MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN.MY FIRST BOOKS.“UNDERTONES” AND “IDYLS AND LEGENDS OF INVERBURN.”By Robert Buchanan.Illustrations by by George Hutchinson(Photographs by Messrs. Fradelle and Young.)My first serious effort in Literature was what I may call a double-barrelled one; in other words, I was seriously engaged upon Two Books at the same time, and it was by the merest accident that they did not appear simultaneously. As it was, only a few months divided one from the other, and they are always, in my own mind, inseparable, or Siamese, twins. The book of poems calledUndertoneswas the one; the book of poems calledIdyls and Legends of Inverburnwas the other. They were published nearly thirty years ago, when I was still a boy, and as they happened to bring me into connection, more or less intimately, with some of the leading spirits of the age, a few notes concerning them may be of interest.MR. BUCHANAN’S HOUSE.A word, first, as to my literary beginnings. I can scarcely remember the time when the idea of winning fame as an author had not occurred to me, and so I determined very early to adopt the literary profession, a determination which I unfortunately carried out, to my own life-long discomfort, and the annoyance of a large portion of the reading public. When a boy in Glasgow, Imade the acquaintance of David Gray, who was fired with a similar ambition to fly incontinently to London—The terrible City whose neglect is Death,Whose smile is Fame!and to take it by storm. It seemed so easy! “Westminster Abbey,” wrote my friend to a correspondent; “if I live, I shall be buried there—so help me God!” “I mean, after Tennyson’s death,” I myself wrote to Philip Hamerton, “to be Poet-laureate!” From these samples of our callow speech, the modesty of our ambition may be inferred. Well, it all happened just as we planned, only otherwise! Through some blunder of arrangement we two started for London on the same day, but from different railway stations, and, until some weeks afterwards, one knew nothing of the other’s exodus. I arrived at King’s Cross Railway Station with the conventional half-crown in my pocket; literally and absolutely, half-a-crown; I wandered about the Great City till I was weary, fell in with a Thief and Good Samaritan who sheltered me, starved and struggled with abundant happiness, and finally found myself located at 66, Stamford Street, Waterloo Bridge, in a top room, for which I paid, when I had the money, seven shillings a week. Here I lived royally, with Duke Humphrey, for many a day; and hither, one sad morning, I brought my poor friend Gray, whom I had discovered languishing somewhere in the Borough, and who was already death-struck through “sleeping out” one night in Hyde Park.[2]“Westminster Abbey—if I live, I shall be buried there!” Poor country singing-bird, the great Dismal Cage of the Dead was not forhim, thank God! He lies under the open Heaven, close to the little river which he immortalised in song. After a brief sojourn in the “dear old ghastly bankrupt garret at No. 66,” he fluttered home to die.To that old garret, in these days, came living men of letters who were of large and important interest to us poor cheepers from the North: Richard Monckton Milnes, Laurence Oliphant, Sydney Dobell, among others, who took a kindly interest in my dying comrade. But afterwards, when I was left to fight the battle alone, the place was solitary. Ever reserved and independent, not to say “dour” and opinionated, I made no friends, and cared for none. I had found a little work on the newspapers and magazines, just enough to keep body and soul alive, and while occupied with this I was busy on the literary Twins to which I referred at the opening of this paper. What did my isolationmatter, when I had all the gods of Greece for company, to say nothing of the fays and trolls of Scottish Fairyland? Pallas and Aphrodite haunted that old garret; out on Waterloo Bridge, night after night, I saw Selene and all her nymphs; and when my heart sank low, the Fairies of Scotland sang me lullabies! It was a happy time. Sometimes, for a fortnight together, I never had a dinner—save, perhaps, on Sunday, when a good-natured Hebe would bring me covertly a slice from the landlord’s joint. My favourite place of refreshment was the Caledonian Coffee House in Covent Garden. Here, for a few coppers, I could feast on coffee and muffins—muffins saturated with butter, and worthy of the gods! Then, issuing forth, full-fed, glowing, oleaginous, I would light my pipe, and wander out into the lighted streets.THE ENTRANCE HALL.Criticisms for theAthenæum, then edited by Hepworth Dixon, brought me ten-and-sixpence a column. I used to go to the old office in Wellington Street and have my contributions measured off on thecurrent number with a foot-rule, by good old John Francis, the publisher. I wrote, too, for theLiterary Gazette, where the pay was less princely—seven-and-sixpence a column, I think, but with all extracts deducted! TheGazettewas then edited by John Morley, who came to the office daily with a big dog. “I well remember the time when you, a boy, came to me, a boy, in Catherine Street,” wrote honest John to me years afterwards. But the neighbourhood of Covent Garden had greater wonders! Two or three times a week, walking, black bag in hand, from Charing Cross Station to the office ofAll the Year Roundin Wellington Street, came the good, the only Dickens! From that good Genie the poor straggler from Fairyland got solid help and sympathy. Few can realise now what Dickens was then to London. His humour filled its literature like broad sunlight; the Gospel of Plum-pudding warmed every poor devil in Bohemia.At this time, I was (save the mark!) terribly in earnest, with a dogged determination to bow down to no graven literary Idol, but to judge men of all ranks on their personal merits. I never had much reverence for Gods of any sort; if the Superior Persons could not win me by love, I remained heretical. So it was a long time before I came close to any living souls, and all that time I was working away at my poems. Then, a little later, I used to go o’ Sundays to the open house of Westland Marston, which was then a great haunt of literary Bohemians. Here I first met Dinah Muloch, the author ofJohn Halifax, who took a great fancy to me, used to carry me off to her little nest on Hampstead Heath, and lend me all her books. At Hampstead, too, I foregathered with Sydney Dobell, a strangely beautiful soul, with (what seemed to me then) very effeminate manners. Dobell’s mouth was ever full of very pretty Latinity, for the most part Virgilian. He was fond of quoting, as an example of perfect expression, sound conveying absolute sense of the thing described, the doggrel lines—“Down the stairs the young missises ranTo have a look at Miss Kate’s young man!”The sibilants in the first line, he thought, admirably suggested the idea of the young ladies slipping along the banisters and peeping into the hall!But I had other friends, more helpful to me in preparing my first twin-offering to the Muses: the faces under the gas, the painted women on the Bridge (how many a night have I walked up and down by their sides, and talked to them for hours together), the actors in the theatres, the ragged groups at the stage doors,London to me, then, was still Fairyland! Even in the Haymarket, with its babbles of Nymph and Satyr, there was wonderful life from midnight to dawn—deep sympathy with which told me that I was a born Pagan, and could never be really comfortable in any modern Temple of the Proprieties. On other points connected with that old life on the borders of Bohemia, I need not touch; it has all been so well done already by Murger, in theVie de Bohème, and it will not bear translation into contemporary English. There were cakes and ale, pipes and beer, and ginger was hot in the mouth too!Et ego fui in Bohemiâ! There were inky fellows and bouncing girls,then;nowthere are only fine ladies, and respectable, God-fearing men of letters.THE DINING ROOM.It was while the Twins were fashioning, that I went down in summer time to live at Chertsey on the Thames, chiefly in order to be near to one I had long admired, Thomas Love Peacock, the friend of Shelley and the author ofHeadling Hall—“Greekey Peekey,” as they called him, on account of his prodigious knowledge of things and books Hellenic. I soon grew to love the dear old man, and sat at his feet, like an obedient pupil, in his green old-fashioned garden at Lower Halliford. To him I first read some of myUndertones, getting many a rap over the knuckles for mysacrilegious tampering with Divine Myths. What mercy couldIexpect from one who had never forgiven “Johnny” Keats for his frightful perversion of the sacred mystery of Endymion and Selene? and who was horrified at the base “modernism” of Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound?” But to think of it! He had known Shelley, and all the rest of the demigods, and his speech was golden with memories of them all! Dear old Pagan, wonderful in his death as in his life. When, shortly before he died, his house caught fire, and the mild curate of the parish begged him to withdraw from the library of books he loved so well, he flatly refused to listen, and cried roundly, in a line of vehement blank verse, “By the immortal gods, I will not stir!”[3]Under such auspices, and with all the ardour of youth to help, my Book, or Books, progressed. Meantime, I was breaking out into poetry in the magazines, and writing “criticism” by the yard. At last the time came when I remembered another friend with whom I had corresponded, and whose advice I thought I might now ask with some confidence. This was George Henry Lewes, to whom, when I was a boy in Glasgow, I had sent a bundle of manuscript, with the blunt question, “Am I, or am I not, a Poet?” To my delight he had replied to me with a qualified affirmative, saying that in the productions he had “discerned a real faculty, andperhapsa future poet. I say perhaps,” he added, “because I do not know your age, and because there are so many poetical blossoms which never come to fruit.” He had, furthermore, advised me “to write as much as I felt impelled to write, but to publish nothing”—at any rate, for a couple of years. Three years had passed, and I had neither published anything—that is to say, in book form—nor had I had any further communication with my kind correspondent. To Lewes, then, I wrote, reminding him of our correspondence, telling him that Ihadwaited, not two years, but three, and that I now felt inclined to face the public. I soon received an answer, the result of which was that I went, on Lewes’s invitation, to the Priory, North Bank, Regent’s Park, and met my friend and his partner, better known as “George Eliot.”But, as the novelists say, I am anticipating. Sick to death, David Gray had returned to the cottage of his father, the hand-loom weaver, at Kirkintilloch, and there had peacefully passed away, leaving as his legacy to the world the volume of beautifulpoems published under the auspices of Lord Houghton. I knew of his death the hour he died; awaking in my bed, I was certain of my loss, and spoke of it (long before the formal news reached me) to a temporary companion. This by the way; but what is more to the purpose is that my first grief for a beloved comrade had expressed itself in the words which were to form the “proem” of my first book—Poet gentle hearted,Are you then departed,And have you ceased to dream the dream we loved of old so well?Has the deeply-cherish’dAspiration perished,And are you happy, David, in that heaven where you dwell?Have you found the secretWe, so wildly, sought for,And is your soul enswath’d at last in the singing robes you fought for?THE DRAWING ROOM.Full of my dead friend, I spoke of him to Lewes and George Eliot, telling them the piteous story of his life and death. Both were deeply touched, and Lewes cried, “Tell that story to the public”; which I did, immediately afterwards, in theCornhill Magazine.By this time I had my Twins ready, and had discovered a publisher for one of them,Undertones.The other,Idyls and Legends of Inverburn,was a ruggeder bantling, containing almost the firstblank versepoems ever written in Scottish dialect. I selected one of the poems, “Willie Baird,” and showed it to Lewes. He expressed himself delighted, and asked for more. I then showed him the “Two Babes.” “Better and better!” he wrote; “publish a volume of such poems and your position is assured.” More than this, he at once found me a publisher, Mr. George Smith, of Messrs. Smith and Elder, who offered me a good round sum (such it seemed to me then) for the copyright. Eventually, however, after “Willie Baird” had been published in theCornhill, I withdrew the manuscript from Messrs. Smith and Elder, and transferred it to Mr. Alexander Strahan, who offered me both more liberal terms and more enthusiastic appreciation.It was just after the appearance of my story of David Gray in theCornhillthat I first met, at the Priory, North Bank, with Robert Browning. It was an odd and representative gathering of men, only one lady being present, the hostess, George Eliot. I was never much of a hero-worshipper; but I had long been a sympathetic Browningite, and I well remember George Eliot taking me aside after my firsttête-à-têtewith the poet, and saying, Well, what do you think of him? Does he come up to your ideal?” Hedidn’tquite, I must confess, but I afterwards learned to know him well and to understand him better. He was delighted with my statement that one of Gray’s wild ideas was to rush over to Florence and “throw himself on the sympathy of Robert Browning.”Phantoms of these first books of mine, how they begin to rise around me! Faces of friends and counsellors that have flown for ever; the sibylline Marian Evans with her long, weird, dreamy face; Lewes, with his big brow and keen thoughtful eyes; Browning, pale and spruce, his eye like a skipper’s cocked-up at the weather; Peacock, with his round, mellifluous speech of the old Greeks; David Gray, great-eyed and beautiful, like Shelley’s ghost; Lord Houghton, with his warm worldly smile and easy-fitting enthusiasm. Where are they all now? Where are the roses of last summer, the snows of yester year? I passed by the Priory to-day, and it looked like a great lonely Tomb. In those days, the house where I live now was not built; all up here Hampstead-ways was grass and fields. It was over these fields that Herbert Spencer and George Eliot used to walk on their way to Hampstead Heath. The Sibyl has gone, but the great Philosopher still remains, to brighten the sunshine. It was not my luck toknow himthen—would it had been!—but he is my friend and neighbour in these latter days, and, thanks to him, I still get glimpses of the manners of the old gods.THE STUDY.With the publication of my two first books, I was fairly launched, I may say, on the stormy waters of literature. When theAthenæumtold its readers that “this waspoetry, and of a noble kind,” and when Lewes vowed in theFortnightly Reviewthat even if I “never wrote another line, my place among the pastoral poets would be undisputed,” I suppose I felt happy enough—far more happy than any praise could make me now. Poor little pigmy in a cockle-boat, I thought Creation was ringing with my name! I think I must have seemed rather conceited and “bounceable,” for I have a vivid remembrance of aFortnightlydinner at the Star and Garter, Richmond, when Anthony Trollope, angry with me for expressing a doubt about the poetical greatness of Horace, wanted to fling a decanter at my head! It was about this time that an omniscient publisher, after an interview with me, exclaimed (the circumstance is historical), “I don’t like that young man; he talked to me as if he was God Almighty, orLord Byron!” But in sober truth, I never had the sort of conceit with which men creditedme; I merely lacked gullibility, and saw, at the first glance, the whole unmistakable humbug and insincerity of the Literary Life. I think still that, as a rule, the profession of letters narrows the sympathy and warps the intelligence. When I saw the importance which a great man or woman could attach to a piece of perfunctory criticism, when I saw the care with which this Eminent Person “humoured his reputation,” and the anxiety with which that Eminent Person concealed his true character, I found my young illusions very rapidly fading. On one occasion, when George Eliot was very much pestered by an unknown lady, an insignificant individual, who had thrust herself somewhat pertinaciously upon her, she turned to me and asked, with a smile, for my opinion? I gave it, rudely enough, to the effect that it was good for “distinguished people” to be reminded occasionally of how very small consequence they really were, in the mighty life of the World!From that time until the present I have pursued the vocation into which fatal Fortune, during boyhood, incontinently thrust me, and have subsisted, ill sometimes, well sometimes, by a busy pen. I may, therefore, with a certain experience, if with little authority, imitate those who have preceded me in giving reminiscences of their first literary beginnings, and offer a few words of advice to my younger brethren—to those persons, I mean, who are entering the profession of Literature. To begin with, I entirely agree with Mr. Grant Allen in his recent avowal that Literature is the poorest and least satisfactory of all professions; I will go even further, and affirm that it is one of the least ennobling. With a fairly extensive knowledge of the writers of my own period, I can honestly say that I have scarcely met one individual who has not deteriorated morally by the pursuit of literary Fame. For complete literary success among contemporaries, it is imperative that a man should either have no real opinions, or be able to conceal such as he possesses, that he should have one eye on the market and the other on the public journals, that he should humbug himself into the delusion that book-writing is the highest work in the Universe, and that he should regulate his likes and dislikes by one law, that of expediency. If his nature is in arms against anything that is rotten in Society or in Literature itself, he must be silent. Above all, he must lay this solemn truth to heart, that when the World speaks well of him the World will demand thepriceof praise, and that price will possibly be his living Soul. He may tinker, he may trim, he may succeed, he may be buried in Westminster Abbey, he may hear before he dies all the peoplesaying, “How good and great he is! how perfect is his art! how gloriously he embodies the Tendencies of his Time!”[4]but he will know all the same that the price has been paid, and that his living Soul has gone, to furnish that whitewashed Sepulchre, a Blameless Reputation.MR ROBERT BUCHANAN AND HIS FAVOURITE DOG.For one other thing, also, the Neophyte in Literature had better be prepared. He will never be able to subsist by creative writing unless it so happens that the form of expression he chooses is popular in form (fiction, for example), and even in that case, the work he does, if he is to live by it, must be in harmony with the social and artisticstatus quo. Revolt of any kind is always disagreeable. Three-fourths of the success of Lord Tennyson (to take an example) was due to the fact that this fine poet regarded Life and all its phenomena from the standpoint of the English public school, that he ethically and artistically embodied the sentiments of our excellent middle-class education. His great American contemporary, Whitman, in some respects the most commanding spirit of this generation, gained only a few disciples, and was entirely misunderstood and neglected by contemporary criticism. Another prosperous writer, to whom I have already alluded, George Eliot, enjoyed enormous popularity in her lifetime, while the most strenuous and passionate novelist of her period, Charles Reade, was entirely distanced by her in the immediate race for Fame. In Literature, as in all things, manners and costume are most important; the hall-mark of contemporary success is perfect Respectability. It is not respectable to be too candid on any subject, religious, moral, or political. It is very respectable to say, or imply, that this country is the best of all possible countries, that War is a noble institution, that the Protestant Religion is grandly liberal, and that social evils are only diversified forms of social good. Above all, to be respectable, one must have “beautiful ideas.” “Beautiful ideas” are the very best stock-in-trade a young writer can begin with. They are indispensable to every complete literary outfit. Without them, the short cut to Parnassus will never be discovered, even though one starts from Rugby.BALDER’S BALL.By P. Von Schönthan.Illustrated by J. Gülich.Balder had begged me to give him a bed for the night. He was going to a ball that evening, and had business early the following morning in Berlin. He lived in such an out-of-the-way suburb that it would be quite impossible for him to go home to sleep. I was only too delighted to be of service to him. Although I could not offer him a bed, it would be easy to improvise a shakedown on which he could have a few hours’ rest. I set to work at once, and did the best I could for him, using a bundle of rags for the pillows, and my old dressing-gown for the mattress. When Balder saw it, he declared that nothing could be more to his taste.“WALKED INTO MY ROOM.”It was long past midnight, when I was awakened from a refreshing sleep by somebody fumbling with a key at the lock of my door. Several bungling attempts were made before the key was fitted into the lock successfully. At last, Balder walked into my room. He presented rather a comical appearance, with his crush-hat on one side of his head like the leaning tower of Pisa, and a short overcoat, with his long tail-coat peeping beneath. His face was flushed, partly with excitement, and he appeared possessed of a burning desire to relate his adventures to somebody. I had been looking at him with one eye; the other, nearest him, I kept tight shut, and did not move, for I had no desire to enter into conversation with him. But my friend was not so easily shaken in his purpose; he came close to my bedside, stepping on my boot-jack, so that it fell over with a terrible noise, and held the lighted candle within a few inches of my nose. Itwas impossible for even the most shameless shammer of sleep to hold out any longer. I opened my eyes, and said in the sleepiest tone I could assume:“Enjoyed yourself?”“ON THE SIDE OF MY BED.”“Famously, my dear fellow,” answered Balder, seating himself on the side of my bed, although I forestalled his intention, and left hardly an inch for him to sit on. Then he entered into a long and not very lucid rigmarole on souls which are destined to come together. The story was rendered all the more difficult to understand from the fact that I kept falling asleep, and dreaming between his rhapsodies; but I gathered that Balder had met with a young Spanish lady at the mask ball, who apparently possessed the soul which he was fated to meet, and that she was the only person on earth who could make him happy. He had spent the whole evening with her, and she had promised to meet him at the next ball. At his request she had lifted her veil for one instant, revealing a face of Madonna-like beauty. It was a simple story, but when a man’s brain is fired with love he lingers over it. The words grace, Southern colouring, eyes like a gazelle, etc., must have been repeated very often, for I dreamed later on that I was repeating them to myself.I bore it all patiently, for hospitality is a sacred duty, and, besides, the state which Balder’s mind was in demanded and deserved consideration.As he went on with his story, he raised his voice, perhaps to rouse my flagging attention. Suddenly, somebody coughed in the next room. It was not a natural cough, but an artificial one, evidently intended by my landlady to serve as a gentle reminder that at two o’clock in the morning all respectable people should be in bed and quiet. My room was only separated from the apartment in which my landlady and her daughter slept by a door, which was hidden on either side by a high wardrobe, through which, in spite of this precaution, voices could be heard very distinctly. I informed Balder of this fact, but, unfortunately, he utterly refused to take my advice and go quietly to bed. He said he could not sleep, and, unhappily, catching sight of my coffee-machine, he added that he would like some coffee.“Sleep if you can,” he said; “I can manage it all for myself.” He then removed his coat, dressed himself in the dressing-gown which acted as his mattress, and started to get some water from the kitchen, knocking things down on the way, and opening and shutting all the wrong doors. I became resigned, and made up my mind not to waste my breath on any fresh warnings. Somebody else coughed. It was Fräulein Lieschen this time, my landlady’s daughter. At any other time, Balder himself would have shown more consideration.“STARTED TO GET SOME WATER.”Most extraordinary noises proceeded from the water-tap in the kitchen. At last the kitchen door banged, and Balder re-appeared again. I expressed my regret that I had no methylated spirit, but he said it did not matter, and catching hold of a bottle of my expensive brandy, poured a lot into the lamp. Then he sat gazing into the blue flame without blinking.Crash! went the glass globe, and the boiling water poured all over the table and put out the fire. I sprang out of my bed. “Good gracious!” I exclaimed, “the whole thing will explode.” He saidnothing, but began to pick up the hot pieces of glass patiently. The coughing in the next room became louder than ever.“For heaven’s sake!” I went on, “try to be quiet if you can. The people in the next room want to go to sleep.Don’tyou hear them coughing?”“Well! I never heard of such impudence! That coughing has disturbed me for some time. Anybody would think you’d got into an almshouse for old women—Where is the sugar?”“Up there, in the cigar-box. But don’t knock that rapier down.”Balder climbed up on a cane chair. It gave way. Klirr! The rapier fell on the floor, and Balder with it.“Confound you, do take care. Didn’t I warn you?” An energetic knocking at the door of communication interrupted me.“Herr Reif, I must really beg you to be quiet,” called my landlady’s daughter, not by any means in her sweetest tones. “We’ve been kept awake for the last hour.”“That’s nothing to us,” said Balder from the floor, where he was groping for the rapier that had rolled under the wardrobe.“Do be quiet! That is my landlady’s daughter, a very respectable girl—”“Well, is nobody respectable except her? What do you pay rent for?” His face grew red with rage, and, placing his mouth close to the door, he called out, “What do you want with Reif? He’s in bed. I only wanted to reach down the sugar, and the old rapier fell on my head—a thing that might happen to anybody! Just lie down quietly and go to sleep. Such a fuss about nothing! Are we in a hospital?”“IT GAVE WAY!”“Do be quiet, Balder!” I begged, and my pleading at least had the effect of silencing whatever else was on his tongue. He thought no more of the sugar, but sat at the table and drank his self-brewed coffee without it. When he had finished it he lighted a cigarette, at which he puffed away till the room was full of smoke. As I lay and looked at him, I fell into that peaceful state in which dreaming and reality are so much mixed that it is hard to distinguish between them. And then Balder disappeared inclouds of smoke, and I heard and saw no more. I was awakened again by a light being held near my face. Balder was standing at my bedside with the candle in his hand. “Ah! I’m glad you’ve been asleep again!” he said, as I half-opened my eyes and looked at him. “I want to make a poem to my Spaniard. Have you got a rhyming dictionary anywhere about?”“There, on the lowest shelf of the bookcase, butdobe quiet.”He got the book without knocking anything down; refilled his coffee-cup, and leant back in his chair, and murmured—“Where shall I meet thee?On the Guadelquiver?“On the Sequara? On the fair Zucar?“Or any other far-off Spanish river.....”Sleep again overpowered me, and I knew nothing till I was awakened by a noisy discussion taking place close to me. Balder stood with his face to the door, engaged in a hot dispute with my neighbours.“The devil himself couldn’t collect his thoughts with that coughing going on,” he was saying as I woke up.“I was coughing to make you quiet, that endless murmuring made me so nervous!” cried Fräulein Lieschen, her voice trembling with annoyance.“I’M GLAD YOU’VE BEEN ASLEEP.”I’m writing a poem, I tell you, and when one is composing a poem one must murmur. If you can’t sleep through it, you can’t be healthy. You must have eaten too much supper, or something. You can congratulate yourself that you’ve got such a lodger as Reif. Do you understand me? If you had me I’d teach you——”Again and again, in as persuasive a voice as I could assume, I begged the orator at the wardrobe to put an end to the speech he was delivering on his views of a landlady’s dutiestowards her tenants. At length my patience gave way, and, sitting up in bed, I commanded him in a voice of authority to give, over his poetry and recitation, and to blow out the light and get into bed. Balder at length seemed to realise that he was trespassing on my hospitality, and that a certain amount of respect was due to my wishes as his host. He became silent; put his manuscript carefully into my dressing-gown pocket; cast one last fiery glance at the door, and retired to bed.I do not know if he saw the daughter of sunny Spain, with her gazelle-like eyes in his dreams, but I do know that he snored as if he were dreaming of a saw-mill.About three hours later, the winter daylight struggled into the room. Balder got up and dressed himself as quietly as a mouse. He seemed as though he was trying to make up for the disturbance he had made in the night, or, rather, in the morning. He excused himself most politely for waking me up, but said that he felt that he could not leave without saying good-bye, and thanking me for my kind hospitality. Then he left the room, closing the door softly behind him. At the same moment, I heard the door of my landlady’s room open. Half a minute’s dead silence followed, and then Balder fell back into my room like one stunned.“IN A HOT DISPUTE.”“Who is that girl that came out of the next room?” he asked breathlessly.“Fräulein Lieschen, of course, the daughter of my landlady, to whom you were kind enough to deliver a lecture in the middle of the night——”“She is my Spanish girl!” he gasped, grinding his teeth, and shaking his head disconsolately. He took a long time to recover himself. He sat down again on the side of my bed, as he haddone on his return from the ball. But in what a different mood! He made me swear to him that I would never reveal his name to Fräulein Lieschen, but that I would excuse him without giving any clue to his identity, for the disturbance he had caused in the night. This duty I willingly undertook.Fräulein Lieschen, who was a good-natured girl, looked at the matter from the comical side, and readily accepted my unknown friend’s apology; and whenever we met on the stairs after that, she would say jokingly, “Please remember me to your funny friend!”“REMEMBER ME TO YOUR FUNNY FRIEND!”“LIONS IN THEIR DENS.”V.—THE LORD LIEUTENANT AT DUBLIN CASTLE.By Raymond Blathwayt.((Photographs and Illustrations by Lafayette, of Dublin, and Byrne, of Richmond.))THE HON. MRS ARTHUR HENNIKER.The Lord Lieutenant’s sister, Mrs. Arthur Henniker, who is helping him to do the honours of the Castle, and whom I had known in London, Mr. Fulke Greville, and I, were wandering round the curious old-fashioned buildings and courtyards that constitute the domain of Dublin Castle one bright breezy day in early spring. A military band was playing opposite the principal entrance, whilst the guard was being mounted in precisely the same manner as at the guard mounting at St. James’s. The scene was brilliant and inspiriting in the extreme. As we passed through an archway we came somewhat suddenly upon the massive Round Tower, from the top of which floated the Union Jack, and which dates back to a period not later than that of King John. Close to the Round Tower, which bears so curious a resemblance to the still more magnificent tower of the same name at Windsor, is the Chapel Royal. Here we found the guardian, a quaint, and garrulous and most obliging old person, waiting to show us over the handsome, albeit somewhat gloomy, building. Very exact and particular was ourciceronein pointing out to us the old fourteenth century painted windows, the special pews reserved for His Excellency, and the ladies and gentlemen of the court; the coats of arms belonging to the various Governors of Ireland,extending over a period of many hundreds of years—all these, I say, he carefully pointed out, drawing especial attention to one over which, at the moment, a thin ray of golden sunlight was falling, and which, he informed me, was the coat of arms of the Earl of Rochester—poor Rochester, the gay, the witty, the wicked, and the repentant. On quitting the chapel we began to ascend, under the auspices of another guide, a tremendously steep staircase, which is cut inside the fifteen-feet stone wall which leads to the chamber in the Round Tower wherein the Ulster King-at-Arms preserves the ancient records of the Castle. On our pilgrimage up this weary flight of stairs the guide drew our attention to a gloomy little dungeon, cut out of the thickness of the wall, in which there is but little light, and wherein the musty smell of ages is plainly discernible. “This,” whispered Mr. Greville in my ear, “reminds me of Mark Twain’s ’Innocents Abroad.’” After a glance at the record chamber, which was crammed with documents,we passed, with a sense of relief, into the bright sunny air and the large courtyard, round which are built the handsome lofty stables in which the Castle horses—of which there are an immense number—are kept, and which stables, Colonel Forster, the Master of the Horse, told me, are upwards of two hundred years old.THE CASTLE.CASTLE YARD. BAND PLAYING.“And now, Mr. Blathwayt,” said Mrs. Henniker, as we passed the two sentries on guard at the entrance to the great hall, and proceeded up a staircase lined with rifles and through long sunlit corridors, “you must come with me to my own special sanctum, and rest yourself, after the object lessons in history which we have been giving you this morning.” Here, in a lofty, white-panelled room, with long windows looking down upon the private gardens of the Castle in which His Excellency and Captain Streatfield, one of the A.D.C.’s, were walking up and down, Mrs. Henniker and I sat talking of the past almost more than we did of the actual present. For, though my hostess is quite a young woman, yet as a daughter of the celebrated Richard Monckton Milnes, the first Lord Houghton, she cannot fail to have the most delightful reminiscences of the many celebrities with whom her father was so fond of filling his house.GRAND STAIRCASE, DUBLIN CASTLE.“But,” said she, “proud as I am of my father, I am quite as proud of my grandfather, Richard Pemberton Milnes, for he was only twenty-two years of age when he refused the choice of a seat in the Cabinet, either as Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary at War. My grandmother, Mrs. Pemberton Milnes, in her diary for 1809, says that one morning, while we were at breakfast, a king’s messenger drove up in a post-chaise and four with a despatch from Mr. Perceval, offering my husband the choice of aseat in the Cabinet. Mr. Milnes immediately said, ’Oh, no, I will not accept either; with my temperament I should be dead in a year.’ And nothing could induce him to do so either,” continued Mrs. Henniker, “nor could he be induced to accept the Peerage which was offered him by Lord Palmerston in 1856.”“But your father was not so rigid in his views as your grandfather, was he, Mrs. Henniker?” said I.“No,” she replied, “certainly he was not, although I don’t think that he quitted the House of Commons, which he always loved, without a pang of real regret. Amongst the many kind congratulations he received—for no man ever had more friends—was a very pretty one from his old friend, Mrs. Proctor, in which she said:“’He enters from the common airInto that temple dim;He learns among those ermined PeersThe diplomatic hymn.His Peers? Alas! when will they learnTo grow up Peers to him?’”“You must have met many interesting people at your father’s house?” I observed, during the course of our conversation.HIS EXCELLENCY LORD HOUGHTON IN HIS STUDY.THE HON. MRS. HENNIKER IN HER BOUDOIR.“Why, yes,” replied she, with an amused smile, “don’t you know the ridiculous story that Mr. Wemyss Reid, in his charming biography of my father, tells, and which, indeed, I believe was first told by Sir Henry Taylor, in his autobiography? I will tell it you. You know my father was acquainted with everybody, and his greatest pleasure in life was to introduce the notoriety of the moment to the leading members of English Society. On the particular occasion on which this story was told, it is alleged that somebody asked whether a certain murderer—it was Courvoisier, I think, the valet who killed his master—had been hanged that morning, and my aunt immediately answered, ’I hope so, or Richard will have him to his breakfast party next Thursday.’ But this story, Mr. Blathwayt, is really absolutely without foundation. I have here,” continued Mrs. Henniker, “a very interesting book of autographs, which I have kept for as far back as I can remember, and in which everybody who came to our house had to write their names,” and as she spoke she placed in my hands a large volume, on every page of which was a photograph and an autograph. There was Lecky, the historian; and Trench, the lateArchbishop of Dublin; Sir Richard Burton, the traveller; and Owen Meredith, the poet. There was a portrait of Swinburne when quite a young man, together with his autograph. “I have known Mr. Swinburne all my life,” remarked Mrs. Henniker. “I used to play croquet with him when I was quite a little girl, and laugh at him because he used to get in such a passion when I won the game.” There was John Bright’s signature, there was that of Philippe d’Orléans and General Chanzy, and last, but not least, there was that of Charles Dickens.
MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN.
“UNDERTONES” AND “IDYLS AND LEGENDS OF INVERBURN.”By Robert Buchanan.Illustrations by by George Hutchinson(Photographs by Messrs. Fradelle and Young.)
By Robert Buchanan.Illustrations by by George Hutchinson(Photographs by Messrs. Fradelle and Young.)
My first serious effort in Literature was what I may call a double-barrelled one; in other words, I was seriously engaged upon Two Books at the same time, and it was by the merest accident that they did not appear simultaneously. As it was, only a few months divided one from the other, and they are always, in my own mind, inseparable, or Siamese, twins. The book of poems calledUndertoneswas the one; the book of poems calledIdyls and Legends of Inverburnwas the other. They were published nearly thirty years ago, when I was still a boy, and as they happened to bring me into connection, more or less intimately, with some of the leading spirits of the age, a few notes concerning them may be of interest.
MR. BUCHANAN’S HOUSE.
A word, first, as to my literary beginnings. I can scarcely remember the time when the idea of winning fame as an author had not occurred to me, and so I determined very early to adopt the literary profession, a determination which I unfortunately carried out, to my own life-long discomfort, and the annoyance of a large portion of the reading public. When a boy in Glasgow, Imade the acquaintance of David Gray, who was fired with a similar ambition to fly incontinently to London—
The terrible City whose neglect is Death,Whose smile is Fame!
The terrible City whose neglect is Death,Whose smile is Fame!
and to take it by storm. It seemed so easy! “Westminster Abbey,” wrote my friend to a correspondent; “if I live, I shall be buried there—so help me God!” “I mean, after Tennyson’s death,” I myself wrote to Philip Hamerton, “to be Poet-laureate!” From these samples of our callow speech, the modesty of our ambition may be inferred. Well, it all happened just as we planned, only otherwise! Through some blunder of arrangement we two started for London on the same day, but from different railway stations, and, until some weeks afterwards, one knew nothing of the other’s exodus. I arrived at King’s Cross Railway Station with the conventional half-crown in my pocket; literally and absolutely, half-a-crown; I wandered about the Great City till I was weary, fell in with a Thief and Good Samaritan who sheltered me, starved and struggled with abundant happiness, and finally found myself located at 66, Stamford Street, Waterloo Bridge, in a top room, for which I paid, when I had the money, seven shillings a week. Here I lived royally, with Duke Humphrey, for many a day; and hither, one sad morning, I brought my poor friend Gray, whom I had discovered languishing somewhere in the Borough, and who was already death-struck through “sleeping out” one night in Hyde Park.[2]“Westminster Abbey—if I live, I shall be buried there!” Poor country singing-bird, the great Dismal Cage of the Dead was not forhim, thank God! He lies under the open Heaven, close to the little river which he immortalised in song. After a brief sojourn in the “dear old ghastly bankrupt garret at No. 66,” he fluttered home to die.
To that old garret, in these days, came living men of letters who were of large and important interest to us poor cheepers from the North: Richard Monckton Milnes, Laurence Oliphant, Sydney Dobell, among others, who took a kindly interest in my dying comrade. But afterwards, when I was left to fight the battle alone, the place was solitary. Ever reserved and independent, not to say “dour” and opinionated, I made no friends, and cared for none. I had found a little work on the newspapers and magazines, just enough to keep body and soul alive, and while occupied with this I was busy on the literary Twins to which I referred at the opening of this paper. What did my isolationmatter, when I had all the gods of Greece for company, to say nothing of the fays and trolls of Scottish Fairyland? Pallas and Aphrodite haunted that old garret; out on Waterloo Bridge, night after night, I saw Selene and all her nymphs; and when my heart sank low, the Fairies of Scotland sang me lullabies! It was a happy time. Sometimes, for a fortnight together, I never had a dinner—save, perhaps, on Sunday, when a good-natured Hebe would bring me covertly a slice from the landlord’s joint. My favourite place of refreshment was the Caledonian Coffee House in Covent Garden. Here, for a few coppers, I could feast on coffee and muffins—muffins saturated with butter, and worthy of the gods! Then, issuing forth, full-fed, glowing, oleaginous, I would light my pipe, and wander out into the lighted streets.
THE ENTRANCE HALL.
Criticisms for theAthenæum, then edited by Hepworth Dixon, brought me ten-and-sixpence a column. I used to go to the old office in Wellington Street and have my contributions measured off on thecurrent number with a foot-rule, by good old John Francis, the publisher. I wrote, too, for theLiterary Gazette, where the pay was less princely—seven-and-sixpence a column, I think, but with all extracts deducted! TheGazettewas then edited by John Morley, who came to the office daily with a big dog. “I well remember the time when you, a boy, came to me, a boy, in Catherine Street,” wrote honest John to me years afterwards. But the neighbourhood of Covent Garden had greater wonders! Two or three times a week, walking, black bag in hand, from Charing Cross Station to the office ofAll the Year Roundin Wellington Street, came the good, the only Dickens! From that good Genie the poor straggler from Fairyland got solid help and sympathy. Few can realise now what Dickens was then to London. His humour filled its literature like broad sunlight; the Gospel of Plum-pudding warmed every poor devil in Bohemia.
At this time, I was (save the mark!) terribly in earnest, with a dogged determination to bow down to no graven literary Idol, but to judge men of all ranks on their personal merits. I never had much reverence for Gods of any sort; if the Superior Persons could not win me by love, I remained heretical. So it was a long time before I came close to any living souls, and all that time I was working away at my poems. Then, a little later, I used to go o’ Sundays to the open house of Westland Marston, which was then a great haunt of literary Bohemians. Here I first met Dinah Muloch, the author ofJohn Halifax, who took a great fancy to me, used to carry me off to her little nest on Hampstead Heath, and lend me all her books. At Hampstead, too, I foregathered with Sydney Dobell, a strangely beautiful soul, with (what seemed to me then) very effeminate manners. Dobell’s mouth was ever full of very pretty Latinity, for the most part Virgilian. He was fond of quoting, as an example of perfect expression, sound conveying absolute sense of the thing described, the doggrel lines—
“Down the stairs the young missises ranTo have a look at Miss Kate’s young man!”
“Down the stairs the young missises ranTo have a look at Miss Kate’s young man!”
The sibilants in the first line, he thought, admirably suggested the idea of the young ladies slipping along the banisters and peeping into the hall!
But I had other friends, more helpful to me in preparing my first twin-offering to the Muses: the faces under the gas, the painted women on the Bridge (how many a night have I walked up and down by their sides, and talked to them for hours together), the actors in the theatres, the ragged groups at the stage doors,London to me, then, was still Fairyland! Even in the Haymarket, with its babbles of Nymph and Satyr, there was wonderful life from midnight to dawn—deep sympathy with which told me that I was a born Pagan, and could never be really comfortable in any modern Temple of the Proprieties. On other points connected with that old life on the borders of Bohemia, I need not touch; it has all been so well done already by Murger, in theVie de Bohème, and it will not bear translation into contemporary English. There were cakes and ale, pipes and beer, and ginger was hot in the mouth too!Et ego fui in Bohemiâ! There were inky fellows and bouncing girls,then;nowthere are only fine ladies, and respectable, God-fearing men of letters.
THE DINING ROOM.
It was while the Twins were fashioning, that I went down in summer time to live at Chertsey on the Thames, chiefly in order to be near to one I had long admired, Thomas Love Peacock, the friend of Shelley and the author ofHeadling Hall—“Greekey Peekey,” as they called him, on account of his prodigious knowledge of things and books Hellenic. I soon grew to love the dear old man, and sat at his feet, like an obedient pupil, in his green old-fashioned garden at Lower Halliford. To him I first read some of myUndertones, getting many a rap over the knuckles for mysacrilegious tampering with Divine Myths. What mercy couldIexpect from one who had never forgiven “Johnny” Keats for his frightful perversion of the sacred mystery of Endymion and Selene? and who was horrified at the base “modernism” of Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound?” But to think of it! He had known Shelley, and all the rest of the demigods, and his speech was golden with memories of them all! Dear old Pagan, wonderful in his death as in his life. When, shortly before he died, his house caught fire, and the mild curate of the parish begged him to withdraw from the library of books he loved so well, he flatly refused to listen, and cried roundly, in a line of vehement blank verse, “By the immortal gods, I will not stir!”[3]
Under such auspices, and with all the ardour of youth to help, my Book, or Books, progressed. Meantime, I was breaking out into poetry in the magazines, and writing “criticism” by the yard. At last the time came when I remembered another friend with whom I had corresponded, and whose advice I thought I might now ask with some confidence. This was George Henry Lewes, to whom, when I was a boy in Glasgow, I had sent a bundle of manuscript, with the blunt question, “Am I, or am I not, a Poet?” To my delight he had replied to me with a qualified affirmative, saying that in the productions he had “discerned a real faculty, andperhapsa future poet. I say perhaps,” he added, “because I do not know your age, and because there are so many poetical blossoms which never come to fruit.” He had, furthermore, advised me “to write as much as I felt impelled to write, but to publish nothing”—at any rate, for a couple of years. Three years had passed, and I had neither published anything—that is to say, in book form—nor had I had any further communication with my kind correspondent. To Lewes, then, I wrote, reminding him of our correspondence, telling him that Ihadwaited, not two years, but three, and that I now felt inclined to face the public. I soon received an answer, the result of which was that I went, on Lewes’s invitation, to the Priory, North Bank, Regent’s Park, and met my friend and his partner, better known as “George Eliot.”
But, as the novelists say, I am anticipating. Sick to death, David Gray had returned to the cottage of his father, the hand-loom weaver, at Kirkintilloch, and there had peacefully passed away, leaving as his legacy to the world the volume of beautifulpoems published under the auspices of Lord Houghton. I knew of his death the hour he died; awaking in my bed, I was certain of my loss, and spoke of it (long before the formal news reached me) to a temporary companion. This by the way; but what is more to the purpose is that my first grief for a beloved comrade had expressed itself in the words which were to form the “proem” of my first book—
Poet gentle hearted,Are you then departed,And have you ceased to dream the dream we loved of old so well?Has the deeply-cherish’dAspiration perished,And are you happy, David, in that heaven where you dwell?Have you found the secretWe, so wildly, sought for,And is your soul enswath’d at last in the singing robes you fought for?
THE DRAWING ROOM.
Full of my dead friend, I spoke of him to Lewes and George Eliot, telling them the piteous story of his life and death. Both were deeply touched, and Lewes cried, “Tell that story to the public”; which I did, immediately afterwards, in theCornhill Magazine.By this time I had my Twins ready, and had discovered a publisher for one of them,Undertones.The other,Idyls and Legends of Inverburn,was a ruggeder bantling, containing almost the firstblank versepoems ever written in Scottish dialect. I selected one of the poems, “Willie Baird,” and showed it to Lewes. He expressed himself delighted, and asked for more. I then showed him the “Two Babes.” “Better and better!” he wrote; “publish a volume of such poems and your position is assured.” More than this, he at once found me a publisher, Mr. George Smith, of Messrs. Smith and Elder, who offered me a good round sum (such it seemed to me then) for the copyright. Eventually, however, after “Willie Baird” had been published in theCornhill, I withdrew the manuscript from Messrs. Smith and Elder, and transferred it to Mr. Alexander Strahan, who offered me both more liberal terms and more enthusiastic appreciation.
It was just after the appearance of my story of David Gray in theCornhillthat I first met, at the Priory, North Bank, with Robert Browning. It was an odd and representative gathering of men, only one lady being present, the hostess, George Eliot. I was never much of a hero-worshipper; but I had long been a sympathetic Browningite, and I well remember George Eliot taking me aside after my firsttête-à-têtewith the poet, and saying, Well, what do you think of him? Does he come up to your ideal?” Hedidn’tquite, I must confess, but I afterwards learned to know him well and to understand him better. He was delighted with my statement that one of Gray’s wild ideas was to rush over to Florence and “throw himself on the sympathy of Robert Browning.”
Phantoms of these first books of mine, how they begin to rise around me! Faces of friends and counsellors that have flown for ever; the sibylline Marian Evans with her long, weird, dreamy face; Lewes, with his big brow and keen thoughtful eyes; Browning, pale and spruce, his eye like a skipper’s cocked-up at the weather; Peacock, with his round, mellifluous speech of the old Greeks; David Gray, great-eyed and beautiful, like Shelley’s ghost; Lord Houghton, with his warm worldly smile and easy-fitting enthusiasm. Where are they all now? Where are the roses of last summer, the snows of yester year? I passed by the Priory to-day, and it looked like a great lonely Tomb. In those days, the house where I live now was not built; all up here Hampstead-ways was grass and fields. It was over these fields that Herbert Spencer and George Eliot used to walk on their way to Hampstead Heath. The Sibyl has gone, but the great Philosopher still remains, to brighten the sunshine. It was not my luck toknow himthen—would it had been!—but he is my friend and neighbour in these latter days, and, thanks to him, I still get glimpses of the manners of the old gods.
THE STUDY.
With the publication of my two first books, I was fairly launched, I may say, on the stormy waters of literature. When theAthenæumtold its readers that “this waspoetry, and of a noble kind,” and when Lewes vowed in theFortnightly Reviewthat even if I “never wrote another line, my place among the pastoral poets would be undisputed,” I suppose I felt happy enough—far more happy than any praise could make me now. Poor little pigmy in a cockle-boat, I thought Creation was ringing with my name! I think I must have seemed rather conceited and “bounceable,” for I have a vivid remembrance of aFortnightlydinner at the Star and Garter, Richmond, when Anthony Trollope, angry with me for expressing a doubt about the poetical greatness of Horace, wanted to fling a decanter at my head! It was about this time that an omniscient publisher, after an interview with me, exclaimed (the circumstance is historical), “I don’t like that young man; he talked to me as if he was God Almighty, orLord Byron!” But in sober truth, I never had the sort of conceit with which men creditedme; I merely lacked gullibility, and saw, at the first glance, the whole unmistakable humbug and insincerity of the Literary Life. I think still that, as a rule, the profession of letters narrows the sympathy and warps the intelligence. When I saw the importance which a great man or woman could attach to a piece of perfunctory criticism, when I saw the care with which this Eminent Person “humoured his reputation,” and the anxiety with which that Eminent Person concealed his true character, I found my young illusions very rapidly fading. On one occasion, when George Eliot was very much pestered by an unknown lady, an insignificant individual, who had thrust herself somewhat pertinaciously upon her, she turned to me and asked, with a smile, for my opinion? I gave it, rudely enough, to the effect that it was good for “distinguished people” to be reminded occasionally of how very small consequence they really were, in the mighty life of the World!
From that time until the present I have pursued the vocation into which fatal Fortune, during boyhood, incontinently thrust me, and have subsisted, ill sometimes, well sometimes, by a busy pen. I may, therefore, with a certain experience, if with little authority, imitate those who have preceded me in giving reminiscences of their first literary beginnings, and offer a few words of advice to my younger brethren—to those persons, I mean, who are entering the profession of Literature. To begin with, I entirely agree with Mr. Grant Allen in his recent avowal that Literature is the poorest and least satisfactory of all professions; I will go even further, and affirm that it is one of the least ennobling. With a fairly extensive knowledge of the writers of my own period, I can honestly say that I have scarcely met one individual who has not deteriorated morally by the pursuit of literary Fame. For complete literary success among contemporaries, it is imperative that a man should either have no real opinions, or be able to conceal such as he possesses, that he should have one eye on the market and the other on the public journals, that he should humbug himself into the delusion that book-writing is the highest work in the Universe, and that he should regulate his likes and dislikes by one law, that of expediency. If his nature is in arms against anything that is rotten in Society or in Literature itself, he must be silent. Above all, he must lay this solemn truth to heart, that when the World speaks well of him the World will demand thepriceof praise, and that price will possibly be his living Soul. He may tinker, he may trim, he may succeed, he may be buried in Westminster Abbey, he may hear before he dies all the peoplesaying, “How good and great he is! how perfect is his art! how gloriously he embodies the Tendencies of his Time!”[4]but he will know all the same that the price has been paid, and that his living Soul has gone, to furnish that whitewashed Sepulchre, a Blameless Reputation.
MR ROBERT BUCHANAN AND HIS FAVOURITE DOG.
For one other thing, also, the Neophyte in Literature had better be prepared. He will never be able to subsist by creative writing unless it so happens that the form of expression he chooses is popular in form (fiction, for example), and even in that case, the work he does, if he is to live by it, must be in harmony with the social and artisticstatus quo. Revolt of any kind is always disagreeable. Three-fourths of the success of Lord Tennyson (to take an example) was due to the fact that this fine poet regarded Life and all its phenomena from the standpoint of the English public school, that he ethically and artistically embodied the sentiments of our excellent middle-class education. His great American contemporary, Whitman, in some respects the most commanding spirit of this generation, gained only a few disciples, and was entirely misunderstood and neglected by contemporary criticism. Another prosperous writer, to whom I have already alluded, George Eliot, enjoyed enormous popularity in her lifetime, while the most strenuous and passionate novelist of her period, Charles Reade, was entirely distanced by her in the immediate race for Fame. In Literature, as in all things, manners and costume are most important; the hall-mark of contemporary success is perfect Respectability. It is not respectable to be too candid on any subject, religious, moral, or political. It is very respectable to say, or imply, that this country is the best of all possible countries, that War is a noble institution, that the Protestant Religion is grandly liberal, and that social evils are only diversified forms of social good. Above all, to be respectable, one must have “beautiful ideas.” “Beautiful ideas” are the very best stock-in-trade a young writer can begin with. They are indispensable to every complete literary outfit. Without them, the short cut to Parnassus will never be discovered, even though one starts from Rugby.
By P. Von Schönthan.Illustrated by J. Gülich.
Balder had begged me to give him a bed for the night. He was going to a ball that evening, and had business early the following morning in Berlin. He lived in such an out-of-the-way suburb that it would be quite impossible for him to go home to sleep. I was only too delighted to be of service to him. Although I could not offer him a bed, it would be easy to improvise a shakedown on which he could have a few hours’ rest. I set to work at once, and did the best I could for him, using a bundle of rags for the pillows, and my old dressing-gown for the mattress. When Balder saw it, he declared that nothing could be more to his taste.
“WALKED INTO MY ROOM.”
It was long past midnight, when I was awakened from a refreshing sleep by somebody fumbling with a key at the lock of my door. Several bungling attempts were made before the key was fitted into the lock successfully. At last, Balder walked into my room. He presented rather a comical appearance, with his crush-hat on one side of his head like the leaning tower of Pisa, and a short overcoat, with his long tail-coat peeping beneath. His face was flushed, partly with excitement, and he appeared possessed of a burning desire to relate his adventures to somebody. I had been looking at him with one eye; the other, nearest him, I kept tight shut, and did not move, for I had no desire to enter into conversation with him. But my friend was not so easily shaken in his purpose; he came close to my bedside, stepping on my boot-jack, so that it fell over with a terrible noise, and held the lighted candle within a few inches of my nose. Itwas impossible for even the most shameless shammer of sleep to hold out any longer. I opened my eyes, and said in the sleepiest tone I could assume:
“Enjoyed yourself?”
“ON THE SIDE OF MY BED.”
“Famously, my dear fellow,” answered Balder, seating himself on the side of my bed, although I forestalled his intention, and left hardly an inch for him to sit on. Then he entered into a long and not very lucid rigmarole on souls which are destined to come together. The story was rendered all the more difficult to understand from the fact that I kept falling asleep, and dreaming between his rhapsodies; but I gathered that Balder had met with a young Spanish lady at the mask ball, who apparently possessed the soul which he was fated to meet, and that she was the only person on earth who could make him happy. He had spent the whole evening with her, and she had promised to meet him at the next ball. At his request she had lifted her veil for one instant, revealing a face of Madonna-like beauty. It was a simple story, but when a man’s brain is fired with love he lingers over it. The words grace, Southern colouring, eyes like a gazelle, etc., must have been repeated very often, for I dreamed later on that I was repeating them to myself.
I bore it all patiently, for hospitality is a sacred duty, and, besides, the state which Balder’s mind was in demanded and deserved consideration.
As he went on with his story, he raised his voice, perhaps to rouse my flagging attention. Suddenly, somebody coughed in the next room. It was not a natural cough, but an artificial one, evidently intended by my landlady to serve as a gentle reminder that at two o’clock in the morning all respectable people should be in bed and quiet. My room was only separated from the apartment in which my landlady and her daughter slept by a door, which was hidden on either side by a high wardrobe, through which, in spite of this precaution, voices could be heard very distinctly. I informed Balder of this fact, but, unfortunately, he utterly refused to take my advice and go quietly to bed. He said he could not sleep, and, unhappily, catching sight of my coffee-machine, he added that he would like some coffee.
“Sleep if you can,” he said; “I can manage it all for myself.” He then removed his coat, dressed himself in the dressing-gown which acted as his mattress, and started to get some water from the kitchen, knocking things down on the way, and opening and shutting all the wrong doors. I became resigned, and made up my mind not to waste my breath on any fresh warnings. Somebody else coughed. It was Fräulein Lieschen this time, my landlady’s daughter. At any other time, Balder himself would have shown more consideration.
“STARTED TO GET SOME WATER.”
Most extraordinary noises proceeded from the water-tap in the kitchen. At last the kitchen door banged, and Balder re-appeared again. I expressed my regret that I had no methylated spirit, but he said it did not matter, and catching hold of a bottle of my expensive brandy, poured a lot into the lamp. Then he sat gazing into the blue flame without blinking.
Crash! went the glass globe, and the boiling water poured all over the table and put out the fire. I sprang out of my bed. “Good gracious!” I exclaimed, “the whole thing will explode.” He saidnothing, but began to pick up the hot pieces of glass patiently. The coughing in the next room became louder than ever.
“For heaven’s sake!” I went on, “try to be quiet if you can. The people in the next room want to go to sleep.Don’tyou hear them coughing?”
“Well! I never heard of such impudence! That coughing has disturbed me for some time. Anybody would think you’d got into an almshouse for old women—Where is the sugar?”
“Up there, in the cigar-box. But don’t knock that rapier down.”
Balder climbed up on a cane chair. It gave way. Klirr! The rapier fell on the floor, and Balder with it.
“Confound you, do take care. Didn’t I warn you?” An energetic knocking at the door of communication interrupted me.
“Herr Reif, I must really beg you to be quiet,” called my landlady’s daughter, not by any means in her sweetest tones. “We’ve been kept awake for the last hour.”
“That’s nothing to us,” said Balder from the floor, where he was groping for the rapier that had rolled under the wardrobe.
“Do be quiet! That is my landlady’s daughter, a very respectable girl—”
“Well, is nobody respectable except her? What do you pay rent for?” His face grew red with rage, and, placing his mouth close to the door, he called out, “What do you want with Reif? He’s in bed. I only wanted to reach down the sugar, and the old rapier fell on my head—a thing that might happen to anybody! Just lie down quietly and go to sleep. Such a fuss about nothing! Are we in a hospital?”
“IT GAVE WAY!”
“Do be quiet, Balder!” I begged, and my pleading at least had the effect of silencing whatever else was on his tongue. He thought no more of the sugar, but sat at the table and drank his self-brewed coffee without it. When he had finished it he lighted a cigarette, at which he puffed away till the room was full of smoke. As I lay and looked at him, I fell into that peaceful state in which dreaming and reality are so much mixed that it is hard to distinguish between them. And then Balder disappeared inclouds of smoke, and I heard and saw no more. I was awakened again by a light being held near my face. Balder was standing at my bedside with the candle in his hand. “Ah! I’m glad you’ve been asleep again!” he said, as I half-opened my eyes and looked at him. “I want to make a poem to my Spaniard. Have you got a rhyming dictionary anywhere about?”
“There, on the lowest shelf of the bookcase, butdobe quiet.”
He got the book without knocking anything down; refilled his coffee-cup, and leant back in his chair, and murmured—
“Where shall I meet thee?On the Guadelquiver?“On the Sequara? On the fair Zucar?“Or any other far-off Spanish river.....”
“Where shall I meet thee?On the Guadelquiver?“On the Sequara? On the fair Zucar?“Or any other far-off Spanish river.....”
Sleep again overpowered me, and I knew nothing till I was awakened by a noisy discussion taking place close to me. Balder stood with his face to the door, engaged in a hot dispute with my neighbours.
“The devil himself couldn’t collect his thoughts with that coughing going on,” he was saying as I woke up.
“I was coughing to make you quiet, that endless murmuring made me so nervous!” cried Fräulein Lieschen, her voice trembling with annoyance.
“I’M GLAD YOU’VE BEEN ASLEEP.”
I’m writing a poem, I tell you, and when one is composing a poem one must murmur. If you can’t sleep through it, you can’t be healthy. You must have eaten too much supper, or something. You can congratulate yourself that you’ve got such a lodger as Reif. Do you understand me? If you had me I’d teach you——”
Again and again, in as persuasive a voice as I could assume, I begged the orator at the wardrobe to put an end to the speech he was delivering on his views of a landlady’s dutiestowards her tenants. At length my patience gave way, and, sitting up in bed, I commanded him in a voice of authority to give, over his poetry and recitation, and to blow out the light and get into bed. Balder at length seemed to realise that he was trespassing on my hospitality, and that a certain amount of respect was due to my wishes as his host. He became silent; put his manuscript carefully into my dressing-gown pocket; cast one last fiery glance at the door, and retired to bed.
I do not know if he saw the daughter of sunny Spain, with her gazelle-like eyes in his dreams, but I do know that he snored as if he were dreaming of a saw-mill.
About three hours later, the winter daylight struggled into the room. Balder got up and dressed himself as quietly as a mouse. He seemed as though he was trying to make up for the disturbance he had made in the night, or, rather, in the morning. He excused himself most politely for waking me up, but said that he felt that he could not leave without saying good-bye, and thanking me for my kind hospitality. Then he left the room, closing the door softly behind him. At the same moment, I heard the door of my landlady’s room open. Half a minute’s dead silence followed, and then Balder fell back into my room like one stunned.
“IN A HOT DISPUTE.”
“Who is that girl that came out of the next room?” he asked breathlessly.
“Fräulein Lieschen, of course, the daughter of my landlady, to whom you were kind enough to deliver a lecture in the middle of the night——”
“She is my Spanish girl!” he gasped, grinding his teeth, and shaking his head disconsolately. He took a long time to recover himself. He sat down again on the side of my bed, as he haddone on his return from the ball. But in what a different mood! He made me swear to him that I would never reveal his name to Fräulein Lieschen, but that I would excuse him without giving any clue to his identity, for the disturbance he had caused in the night. This duty I willingly undertook.
Fräulein Lieschen, who was a good-natured girl, looked at the matter from the comical side, and readily accepted my unknown friend’s apology; and whenever we met on the stairs after that, she would say jokingly, “Please remember me to your funny friend!”
“REMEMBER ME TO YOUR FUNNY FRIEND!”
V.—THE LORD LIEUTENANT AT DUBLIN CASTLE.By Raymond Blathwayt.((Photographs and Illustrations by Lafayette, of Dublin, and Byrne, of Richmond.))
THE HON. MRS ARTHUR HENNIKER.
The Lord Lieutenant’s sister, Mrs. Arthur Henniker, who is helping him to do the honours of the Castle, and whom I had known in London, Mr. Fulke Greville, and I, were wandering round the curious old-fashioned buildings and courtyards that constitute the domain of Dublin Castle one bright breezy day in early spring. A military band was playing opposite the principal entrance, whilst the guard was being mounted in precisely the same manner as at the guard mounting at St. James’s. The scene was brilliant and inspiriting in the extreme. As we passed through an archway we came somewhat suddenly upon the massive Round Tower, from the top of which floated the Union Jack, and which dates back to a period not later than that of King John. Close to the Round Tower, which bears so curious a resemblance to the still more magnificent tower of the same name at Windsor, is the Chapel Royal. Here we found the guardian, a quaint, and garrulous and most obliging old person, waiting to show us over the handsome, albeit somewhat gloomy, building. Very exact and particular was ourciceronein pointing out to us the old fourteenth century painted windows, the special pews reserved for His Excellency, and the ladies and gentlemen of the court; the coats of arms belonging to the various Governors of Ireland,extending over a period of many hundreds of years—all these, I say, he carefully pointed out, drawing especial attention to one over which, at the moment, a thin ray of golden sunlight was falling, and which, he informed me, was the coat of arms of the Earl of Rochester—poor Rochester, the gay, the witty, the wicked, and the repentant. On quitting the chapel we began to ascend, under the auspices of another guide, a tremendously steep staircase, which is cut inside the fifteen-feet stone wall which leads to the chamber in the Round Tower wherein the Ulster King-at-Arms preserves the ancient records of the Castle. On our pilgrimage up this weary flight of stairs the guide drew our attention to a gloomy little dungeon, cut out of the thickness of the wall, in which there is but little light, and wherein the musty smell of ages is plainly discernible. “This,” whispered Mr. Greville in my ear, “reminds me of Mark Twain’s ’Innocents Abroad.’” After a glance at the record chamber, which was crammed with documents,we passed, with a sense of relief, into the bright sunny air and the large courtyard, round which are built the handsome lofty stables in which the Castle horses—of which there are an immense number—are kept, and which stables, Colonel Forster, the Master of the Horse, told me, are upwards of two hundred years old.
THE CASTLE.
CASTLE YARD. BAND PLAYING.
“And now, Mr. Blathwayt,” said Mrs. Henniker, as we passed the two sentries on guard at the entrance to the great hall, and proceeded up a staircase lined with rifles and through long sunlit corridors, “you must come with me to my own special sanctum, and rest yourself, after the object lessons in history which we have been giving you this morning.” Here, in a lofty, white-panelled room, with long windows looking down upon the private gardens of the Castle in which His Excellency and Captain Streatfield, one of the A.D.C.’s, were walking up and down, Mrs. Henniker and I sat talking of the past almost more than we did of the actual present. For, though my hostess is quite a young woman, yet as a daughter of the celebrated Richard Monckton Milnes, the first Lord Houghton, she cannot fail to have the most delightful reminiscences of the many celebrities with whom her father was so fond of filling his house.
GRAND STAIRCASE, DUBLIN CASTLE.
“But,” said she, “proud as I am of my father, I am quite as proud of my grandfather, Richard Pemberton Milnes, for he was only twenty-two years of age when he refused the choice of a seat in the Cabinet, either as Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary at War. My grandmother, Mrs. Pemberton Milnes, in her diary for 1809, says that one morning, while we were at breakfast, a king’s messenger drove up in a post-chaise and four with a despatch from Mr. Perceval, offering my husband the choice of aseat in the Cabinet. Mr. Milnes immediately said, ’Oh, no, I will not accept either; with my temperament I should be dead in a year.’ And nothing could induce him to do so either,” continued Mrs. Henniker, “nor could he be induced to accept the Peerage which was offered him by Lord Palmerston in 1856.”
“But your father was not so rigid in his views as your grandfather, was he, Mrs. Henniker?” said I.
“No,” she replied, “certainly he was not, although I don’t think that he quitted the House of Commons, which he always loved, without a pang of real regret. Amongst the many kind congratulations he received—for no man ever had more friends—was a very pretty one from his old friend, Mrs. Proctor, in which she said:
“’He enters from the common airInto that temple dim;He learns among those ermined PeersThe diplomatic hymn.His Peers? Alas! when will they learnTo grow up Peers to him?’”
“’He enters from the common airInto that temple dim;He learns among those ermined PeersThe diplomatic hymn.His Peers? Alas! when will they learnTo grow up Peers to him?’”
“You must have met many interesting people at your father’s house?” I observed, during the course of our conversation.
HIS EXCELLENCY LORD HOUGHTON IN HIS STUDY.
THE HON. MRS. HENNIKER IN HER BOUDOIR.
“Why, yes,” replied she, with an amused smile, “don’t you know the ridiculous story that Mr. Wemyss Reid, in his charming biography of my father, tells, and which, indeed, I believe was first told by Sir Henry Taylor, in his autobiography? I will tell it you. You know my father was acquainted with everybody, and his greatest pleasure in life was to introduce the notoriety of the moment to the leading members of English Society. On the particular occasion on which this story was told, it is alleged that somebody asked whether a certain murderer—it was Courvoisier, I think, the valet who killed his master—had been hanged that morning, and my aunt immediately answered, ’I hope so, or Richard will have him to his breakfast party next Thursday.’ But this story, Mr. Blathwayt, is really absolutely without foundation. I have here,” continued Mrs. Henniker, “a very interesting book of autographs, which I have kept for as far back as I can remember, and in which everybody who came to our house had to write their names,” and as she spoke she placed in my hands a large volume, on every page of which was a photograph and an autograph. There was Lecky, the historian; and Trench, the lateArchbishop of Dublin; Sir Richard Burton, the traveller; and Owen Meredith, the poet. There was a portrait of Swinburne when quite a young man, together with his autograph. “I have known Mr. Swinburne all my life,” remarked Mrs. Henniker. “I used to play croquet with him when I was quite a little girl, and laugh at him because he used to get in such a passion when I won the game.” There was John Bright’s signature, there was that of Philippe d’Orléans and General Chanzy, and last, but not least, there was that of Charles Dickens.