” was the reply.

“But let the consequences be what they may, money I must have,” said Tom fiercely.

“In that case, my dear Tom,” said the father, “you will find a case of loaded pistols upstairs and a horse ready saddled in the stable, the night is dark and you are within half a mile ofHounslow Heath”—a place of terrible repute for highway robbers.

“I understand,” said Tom, “but I tried that before I came to you. Unluckily the man I stopped was Peake, your treasurer, and he told me that you had been beforehand with him and robbed him of every sixpence he had in the world.”

Kelly saw many instances of Sheridan raising money, but one instance in particular astonished him. Sheridan was £3000 in arrear with the Italian Opera performance; there were continual postponements, and at last the singers resolved to strike. Kelly, as manager, received a note that on the evening of a certain day they would not sing unless paid, and hurried off to Morlands, the bankers in Pall Mall, for advances. The bankers were inexorable; like the singers, they were worn out. The manager then flew off to Sheridan at his residence in Hertford Street, Mayfair, where he was kept waiting two hours. Sheridan was told that if he could not raise £3000 the theatre must be closed. “£3000, Kelly,” he said; “there is no such sum in nature. Are you an admirer of Shakespeare?”

“To be sure I am,” said Kelly, “but what has Shakespeare to do with £3000 or the Italian singers?”

“There is one passage in Shakespeare,” said Sherry, “which I have always admired particularly, and it is where Falstaff says, ‘Master Robert Shallow, I owe you £1000.’ ‘Yes, Sir John,’ says Shallow, ‘which I beg you will let me take home with me.’ ‘That may not so easily be, Master Robert Shallow,’ replies Falstaff. And so say I unto thee, Master Michael Kelly, to get £3000 may not so easy be.”

Kelly answered that there was no alternative then but to close the theatre. Sheridan made Kelly ring the bell and have a Hackney coach called, then sat down quite at his ease and read the newspaper. Kelly was in an agony. The coach arrived, Sheridan requested Kelly to get into it, and went with him. The coach was driven to Morlands’ banking-house—Kelly remained in the coach bewildered. In a quarter of an hour Sherry came out of the bank with the required sum in bank notes. Kelly never knew how it was obtained. Sherry told Kelly to take the money to the theatre, but to save enough out of it for a barrel of oysters, which he, Sheridan, would partake of that night at Kelly’s lodgings in Suffolk Street.

On another occasion Kelly and Sheridan were one day in conversation close to the gate of the path which was then open to the public, leading across the churchyard of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, from King Street to Henrietta Street. Holloway, a creditor of Sherry’s, went by on horseback. He spoke to Sherry in loud and angry tones, complaining that he could never get admittance at Sheridan’s house, and vowed vengeance on François, Sherry’s valet, if he did not let him in next time he called in Hertford Street. Holloway was in a passion; Sherry, who knew he was vain of his judgment of horseflesh, took no notice of the angry boast of Holloway, and burst into exclamations of rapture on Holloway’s steed. Holloway was softened, and said his horse was one of the prettiest of creatures. Would not Mrs. Sheridan like to have one like it?

“She would if he could canter well,” said Sheridan.

“Beautifully,” said Holloway.

“Perhaps I should not mind stretching a point for such a one. Will you have the kindness to let me see his paces?”

“To be sure,” said the lawyer.

The action was suited to the word, and Sherry cut off through the churchyard, where no horse could follow. In spite of his many faults, his utter unscrupulousness in money-matters being not the least, it is particularly pleasant to refer to one of the incidents at the close of his career which reveals a delightful little bit of sentiment and good feeling, of which many of his detractors would have us think he was incapable. When his goods were taken in execution in Hertford Street, Mayfair, Paston, the sheriff’s officer, said that if there was any particular article upon which he set affectionate value, he might secrete or carry it off from the premises.

“Thank you, my generous fellow,” said Sheridan. “No, let all go—affection and sentiment in my situation are quite out of the question. But,” said he, recollecting himself, “there is one thing which I wish to have.”

“What is it?” said Paston, expecting him to name some cabinet or piece of plate.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Sheridan, “it is only this old book, worth all others in the world, and to me of special value, because it belonged to my father, and was the favourite of my first wife.”

Paston looked into it, and it was a dogs’-eared edition of Shakespeare.

Another great man in the literary and histrionic professions, the novelist, Fielding, although of an aristocratic stock, and liberally educated, began life almost without pecuniary resources. He came before the public first in 1725, and in succession was a showman at Bartholomew and other fairs, the owner of a booth for theatrical performances, at one time set up in George Yard, from which he found his way to the regular boards. In spite of being the son of a general, and the great grandson of an earl, his impecuniosity was often great, although he met his difficulties with the light-hearted gaiety of a Sheridan, and the careless imprudence of a Goldsmith.

Once, when in Ireland, he got into disgrace through giving a dancing-party at his rooms; sold his books the next day, ran away from college, loafed about Dublin till only a shilling was left, and then went to Cork. There he lived three days on the shilling, and said afterwards the most delicious meal he ever tasted was a handful of grey peas, given him by a girl at a wake, after twenty-four hours’ fasting.

Poor Oliver Goldsmith must, of course, have his place in this chapter, for from the time when he wrote street ballads to save himself from starving, and was delighted to hear them sung, to when he started on “the grand tour,” alone and friendless, with one spare shirt, a flute, and a guinea in his pocket, to the last scene of hopeless insolvency in which he died, his life was one long, hard struggle against pecuniary difficulties. When his relatives raised £50 to send him to London to study, he spent and gambled all away, and got no farther than Dublin. The result of his wildly rash act of going abroad so ill provided he has himself described. In a foreign land, when without money, he turned to his flute as a last resource, and whenever he approached a peasant’s cottage towards nightfall, he played one of his merriest tunes, and so generally contrived to win a shelter for the night, and some food for his next day’s journey. In this way he passed through Flanders, parts of France, Germany and Switzerland, reaching Padua at last; remaining there six months to secure his medical degree. Returning in 1756, and failing to find employment, he was at last taken in by a chemist by way of charity,and to preserve him from starvation. His friend, Dr. Sleigh, next befriended him, and then he became usher to Dr. Milner’s school in Peckham. Soon after he found literary employment, and took a lodging at No. 12, Green Arbour Court, in the Old Bailey—a miserable, dirty room, with but one chair. He did not emerge from this squalid, dismal abode until 1760, when improved circumstances enabled him to lodge in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, where he received his friends with a freedom and hospitality which soon reduced his means to the level of impecuniosity. Here he first met Dr. Johnson, who became his dearest friend and best adviser.

Johnson has described how he received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith, to the effect that he was in great distress, and as it was not in his power to go to the Doctor, begging that the Doctor would come to him as soon as possible.

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