"Enough, sad Muse, enough thy downward flightHas cleft with wearied wing the shades of night:Be drest in smiles, forget the gloomy past,And, cygnet-like, sing sweeter at the last,Strike on the chords of joy a happier strainAnd be thyself, thy cheerful self, again.Hail, goodly company of generous youth,Hail, nobler sons of Temperance and Truth!I see attendant Ariels circling there,Light-hearted Innocence, and Prudence fair,Sweet Chastity, young Hope, and Reason bright,And modest Love, in heaven's own hues bedight,Staid Diligence, and Health, and holy Grace,And gentle Happiness with smiling face,—All, all are there; and Sorrow speeds away,And Melancholy flees the sons of day;Dull Care is gladden'd with reflected light,And wounded Sin flies sickening at the sight."My friends, whose innate worth the wise man's praiseAnd the fool's censure equally betrays,Accept the humble blessing of my Muse,Nor your assistance to her aim refuse,She asks not flattery, but let her claimA kind perusal, and a secret name."
"Enough, sad Muse, enough thy downward flightHas cleft with wearied wing the shades of night:Be drest in smiles, forget the gloomy past,And, cygnet-like, sing sweeter at the last,Strike on the chords of joy a happier strainAnd be thyself, thy cheerful self, again.Hail, goodly company of generous youth,Hail, nobler sons of Temperance and Truth!I see attendant Ariels circling there,Light-hearted Innocence, and Prudence fair,Sweet Chastity, young Hope, and Reason bright,And modest Love, in heaven's own hues bedight,Staid Diligence, and Health, and holy Grace,And gentle Happiness with smiling face,—All, all are there; and Sorrow speeds away,And Melancholy flees the sons of day;Dull Care is gladden'd with reflected light,And wounded Sin flies sickening at the sight.
"My friends, whose innate worth the wise man's praiseAnd the fool's censure equally betrays,Accept the humble blessing of my Muse,Nor your assistance to her aim refuse,She asks not flattery, but let her claimA kind perusal, and a secret name."
I scarcely like to mention it, as a literary accident, but being a curious and unique anecdote it shall be stated. I had the honour at Christ Church of being prizetaker of Dr. Burton's theological essay, "The Reconciliation of Matthew and John," when Gladstone who had also contested it, stood second; and when Dr. Burton had me before him to give me the £25 worth of books, he requested me to allow Mr. Gladstone to have £5 worth of them, as he was so good a second. Certainly such an easy concession was one of my earliest literary triumphs.
My first acquaintance with Gladstone, whom I have known from those college days now for more than five and fifty years, was a memorable event, and may thus be worthy of mention. It was at that time not a common thing for undergraduates to go to the communion at Christchurch Cathedral—that holy celebration being supposed to be for the particular benefit of Dean and Canons, and Masters of Arts. So when two undergraduates went out of the chancel together after communion, which they had both attended, it is small wonder that they addressed each other genially, in defiance of Oxford etiquette, nor that a friendship so well begun has continued to this hour. Not that I have always approved of my friend's politics; multitudes of letters through many years have passed between us, wherein if I have sometimes ventured to praise or to blame, I have always been answered both gratefully and modestly: but I have ever tried to hold the balance equally too, according to my lights, and if at one time (on occasion of the great Oxford election, 1864) I published a somewhat famous copy of verses, ending with
"Orator, statesman, scholar, wit, and sage,The Crichton,—more, the Gladstone of the age,"
"Orator, statesman, scholar, wit, and sage,The Crichton,—more, the Gladstone of the age,"
my faithfulness must in after years confess to a well-known palinode (one of my "Three Hundred Sonnets") commencing
"Beware of mere delusive eloquence,"
"Beware of mere delusive eloquence,"
and a still more caustic lyric, beginning with
"Glozing tongue whom none can trust,"
"Glozing tongue whom none can trust,"
and so forth, as a caution against a great man's special gift, so proverbially dangerous. Some of our mosthonest Ministers,e.g., Althorpe and Wellington, have been very bad speakers: some of our most eloquent orators have proved very bad Ministers.
And in this place I may introduce some account, long ago in print, of the famous Aristotle class under the tutorship of Mr. Biscoe at Christ Church, wherein (among far nobler and better scholars) your present confessor took the lowest seat.
Fifty years ago Biscoe's Aristotle class at Christ Church was comprised almost wholly of men who have since become celebrated, some in a remarkable degree; and, as we believe that so many names, afterwards attaining to great distinction, have rarely been associated at one lecture-board, either at Oxford or elsewhere, it may be allowed to one who counts himself the least and lowest of the company to pen this brief note of those old Aristotelians.
Let the central figure beGladstone—ever from youth up the beloved and admired of many personal intimates (although some may be politically his opponents). Always the foremost man, warm-hearted, earnest, hard-working, and religious, he had a following even in his teens; and it is noticeable that a choice lot of young and keen intelligences of Eton and Christ Church formed themselves into a small social sort of club, styled, in compliment to their founder's initials, the "W. E. G."
Next to Gladstone LordLincolnused to sit, his first parliamentary patron at Newark, and through life to death his friend. We all know how admirably in many offices of State the late Duke of Newcastle served his country, and what a good and wise Mentor he was to a grateful Telemachus in America.
Canningmay be mentioned thirdly; then a good-looking youth with classic features and a florid cheek, since gone to "the land of the departed" after having healed up the wounds of India as her Governor-General. Next to the writer, one on each side, sat two more Governors-Generalin futuro, though then both younger sons and commoners, and now both also gone to their reward elsewhere; these wereBruce, afterwards Lord Elgin, andRamsay, Lord Dalhousie; the one famous from Canada to China, the other noted for his triumphs in the Punjaub. When at Toronto in 1851, the writer was welcomed to the splendid hospitality of Lord Elgin, and the very lecture-room here depicted was mentioned as "a rare gathering of notables." LordAbercornwas of the class, a future viceroy; LordDouglas, lately Duke of Hamilton, handsome as an Apollo, and who married a Princess of Baden; and if LordWaterfordwas infrequent in his attendance, at least he was eligible, and should not be omitted as a various sort of eccentric celebrity. ThenPhillimorewas there, now our Dean of the Arches;ScottandLiddell, both heads of houses, and even then conspiring together for their great Dictionary.Curzontoo (lately Lord De la Zouch) was at the table, meditating Armenian and Levantine travels, and longing in spirit for those Byzantine MSS. preserved at Parham, where the writer has delighted to inspect them; how nearly Tischendorf was anticipated in his fortunate find of that earliest Scripture, no one knows better than Lord Zouch, who must have been close upon that great and important discovery!Doyle, now Professor of Poetry,Hill, of Mathematics,Vaughan, of History—all were of this wonderful class; as also the Earl ofSelkirk,celebrated as a mathematician; BishopsHamilton,Denison, andWordsworth; andCornewall Lewis, late Chancellor of the Exchequer; andKynaston, Head Master of St. Paul's; and a member of Parliament or two, as, for example,Leader, once popular for Westminster.
Now, other names of almost equal eminence may have been here accidentally omitted, but the writer will not guess at more than he actually recollects. Sometimes—for the lecture was a famous one—members of other colleges came in;Sidney Herbert, of Oriel, in particular, is remembered; and ifRobert Lowe, of University, was only occasionally seen, it must have been because he seldom went abroad till twilight.
Altogether "there were giants in those days;" and, without controversy, a casual class, containing more than a score of such; illustrious names as are here registered, must be memorable. The lecture-room was next to Christ Church Hall, where that delicate shaft supports its exquisite traceried roof; the book was "Aristotle's Rhetoric," illustrated by each reader with quotations, a record whereof is stillpenes me, and the lecturer, now no longer living, was that able and accomplished classic, the ReverendRobert Biscoe.
My college days are full of recollections of men, since become famous in literature, art, science, or position: of these the principal are already recorded as having been members of the Aristotle class. Let me add here, that I lived for three weeks of my first term in the gaily adorned rooms in Peckwater of the wild Lord Waterford; and afterwards in Lord Ossulston's, both being then absent from college; that Frank Buckland and his bear occupied (long after I had left) my ownchambers in Fells' Buildings; that I was a class-mate and friend of the luckless Lord Conyers Osborne, then a comely and ruddy youth with curly hair and gentle manners, and that I remember how all Oxford was horrified at his shocking death—he having been back-broken over an arm-chair by the good-natured but only too athletic Earl of Hillsborough in a wine-party frolic; that Knighton, early an enthusiast for art, used to draw his own left hand in divers attitudes with his right every day for weeks; and that some not quite unknown cotemporary used to personate me at times for his own benefit. As he has been long dead, I may now state that he was believed to be Lord Douglas of Hamilton. Here is the true story. One day the Dean requested my presence, and thus addressed me: "I have long overlooked it, Mr. Tupper, but this must never occur again: indeed I have only waited till now, because I knew of your general good conduct."
"What have I done, Mr. Dean: be pleased to tell me."
"Why, sir, the porter states that this is the fifth time you have not come into college until past twelve o'clock."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Dean; there is some mistake: for I have never once been later than ten."
"Then, Mr. Tupper, somebody must have given your name in the dark: and I request that you will do your best to discover who did this, and report it to me."
As I failed to do it, after some days, again the Dean sent for me; and finding after question made that I pretty well guessed the delinquent but declined to expose him, the Dean kindly added—"This does you credit, sir," and I left. A few days passed, and I wasbrought up again with "I think you are intended for the Church, Mr. Tupper." As well as I could manage it, I stammered out that it was impossible, as I could not speak. Then he said he was sorry for that, as he meant to nominate me for a studentship. This, however, never came to pass, and so the matter dropped; until Dean Gaisford succeeded Dean Smith, and Joseph lost his Pharaoh.
At college I lived the quiet life of a reading-man; though I varied continually the desk and the book with the "constitutional" up Headington Hill, or the gallop with Mr. Murrell's harriers, or the quick scull to Iffley, or the more perilous sailing in a boat (no wonder that Isis claims her annual victims), or the gig to Blenheim or Newton-Courtnay,—or that only once alarming experience of a tandem when the leader turned round and looked at me in its nostalgic longing to return home,—or the geological ramble with Dr. Buckland's class,—or the botanic searchings for wild rarities with some naturalist pundit whose name I have forgotten; and so forth. In matters theological, I was strongly opposed to the Tractarians, especially denouncing Newman and Pusey for their dishonest "non-naturalness" and Number Ninety: and I favoured with my approval (valeat quantum) Dr. Hampden. I attended Dr. Kidd's anatomical lectures, and dabbled with some chemical experiments—which when Knighton and I repeated at his father's house, 9 Hanover Square, the baronet in future blew us up to the astonishment of the baronetin præsenti, his famous father. Also, I was a diligent student in the Algebraic class of Dr. Short, afterwards the good Bishop of St. Asaph; and I have before me now amemoria technicaof mine in rhyme giving thenine chief rules of trigonometry, but not easily producible here as full of "sines and cosines, arcs, chords, tangents, and radii," though helpful to memory, and humorous at the time, ending with
"At least I have proved that nothing is worseThan Trigonometrical Problems in verse:"
"At least I have proved that nothing is worseThan Trigonometrical Problems in verse:"
there are also similarly to be recorded my mathematicalséanceswith that worthy and clever Professor, A. P. Saunders, afterwards headmaster of Charterhouse; and my Hebrew lectures with the mild-spoken Dr. Pusey, afterwards so notorious; and I know not whatever else is memorable, unless one condescended to what goes without saying about Hall and Chapel, and Examinations: however, some frivolous larks in the Waterford days, wherewith I need not say the present scribe had nothing to do, may amuse. Here are three I remember; 1. An edict had gone out from the authorities against hunting in pink,—and next morning the Dean's and the Canons' doors in quad were found to have been miraculously painted red in the night. 2. There was a grand party of Dons at the Deanery, and as they hung their togas in the hall (for they couldn't conveniently dine in them) there was filched from each proctorial sleeve that marvellous little triangular survival of a stole which nobody can explain, and all these collectively were nailed on the Dean's outer door in a star. 3. A certain garden of small yews and box trees was found one morning to have been transplanted bodily into Peckwater Quadrangle, as a matter of mystery and defiance. And there were other like exploits; as the immersion of that leaden Mercury into its own pond; and town and gown rows, wherein I remember to have seen the herculean Lord Hillsborough on one side of High Street, and Peard (afterwards Garibaldi's Englishman) on the other, clear away the crowd of roughs with their fists, scattering them like duplicates of the hero of Corioli.
Of course I duly took my degrees of B.A. and M.A.,—and long after of D.C.L., when the Cathedral chimes rang for me, as they always do for a grand compounding Doctor.
A mentionablecurioof authorship on that occasion is this: whatever may be the rule now, in those days the degree of D.C.L. involved a three-hours' imprisonment in the pulpit of the Bodleian Chapel, for the candidate to answer therefrom in Latin any theological objectors who might show themselves for that purpose; as, however, the chapel was always locked by Dr. Bliss, the registrar, there was never a possibility to make objection. So my three hours of enforced idleness obliged me to use pencil and paper, which I happened to have in my pocket,—and I then and there produced my poem on "The Dead"—to be found at p. 26 of my Miscellaneous Poems, still extant at Gall & Inglis's—a long one of eighteen stanzas, much liked by Gladstone amongst others. I didn't intend it certainly, but, as the poem ends with the word "bliss," it was ridiculously thought that I had specially alluded to the registrar!
Soon after leaving Oxford, and when some attempts to help my speech seemed to be partially successful, my father wished me to take orders, which also from religious motives was my own desire (for M'Neile at Albury, and Bulteel at Oxford, had been instruments of good to me, the first since I was 15, the other as a young collegian) and as Earl Rivers, whom my father had financially assisted promised me a living, and a curacy was easy where the mere licence was enough by way of salary, I soon found myself standing for introductory approval before Bishop Burgess at his hotel in Waterloo Place, a candidate for orders by Examination. The good Bishop being a Hebrew scholar was glad enough to hear that I (with however slight a smattering) had studied that primitive tongue under Pusey and Pauli,—and I began to hope before his awful presence. But, when he told me to read, and soon perceived my only half-cured infirmity, he faithfully enough assured me with sorrow that I could not be ordained unless I had my speech. So that first and sole interview came to an untimely end: for soon after, not meaning to give up the struggle at once, I resolved, before my next Episcopal visit, to go down to Blewbury, the vicarage of my friend Mr. Evanson, who had agreed to license me to his curacy, in order that by reading the lessons in church I mightpractically test my competency. Of course, I prepared myself specially by diligence, and care, and prayer, to stand this new ordeal. But I failed to please even the indulgent vicar, though he got his curate for nothing, and though his fair daughter amiably welcomed the not ungainly Cœlebs; and as for the severe old clerk,—he naïvely blurted out, "Tell'ee what, sir, it won't do: you looks well,—but what means them stops?" Alas! they meant the rebellion of tongue and lips against every difficult letter, at, or ap, or a far too currents. And so I came to the wise conclusion that I was not to be a parson. And perhaps it's as well I'm not; for my natural combativeness would never have tolerated my bishop or my rector, or even the parish churchwarden, specially in these days of Ritualism and Romanism. I was thus thrown back upon myself: and I now see gratefully and humbly how I was being schooled and forced into a mental era of silent thoughtfulness, in after years the seed of several volumes as well as innumerable ballads and poems which have flown as fly-leaves over the world.
After this clerical failure, my good father urged me to turn to the law, thinking that as a chamber counsel my intellectual attainments (and I had worked hard for many years) might yet be available to society and to myself, though on the "silent system:" but alas! verbal explanations are as necessary in a room as at the bar; I soon perceived that all could not be done on paper, and as I thoroughly hated law I speedily turned to other sorts of literature, in especial the fixing of my own rhymed or rhythmed thoughts in black and white.
There is a small chamber in the turret of No. 19 Lincoln's Inn Old Square, on the second floor of roomsthen belonging to my late friend Thomas Lewin (afterwards a Master in Chancery, and well known not only for his Law books, but also for his Life of St. Paul) where I used to dream and think and jot down Proverbial morsels on odd bits of paper which gradually grew to be a book. Lewin once, I remember, picked up from the wastepaper basket these lines which he admired much, and asked me where they came from:
"For that a true philosophy commandeth an innocent life,And the unguilty spirit is lighter than a linnet's heart."
"For that a true philosophy commandeth an innocent life,And the unguilty spirit is lighter than a linnet's heart."
They occur in my Essay on Ridicule, first series, so I had to confess as found out.
When my book appeared Lewin offered to review it for me in theLiterary Gazette, then edited by his friend Mr. Landon, L. E. L.'s brother. An unusual rush of business just then coming in to him, and the editor pressing for copy, Lewin begged me to write the Article myself, to which I most reluctantly assented; resolving however to be quite impartial. The result was that when I handed the critique to my busy friend, he quickly said after a hurried glance, "Why, this won't do at all; you have cut yourself up cruelly, instead of praising, as you ought to have done. I must do it myself, I suppose. Here, copy out this Opinion for me, if you can read it: it's Mr. Brodie's, and I can't." With that he threw my MS. into the wastepaper basket, and I did his work for him, whilst he commended me with due vigour, and sent his clerk off with a too kind verdict in hot haste to the expectant editor.
The mention of Brodie reminds me that I spent a year copying old deeds in his murky chamber, 49 Lincoln's Inn Fields, where nobody could read his handwriting except his clerk (appropriately yclept Inkpen), and whenhecouldn't it was handed back to Mr. Brodie for exposition, wherein if he himself failed, as was sometimes the case, he had to write a new Opinion. Inkpen was a character, as a self-taught entomologist, breeding in me then the rabies of collecting moths and beetles, as a couple of boxes full of such can still prove. He lived at Chelsea, near the Botanical Gardens there; and attributed his wonderful finds of strange insects in his own pocket-handkerchief garden to stray caterpillars and flies, &c., that came his way from among the packets of foreign plants. He used also to catch small fowl on passengers' coats and blank walls, as he passed on his daily walks to his office and back, having pill-boxes in his pocket, and pins inside his hat to secure the spoil. In the course of years he had amassed butterflies and beetles to so valuable an extent, that when he was compelled by adverse fortune to sell his cabinets by auction at Stevens's, he netted £1200 for his collection: this he told me in later years himself; immediately after the sale, he commenced collecting anew,—and having been made curator of Lincoln's Inn Fields (through Mr. Brodie's interest), he soon found an infinity of new insects,—derived perhaps from the Surgeon's Hall Museum, or straying to the nine acres of that Garden,—is it not the area of Cephren's Pyramid?—as a refuge for them out of smoky London. The good man always brought a new flower to look at every morning while at desk work; it lived in an old inkbottle of water, till one happy day I bethought me charitably of giving him a pretty China vase,—that good man, I say, is now long since gone to a world of light and beauty—whence, I am sure, flowers and butterflies cannot be excluded.
About the same time this memorable matter may receive a notice. One day at Brodie's chambers we heard a riotous noise in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and running out, I found that the Duke of Wellington, for some political offence, was being mobbed,—and that too on the 18th of June! He was calmly walking his horse, surrounded by roaring roughs,—a groom being behind him at some distance, but otherwise alone. Disgusted at the scene, I jumped on the steps of Surgeon's Hall, and shouted out—Waterloo, Waterloo! That one word turned the tide of execrations into cheers, and the Iron Duke passed me silently with a military salute: as the mob were thus easily converted ("mob" being, as we conveyancers say, a short form for "mobilé", changeable) and escorted our national hero to his home in safety, I really think the little incident worth recording. We are just now in the throes of such a mobocracy,—and know how much one firm policeman can avail to calm a riot. While speaking of the Duke and Apsley House, let me add here another word of some interest. My uncle, Arthur W. Devis, had painted life-sized portraits of Blucher and Gneisenau, which his widow had given to me: and as the Duke had always been my father's friend, I asked his Grace if he would accept them from me; this he declined, but said, "get Colnaghi to value them and I'll buy them"—as accordingly I did, and the pictures are still I presume either at Apsley House or Strathfieldsaye. My small memories of the Great Duke are summed up in these four monosyllables, plain, blunt, firm, kind.
After Brodie's, my liberal father would give for me another hundred pounds, this time to his cousin Mr. Walters of No. 12 in the Square, to make me morelearned as a conveyancer: but it was all of no use: "He penned a stanza when he should engross:" however, I ate my terms and was duly called to the Bar. At Walters' my most eminent colleague, amongst others, was Roundel Palmer, now Lord Selborne, who, some time after, when we both had chambers in the Inn, wanted me (but I repudiated the idea) to be proposed as a candidate member for Oxford University, just before Gladstone was induced to stand; I daresay he will remember it. As to M.P.ship I may have had other chances, but I never cared for a position of endless care and toil by night and day, to say nothing of my impediment of speech, and as to the magic letters I rather despised them: this being one reason. Not very many years ago my brother Charles was offered Nottingham if he would pay £3000 for the honour,—and so I failed to appreciate any such distinction. I think too that votes were at one time purchasable even at Guildford, my county town: but that was of course at a less upright and immaculate time of day than this.
At Walters' were also three of my cotemporaries,—De Morgan, who had the business after decease of our principal, and whose brother is or was the famous psychological philosopher; Domville, since Sir Charles, I believe; and Gunn, a West Indian, of whom the jest was to inquire of Walters, a very nervous man, if he liked us to have a gun in chambers: all these, and there were more, were clever men and worthy, but as the tide of life flows on I have lost sight of them.
I have just found an old letter of my own, dated December 28, 1839, which (with my own permission asked and granted) I will give as to a matter quite forgotten by me, viz., that Lady Spencer promised my father to get me an Indian Writership,—as also that previously I had once hopes of the Registrarship from Lord John Russell, afterwards given to Mr. Lyster. The letter proves how much my no-speech hindered both my good father's efforts and my own;—and explains itself. In those days it cost 9d. between Albury and London.
My Dearest Father,—I can fully, though not perhaps so fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five great boys, and actuated by this sympathy I sit down to say a word more about India.—I do hope you have not yet given Lady Spencer a decisive answer, as the horizon seems a little to clear of its indigenous hurricanes. Since my last letter to you I have, I can truly say, made every effort to speak like a man, but, alas I too unsuccessfully: my tongue seems only able to say veto to the Church, and that speaking is a necessary qualification "needs no demonstration." Aunt Fanny has strongly recommended me to think more seriously about it, and Mr. M'Neile has also given me his valuable opinion on the subject, that at least I must inquire what I am more fitted for, and not lightly put aside those opportunities which Providence places in my way. However, I would by no means be hurried in my choice either way: I must inquire what is the office of a writer; whether oratorical powers be not requisite, &c., for as yet I have a very vague and indefinite idea of what I reject or choose. I really do find my impediment most truly a grievous impediment to what appears more desirable; but I would wish to consider this, as every other constitutional infirmity or affliction,as but an instrument in the hands of God to subserve some wise purpose. Let this letter therefore, if you please, serve as a preventive, if not too late, to your final decision about it, and put me, my dear father, in possession of more of the peculiar features, in a writer's employment if you can, I hope to be with you on Friday.Till then, and ever believe me, my dear father, your affectionate son,M. F. Tupper.Albury,December 28th, Wednesday.
My Dearest Father,—I can fully, though not perhaps so fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five great boys, and actuated by this sympathy I sit down to say a word more about India.—I do hope you have not yet given Lady Spencer a decisive answer, as the horizon seems a little to clear of its indigenous hurricanes. Since my last letter to you I have, I can truly say, made every effort to speak like a man, but, alas I too unsuccessfully: my tongue seems only able to say veto to the Church, and that speaking is a necessary qualification "needs no demonstration." Aunt Fanny has strongly recommended me to think more seriously about it, and Mr. M'Neile has also given me his valuable opinion on the subject, that at least I must inquire what I am more fitted for, and not lightly put aside those opportunities which Providence places in my way. However, I would by no means be hurried in my choice either way: I must inquire what is the office of a writer; whether oratorical powers be not requisite, &c., for as yet I have a very vague and indefinite idea of what I reject or choose. I really do find my impediment most truly a grievous impediment to what appears more desirable; but I would wish to consider this, as every other constitutional infirmity or affliction,as but an instrument in the hands of God to subserve some wise purpose. Let this letter therefore, if you please, serve as a preventive, if not too late, to your final decision about it, and put me, my dear father, in possession of more of the peculiar features, in a writer's employment if you can, I hope to be with you on Friday.
Till then, and ever believe me, my dear father, your affectionate son,
M. F. Tupper.
Albury,December 28th, Wednesday.
The day after I took my degree as a barrister, I married my cousin after a nine years' engagement; my father having resolved I should not marry without a profession. I did my best at this vocation of the law much against the grain, and actually achieved, with Lewin's help, a voluminous will, and a marriage settlement, with some accessory deeds, procured for me by my mother's friend Mr. Hunt, through one Dangerfield, a solicitor. I have often felt anxious to know how far my conveyancing held water; but the thought of Lewin's skill has comforted me—and besides I have never heard a word about it now for half a century. My fee for all was fifty guineas—pretty well for a first and last exploit in the way of law and its rewards.
As I am just leaving my father's house for Park Village, and thereafter Albury, here I will insert two little memories of past days when I lived with my parents at No. 5. Here is one. Theodore Hook's famous Berners Street hoax had lately made such exploits very catching among schoolboys—and in my Charterhouse days it was repeated by "Punsonby & Co." at myfather's town-house. On a certain Saturday when I had my weekly holiday at home, I marvelled to find the street crowded with vans, coal-carts, trucks, a mourning coach, fishmongers, butchers, and confectioners with trays, and a number of servants wanting places. All these were crowding round No. 5, as ordered or advertised for by Mr. Tupper: of course soon explained away, and rejected, to a general indignation at the hoaxers. Now, as I had my suspicions, I sat unseen at the front drawing-room window, and watched: and as more than once I had noticed P. and his friends pass down the street on the opposite side, I taxed them with their exploit on the Monday; and I rather think it cost them not a trifling sum to satisfy that crowd of disappointed tradesmen. Happily such practical joking is now long since (or ought to be) a social outrage of the past; Hook's being first had the grace of original humour,—but imitations are dull repetition, not to be excused. I only once met Theodore Hook, and that was in his decadence; he looked puffy and only semi-sober; but I recollect with how much deference and expectation the "livener-up" was eagerly surrounded, and how sillily the dupes laughed at every word he uttered, whether humorous or not.
For another last memory of No. 5, in the dining-room whereof Lord Sandwich, who had once lived there, is said to have invented "sandwiches," I will record this.
In those days of long ago, how well I remember our next-door neighbour, old Lady Cork, "The Dowager-Countess of Cork and Orrery," as her door-plate proclaimed, some of whose peculiarities I may mention without offence, as they were notorious and (the physicians judged) innocent and venial. Whenever she found herself alone (and she kept profuse hospitality three or four days a week, with her vast illuminated conservatory full of artificial flowers and grapes and oranges tied on everything), when those famous routs were silent, and dance music no longer kept us awake at night, the little old lady would send in a message, asking "neighbour Tupper to give her a dinner to-day"—sometimes even coming unannounced. She usually appeared all in white, even to her shoes and bonnet, which latter she would keep on the whole evening; the only colour about her being rouged cheeks, sometimes decorated with a piece of white paper cut into the shape of a heart, and stuck on "to charm away the tic." Well, her ladyship was always full of society anecdotes; and I only wish that her diary may soon be published, as probably a more spicy record of past celebrities than even Pepys's in old times, or Greville's in our own; but she is said to have left instructions to her executors not to publish till every one mentioned by her was dead: so we must wait till that tontine is over. But the specialty of the aged countess, who died at past ninety but never owned to more than sixty, was a propensity to annex small properties; always it happened that next morning after a visit either her butler or her lady's-maid would bring to us a spoon or a fork or a piece ofbric-à-bracwhich she had carried off with her in seeming unconsciousness; and as she never inquired for them afterwards, possibly it was so. Let doctors decide.Requiescat.The forthcoming memoirs of that once famous and lovely Miss Monckton will be interesting indeed, if not over-edited.
One of the apparent calamities of my life (overruled, as I have long since seen, for good) was the before-mentioned affliction of a very bad impediment of speech, which blighted my youth and manhood from fifteen to thirty-five, obliging me to social humiliations of many kinds, to silence in class and on examination occasions (hence my written poetries in lieu of spoken prose), and in early manhood preventing me from taking orders, and thereafter from speaking in the law courts. But I was hopelessly and practically a dumb man, except under special excitations, when I could burst into eloquent speech which surprised third persons more than myself; for when quite alone I could spout like Demosthenes; it was only nervous fear that paralysed my tongue. Accordingly, my good father placed me from time to time with well-meaning and well-paid pretenders to make a perfect cure of my affliction, and I did many things and suffered much from such false physicians. I am sure no one can truly say what I can, viz., that in a purposely monotonous note and syllable by syllable, with a crutch under my chin, and a sort of gag on the rebellious tongue, I have read all through in a loud voice Milton's whole Paradise Lost and Regained, and the most of Cowper's poems!That was the sort of tongue-drill and nerve-quieting recommended and enforced for many hours a day, through weary months, by a certain Mr. C., while Dr. P., his successor to the well-named "patient," gave, first, emulcents, and then styptics, and was fortunately prevented in time by my father from some surgical experiments on the muscles of lip and tongue. However, nobody could cure me, until I cured myself; rather, let me gratefully and humbly confess, until God answered constant prayer, and granted stronger bodily health, and gave me good success in my literary life, and made me to feel I was equal in speech, as now, to the most fluent of my fellows. So let any stammerer (and there are many such) take comfort from my cure, and pray against the trouble as I did, and courageously stand up against the multitude to claim before heaven and earth man's proudest prerogative—the privilege of speech. In my Proverbial Essay "Of Speaking" will be found two contrasted pictures drawn from my own experiences: one of the stifled stammerer, the other of the unbridled orator: which you can turn to as you will. As, however, some of my old groanings after utterance are not equally accessible, I will here give a few lines of mine from the "Stammerer's Complaint," printed in the medical book of one of my Galens:—
"... And is it not in truthA poisoned sting in every social joy,A thorn that rankles in the writhing flesh,A drop of gall in each domestic sweet,An irritating petty misery,—That I can never look on one I loveAnd speak the fulness of my burning thoughts?That I can never with unmingled joyMeet a long-loved and long-expected friendBecause I feel, but cannot vent my feelings,—Because I know I ought, but must not, speak,—Because I mark his quick impatient eyeStriving in kindness to anticipateThe word of welcome strangled in its birth?Is it not sorrow, while I truly loveSweet social converse, to be forced to shunThe happy circle, from a nervous sense—An agonising poignant consciousness—That I must stand aloof, nor mingle withThe wise and good in rational argument,The young in brilliant quickness of reply,Friendship's ingenuous interchange of mind,Affection's open-hearted sympathies?But feel myself an isolated being,A very wilderness of widowed thought!"
"... And is it not in truthA poisoned sting in every social joy,A thorn that rankles in the writhing flesh,A drop of gall in each domestic sweet,An irritating petty misery,—That I can never look on one I loveAnd speak the fulness of my burning thoughts?That I can never with unmingled joyMeet a long-loved and long-expected friendBecause I feel, but cannot vent my feelings,—Because I know I ought, but must not, speak,—Because I mark his quick impatient eyeStriving in kindness to anticipateThe word of welcome strangled in its birth?Is it not sorrow, while I truly loveSweet social converse, to be forced to shunThe happy circle, from a nervous sense—An agonising poignant consciousness—That I must stand aloof, nor mingle withThe wise and good in rational argument,The young in brilliant quickness of reply,Friendship's ingenuous interchange of mind,Affection's open-hearted sympathies?But feel myself an isolated being,A very wilderness of widowed thought!"
All this is only sad stern truth; nothing morbid here: let any poor stammerer testify to my faithfulness. Amongst others afflicted like myself was Charles Kingsley, whom I knew well at a time when I had overcome my calamity; whereas he carried his to the grave with him; though he had frequent gleams of a forced and courageous eloquence, preaching energetically in a somewhat artificial voice,—in private he stammered much, as once I used to do, no doubt to his mortification, though humbly acquiescing in God's will.
Chess is a chief intellectual resource to the stammerer; for therein he can conquer in argument without the toil of speech, and prove himself practically more eloquent than the men full of talk whom he so much envies. Accordingly, in days gone by (for of late years I have given it up, as too toilsome a recreation) I played often at that royal game. In these times it is no game at all,—but a wearisome if seductive science; just as cricket is an artillery combat now, and football a most perilous conflict, and boating breaks the athlete's heart, and billiards can only be played by a bar-spot professional, and tranquil whist itself has developed into a semi-fraudulent system of open rules and secret signs; even so the honest common-sense old game of chess has come to be so encumbered with published openings and gambits and other parasitic growths upon the wholesome house-plant, that I for one have renounced it, as a pursuit for which life is too short and serious (give me a farce or a story instead), and one moreover in which any fool well up to crammed book games may crow over the wisest of men in an easy, because stereotyped, checkmate. However, in this connection, I recollect a small experience which proves that positive ignorance of famous openings may sometimes be an advantage; just as the skilled fencer will be baffled by a brave boor rushing in against rules, and by close encounter unconventionally pinning him straight off. When a youth, just before matriculation, I was a guest at Culham of the good rector there, a chess-player to his own thinking indomitable, for none of the neighbours could checkmate him: so he thought to make quick work of a silent but thoughtful boy-stammerer,—by tempting him at an early period of the game to take, seemingly for nothing but advantage, a certain knight (his usual dodge, it appeared) which would have ensured an ultimate defeat. However, I declined the generous offer, which began to nettle my opponent; but when afterwards I refused to answer divers moves by the card (as he protested I ought), and finally reduced him to a positive checkmate, he flew into such an unclerical rage that I would not play again;his "revenge" might be too terrible. For another trivial chess anecdote: a very worthy old friend of mine, a rector too, was fond of his game, and of winning it: and I remember one evening that his ancient servitor, bringing in the chessboard, whispered to me, "Please don't beat him again, sir,—he didn't sleep a wink last night;" accordingly, after a respectably protracted struggle, some strange oversights were made, and my reverend host came off conqueror: so he was enabled to sleep happily. I remember too playing with pegged pieces in a box-board at so strange a place as outside the Oxford coach; and I think my amiable adversary then was one Wynell Mayow, who has since grown into a great Church dignitary. If he lives, my compliments to him.
One of the best private chess-players I used often to encounter,—but almost never to beat, is my old life-friend, Evelyn of Wotton, now the first M.P. for his own ancestral Deptford. It was to me a triumph only to puzzle his shrewdness, "to make him think," as I used to say,—and if ever through his carelessness I managed a stale, or a draw,—very seldom a mate,—that was glory indeed. If he sees this, his memory will countersign it.
Let so much suffice, as perhaps a not inappropriate word about the Literary Life's frequent mental recreation, especially, where the player is, like Moses, "not a man of words."
One day, by the by, this text in the original, "lo ish devarim anochi" (Exod. iv. 10), came to my lot in Pusey's Hebrew class, to my special confusion: but every tutor was very considerate and favoured the one who couldn't speak, and Mr. Biscoe in particular used to say when my turn came to read or to answer,—"Never mind, Mr. Tupper, I'm sure you know it,—please to goon, Mr. So-and-So." This habitual confidence in my proficiency had the effect of forcing my consciousness to deserve it; and it usually happened that I really did know, silently, like Macaulay's cunning augur, "who knew but might not tell."
Speaking of recreation, Izaak Walton's joy as a contemplative man has been mine from youth; as witness these three fishing sonnets, just found in the faded ink of three or four decades ago, which may give a gleam of country sunshine on a page or two, and would have rejoiced my piscatorial friends Kingsley and Leech in old days, and will not be unacceptable to Attwood Matthews, Cholmondeley Pennell, and the Marstons with their friend Mr. Senior in these. I have had various luck as an angler from Stennis Lake to the Usk, from Enniskillen to Killarney, from Isis to Wotton,—and so it would be a pity if I omitted such an authorial characteristic; especially as my stammering obliged me to "study to be quiet."
I."Look, like a village Queen of May, the streamDances her best before the holiday sun,And still, with musical laugh, goes tripping onOver these golden sands, which brighter gleamTo watch her pale-green kirtle flashing fleetAbove them, and her tinkling silver feetThat ripple melodies: quick,—yon circling riseIn the calm refluence of this gay cascadeMarked an old trout, who shuns the sunny skies,And, nightly prowler, loves the hazel shade:Well thrown!—you hold him bravely,—off he speeds,Now up, now down,—now madly darts about,—Mind, mind your line among those flowering reeds,—How the rod bends,—and hail, thou noble trout!"II."O, thou hast robbed the Nereids, gentle brother,Of some swift fairy messenger; behold,—His dappled livery prankt with red and goldShows him their favourite page: just such anotherSad Galatæa to her Acis sentTo teach the new-born fountain how to flow,And track with loving haste the way she wentDown the rough rocks, and through the flowery plain,Ev'n to her home where coral branches grow,And where the sea-nymph clasps her love again:We the while, terrible as Polypheme,Brandish the lissom rod, and featly tryOnce more to throw the tempting treacherous flyAnd win a brace of trophies from the stream."III."Come then, coy Zephyr, waft my feathered baitOver this rippling shallow's tiny waveTo yonder pool, whose calmer eddies laveSome Triton's ambush, where he lies in waitTo catch my skipping fly; there drop it lightly:A rise, by Glaucus!—but he missed the hook,—Another—safe! the monarch of the brook,With broadside like a salmon's, gleaming brightly:Off let him race, and waste his prowess there;The dread of Damocles, a single hair,Will tax my skill to take this fine old trout;So,—lead him gently; quick, the net, the net!Now gladly lift the glittering beauty out,Hued like a dolphin, sweet as violet."
I.
"Look, like a village Queen of May, the streamDances her best before the holiday sun,And still, with musical laugh, goes tripping onOver these golden sands, which brighter gleamTo watch her pale-green kirtle flashing fleetAbove them, and her tinkling silver feetThat ripple melodies: quick,—yon circling riseIn the calm refluence of this gay cascadeMarked an old trout, who shuns the sunny skies,And, nightly prowler, loves the hazel shade:Well thrown!—you hold him bravely,—off he speeds,Now up, now down,—now madly darts about,—Mind, mind your line among those flowering reeds,—How the rod bends,—and hail, thou noble trout!"
II.
"O, thou hast robbed the Nereids, gentle brother,Of some swift fairy messenger; behold,—His dappled livery prankt with red and goldShows him their favourite page: just such anotherSad Galatæa to her Acis sentTo teach the new-born fountain how to flow,And track with loving haste the way she wentDown the rough rocks, and through the flowery plain,Ev'n to her home where coral branches grow,And where the sea-nymph clasps her love again:We the while, terrible as Polypheme,Brandish the lissom rod, and featly tryOnce more to throw the tempting treacherous flyAnd win a brace of trophies from the stream."
III.
"Come then, coy Zephyr, waft my feathered baitOver this rippling shallow's tiny waveTo yonder pool, whose calmer eddies laveSome Triton's ambush, where he lies in waitTo catch my skipping fly; there drop it lightly:A rise, by Glaucus!—but he missed the hook,—Another—safe! the monarch of the brook,With broadside like a salmon's, gleaming brightly:Off let him race, and waste his prowess there;The dread of Damocles, a single hair,Will tax my skill to take this fine old trout;So,—lead him gently; quick, the net, the net!Now gladly lift the glittering beauty out,Hued like a dolphin, sweet as violet."
In the course of my Oxford career I tried for two Newdigate Prize poems, "The Suttees" and the "African Desert," won respectively by Claughton, now Bishop of St. Albans, and Rickards, whose honours of course I ought to know, but don't. A good-looking and well-speaking friend of mine, E. H. Abney, now a Canon, was so certain that the said prizes in those two successive years were to fall to me, that he learnt my poems by heart in order to recite them as my speech-substitute in the Sheldonian Theatre at Commemoration, and he used frequently to look in upon me to be coached in his recital. It was rumoured that I came second on both occasions,—one of them certainly had a 2 marked on it when returned to me, but I know not who placed it there. However, my pieces were afterwards printed; both separately, and among my "Ballads and Poems," by Hall and Virtue, and are now before me. As an impartial and veteran judge of suchliteraria, I am bold to say they are far better than I thought, and might fairly have won Newdigate prizes, even as friend Abney & Co. were sure they would.
At the close of my University career came, of course, the Great Go, which I had to do as I did the Little Go, all on paper; for I could not answervivâ voce. Andthis rule then, whatever may be the case now, prevented me from going in for honours, though I had read for a first, and hoped at least to get a second. Neither of these, nor even a third class, was technically possible, if I could not stand a two days' ordeal ofvivâ voceexamination, part of the whole week then exacted. However, I did all at my best on paper, specially the translations from classic poets in verse: whereof I'll find a specimen anon. The issue of all was that I was offered an honorary fourth class,—which I refused, as not willing to appear at the bottom of the list of all, alphabetically,—and so my tutor, Mr. Biscoe, not wishing to lose the honour for our college, managed to get it transferred to another of his pupils, Mr. Thistlethwaite, whose father wrote to thank me for this unexpected though not unmerited luck falling to his son.
One short presentable piece of verse-making in the schools is as below from Virgil: there were also three odes of Horace, a chorus from Æschylus, and more from other Greek and Latin poets.