Part 14

I do not know very well how or why, but I have been lately sickening of poetry; and though once as great a dreamer as ever felt the sweet music of imagination in his heart of hearts, within the last four or five years I have found it all flat, stale, and unprofitable; and began to fancy myself a devout adorer of dull prose. I thank you then for showing me that there is still such a thing as poetry; and it would not at all surprise me to feel myself—after reading the Maid of Elnar through—taking the top of the wave, and going over every poet again from Chaucer to Byron. Can you tell me what it is that causes such a strange revolution in tastes? I declare for the last five years since the Byron mania was upon me, I have looked upon poetry as the most sappy, senseless misapplication of good words, that ever the whimsical folly of the universal fool, mankind, devised. A spark or two of the old faggot was rekindled in my heart about six weeks ago, by hearing a sonnet of Wordsworth’s read aloud; and that I believe induced me to read the extracts from your book; and now I am all ablaze. What I like in the various scattered passages of the Maid of Elnar, would be endless to tell without writing a review; but there is something throughout the whole which has enchanted me—a mingling of the fine spirit of old chivalry, with the sweet home feeling of calm happy nature that is something newer than even Spenser. As Oliver Cromwell used to say, I would say something—Ay verily—but I won’t for fear you should think me exaggerating and therefore I will bid you farewell. It is natural of course for me to hate you; for every author is bound to detest any other person who writes what is good. I would therefore fain pay you that compliment, but your book will not let me; and I must beg you to believe me

Ever yours most truly G. P. R. JAMES.

I send this to your Bookseller, because I do not know where else to send it; and I pay it, because many a good wholesome letter which has been addressed to the care of mine, has never reached me for want of that precaution on the part of my correspondents. Before the letter reaches you, I shall have got and read the whole book; and by heaven, if the rest does not come up to the extracts, I shall either lampoon you or your critics.

Another letter to Cunningham follows:

MAXPOFFLE NEAR MELROSE ROXBURGHSHIRE 17th May 1833.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

To show you how little the fault that you notice is attributable to myself, I have only to tell you that I could not get a copy of _Mary of Burgundy_ till three days after you had received it and my sister in law writes to Mrs. James, by the post that brought your letter, that although she had ordered the book through her own bookseller, she has not yet been able to get it, while friends of hers have obtained it at the circulating libraries. Not having lived in London for many years, I am quite unacquainted with all the ins and outs of these affairs and do not even know who is the Editor of the Athenæum; but I think it somewhat hard measure on his part to make an author pay for the sins of his Bookseller and very different indeed from the usual liberal spirit that I have seen in his paper.

However, I never courted a Journalist in my life and although I know that I have suffered greatly on this account, yet I shall pursue the same plan; and only by endeavoring to make my works better than they have been, force all honest writers to give them their due share whatever it may be. At the same time I will endeavour as far as in me lies to prevent any such instances of neglect as those of which you complain taking place for the future, especially in regard to a paper which deserves so well of the public. Having done so, whatever be the result the Editor must “tak his wull o’t, as the cat did o’ the haggis.” I never reply to criticism unless it be very absurd which is not likely to be the case with his; so let him “pour on, I will endure.”

In regard to the _String of Pearls_ I not only begged a copy to be sent to you before any one else; I wrote you a long letter to be sent with it; but this is only one out of the many shameful pieces of negligence which Mr. Bentley has shown in my affairs.

I trust that the Editor of the Athenæum got a copy of _Mary of Burgundy_ independent of that sent to you for I wish it clearly to be understood that I send you my leather and prunella, as a man for whom I have a high admiration and esteem, and not at all as a critic. When you get them, review them yourself, let others review, praise, abuse them, or let others abuse them as you find need; but still receive them as a mark of regard from me; and be sure that nothing you can say of them will diminish that regard. Whenever I have any one of them for which I wish a little lenity I will write you a note with it and tax your friendship upon the occasion; but still exculpate me in your own generous mind and plead my exculpation to others, of all intriguing to gain undue celebrity for my works or of dabbling with literary coteries. I give in to my bookseller a list of my friends—amongst whom your name stands high and I leave all the rest to him. For the _String of Pearls_ I _was_ anxious both because it was given to a charity and because I was afraid the Publisher might lose by it; but this as far as I can remember is the only book for which I ever asked a review.

Thanks however, many thanks, for your critique in the Athenæum which is calculated to do my book much good and is much more favorable than it deserves. Of your light censure I will speak to you when we meet which I am happy to say will be soon—at least I trust soon. On the twenty-eighth we leave this place for London on our way to Germany and Italy. My liver and stomach have become so deranged of late that I find it necessary to put myself under the hands of a physician whose prescription is an agreeable one. “Take the waters of Ems for two seasons and spend the intermediate time in traveling through Italy.” This plan I am about to pursue, and in our way we shall spend a month in London when I will find you out.

The country round us is lovely at present. After a cold lingering spring, summer has set in, in all its radiance and the world has burst at once into green beauty. You cannot fancy how lovely the Cheviots looked yesterday evening, as Mrs. James and I rode over the shoulder of the Eildons. The sky was full of the broken fragments of a past thunder storm and the lights and shadows were soft, superb and dreamlike. I know I may rave about beautiful scenery to you without fear or compunction for the Maid of Elnar made me know that you love it as well as

My Dear Allan, Ever yours truly, G. P. R. JAMES.

P. S.—I have not yet got your last volume but if it be as good as its predecessors you will have no occasion to whip your Genius.

He writes again to Cunningham:

10 JULY, 1835. 1 LLOYDS PLACE, BLACKHEATH.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

A thousand thanks for your kind letter and all the kind things it contains. I am glad that you like my friend the Gipsey, because your approval is worth much and though I think it tolerable myself, yet I have attributed a great part of its success to the name. In answer to the question you put, I do not think he was drowned; but I do not know with certainty. I have told all I do know and farther this deponent sayeth not. I have long been thinking of writing to you to tell you that the name of Chaucer appears in the Scroop and Grosvenor roll in the year 1386 but all that I dare say you know. The best sketch of the real events of Chaucer’s life is certainly that in Sir H. Nicholas’ comments on that roll, Vol. II., page 404, wherein he probably states all that can be learned with certainty of his life and proceedings. I tell you all this, although I dare say you are already acquainted with it because you asked me if I found any thing concerning our poet to let you know. The _Black Prince_ comes on but slowly. So much examination and research is necessary that it is a most laborious and very expensive work. It has already cost me in journeys, transcriptions, books, MSS., &c., many hundred pounds without at all calculating my individual labour and do you know, my dear Allan, what I expect as my reward. Clear loss; and two or three reviews written by ignorant blockheads upon a subject they do not understand, for the purpose of damning a work which throws some new light upon English History. I am very much out of spirits in regard to historical literature and though I would willingly devote my time and even my money to elucidate the dark points of our own history yet encouragement from the public is small and from the Government does not exist, so that I lay down the pen in despair of ever seeing English history any thing but what it is—a farrago of falsehoods and hypotheses covered over with the tinsel of specious reasoning from wrong data. And so you tell Lord Melbourne when you see him. But to speak of a personage, you are more likely to see namely Mr. Chantry. There is a bust which I wish him very much to see and wish you would take a look at it first as I have not seen the original myself. I have a cast of it given me by my Banker at Florence, to whom the original belongs, and if the head be equal to the cast it is the most beautiful antique I have ever seen. It is to be seen at Mr. Brown’s in University Street, Gower Street _marble works_. Ask to see the antique head belonging to Mr. Johnstone and write me but three lines to tell me what you think of it. He paid, I believe, two hundred pounds for it and would take I believe three or four. If it be as I think, it (pedestal and all) is worth double.

Yours ever with best Compliments to your family

G. P. R. JAMES

Excuse a scrawl but I am not very well.

1 LLOYDS PLACE, BLACKHEATH 5th Decr 1835

MY DEAR ALLAN,—I have sent you a book and have ten times the pleasure in sending you one now that ever I had, because I hear you have detached yourself from all reviews. Heaven be praised therefor; for now you can sit down quietly by your own ingle nook and pick out all that is good—if there be any—in my One in a Thousand and palate it all, without the prospect, the damning prospect, of a broad sheet and small print before your eyes, and without wracking your honest brain to find out any small glimmerings of wit and wisdom in your friend’s book in order to set it forth as fairly as may be to the carping world.

By the way, I thought you were honest and true; and yet you have deceived me wofully. You promised to come down to Blackheath and you have not appeared. I have been writing night and day or I should have presented myself to call you to account. Will you come down even yet, and take a family dinner with me? Any Sunday at five you will be sure to find me but if you come on another day, let me have a day’s notice by post, lest I be engaged, which would be a great disappointment to

Yours ever truly, G. P. R. JAMES

He always wrote frankly and freely to Cunningham. This letter deals with _Attila_.

THE COTTAGE, GREAT MARLOW, BUCKS, 15th April 1837

MY DEAR ALLAN,

Many thanks for your letter and kind words upon _Attila_. I do believe that he is a good fellow, at all events he is very successful in society and though there are not as you well know twenty people in London who know who Attila was, he is as well received, I understand, as if he had the entrée. Conjectures as to who Attila was are various in the well _informed circles_ of the Metropolis, and ever since the book was advertised two principal opinions have prevailed, some people maintaining that He, Attila, was Platoff; others asserting that he was a Lady, first cousin to Boru the Backswoodsman, and the heroine of a romance by Chateaubriand. This may look like a joke, but I can assure you, it is a fact and that out of one hundred people of the highest rank in Europe you will not find five who know who Attila was; setting aside the groveling animals who, as the Duke of Somerset says, _addict_ themselves to Literature.

I am very sorry to hear you say that these well informed and enlightened times have not done justice to your romances. I’ll tell you one great fault they have, which is probably that which prevents the world from liking them as much as it should do: they have too much poetry in them, Allan, one and all from _Michael Scott to Lord Roldan_. But you must not expect to succeed in all walks of art. You are a lyric poet and a biographer; how can you expect that the critics would ever let you come near romances. No, no; they feel it their bounden duty to smother all such efforts of your genius and they fulfil that duty with laudable zeal. Did you see how the Athenæum attempted to dribble its small beer venom upon _Attila_. If you have not, read that sweet and gramatical (_sic_) article, when you will find that because a man has succeeded in one style of writing he cannot succeed in another, and apply the critics dictum to yourself. One half of this world is made up of idiocy, insanity, humbug, and peculation, and the other half (very nearly) of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.

Yours ever truly G. P. R. JAMES

This letter is directed to “Charles Ollier, Esq., Richard Bentley, Esq., New Burlington street, London.”

FAIR OAK LODGE, PETERSFIELD, HANTS, 25th December, 1837.

MY DEAR OLLIER:

Mr. Bentley I think usually gives me six copies of a work such as Louis XIV. I have already had one copy of the two first volumes for the Duke of Sussex, and you will very much oblige me by having the copies sent to the following persons with my compliments written in the front leaf and dated Fair Oak Lodge, Petersfield. Lord John Russell, Wilton Crescent; S. M. Phillipps, Esq., Home Office; The Marquis Conyngham, Dudley House, Park Lane; The Lady Polwarth, 9 John Street, Berkeley Square; and also one to G. P. R. James, Fair Oak Lodge, which will make the six copies. I must also have another copy sent to my friend Seymour as soon as you can, addressed as follows: “Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, G. C. H. Brussels, In the care of the Under Secretary of State F. O. Downing Street.” For this last I will pay as soon as you let me know what is the price. Mr. Bentley charges me for the copy; I should like it to be accompanied by a copy of _Henry Masterton_, the small edition of which by the [way] I have not received any copies and should like some. Pray let me know what Mr. B. charges _me_ for Louis per copy as there are several other friends to whom I should like to give it, but as Sancho would say I must not stretch my feet beyond the length of my sheet.

Yours ever, G. P. R. JAMES.

P. S. I am anxious to get on with the two last volumes, but I suppose it is the merry season which prevents my having any proofs as yet.

A letter to Alaric Watts refers to the Boundary Question pamphlet:

FAIR OAK LODGE, PETERSFIELD, HANTS, 9th April, 1839.

MY DEAR WATTS,

I write you ten lines in the greatest bustle that ever man was in to tell you that the death of poor Sir Charles Paget turns me out of my house. This is not of necessity indeed, for I have a lease of it for some time yet unexpired, but Lady Paget sent to ask if I would let her come in again and I felt not in my heart to refuse the widow under such circumstances. I go before the first of May, but I do sincerely wish that between this and then I may have the pleasure of seeing you here. I think that you will believe me to be a sincere man; a tolerably bitter enemy as long as I think there is cause for enmity, a very pertinacious friend when I do like. From this place we go to London, or rather to Brompton, Mrs. James’s sister who is in town for the winter, having lent her her house there, for a short time. It is called the Hermitage and is nearly opposite Trevor Square, which perhaps you may know. Do not suffer yourself or Mrs. Watts to fancy that it will put us to any inconvenience to receive you here if you can manage it, as I assure you it will not. I sell all my horses by auction on the 25th and you could help to bid them up. After we quit the Hermitage, we have not the slightest idea where we shall go but there at least I trust to see you if you cannot leave your weighty employments ere then. I was delighted with your parthian shots, which were exquisitely truly aimed and though the arrows were not poisoned by your hand, the corruption of the flesh in which they have stuck, depend upon it, will produce gangrene. You were made for a reviewer: only you are honest. How was it else that I escaped even when we did not fully understand each other?

I have told the booksellers to send you a little pamphlet on the American Boundary question. It is merely a brief and unpretending summary of the early history of that bone of contention, only worth your looking into as a saving of time.

Pray let me hear from you a few words and believe me with Mrs. James’s and my own best Compliments to Mrs. Watts.

Yours ever G. P. R. JAMES

P. S. I am making a little collection of my works in their new edition for Mrs. Watts’s book-case and I send _Richelieu_ with this. It is odd Bulwer should have just published a play under the same title when the third edition of mine had been announced for months. I have not seen his, but I should like to compare the two.

ALARIC A. WATTS ESQRE Crane Court Fleet Street

2 VERULAM PLACE HASTINGS 10th January 1840

MY DEAR ALLAN,

It is very grievous to me to hear that you have been suffering and it would be as grievous to hear _the how_ if I were not quite sure that at your age and with temperance in all things such as yours, the enemy—if so we can venture to call him—will pass away and leave you, perhaps more useful, but not less comfortable for many a long year. Within my own recollection this has happened to many that I still know in health and vigor but while any vestige remains of the disease it always leaves a despondency as its footprint which makes us look upon the attack as worse than it really has been. Though a successful man, I know—I am sure,—you have been an anxious man; and there is nothing has so great a tendency to produce all kind of nervous affections as anxiety. I trust however that you have now no cause for any kind of anxiety but _that_ regarding your health, and that it will soon regain its tone. Pray my good friend take exercise, not of a violent or fatiguing nature, but frequent and tranquilly, and remember that anything which hurries the circulation is very detrimental. You will also find everything that sits heavy or cold upon the stomach also bad for you; I know, for I have seen much mischief done by even a small quantity of the cold sorts of fruit. It gives me great pleasure to hear you like my books. You are one of those who can understand and appreciate the plan which I have laid down for myself in writing them. If I chose to hazard thoughts and speculations that might do evil, to run a tilt at virtue and honor, to sport with good feelings and to arouse bad ones, the field being far wider, the materials more ample, I might perhaps be more brilliant and witty, but I would rather build a greek temple or a gothic church than the palace of Versailles with all its frog’s statues and marbles. If the books give you entertainment, you are soon likely to have another for there is one now in the press called the “_King’s Highway_” but which is not quite so Jack Sheppardish as the name implies. With our best regards to all yours believe me ever

Yours truly G. P. R. JAMES

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM ESQRE Belgrave Place Pimlico

I do not know to whom this letter was written.

HOTEL DE L’EUROPE, BRUSSELS, 30th July, ’40.

MY DEAR SIR,

The grief and anxiety I have suffered have brought upon me an intermittent fever and various concomitant evils amongst which has been an affection of the face and eyes. Had this not been the case I should have written to you ere I left England, although it has cost me a great effort to write to any one. I am now a good deal better and will immediately correct the proofs I have received; but for the future will you tell Mr. Shaw to send the proofs in as large a mass as possible, addressed as follows and given in to the French diligence office, à Monsieur G. P. James _chez_ M: C. A. Fries, Heidelberg en Basle, _aux soins de_ Messrs. Eschenauer Cie, Strasburg, Via Paris, _Pressé_.

This is a somewhat long address, but if it be not followed and the proofs be sent by Rotterdam I shall never get one half of them till two or three years after, for such was the case with many proofs of _Edwd. the Black Prince_.

Any letter for me you had better direct at once to me “_aux soins de_ Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, G. C. H. Brussels.” When I am a little better I will write you a longer letter telling you all our movements and also what progress I have made in my plan for stopping continental piracy; in which if you will give me your assistance and influence I do not despair of succeeding although the Government will do nothing. I have already made some way for I can talk without using my eyes.

Yours ever faithfully G. P. R. JAMES.

This letter was written to McGlashan, in Lever’s care, at Brussels:

THE SHRUBBERY, WALMER, 2nd August, 41.

MY DEAR SIR,—

I did not write to you as I had full occupation for every minute and of a kind that could not be neglected. The same will be the case for the next three weeks, as I am just concluding a new work which I can of course lay aside for no other undertaking till it is finished. It will give me very great pleasure to see you here on your way back from Brussels and we can talk over the whole of my plan but as to having even one number completed that is quite out of the question as in order to accomplish it I should be obliged to lay aside a work which had reached the beginning of the last volume before you made up your mind and to do so would be highly disadvantageous to both books. I can tell you quite sufficient however regarding the first two numbers to answer your views as to illustrations.

Pray give my best wishes to Dr. Lever and tell him that we are all going on well; though for the last fortnight I have had no small anxiety upon my shoulders regarding Mrs. James and the baby.