Part 13
MY DEAR SIR: I thank you very much for your renewed kindness. The perusal of your last work gave me very great pleasure, most of all (though that is but a very slender testimony in their favour) Evesham and Simon de Montfort, of whom I never had before an adequate conception. It is true I am adopted into the Cabinet, & will I fear be alleged as a proof of its poverty. In point of form I cannot succeed Lord Ripon until the Queen holds a Council.[54] The true and whole secret of the difficulty about Canada corn (and I do not mean that we can wonder at it) is, as I believe, that wheat, without great abundance, is at 46 / a quarter.
I remain, my dear sir, Yours faithfully & obliged, W. E. GLADSTONE.
G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ., The Shrubbery, Walmer.
Donald G. Mitchell, describing the little red cottage of Hawthorne, in the Berkshire hills, reminds us that among those who used to come a-visiting the great American romancer, was “G. P. R. James, that kindly master of knights ‘in gay caparison’;” and elsewhere says that at the Cooper Memorial meeting in Metropolitan Hall, on February 25, 1852, where Webster, Bryant and Hawks paid their tribute to the author of the Leatherstocking tales, “Mr. G. P. R. James—then chancing to be a visitor in New York,—lent a little of his rambling heroics to the interest of the occasion.”[55] I have before me the _Memorial_, printed by Putnam in 1852, containing a full report of the meeting, including the remarks of James, and I do not find anything which may fairly be called “heroics”, rambling or otherwise. The speech was manifestly extemporaneous. He began by expressing his pride in being an Englishman, a romance writer, and a man of the people, and his pleasure in paying an humble tribute to an American romance writer and a man of the people. He praised the addresses of those who preceded him, corrected a trifling error of Bryant’s in regard to a Mr. James, a surgeon, and declared that the proposed statue to Cooper was not merely to a novelist, but to a genius—to truth—to truth, genius and patriotism combined. He closed by urging all present to use every exertion to procure contributions for the purpose of erecting such a statue. To any unprejudiced mind, what James said was appropriate and dignified; well suited to the occasion; wholly natural and unaffected; and compared favorably, to say the least, with the dull and ponderous commonplaces of Daniel Webster who had the chair and who was singularly unfitted to preside over such a meeting. Of Webster’s platitudes, Professor Lounsbury is quite contemptuous, remarking that the distinguished orator “had nothing to say and said it wretchedly.”[56] I believe that the projected statue was never built. James was evidently a favorite dinner-speaker. It is pleasant to know that he spoke at a ‘printer’s banquet’ in New York in the latter part of 1850, and that he paid a well-merited tribute to a man destined to become a distinguished figure in literature. Bayard Taylor, writing to his friend George H. Boker, on January 1, 1851, says: “By the bye, James paid me a very elegant compliment, in his speech at the ‘printer’s banquet’ the other night, referring to me as the best landscape painter in words that he had ever known. This is something from an Englishman.”[57] He always said kind and appreciative words about his fellow-authors, if they were deserving.
Returning to the Hawthorne cottage, Julian Hawthorne gives a brief account of one of the visits of James, who, it appears, was living near by during the summer of 1851. As the narrator was five years old at the time of this visit, his estimate of the visitors must have been founded upon something other than his personal observation. He says:
“James was a commonplace, meritorious person, with much blameless and intelligent conversation, but the only thing that recalls him personally to my memory is the fact of his being associated with a furious thunderstorm.”
He relates how the storm raged and how the door burst open,—his father and he were alone in the cottage—
“and behold! of all persons in the world—to be heralded by such circumstances—G. P. R. James! Not he only, but close upon his heels his entire family, numerous, orthodox, admirable, and infinitely undesirable to two secluded gentlemen without a wife and mother to help them out.*** They dripped on the carpet, they were conventional and courteous; we made conversation between us but whenever the thunder rolled, Mrs. James became ghastly pale. Mr. James explained that this was his birthday, and that they were on a pleasure excursion. He conciliated me by anecdotes of a pet magpie, or raven, who stole spoons. At last the thunderstorm and the G. P. R. Jameses passed off together.[58]
It is not uninteresting to compare this rather patronizing and supercilious narration of a trivial incident with that which is given in his own Journal by the father of this precocious young gentleman of five years; and it is probably the fact that the story was related by the son not from his own memory but from the record of the Journal, reproduced in “Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife,” by Julian Hawthorne.[59] Nathaniel Hawthorne evidently liked James. Under date of July 30, 1851, he says:
“We walked to the village for the mail, and on our way back we met a wagon in which sat Mr. G. P. R. James, his wife and daughter, who had just left their cards at our house. Here ensued a talk, quite pleasant and friendly. He is certainly an excellent man; and his wife is a plain, good, friendly, kind-hearted woman, and his daughter a nice girl. Mr. James spoke of ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ and of ‘Twice-Told Tales,’ and then branched off upon English literature generally.”[60] The acquaintance between the two authors must have been deemed to be of advantage to both, for the supercilious Master Julian takes care to present in full a note of invitation addressed by James to the elder Hawthorne asking the latter ‘with his two young people’ to visit him, saying: “We are going to have a little haymaking after the olden fashion, and a syllabub under the cow; hoping not to be disturbed by any of your grim old Puritans, as were the poor folks of Merrymount. By the way, you do not do yourself justice at all in your preface to the ‘Twice-Told Tales,’—but more on that subject anon.”[61]
Under the date of August 9, 1851, Hawthorne gives his own version of the thunderstorm episode, in marked contrast with the condescending remarks of his hopeful son. It reveals the difference between parent and child.
“The rain was pouring down,” says Hawthorne senior, “and from all the hillsides mists were steaming up, and Monument Mountain seemed to be enveloped as if in the smoke of a great battle. During one of the heaviest showers of the day there was a succession of thundering knocks at the front door. On opening it, there was a young man on the doorstep, and a carriage at the gate, and Mr. James thrusting his head out of the carriage window, and beseeching shelter from the storm! So here was an invasion. Mr. and Mrs. James, their eldest son, their daughter, their little son Charles, their maid-servant, and their coachman;—not that the coachman came in; and as for the maid, she stayed in the hall.[62] Dear me! where was Phoebe in this time of need? All taken aback as I was, I made the best of it. Julian helped me somewhat, but not much. Little Charley is a few months younger than he, and between them they at least furnished subject for remark. Mrs. James, luckily, happened to be very much afraid of thunder and lightning; and as these were loud and sharp, she might be considered _hors de combat_. The son, who seemed to be about twenty, and the daughter, of seventeen or eighteen, took the part of saying nothing, which I suppose is the English fashion as regards such striplings. So Mr. James was the only one to whom it was necessary to talk, and we got along tolerably well. He said that this was his birthday, and that he was keeping it by a pleasure excursion, and that therefore the rain was a matter of course.[63] We talked of periodicals, English and American, and of the Puritans, about whom we agreed pretty well in our opinions; and Mr. James told how he had recently been thrown out of his wagon, and how the horse ran away with Mrs. James; and we talked about green lizards and red ones. And Mr. James told Julian how, when he was a child, he had twelve owls at the same time; and, at another time, a raven, who used to steal silver spoons and money. He also mentioned a squirrel, and several other pets; and Julian laughed most obstreperously. As to little Charles, he was much interested with Bunny (who had been returned to us from the Tappans, somewhat the worse for wear), and likewise with the rocking-horse, which luckily happened to be in the sitting-room. He examined the horse most critically, and finally got upon his back, but did not show himself quite as good a rider as Julian. Our old boy hardly said a word. Finally the shower passed over, and the invaders passed away; and I do hope that on the next occasion of the kind my wife will be there to see.”[64]
I give the story in full, not only because of its relation to James and his family, but for its revelation of Hawthorne himself; the little touch of parental pride is amusing as well as affecting. What Nathaniel Hawthorne thought of James in those days is far more important than what Julian Hawthorne thinks of him now.
Mr. Charles L. James writes to me:
“Yes, I have read Hawthorne’s account of our visit in a thunderstorm; and what is more, I remember the occurrence. I was little Charley, whom he mentions. I remember not only getting upon Julian’s rocking-horse, but pulling out his tail and being aghast at what I had done, for I did not possess a wooden horse and it had not occurred to me that the tail was movable.”
I am glad that Charles pulled out that tail; perhaps the memory of the outrage inspired the owner of the steed when he wrote his little story.
Longfellow regarded James with a degree of kindness and esteem quite comparable to that with which Hawthorne looked upon him. In his Journal for September 17, 1850, he says, after mentioning several visitors: “Then Fields, with G. P. R. James, the novelist, and his son. He is a sturdy man, fluent and rapid, and looking quite capable of fifty more novels.”[65] Later, on November 17, he says: “James, the novelist, came out to dinner with Sumner. He is a manly, middle-aged man, _tirant sur le grison_, as Lafontaine has it, with a gray mustache; very frank, off-hand, and agreeable. In politics he is a Tory, and very conservative.”[66] James certainly had no reason to complain of his reception by the best of our own literary men of that day.
It is an evidence of the fact that James was admired and his ability appreciated by other authors, that he was suspected by no less a person than William Harrison Ainsworth of being the writer of _Jane Eyre_. I have before me an autograph letter from Ainsworth to James (November 14, 1849), in which he says: “Anything I can do for you at any time you know you may command, and I shall only be too happy in the opportunity of making kindly mention in the N. M. M. of your Dark Scenes of History. The times are not propitious to us veterans and literature generally has within the last two years suffered a tremendous depreciation.*** Do you know I took it into my head that you were the author of ‘Jane Eyre,’ but I have altered my opinions since I read a portion of ‘Shirley.’ Currer Bell, whoever he or she may be, has certainly got some of your ‘trick’ *** but ‘Shirley’ has again perplexed me.”
Robert Louis Stevenson had a modified fondness for James, which is expressed in a letter written by him from Saranac, February, 1888, to E. L. Burlingame. He says:
“Will you send me (from the library) some of the works of my dear old G. P. R. James? With the following especially I desire to make or to renew acquaintance: _The Songster_, _The Gipsey_, _The Convict_, _The Stepmother_, _The Gentleman of the Old School_, _The Robber_. _Excusez du peu._ This sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an accident. The Franklin County Library contains two works of his, _The Cavalier_ and _Morley Ernstein_. I read the first with indescribable amusement—it was worse than I had feared, and yet somehow engaging; the second (to my surprise) was better than I had dared to hope; a good, honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine old-fashioned talent in the invention when not strained, and a genuine old-fashioned feeling for the English language. This experience awoke appetite, and you see I have taken steps to stay it.
R. L. S.”
I have a number of holograph letters of James, some of which show his pleasant ways and attractive playfulness. They constitute the _raison d’ étre_ of this commentary and so I will not apologize for giving them almost in full. He speaks for himself far better than I can speak for him. He was surely not a Siborne or a Major Dwyer. To my mind these letters reveal the man, and they tell of an honest, genial man who was able to write.
He writes to C. W. H. Ranken, at Bristol, thus:
RENNES, 16 January, 1826.
RANKENO AMICO CARISSIMO:
That unfortunate Gentleman upon whose back all the evils of this world have been laid from time immemorial, I mean the Devil, has certainly (to give him his due) been tormenting my poor friend and schoolfellow pretty handsomely. What with your cough in the first place and your abscess in the second you have been quite a martyr, but remember the martyrs always reach heaven at last and I doubt not that your sufferings will soon be over and that in the little Paradise you have planned for yourself some five or six miles from London (rather a cockney distance by the by) you will enjoy the happiness of the blest with those you love best. I think I shall make the same compact with you that I have made with Becknell namely that in after years when time has laid his heavy hand upon us all and when you are happy in your children and your children’s children you will still give the crusty old Bachelor a place at your fireside and your Sophia shall furnish me with strong green tea and I will take my pinch of snuff and tell you Graddam’s tales to amuse the little ones or recount the wonderful things I have seen in my travels or growl at the degeneracy of the world and praise the good old days when I was young and gay and did many a wondrous deed for “Ladye love and pride of Chivalrie” and you shall forgive many a cross word and ill tempered remark for old friendship’s sake and say “He was not always so but this world’s sorrows have soured his temper, poor old Man.”
You tell me to continue my history of Bretagne, but in sooth I know not where I left off. Memory, that lazy slut, has forgot to mend her pocket which has had a hole in it for some time and the consequence is that, of all I give her to keep for me, the dross alone remains and the better part is dropped by the wayside. But I am not at all in the mood to give any descriptions. I am philosophical and therefore will tell you a story.
In that mighty empire which exceeds all others as much in wisdom as it does in size—in the time of Fo Whang, who was the six hundredth emperor of the ninety-seventh dynasty which has sat on the throne of Cathay, there lived a philosopher whose doctrine was such that every Chinese from the mandarin who enjoys the light of the celestial presence to the waterman who paddles his Junk in the river of Canton became proselytes.
Every one knows that every Chinese from generation to generation is in manners, customs, dress, and appearance so precisely what his father was before him that a certain Mandarin who had thought proper to fall into a trance for a century or so, waking from his sleep and entering his paternal mansion, found his great grandson, who was at dinner, so strikingly like himself that he was struck dumb with astonishment. There were the same wide thin eye-brows, there were the same beautiful black eyes no bigger than peas, there was the same delicate tea-colored complexion. He wore the same silk his ancestor had worn and the same chopsticks carried his food to his mouth. The Great Grandson instantly recognized his predecessor, but the resuscitated Mandarin, forgetting the lapse of years, mistook his descendant for his own grandfather and each casting themselves on their belly wriggled towards each other with all symptoms of respect. Such being the laudable reverence of this people for all customs sanctified by time, it may be well supposed that that doctrine was magnificent which could take a Chinese by the ear, and such indeed was the doctrine of the Philosopher, namely, that wisdom is folly and folly is wisdom. Which he proved thus: “The end of wisdom” said the Philosopher, “is to be happy. And the fewer are our wants the fewer can be our disappointments and consequently the happier we are. The fool has fewer wants than the wise man and the ignorant less wishes than the learned, and therefore the fool being the happiest is the wisest and the wise man is but a fool.” Now the wise men (even in China) being lamentably in the minority the Philosopher had all the voices for himself. Now there was a young Man named To-hi, who never pretended to be a wise man but was nevertheless not a fool, and going to the Philosopher he said to him—“Father, I cannot help thinking that your doctrine means more than it appears to mean and I think I have found its explication.” “Speak freely, my Son” replied the Philosopher, “and tell me what you suppose it to be.” “I imagine,” said To-hi, “that you wish to inculcate that Men seek for wisdom above their power and destroy their happiness by examining too near the objects which produce it. For I remark that all that is beautiful in nature as well as in life is little better than a delusion which to be enjoyed must be seen from a distance. When I look at the hills of Tartary, they seem from here grand and soft and blue and changing all sorts of colors from the reflection of the Sun, but when I approach them I find nothing but heaps of barren rocks and frightful deserts. If we regard the finest skin with a magnifying glass, it is like coarsest cloth of Surat and the sunset that we admire for its soft splendor to the nations on the edge of the horizon is but the glare of midday. Thus then we ought to enjoy whatever the world offers us without searching for faults and be as happy as we can without seeking to be too wise. Is not this what you meant?” “My Son,” replied the Philosopher “like many other Philosophers I did not well know what I meant and you, like many other commentators, have given an explanation which the author never intended.”
Rennes, first of Feby.
As you will see, my Dear Ranken, this letter has been written half a century but I have been wandering about the country and forgot to finish it before I went. Long before this however I hope you are fundamentally cured and prepared to set up on your own bottom. Doubtless you will find a vast fund of nonsense in the former part of this ’pistle but if it serves to give you a minute’s amusement it will answer the object of
Yours sincerely G. P. R. JAMES.
Everybody seems to have written affectionately to Charles Ollier, the publisher—Lamb, Hunt, Keats, Shelley, and a host of others. His son, Edmund, ‘beheld Charles Lamb with infantile eyes and sat in poor Mary Lamb’s lap.’[67] James writes to the elder Ollier, from the Chateau du Buisson, Garumbourg, _près_ Evreux, on August 7, 1829:
“MY DEAR MR. OLLIER.
I take advantage of a friend’s departure for London, to write to you though I have nothing to say. I have done so much of my new book as I permit myself to do per diem and having nothing else to do my vile _cacoethes scribendi_ prompts me to indite this epistle to your manifest trouble and annoyance. My father informs me you have been ill and calls your complaint ‘nothing but Dis-pep-sia.’ I hope and trust however that you have no such long word in your stomach, but if you have, nothing can be so good for it as crossing the water and visiting a friend in France. One of my visitors lately brought me over about twenty newspapers and also the information that my unfortunate _Adra_ had never made her appearance. Incontinent, I fell into one of my accustomed fits of passion which was greatly increased by finding that in none of the twenty journals was any advertisement or mention whatever of _Richelieu_ which together with the news that about four and twenty people had asked for _Richelieu_ and could not get it in England, Scotland or Ireland, made me write instantly to Mr. Bentley a very flaming letter about printing _Adra_ &c. &c. &c. I had written to Mr. Colburn sometime ago without his doing me the _honor_ to answer me, and therefore I write not there again. I have since received an answer from Mr. R. Bentley and all has gone right. But I am most profanely ignorant of all news and therefore will beg you to answer me the following Qys. if you can.
Has _Richelieu_ been reviewed in the New Monthly? Has it ever been advertised? Does the sale proceed as successfully as when I left London? Will you see that its first success does not make Mr. Colburn relax in his efforts in its favor? Will you manage the reviewing of Adra and take care that it be sent to and noticed by as many publications as possible? Will you see that the list of persons to whom I desired it to be sent and which I left in Burlington street be attended to? Will you let me know whether there be anything in which I can in any way serve or pleasure you? I am sincere and ever yours.
G. P. R. JAMES.
This letter dated at Maxpoffle, near Melrose, Roxburghshire, 14th June 1832, is addressed to Allan Cunningham.
MY DEAR SIR:
When you were in this country last year, I told you not to forget me; and you promised that you would not; yet I doubt not that when you see the signature to this, memory will have much ado to call up the person who writes. Nevertheless I cannot forbear—even at the distance of time which has since elapsed, and the distance of space which intervenes—from telling you how much delighted I have been with your Maid of Elnar. I have not seen the whole; but various passages in various reviews, have shown me so much surpassing beauty, that I do not wait even till I have been delighted with the whole, to tell you how great has been the pleasure I have felt from a part.