Part 22

‘The Martins’ was rapidly advancing towards its close. The serial course of ‘Glencore’ had been interrupted by the difficulties which had beset the Magazine, and these difficulties were not surmounted until the spring of 1856, when Lever made a journey to London and entered into an arrangement with Hurst & Blackett to continue the story, payment to be at the rate of £20 per sheet. In London he heard that his brother was seriously ill. He intended to cross over to Ireland, but John Lever’s doctors warned him that he must not visit his brother, as his only chance of recovery depended upon perfect rest; so the novelist returned, gloomily, to Italy. By this time ‘The Martins’ had been published in volume form. He was more sensitive than usual about criticisms of this book, and the opinion of a London literary weekly that “Mr Lever had committed his one dull novel” caused him intense chagrin. His own opinion was that the more reflective characters would please his friends; and Mary Martin was one of his best-loved heroines--therefore his friends should admire her.

He was able now to devote his attention exclusively to ‘Glencore,’ and all would have been well with him, only that he was very much disturbed about his son. The young soldier had been sowing a considerable crop of wild oats.

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Nov_. 21, 1856.

“I have just learnt that Charley is idling about in Dublin, his regiment having been disbanded, and he himself, having passed some bills and contracted other debts, being probably unwilling to face us here at home. I say probably, because he has not written to any of us, and it is only through Maxwell having met him that I know of his being in Dublin.

“Passing over the distress and disappointment that this has occasioned me, I address myself at once to the question--What is to be done with him? Now, as he must earn his bread in some fashion, and as he has himself closed the [? gates] against him by his misconduct, I want to ascertain if he is disposed to work at any career, and what? If medicine, I can, through my Dublin professional connection, have him apprenticed, and will do my best to support him--not in extravagance and debauchery, but suitably and becomingly--as long as I am able.

“To broach this myself directly to him would be to weaken any influence his past misconduct should exert over him, so that the suggestion, to be effectual, ought to come from another,--none so fit as you, whose attachment to me he well knows. Now if you would sound him, and say that if he were really disposed to make amends for all he has done and steadily to devote himself to study and application, you would at once acquaint me with this resolve and endeavour to effect an arrangement to carry it out. We could thus at least approximate the knowledge of whether he desires to be of use to himself, and in what capacity. Had he come straight back here at once I should have set him down to read with a tutor, but as this has not happened, and as I see great disadvantages in his coming to a place like this with such habits as he has now acquired, I deem the best thing will be to try if he can be settled down to learn in Dublin either the rudiments of a career or to prepare himself for a merchant’s office.

“If he has not called on you ere this, he will of course be heard of through Miss Baker or Mr Saunders of Mount Street; but I trust that you have already seen him. If you find that he rejects the overtures as to a profession, and will not give such pledges as may lead us to hope for amendment, you must give him £20 to come home at once (there is something now due to me from the Magazine). At the same time, it is essential that he should come at once home, and not remain to spend the money at hotels.

“But the chances are that he may prefer to embrace a career, and I have only to hope that he may be taught by past experience that a life of debt and dissipation cannot lead to credit or honour. His present liabilities have thrown me into great, almost too great, embarrassment. How I am to pay them and support myself and my family is a problem that will depend upon my gaining back a little of that tranquillity of head without which no man can work. I will, however, do my best and hope for the best.

“Of course you must not suffer it to escape you that this idea of a profession originates with me. It must be, as it were, _your_ suggestion; and while you promise to write and consult me upon it, you could recommend him to go down and stay at Ardnucker, where I am sure they would kindly have him until I write you again.

“I hope I have already expressed all I mean, but my head is sorely troubled while I write.”

Young Lever did not relish the idea of visiting a father whose purse and whose patience he had taxed so severely. He preferred to retire upon his uncle at Ardnucker, and later to quarter himself upon the Rev. Mortimer O’Sullivan at Tanderagee.

‘The Fortunes of Glencore’ was out of hand early in 1857. It was published in three volumes by Chapman & Hall--the first work (bearing the author’s name on the title-page) by Lever which was issued in three-volume form. Of Glencore’ he says: “I am unwilling to suffer this tale to leave my hands without a word of explanation.... If I have always had before me the fact that to movement and action, to the stir of incident, and to a certain light-heartedness and gaiety of temperament (more easy to impart to others than to repress in one’s self), I have owned much, if not all, of whatever popularity I enjoyed, I have felt (or fancied I felt) that it would be in the delineation of very different scenes, and in the portraiture of very different emotions, that I should reap what I would reckon as a real success. This conviction--or impression, if you will--has become stronger with years and with fuller knowledge of life; and time has confirmed me in the notion that any skill I possess lies in the detection of character and in the unravelment of that tangled skein which makes up human motives.” Opportunities of beholding the game played by Society (he further declares), as well as his inclination to study the game, helped him to give a picture of the manners, and to describe the modes and moods, of the age he lived in. If he had often grinned because of the narrow fortune which had prevented him from “cutting in,” he was able to console himself with the thought that he might have risen from the table a loser. He goes on to say that though the incidents which are noticeable in the world of the well-bred are fewer, because the friction is less than in classes where vicissitudes of fortune are more frequent, yet the play of passion, though shadowed by polished conventionalities, is often more highly developed.

To trace and to mark these developments was, he assures us, one of the great pleasures of his life. “Certain details, certain characteristics, I have of course borrowed--as he who would mould a human face must needs have copied an eye, a nose, a chin from some existent model,--but beyond this I have not gone; nor indeed have I ever found, in all my experiences of life, that fiction ever suggests what has not been implanted unconsciously by memory--originality in the delineation of character being little more than a new combination of old materials derived from that source.”

‘Glencore’ being disposed of, its author planned out a new tale, going again to Ireland for his scenery and his characters. He took for his hero, or leading villain, John Sadlier,* the once famous banker and politician, who put an end to his own career in 1856 by committing suicide on Hampstead Heath. Lever did not attempt to keep closely to the true story of Sadlier, or to depict the man as he had lived and moved: he merely used incidents in his career and traits in his character, and as he warmed to his work Davenport Dunn bore but a slight resemblance to John Sadlier. By this time the novelist had all but abandoned the portrayal of comic personages,--‘Glencore’ harboured Billy Traynor, but Billy was only a faint echo of Mickey Free or Darby the Blast,--and ‘Davenport Dunn,’ though it was full of spirit, bristled with character sketches, and was packed with adventure, was on the whole a much graver and possibly a stronger performance than anything which had preceded it. The story appeared in the monthly part form, Phiz’s illustrations embellishing it.

* It is said that Sadlier was one of the models for Dickens’s Mr Merdle.--E. D.

Lever paid another visit to London in the spring of 1857: it was chiefly a business visit He wished to discuss his forthcoming novel with Chapman & Hall and with Phiz. While he was in London he received some disturbing news of his son (who was still idling in Ireland), and he was half inclined to cross the Irish Sea, but he found he had lingered too long in London--a city in which he always managed to accomplish more card-playing than was good for his health or his pocket,--so he hurried back to Florence and ‘Davenport Dunn.’ Although there is no evidence to bear out the conjecture, it is most likely that he endeavoured during this visit to England to further his cause as a prospective diplomatist. On the whole, 1857 was a comparatively uneventful year.

Again--early in 1858--did the pressure of his financial affairs stir him to the exertion of “working double tides,” and, looking around him for a subject, it occurred to him that a highly romantic tale could be woven out of the adventures of a supposititious son and heir of Charles Edward Stuart, the offspring of a secret marriage with a daughter of the Geraldines. He found a sufficiently plausible groundwork for the theory of this marriage and its consequences in the letters of Sir Horace Mann.*

* He quotes Sir Horace as his authority for the pitiful tragedy which concludes the adventures of his ‘Chevalier’: “Any anxiety we might ever have felt on the score of a certain individual alleged to have been the legitimately born son of Charles Edward is now over. He was murdered last week.... Many doubted that there was any, even the slightest, claim on his part to Stuart blood, but Mr Pitt was not of this number. He had taken the greatest pains to obtain information on the subject, and had, I am told, in his possession copies of all the documents which substantiated the youth’s rights.”--E. D.

Poor M’Glashan died in 1858, and ‘The Dublin University’ passed into the hands of Mr Digby Starkey and Mr Cheyne Brady. They proposed to Lever that he should renew his relations with the Magazine, and he arranged with them to contribute to it the adventures of ‘Gerald Fitzgerald the Chevalier.’

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

“Casa Capponi, Florence, _July_ 4, 1858

“After repeated promises of place from the present Government, I am put off with an offer so small and contemptible that I answered it by indignant refusal.

“The Yankees have come to something like--but not exactly--a definite offer. If it be put in a real, tangible, and unevasive way I shall accept, pitching my friends the Tories to the winds.

“Have you read ‘D. D.’ and ‘Fitzgerald’? If so, what do you say to them?”

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

“Spezzia, _Aug_. 10, 1858.

“I cannot tell you how gratified I was by what you say of ‘Cro-Martin.’ Independently of all a man’s natural misgivings about his own failing powers, it is unspeakably encouraging to be judged favourably by one’s oldest and best of friends, whose true-heartedness would not suffer him to flatter or say more than he felt. I know--I feel--that my old vein is worked out. I am as much aware of it as I am of scanty hair and the _fifty_ other signs of age about me, but I don’t despair of finding other shafts to work, and of making my knowledge of life and mankind available,--even though I have lost the power to make my books droll or laughable.

“We have come down here for the bathing to the most beautiful spot on the Mediterranean, and are boating and swimming to our heart’s content,--everything but working, which really I cannot do in this most fascinating of all idling localities.”

_To Mr Alexander Spencer_.

“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Nov_. 1,1858.

“Yesterday I had a civil note from Lord Malmesbury stating that the regulation for consular appointments required that no candidate should be above fifty, and all should submit to a rigid examination. He saw no better means of introducing me into ‘the line’ than by creating for me a vice-consulate at a place I am much attached to--Spezzia. The rule as to age and examination did not apply to vice-consular appointments nor to their promotion, so that once a V.-C. I can be advanced, if opportunity serve, to something worth having. Spezzia will not be £300 a-year; but as I like the place, and there is nothing--actually nothing--to do, I have thought it best to accept it. In fact, to refuse would be to exclude myself totally from all hope of F. O. patronage, and this I did not deem wise to do. The whole negotiation is yet secret, and until I am gazetted I wish it to remain so. The consulship at Naples is what I look to, and what, if negotiations should open to a renewal of relations there, I might hope to obtain.

“I hope you like ‘D. Dunn.’ I have hardly courage to say the same for ‘Fitzgerald,’ though some say it is better than the other.

“I have been solicited to give Readings _à la_ Dickens; but though pecuniarily a temptation, there is much I dislike in the exhibition....

“I ought to add that Sir J. Hudson, the Ambassador at Turin, strongly advised my acceptance of Spezzia, offered as it was.”

No sooner had he made up his mind to accept the Spezzia post than he was intently gazing at the Naples consulship, which he hoped would drop like a ripe plum into his mouth when he could muster up courage to take a step forward.

Another turn of Fortune’s wheel which cheered him in 1858 was the appointment of his son to the 2nd Dragoon Guards. The regiment was under the command of General Seymour, and was stationed in India.

In the spring of 1859 ‘Davenport Dunn’ had run its monthly course, and it was published in book form. The author’s official duties were extremely light, and did not tie him to Spezzia. He was able to visit his vice-consulate when it pleased him, and to indulge in his favourite pastimes of boating and bathing all through the summer months.

Young Lieutenant Lever was now winning some golden opinions in India, though there was a little dross to be found in the gold. One of his brother officers describes him as being “an exact facsimile of Charles O’Malley. He was the most accomplished young man I have ever heard of or read of,” says this witness, “not only in such gifts as would make him conspicuous in a regiment, but he was likewise an accomplished linguist, and possessed a vast knowledge of general literature.” “He was a warm-hearted, generous fellow,” declares another of his brother officers. “But,” he continues regretfully, “he was given too much to convivial and extravagant habits. Apparently he had set before himself, as an ideal of what a cavalry soldier should be, the bygone type of Jack Hinton.” By no means a bad type, one might add, if only the crack cavalry officer had sufficient means to live up to the ideal.

‘Gerald Fitzgerald’ came to the end of its irregular magazine course in 1859. For some reason which is not disclosed in Lever’s correspondence, this novel was not published in book form in this country during the author’s lifetime.* Amongst other graphic character-sketches, ‘Fitzgerald’ furnishes vivid studies of Alfieri and of Mirabeau. His next novel, ‘One of Them,’ was put in hand during the autumn: it was written wholly in the Villa Marola at Spezzia. It is said that the story was largely autobiographical. It gives an intimate description of life in an Ulster dispensary, and when the scene is shifted from Ireland the reader is taken to Florence. The most outstanding character in this book is the acute, good-humoured “Yankee.” Quackinboss.

* A “pirated” edition of it appeared in America daring Lever’s lifetime. Its first issue in book form in this country was in 1897, when Downey & Co. published it (by arrangement with the author’s grandson) in one volume.--E.D.

While ‘One of Them’ was moving leisurely onwards in its monthly groove, Charles Dickens asked Lever for a serial for ‘All the Year Round.’ Once more did the Irish novelist adopt the dual system; while he was still in the throes of ‘One of Them’ he commenced to write ‘A Day’s Ride: A Life’s Romance.’ This story relates the adventures of a half-shrewd, half-foolish day-dreamer. Through it there runs a curious vein of irony which is quite different from the author’s early or later quality of humour. There is an insufficiency of movement in the tale; and it proved to be quite unsuited for serial publication in a magazine where the plot interest has to be kept alive from month to month. Dickens was bitterly disappointed: he complained that the circulation of his magazine was injuriously affected. Something perilously near a quarrel arose between the editor of ‘All the Year Round’ and the author of ‘A Day’s Ride.’ Lever did not hold a very high opinion of the novel, but he was justified in not regarding it as an absolutely worthless performance.

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

“Spezzia, _Sept_. 7, 1859.

“It was only because I found myself in a maze of troubles at the moment of what is ordinarily a pleasant family event that I had not a moment to write to you. Chapman & Hall, in whom for years back all my confidence has been unbounded, have behaved to me in a way to make me uneasy as to my right in my works, and I feel the very gravest anxiety for the future. This case yet hangs over me, and how it is to [? terminate] I cannot foresee. This is but a sorry [excuse] for suffering you to incur all the inconvenience I have occasioned; but when have I ceased to be a burthen to you?

“I wrote by this post to Chapman to forward the money for the insurance, and will immediately see to the other. Brady cannot affect any difficulty in settling with you: his only payment to myself personally was £100, somewhere in the present year. Therefore the number of sheets of my contributions, multiplied by the sum per sheet (£30 or £35, I forget which), will give the exact amount due.

“I am about to begin a new serial, which will at least provide for the present.

“The ‘Party,’ after [?immense] pledges and compliments, went out without giving me anything beyond this very humble sinecure; but sinecure it is, and therefore for once ‘The right man in the right place.’

“Charley was well, and fighting up in Oude, when last I heard from him; but all the pleasure of killing sepoys does not, it would appear, so entirely engross him that he cannot spend money, and he draws a bill with the same nonchalance that he draws his sword. Pussy’s husband is a Captain Bowes-Watson,--only twenty-two years of age, but a Crimean and Indian hero. He is of the veritable English type--blond, stiff, silent, and upstanding, and what Colonel Haggerstoue would call ‘a perfect gentleman,’ being utterly incapable by any effort of his own to provide for his own support. They are for the present poorly off, but at the death of a very old grandmother will have a fair competence,--about £1500 a year. I am sorely sorry to part with her, but the _malheur_ is that we lose in age the solace of those whose society we always hoped to console us. We go through the years of training and teaching and educating to give them up when they have grown companionable. Very selfish regrets these, but they are my latest wounds, and they smart the most.

“Julia is ‘contracted,’ but the event is, and must be, somewhat distant. In other respects it is what is called a great match. And so only Baby (as Sydney is called) remains,--a marvellously clever little damsel of ten, whose humour and wit exceed that of all the grown folk I know.

“I hope to send you the first number of my new serial by the end of next month. Its title is ‘One of Them.’”

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

“Spezzia, _Sept._ 17, 1860

“I am doing my best at ‘One of Them.’ ‘The Ride’ I write as carelessly as a common letter, but I’d not be the least astonished to find the success in the inverse ratio to the trouble. At all events I am hard worked just now, and as ill-luck would have it, it is just the moment the F. O. should call upon me for details about Italy.

“The position of Sardinia is now one of immense difficulty. If she throws herself on France she must confront the [? Revolutionary] party at home, who are ready to seize upon Garibaldi and place him at the head of the movement. If she adopts Garibaldi and his plans, she offends France, and may be left to meet Austria alone and unaided. The old story--the beast that can’t live on sand and dies in the water. To be sure, our own newspapers assure her complacently that she has the ‘moral aid’ of England. But moral aid in these days of steel-plated frigates and Armstrong guns is rather out of date, not to say that at the best it is very like looking at a man drowning and assuring him all the while how sorry you are that he had not learned to swim when he was young. The crisis is most interesting, particularly so to me, as I know all the actors--Admirals, Generals, and Ministers--who are figuring _en scène_.

“One would have thought the withdrawal of the French Ambassador from Turin would have caused great discomfiture here, but with a native craft--not always right--the Italians think it a mere dodge, and that the Emperor’s policy is: ‘Go on. I’m not looking at you!”’