Part 15

Believe me to be Dear Sir Yours faithfully G. P. R. JAMES.

On May 17, 1842, he wrote to Mr. Bretton:

“*** I am very glad you were pleased with what I said at the Literary Fund dinner. I could have said a great deal more upon the same subject and opened my views for the benefit of the arts in this country, including literature of course, as one of the noblest branches of art—but the hour was so late that I made my speech as short as possible and yet perhaps it was too long.*** I think if I can bring the great body of literary men to act with me, especially the much neglected and highly deserving writers for the daily and weekly press, I shall be enabled to open a new prospect for literature. Should you have any oportunity (_sic_) of hinting that such are my wishes and hopes, pray do: for this is no transient idea, but a fixed and long meditated purpose which, however inadequate may be my own powers to carry it out, may produce great things by the aid of more powerful minds than that of

Yours very faithfully G. P. R. JAMES.

The name of the person to whom the following letter was written is not given:

THE OAKS NR. WALMER KENT 22ND AUGT. 1844

SIR:

I have been either absent from home or unwell since your letter arrived or I should have answered it sooner. I do not exactly understand the sort of use you desire to make of the _Life of Edward the Black Prince_ written by myself. Of course I can have no possible objection to your making as long quotations from it as you like, or to your grounding your own statements upon those which it contains which I think you may rely upon with full confidence; but if it was your purpose to make the projected Work a mere sort of Abridgement of mine, I am sorry to say I cannot give you the permission you desire, however much I might personally wish to do so, as Messrs. Longman published a Second Edition of it not long ago, a part of which remains unsold and I could not venture, of course to interfere with their sale. They could not of course object to any quotations you might think fit to make or any reasonable use of the facts stated, as I cannot but think that each historian has a full right to employ the information collected by all his predecessors.

I have the honor to be, Sir Your most obedt. Servant G. P. R. JAMES

THE SHRUBBERY WALMER KENT

1ST JUNE 1847

MY DEAR WORTHINGTON,

I received your letter yesterday and would have answered it immediately; but we are in the midst of an election business here. I am not a candidate; and, disgusted with public men, had resolved not to take any part on behalf of others; but I have been led on and when once in the business go on, as you know, heart and hand.

Let me hear a little more about the Ecclesiastical History Society. I am a churchman you know, but far from Puseyitical and I should not like to be mixed up with any legends except such as Ehrenstein or any Saints except St. Mary le bonne.

I am glad to hear that you have moved your dwelling; for Pancras was so completely out of my beat that it was impossible for me to get there when in town. Indeed during my visits to that famed city of London I always put myself in mind of an American orator’s description of himself when he said “I am a right down regler Steam Engine, I go slick off right ahead and never stop till I get to the tarnation back of nothing at all.”

I shall be delighted to see you and Mr. Christmas here any time you can come and will with a great deal of pleasure board and educate you but as to lodging you I am unable for what with babies, nurses, and one thing or another I can hardly lodge myself. I do not propose to be in London for some days or I should rather say weeks, as I was there very lately.

As to Marylebone, any body may propose me for any where and I will be the representative of any body of men always provided nevertheless that I do not spend a penny and maintain my own principles to the end of the chapter. I am not yet inscribable in the _dictionnaire des Girouettes_; but I trust soon to be for it seems to me that the Jim Crow system is the only one that succeeds in England.

Believe me with best regards to all your household

Yours truly G. P. R. JAMES

In a letter dated April 1, 1849, and addressed to Mr. Davison, he says:

“I understand you have got a potato. Can you spare half of it, for we have not that. But to speak seriously, which is not my wont, Mrs. James has heard from Mrs. H. that on your farm there are some capital praties, and as we have been languishing for some of the jewels for the last month without being able to get anything edible or digestible, if this rumor of your _riches_ is correct, will you spare a sack or two to a poor man in want, and what will be the cost of the same, delivered in Farnham safe, sound and in good condition—wind and weather permitting. The truth is I have no horse to send for them; and neither cow nor calf have learned to draw yet. I have had no time to teach them, or to buy a horse either. I wish any one else had half my work and I half of theirs—I’d take it and give a premium.”

How busy he was after his arrival in America may be seen from a letter dated October 27, 1850:

“I fear that it would be quite impossible for me to rewrite the first four numbers of the tale you speak of. Applications for lectures have come in so rapidly that I have not one single evening vacant and the evening would be the only time which I could devote to such a purpose as all my mornings must be given up to the fulfilment of my engagements with England and to traveling from place to place. You may easily imagine how much I am occupied when I tell you that during the whole month I am about to stay in Boston, there is not one night which has not its lecture fixed there or at some place in the neighborhood. The delay in London however, of which I had not heard till I received your letters is favorable, as it will enable me to get the proofs over in good time. The four parts are in type, I understand, and I have written over two thumping letters to the printers scolding them for not sending the proof as they are bound by contract to do. One of these letters was posted three weeks ago, so that we may expect the proofs in a week or ten days. In regard to the name, it is certainly curious that one name should have been taken three times but I do not see how it is possible for me to alter it now when it is announced in London. I was not at all aware that any work had before appeared under a similar title, but you could head it _James’s_ story without a name in the Magazine, but if any other title is given it must be by yourselves and not by

“Yours faithfully, “G. P. R. JAMES.”

Soon after his arrival in America he appears to have become involved in some trouble with publishers. He writes from New York on October 24, 1850, to Ollier:

*** “Send no more sheets to Mr. Law till you hear from me again. My eyes have been opened since my arrival here. Four times the sum now paid can be obtained from Messrs. Harper, and negotiations are going on with them in which they must not have the advantage of having the sheets. You shall not lose by any new arrangement—of that you may trust to the word of one who has I think never failed you.”

He adds, in a postscript: “Tell him [Mr. Newby] I have been shamefully imposed upon by false statements of the sale here and if I had taken his advice I should have been some hundreds of pounds richer.”

On October 5, 1851, he writes from Stockbridge to Ollier:

“I have not written to you earlier because I wanted to find the treaty with Russia in regard to Copyright, and also to see the head of a great German house here in America so as to put you in the way of negotiating for the sale of my next book in Germany. But I have been too lame to leave my own house for anything but a morning drive. I am so far better that I can now walk out for a mile or two, but my right hand and arm remain very painful. However, I think I shall be able to go to New York in ten days and will write to you from that place.*** I am anxious to dedicate the first book I write to my own satisfaction, to Lord Charles Clinton. He is one of the noblest-minded men I ever met with—all truth and honor and straightforwardness. If you see him will you ask him for me whether he has any objection. The Fate is highly popular here—considered the best book I ever wrote—by the critics at least. The whole of the first chapter was read in the Supreme Court the other day before Chief Justice SHAW to prove what was the state of England in the reign of James II. So says the ‘N. Y. Evening Post’ and I suppose it is true. I wish I had you here with me to see the splendor of an American autumn in the most lovely scene. The landscape is all on fire with the coloring of the foliage and yet so harmoniously blended are the tints, from the brightest crimson to the deep green of the pines that the effect is that of a continuous sunset. Mountains, forests, lakes, streams are all in a glow round.”

A letter to Ollier, written at Stockbridge on March 22, 1852, deals with some financial matters and then proceeds:

“I am glad to hear what you say of _Revenge_—though the title is not one I would myself have chosen, there being a tale of that name in the book of the Passions. I think it is a good book, better in conception than in execution perhaps. Your comparison of Richardson and Johnson with myself and you will not hold. You are scantily remunerated for much trouble. Johnson had done nothing that I can remember for Richardson. As to Richardson’s parsimony towards the great, good man, you explain it all in one word. The former was rich. Do you remember the fine poem of Gaffer Grey—Holcrofft’s I believe—

‘The poor man alone, To the poor man’s moan, Of his morsel a morsel will give Gaffer Grey.’

“But this rule is not without splendid exceptions, of which I will one day give you an instance, which I think will touch you much. At present I am writing in great haste in the grey of the morning with snow all around me, the thermometer at 18, and my hand nearly frozen. Verily, we have here to pay for the hot summer and gorgeous autumn in the cold silver coinage of winter.”

Another letter of his written from Winchester, Virginia, November 6, 1853, to Ollier, has some interest. He writes thus:

“MY DEAR OLLIER: Long before the arrival of your kind letter, which reached me only two days ago, I had directed Messrs. Harper to send me a revise of the first page of _Ticonderoga_, in order to transmit it to you for the correction of errors which had crept into the Ms. through the stupidity of the drunken beast who wrote it under my dictation. Harpers have never sent the revise, but I think it better to write at once in order to have one correction and one alteration made, which must be effected even at the cost of a cancel of the page—which of course I will pay for. The very first sentence should have inverted commas before it. These have been omitted in the copy left here, as well as the words ‘so he wrote’ or something tantamount, inserted at the end of the first clause of that sentence.***

I cannot feel that an appointment of any small value, to the dearest and most unhealthy city in the United States (with the exception of New Orleans) is altogether what I had a right to hope for or expect. You must recollect that I never asked for the consulate of Virginia, where there is neither society for my family, resources or companionship for myself, nor education to be procured for my little boy—where I am surrounded by swamps and marsh miasma, eaten up by mosquitoes and black flies, and baked under an atmosphere of molten brass, with the thermometer in the shade at 103—where every article of first necessity, with the exception of meat, is sixty per cent. dearer than in London—where the only literature is the ledger, and the arts only illustrated in the slave market.

I hesitated for weeks ere I accepted; and only did so at length upon the assurances given that this was to be a step to something better, and upon the conviction that I was killing myself by excessive literary labors. Forgive me for speaking somewhat bitterly; but I feel I have not been well used. You have known me more than thirty years, and during that time I do not think you ever before heard a complaint issue from my lips. I am not a habitual grumbler; but ‘the galled jade will wince.’

I am very grateful to Scott for his kind efforts, and perhaps they may be successful; for Lord Clarendon, who is I believe a perfect gentleman himself, when he comes to consider the society in which I have been accustomed to move, my character, my habits of thought, and the sort of place which Norfolk is—if he knows anything about it—must see that I am not in my proper position there. He has no cause of enmity or ill will towards me, and my worst enemy could not wish me a more unpleasant position. If I thought that I was serving my country there better than I could elsewhere, I would remain without asking for a change; but the exact reverse is the case. The slave dealers have got up a sort of outcry against me—I believe because under Lord Clarendon’s own orders I have successfully prosecuted several cases of kidnapping negroes from the West Indies—and the consequence is that not a fortnight passes but an attempt is made to burn my house down. The respectable inhabitants of Norfolk are indignant at this treatment of a stranger, and the authorities have offered a reward of three hundred dollars for the apprehension of the offenders; but nothing has proved successful. This outcry is altogether unjust and unreasonable; for I have been perfectly silent upon the question of slavery since I have been here, judging that I had no business to meddle with the institutions of a foreign country in any way. But I will not suffer any men, when I can prevent or punish it, to reduce to slavery British subjects without chastisement.

You will be sorry to hear that this last year in Norfolk has been very injurious to my health; and I am just now recovering from a sharp attack of the fever and ague peculiar to this climate. It seized me just as I set out for the West—the great, the extraordinary West. Quinine had no effect upon it, but I learned a remedy in Wisconsin which has cured the disease entirely though I am still very weak.***

He seems to have been tormented by ill health during all his period of residence at Norfolk. He writes to Ollier:

BRITISH CONSULATE, NORFOLK, VIRGINIA, 7th April, 1855.

MY DEAR OLLIER:—It has been impossible for me to write to you and it is now only possible for me to write a few lines as I have already had to do more than my tormented and feeble hands could well accomplish. For 10 weeks I was nailed to my chair with rheumatic gout in knees, feet, hips, hands, shoulder. For some time I could only sign my dispatches with my left hand and to some letters put my mark. Happily my feet, knees, &c., are well, but I cannot get the enemy out of my hands and arms. My shoulder is Sebastapol and will not yield.

Another letter, also in my possession, I have caused to be printed elsewhere. It is addressed to Ollier, and was written from Farnham, Surrey, on July 26, 1848.

My dear Ollier: I do not suppose that I shall be in town for a few days, and I think in the meantime it would be better to send me down the sheets with any observations you may have to make. I shall be very happy to cut, carve, alter and amend to the best of my ability. The ‘sum’ can only be described as ‘Heaven, Hell and Earth’, or if you like it better, ‘upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber.’ But I suppose neither of these descriptions would be very attractive and therefore perhaps you had better put ‘The Sky, the hall of Eblis, South Asia’. When it maketh its appearance you had better for your own sake take care of the reviewing; for I cannot help thinking that with the critics at least, my name attached to it is likely to do it more harm than good, unless friendly hands undertake the reviewing. The literary world always puts me in mind of the account which naturalists give of the birds called Puffs and Rees which alight in great bodies upon high downs and then each bird forms a little circle in which he runs round and round. As long as each continues this healthful exercise on the spot he has first chosen, all goes on quietly; but the moment any one ventures out of his own circle, all the rest fall upon him and very often a general battle ensues. I wish you could do anything for my book _Gowrie or the King’s Plot_. I had a good deal of money embarked in it.

Yours faithfully, G. P. R. JAMES.

My letter of latest date indicates the time when he was transferred to Richmond.

BRITISH CONSULATE, NORFOLK, VA. 3 May, 1856.

MY DEAR MR. KENNEDY: *** Lord Clarendon has ordered me to make every preparation for moving the Consulate of Virginia up to Richmond but not to do so until he has nominated a Vice Consul for Norfolk. He also wishes me to send him a detailed report regarding the late epidemic here and what between house hunting, office hunting, and trying to run down those foxes called rumors into their holes and to draw truth up from the bottom of her well in a place where people are as fanatical upon contagion and non-contagion as if they were articles of faith, I have had no peace of my life. My book I would have sent you but I could not get a copy worth sending. It has found favor in the South and is powerfully abused in the North, both which circumstances tend to increase the sale so that it has been wonderfully well read.***

I am sorry I did not think of taking notes of all the winning conversations at Berkeley. We might have made out together some few from the Noctes Berkelianae.

Yours ever, G. P. R. JAMES.

I was interested not long ago in a remark of the accomplished literary reviewer of the _Providence Journal_ about reading for boys. He said: “As a matter of fact, there is plenty of good, healthy reading for boys if parents and teachers would do more to bring it to their attention. To say nothing of Scott—whom some degenerate youngsters in these days profess to find stupid—there are Ainsworth, G. P. R. James, Mayne Reid and hosts of others who can tell stories of adventure that any healthy minded boy will enjoy.” I know well the sound and refined judgments of my Providence friend,—who castigated me once for my opinion that Cowper was not much read in these times—but I do not understand how he can imagine a boy of the twentieth century condescending to read Ainsworth or James. First and foremost, the novels are too long. The conventional three volumes demanded by the English public are revolting to the minds of the modern boys who want their fiction condensed and flavored with tabasco sauce. The Providence critic and I know—or think we know—what they ought to read, what would be good for their intellectual digestion; but we might as well offer them pre-digested tablets in lieu of chocolate creams. The young person will not now subsist on a diet of Ainsworth or of James. The long-spun dialogue would bore him. He calls for something more piquant; revels in slang; wants “sensation” and plenty of it, compressed in a small compass. As for the parents, they do not know much better themselves. The man of Providence well says: “The trouble is, as was pointed out in these columns recently in discussing the reading of girls, that the home atmosphere is all against any intelligent selection of books.” The prevalent antagonism to all that is called “old-fashioned” is not limited to the young people, and the novels of James are, in comparison with the novels of to-day as old-fashioned as are the plays of Massinger in comparison with those of Bernard Shaw.

James has been compared to Dumas, and there are many things in common between the two authors—their voluminous publications, their bent towards the historical, and their use of an amanuensis. A critic, not very well disposed towards James, says in regard to this comparison, “both had a certain gift of separating from the picturesque parts of history what could without difficulty be worked up into picturesque fiction, and both were possessed of a ready pen. Here, however, the likeness ends. Of purely literary talent, James had little. His plots are poor, his descriptions weak, his dialogue often below even a fair average, and he was deplorably prone to repeat himself.”[68] This harsh judgment appears to me to be far too severe. His descriptions are not weak, and he surely had an advantage over Dumas in the matter of decency and morality.

But the most ardent admirers of this hard-working and conscientious toiler in the fields of literature must own that in all his multitudinous pages he has not given to the world a single character which has endured in the popular mind, and the Podsnap virtue of having written no word which could bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, cannot remedy this flaw in his title. Writers who rival him in productiveness but who are in respects inferior to him, have nevertheless secured a more permanent place in the hall of fame, because they have been able to give to some of their personages a real and distinctive life. Leather-Stocking and Long Tom Coffin shine forth from the many wearisome chapters of Fenimore Cooper, Count Fosco and Captain Wragge from the ephemeral volumes of Wilkie Collins, and Mrs. Proudie from the placid chronicles of Anthony Trollope, but they have no kinsmen in the works of James. Even in the historical stories no individual stands forth like Louis XI. in _Quentin Durward_ or Rienzi in Bulwer’s stirring tale. Nor has he left to posterity any brilliant _tour de force_ like the “Dick Turpin’s Ride” of Harrison Ainsworth.

Whatever may be said of the diffuseness and sameness of the stories, of their want of definite plan, their lack of strength in the development of the characters who throng their pages, and the evidence they afford of hasty composition, it must be admitted that they are clean and dignified in tone and that they display a wonderful acquaintance with history as well as a faithful and conscientious use of materials gathered with infinite pains and laborious research. These qualities, however, are not those which ensure literary immortality; and while it is possible that the best of the books may find from time to time readers incited to peruse them by a certain curiosity, and while the lovers of good stories may enjoy them, it is not likely that they will ever rank with the novels of Scott, of Thackeray, of Dickens, or even of Marryat and Lever, although they may occupy a place on the shelves of our libraries by the side of the old romances of the period of _Amadis de Gaul_ or the forgotten tales of the younger Crébillon.