n 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 fa 
 
 I
 
 From Hum's MAGAZINE. 
 
 Copjrijht, 1884, bj JUarcE * BE 
 
 CHARLES EEADE. 
 
 From the Painting bequeathed by Mr. Reade to Meura. Harper & Brothers.
 
 CHARLES READE 
 
 D.C.L. 
 
 DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, JOURNALIST 
 
 a fIDemoir 
 
 COMPILED CHIEFLY 
 
 FROM HIS LITERARY REMAINS 
 
 DY 
 
 CHARLES L. READE 
 
 AND THE 
 
 REV. COMPTON READE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER tt BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1887
 
 CHARLES BEADE'S NOVELS. 
 
 HARPER'S HOUSEHOLD EDITION. 
 12mo, Cloth. Illustrated. $1 00 per volume. 
 
 A Woman-Hater. 
 
 Hani Cash. 
 
 Foul Play. 
 
 White Lies. 
 
 Love Me Little, Love Me Long. 
 
 Griffith Gaunt. 
 
 Put Yourself in His Place. 
 
 The Cloister and the Hearth. 
 
 It is Never Too Late to Mend. 
 
 Peg Wofflngton, Christie Johustonc, and 
 
 Other Stories. 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 A Simpleton, and The Wandering Heir. 
 Good Stories. 
 
 A Perilous Secret 75 cents. 
 Cloth, $12 00 per set (14 vols.) ; Half Calf, $30 00 per set. 
 
 HARPER'S POPULAR EDITION. 
 8vo, Paper. 
 
 A Woman -Hater. Ill'd. 30 cents. 
 A Hero aud a Martyr. With a Por- 
 trait. 15 cents. 
 A Simpleton. 30 cents. 
 A Terrible Temptation. Ill'd. 25 cts. 
 Foul Play. 30 cents. 
 Griffith Gaunt. Illustrated. 30 cents. 
 Hard Cash. Illustrated. 35 cents. 
 It is Never Too Late to Mend. 35 cts. 
 
 Love Me Little, Love Me Long. 30 cts. 
 
 Peg Wofflngton, Christie Johnstoue, 
 ond Other Tales. 35 cents. 
 
 Put Yourself in His Place. Illustra- 
 ted. 35 cents. 
 
 The Cloister and the Hearth. 35 etc. 
 
 The Wandering Heir. Illustrated. 20 
 cents. 
 
 White Lies. 80 cents. 
 
 The Jilt. Illustrated. 32mo, Pnper, 20 cents; Cloth, 36 cents. 
 
 The Coming Man. 32mo, Pnper, 20 cents ; Cloth, 35 cents. 
 
 The Picture. ICmo, Paper, 15 cents. 
 
 Jack of all Trades. IGmo, Paper, 15 cents. 
 
 Good Stories. 12mo, Paper, 50 cents. 
 
 A Woman-Hater. Illustrated. 12mo, Pnper, 20 cents. 
 
 A Perilous Secret. 12mo, Pnper, 40 cents ; 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 
 
 Mtiltum in Parvo. Illustrated. 4to, Paper, 15 cents. 
 
 Good Stories of Man and Other Animals. Ill'd. 4t<>, Paper, 20 cents. 
 
 PCIM.ISIIED BT HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YOKK. 
 
 ny of tht abate volt, lent by mail, pottage prepaid, to any part of the U. 8., on reetipi of Ike prie
 
 College 
 
 Library 
 
 TO 
 
 LORD LONDESBOROUGH J SIR HENRY JAMES, M.P. ; 
 MR. EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I. ; REV. C. GRAHAM J 
 
 MR. WILKIE COLLINS ; MR. HENRY IRVING J 
 
 MRS. JOHN MAXWELL ; MISS ELLEN TERRY, 
 
 AND THOSE MANY OTHERS WHO KNEW AND LOVED 
 
 CHAELES KEADE, 
 (Ellis Iblnmc is 3nscribcb nrspcctfuiin 
 
 BY THE COMPILERS, 
 
 C. L. R. 
 C. R. 
 
 834947
 
 PEE FACE. 
 
 THIS biography is offered to the public as a compila- 
 tion. It will be found to contain both unpublished MSS. 
 of Charles Reade, and also fragments of his correspond- 
 ence, with numerous extracts from his diaries. These 
 have been selected with care, from a voluminous mass of 
 literary and personal remains, individually by Mr. Charles 
 L. Reade, the deceased author's literary executor and 
 residuary legatee. In this selection he has been guided 
 solely by what he believes to have been the wishes of 
 Charles Reade and the reverence due to his memory. 
 
 The narrative portion of these volumes, indeed their 
 entirety, apart from the matter which emanates from 
 Charles Reade's own pen, has been written by the Rev. 
 Compton Reade, on whose shoulders therefore devolves 
 primarily the responsibility of authorship. The compilers 
 deem it due both to themselves and to their readers thus 
 precisely to define their respective shares in the book as 
 a whole. So far as regards what is here presented of 
 Charles Reade's manuscript, Mr. Charles L. Reade stands 
 accountable ; on the other hand, the biography, as such, 
 with whatever opinions are here hazarded on men and 
 things, must be referred absolutely and exclusively to the
 
 viii Preface. 
 
 Rev. Compton Rcadc, who has written from the stand- 
 point of a near relative, of a foundation member for a 
 quarter of a century of his uncle's college, and of a close 
 literary association. 
 
 The compilers have with gratitude to express their ob- 
 ligation to Arnold Taylor, Esq., of the Local Government 
 Board, for his valuable communication in reference to the 
 authorship of "Masks and Faces," to which they desire 
 to direct the especial attention of all interested in our na- 
 tional drama; to the Rev. C. Graham, Minister of the 
 Avenue Chapel, Shepherd's Bush, for permission to give 
 extracts from letters addressed, to him by Charles Reade ; 
 to the Very Reverend Canon Bernard Smith, of Great 
 Marlow ; to Mrs. John Maxwell (M. E. Braddon) for her 
 affectionate reminiscences of the author ; and to members 
 of his family, both for antiquarian details and also par- 
 ticularly for information relating to the boyhood and 
 
 young manhood of Charles Reade. 
 
 C. L. R. 
 ORSETT HALL, February I, 1887. C. R.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER J>AO 
 
 INTRODUCTION 1 
 
 I. CHARLES READE'S MOTHER 16 
 
 II. BABYHOOD 31 
 
 III. UNDER THE ROD 41 
 
 IV. "AT STAINES" 55 
 
 V. SAVED BY A SECOND G4 
 
 VI. THE DEMYSHIP EXAMINATION 72 
 
 VII. UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 80 
 
 VIII. ELECTED FELLOW 89 
 
 IX. STUDIES LAW 97 
 
 X. "MAGDALEN" 106 
 
 XI. PARIS AND GENEVA 116 
 
 XII. THE HOSPICE OF ST. BERNARD 132 
 
 XIII. CREMONAPHILISM 144 
 
 XIV. PARIS AND IPSDEN 166 
 
 XV. MRS. SEYMOUR. . 177 
 
 XVI. VICE-PRESIDENT 202 
 
 XVII. READE vs. BENTLEY 221 
 
 XVIII. VICTORY! 234 
 
 XIX. A VINDICATION OF SHAKESPEARE 246 
 
 XX. VISITS TO ADDINGTON AND KNEBWORTH . . . .261 
 XXI. COMBATIVE 268 
 
 XXII. "Tms CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH" .... i 281 
 A*
 
 Contents. 
 
 i v.i: 
 
 XXIII. "HARD CASH" 800 
 
 XXIV. THE DRAMA "SERA NUNQUAM" 817 
 
 XXV. THREE NOVELS AND THREE PLATS 832 
 
 XXVI. IDEAL JOURNALISM 349 
 
 XXVII. WISDOM AND FOLLY 863 
 
 XXVIII. FRIENDS, FAUTORS, AND FAVORITES 880 
 
 XXIX. DEAD- SEA FRUIT 412 
 
 XXX. VIA CALCANDA 430 
 
 APPENDIX 443
 
 A MEMOIR 
 
 OP 
 
 CHARLES READE, D.C.L., 
 
 DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, ESSAYIST. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 BIOGEAPHERS for the most part begin with an account 
 of the ancestry and parentage of him whose life they re- 
 produce. For many reasons we should have preferred to 
 vary this rule. To have done so, however, would have 
 been to obliterate much of the special interest which en- 
 vironed the old home and family circle whereof Charles 
 Reade was for more than half his lifetime the central 
 point. We will so far apologise, nevertheless, for the in- 
 trusion of genealogical matter, by relegating it to an in- 
 troductory chapter, to be read or passed over according 
 to individual preference. In the one brief autobiographi- 
 cal sketch which exists among his very copious literary 
 remains, we find that he devoted about a tenth part of its 
 entirety to his pedigree ; it would appear, therefore, that 
 had lie followed the example of Mr. Trollope, and be- 
 queathed a compendious narrative of himself, he would 
 have endeavored not only to tell who his progenitors were, 
 1
 
 2 Memoir of diaries Reade. 
 
 but also to show that they were not purchased commodi- 
 ties. He has himself given us our cue. 
 
 The author, moreover, upon whose individuality we here 
 attempt to throw such light as may be afforded by our 
 own personal knowledge, that of others, and by excerpts 
 from his MSS., was never among the number of those who 
 affect to despise heredity. He expended time and labor in 
 verifying the ancient family records. No man believed 
 more firmly in himself, none also was more ready to ac- 
 knowledge indebtedness to his progenitors. When com- 
 plimented on his sledge-hammer letters to the Daily Tele- 
 graph, he parried this eulogium with, " A piece of good- 
 fortune befell us in the last century. My father's grand- 
 father married the daughter of the village blacksmith, and 
 from her we arc descended." That was how he accounted 
 for the hammer of Thor his right hand wielded. It may, 
 perchance, have been from the said blacksmith that he in- 
 herited the surpassing force which seemed to give him the 
 mastery over all antagonism. He owed his imagination, 
 however, his susceptibility, his sympathy with beauty, his 
 dramatic instinct, to other and less coarsened sources. 
 With the muscular texture of the rude smith were inter- 
 woven fibres of the Court and the Camp, the Senate and 
 the Study. He regarded himself and rightly as apart 
 from class, yet would have turned in hot fury upon him 
 who dared to impugn his gentle blood ; indeed, his almost 
 romantic reverence for his ancestors extended beyond 
 them, to their acreage and mansions. More than once in 
 his literary remains we find a mournful reference to the loss 
 of Brocket entailed in strict succession on his own branch 
 of the family so much so as almost to suggest that he may 
 at one time, when Fortune was at her zenith, have indulged 
 a secret ambition of repurchasing that beautiful demesne.
 
 Introduction. 3 
 
 We commence, therefore, his biography with a brief 
 analysis of those human threads whereof his nature was 
 composed. Pedigrees, by those who do not happen to 
 possess them, are commonly supposed to be shoddy inven- 
 tions designed to bolster up a factitious pride. Happily, 
 in the case of Charles Reade, his ancestry on either side 
 for about four centuries is capable of exact verification, 
 and we have at once relieved ourselves from the charge of 
 snobbishness by putting boldly to the front its one plebeian 
 element. We shall further tell the whole story without 
 coloring or gloss. It is one which seems to confirm the 
 doctrine of heredity by reflecting as in a mirror both his 
 faults and his virtues. 
 
 He was the youngest child of John Reade, lord of the 
 manors of Ipsden Huntercombe and Ipsden Bassett, and 
 of half the manor of Checkenden in the county of Oxford, 
 by Anna Maria, eldest daughter of Major John Scott- 
 Waring, M.P. for the old borough of Stockbridge, Hants.* 
 It was his constant boast through life that he was par ex- 
 cellence, his mother's son, a Scott - Waring rather than a 
 Reade. This was aii injustice in more senses than one to 
 his sire, to whom he stood indebted for whatever of good 
 looks, stature, and humor he possessed. However, inas- 
 much as his mother's brain was in many ways the replica 
 of his own, we will first, in brief, trace the threads of her 
 genealogy. 
 
 Her name was Scott, Waring being added by her father 
 subsequently to her marriage with John Reade. We have 
 therefore to deal with the Scotts of Betton, in the county 
 of Shropshire. 
 
 In the reign of Henry VII. (whose Chief-Justice and 
 
 * Disfranchised by Earl Grey's Reform Bill of 1832.
 
 4 Memoir of diaries Readc. 
 
 adviser, by the way, was Sir Robert Rede) there occurred 
 a herald's visitation in and about the Welsh Marches, and 
 the reigning Scott of Betton was required to produce his 
 pedigree. He did so, alleging his direct descent from 
 Balliol le Scot of Scot's Hall in Kent, son of John Balliol, 
 non voluntate hominum King of Scotland. The heralds 
 found fault with Mr. Scott's pedigree, but gave him time 
 to prove it. The verdict subsequently went against the 
 Shropshire gentleman by default, but it must not hastily 
 be assumed that the plea was erroneous. It is a far cry 
 from Shrewsbury to Maidstone, and no doubt in the mid- 
 dle ages proofs of pedigree depended largely for their regis- 
 tration on the ability of the heritor to disburse largess to 
 the heralds. Be that as it may, it has been a steady tradi- 
 tion with the Scotts that their real name is Balliol, and if 
 that be true, then Charles Reade could claim consanguin- 
 ity with the royal house of Scotland. 
 
 In the pedigree of the Scotts after Henry VII. 's reign 
 we find but few names of note. A Scott in the last century 
 married a Miss Sandford of the Isle, a family of remote 
 antiquity, boasting descent from Charlemagne, and Charles 
 Reade's great-grandfather Scott wedded a Miss Waring 
 of Ince. This, as it proved, was a great match, for Miss 
 Waring's son, Mrs. Reade's father, eventually inherited 
 the entirety of the Waring estates, which when capitalized 
 gave a grand total of a quarter of a million sterling ; and 
 had they been preserved, inasmuch as Ince is now yielding 
 coal abundantly, would have produced at least half that 
 amount per annum in rents and royalties. That, however, 
 was not to be. John Scott went to India as a mere lad in 
 the service of the Company. He rose to be Major, and be- 
 came the military secretary and friend of Warren Has- 
 tings, then Governor-General. He has been termed Has-
 
 Introduction. 5 
 
 tings's evil genius. The statement should be inverted; but 
 of that anon. 
 
 While yet a subaltern in the Madras army young Scott 
 met a Scotch girl, who, if an ivory miniature is to be 
 trusted, must have been supremely lovely. Miss Blackrie 
 was the only daughter of the Surgeon-General of India, 
 who in his youth had fought as an officer in the army of 
 bonnie Prince Charlie ; but when the romance of rebellion 
 collapsed at Culloden, exchanged the service of Mars for 
 that of Esculapius, and was holding a position of profit in 
 consequence. By this lady Major John Scott had two 
 daughters, Mrs. Reade and Mrs. Faber; and two sons, Ed- 
 ward, the elder, who subsequently became a distinguished 
 Bengal Civil servant, and Charles, who died young. He 
 resigned his appointment upon hearing of the virulent at- 
 tacks made upon his chief by Sir Philip Francis, and en- 
 tered Parliament, burning with zeal to confute the slanders 
 which Sir Philip's rancorous hatred had invented and 
 spread broadcast against his friend. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, with his usual inaccuracy, affirms in his 
 essay that Scott was in the pay of Hastings. Major Scott, 
 on his father's death, inherited property in Shropshire; his 
 wife's fortune was about twenty thousand pounds, and he 
 had saved money in India. When he left India Mr. Hast- 
 ings was his debtor, and continued so for many years. 
 The accusation that he was paid for the services he ren- 
 dered to his friend with such cordial enthusiasm was false, 
 and all the more ludicrous because, at the moment when 
 he was accused of plundering Warren Hastings, he had 
 inherited the vast estates of Mr. Waring, and was the 
 wealthier man of the two. Charles Reade's mother, who 
 was passionately fond of her father, wrote a calm letter 
 to the Whig historian, informing him of the facts, which
 
 6 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 letter was never acknowledged, while the misstatement in 
 the first remained uncorrccted in the subsequent editions. 
 Moreover, Macaulay gibbets the voluble Major for calling 
 Burke a reptile, but omits to state that this amenity was 
 evoked by Burke having previously styled him a jackal. 
 Major John Scott-Waring has sins to answer for, but he 
 was lavishly generous, a man of honor, and one of the 
 readiest debaters in a brilliant House of Commons. 
 
 The Major's social life was, in some respects, more im- 
 portant than his political. He was an intimate friend of 
 the Prince Regent and his Royal brothers, none the less 
 so, perhaps, because his second and third wives chanced to 
 be members of the dramatic profession. The advocates 
 of heredity might assuredly find a strong confirmation 
 of their doctrine in the circumstance of grandfather and 
 grandson being equally stage-struck. Not without suffi- 
 cient cause did Charles Reade boast his close affinity with 
 the Scott-Warings. 
 
 It was in a cultured atmosphere, therefore, that Charles 
 Reade's mother passed her girlhood. She knew every 
 one. The Princes and Princesses, Mr. Pitt, Sir Jonah 
 Barrington, Charles and Robert Grant, Grattan and Sheri- 
 dan, the former of whom dubbed her " My pretty Puri- 
 tan." She was a constant habitues of the Ladies' Gallery 
 in the House of Commons. " Mr. Burke," she was wont 
 to declare in after-years, " would not now be listened to. 
 His brogue was absurd. He persisted in calling the 
 Begum, the ' Baygum,' though every one even then 
 laughed." Her anecdotes of the Pitt and Regency period 
 were most racy, and she took so keen an interest in the 
 Hastings trial as to have passed not merely hours, but 
 days, in court. 
 
 Being on a visit at the country-seat, in Oxfordshire, of
 
 Introduction. 7 
 
 Lord Charles Spenser, she accompanied her host and host- 
 ess to the Assize ball, and danced with a young gentle- 
 man commoner of Oriel the whole evening. The ac- 
 quaintance thus formed ripened into intimacy, and ended 
 in her marriage with Mr. Reade, and her settling down at 
 Ipsden House as its chatelaine, celebrating her golden 
 wedding there, and beneath its eaves giving birth to her 
 son Charles. 
 
 On the mother's side, therefore, Charles Reade inherit- 
 ed his dramatic instinct, and withal a vein of good, honest 
 Puritanism. But if he was the son par excellence of 
 Grattan's pretty Puritan, he was also the grandson of 
 Prince Florizel's convive and boon companion, and, be it 
 added, the grandson of the braw young Highlander who did 
 battle for bonnie Prince Charlie a gentleman, whose por- 
 trait, by-the-bye, suggests the student rather than the hero; 
 but then it was painted in the days of his Surgeon-Gener- 
 alship, after he had, doubtless, schooled his features into an 
 expression resembling that of Lord Chancellor Thurlow. 
 
 From the fine old English gentleman his sire Charles 
 Reade inherited qualities of a very different character. 
 The Squire was a Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche, and 
 as he was, so also for the most part were the men whose 
 name he had inherited. Among the gentlemen of Oxon, 
 Berks, Bucks, Herts, and Gloucester, none could adduce 
 a braver record of loyalty to Church and State than the 
 race styled indifferently Le Rede, Rede, Reade, and this 
 only in the solitary instance of a fellow of St. John's Col- 
 lege, Oxford, who dropped the final ' e ' Read, albeit Gen- 
 eral Meredith Read, who represents the American branch 
 of the family, has also elided the characteristic letter. 
 
 In the year 1460, William of Waynflete, being about to 
 build Magdalen College, Oxford, received from a neigh-
 
 8 Memoir of Charles Iteade. 
 
 boring land-owner the substantial offer of stone from his 
 quarry of Taynton on the borders of Oxon and Gloucester- 
 shire. In the deeds of the last century this estate of 
 Taynton, subtending the superb Royal Forest of Wych- 
 wood, is styled "the ancient inheritance," and it remained 
 in the possession of the family till 18G8, when it was 
 willed away by the late Sir John Chandos Reade to his 
 servant, Joseph Wakefield. The donor of stone from the 
 Taynton quarry to Waynflete was Sir Edmund Rede, 
 who is styled Baron of Boarstal, and was himself both an 
 ardent churchman and a lover of architecture. He re- 
 built a large portion of Dorchester Abbey, the noblest of 
 Oxfordshire churches, and Boarstal Tower, at the foot of 
 Brill Hill, remains as a monument of his taste. The 
 tower was probably erected by the same guild or com- 
 pany of masons that erected Magdalen College. There 
 must have been an Italian among them, or else, as is prob- 
 able, Sir Edmund himself had crossed the seas, for though 
 the outline of the tower is late perpendicular, the detail is 
 renaissance. Sir Edmund's uncle was Bishop of Chiches- 
 ter, and his father a benefactor to the Abbey of St. Al- 
 bans. Whether he ever sat in the House of Lords as 
 Baron of Boarstal is dubious, but that indisputably was 
 his style, and the Fellows of Magdalen, up to the date of 
 the Reformation, said masses for the repose of his soul. So 
 far as we can gain a glimpse of his character through the 
 long vista of ages, this first benefactor of Magdalen Col- 
 lege seems to have been a zealot, large of heart and chiv- 
 alrous w r ithal. He lived a celibate life, and was suc- 
 ceeded by his nephew, Sir Robert Le Rede, who resided 
 at Beedon in Berks, and was in the same year Sheriff of 
 Oxon, Bucks, and Berks. Sir Robert le Rede was suc- 
 ceeded by his son William, who married into the family
 
 Introduction. 9 
 
 of Beaumont of Cole Orton, the direct descendants of 
 King Henry III. His successor, Thomas Rede, married the 
 daughter of Sir William Hoo of the Hoo in Herts, whose 
 son was the uncle of Queen Anne Boleyn, and created 
 Baron Hoo and Hastings. But the most illustrious of 
 the name was Sir Robert Rede, founder of the Rede 
 lecture in the University of Cambridge, Chief-Justice of 
 the Common Pleas, Executor of the will of Henry VII., 
 and one of the guardians of King Henry VIII. during his 
 minority. Sir Robert obtained a fresh grant of arms, 
 which have been borne ever since by the family, and are 
 quite distinct from the coat of the Barons of Boarstal. 
 It was at one time attributed erroneously to his influence 
 that on the dissolution of the monasteries, the Barton 
 estate at Abingdon, consisting of the palatial abbot's resi- 
 dence and pleasaunce, came into the possession of William 
 Rede of Beedon, the purchaser, in 1539, of the Manors of 
 Ipsden Huntercombe and Ipsden Bassett. As a matter of 
 fact, the Barton estate was acquired by purchase. Ipsden 
 became the dower of his granddaughter Catherine, who 
 married a Mr. Vachell. The inventory of their furniture 
 is still preserved at Ipsden; but, unluckily, the bridegroom 
 being a Popish recusant, two thirds of the rental of Ips- 
 den during his lifetime were forfeited to the Crown. 
 Mrs. Vachell died childless, and Ipsden at her death was 
 inherited by her nephew, Sir Thomas Reade. 
 
 Sir Thomas succeeded his father at Barton Court, as 
 the Abbatial Palace was renamed, and married the only 
 daughter of a Spanish Adventurer, Sir John Brocket, of 
 Brocket Hall, Hatfield, son-in-law of Sir John Lytton of 
 Knebworth. Barton being the appanage of the elder 
 son, the second son, John, obtained his mother's estate, 
 and as the owner of Brocket was created a Baronet in 
 1*
 
 10 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 1625, which honor expired with his grandson, who, as the 
 monument in Hatfield Church tells us, died while on his 
 travels abroad, at the early age of twenty-two, unmarried,* 
 and at his death Brocket Hall passed to his sisters as co- 
 heiresses. 
 
 Sir Thomas Reade's elder son married a daughter of 
 Sir Gilbert Cornewall, Baron of Burford, in Shropshire, 
 the direct lineal descendant with the bar sinister of 
 King John. This lady's sister had wedded Speaker Len- 
 thall, a fortunate circumstance for at least one Reade, as 
 events proved, for the times were troublous, and, true to 
 their traditions, the junior members of the family were 
 ardent Church and State men. They had given to the 
 former, for old Sir Thomas, following the example of Sir 
 Edmund of Boarstal, had built an aisle in St. Helen's 
 Church, Abingdon, and had benefited by the latter. 
 Hence, when, later on, the civil war broke out, none were 
 more devoted to the losing cause. 
 
 Compton Reade stands out in the history of the family 
 at this epoch in bold relief. He was the eldest son and 
 heir to Barton and Beedon, with the ancient estate at 
 Taynton, while his next brother, Edward, was heir of Ips- 
 den, and heir presumptive of Brocket Hall. At the age 
 of nineteen this fine young cavalier raised a regiment of 
 horse for the King, which formed a contingent of the 
 splendid cavalry of Prince Rupert. There is a record in 
 the Bodleian Library of his personal encounter with Col- 
 onel Barrett of the Parliamentary forces. He was not 
 only present at the earlier battles of the campaign, but 
 also at the siege of Worcester, after which crowning 
 
 * The tradition is that he formed one of the suite of the Pretender. 
 He died in Rome of small-pox.
 
 Introduction. 1 1 
 
 mercy to the Parliamentarians, although the Royal Stand- 
 ard was down, he defended Barton Court against the 
 guns of Fairfax till it was as Dr. Plot puts it burned 
 over his head. Years ago they used to show a cannon- 
 ball embedded in the gray masonry of the ruins of this 
 noble pile ; but Barton Court and the heroism of its 
 young master have long been forgotten. 
 
 Thanks to the influence of Speaker Lenthall, Compton's 
 life was spared, as also that of his younger brother Ed- 
 ward, who had been his lieutenant. Doubtless they had 
 a bad time of it during the Commonwealth; but at the 
 Restoration, Compton was rewarded with a baronetcy and 
 a grant of money by Parliament as a solatium for the 
 loss of Barton. At the request of the King, he invested 
 this lump sum in the purchase of the Royal residence of 
 Shipton Court, near Wychwood Forest, and adjoining his 
 lands at Taynton. To reveal an ugly secret the " Mer- 
 rie Monarch " had bestowed Shipton on one of the ladies 
 of his Court, and this personage preferred ready money to 
 a gabled residence with the privilege of shooting bucks. 
 It was very much what we should call a job, but Comp- 
 ton got a new home and the lady her money, all at the 
 expense of the British taxpayer, so everybody was pleased 
 all round. 
 
 Young Edward, however, did not fare so well. He, 
 poor fellow, was not an eldest son, but had borne the risks 
 of loyalty, and, worse still, had mortgaged Ipsden up to 
 the hilt. The old house where Catherine Vachell had 
 lived was tumbling to pieces for lack of repair ; and in- 
 stead of being granted largess by a complaisant Parlia- 
 ment, he found himself under lock and key in Oxford 
 Castle for debt. There exists some very strange corre- 
 spondence anent this ill-starred cavalier, who, by-the-bye
 
 12 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 malgre his reverses, contrived to marry four wives. One 
 letter is from his detaining creditor, addressing him as 
 Right Worshipful Sir, and politely hoping that his health 
 does not suffer from his incarceration. Another is from 
 the old cavalier himself to one of his wives, petulantly 
 grumbling because she had neglected to forward his 
 leather-breeches. A third is from his eldest son another 
 Compton, who was fellow of St. John's, expressing a hope 
 that number four might be a lass with a little money. 
 Edward lived to a green old age in spite of his misfor- 
 tunes, leaving his eldest surviving sou his estate. His 
 younger son, Philip Edward, was a poet, whose erotic 
 verses have unfortunately been lost, and also much given 
 to experiments in metallurgy, at a place called Braziers, 
 hard by Ipsden, with the design of discovering the phi- 
 losopher's stone. 
 
 Philip, Edward's nephew, however, who shortly after, 
 at the age of sixteen, inherited Ipsden, made that discov- 
 ery, though not through the medium of metals. Enter- 
 ing, when he attained his majority, on a mortgaged estate, 
 with a ruinous mansion, and little of any value except the 
 fine stock-timber in the park, he registered a resolve to re- 
 trieve the fortunes of his branch of the family by industry 
 and thrift. His property ran for four miles in an unbroken 
 line, three fourths being grass and corn land, and one 
 fourth wood. At that time it was the commencement of 
 the last century wheat was gold, and the soil of Ipsden 
 produced magnificent cereals. In order to obtain capital, 
 he felled all the timber in his park, pulled down the man- 
 sion, erected new farm buildings, broke up the grass, and 
 began farming on a large scale. His books remain to show 
 how, little by little, he paid off first one mortgage, then an- 
 other, then cleared the estate, then enlarged what had been
 
 Introduction. 13 
 
 the ancient manor-house before his ancestor had built a 
 mansion for Catherine Vachell, and finally added three 
 farms to his acreage. His portrait represents a man who 
 could drive a hard bargain; possibly he did sometimes, 
 but he could boast with truth that he had found out the 
 real philosopher's stone. 
 
 He could not, however, have been altogether hard- 
 natured, for there remains a pane of glass whereon he had 
 cut with a diamond "Bridget Brigham has no faults." 
 That was in his early youth. He married the same fault- 
 less Bridget, who was the daughter of the Squire of Cane 
 End, and years after, when she lay under the sod in Ips- 
 den churchyard, mysteriously disappeared one fine day; 
 so also did Martha Bartholomew, the daughter of the vil- 
 lage blacksmith, whose sister subsequently married Mr. 
 Thomas, the Vicar of Ipsden; and when Squire John re- 
 turned, Martha was by his side as Mrs. Reade. Wonder- 
 fully lovely, so the tale goes, was the bride, as also her 
 sister. Anyhow, the Squire thought so, and in the days 
 of his prosperity too. She bore him children, but did not 
 outlast her beauty. They went in state with four horses 
 and the family coach to visit his cousin, Sir John, at Ship- 
 ton Court, and she died during her visit. The Squire did 
 not long survive her, and at his decease Ipsden went to his 
 grandson, then a child of two years old. 
 
 We have already adverted to the story of this same 
 child, Charles Reade's father. He was educated at Rugby 
 and Oriel, was during part of his life master of his own 
 harriers, and though pressed to enter Parliament as the 
 friend of such men as Lord Charles Spencer, Vansittart, 
 afterwards Lord Bexley, Lord Chancellor Thurlow, and 
 Warren Hastings, steadily refused to abandon his country 
 life and field sports. But, if he lost a splendid chance, no
 
 14 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 man was a wiser or a kindlier father. His seven sons wor- 
 shipped him for his noble bearing, his manliness, conscien- 
 tiousness, and ready wit. Ipsden House, though the least 
 pretentious of residences, attracted men of station, men of 
 letters, and the best minds of the university. Among the 
 guests whose names recur to memory haphazard among 
 the visitors there, may be enumerated besides Warren 
 Hastings and Lord Thurlow George Grote, Frederick 
 Faber, Wilberforce and his sons Robert, Samuel, and 
 Henry, Lord Lytton, Bishops Barrington, Hampden, 
 Charles Baring, Jacobson, the two Sumners, Doctors Mac- 
 bride, Plumptre, Ellerton, Cadogan, and Kennicot. The 
 genius loci was both clerical and literary. The Squire 
 never forgot his scholarship ; and his wife, besides being 
 the most brilliant of conversationalists, read every book 
 that came out. Whatever Ipsden House was, it could not 
 be charged with bucolic dullness. Charles Reade was 
 born into a refined family circle, for his mother had the 
 bel air of the Court, and his father was a gentleman of the 
 old school. 
 
 We have thus roughly enumerated the leading threads 
 which went to form the individuality of the dramatist and 
 novelist. On his father's side he boasted the blood of the 
 Beaumonts, descended from King Henry III., and of the 
 Cornewalls, through a morganatic marriage from the King 
 of the Romans, son of King John. His direct ancestors 
 had been Catholics and High Churchmen; his parents were 
 Low Church people. The race had produced a lawyer of 
 eminence, besides courtiers and cavaliers. With them he 
 mingled the blood of Brocket the adventurer and Bar- 
 tholomew the smith, while he combined the idiosyncrasies 
 of Edward Reade the spendthrift, and old John Reade, 
 the self-help man, who saved the Ipsden Reades from ruin.
 
 Introduction. 15 
 
 On his mother's side he may possibly have inherited a 
 strain of the old Balliol blood; but the Scotts, being dwell- 
 ers on the Welsh Marches, must have been more or less 
 Cambrian, and Mrs. John Reade's mother was a Highland 
 lassie. There were points of resemblance, undoubtedly, 
 between the author of " Griffith Gaunt " and " A Terrible 
 Temptation " and his grandsire, the Epicurean major; but 
 the grandson was immeasurably his maternal grandfather's 
 superior. 
 
 Being, as we have seen, a blende of inequalities of 
 Blue and Red blood, of the Farm and of the Court, of 
 Catholic and Calvinist, of Epicure and Ascetic, of Spend- 
 thrift and Miser, of Adventurer and Stay-at-home, of 
 fighting Cavalier and homely Artisan, Charles Reade was, 
 perhaps necessarily, a mass of contradictions. Assuming, 
 for argument's sake, that the attributes of these various 
 ancestors with special intensity concentrated in his person, 
 so complex an amalgam could hardly be commonplace; 
 nevertheless, with all his eccentricity, he never descended 
 below his own level, which, as he would have told you, 
 was that of a man of ancestry, though, owing to the acci- 
 dent of being natu junior, not also of acres. Whether 
 genius, or, as Trollope sneered, only " almost a genius," 
 he lived, as he was born, a gentleman, and died a Chris- 
 tian. To his country he gave the product of a brilliant 
 and independent brain, and he rescued an old name from 
 obscurity. We all owe him a debt, we of the English- 
 speaking races, but especially those of his own kith and 
 kin, for if a man in his faults, he was more than a man in 
 
 his virtues. 
 
 " In memoria eterna erunt justi. 
 Ab auditione mala non timebunt."
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHARLES KEADE'S MOTHER. 
 
 THE Gracchi, who Were the moral politicians of Re- 
 publican Rome, the Wesleys, the moral religionists of 
 monarchic England, both owed their superiority to the 
 formative influence of their mothers. And these phe- 
 nomenal mothers were pre-eminently human creatures of 
 flesh and blood, brain and force, as well as of sweetness 
 and light. They were not nuns; they were not hysteri- 
 cal; nevertheless, they were much the reverse of common- 
 place, while their ambitions soared aloft, and were all the 
 nobler because of being not for themselves, but for their 
 offspring. They desired to see their sons both great and 
 good; not great only, but great and good; not good only, 
 but above their fellows in intellectual capacity. They 
 have their reward. History speaks of no women in terms 
 of such reverence. You must obliterate the records of 
 the past before you can abrogate their fame; indeed, 
 whatever Rome owed to the Gracchi she owed to the 
 Spartan virtues of the woman who gave them birth ; and 
 our national debt to the Wesleys, the magnitude of which 
 we hardly as yet can realize, may be carried back to the 
 homely parson's wife who trained them to be truthful 
 and God-fearing, temperate and brave. 
 
 Like them, the mother of Charles Reade was no com- 
 mon woman. Born under the torrid sun of Madras, im- 
 mersed while yet a girl in the life of politics, society, and
 
 Charles Readers Mother. 17 
 
 the Court, she was before all things a lady. Haydn taught 
 her music, and Sheridan epigram and repartee. Her man- 
 ner was perfect, and her conversational powers so extraor- 
 dinary as to have fascinated so superior a master of rhet- 
 oric as Samuel Wilberforce. There never was a more 
 omnivorous devourer of books; yet though she read in- 
 cessantly during her span of ninety years, she never varied 
 by one iota the strong opinions formed in early life, opin- 
 ions wherewith she indoctrinated every one of her eleven 
 children, and that not superficially, but rather as a matter 
 of unalterable conviction. Being, however, essentially a 
 woman of fashion, her religion was tempered by worldli- 
 ness. " My mother," aphorized her son Charles, " is pre- 
 eminently feminine. She is consistent in her inconsis- 
 tency." 
 
 It was on the eve of the great French Revolution that 
 she was married to John Reade, in the old pai'ish church 
 of Bromley in Kent, and on the same day travelled with 
 her squire to Ipsden, where, ne cretd careat pulchra dies 
 notd, she planted a larch on the lawn. The quaint old 
 house, which had sufficed for thrifty John Reade, her hus- 
 band's grandsire, did not at all meet her ideas. It was 
 by no means, to employ her own terminology, " sufficient- 
 ly genteel." The red-brick and flint-stone dressings of- 
 fended her eye, accustomed alike to the " bungalows " of 
 the East and to the Georgian architecture of suburban 
 London. Hence her first act was to paint the old house a 
 garish white, and her next to throw out enormous bow- 
 windows of mahogany, whereby the two chief reception- 
 rooms were enlarged, but the house itself was invested 
 with the appearance of a villa. After that she burned 
 several family portraits which were not up to her aesthetic 
 level, exchanged the huge mediaeval salt-cellar, which had
 
 18 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 been used at audit dinners to the tenants, for a teapot, and 
 settled down to a long reign. 
 
 At first Ipsden House was merry enough. Grattan had 
 styled her " My pretty Puritan," but there was not much 
 of the latter quality conspicuous either in her or her squire, 
 whose indiscipline had not been largely appreciated by 
 the fellows of his college. All his old friends of Oriel 
 and Christ Church came in shoals to visit their whilom 
 companion and his bride. There was at that time a pack 
 of harriers in the kennels, and four English miles of shoot- 
 ing, over and above the attraction of a lady who knew 
 everybody about town. So the game progressed right 
 merrily, and had it continued, though she brought her 
 husband some fortune, the chances are that the Ipsden es- 
 tate would have again required nursing. A change, how- 
 ever, came over the spirit of their dream. 
 
 There had been at Oriel with young Squire John a 
 scholar of the name of Fry. This gentleman's brains and 
 heart were vastly superior to his manner and appearance. 
 In college he had been anathema to a set numbering 
 among others the late Lords Devon and Charles Spencer, 
 Brummel, Stackhouse, and Pendarves; as a matter of fact, 
 the Squire dubbed him " a vulgar fellow," whose gray 
 stockings were a cause of offence, and whose clay pipe one 
 of absolute abomination. It chanced, however, that the 
 Vicar of Ipsden, a divine much given to partridge-shoot- 
 ing, who conducted a funeral in sporting garb, plus of 
 course the necessary surplice, fell sick, and Mr. Fry came 
 as his Locum Tenens. " You must ask the gentleman to 
 dinner," said Mrs. Reade. "I really can't," pleaded the 
 Squire. However, though the good man was not invited 
 to the festive board, both John Reade and his young wife 
 paid him the compliment of occupying the family pew
 
 Charles Readers Mother. 19 
 
 on Sunday, and they who came to scoff remained to 
 pray. 
 
 The plain, vulgar, ungainly scholar, in a word, had de- 
 veloped into a mighty preacher. He had caught the fer- 
 vor of the original Methodists, and his rhetoric, if delivered 
 with a provincial accent, was of the type that strikes hard 
 and strikes home. After church the Squire turned to his 
 wife and said, " I wish I had asked Fry to dinner. I'll 
 ask him now." And so he did, with a courteous apology 
 for his previous laches, and the scholar with the gray 
 stockings pocketed the affront, walked back with them to 
 the house, nearly a mile, and metamorphosed both. The 
 Squire dropped his Oriel friends,* family prayers became 
 
 * One of his old Oxford set never relaxed his intimacy with the Squire. 
 This was Henry Peckwell, student of Christ Church, who afterwards as- 
 sumed the name of Blosset, and as Sir Henry Blosset was Chief-Justice of 
 the Supreme Court of Calcutta, and uncle of George Grote, the historian. 
 This gentleman rode over to Ipsden to learn that Squire John had an heir, 
 and, returning to his college rooms, indited the following stanzas : 
 
 " Through Dorchester, as journeying late, 
 I passed the churchyard's ancient gate, 
 
 And mused in pensive mood, 
 Immortal sounds I seemed to meet ; 
 Trembling I stopp'd, when at my feet 
 A meagre phantom stood. 
 
 " ' Three hundred years,' it cried, ' and more, 
 My body near yon aged tower 
 
 Has slept in sacred peace. 
 I dwell in Heaven, in glory there 
 I watch, and with a father's care 
 Protect my manly race. 
 
 " As each new heir his breath receives, 
 Those peaceful realms my spirit leaves, 
 His future state to learn.
 
 20 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 an institution at Ipsden, everything mundane was sent to 
 the right-about, bar the harriers to have dispersed the 
 pack would have been too severe a sacrifice for Mr. John 
 Readc and Mr. Fry was constituted father confessor. 
 He brought over from Lincoln College his bosom friend, 
 George Stanley Faber, a Yorkshireman with an incompre- 
 hensible dialect, but a magnificent brain, which latter di- 
 vine married Mrs. Reade's sister, and for nearly sixty years 
 subsequently kept up a continuous correspondence with 
 Ipsden, mostly on the subject of prophecy, for he was the 
 Gumming of the period, and certainly justified his reputa- 
 tion by foretelling the Second Empire, almost before the 
 first had attained its zenith. As a matter of fact, of the 
 two divines who influenced so largely both the Squire of 
 Ipsden and his wife, Faber was by far the more intellectual 
 and presentable. Both of them were Doric, but the one 
 was cultured ; whereas the other, known afterwards as 
 Fry of Bath, though a splendid preacher and fine Hebrew 
 scholar, never attained to the semblance of a gentleman. 
 In his old age a long pipe and spittoon were his insepara- 
 ble companions, but withal he was a good man and a good 
 Christian. 
 
 The conversion of Mrs. Reade to the tenets of high Cal- 
 
 To Ipsden journeying now, for there 
 My first delight, my tenderest care, 
 A lovely babe is born." 
 
 Sir Henry, of course, refers to Sir Edmund Rede, the rebuilder of Dor- 
 chester Abbey, whose remains rest under its shadow. But the doctrine of 
 the good Chief- Justice, even for 179 "7, when nobody was suspected of Ro- 
 manism, must have staggered the theological mother of the said lovely 
 babe. According to Sir Henry, the successive heirs to Ipsden and Shipton 
 were placed under the patronage of saintly Sir Edmund : This indeed was 
 rank Papistry.
 
 Charles Headers Mother. 21 
 
 vinism affected the entire atmosphere of Ipsden for more 
 than half a century. If the Vicar was a Gallio, the vil- 
 lage became one of the most religious in the county.* No 
 
 * Influenced by Mr. Fry's teaching, the Squire, to whom all the cottages 
 in the village of Ipsden belonged, invited his humble tenants to come up 
 to the House on Sundays when there was no service in the church and read 
 with him ; or, if they could not read, hear him read, and explain one or 
 two chapters in the Bible for their mutual edification. Mr. Wright, the 
 then Incumbent of Ipsden, gave only one service on Sunday, and some- 
 times that one was pretermitted. His sermon, accurately timed to ten 
 minutes, was (unlike his example) moral, but often incomprehensible to 
 his humble hearers, and there his active clerical life ceased ; comforting 
 the afflicted, visiting the sick and dying, appeared to form no part, in his 
 opinion, of a clergyman's duty. Mrs. Reade might fulfil it if she thought 
 fit he offered no objection ; but when it came to a layman reading the 
 Bible to other laymen his wrath kindled, and he incontinently addressed a 
 vehement letter to the Bishop of Oxford, urging his lordship at once to 
 proceed against the Squire for holding a Conventicle in his house contrary 
 to law. The bishop wrote a kind letter to Mr. Readc, reminding him, as an 
 active magistrate, that the law prohibited the assembling together under a 
 roof of more than twenty persons, either for religious or political objects. 
 The Squire replied, explaining what the real facts were, and that the num- 
 ber of the cottagers who met together had never exceeded twelve. The 
 bishop's reply was, nevertheless, looked for with some anxiety. After a 
 few days it came, the family being seated at breakfast at the time. Mr. 
 Reade read the letter in silence, and with a grave face. Mrs. Reade, who 
 was on tenter-hooks, at last could contain herself no longer. "My dear 
 John," she exclaimed, " what does the bishop say ?" " Well, my dear," 
 her husband quietly replied, " in substance, that Reade is right and Wright 
 is wrong." In fact, the bishop warmly approved of the course Mr. Reade 
 had pursued, and urged him to continue it. Thus fortified, a Sunday- 
 school, nearly, if not quite, the first in Oxfordshire, was established and 
 supported by the Squire at his sole expense. Later on he built a school- 
 house for day as well as Sunday scholars, the mistress who presided being 
 styled the Dame; and in that school Mrs. Readc, her children, grandchil- 
 dren, and great grandchildren have taught successive generations of the 
 Ipsden poor for upwards of eighty years.
 
 22 Memoir of diaries Redde. 
 
 public-house offered a counter-attraction to the Bible, and 
 the boys and girls who with rapid succession put in an ap- 
 pearance at Ipsden House between the years 1797 and 1814 
 acquired a belief which never deserted them. It is but 
 just to add that no mother ever labored with more un- 
 remitting exertion to make her children capable. She 
 would have had every one distinguished, for the medioc- 
 rity which satisfied her really clever but totally unambi- 
 tious husband, to her was most abhorrent. Not once nor 
 twice was John Reade urged by her to enter on a Parlia- 
 mentary career, for which he was personally fitted, being 
 gifted with a noble presence and a fluent tongue, while his 
 interest in an age when interest carried everything was 
 overpowering. The dogs and the woods satisfied the born 
 country gentleman, and his wife, therefore, centred all her 
 hopes in her sons. Earnestly, almost oppressively, she 
 sought to fire them with her vaulting ambition to be first 
 among the first. The names of John Thurlow Reade and 
 of Edward Anderdon Reade live still in the memory of 
 the dark-skinned inhabitants of the northwest provinces 
 of India ; but of all her sons the name of Charles Reade 
 alone has gained a world-wide renown. 
 
 The routine of Ipsden House resembled clock-work. 
 Prayers at 8 A.M. in the drawing-room, when the servants 
 introduced a deal form for themselves, the housekeeper 
 and butler, as became those in authority, being permitted 
 the luxury of a chair. The Squire was his own chaplain, 
 and one rule he enforced rigorously and dogmatically, viz., 
 that on no account, and at no hour of the day, should any 
 book, sacred or secular, be laid on the top of the Bible. 
 The method of elocution adopted at these diurnal domes- 
 tic functions would be styled nowadays histrionic, if not 
 melodramatic. Enough that it was sincere.
 
 Charles Readds Mother. 23 
 
 Prayers over, all promptly adjourned to the breakfast- 
 room, where breakfast followed in due course. The Ips- 
 den hot-rolls were subsequently introduced at Cuddesden 
 Palace, Bishop Wilberforce, from his earlier recollections 
 of Ipsden, having begged for the receipt. One can but 
 wish that these simple luxuries of the past had not shared 
 the fate of the species dodo, for they are now but memo- 
 ries. Luncheon was punctually at one, dinner at half -past 
 five, tea about eight ; then chess and music till ten, when 
 family vespers ended the day. Of course everybody was 
 dressed for dinner the ladies with bare necks and arms, 
 the gentlemen in blue coats with brass buttons. This 
 arrangement was de rigueur even when the house was 
 comparatively empty, a social condition of infrequent oc- 
 currence, guests, as a rule, succeeding each other by re- 
 lays. Everybody ate much and drank little, the wines 
 being madeira and port, except the late Sir John Chandos 
 Reade, who, as head of the family, was privileged to in- 
 vert the process. Beer was an almost unknown beverage, 
 the entire family preferring wine, with the solitary excep- 
 tion of Charles, who was a stern water-drinker until quite 
 late in life. 
 
 Environed by this Arcadian, indeed primeval simplicity, 
 Mrs. Reade lived and did her work in the world industri- 
 ously and happily. She was at once domestic and social, 
 with an aptitude for cultivating the great of the earth, 
 more particularly when they were of her own cult. Lord 
 Thurlow was godfather to her eldest son ; Barrington, 
 the Prince-Bishop of Durham, who resided at Mongewell 
 Park, three miles off, became sponsor for her fourth ; 
 and Warren Hastings for her youngest daughter. " My 
 dearest Lady Effingham" was the friend of her lifetime, 
 until that lady in her eighth decade ran away with a
 
 24 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 scripture-reader, when the note changed, and she was 
 styled " That horrid old woman." On her, however, and 
 others of the same type she wasted reams of paper and 
 gallons of ink, the major part of the forenoon being de- 
 voted to correspondence. It is, perhaps, superfluous to 
 hint that a lady gifted with such exceptional mental 
 qualities, though a devoted mother, was by no means am- 
 bitious of being bored by her children indeed, she sent 
 the sons off to school as early as possible, and after that 
 to India. Her influence with the Board of Directors of 
 the Old East India Company was virtually paramount. 
 She obtained no less than three writerships, i. e., appoint- 
 ments in the Civil Service, together with two cavalry 
 cadetships for her sons, and an infantry cadetship for a 
 connection by marriage. Five out of seven boys were 
 thus expeditiously launched to sink or swim; and as re- 
 gards the daughters, the two elder were wedded to men 
 of her choice, while one remained single, to be the com- 
 panion of her fourteen years of widowhood. 
 
 Although, therefore, this woman of idiosyncrasies con- 
 signed her five first-born sons to the India where she was 
 born, and where her father had attained a certain emi- 
 nence, her youngest seemed from his cradle to have a 
 singular attraction for her. Charles was her pet. "When 
 her other children came from school or college she loved 
 them for a day, tolerated them for a week, and then de- 
 voutly wished they were out of the house. Charles, how- 
 ever, was ever welcome, missed when absent, and adored 
 when present. For his mother was as warm-hearted as 
 capricious, and it may be that her quick perception de- 
 tected in him the evidences of consummate brain-power, 
 the quality she coveted for all. Yet she had not one 
 stupid child indeed, her whole family was distinctly tal-
 
 Charles Readers Mother. 25 
 
 ented. Her two elder sons shone at Rugby and Hailey- 
 bury, her third at Charterhouse. Her fourth, the father 
 of Winwood, the African explorer, was a brilliant racon- 
 teur; her fifth became acting Lieutenant-Governor of the 
 northwest provinces, during the mutiny, and not only 
 saved Agra, but, better still, Havelock from collapse, by 
 supplying him at a critical moment with funds. It was 
 the fortune of her sixth to be engaged in several leading 
 cases with no small eclat, and Charles was himself the last 
 but not least; while of her daughters, Julia, the wife of 
 the martyr, Captain Allen Gardiner, R.N., has left a 
 memory alike sweet and fragrant. She was as handsome 
 as her father, and as brilliant as her mother. Nearly 
 forty years after this lady's decease a nephew of hers was 
 greeted by an ardent Romanist with, "What, are you a 
 nephew of Julia Reade ?" as though the fact alone spoke 
 volumes; the speaker adding, "For grace, for beauty, and 
 for brains, I have never known any woman to be her 
 equal." Nor was that the language of exaggeration. It 
 was not, therefore, because her other children were dull- 
 ards or behemoths that Mrs. Reade concentrated her ma- 
 ternal affection on Charles. There was a bond of brain 
 between mother and son, and withal a decided similarity 
 of disposition. He entertained from first to last a firm 
 belief in the majesty of his mother's mental powers, and 
 loved her, we may be sure, none the less for being in 
 every fibre a lady. It was to her that he was indebted 
 for those habits of untiring industry which, even when he 
 appeared to be a man of leisure, redeemed his hours of 
 seeming idleness from inanity, and afterwards converted 
 his luxurious residence at Albert Gate into a workshop. 
 His mother's brain was never passive. The secret of her 
 social success lay in the fact of her having so much to 
 2
 
 26 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 say on every conceivable topic. She bad read, she bad 
 thought, she had discussed the problems of the day, its 
 literature, its theology and politics, within and without 
 the family circle, and her mind rapidly crystallized ideas. 
 Bishops and learned doctors listened to her with genuine 
 admiration, for to the charm of originality she added that 
 of research. She was a firm believer in woman's wit; her 
 earnestness was so intense that she could hardly tolerate 
 badinage, or fun of any sort. At dinner she would seem 
 almost surprised at the effect produced by her husband's 
 sparkling sallies, and was once heard to whisper an irate 
 aside, that he was getting to be a very frivolous old man. 
 To her everything was so overwhelmingly serious, that 
 although a smile never left her features except on very 
 rare occasions she had no time for laughter, still less for 
 fooling. There was nothing little about her, and to her 
 littleness was tantamount to vulgarity. To say that she 
 impressed all with whom she came in contact is to render 
 her but scant justice, for she attracted most especially the 
 highest minds, such as George Grote, Samuel Wilberforce, 
 G. S. Faber, and his splendid nephew, .founder of the 
 Brompton Oratory and poet. That, however, was not 
 all; her servants held her in the highest estimation. To 
 the poor people on the Ipsden estate she played the part 
 of Lady Bountiful, feeding them royally, and physicking 
 their vitals experimentally. This spirit of charity she 
 certainly transmitted to her son Charles, together, un- 
 luckily, with her faculty for being very easily humbugged. 
 That her sons were keenly appreciative of the worth of 
 this mother of theirs may be inferred from the simple fact 
 of one among their number having jotted down, during 
 a period of forty years, several hundred of her wisest 
 aphorisms. It would obviously be impossible to give
 
 Charles Readers Mother. 27 
 
 more than a sample of her epigrammatic tongue and pen. 
 Suffice it that the following were unpremeditated, ut- 
 tered in the course of common conversation, or scribbled 
 currente calamo, but rescued from oblivion by the affec- 
 tion of a son who treasured his mother's wit as sacred. 
 She shall speak for herself in the excerpts culled from a 
 small MS. volume in her son's handwriting, almost at 
 random: 
 
 " Life teems with contrarieties, and the wise man seeks 
 rather to discipline his mind than to alter his circum- 
 stances." 
 
 "Mr. Hastings is surprisingly well and young. At 
 eighty skipping like a fawn, and not old-looking. But at 
 eighty I prefer age." 
 
 " How difficult it is for a mother to win the love of her 
 sons when she has to fight against their inclinations! But 
 in this, as in other cases, the line of duty is the line for me 
 to take." 
 
 " Oh, for bark and steel for the mind, instead of senti- 
 ment and spermaceti!" 
 
 " I left my Charles in his solitude of College with an 
 aching heart. It is my children that glue me to life." 
 
 "I do not much fancy Daniel Wilson as Bishop (of 
 Calcutta). He is a child of God, but barely a gentleman 
 in manners." 
 
 "I am better for advice, but in our grand climacteric 
 we must expect the pins to loosen." 
 
 " There are some persons whose detestation of you is 
 desirable. Their praise would be censure." 
 
 " Female authors are springing up like mushrooms. I 
 begin to think tapestry was a wise employment." 
 
 " My friend Samuel Wilberf orce will be a bishop. He 
 eschews the doctrine and disloyalty of Newman, but
 
 28 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 seems inclined to shut up the Kingdom of Heaven from 
 all but Episcopalians." 
 
 " Love makes sad havoc with some people, but will not 
 hurt those who can change easily from fair to brown." 
 
 "The wisest man is he who never anticipates, but is 
 daily thankful for the good he enjoys." 
 
 "A bouncing girl with the mind of a sparrow, and a 
 beauty with all her wit in her heels, is heaviness to 
 me." 
 
 " My early education, early tastes, early friends make 
 me utterly at issue with all vulgarity and imitative gen- 
 tility." 
 
 " Commonplace people are always on the subject of ser- 
 vants or dress, or newspaper information. I had rather be 
 closeted for aye with my own thoughts than have freedom 
 with theirs." 
 
 " I have been reading Macaulay's Essays. That on Mil- 
 ton so much admired is execrable in principle, and not re- 
 deemed by antithetical eloquence. I like the sparkling, 
 easy style of Horace Walpole, and his terse criticisms bet- 
 ter than this new-fangled style of our reviews." 
 
 "I have read a few works of fiction. The low wit of 
 Dickens I abominate, but except 'Nicholas Kickleby.' 
 Bulwer I do not read, but James, with his love-ladies, is 
 interesting. And love is not dead, nor imagination either, 
 in your old mother." She was seventy-one. 
 
 "One does not wish to see sentiment oozing out at 
 every pore; but there is a bright look and a beaming eye 
 that sets all life within afloat, and that pleases. Profes- 
 sion of all sorts is an emetic but ice chills." 
 
 "As to the apostolic succession, drive the nail too 
 hard, and you will rather destroy than build up the Church 
 of England."
 
 Charles Readers MotJier. 29 
 
 " Nothing annoys me so much as the loss of the Eng- 
 lish language in the literature of the day. There is Car- 
 lyle, with his abominable German phraseology conceited 
 divines, with their Frenchified sentences and compound 
 words that make me throw the book down. What think 
 you of Montgomery ending an octavo volume with ' How ?' 
 I like pithy and epigrammatic sentences, a little antithesis 
 also, but only a little." 
 
 " To be ever on the stilts is a mistake in these days, 
 when the head is often compelled to take the place of the 
 tail." 
 
 " Catechisms make a parrot." 
 
 " Haydn gave me his picture on my marriage. On the 
 reverse was Solon's maxim, ' Reckon not on Happiness.' " 
 
 " Lady Bathurst said of my father, in the time of the 
 Hastings controversy, ' Here comes Scott, his eyes full of 
 fire and his pockets full of pamphlets.' " This was apro- 
 pos of her father's daughter, evidently. 
 
 To these may be added a sentiment of the canonical 
 variety which reflects the mind of the high Tory, high 
 Calvinist, and high-bred lady. "No one should go be- 
 yond his own grounds on Sunday, except to church." Un- 
 luckily we have not all of us grounds to go beyond. 
 
 This clever lady, as will be noted, was in essence a pro- 
 verbial philosopher, often unconsciously funny, but al- 
 ways burningly earnest. Paragraphs of hers read like ex- 
 tracts from Charles Reade's earlier novels; e. g., "Living 
 in London," she writes, " what is it ? Cliques fashionable, 
 cliques political, cliques religious, and clubs the excep- 
 tions." Mixed, however, with so much that was prag- 
 matical and didactic, with much of Jane Austen's ideas 
 about sense, sentiment, and sensibility, and with the con- 
 sequent glorification of the commonplace, was a current of
 
 80 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 tenderness, rarely rising to the surface, perhaps too often 
 obscured. It existed, however, and when in evidence 
 charmed by its simplicity. Thus, after the death of her 
 squire, she wrote, "My children are too old to be loving; 
 I miss the pressure of my dear husband's hand." And 
 during the last week of her life, at the age of ninety, she 
 wrote to her son Edward a farewell, concluding with the 
 really poetic paradox, " THE MOTHER NEVEK DIES !" 
 That is indeed a beautiful truth!
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BABYHOOD. 
 
 CHARLES READE was born at Ipsden House on the 8th 
 of June, 1814. The youngest of eleven, he entered a 
 home well filled with boys and girls, of whom the elder 
 were almost young men and women. India, however, so 
 soon absorbed the three seniors that he was barely able to 
 recall them, and at a family gathering in his later years 
 openly avowed himself unable to contra-distinguish the 
 portrait of his brother George from that of his brother 
 Henry. His eldest sister, moreover, was shortly after 
 married to an ex-fellow of St. John's, and her union with 
 Mr., afterwards Canon, Woodrooffe virtually took her out 
 of the family. The little Charley, therefore, became 
 from his cradle the especial charge of his sister Julia. 
 Seldom has it fallen to the lot of a child to be blessed 
 with such a nurse, and in after-years he never mentioned 
 her name except with some prefix of endearment. His 
 brothers joined in the general idolatry of the fair-haired, 
 rosy-cheeked urchin with the large, thoughtful eyes, and a 
 mouth that already showed signs of caprice and wilful- 
 ness. Had there been less of wisdom and sound sense 
 blended with such pronounced favoritism, the boy would 
 have developed, even in the nursery, into an enfant terrible ; 
 but sister Julia was too high-minded to spoil him for the 
 sake of selfish gratification, and his mother had a habit of 
 loving her children with an iron love. She was honey one
 
 82 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 moment and vinegar the next ; now indulgent up to a 
 certain limit, and now, as she phrased it, tiring and teas- 
 ing the children. Charles, doubtless, came in for his full 
 share of her caressing and his half share of her tantalizing, 
 but the latter could not have affected him much. If he 
 was naughty some one else got the blame ; if he gave vent 
 to those momentary ebullitions of temper, which after- 
 wards induced him to style the most eminent of dramatic 
 critics " A criticaster and a shrimp," his amiable sister was 
 sure to be at hand to exorcise the evil spirit by the sheer 
 force of sweetness ; if the young Turk essayed to bully 
 his seniors and got compound interest in return, Julia was 
 ready to ward off the Nemesis his self-assertion had evoked, 
 and pour oil on the troubled waters. He was a spoiled 
 child if ever there was one, and would have been made 
 totally indisciplined but for a fortunate accident. 
 
 The nurseries in Ipsden House were situate on the first 
 floor of the old wing, that portion of the mansion whose 
 date is uncertain, but is believed to antedate 1536. Three 
 rooms and a passage were shut off from the rest of the 
 house by a swing door, and it may be supposed that, hav- 
 ing been devoted to the use of young children from 1797, 
 when John Thurlow, the eldest son, was born, to 1818, a 
 stretch of twenty-one years, they had got out of repair. 
 Hence, when Charles was but four years of age, it oc- 
 curred to the Squire to furbish up this wing, but the proc- 
 ess of papering, painting, and whitewashing would nec- 
 essarily take time. Not only so, but the rest of Ipsden 
 House needed renovation, and therefore a temporary ex- 
 odus for the whole family seemed inevitable. They man- 
 aged things differently in those days. In this year of 
 grace, if a country gentleman had a mind to repair his 
 house, he would either rent another in the shires or in
 
 Babyhood. . 33 
 
 town, or perhaps at Brighton. In 1818 locomotion was 
 laborious, and the sort of undertaking to be dreaded ; so it 
 was determined for the nonce to disperse the family, and, 
 as a preliminary, son Charles, though very young indeed 
 for so grave an experiment, was breeched, and thus tech- 
 nically, according to the ideas of the period, converted 
 into a schoolboy. No doubt the poor little fellow parted 
 with his frocks painfully, and resented the honor thus 
 thrust upon him, but he must ere this have learned that, 
 however much mother and sister might pet him, the rule 
 of Ipsden was rather Stoic than Epicurean. The Squire 
 with his hounds and his gun was no milksop. Mrs. Reade 
 indulged her own tastes and caprices ad libitum, but strin- 
 gently insisted upon every one else practising the virtue 
 of self-denial. Ipsden is probably the coldest house in 
 Europe, yet fires were all but unknown luxuries in its bed- 
 rooms; the halls and principal staircase were icy, and even 
 in the living rooms the beechen logs, with their cheerful 
 blaze, emitted a minimum of heat. Ladies with bare necks 
 and arms shivered in the dining-room and clustered round 
 the hearth-rug in the drawing-room. There was, in fact, 
 with a superb cuisine of the genuine and unostentatious 
 kind, with abundance of civilization and punctilio, a sin- 
 gular absence of real comfort, and Master Charles, like his 
 sisters and brothers, learned from his cradle to rough it. 
 The breeches, however, at the tender age of four, were a 
 severer discipline than had been meted out to his brethren. 
 Their symbolism was not remote. These integuments 
 said that, being now by virtue of his breeching a boy, he 
 must put off childish things. They warned him solemnly 
 that the time had come to buckle to, and learn his regular 
 lessons at stated hours, in lieu of that easy, desultory in- 
 struction which hitherto had passed muster. But above 
 2*
 
 84 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 all, he soon discovered, to his bitter grief, that these de- 
 testable breeks were destined to separate him from his dear 
 mother, his yet dearer sister Julia, and all the glorious 
 liberty of the nursery, for the stern decree had gone forth 
 that he, the tiny brat of four years, should accompany his 
 bigger brother to school. 
 
 The truth is, that his mother, much as she loved the 
 baby Charles, loved her own whims and fancies more, and 
 had resolved to spend the interregnum during the f urbish- 
 ment of Ipsden House in the gay but serious city of Bath. 
 Mr. Fry, her evangelist, had pitched his tent there. They 
 could drive into Somersetshire from Ipsden with their own 
 horses by breaking the journey at Faringdon or Cirences- 
 ter, and thus escape the horror of coaching. Bath was at 
 its zenith, and it is just possible that, after twenty-two 
 years of Ipsden, this good lady may have begun to hanker 
 after the fleshpots of fashion, whereof she had partaken 
 so extensively in her maiden days. Bath, therefore, was 
 the venue, and Mrs. Reade had no notion of Bath in com- 
 bination with a legion of brats. To her mind the glories 
 of King Bladud's city were incompatible with the respon- 
 sibilities of maternity, so she eliminated those irksome ad- 
 juncts pro tern, and packed off her nurseryful to school, 
 while the rest were despatched on a round of visits to 
 relations and friends and thus Mrs. Reade and her hus- 
 band were enabled to descend in state upon Bath without 
 encumbrances. 
 
 The school selected for sons Charley and Compton had 
 been started by a Mrs. Bradley at Reading. This lady 
 must have been gifted with considerable force of charac- 
 ter, for her ambition seems to have been both to fulfil her 
 duties as wife and mother, and also to keep the domestic 
 pot aboil by her own exertions. Her husband, who is de-
 
 Babyhood. 35 
 
 scribed as a dapper little fellow dressed d la militaire, 
 acted the part of drill-sergeant to the pupils, but was con- 
 tent to allow his wife to earn his and her bread. This, 
 by-the-bye, was no such easy feat. Mrs. Bradley happened 
 to be nursing her first-born, and that interesting occupa- 
 tion must have interfered not a little with her work as an 
 informer of the youthful mind. Infants, even when of 
 the highest moral calibre, are apt to give tongue in season 
 and out of season, and that which Mrs. Bradley had intro- 
 duced to this terrestrial scene was no less fractious than 
 the rest. It afforded, in short, a substantial guarantee 
 against that over-pressure which is said to be the vice of 
 Board Schools. The Bradley establishment must have 
 been more of a crdche than a school. 
 
 The big landau with the seventeen-hand bays the 
 Squire plumed himself on his horse-flesh took the two 
 boys over to Reading by noon one fine day, and after a 
 formal welcome from Mrs. Bradley, and a view-halloa 
 from the suckling cherub, at one o'clock the boys sat down 
 to dinner. The two Reades were hungry enough after 
 their ten-mile drive, and awaited with no common interest 
 the entrance of the viands. Grace was said, and then a 
 huge rice pudding entered an appearance. Now rice pud- 
 ding at best is rather homely fare, and it came in the shape 
 of an unwelcome surprise. Compton accepted his helping 
 as a matter of duty, but a glance at his brother Charley's 
 visage warned him of an impending storm. The little fel- 
 low looked quite all the indignation he felt, and when a 
 plateful was placed in front of him, clutched his spoon, 
 filled it with the stodgy stuff, lifted it to his mouth, and 
 then dropped it with a crash. 
 
 Mrs. Bradley, who had been dispensing this edible, 
 glanced inquiringly across at her new pupil to behold
 
 36 Memoir of Charles JKeade. 
 
 him push away plate, spoon, and all in a torrent of tem- 
 per, while in a tone of absolute ill-usage he ejaculated, 
 " Where's my meat ?" 
 
 This query of course demanded explanations which 
 were duly forthcoming, and the future author learned that 
 whereas in the county of Oxford and parish of Ipsden the 
 custom prevailed of eating meat first and pudding second, 
 in the county of Berks and borough of Reading they in- 
 verted the process. On being further assured that those 
 pupils only who ate their pudding were permitted the lux- 
 ury of fibrine, Master Charles took the hint promptly, and 
 by sedulous devotion to rice pudding earned a full com- 
 mons of meat. This singular bouleverscment of the items 
 of the ordinary menu was not peculiar to Mrs. Bradley's 
 establishment, nor to that of Mr. Squeers. It obtained in 
 very many schools, the idea being to save the butcher's 
 bill, and keep the boys in health. Dickens by a stroke of 
 the pen abrogated it, but before " Nicholas Nickleby " set 
 the world laughing, parents had got to regard the arrange- 
 ment as of the nature of a swindle, and there was sub- 
 sequently much indignation at Ipsden against Madame 
 Bradley's petty economy when the story of little Charley's 
 first dinner at school was narrated. 
 
 The rehabilitation of Ipsden House took exactly three 
 months to complete, and at the expiration of that period 
 Charles with his elder brother returned home. They found 
 the nursery converted into a schoolroom, and that their 
 regime in the future would be that of schoolboys, not of 
 children. Shortly after this Compton was sent to join his 
 brother Edward at a private tutor's near Oxford, and 
 Charles again became the sole charge of his sister Julia. 
 She washed him, dressed him, taught and played with 
 him, nor would she permit any one to usurp her place.
 
 Babyhood. 37 
 
 Kever was there so devoted a sister, never a boy more at- 
 tached to a beautiful, spirituelle, and accomplished woman. 
 Clever and brilliant herself, she made learning not only 
 easy to him, but pleasant. He must have been largely 
 influenced by her grace and esprit. It was indeed a rare 
 privilege to have been trained even in early youth by one 
 who, in virtue of extraordinary qualities, was enabled to 
 command universal admiration, being herself, notwith- 
 standing, entirely unconscious of it. Bright, animated, 
 vivacious, yet never lacking dignity, she taught him 1 to 
 appreciate not merely wisdom, but wit, and to abhor me- 
 diocrity. The debt he owed to her was incalculable ; 
 indeed, her social influence throughout a brief but beauti- 
 ful life was as fertilizing of good as the sunshine. During 
 the three years when he was her pupil, Charles developed 
 surprisingly every quality of the heart and brain. At six 
 he could play a fine game of chess, and at seven had ac- 
 quired the rudiments of a sound English education, plus 
 that love of literature which he retained throughout his 
 life, and which, in a degree, proved the basis of his success. 
 It was the kind and good Julia who made him a devourer 
 of books, and it had been well for him had she continued 
 her work of tuition and supervision for the entire period 
 of his boyhood. A sister's affection, however ardent and 
 impulsive though it may be, is a transferable quality as 
 the little Charles, to his sorrow, was destined to discover. 
 About five miles from Ipsden, subtending the river's 
 banks, and environed by parklike grounds, stands Combe 
 Lodge, the seat then of the Gardiners. The founder of 
 that family was a merchant or broker, who came down to 
 Oxfordshire at the latter end of the last century, and pur- 
 chased extensive estates in the parishes of Whitchurch 
 and Goring. The younger son of Mr. Gardiner of Combe,
 
 88 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 in 1821, was a certain Allen Francis Gardiner, a naval offi- 
 cer of strong religious sentiments. There was, by-the-bye, 
 a religious vein in the Gardiner family, for some of Captain 
 Gardiner's nearest relatives afterwards became disciples of 
 the great Irving. A-wooing journeyed to Ipsden the gal- 
 lant captain, and his suit prospered. He was evangelical, 
 so was Julia Reade. His brain was filled with romantic 
 visions of apostleship, so was hers. He had been a very 
 pretty boy, and as a midshipman had played girls' parts 
 in theatricals at Portsmouth with some eclat, and it is 
 possible his future wife was able to trace the vestiges of 
 his youthful good looks. But his features, which singu- 
 larly resembled those of Lord Nelson, were bronzed, and 
 his manner cold and stern, though doubtless not to her. 
 From a worldly point of view the match was hardly a 
 good one, for Captain Gardiner was a younger son, and 
 Julia had a plethora of suitors. It was, however, essen- 
 tially a love-match, and both the Squire and his wife were 
 well pleased that their daughter had chosen a man of such 
 natural nobility of character. 
 
 The wedding came off at Ipsden Church. Captain Gar- 
 diner's sister had just bestowed her hand on Mr. Hunt, of 
 Buckhurst, a more than opulent squarson, among the issue 
 of that marriage being George Ward Hunt, Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Post- 
 master-General under Lords Derby and Beaconsfield. 
 There were Gardiners and Hunts in abundance at the wed- 
 ding, and, indeed, all the country - side. Sixty carriages 
 followed the bride and bridegroom to church ; and, bear- 
 ing in mind that there were no railways, this fact speaks 
 volumes for the esteem in which the happy couple were 
 held. Every one in that region knew what a fine fellow 
 Allen Gardiner was, most had heard of the grace and
 
 Babyhood. 39 
 
 beauty of Julia Reade. So they all mustered in force to 
 do them honor and wish them joy, little dreaming, by-the- 
 bye, that so glorious a morning would presage a brief day 
 for the one and a tragic termination for the other. 
 
 Before going to church the guests assembled at Ipsden 
 House, and one can well imagine the picture of the tall, 
 handsome Squire, perhaps more regretful than overjoyed, 
 with his blue coat and buff waistcoat, as he nervously 
 took out his watch, said time was up, and demanded, sotto 
 voce, " Why the bride had not entered an appearance ?" 
 Sister Ellinor was despatched from the drawing-room to 
 hurry down Miss Julia, but she returned with a puzzled 
 face to say that the bride was not in her chamber, and 
 could not be found. A curious smile of awkwardness 
 passed round, and the company began to think of the old 
 oak chest of the "Mistletoe Bough." Other messengers were 
 sent in search, but still with the same result, till the Squire 
 began to fume, and his wife herself ascended hastily the 
 broad oak stairs, and in high dudgeon roamed from room 
 to room. At last the musical note of her daughter Julia's 
 voice caught her ear, and gave her the cue. With all 
 speed she tripped down the passage leading to the night 
 nursery, to behold the bride, orange-blossoms and all, hard 
 at work dressing the youngest of her brothers. 
 
 "What, mamma," cried she, reproachfully, "do you 
 think I would go to church without my little Charley ?" 
 
 They had determined that this infinitesimal element 
 should be omitted from the ceremony, but Julia would not 
 have it so. Her pupil should have the last of her life and 
 love till the moment when she pledged both to her noble 
 husband. 
 
 And so Charles went with the rest of the big company, 
 and no doubt, with his large, pensive eyes, took in the
 
 40 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 whole scene. It was fraught, poor boy, with ill-omen for 
 his happiness, for so long as Julia was at home to play 
 mother to him, Ipsdcn House was able to tolerate his pres- 
 ence. It chanced, however, that soon after she disap- 
 peared, leaving a gap the Squire always declared could 
 never be filled, his cousin, Emma Scott -Waring, a little 
 torn-boy of a girl, came on a visit, and the pair took upon 
 themselves not merely to rob the hen-roost, but further to 
 pelt each other with the new-laid eggs. The girl, after 
 detection, was severely punished for the sin of having en- 
 ticed Master Charles from the path of rectitude, whereas, 
 in truth, it was altogether the other way. His mother 
 would not hear of her dear and spoiled boy being subject- 
 ed to corporal chastisement, so the Squire, in order to in- 
 sure its abundant application, packed him off sharp to 
 join his elder brother Compton at Rose Hill, Iffley, near 
 Oxford. The dominie who was their schoolmaster had 
 already beaten his three elder brothers metaphorically into 
 jellies, and the same horrible fate was reserved for Master 
 Charles.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 UNDER THEKOD. 
 
 Tx was popularly supposed at the beginning of the cen- 
 tury that knowledge was introduced to the human brain 
 by dint of hard knocks on every part of the person. A 
 boy, from that point of view, could scarcely be too se- 
 verely cudgelled or too constantly flogged. Men said 
 that the cat-o'-nine-tails won for us both Trafalgar and 
 Waterloo, and that to make a boy a scholar and a gentle- 
 man copious flagellation was essential. Dr. Valpy earned 
 the sobriquet of " Vapuly " by the horrible tortures he in- 
 flicted on his pupils, yet was generally considered, before 
 Arnold, the model Head Master. But Valpy himself was 
 mild and merciful in contrast with the pedagogue to whom 
 the Squire of Ipsden intrusted his four younger boys. 
 
 The Squire perhaps may have been less blameworthy 
 than his wife. A Rugbeian himself, John Reade not un- 
 naturally sent his two elder sons to Rugby, while the third 
 became a Carthusian. Yet, somehow, neither Rugby nor 
 the Charterhouse quite satisfied Mr. Reade, who began to 
 question whether a public - school education might not be 
 more costly than advantageous. He therefore favored the 
 notion of private tuition for his younger sons, but the ac- 
 tual selection of a private tutor he appears to have left to 
 his wife. Now Mrs. Reade, like many clever women, had 
 strong prejudices. Her belief in the clergy of her own 
 way of thinking was simply amazing, and she almost in-
 
 42 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 vested them with the attribute of infallibility. History 
 has failed to record who recommended the Rev. Mr. Slat- 
 ter, of Rose Hill, Iffley, as tutor of her boys. The cleric, 
 whoever he was, who advised a mother to confide in so 
 inhuman a master must have been gifted with a curious 
 conscience. Charles Dickens's Squeers has always been 
 accepted as a broad caricature, but this same character in 
 some respects, though not in all, was highly colored in the 
 person of Mr. Slatter. Life under his roof was more than 
 purgatory it was a positive inferno. His system has ac- 
 curately been described as one of all punishment and no 
 reward, and the wonder was that he preserved till his 
 death a steady average of subjects to experiment upon. 
 Nothing but the generally diffused superstition concern- 
 ing the necessity of never sparing the rod could have kept 
 him going, for severity increased with his advancing 
 years; and though at thirty-five he was only a harsh mar- 
 tinet, at sixty-five he seemed to take pleasure in the phys- 
 ical sufferings of his pupils. 
 
 When her husband opened his school, Mrs. Slatter, who 
 was a gentle, motherly sort of woman, often pleaded for 
 the unfortunate youngsters who had fallen into disgrace. 
 But as years passed on she became inured to the wails of 
 the sufferers, or perchance discovered that her interfer- 
 ence was of no avail. Once in every half-year each pupil 
 was invited to spend Sunday evening with this good 
 woman in her sanctum. On these occasions apple-tart was 
 the style of provender; but before deglutition the guest 
 was required to repeat the names of the Oxford Colleges. 
 It was a singular species of entertainment, but keenly ap- 
 preciated by the boys, as affording a sort of contrast to 
 the horrors of the schoolroom. The school, in short, was 
 repressive and crushing. Its master had acquired a cer-
 
 Under the Rod. 43 
 
 tain reputation as a strict disciplinarian, but in truth his 
 system of terrorizing stupefied his pupils. Executions 
 went on perpetually throughout school-hours, and it was 
 a rare occurrence for any boy to escape corporal punish- 
 ment, on a larger or lesser scale, between breakfast and 
 dinner, or dinner and tea. On a high platform, covered 
 with red baize, in the angle of the room, posed Mr. Slat- 
 ter. The boys on forms sat round the green baize-cov- 
 ered table, a stool at the angle of the table nearest the 
 door serving as the vehicle for one species of execution, 
 and a very painful one indeed. Each pupil was summoned 
 in turn, his lesson assigned him to learn by heart, and in 
 due time he was called up to repeat it. Probably he got 
 through the first three lines correctly, then followed some 
 slight lapse of memory. " Hold out your hand!" was the 
 prompt command, and down came the cane irrespective 
 of chilblains and bruises. A small child, of course, would 
 yell, whereupon the punishment was repeated for the fresh 
 offence of crying. In the course of a single lesson a dozen 
 cuts would be showered on the hands or arms; while, if 
 the boy had omitted to learn even the first few lines, the 
 stool above referred to was requisitioned, the child was 
 flung across it, his back bared, and blows rained upon him. 
 After this infliction a sitting posture was excruciating 
 torture, for the skin was abraded and the cuticle severely 
 bruised. 
 
 This, however, was not supposed to be the ne plus ultra 
 of the inquisitor's art. In the event of any grave offence 
 being committed the offender was invited to " come into 
 my study, sir," a small room across the hall, and then all 
 ears were attention to count the number of strokes in- 
 flicted on the bare flesh by the birch rod. The shrieks of 
 the sufferer after each stroke were duly timed, but not
 
 44 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 seldom obscured by wild and frantic cries for mercy an 
 appeal utterly fruitless. 
 
 Of course the boys learned nothing, or next door to noth- 
 ing. The Latin grammar was written in Latin, and com- 
 mitted to memory without reference to any meaning the 
 words might have. Mr. Slatter never explained, or taught. 
 He sat on his throne to hear lessons said. If the task was 
 repeated accurately, the pupil escaped the cane. That was 
 his negative rewai'd. If he repeated ninety-nine words 
 only out of a hundred he got caned for the odd one. And 
 this was what Mr. Slatter facetiously termed "grounding " 
 in Latin! 
 
 It was a somewhat singular fact that the smaller boys 
 at Rose Hill suffered the most. When a sturdy youth 
 kicked Mr. Slatter's shins, though vendetta followed 
 promptly, he self-guarded his corpus against future vivi- 
 section. That same sturdy boy is now an Admiral in Her 
 Majesty's fleet, and if he peruses these lines may recall to 
 memory how pluckily he stuck to the wall, kicked with all 
 his might, and was only dragged to the stool of torture 
 after a stiff resistance, wherein he did not altogether come 
 off worst. But at the time he was not a junior, and in 
 fact had passed through a long ordeal of suffering as a 
 small boy before he mustered up courage to resist. It 
 would have been well had his example been followed by 
 all. The writer, after a lapse of forty-five years, sees as 
 clearly as though it were to-day, a little child of six, a 
 widow's son and pet, who had been most tenderly nur- 
 tured, and was sent from Oxford to Iffley for afternoon 
 lessons only. He sees this child caned till his hysterical 
 crying could not cease, and his whole body was swollen 
 with the blows. In after-years he heard that same child 
 as a man, and a dying man, curse the name of Slatter,
 
 Under the Rod. 45 
 
 though that merciless torturer who had rendered his child- 
 hood a hell lay under the sod of Iffley churchyard. 
 
 It is possible that the Squire might have hesitated be- 
 fore consigning his son Charles to this harsh disciplinarian 
 but for an unlucky circumstance. His three elder sons 
 needed no severe curb. But the fourth son, William Bar- 
 rington, was endowed by nature with a turbulent spirit. 
 Though physically the little one of the family, his high 
 spirit was only equalled by an inordinate love of mischief, 
 and his cuticle was so tough, his muscles so hard, that it 
 needed something akin to a surgical operation to make 
 him feel at all. This rough-and-tumble youth appears 
 somewhat to have startled Mr. Slatter, who had been ac- 
 customed to operate on sensitive subjects, and was puzzled 
 proportionately by a phenomenal insensibility to pain. On 
 arriving at Rose Hill Master William Barrington dined 
 with the rest in total silence the rule of the school. He 
 ate his meat without observation; but when the spotted 
 dog made its appearance, the new boy exclaimed inconti- 
 nently, "I say, Mr. Slatter, the plums in this pudding are 
 calling out to each other, ' Here be I, Jack ; where be 
 you?'" The school tittered in the subdued fashion of 
 convicts with the lash always impending, whereupon Mr. 
 Slatter summoned Master William Barrington to "stand 
 out;" and, laying down his fork and spoon, clutched the 
 cane, and began to play upon the new boy vigorously. 
 To his chagrin, however, the blows made no impression, 
 indeed the victim did not wince, but smiled as at a su- 
 preme jest. At last, however, he observed, in a tone of 
 mild reproach, suggestive of the possibility of overdoing 
 even the best of jokes, " I say, if you keep on that much 
 longer you'll hurt me!" Needless to add, that however 
 severely he might be thrashed, this same Master William
 
 46 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Barrington was much too proud to carry home a grumble; 
 indeed in his case it would have been fruitless, for the 
 Squire would have replied that in beating so fractious a 
 boy the master was only doing his duty. 
 
 With William Barrington there went to Mr. Slatter's 
 Edward Anderdon, the fifth son, whose powers of applica- 
 tion were abnormal, and who escaped the cane simply be- 
 cause he always mastered his lessons. Later on Compton, 
 the sixth son, joined his brothers, and on him descended 
 the full force of the pedagogue's right arm. Pride, how- 
 ever, kept his tongue silent. His elder brothers had not 
 complained, and had he protested against the severity to 
 which he was subjected he would have been gibbeted in 
 the family circle as an idler. He omitted, therefore, to 
 warn his mother against Mr. Slatter, and the little Charles, 
 not yet eight years of age, became one of his victims. 
 
 Compton had been his younger brother's companion at 
 Mrs. Bradley's, and was ready to fight his battle at Rose 
 Hill. But what can a small boy of ten do in opposition 
 to a master, and that master a bully ? It was the practice 
 of this most peculiar of pedagogues to make the acquaint- 
 ance of a new pupil within a few hours of his entry into 
 the school by vigorous chastisement. There was no hypoc- 
 risy about Mr. Slatter. He did not pretend to be his 
 pupils' friend, and whale their bodies for the good of their 
 souls. Nothing of the kind. He made it clear as crystal 
 that you had come there to be thrashed, possibly for your 
 own good, certainly for his gratification. He therefore wel- 
 comed Charles Reade as a new subject, and a very prom- 
 ising one, inasmuch as, unlike his pachydermatous broth- 
 er, William Barrington, he evinced an acute sense of pain. 
 Day after day the child's flesh was lacerated by the cruel 
 cane, until at last his brother Compton, who had borne his
 
 Under the Hod. 47 
 
 own floggings with fortitude, but could not so indifferently 
 endure the spectacle of Charles's torment, up and spoke. 
 
 The occasion was Sunday, a day which might well have 
 been treated as an armistice. Charles, just before the 
 boys were marched off in double file to Iffley Church, had 
 perpetrated some peccadillo. The church bells were ring- 
 ing, and there was no time for an execution, so Mr. Slatter 
 in remarking on this fact added, " Never mind, Charles, 
 you shall be flogged after divine service." Master Comp- 
 ton heard, and his heart swelled beneath his jacket with 
 indignation. "Was it not enough to beat the little fellow? 
 must mental be added to bodily agony ? Not if a word 
 would stop it; and he resolved that, come what might, and 
 the odds were that interference would entail condign pun- 
 ishment, that word should not be left unsaid. 
 
 Accordingly, after the function was over, and the boys 
 were trooping sadly back to Rose Hill, he said, " Sir, I 
 wish to speak to you. Do you think it fair to keep my 
 brother in a state of suspense all through church time ? 
 You know how nervous he is, already he has suffered ten- 
 fold more than any flogging." 
 
 Whether it was the point, or the audacity of this speech, 
 or a secret dread lest a report to his disadvantage might 
 travel as far as Ipsden, certain it is that Mr. Slatter let 
 Charles off his flogging. Compton's remonstrance, more- 
 over, had an ulterior effect, for though his own back suf- 
 fered as before, he had the satisfaction of remarking that 
 Mr. Slatter slightly abated his severity towards Charles. 
 Existence, however, even under such mitigated conditions 
 was simply penal. There was seldom or never cricket, no 
 football or hockey, no fishing or boating at Rose Hill. 
 The boys bathed in Iffley lasher during the summer 
 months, and were allowed to garden in the spring, but
 
 48 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 there were no games. Two and two, with Mr. Slatter to 
 the rear, the miserable children marched along the Iffley 
 road for about an hour a day. That was the extent of 
 their exercise. Boyhood could not have been more sys- 
 tematically dwarfed, and the marvel is that the pupils did 
 not emerge from this peine forte et dur in a condition of 
 abject idiotcy. 
 
 The subjoined are three letters from the small boy at 
 Rose Hill to the family circle. It is superfluous to hint 
 that inasmuch as Mr. Slatter supervised all his pupil's cor- 
 respondence no allusion to a bleeding and bruised cuticle 
 was feasible. The first, of which a fac-simile is given on 
 the following page, is to his mother. 
 
 The next seems addressed to Julia and Ellinor. It runs 
 thus: 
 
 " MY DEAR SISTERS, I hope you and Edward arc quite well. I arrived 
 at Mr. Slattcr's house on the 1st, and at his study on the 2d, where I have 
 fagged with unremitting industry till this day. Edward will soon go to 
 India I fear, but I wish he would just come and visit me before he sails. 
 I want him to get, alias obtain, vis a whole holiday, which is very desirable 
 here, by the way. And if he cannot come, you and mamma must come 
 and beseech Mr. Slatter until he giveth one unto us. Edward gave me a 
 certain book called ' The Son of a Genius,' which I forgot to bring with 
 me. That also you must bring with ' e.' Mamma's ruler has greatly as- 
 sisted me in this letter. I have got a Cornu Ammonis, or petrified snake, 
 for you, which you had better come and possess. Tell mamma that quire 
 of paper did not come here. 1 have got a very bad pen. Shew this letter 
 to mamma and Julia. Write to me any questions about * * * Keep this let- 
 ter till I come back. Keep every other letter of mine till then. 
 
 " Your affectionate BROTHER." 
 
 The asterisks probably refer to Mr. Slatter, who, incon- 
 sistently enough, though he perused every line sent home 
 by his pupils, did not read the letters they received. The 
 appeal for a holiday is rather piteous a respite he might
 
 Jli 
 
 J asm runt-Juj/ -to imferm; w 
 - cornsnw/n/xA cm I^UL> iz,.-tvu& nJ-ri&vis i/ 
 /iWt/ /b <f*e/ i/ 
 
 , J arm sfi& uxu&/rLg / \MAartSj 
 
 . (ujiw my -Ccn^ to CLCC cuf< 
 
 from v^oiuv cuJt/uJkj> fon/ t 
 
 . 
 
 Charr-h*
 
 50 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 have termed it from the diurnal cane. The "e" for you 
 was doubtless a bit of schoolboy fun at the expense of 
 Mrs. Slattcr. In the next letter he drops the same sort of 
 hint in a broader fashion. Probably he had imitated, for 
 the amusement of his sisters, that worthy woman's Doric 
 eccentricities. 
 
 The following bears the date February 17, but the year 
 is omitted. It was in all likelihood 1825. The handwrit- 
 ing is legible. 
 
 14 MY DEAU SISTERS, I am glad you liked my fine letter, and hope you 
 will like this better. I hope this lay a stress letter will also be better 
 received by you than mamma's, which will reach her on the same day as 
 this does you. Since I have had more time for the better formation of 
 my letter, having finished this tedious discourse, I enter upon narratives. 
 There was a certain word in mamma's letter which I could not make out. 
 It was as follows : ' I am very anxious to know whether you are likely ' 
 something or other ? Please ask mamma what it was, and when you write 
 to me, which I hope will be soon, mention it. Edward will most likely be 
 detained by the contrary winds. Write to me soon, and tell me how he 
 does, and all about him. I am afraid he is ' gawn awa frae Ipsden.' I 
 pity his taste, but think he has as many advantages as a young man could 
 expect. I have such excellent eggs, the yelk (sic) luke-warmed and the 
 white raw. Mrs. Slatter won't do them any better, though I frequently 
 ask Vr. I have often wished myself at home to bid E. good-bye. My pa- 
 per costs me more than you think. It cost a half-penny a sheet. I have 
 written four letters, two to you, one to Mamma, and one to Compton. 
 Give my siucerest, faithful love to Edward and Mamma, etc., etc., and 
 write soon, I beseech you, to your affectionate brother, 
 
 "CHARLES READE. 
 
 "I hope to find Julia at home when I come, which won't be so over- 
 soon, by the way. I hoped to sec Allen and Julia at this very house. You 
 never knew me to write such a letter before. I beg mamma's pardon for 
 writing to you before her." 
 
 The effect of Mr. Slatter's cruelty on a child of a sensi- 
 tive temperament, yet naturally virile, may have been less
 
 Under the Rod. 51 
 
 absolutely injurious than might easily be presupposed. 
 Charles Reade, be it remembered, was not a London boy, 
 reared in an enervating atmosphere among comforts that 
 might appropriately be termed luxuries. He had been 
 petted, spoiled, and as regards brains, forced, but in other 
 respects his home training had been fairly robust. At 
 Ipsden there were not alone ladies exceptionally cultured, 
 who doted on a clever child, but a hunting and shooting 
 Squire also, with his cohort of elder sons, as fond of the 
 harriers and horses, the woods and the warren, as was their 
 sire. Hence, although Charles both suffered and winced 
 under Mr. Slatter's rod, that terrible weapon toughened 
 his cuticle and taught him to think less of pain. It does 
 not appear to have utterly stupefied him, as was the case 
 generally; indeed, in after-life he was fond of pointing to 
 the singular paradox, that whereas at the cane's point he 
 had learned like a parrot his grammars, totally without 
 reference to any possible meaning the words might possess, 
 afterwards when he came to be taught by a capable tutor, 
 and Latin was made intelligible, he was amazed to discov- 
 er the amount of rudimentary philology wherewith his mind 
 was stored. If you can imagine a Turk with no knowl- 
 edge whatever of English being compelled to learn by 
 heart the entirety of Shakespeare's plays, and then acquir- 
 ing the English tongue, and with it an appreciation of our 
 immortal dramatist, you will realize exactly tho mental 
 process through which Charles Reade's mind was made to 
 pass. The grammars placed in his hand by Mr. Slatter 
 were written in Latin one might say with truth in canine 
 Latin and they had to be repeated from end to end verba- 
 tim, the learner not being informed as to any meaning the 
 rules or examples might have. Not only so, but such ridic- 
 ulous doggerel as the "Propria quce maribus " and "As in
 
 62 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 presenti " would have been a useless memoria technica for 
 advanced pupils, while for children just fresh from the 
 nursery they were sheer hocus-pocus. Dr. Valpy of Read- 
 ing, who served as an exalted apology for Mr. Slatter's 
 severity, was said to have publicly birched before the 
 whole school one of his own children for inability to ac- 
 quire this same hateful jargon, and the horrible agonies 
 they caused the wretched boys of Rose Hill can hardly be 
 imagined, still less described. The system was one which, 
 apart from its savagery, aimed at improving the memory, 
 and it is a fact that gibberish learned by rote adheres to 
 the brain; nevertheless, oddly enough, Mr. Slatter's pupils 
 had exceptionally bad memories, except for the rubbish he 
 beat into their heads. Certainly Charles Reade was his 
 most brilliant pupil, and yet in after-years, as will appear, 
 he all but lost his fellowship owing to the difficulty he ex- 
 perienced in committing to memory the Thirty-nine Arti- 
 cles in Latin. Mr. Slatter, as the cant phrase of the day 
 went, grounded him, i.e., forced him by constant torture to 
 acquire what must have appeared to his young mind lunat- 
 ical gibberish, and it was only when he had subsequently 
 passed through a course of bond fide teaching that he 
 awoke to the fact of the same unintelligible gibberish be- 
 ing rudimentary philology expressed in dog Latin. A boy 
 of exceptional talent, if he had been placed under a con- 
 scientious and able tutor, could with facility have mastered 
 the Latin grammar in twelve months. At Rose Hill in 
 five years he had learned it, but was perfectly ignorant of 
 what he had learned. What graver satire could be written 
 on the perverse plan of digesting first and comprehending 
 afterwards? It finds an appropriate parallel in the fervid 
 piety of the Irish Catholics, who sing hymns and litanies in 
 Latin as devotional exercises, without the faintest concep-
 
 Under the Rod. 53 
 
 tion of what they mean. It was the Slatterian system 
 which caused the mediaeval priest to sing " mumpsimus " 
 instead of " sumpsimus," and when found fault with to 
 retort that it was all the same. 
 
 In justice to Mr. Slatter it must be added that he fed 
 his pupils satisfactorily. Breakfast, it is true, was not ap- 
 petizing, the provender being thick slices of stale bread 
 scraped over with imperceptible butter. Dinner, however, 
 was excellent. Mr. Slatter grew his own mutton, and it 
 was a specialty. The culinary arrangements left little to 
 be desired, and everything was scrupulously clean. Each 
 boy, however, was expected to bring to Rose Hill the 
 stomach of one of Horace's reapers, and to devour every- 
 thing that was put before him. It was a sin of the first 
 magnitude to leave a fragment of fat or gristle on the 
 edge of your plate, and the boy who did so rendered him- 
 self liable to subsequent flagellation. 
 
 Now to most young children fat of all kinds superin- 
 duces nausea, and therefore the custom of the school was 
 for boys not provided with the stomachs of ostriches to 
 slip what pieces of fat they could not swallow into their 
 pocket-handkerchiefs, the result being that their jacket and 
 trousers pockets were in a condition too filthy to be thought 
 of before the end of the half-year. But for this petty 
 tyranny and a jejune breakfast - table, the dietary of Rose 
 Hill would have merited our warm encomium. Under 
 its influence a boy like Charles Reade, who was all the 
 worse both mentally and physically for the incessant flog- 
 ging, contrived to thrive and grow. Birch and cane may 
 have retarded the natural development of his brain, but 
 the mutton made his muscles, and when he left Rose Hill 
 for good it was as an exceptionally fine, erect, picturesque 
 boy, whose physique was almost phenomenal, but whose
 
 54 Memoir of Charles JKeade. 
 
 education had yet to commence. What little he knew 
 had been imparted to him in the nursery by his sister 
 Julia; while as regards positive knowledge, its acquisi- 
 tion had been interrupted for five long years, and he had 
 thus to make a fresh start heavily handicapped. Rose 
 Hill had been a palpable error. Nevertheless, incredible 
 although it may appear, Mrs. Reade was so enamoured of 
 its more than Spartan system as to have consigned a neph- 
 ew to the tender mercies of Mr. Slatter, and, later on, a 
 grandson. It was part of her theory of education that a 
 boy could not be too accurately well beaten ; and that the 
 weaker and more tender and more sensitive he was, the 
 more excruciating ought to be his agonies. If only this 
 good lady could in her proper person have suffered the 
 experiences narrated so graphically by the author of 
 " Vice Versa," her theory might have undergone some 
 modification. A five minutes' flogging, scientifically inflict- 
 ed by so consummate a vivisector as Mr. Slatter, would have 
 dissipated those fallacious ideas which caused her to con- 
 demn her own flesh and blood to the torment of an inferno. 
 The precise reason which induced her to remove, after 
 five years' penal servitude, her favorite son Charles from 
 Mr. Slatter's jurisdiction can only be surmised. Possibly 
 she may have found out that he was learning nothing, and 
 withal in considerable danger of being brutalized. Pos- 
 sibly the warnings of her son Compton as to the maleficent 
 effects of Rose Hill discipline may have influenced her. 
 It is even within the bounds of probability that son Charles 
 himself may have whispered in her ear that a little in- 
 struction would be more profitable than much beating. 
 Anyhow, he was sent to join his elder brother at Mr. 
 Hearn's, a clergyman residing at Staines; but the reminis- 
 cences of Rose Hill were perhaps the most unpleasant of 
 his life.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "AT STAINES." 
 
 SCHOOL-LIFE may be a happy epoch, if not the happiest, 
 ill man's mortal existence, or it may be much the reverse 
 : a term of years to be held in bitter remembrance. So 
 far as Charles Reade's experience went, he had reason to 
 recoil from such a memory as that of Rose Hill. Noth- 
 ing save innate qualities of the highest order could have 
 preserved him from becoming under Mr. Slatter's system 
 both dwarfed and dulled. It was a happy circumstance 
 indeed that he quitted that scene of vivisection, and ceased 
 himself to be experimented upon at a comparatively early 
 age. His brain and temperament had still the power of 
 recovery, and it needed only reasonable liberty and intelli- 
 gent tuition to mature both. His elder brothers had been 
 taught by Mr. Slatter's rod to revolt from classical study, 
 and to this bathos Charles might have reached but for his 
 providential escape from the domination of that ogre. 
 Two years more of Rose Hill, and it would be safe to pre- 
 dict that he would never have been Fellow of Magdalen, 
 author, and world-renowned celebrity. His very brain 
 must have been flattened into mediocrity by tyranny and 
 terrorizing. Read or witness the scenes of brutality en- 
 acted within the four walls of the jail in the drama-novel 
 "It is Never too Late to Mend," and you will find there 
 reproduced his own child-life under Mr. Slatter. "I am 
 so veiy tired !" is the refrain that must often and often
 
 56 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 have been wrung from his boyish lips as the cruel cane de- 
 scended on unhcalcd wounds, and made him hate the very 
 breath he drew. That raw-boned iron-faced man was the 
 merciless warder of his drama, and the little boy done to 
 death himself. True, the hard master stopped short of 
 manslaughter ; but at Rose Hill there was no Mr. Eden 
 to come to the rescue as Deus ex machind. The boys 
 groaned to the tune of " I am so very tired," till the order 
 of release arrived, and they were set free. 
 
 The change from Rose Hill to Staines can only be com- 
 pared to one from a diet of gall to one of champagne. 
 Compton, who had preceded his younger brother to the 
 charming Berkshire town, made such rapid progress in 
 every respect under the tuition of Mr. Ilearn, who com- 
 bined tutorial work with the cure of the parish, as virtual- 
 ly to have paved the way for Charles. Mrs. Reade had a 
 keen, observant eye of her own, eccentric although she was 
 in many respects; and she could not have failed to con- 
 trast the vivacity of the boy in clover with the down-trod- 
 den weariness of the boy whose hours were a burden to 
 him. Be that as it may, after Compton had been for a 
 term under Mr. Ilearn, Charles was removed from Mr. 
 Slatter's and sent to join his brother. 
 
 What a metamorphosis it was ! Mr. Hearn, who ap- 
 pears to have been a gentleman, handled his pupils as such, 
 his object being not to dragoon, but to develop. He soon 
 discovered what splendid material he had to work upon in 
 Charles, and how it had been cribbed, coffined, and con- 
 fined under a repressive and ill-conditioned system. Of 
 course he had to commence de novo, to explain and guide, 
 to revive what under Julia had been an ardent, but was 
 now a crushed, love of learning, and to try and save the 
 wrecks of the years Mr. Slatter had wasted. Moreover, he
 
 "At Staines." 57 
 
 was no martinet. lie recognized the wisdom of the corpus 
 sanum as dominating more or less the mens sana, and in 
 consequence gave his pupils quite as much rope as was at 
 all desirable. His plan was to interfere as little as might 
 be with their amusements, and to utilize to the utmost the 
 all-precious hours devoted to study. Such a master was 
 of course liable to be deceived in matters of trifling mo- 
 ment, for boys will always take advantage of their supe- 
 rior officer's laxity; but, on the other hand, he brought out 
 all that was in a boy. Himself a scholar, not only in re- 
 gard of the dead languages, but in English also, he pos- 
 sessed in a high degree the happy art of persuading his 
 pupils to think for themselves ; and when the pathway of 
 knowledge to the beginner seemed so rough and rugged 
 as to be impassable, his sympathetic mind, appreciating 
 alike difficulties and their solution, was ever ready with as- 
 sistance. Charles Reade owed not a little of his literary 
 facility to this same humble, obscure Curate of Staines. 
 
 As it happened, his fellow-pupils were all boys of parts 
 and capacity. Besides his brother Compton, for whose 
 ability he to the last entertained no small esteem, there 
 were three boys in every respect much above the average 
 under Mr. Hearn's roof. These were Edwin James, after- 
 wards Q.C. and M.P., a man whose forensic brilliance 
 would have certainly secured him the woolsack, but for 
 an error which quashed his career ; and with him a brother 
 scarcely less clever ; and Mr. William Bovill, subsequent- 
 ly of the Chancery bar. The Staines regime was by no 
 means all Thucydides and Cicero, Homer and Horace. 
 Torture not entering into the educational theory of be- 
 nevolent Mr. Hearn, the boys developed amazing fortitude 
 and enterprise. They soon got to appreciate the value of 
 the old adage, " When the cat's away the mice will play," 
 3*
 
 58 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 and inasmuch as their feline supervisor was not always in 
 evidence, were enabled to fulfil the functions of sportive 
 mice almost without let or hinderance. There were rules, 
 of course, rules just sufficiently stringent to render their 
 breakage a luxury ; but Mr. Hearn was so absent and un- 
 observant that it really was by no means easy to be found 
 out. The boys, therefore, or rather the seniors among 
 them, did pretty much according to their own sweet wills, 
 appearances proformd being kept up, and a little dust oc- 
 casionally thrown in the master's eyes. 
 
 Charles had not been long an alumnus of good Mr. 
 Hearn when an opportunity was afforded him of "derring 
 do," and that too of the kind to test both his pluck and 
 presence of mind, and also to raise him to the highest pitch 
 of popularity with his schoolfellows. He was between 
 thirteen and fourteen years of age, tall, symmetrical, grace- 
 ful, and attractive. Ipsden, moreover, had taught him 
 agility, and he was already beginning to display prowess 
 in cricket. Such a boy was well qualified to be the hero 
 of an adventure, and he certainly, on the occasion to 
 which we refer, played his part as an actor to the man- 
 ner born. 
 
 His brother Compton, like the old Squire, was a sportsman 
 to the core. He inherited his sire's idolatry of the Ipsden 
 woods, and at that period of his life would cheerfully have 
 accepted the position of gamekeeper had it been thrust 
 upon him. He had, therefore, at Edwin James's sugges- 
 tion, very readily joined with him in a sort of partnership 
 in sporting dogs. Worthy Mr. Hearn knew nothing of 
 this, for the dogs were kept a quarter of a mile off, and he 
 disdained espionage, so the boys fancied they were safe 
 from detection. A country town, however, has eyes and 
 ears for everybody's business, and some malicious Paul
 
 "At Staines." 59 
 
 Pry male or female carried the intelligence to the tutor. 
 At once that amiable gentleman, who rather plumed him- 
 self on a lavish copia verborum in the pulpit, and could 
 really at times ascend to eloquence, summoned his pupils 
 en masse before him, and without asking questions pro- 
 ceeded to deliver a powerful oration against sporting dogs, 
 and the outrageous wickedness of keeping such incentives 
 to disobedience without magisterial permission. In his 
 tatters-torn passion it was perhaps rather obscure whether, 
 according to his notions, dogs or deceit were the greater 
 evil. On the whole, however, it became fairly apparent 
 that, although he hated deceit much, he hated dogs more, 
 and meant, if he could, to expel them from the extremest 
 limits of that social circle whereof he was the centre. Af- 
 ter much exercitation of lungs and larynx to enforce this 
 view, Mr. Hearn at last ran down, fairly exhausted ; not, 
 however, before, in tones of stern reproach intended to 
 lacerate the guilty conscience, he had urged his auditory, 
 all and singular, to step forward and make a plenary con- 
 fession. 
 
 A dead silence was the only response to this forcible 
 suggestion. The confessional happens to be about the 
 very last place a puerile fly would permit himself to be in- 
 veigled into by a magisterial spider. Ergo, Mr. Hearn 
 changed his tactics. 
 
 " John Edwin James," he exclaimed, in a voice choking 
 with emotion, "be good enough to say what you know 
 about these dogs." We may remark, parenthetically, that 
 although Mr. James in after-years dropped the " John," 
 that was his Christian name, and by it he was known in 
 Mr. Hearn's establishment. 
 
 The embryo Q.C. rose to the occasion. Assuming ail 
 air of conscious innocence, he boldly challenged his master
 
 60 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 to find the dogs if he could. They were, so lie hardily 
 affirmed, an ignus fatuus, a mere figment of Mr. Hearn's 
 overwrought imagination. 
 
 But the tutor was not to be foiled. His informant had 
 not only told the tale of the pointers and setters, but also 
 where these quadrupeds were lodged. A smile of satirical 
 significance flitted across his features as he replied firmly, 
 " Very well ; we will soon see all about that. Be good 
 enough to follow me, and if, John, I detect you in a false- 
 hood, sir if, sir, you have added to deceit and disobedi- 
 ence the sin of bare-faced mendacity, why " 
 
 " All right !" was John Edwin James's jaunty rejoinder, 
 and the entire household donned their headgear and sallied 
 forth, to witness, as they imagined, the discomfiture of the 
 imperturbable offender. 
 
 Except, one. Charles Reade was fagging away at an 
 ode of Horace, and being naturally of a studious disposi- 
 tion, remained behind without exciting either observation 
 or suspicion. He, however, as will appear, had other 
 ideas in his head beyond alcaics and sapphics. Edwin 
 James had passed him that sort of wink which is pro- 
 verbially as good as a nod, and he was ready for action, 
 while yet to all appearance immersed in his "Quum tu 
 Lydia," or " Jam Satis." The situation was just dramatic 
 enough to be relished by him dearly, and he entered into 
 it with all the gusto of Guy Fawkes. 
 
 At the back of Mr. Hearn's residence, beyond the gar- 
 den fence, was a very large meadow, its extreme limit 
 being a sort of broad dyke. Beyond this was situated the 
 cottage and yard of a member of the rat-catching frater- 
 nity, one of the Filthy Lucre variety, who was handy for 
 any kind of job, the more illegal the better suited to his 
 tastes. He it was whom Mr. Hearn suspected of harbor-
 
 "At Staines." 61 
 
 ing the sporting dogs of Messrs. Edwin James or John, 
 as he ought to be described and Compton Reade, and 
 thither the good man marched all his pupils; the principal 
 culprit, with rare effrontery, engaging him closely in con- 
 versation as they bestrode the turnpike road subtending 
 his domicile, until they reached the lane leading to the rat- 
 catcher's abode. Here again the future Q.C. exhausted 
 all his stock of volubility, until at last the entire party 
 faced the rat-catcher's cottage, while their leader knocked 
 at the door authoritatively. 
 
 " Where is your husband ?" was the brisk demand. The 
 woman smiled as she informed Mr. Hearn that he had just 
 stepped out in the opposite direction. 
 
 " Then," said the tutor, " I must trouble you to allow 
 me to inspect your back-yard. I am told there are some 
 dogs there belonging to these gentlemen." 
 
 " Dogs !" echoed the woman with uplifted hands, as 
 though deprecating, ab imo corde, any such enormity. 
 " Oh, no, sir ; there are no dogs. But you can see for 
 yourself." 
 
 John Edwin James tittered sardonically, a proceeding 
 which not a little incensed Mr. Hearn, who strode forward 
 into the yard to find, as the woman had said, plenty of 
 kennels, but no dogs in them. 
 
 That was James's chance. With an air of triumph he 
 demanded where the dogs might be? "Are the animals 
 mythical or real, sir?" he asked, turning to his master, 
 while his fellow-pupils joined gleefully in a chorus of 
 laughter at Mr. Hearn's discomfiture. Indeed, the impu- 
 dent boy exceeded the largest limits in his banter, until at 
 last Mr. Hearn, who guessed the trick he had been served, 
 cried aloud in his wrath, " John, John, I could smite thee 
 to the earth !"
 
 62 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 And so the party marched back again to the house in 
 solemn silence, and Charles was discovered, as they had 
 left him, cramming his Horace, and oblivious of the very 
 existence of such a vertebrate as the dog. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was he who throughout had pulled the 
 wires. No sooner had they started on this march of dis- 
 covery than, presto, his long, agile legs carried him swiftly 
 across the meadow, he cleared the dyke at a bound, and in 
 less than two minutes had explained the situation to the 
 rat-catcher, packed him and the dogs out of the house, 
 and, better still, out of sight, and then with all expedition 
 returned by the way he came. Mr. Hearn, though fully 
 aware of being tricked, never learned who it was managed 
 it so cleverly, and least of all suspected Charles Reade. 
 
 The episode was beneficial in two ways to its perpetrator, 
 negatively and positively. Negatively, because Mr. Hearn, 
 being unsuspicious, continued to regard him as his most 
 promising pupil, and lavished on him attention and kind- 
 ness, both of which were of the greatest service in devel- 
 oping a sensitive child, still smarting under previous ill- 
 usage; and positively, because thereby Charles Reade won 
 the regard of the cock of the school. Edwin James ruled 
 the roost at Staines, his robust temperament exacting hom- 
 age imperiously from his fellows, and the fact of his being 
 Charles Reade's patron was largely in favor of the latter's 
 comfort and peace of mind. 
 
 As an appropriate pendant to this chapter we give a 
 letter of Charles Reade to his sister Ellinor, the guest of 
 his brother Edward, then the tenant of Ipsden House: 
 
 6 BOLTOS Row, MAYTAIR, December 27 (1861 ?) 
 
 " MT DEAR ELLEN, I am glad to hear you have got safe to Ipsden for 
 Christmas. Keep a good fire in your bedroom, and then perhaps native 
 air will do you no harm.
 
 "At Staines." 63 
 
 "I do not like to run any risk of being de trop, and I think at this time 
 of the year the master of the house should be allowed to make his own 
 arrangements. 
 
 " Mrs. Hearn is in very poor circumstances, and I have sent her 5 this 
 Christmas-tide. I learned her situation from my old schoolfellow Bovill, 
 now a Chancery Barrister. I met her on Clapham Common, and renewed 
 her acquaintance after so many years. 
 
 " I enclose her note for your edification, which you can burn after peru- 
 sal. Will you be kind enough to ask Amy (his niece) to direct you to a 
 woman I shot at my last visit, and lay out on her 1 this cold weather. 
 Blankets fuel muffetees cash. 
 
 " I don't shoot women every day, and Christmas comes but once a year. 
 
 " I will duly repay you the same. 
 
 " Love to all. 
 
 " Your affectionate Brother, CHARLES READE." 
 
 At this time, we must remark, he was not overflush of 
 ready cash, and 5 was really a relatively large sum, al- 
 beit, contrasted with his munificence later on, it seems al- 
 most niggardly. Evidently, on receiving Mr. Bovill's in- 
 formation he lost no time in paying a visit to Clapham in 
 order to discover his former tutor's widow, and this little 
 circumstance testifies indirectly to the gratitude he cher- 
 ished for that worthy man's careful tuition.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SAVED BY A SECOND. 
 
 LIFE at Staines flowed with average smoothness, varied 
 by a few breezes and no storms. Mr. Hearn appears to 
 have kept the main chance steadily in view, and to have 
 energized for his pupil's advancement in classics. Being, 
 however, himself a man with a fine perception of the music 
 of language, a rhetorician if not an orator, he paid especial 
 attention to English composition. In after-life Charles 
 Reade bitterly regretted that he had never been at a pub- 
 lic school, nor was there any reason why he should not 
 have gone to Rugby or the Charterhouse like his elder 
 brothers. It happened, however, that Mr. Hearn compen- 
 sated for the loss indirectly. He discovered in Charles 
 Reade one, like himself, with an intuitive capacity for ex- 
 pression, coupled with a quick perception, a vivid imagina- 
 tion, and a more than ordinary power of generalization. 
 By a strange paradox, a preacher whose model was the 
 vapid Blair, contrived to infuse into his promising pupil 
 a love of epigram, a terse, concise style, and a vigorous 
 method. Mrs. Reade sent her pet son to Staines to be 
 converted into a scholar. That was beyond the utmost 
 possible of Mr. Hearn, who had attained to no more than 
 the level of scholarship which satisfied parental ideas at 
 that time of day. But he did better for the boy than if he 
 had been a Person or a Conington. He taught him how to 
 wield his pen, and that was indeed instruction. None better.
 
 Saved by a Second. 65 
 
 It is a far cry back to the twenties, and Charles Reade 
 left behind him no record of his school-days. To the last 
 his mind was so immersed in objects of passing interest, 
 more particularly the drama and literature, that he es- 
 caped that retrospective mental attitude which seems to 
 be the normal concomitant of age. He was, too, never a 
 great talker, albeit when he chose to exercise his conver- 
 sational powers he could be not merely brilliant, but fas- 
 cinating. Except in a passing allusion to his boyhood at 
 Ipsden, he seldom dwelt even for a moment on that period 
 of his life, if indeed his brain ever recalled it. For his 
 youth he sighed, sometimes with strange bitterness, as 
 though age had robbed him of his rights; for his boyhood 
 never. Iffley had left so bitter an after-taste as to cause 
 him to dismiss it finally from his memory, and Staines he 
 seems to have passed by as a colorless episode. Color- 
 less it certainly was, yet it so happened that but for the 
 presence of mind of his brother Compton its hue might 
 have been strangely darkened. In plain English, he may 
 be said to have narrowly escaped with limb, if not with life. 
 
 The parish church of Staines, whereof, as has been said, 
 Mr. Hearn was the assistant minister, happened to be un- 
 dergoing one of those singular processes of beautification 
 and improvement which the churchwardens of the Geor- 
 gian era deemed advisable in the interest of oestheticism. 
 True, their notions of art differed remarkably from those 
 of Pugin and Gilbert Scott. Whitewash and stucco were 
 the materials they especially affected, and if an ecclesias- 
 tical edifice showed signs of decay, their plan was to tie it, 
 or clamp it, or prop it, or patch it. This effected, they 
 painted in gold letters on a black ground their services in 
 having renovated their church, and placed this bold adver- 
 tisement in the most conspicuous place. They thought
 
 66 Memoir of Charles Iteade. 
 
 themselves the Solomons of their generation, and were 
 proud of the title. 
 
 Staines Church seems at the epoch we are considering 
 to have needed something more substantial than a church- 
 warden's restoration, inasmuch as its condition was rickety 
 and tumble-down in the extreme. Moreover, in country 
 towns when George was King the population was much 
 more zealous in its attendance at church than is the case 
 at present, and Mr. Ilearn preached every Sunday to a 
 large and possibly attentive congregation. As a disciple 
 of the great and, be it added, good Mr. Simeon of Cam- 
 bridge, he may be supposed to have drawn, as the phrase 
 went; for rhetoric was at that time of day much in re- 
 quest, and sermons, however ponderous they might be, 
 found ready listeners. Consequently Staines Church, 
 ugly and tottering though it was, filled well, and the con- 
 gregations were as large as appreciative. 
 
 The churchwardens and their padre, Mr. Govett, do not 
 appear to have paid much attention to the insecure con- 
 dition of the fabric. Archdeacons in those days, albeit 
 they wielded powers of an autocratic character such as 
 they have long since been relieved of, were tolerably in- 
 different about using them. At the same time, when a 
 church came down with a run, those dignitaries would 
 suddenly awake to the consideration that the province of 
 an archdeacon was, as Sydney Smith tersely phrased it, 
 to perform archidiaconal functions, and in that event a 
 parish was mulcted by a colossal rate. Hence, when 
 Staines Church exhibited, at last, unmistakable symptoms 
 of converting itself incontinently into a ruinous heap of 
 debris, its responsible guardians took fright, and when one 
 of the side walls began to bulge externally, actually com- 
 menced repairs in good earnest.
 
 Saved by a Second. 67 
 
 The poor old church, however, was virtually beyond 
 tinkering. It had been galleried, and high pewed, and 
 whitewashed, and plastered; but neither the plaster, nor 
 the whitewash, nor the high pews would support the side 
 walls, which were simply being forced out externally by 
 the weight of the galleries. These walls had not been 
 built to support anything more ponderous than the roof 
 and their own weight; and though, when the wardens in 
 their wisdom piled Pelion super Ossam in the shape of 
 galleries resting on beams dovetailed into the masonry, 
 the overburdened walls bore their burden bravely with- 
 out reference to dynamics, still the time came when the 
 extra pressure loosened the said masonry, and then every- 
 thing betokened an immediate collapse. Too late the 
 churchwardens realized the extent of the mischief, and 
 prepared to act. 
 
 They first made the not unimportant discovery, by the 
 simple process of removing the soil, that the foundations 
 were quite rotten. Having satisfied themselves generally 
 of this rather alarming phenomenon, they next proceeded 
 to excavate, largely, in order to ascertain the full extent 
 of the mischief, a feat of engineering which would have 
 been quite justifiable had they contemplated closing the 
 church. It never seems to have occurred to their minds 
 that by exposing the foundations and then cramming the 
 galleries with human beings they were making tolerably 
 certain of a collapse; in fact, they were acting with a 
 noble indifference to every architectural consideration. 
 There is, moreover, a strong and incomprehensible preju- 
 dice against pretermitting the ritual of the Church of 
 England for any consideration" whatever. Sifractus illa- 
 batur orbis, the average incumbent would go on with his 
 function, unless indeed nervousness overpowered him, in
 
 68 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 which event he would secure at any cost the services of a 
 Locum Tenens. This is no exaggeration, since it remains 
 an historical fact that when Canterbury Cathedral was on 
 fire, and the roof all ablaze, they proceeded with the 
 usual choral service as though nothing was the matter. 
 In the same vein of heroism, though Staincs Church was 
 known to be in a highly dangerous state, Messrs. Govett 
 and Hearn, as its Priest and Levite, never dreamed of 
 postponing divine service until after the needful repairs 
 had been completed. Whatever might happen, the sacred 
 routine must be kept up. 
 
 The congregation duly assembled in the morning of 
 Sunday, and nothing of an untoward character happened. 
 The good people of Staines were, so it is recorded, rather 
 fidgety, but the success of the morning's experiment reas- 
 sured them, and an overflowing congregation mustered 
 for the evening service. Again it seemed as though all 
 would go smoothly, and in truth but few suspected the 
 proximity of peril, when in the middle of the service a 
 crash was heard like unto thunder, and the entire north 
 wall fell after the manner of those of Jericho. 
 
 The effect on the congregation can only be described 
 as paradoxical. Had any such catastrophe happened in 
 a theatre, the shrieks and shouts would have been deaf- 
 ening. As it was, the magical influence of Church pre- 
 vailed over every other consideration. The people did 
 not utter more than a low murmur, but then followed 
 none the less a mad rush to escape, for every one antici- 
 pated, not without cause, that the galleries and roof would 
 follow suite, and the church become in a trice a pile of 
 ruins. It was remembered afterwards that the only mem- 
 ber of the congregation who uttered a cry was a man 
 with a wooden leg, which artificial prop got fixed tight in
 
 Saved by a Second. 69 
 
 a plug, thereby preventing him from motion. The rest, 
 in silence, made for the doors pell-mell. 
 
 Compton, with admirable presence of mind, was among 
 the first to grasp the situation and make his escape. 
 Then he looked round for his brother Charles. The boy 
 was not visible among the crowd; the rafters had begun 
 to fall like minute guns; the danger was imminent and 
 overpowering. Could Charles Reade have already suf- 
 fered damage? He was light of limb and agile, well 
 adapted for a stampede. The chances were, therefore, 
 that some mishap had befallen him. A moment's thought, 
 and Compton faced the hurrying crowd blanched with 
 fear at the noise of falling timber, pushed his way through 
 them to the pew where his brother had been seated, and 
 started to perceive it to all appearance deserted. 
 
 He was about to emerge for the second time from the 
 church, when by a fortunate instinct he pushed open the 
 door of the large, square, baize-lined pew to see a pair of 
 legs, and in another second the entire body of his brother 
 crouching beneath the seat. Quickly and resolutely he 
 dragged him forth, whispered that not a second was to 
 be lost, and as he hauled the terrified boy from the church 
 porch, the roof fell. 
 
 They were among the last out of the doomed edifice. 
 No one, happily, was hurt, not even the man with the 
 wooden leg, and in the twenties neither sex dreamed of 
 dying of nerves. But the scene was one to be not in- 
 aptly termed melodramatic. It had its serious, and might 
 have had its tragic, aspect, nor was it altogether without 
 its vein of comedy. Staines, like most country towns, 
 boasted a commercial academy, and the pupils of that in- 
 stitution were seated solemnly in the gallery when the 
 crash came. Their pedagogue with fine promptitude pro-
 
 70 Memoir of Charles Rcade. 
 
 pelled his masculine form through the scurrying crowd, 
 and was actually one of the earliest to reach the church- 
 yard with a whole skin. Arrived at that point of van- 
 tage, the worthy instructor in the three R's suddenly be- 
 thought him of his pupils, who might, for aught he knew 
 to the contrary, at that very moment be undergoing a 
 pulverizing or flattening process. lie was naturally an 
 economical man, one who practised in private life all the 
 arithmetic it was his privilege to impart to budding shop- 
 walkers and embryo clerks. At such a crisis, however, he 
 doubtless thought that a little spice of recklessness might 
 be allowable, if not appropriate. Hence, in an unwonted 
 burst of extravagance he shrieked, " My boys, my boys ! 
 I will give any one ten shillings who will rescue my boys!" 
 To anticipate, the said boys required little or no rescuing, 
 for they were quick to follow their revered master's ex- 
 ample; but the lavish offer of ten shillings for a whole 
 school, if alive, induced the pupils of Mr. Hearn subse- 
 quently to indulge in a calculation as to how much the 
 life of each member of the Staines Commercial Academy 
 was rated at by its master, and it appeared that the pre- 
 cise sum was threepence ! 
 
 In Charles Reade's " Commonplace Book " we find the 
 following references to Edwin James and the above inci- 
 dent, the exact details of which have been furnished by 
 his brother Compton : 
 
 "(1.) John Elwin James, late illustrious Queen's Counsel, now these 
 many years under a sad cloud. My old schoolfellow of Staines Lodge. 
 Three years my senior. Such a sharp boy ! 
 
 "(2.) This gentleman was my schoolfellow at Staines for more than 
 two years. We were in church there together when the transept fell in. 
 Just as the Vicar repeated his text for the twentieth time, ' Woe unto 
 you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites !' rumble, tumble, rush, cold air, 
 shrieks, yells, etc."
 
 Saved by a /Second. 71 
 
 That was the last service Compton was able to render 
 brother Charles as a schoolboy. In the spring of 1827, 
 the latter being just thirteen, Compton ceased to be a 
 schoolboy altogether, and his younger brother remained 
 under the care and tuition of Mr. Hearn till he was turned 
 fifteen. By then it was judged, not unadvisedly, that he 
 had sucked his master's brains dry, and accordingly he was 
 removed to finish his school career under a Mr. Durham, 
 who enjoyed the reputation of being alike a brilliant 
 scholar and one capable of running his pupils successfully 
 for scholarships at the University. The Squire of Ips- 
 den, having himself done nothing better than spend 
 money at Oriel, had imbibed a prejudice against Oxford; 
 but he yielded to his wife's wish, that their youngest 
 and clever son should make the experiment of an aca- 
 demical career, provided that he could carry off a scholar- 
 ship.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TUB DEMYSIIIP EXAMINATION. 
 
 IN the year of grace 1831, the University of Oxford, 
 like the public services, was manipulable by persons pos- 
 sessing that undefined yet potential leverage, interest. A 
 man might obtain a scholarship, a fellowship, a headship, 
 or professorship with little more than a smattering of 
 classics or mathematics, while the highest proficiency in 
 the subjects recognized in the schools did not absolutely 
 insure any participation in the endowments of the wealthy 
 corporation or its component colleges. At the same time, 
 popular opinion, both in the University and out of doors, 
 was tending in a direction adverse to this corrupt system. 
 Oriel had set a noble example by throwing open her Fel- 
 lowships to the world, her immediate reward being the 
 aggregation of the grandest minds of Oxford, perhaps we 
 might say of the nation, within her common room. - Car- 
 dinal Newman, Keble and Clough, Whately and Arnold, 
 were all Fellows of this famous college, whose initiative 
 Balliol, with splendid success, was soon to follow. The 
 colleges least influenced by what may be termed the 
 Oriel spirit were Magdalen, New College, and St. John's, 
 and it was with the first-named of this trio, the most 
 beautiful of all collegiate institutions, that Charles Reade 
 was destined to ally his name. 
 
 Ipsden being situated but seventeen miles from the great 
 academic city, and its hospitality as large and generous as its
 
 The Demyshi-p Examination. 73 
 
 tone was intellectual, had become by no means a terra in- 
 cognitatothe Oxford dons. Plumptre, Master of University, 
 a gentleman of ancestry and culture, was an ever-acceptable 
 guest at Ipsden House. Dr. Macbride, Principal of Mag- 
 dalen Hall, then a kind of parasite of the great college, 
 forming as it did an angle of its pile of buildings, was 
 Mrs. Reade's dearest male friend the good lady boasted 
 such a multitude of dearest friends of her own sex that it 
 was impossible to compare her superlatives. He was 
 learned, evangelical, benevolent, courtly, and, though a 
 Scotchman, exhibited not the slightest trace of his nation- 
 ality, if we except a ceaseless industry. Dr. Ellerton, Fel- 
 low of Magdalen, was another acquaintance, as also Mr. 
 nicknamed Corporal Dornford, Fellow of Oriel, who 
 would have married Julia Reade if the fates had been 
 propitious. Mrs. Reade, therefore, in virtue of an admi- 
 rable cuisine, enjoyed a plethora of the sort of interest 
 which hospitality commands. 
 
 Possibly it may have been Dr. Macbride, possibly Dr. 
 Ellerton, who suggested that Mr. Durham's promising 
 pupil should stand for a Demyship at Magdalen. It was 
 rather of the nature of shooting an arrow into the air, for, 
 bar Dr. Ellerton, Mrs. Reade had no string to her bow 
 within Waynflete's college. Dr. Martin Joseph Routh, at 
 that epoch President, and one of the most learned men in 
 the University, who managed to hang on to this mortal 
 coil for ninety-nine years and three months, was a High- 
 Churchman, and that, too, at a period when high-church- 
 manship was scarcely even invented. Consequently, to 
 Ipsden he was very much anathema, and doubly so, since 
 he did not care to preserve amicable relations with his 
 next door neighbor, ce cher Dr. Macbride. Looking back, 
 one almost wonders how it came to pass that Charles 
 4
 
 74 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Reade, a youth of seventeen, was run for a Magdalen 
 Demyship in the teeth of probability. True, a Reade four 
 centuries back had given the stone whereof the college 
 was built. That, however, was rather a statute-run obliga- 
 tion, and one which the Fellows would have encountered 
 with a sneer had it been put forward as an excuse. Grati- 
 tude is hardly the virtue which abounds most in college 
 common rooms, and the fact of Sir Edmund Rede of 
 Boarstal having virtually built the tenement they in- 
 habited would be one they might by no means relish be- 
 ing flung at them. In fine, but for the chapter of acci- 
 dents, Charles Reade would never have been Demy or 
 Fellow of Magdalen. 
 
 The college at that period had preserved the main out- 
 lines prescribed by its pious founder, William of Wayn- 
 flete, Lord Chancellor to King Henry VI. and Bishop of 
 Winchester. Its rule was relaxed that of course. There 
 was no mass, no fasts, no prelections in the college hall, 
 nothing, in short, either Roman or Catholic; while if, as 
 was the case, the Fellows were bound to celibacy, the 
 president and chaplains were permitted the luxury of the 
 matrimonial state. The revenues of the college, derivable 
 from lands in London, Hants, Lincolnshire, Oxon, and other 
 shires, amounted to about twenty-four thousand pounds 
 per annum, of which grand total President Routh absorbed 
 for his own share one sixth, the balance being distributed 
 on very uneven lines among forty Fellows, thirty 
 Demies, twelve Chaplains and Clerks, sixteen Choristers, an 
 Organist, a Schoolmaster and Usher, a Steward, and several 
 Incumbents who were made comfortable for life at the 
 college expense, in consideration of having formerly been 
 Fellows. Needless to add, the forty Fellows, as the ruling 
 body, appropriated for their own use the lion's share, the
 
 The Demyship Examination. 75 
 
 Seniors being tenaciously careful of their own interests, so 
 that the Demies and other Foundation members received 
 little more than a small pittance. A Demyship, however, 
 had a relative value, in that it led to a Fellowship. The 
 Founder provided that his Fellowships should be restricted 
 to the natives of certain counties and dioceses, parcelling 
 out these preferred geographical areas among the forty 
 Fellows. Thus, for example, three of his Fellows were to 
 be born in Oxfordshire, but one only in Kent; Lincoln- 
 shire, his birthplace, and the Diocese of Winton being es- 
 pecially favored. Anybody born in any one of these se- 
 lected shires and dioceses was eligible for a Demyship, but 
 after election he had to wait till a Fellow on his county 
 or diocese took a living, married, came into a fortune in 
 land, or died. He would then, if he had taken his B.A. 
 degree, succeed de jure, but subject to one condition. 
 There were to be two medical and three law Fellows, and 
 thus a Demy might be required, owing to the Fellow he 
 succeeded being a doctor or lawyer, to embrace one or 
 other of these professions, or to lose his Fellowship. Some- 
 times a Demy waited for a vacancy for ten, twenty, thirty, 
 or more years, and cases have occurred of men living and 
 dying as Demies at a green old age, owing to the longevity 
 of the Fellow for whose shoes they were waiting. A 
 Demyship, however, was the first step, and the Fellows 
 coveted that appointment for their relatives. 
 
 This brings us to the consideration of how these scholar- 
 ships for such they ranked academically were bestowed. 
 There was, we may remark in limine, no nonsense of merit 
 about them. From any such taint they were as free as 
 the most noble Order of the Garter. There numbered, as 
 has been said, thirty Demies, and, taking one year with an- 
 other, there were from four to five vacancies to be filled
 
 76 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 up on St. Mary Magdalen's Festival, viz., July 22. The 
 Times and other papers duly notified the fact that on that 
 day so many Demies would be elected. From this you 
 might suppose that competition was invited, and that the 
 examination would decide the successful candidates. Not 
 so. The new Demies were nominated by the college 
 officers, and the college officers, with the exception of the 
 president, changed each 2d of February in every year; 
 " the end of all things " the day was in consequence nick- 
 named. These college officers, need it be related, were 
 selected from the list of Fellows in rotation, and each Fellow 
 served his turn for each office when his year came round. 
 The list was as follows: President, V ice-President, Dean of 
 Divinity, Senior Dean of Arts, Junior Dean of Arts, Senior 
 Lursar, Riding Bursar, and Junior Bursar. Oddly enough, 
 the college tutors were not considered officers at all un- 
 less they chanced to fill for the year one of the above- 
 mentioned posts, the real value of which consisted in the 
 probability of its holder having the privilege of nominat- 
 ing a Demy in other words, of bestowing on a relative an 
 income for life, provided the recipient avoided the fatal 
 noose of matrimony; at all events, until such time as he 
 obtained a college living. If, therefore, there were four 
 vacancies, the President, Vice-President, Dean of Divinity, 
 and Senior Dean of Arts had each a Demyship to give 
 away. If eight vacancies, then each of the college officers 
 enjoyed the same privilege; but if one only, then the Presi- 
 dent alone appointed. It was whispered that President 
 Routh selected the best candidate who offered himself, 
 and this may have been the case at times, but as a rule 
 the one supreme merit in the venerable old gentleman's 
 eyes consisted in being the grandson of some one of his 
 friends of by-gone years. It happened, however, that he
 
 The Demy ship Examination. 11 
 
 kept an eagle eye on the papers of the several candidates, 
 and when a youth conspicuously failed, intimated to the 
 particular Fellow who contemplated appointing him that 
 he should oppose his nomination. It was only in the event 
 of a complete fiasco that Dr. Routh took this decided line; 
 more often, when dissatisfied, he would allow the nomina- 
 tion to pass, but remark sarcastically, " Your nominee, sir, 
 may be a very excellent young man, but he is no scholar." 
 In 1831 the example of Oriel had decidedly affected the 
 Magdalen common room, and the tutors would, if they 
 could, have abolished the nomination system in favor of 
 pure merit. It is necessary, at the risk of weariness, to 
 particularize these details, because without them the elec- 
 tion of Charles Reade would be misunderstood. It has all 
 along been imagined that he owed his Fellowship to a 
 nomination as Demy. This is an error. Merit brought 
 him into the college, not favor. He was indebted for his 
 fifty years of Fellowship and four years of Demyship to no 
 human being save Charles Reade. True, had Dr. Ellerton 
 been one of the college officers for the year, it is possible 
 that he might have nominated the talented son of his 
 friend, Mrs. Reade of Ipsden. He was not, however, des- 
 tined to render her this signal service. 
 
 The election was one of those jobs that are neatly man- 
 aged. It was assumed that any candidate could write an 
 English essay respectably, and thereupon this was made 
 the piece de resistance of the menu. Many an ignoramus 
 justified the distich 
 
 "And native check, when facts were weak, 
 Bore him in triumph through." 
 
 It happened, however, on this eventful occasion, that 
 among the total of candidates was one born essayist, a
 
 78 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 youth who already could wield his pen epigramraatically. 
 His scholarship was average, though not brilliant, but his 
 English coruscated. The shades of Addison and Gibbon 
 seemed to inspire him. Noctes Ambrosian Wilson, alias 
 Christopher North, who had just left the college, cast his 
 mantle upon him, and Collins, the college singer, imparted 
 a spice of his poesy to the candidate's pages. Mills vowed 
 that Charles Reade's essay gave evidence of absolute tal- 
 ent. Old Dr. Routh read it from end to end, and smiled 
 the approval of an octogenarian. For all that, the best 
 man in would have been passed over infallibly as had 
 been the case before half a hundred times at least but 
 for the lucky accident that one of the designate nominees 
 so completely failed all along the line that President Routh 
 put his foot down and declared with emphasis that he 
 would not consent to the nomination of an absolute dunce. 
 That gave Charles Reade his chance. He was facile 
 princeps among all the candidates, the only one who had 
 risen above mediocrity. Mills, the tutor, spoke up for him 
 right manfully. The subject of the English essay was, 
 " How far is Ambition productive of Virtue ?" To a man, 
 the other candidates, imagining the college expected them 
 to glorify Uriah Heepishness, proceeded on the old trite 
 track to decry ambition as one of the devastating forces 
 of humanity. Charles Reade, however, being himself wild- 
 ly ambitious, was not so canting a hypocrite as to abuse a 
 quality he admired intensely. He took pen and wrote con 
 brio, yet judgmatically, his ideas. In barbarous days, he 
 affirmed, when war is the only outlet for ambition, ambi- 
 tion showed to the greatest disadvantage as being pure 
 selfishness. But whatever might be said against military 
 ambition had been said already, and to the domain of learn- 
 ing and the arts these censures were quite inapplicable.
 
 The Demy ship Examination. 79 
 
 Without ambition as a motive power, he contended, there 
 would be no excellence, nothing but a dead level of medi- 
 ocrity; and he went on to remark, incidentally, that all 
 academic successes were in reality the triumphs of an hon- 
 orable ambition. Further, he argued that the sole alterna- 
 tive of ambition would be a chaotic stagnation of all the 
 mental faculties; and, in brief, his peroration was the warm- 
 est eulogium of the very quality which the other candi- 
 dates had been gibbeting as the meanest of vices. The 
 effect of this incisive honesty on the mind of a scholar 
 who was reverenced by his contemporaries, including, inter 
 alias, Lord Selborne, as a man of genius and conscience, 
 the tutor Mills, was almost electrical. "Good heavens!" 
 the candidates overheard him exclaim in the ear of Presi- 
 dent Routh, " here is a boy who gives us his own ideas in- 
 stead of other people's!" Better still, old Dr. Routh, after 
 he had read the essay, endorsed his subordinate's verdict, 
 and thus, as it were, by acclamation, Charles Reade was 
 elected Demy of Magdalen.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 UNDERGRADUATE LIFE. 
 
 LIFE in beautiful Magdalen during the years 1831-35 
 was about as agreeable as it is well possible to conceive. 
 There were at least twenty out of the forty Fellows in 
 residence, and the high table at the dinner hour was the 
 best filled in the College Hall. The senior was old Dr. 
 Ellerton, the next Dr. Daubeny, chemist, botanist, atomic 
 theorist, and in after-days President of the Royal Society; 
 the third, Mr. Edwards, who was mathematical tutor, and 
 the most dignified and courteous of dons. Mills was the 
 leading tutor; but on the day that Charles Reade was ad- 
 mitted Demy a certain Mr. Robert Lowe, of University, 
 was elected probationer Fellow, and this gentleman, 
 subsequently Chancellor of the Exchequer and Viscount 
 Sherbrooke, became his private tutor. As might be ex- 
 pected, the college was by no means rich in celebrities. 
 Lord Rosse, the astronomer, had as Lord Oxmantown 
 been gentleman commoner; Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, 
 was on the list of ex-Fellows; and President Routh had 
 earned the appreciation of German students of theology. 
 Mr. Lowe, however, and Roundell Palmer were as yet 
 unknown beyond the confines of Oxford, and Mozley, 
 afterwards Regius Professor of Divinity, an enlightened 
 theologian, did not enter the college till about the date of 
 Charles Reade's graduation. Among his contemporaries 
 were Lord Winmarleigh and Mr. Thomas Chamberlayne,
 
 Undergraduate Life. 81 
 
 the distinguished yachtsman, who were Gentlemen-Com- 
 moners; President Bulley, his senior three years, but his 
 constant friend; Bernard Smith, his chief ally, who after- 
 wards joined the Roman Communion and became a canon ; 
 Henderson, Dean of Carlisle; Dr. Newman, the Squire of 
 Nelmes, whose eccentricities were for many years the talk 
 of Oxford; Dr. Fisher, the present Senior Fellow; and 
 Dr. Bloxam, the antiquarian, for whom he maintained the 
 greatest regard. Goldwin Smith and John Conington 
 were later importations. 
 
 Those unacquainted with the glories of Magdalen it 
 may be advisable to refer to Macaulay's magnificent de- 
 scription. Since 1831 the College has changed architec- 
 turally as otherwise. A new block of buildings faces the 
 High Street, and covers the site of old Magdalen Hall, 
 which, with the exception of a picturesque turret still re- 
 maining, was destroyed by fire. A very handsome school- 
 room occupies the southwest angle of the college build- 
 ings, and the eastern side of the Chaplain's Quadrangle 
 was rebuilt in 1854. Not only has the venerable Jacobean 
 portal, through which Charles Reade passed to become 
 Demy, disappeared, but also its successor, a well-meant 
 but ill-executed gateway, designed by the elder Pugin. 
 In the deer-park quite half the Caroline elms of 1831 have 
 succumbed to wind and weather; the chapel has under- 
 gone a quasi restoration by Cottmgham; the old organ is 
 no more, but has found a magnificent successor by Messrs. 
 Gray and Davison; the Founder's Chambers and Tower 
 have been restored by Sir G. Scott. To-day the college 
 is crammed to suffocation with undergraduates, and its 
 President is more than seventy years younger than was 
 Martin Joseph Routh, when he passed away on Christmas 
 Eve, 1854. On the whole, however, the Magdalen of
 
 82 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 1831 was a far more charming home than is the Magda- 
 len of 1886. The twenty resident Fellows inhabited the 
 senior common room, and interfered but little with the 
 Gentleman-Commoners and Demies, both of which orders 
 enjoyed their own common room, with a superb cellar of 
 wine, service of plate, and other luxuries. Lectures were 
 few and almost optional. A meet of the hounds afforded 
 an ample excuse for absence; and as there were only two 
 examinations to be passed in a period of four years' resi- 
 dence, the Demies had no cause to weary themselves with 
 books. At Oxford every one, except, perhaps, the purely 
 betting and equine men, reads more or less; but reading 
 to suit one's bent is one thing, and reading against the 
 grain another. A distinguished Fellow of the college has 
 narrated concerning Charles Reade that he did not take 
 much interest in the studies of the place, and hence the 
 sequitur seems rather a negative one no one suspected 
 that he would ever obtain distinction as an author. That, 
 of course, expresses with precision the strong academic 
 prejudice in favor of grooves. The ordinary Oxonian of 
 academical eminence believes, ab imo corde, in the virtue 
 of absorbing the thoughts of the great minds of the past, 
 more especially when those thoughts happen to have taken 
 a purely pedantic and technical shape, and, pari passu, 
 disbelieves in a man of brains thinking his own thoughts. 
 It was enough for the dons of 1831 that a student should 
 write Ciceronian prose and Ovidian verse, know the Aris- 
 totelian Ethics by heart, and be able to give the date of 
 the battle of Marathon. To have gorged all that involved 
 capacity; and as for originality, it was outside the calcu- 
 lation. Consequently, when a youth with a natural de- 
 testation of grooves of all sorts came to Magdalen, his 
 superiors and equals in the College alike failed to make
 
 Undergraduate Life. 83 
 
 him out. He neglected his lectures; he played the fiddle; 
 he wore long curls; he footed the double shuffle like a 
 professional, for in spite of an ugly rolling gait he was a 
 perfect dancer, and thought fit to select the egg-shaped 
 dining-table at Ipsden for Terpsichorean performances 
 to his own accompaniment on the violin much to the 
 Squire's horror. His raiment was by no means of the 
 subfusc hue enjoined by the statutes, but rather of the 
 picturesque variety. Moreover, oddly enough, this rather 
 eccentric Demy failed to appreciate the excellent cellar of 
 the Demies' common room, having, in fact, a rooted aver- 
 sion to wine and a positive detestation of beer. Added to 
 which he evinced some sort of preference for the College 
 Choir, and invited one of the leading singers over to 
 Ipsden a coup manque, for his father, on learning that 
 the pretty boy, with the voice of a cherub, was the son 
 of a tradesman, promptly packed him off to Oxford. But 
 though not industrious on academic lines, he read vora- 
 ciously. Oxford is a city of books, of books of every 
 conceivable description, and the future author was thereby 
 enabled to assimilate all the fiction and all the dramas of 
 the past three centuries. Thus he began, while yet but 
 little more than a big boy, to cultivate an innate dramatic 
 talent. Those who in after-years were astonished at his 
 rare ability as a stage-manager, little suspected that some 
 half a century before they knew him he was actually prac- 
 tising parts before the looking-glass. His mother meant 
 him to be a divine, a bishop perhaps. The hen, too, has 
 no idea when she takes her brood of ducklings to the 
 edge of a pond, just to sip the water, that these young 
 termagants will swim away from her. They had got a 
 duckling instead of a cockrell in Magdalen, and neither 
 Mills's fascinating presence nor Mr. Lowe's splendid coach-
 
 84 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 ing could keep him to strictly farmyard lines. "While 
 they were explaining the Platonic idea, or discussing the 
 obscure renderings in the choruses of Agamemnon, their 
 pupil's mind was immersed in the contemplation of some 
 ideal Peg Woffington. Yet he did not altogether neglect 
 his pastors and masters. Perhaps he- took in about half 
 of what they said, perhaps even more. Neither did he 
 cut his classics or logic; on the contrary, he treated them 
 as very deserving parerya. They were not the business 
 of his life, nor ever could be, but in so far as they touched 
 on the drama they excited his admiration. Besides which 
 he had de rigueur to pass, with or without honors, other- 
 wise he would lose his Fellowship a serious calamity to a 
 younger son, whose father's estate was entailed. He read, 
 therefore, but reserved his hard work for subjects with 
 which he had positive affinity. 
 
 The two contemporaries at Oxford whom he most ad- 
 mired were Roundell Palmer, who had carried everything 
 before him as Scholar of Trinity, and Stanley of Balliol, 
 known afterwards as Dean Stanley. With the first, who 
 was Fellow of Magdalen, he had barely an acquaintance; 
 the latter he never knew at all. Both were, unlike him, 
 intensely, exclusively academical, the essential products 
 of Oxford; yet though the difference between their aims 
 and method was so radical, he reverenced each as a man 
 of commanding talent. From their point of view he was 
 no student, but, if so, they judged him erroneously. He 
 was certainly never a student in the fields where they ob- 
 tained proficiency, yet in his own domain, as all who knew 
 him will testify, he was a lifelong student, and his labor 
 had its commencement during the uneventful four years 
 when he was Demy of Magdalen. 
 
 His contemporaries those, that is to say, of his under-
 
 Undergraduate Life. 85 
 
 graduate days have mostly passed away, and it is diffi- 
 cult to form an accurate impression of that period of his 
 life. It has been hinted that he was never very popular 
 with the Demies' common room. He could not, as has 
 been said, appreciate their port. His manner was indi- 
 vidual and unsympathetic; he cared less than little for 
 college gossip or college jokes. Newman amused him, 
 but only as a polished buffoon. One or two of the others 
 he did not consider gentlemen an unpardonable sin in 
 his eyes at that time of his life. It was Bernard Smith 
 for whom he cherished a sincere affection, and afterwards 
 he was positively chagrined when his friend elected to 
 merge himself in the Church of Rome, and not only so, 
 but to embrace Roman orders. He always spoke of that 
 gentleman as of a brother whom he had lost by the sort 
 of misadventure which he could neither comprehend nor 
 quite tolerate. He had been imbued with Protestant 
 ideas. His pet divine, Chillingworth, was the author of a 
 trite but ill-worded aphorism concerning the Bible and 
 the Bible only, and he could quite understand any belief 
 under the sun or absolute negation except Popery. 
 Perhaps not a little of his acerbity towards all things 
 Papistical, a sentiment which he tried to veil in "The 
 Cloister and the Hearth," may be referred to spleen at 
 losing the society, if not the friendship, of Bernard Smith. 
 He was a warm adherent of the Union, then located over 
 the shop of the bibliopole Vincent in the centre of the 
 High Street, a situation far more convenient for Magdalen 
 men than remote New Inn Hall Lane. The old Union 
 rooms were very snug, and when the other Demies were 
 imbibing the vintages of Oporto and Xeres in their com- 
 mon room, Charles Reade might have been found at the 
 Union, drinking in greedily the literature of what was
 
 86 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 even then one of the best modern libraries in Europe. He 
 was educating himself, and though doubtless people voted 
 him a lazy, unsociable member of a small but fraternal 
 society, was following his destiny. His inability to as- 
 similate with anybody and everybody was set down to the 
 score of pride. His election as Demy had been informally 
 protested against by one of the senior Fellows, on the 
 ground that the Founder's Statutes enacted that the Demies 
 should be " poor scholars," whereas he was the son of a 
 man of ancestry and estate. It is possible, therefore, that 
 his avoidance of the social life of Magdalen may have been 
 misinterpreted. At that time of day the common room 
 was the sole rendezvous for the gentlemen of the college. 
 There were no cricket matches, no racing-boats, no athlet- 
 ics, no fives or rackets. There was the hunting-field, 
 pigeon-shooting, and netting the rivers, but, so far as 
 amusement went, the fast men rode and drove, while the 
 slow men trudged diurnal constitutionals along the differ- 
 ent roads. At Magdalen there were seldom more than 
 twenty undergraduates in residence, and the traditions of 
 the college almost forbade association with out-college 
 men. With its faults and virtues Magdalen kept to itself 
 rigorously, and when a distant cousin who was in residence 
 at Wadham invited Charles Reade to dinner, and intro- 
 duced him to his friends very nice, gentlemanly fellows 
 he described them afterwards, as no doubt was the case 
 he was chagrined and surprised beyond expression to find 
 that the Magdalen Demy, while willing to recognize a re- 
 lation belonging to another college, positively declined the 
 acquaintance of Wadham as a society on any terms. To 
 reveal an open secret, the Magdalen Demies were by no 
 means ambitious of the company of strangers, except on 
 rare occasions. They formed a very pleasant little coterie
 
 Undergraduate Life. 87 
 
 of their own, and disliked its being disturbed. "We men- 
 tion this fact, because it demonstrates clearly and accounts 
 for the small influence exercised by Oxford on the mind 
 and temperament of Charles Reade. He became a privi- 
 leged member of a small and exclusive college. With his 
 contemporaries within that narrow circle he had few af- 
 finities, and did not harmonize; consequently, he lived his 
 own life, and preserved his very distinct individuality un- 
 impaired. It was the bitter complaint of a brilliant Mag- 
 dalen man in after- years against Oxford, that he had come 
 to it inspired, and left it flattened to the dead level of a 
 mediocre average. That student, however, entered vigor- 
 ously and industriously into the studies of the place. He 
 read for his first, and his mind passed through a severe 
 training, from which it emerged, as he put it, a wreck. 
 Not so Charles Reade. He touched academic Oxford 
 with the tips of his fingers. He was moulded neither by 
 the lecture-room, the midnight oil, nor the common room. 
 He brought to Magdalen HIMSELF, and the college doubt- 
 less assisted his brain to develop. But it did not spoil 
 him, or pare off those angles which were, perhaps, as the 
 crystals on the rock, the most valuable portions of his 
 nature. Had he been sent to Eton or Harrow, he might 
 have learned to be polished and commonplace ; had fate 
 consigned him to Balliol he might have adorned the first 
 class, and become Lord Chancellor, for he had the head of 
 a lawyer. He was destined for something less ephemeral. 
 Lord Brougham is reported to have said that he would 
 rather have written " Pickwick " than have been raised to 
 the woolsack; and, if we may say so inoffensively, Lord 
 Selborne, Charles Reade's most illustrious contemporary 
 among the Magdalen Fellows, who absorbed all the hon- 
 ors that Oxford and Winchester had to offer, and attained
 
 88 Memoir of Charles Eeade. 
 
 the highest apex of a lawyer's ambition, will be forgotten 
 when " Masks and Faces " is remembered and played, and 
 its author's name is held in veneration. That is, perhaps, 
 a humiliating reflection for the worshippers of divine 
 average, who believe that labor and talent transcend 
 genius. Time, however, shall be the test, and if the author 
 fails to survive the Lord Chancellor, his authorship will 
 be at fault, for it is genius alone which attains to that hap- 
 piness which Solon affirmed would not commence until 
 after death the happiness of literary immortality. We 
 venture to prophesy that it will be a long day before a 
 Magdalen brain shall conceive another Triplet, or create 
 such a climax as the Pictui'e Scene. Unless mankind 
 changes fundamentally, this glorious literary achievement 
 must be rated higher than prize poems, prize essays, schol- 
 arships, and all the first-class degrees that ever have gilded 
 pretentious mediocrity. On the contrary, our conviction 
 remains that, with the spread of education, the wide world 
 of thought and reading will command the mere successful 
 plodders to take off their hats in the presence of genius. 
 Qui vivra, verra I
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ELECTED FELLOW. 
 
 CHARLES READE'S four years of life as an undergradu- 
 ate Demy of Magdalen were, as he himself phrased it, un- 
 eventful. He sucked the brains of Mr. Robert Lowe and 
 Mr. Mills, as well as the shelves of the Union Society. 
 He acquired a smattering of music, and learned to sing 
 songs, both sentimental and comic, malgre a rather throaty 
 voice. He picked up a local musician, who inspired him 
 with something approximating enthusiasm for the violin. 
 Although cricket at the time was almost an unknown game 
 in the University, he practised batting against the local 
 professionals to such purpose that ten years after he 
 knocked the giant, Alfred Mynn, round the field at Liver- 
 pool. His contemporaries voted him an eccentric, but 
 yielded his intellect homage. His long curls were incom- 
 prehensible, so were his ideas. Men could not quite un- 
 derstand how it came to pass that a youngster who could 
 acquire knowledge without an effort, and might have 
 figured in the first class, deliberately preferred fiddling 
 and dancing to Aristotle and Plato. Plodding industry, of 
 which there was a stratum among the Demies, took offence, 
 and indolent stupidity was envious. In the end both or- 
 ders of student agreed to vote him a mystery. He was 
 not of their sort, and they assumed that he was destined 
 to mount to the skies or go to the dogs, probably the lat- 
 ter. President Routh, however, held him in the highest
 
 90 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 estimation. Mills, the light of the college, appraised him 
 as a youth of genius, and he gained the regard of another 
 whose insight into character was throughout his brilliant 
 career more than remarkable. 
 
 Samuel Wilberforce had left Oriel disappointed, mar- 
 ried Miss Serjeant, and, having taken Holy Orders, had 
 accepted the curacy of Checkenden the Chalken Dene. 
 The Ipsden estate runs into Checkenden parish, so John 
 Reade, who had known him from a boy, was the future 
 bishop's squire. Samuel Wilberforce, as is generally 
 known, was a skilful rider and an ardent lover of horse- 
 flesh, and he doubtless, as a young curate, was not a little 
 gratified when the Squire placed his stable at his disposal, 
 subject to one condition, that he would never keep the 
 horses waiting, a rule not always observed, the neglect of 
 which, too, evoked the smart censure of Mr. John Reade, 
 and very nearly led to a rupture of their friendly relations. 
 Mrs. Reade also was unvaryingly courteous and kindly to 
 the interesting curate and his beautiful but delicate wife, 
 and the cordial relations then established terminated only 
 with her death. It was almost inevitable, therefore, that 
 the promising Demy of Magdalen should in the vacations 
 be brought into social relations with a clergyman who was 
 a neighbor and a man of brains. As a matter of fact, 
 Samuel Wilberforce affected a curious interest in the 
 young Oxonian. He took a rapid and accurate survey of 
 his capacity, and they might in spite of the slight dis- 
 parity of age have become friends had they possessed 
 more in common. As it was, they never, in spite of the 
 embryo bishop's chilly advances, quite found a middle 
 term; indeed, from first to last, with very few exceptions, 
 Charles Reade fought shy of clergymen. Possibly the 
 social life of Ipsden may have created this antipathy.
 
 Elected Fellow. 91 
 
 Mrs. Reade was perpetually cultivating bishops, dons, and 
 professors. Her brother-in-law, George Stanley Faber, 
 was reverenced by her as a sort of deity, though his man- 
 ners were peculiar and his pronunciation unutterable York- 
 shire. His nephew, who rendered the name of Faber for- 
 ever illustrious, was as Fellow of University a persona grata 
 at Ipsden, until he ventured, in defiance of his uncle who 
 styled him invariably in common conversation " that uss 
 (ass) mai nephew " to pose as Tractarian, and afterwards 
 to follow Cardinal Newman across the Rubicon. Then 
 there were the Oxford dons, Avho came to Ipsden partly to 
 air their importance, and still more to partake of its hos- 
 pitality; and the local clergy, who courted the lady of the 
 open house, and en revanche tried, not always successfully, 
 to snub the son. It was perhaps not a matter for wonder- 
 ment that this same son imbibed a distaste for clerics and 
 ecclesiasticism. 
 
 Yet there was never a rule without an exception. 
 Among the divines specially affected by his mother was 
 Pearson, Dean of Salisbury. That eminent ecclesiastic 
 had two clerical sous, whereof the elder, Charles, became 
 afterwards Rector of Knebworth, by favor of Lord Lyt- 
 ton. This gentleman was a frequent visitor at Ipsden, 
 and though by quite five years the senior of Charles 
 Reade, cultivated his acquaintance, and in after-years per- 
 suaded him to become his frequent guest. He was of all 
 clerics the most frigid and unsympathetic, but withal 
 thoughtful and reticent qualities a writer would natural- 
 ly prefer to garrulity. To the last he was Charles Reade's 
 chief clerical friend, a condition which would have been 
 impossible had they not assimilated in the days of youth 
 and buoyancy. 
 
 The period of undergraduate existence passed smoothly,
 
 03 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 and ended, if dramatically, none the less propitiously. As 
 has been stated, the rule of the college was that a Demy 
 succeeded only to a Fellowship on his particular county, 
 and also on the express condition that he had, previously 
 to the next ensuing St. Mary Magdalen's day after the 
 vacancy occurred, taken his degree. In the early summer 
 of 1835, when Charles Reade was of sufficient academic 
 standing to graduate, having been four years in residence, 
 such a vacancy occurred quite unexpectedly on his county 
 Oxfordshire. As it happened, however, he was not pre- 
 pared for his great-go, the chief examination, and yet his 
 chances of a fellowship hung upon his satisfying the ex- 
 aminers. Never was there so grave, so painful, so critical 
 a dilemma! He had purposed to defer the ordeal until 
 after the long vacation ; and yet his whole future turned 
 on his scraping through an examination for which he had 
 only read in a desultory sort of fashion. It was June, and he 
 had, at a day's notice, to enter his name on one of two lists 
 either that of pass-men, or of those qui honores ambiunt, 
 i.e., intending honor-men. The regulations then prescribed 
 that the pass-men were examined first, and disposed of for 
 good or evil. This occupied about three weeks, after 
 which the honor examination commenced. Now, if 
 Charles Reade had put down his name for a pass, he 
 would have had at once to submit to the ordeal of paper- 
 work, and in all human probability would have secured an 
 inevitable rejection. He could not master his books in a 
 few hours, and though the pass examination was light and 
 easy as compared with that for honors, still ignorance of 
 the authors offered would not have been excused. Con- 
 sequently there was no hope for it but in a bold stroke, 
 and with the bait before him of a provision for life our 
 author did not hesitate. He entered his name as a candi-
 
 Elected Fellow. 93 
 
 date for honors, went back to his rooms, and set to work 
 manfully to lick his chaotic reading of the past few years 
 into shape. His wildest ambition was to be gulfed, i. e., re- 
 duced to the level of a simple pass, yet awarded a testa- 
 mur. Were he, however, to break down absolutely in any 
 one subject, even this latitude would be denied him. His 
 task seemed simply impossible, and wiseacres prophesied 
 the Nemesis of fiddling and dancing. Night and day, day 
 and night, with bare intervals for fool and sleep, the 
 youngster of brain-power and singular concentration stuck 
 to his books. He had to carry the Ethics, in Greek as 
 well as English, in his head; to translate respectably so 
 many plays of ^Eschylus; to remember the text and mat- 
 ter of Thucydides and Herodotus; to render Cicero with 
 Addisonian English, and Addison into Ciceronian Latin ; 
 to write disquisitions on mental and moral philosophy, as 
 well as on ancient history; to play at versifying in Latin 
 and Greek; and to give an analysis of Anglican theology, 
 with Bible history plus Logic. But that was not all. The 
 University in its wisdom had decreed that each candidate 
 should repeat by heart such selections from the Thirty- 
 nine Articles of Religion in the Latin version as the ex- 
 aminers might require. This amounted to a parrot-like 
 exercise, and the examinees usually deferred committing 
 such dry matter to memory until the last few days before 
 the schools. It was considered a sort of humane knight- 
 service for a man's friends to take him round the college 
 walks three quarters of a mile and cause him to repeat 
 these thirty-nine symbols to friendly prompting. The 
 article on Predestination, being the most prolix, was the 
 biggest fence to be surmounted, and examiners of a ma- 
 licious turn were suspected of an undue preference for 
 that crabbed piece of Latinity. All prudent men, not-
 
 94 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 withstanding, while devoting especial attention to the Ar- 
 ticulus de Predestinatione, gorged also the rest. There was 
 then, as now, no accounting for the caprices of examiners, 
 and a man who knew thirty-eight articles by rote, so as to 
 be able to repeat them verbatim without blinking, might 
 be ruthlessly rejected for his ignorance of the thirty- 
 ninth. 
 
 Charles Reade, following in this particular the multi- 
 tude to do evil, procrastinated. This was unwise, for he 
 would be allowed errors in his ethics or plays, but not, by 
 a silly parodox, in the all-precious Thirty-nine Articles. 
 Hence, when, thirty-six hours before the examination, he 
 began to repeat these forty-save-one tests of orthodoxy, 
 memory, and scholarship as the academic pundits im- 
 agined them to be his friends, perceiving how hard he 
 found it to learn by rote, began to prophesy his collapse. 
 But the worst was to come. Although it was midsummer, 
 the terrible strain of the past three weeks had affected his 
 nerves. Neuralgia supervened, his face swelled, he was 
 wracked with agony, and positively could not acquire the 
 Thirty-nine Articles. 
 
 "I can say three of them/' he remarked sadly to a 
 friend, as, swelled cheek and all, he marched off to the 
 schools to face fate and the examiners. Slatter's severity 
 had sickened him of learning by heart, and, indeed, in- 
 capacitated him for an exercise wherein the stupidest are 
 commonly the most proficient. But to learn against the 
 grain, and with such pain as seemed to crush his very soul, 
 that was impossible. Nine hundred and ninety-nine men 
 out of every thousand, given such conditions, would have 
 been asked any and every article except the aforesaid 
 three. Charles Reade, however, was born with a silver 
 spoon in his mouth. Throughout he was nothing if not
 
 Elected, Fellow. 95 
 
 the spoiled child of fortune. Incredible as it reads, it is 
 none the less a positive fact, that he was required to re- 
 peat one of those magic three, and performed this tour de 
 force with such aplomb as quite to satisfy his questioning 
 Minos, who at once vaulted to the conclusion that the 
 Demy whose Fellowship hung in the balance had not failed 
 to make quite sure of this petty test. Had he suspected 
 that he was totally ignorant of thirty-six out of thirty-nine, 
 the result would have been different, for at that time 
 of day the reverence for oaths, subscriptions, et id genus 
 omne, amounted to a fetish. " Will you," asked the Vice- 
 Chancellor of Mr. Theodore Hook of St. Mary Hall, when 
 that practical joker canre up for matriculation, " subscribe 
 to the Thirty-nine Articles, sir ?" " Forty, if you wish 
 it," was the glib response, and the extraordinary solemni- 
 ty of this empty form was preserved up to the days of 
 Dr. Cotton, who addressed boys from school as though 
 they were Ordination Candidates, and the shibboleths they 
 were ready to subscribe blindfold were safeguards against 
 heresy. All that has been changed since those da^-s. 
 Boys are no longer expected to be theologians, nor St. 
 Athanasius protected against the surreptitious Arianism 
 of the playground. In 1835, however, everybody was ex- 
 pected to think in the same groove as his neighbor, 
 whether cleric or lay, and it may consequently be record- 
 ed as a characteristic of the Oxford of that day that one 
 of her most brilliant sons would have lost his fellowship 
 but for, in plain English, a lucky fluke. 
 
 The aforesaid turn of the wheel saved him. His ethics 
 were respectable; his plays at his fingers' ends; his logic 
 mastered; his prose and verse fair; his essay, of course, 
 brilliant. It was no question of plucking, still less of 
 gulfing, but rather of the class to which he was entitled
 
 96 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 by virtue of an unequal, yet by no means incompetent, ex- 
 amination. 
 
 They gave him a third. That is to say, he took as good 
 a degree as Cardinal Newman, Archbishop Thompson, and 
 Regius Professor Mozley. Though only in the third 
 class, his name stands forth as the most illustrious of the 
 honor-men of that year, justifying, indeed, the trite para- 
 dox that the third class has beaten the first in the race 
 of life. 
 
 That sufficed. On July 22, 1835, he, as B.A., succeed- 
 ed in due course to his Fellowship, his first year being, 
 nominally, one of probation. He was only twenty-one, 
 yet academically on the same plane with Doctor Daubeny, 
 Roundell Palmer, and Robert Lowe. He elected to be- 
 come a law Fellow, and prepared with that intent to enter 
 at Lincoln's Inn, and after his probationer year which 
 entailed residence at Magdalen was terminated, to eat his 
 terms and be called to the bar. His brother Compton had 
 married and become a limb of the law, and it was pre- 
 supposed at Ipsden that the brothers would work together 
 for their mutual advantage. It happened, however, that 
 the younger of the two had other aims. The law was to 
 be his parergon only, his ergon literature, albeit as yet 
 neither he himself, nor his friends, nor his family imag- 
 ined that fate had designated him for anything nobler 
 than chambers, a horsehair wig, and perhaps a silk gown. 
 His mother alone mentally predicted that he would be a 
 second Sir Robert Reade, and add to the galaxy of fami- 
 ly worthies the portrait of another Chief -Justice. Verily 
 her charity was of that sort which believeth all things !
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 STUDIES LAW. 
 
 HAVING attained the acme of most men's academical 
 ambition, a Fellowship, and one too in the most beautiful 
 and opulent of colleges, our author had the choice before 
 him of three professions the Bar, the Church, or Medi- 
 cine. At the present moment a Fellow of Magdalen may 
 be non - prof essional, a scholar et prceterea nihil. Such, 
 however, was not the intention of the pious and munifi- 
 cent Founder, who, being nothing if not priestly, imported 
 a small element of jurisprudence and medicine into his 
 college simply with the design of making his clerical Fel- 
 lows in a small degree conversant with these two sciences. 
 Waynflete has been accused of liberality, a compliment 
 his Church would consider rather back-handed, because 
 though he insisted on his foundation being monkish, he 
 admitted within its bosom as lay monks a meagre half 
 dozen amateur lawyers and doctors. A glance at his vol- 
 ume of statutes, with their elaborate regulations concern- 
 ing the ritual of the chapel and his apparent indifference, 
 so long as the ritual was performed in scecula sceculorum, 
 whether the number of the Fellows was few or many, 
 would dispel this illusion. In 1835, when Charles Reade 
 was elected probationer, the mediaeval statutes, paradoxi- 
 cally enough in all respects except the performance of the 
 Founder's favorite ritual, were in full force, and when 
 Parliament subsequently did interfere, a cry of sacrilege 
 5
 
 98 Memoir of Charles Rcade. 
 
 was raised from men who bad never, and could never, obey 
 the Founder's intentions even so far as to say mass for 
 tbe repose of bis soul, and for tbe souls of King Henry the 
 Sixth, Sir Edmund Rede, Lord de Boarstal, and Sir John 
 Falstaff. The College elevated the Founder's statutes 
 into a matter of principle, because they wished to manip- 
 ulate estates to suit their own convenience and enrich 
 themselves individually. In those days, when a poor liv- 
 ing fell vacant, it was raised to a thousand a year out of 
 the moneys bequeathed by Waynflete for the maintenance 
 of the Chaplains, Demies, and Clerks ; and when a lease 
 ran out, a heavy fine was exacted from the tenant in order 
 to put ready money into the Fellows' pockets, the man 
 thus mulcted becoming, however, virtually the owner of 
 his tenure for a long term of years. In order to put a 
 fair gloss on such very equivocal arrangements, the com- 
 mon room talked bombastically about the rights of the 
 pious Founder, and the sin of traversing them ; as though 
 they had not been really abrogated ever since the Refor- 
 mation, saving for three short weeks in the reign of James 
 the Second, when the Protestant Foundation was expelled 
 and Papists intruded! Looking back on the career of 
 Charles Reade, it is tolerably evident that the Bar, as a 
 profession, was to him valueless, indeed, it may have been 
 detrimental, for it encouraged that spirit of litigiousness 
 which at times almost embittered his existence. It was, 
 however, forced upon him. The rod of Mr. Slatter, and 
 the rather Puritanical simplicity of home, had caused a 
 mind naturally religious to revolt from religion, at all 
 events as exemplified by the section of the Church of Eng- 
 land to which his mother was attached, albeit it is only 
 fair to the Evangelicals of that day to add that he be- 
 lieved in them far more than in the port-imbibing High
 
 Studies Law. 99 
 
 Churchmen, who jobbed away the college property with- 
 out conscience or decency. In fact, from the beginning 
 to the end of the chapter, he was never quite a persona 
 grata to the Fellows of Magdalen, and at the outset his 
 unpopularity all but cost him his Fellowship. 
 
 The rule of the college was that a probationer fellow 
 should reside during his year of probation, a regulation 
 which lost a man a "year at the Bar, since, not being a 
 bird, he could hardly eat his dinners at Lincoln's Inn and 
 pernoctate at Magdalen. The G. W. R. in those days was 
 not in existence, and to cover a long fifty-six miles of road 
 between dinner and bedtime every day would have been 
 a feat alike expensive and fatiguing. Most lay Fellows 
 found this period of penal residence a grievous infliction. 
 Too young to enjoy either the port or the puns of the 
 senior common room, too elastic to harmonize with men 
 not merely their seniors, but too often prematurely senile 
 owing to the subtle deterioration of lethargy and liquor, 
 the probationer Fellows must have voted their Fellowship 
 an illusion. Nothing to do and money to do it with is 
 not an unmixed blessing, and certainly Charles Reade, a 
 young man alike eupeptic, active, and adventurous, felt 
 bored by his college, and out of tune with its lotus-eating 
 ethics. The year, however, passed, and after that he w T as 
 free to live where he liked. He must be called to the Bar, 
 but need never hold a brief, and might refuse to hold of- 
 fice in the college when his turn came. His year of pro- 
 bation expired on June 22d, 1836, and he seems to have 
 lost not a moment in commencing what was then supposed 
 to be the business of his life. He entered at Lincoln's 
 Inn in the November of that year. The subjoined epistle 
 to his fond mother gives an idea of his earlier impressions, 
 and at all events possesses the merit of being natural. It
 
 loo Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 is addressed from the chambers of Mr. Charles Waring 
 Faber, B.C.L., of the Chancery Bar, the elder son of the 
 prophetical Master of Sherburn Hospital, and his first 
 cousin. Mr. Faber was a most charming and genial gen- 
 tleman, who had taken honors at Oxford, was a model of 
 industry, a professional diner-out in an age when conver- 
 sation was cultivated as an adjunct of gastronomy, and a 
 confirmed bachelor. He rose to a certain level in his pro- 
 fession, but never beyond it, and throughout his long and 
 meritorious life played an unostentatiously charitable part. 
 Few men gave away so liberally, and yet were so little 
 accredited with generosity. He seems to have acted elder 
 brother to Charles Reade at starting, and certainly they 
 were cousinly friends to the end of the chapter. 
 The letter to Mrs. Reade runs thus : 
 
 12 KING'S BENCH WALK, TEMPLE, November 12, 1836. 
 "Mr DEAR MOTHER, I am at length initiated in these mysteries of 
 Themis, and turned loose with my brain on smoke, amidst the cabalistic 
 wonders of the law's glorious labyrinth. My companions have the start 
 of me by six months of actual reading. I hope you opened Edward's let- 
 ter. There are one or two things iu it that puzzle me : he insists upon 
 my travelling, without telling me where I may get the means of so doing, 
 and talks about my academical fame (!), warning me against resting satis- 
 fied with tfiat, which ought to be but an earnest of my future career. Now 
 I deprecate sincerely the latter part of this, because I assent so fully to the 
 former. Mr. Warren has gone down to Cambridge for a day upon some 
 business, and before he returns I hope to catch my comrades in the book 
 we are studying : from what I see of the study, its natural effect upon the 
 mind must be to improve the memory, and give a habit of attention and 
 strict accuracy for every particular word in every individual sentence has 
 a meaning which may be of very vital importance, so that you soon learn 
 that it is not enough to glance your eye over the propositions and possess 
 yourself of their general meaning. I am in C. F.'s (Charles Faber's) rooms, 
 and shall not quit them immediately, as I have been at the expense of 
 buying keys. I am waiting too to see whether you come to town or not.
 
 Studies Law. 101 
 
 Compton sent down a letter containing a draft, though I had told him I 
 was about to return, but, n'importe, I received it to-day, and it is of no use 
 to me till the 24th. I shall go and call on the Shepherds and Andcrdons 
 next week, D.V., if I can find them. It is getting so dark that I, having 
 no candle, must conclude, with a promise to write better next time. 
 
 " Your affectionate son, CHARLES READE. 
 
 " Saturday Eve. 
 
 " P. S. I think Norfolk Street may very likely be my habitation, where 
 the lodgings are good and cheap. I am determined to get to the bottom 
 of the Snow mystery to-morrow, by the aid of the pew-opener." 
 
 This last sentence constitutes in itself a mystery not 
 destined to be unravelled. There was a family of the 
 name of Snow at Bibury, near Sir John Reade's residence, 
 on the borders of Gloucestershire, who were interested in 
 the ill-starred banking firm of Strahan, Paul, & Bates, 
 but whether the party named Snow here darkly alluded 
 to was one of the Gloucestershire Snows must remain the 
 subject of conjecture. 
 
 Within three weeks from the date of the above letter 
 to his mother there followed one to his father, redolent of 
 the pedantry of Oxford, and written in so artificial a style 
 as to be almost ludicrous. In addressing " My dear Fa- 
 ther " the youngest son adopts the distant attitude of the 
 diplomatist. It is not indeed a letter at all, but a formal 
 essay, inspired partly by Addison's Walk and Sir Roger 
 de Coverley, partly by the Aldrich, Aristotle, and Plato 
 lectures of his college, and emanating in no sense from 
 himself. One can but smile as one reads how the junior 
 Fellow suggests that his sire should begin by defining hap- 
 piness. This alone brings back the jargon of the lecture- 
 room, so stereotyped that the same words, the same phrases 
 and illustrations, were passed on from tutor to pupil, and 
 when the pupil became tutor, he in turn passed it on to
 
 102 Memoir of Charles jReade. 
 
 other pupils. The conclusion, by-thc-bye, reminds us of 
 the juvenile town-mouse inviting the venerable country- 
 mouse to pay a visit to the urban granaries. Doubtless 
 the old Squire was tempted by this picture to emerge 
 from the solitude of Ipsden. Some four years later he 
 actually did descend on the metropolis to see the young 
 Queen open Parliament. It was cold, and the Squire not 
 only surmounted himself with two great - coats, but also 
 with a huge cloak. Underneath four garments, therefore, 
 and in the fob of his trousers was his watch, and in the 
 breast-pocket of coat number one, his purse. The crush 
 to see the show was so great that the party could not 
 drive up to the rooms in Palace Yard, where they had 
 secured seats, but had to walk some two hundred yards 
 along the pavement. This proceeding took about twenty 
 minutes, during which brief period the Squire was relieved 
 of his purse. One would have imagined that he would 
 have been indignant. Not so. The old gentleman, chair- 
 man, by-the-bye, of the Henley Petty Sessions, was vexed, 
 but quite for another cause. It was because he could not 
 discover the thief. " I profess," he said, " that this must 
 be the identical thief who robbed me twenty years ago. 
 No one else could have been so adroit. If I could find the 
 fellow, I'd give him a ten-pound note for his cleverness." 
 And this was not affectation. The fine old gentleman re- 
 sembled his son Charles in that he positively revelled in 
 a startling paradox. The following is the epistle to which 
 we refer. It is under date of November 26, 1836. 
 
 " 80 CUANOKKY LANK. 
 
 " MY DEAR FATHER, The most ancient strife that ever I heard of is the 
 war between wave and rock upon the Shore of River or Sea, so often com- 
 memorated by Poets of every class ; but next to this I think (for it is a 
 rivalry many hundred years old) is the competition between Town and
 
 Studies Law. 103 
 
 Country, each of which, as heretofore, still claims for itself to be called 
 the dwelling-place of human happiness ; and, hacked as they have been by 
 so long a warfare, both still employ the weapons which gleamed in their 
 very first encounter. Intellectual improvement is pitted against Health 
 'prime blessing of all,' 'Wit' on the one hand is met by 'Innocence' on 
 the other; and if this competition advances with the promise of pleasures 
 glowing, keen, and various, the other is not backward to proffer such as 
 are less apt to be followed by pain and regret : these are the old topics, to 
 which I add a less common item of comparison, viz., that in the Country 
 there are fewer tempters and temptations in the week ; in the Town more 
 Jeremiahs to thunder over your conscience on the Sabbath. He who 
 would decide this question, with mankind taken generally for its subject, 
 must begin with settling the definition of earthly happiness and the means 
 of acquiring and keeping it, points of discussion which, after severely try- 
 ing the wisdom of the Ancient World, were by it left undecided; or else 
 he must approach the discussion in that noble spirit of self-confidence 
 which foreruns a notable disgrace almost invariably ; but, if you put com- 
 monplace people out of consideration, the difficulty in my mind is dimin- 
 ished by fths, or, rather, j^ths, which I believe is about the proportion 
 of Men of Ability to the Mass : in the Country the intellects of Men are 
 stagnant and putrescent, they dawdle in their thinking as they do in ev- 
 erything else : an hour and a half at a meal, three hours and a quarter 
 consumed in a ride of twelve or thirteen miles, and after dinner the hours 
 they sit with little or hardly any interchange of thought, and then after 
 tea they go to bed and pass the night in a weakly sleep, as they did the 
 day in an unrefrcshing doze. Here a man so clearly sees, by looking out 
 of a window for 10 seconds, that if he dawdles he will be distanced, that 
 he cannot help shaking himself. Then the information which one imbibes 
 almost involuntarily at every pore merely by being in the Metropolis ! I 
 have observed at Oxford that if we entertained at our table a Metropolitan, 
 he was sure, if conversable, to be the star of the company : in that very 
 common topic, Politics, he was sure to be very superior because he knew 
 a number of matters such as either slowly or not at all travel into the 
 country, but which throw a light upon the state and intention of parties ; 
 he had picked up some little things the editors of newspapers did not 
 know or had not the wit to think important: he had been present and 
 heard the Speech in question and begged leave to correct The Standard, 
 which he thought he could with the more effect if he just hinted at a the- 
 ory that paper wished to establish, by misrepresentation, if no other way
 
 104 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 appeared. Londoner ' Mrs. Norton has a poem in the press, Lady S. a 
 novel which she has paid II d a hundred pounds to puff in The Quar- 
 terly, and Gait has a rival " Curiosities of Literature " to D'Isracli's com- 
 ing out' Country M. ' You don't say so ! Why, I have seen in none of 
 the Litera L. ' No, I dare say not, but though I am not a literary 
 man I generally hear what is going on, whether I will or no, from some 
 friend who writes in the Reviews or from literary gossips of one kind or 
 another, a long time before the Newspapers are told.' In this way a 
 Dunce from London attracts and deserves a certain degree of respect : 
 London the Focus of Intellect and virtue, the very heart of this great king- 
 dom, the seat of legislature, the Throne of Pleasure, the place where ev- 
 erything that affects the condition of Britain seems to begin Opinion, 
 fashion, luxury, comfort, knowledge, Law. If I had not been an Egotisti- 
 cal dog, my dear father, I should have told you in fewer words that I am 
 satisfied with my situation ; and reserved more paper to let you know that 
 the same place is well adapted to your present condition. Ever since I 
 have known you you have divided your time between the business or pleas- 
 ure of the fields and an easy, diffusive sort of reading, but if I were asked 
 which way your literary taste ran, I should say for amusing and illustrative 
 antiquities and for a kind of 'curiosities of knowledge.' As for a time 
 your range of Agricultural employment is narrowed, embrace your other 
 resource more closely, and make it supply the want of the other. This is 
 a place where 'curiosities of knowledge' may be gleaned by handfuls in 
 more than one way : they may be gained by reading curious and scarce 
 books which you could not find elsewhere ; or they may be seen in abun- 
 dance in the course of a single walk in this wonderful city. What, for in- 
 stance, can be more curious, interesting, wonderful, than the mysteries of 
 trade and commerce ; the practical and speculative skill of persons em- 
 ployed in its different parts ; the lading and unlading of ships, the appear- 
 ance of the various cargoes, the Division of labor, the arrival of precious 
 freights from every part of the Globe, which owns no country that does not 
 pour its riches into the bosom of our favored land ; the various Galleries 
 of pictures to which additions have been made since you have seen them, 
 the works of the old masters, which improve upon the sight and are always 
 new ; the Museum, to which Compton can admit you and where you may 
 read books that you never could anywhere else : The courts of justice, 
 where you may see the working of our glorious system ? I could enumer- 
 ate more objects of interest, and yet I know little of London ; and I dare 
 say I have omitted many things that you remember. With regard to the
 
 Studies Laio. 105 
 
 atmosphere, as it does not affect me, I am no judge further than this, that 
 in all candor I know no time of the year in which town and country are 
 more upon a par than this : in fact my experience of a London and Scot's 
 common fog drives me to a vulgar proverb, though not inappropriate, as it 
 too is founded on an observation of a Natural Phenomenon : viz., ' There 
 is no choice amongst rotten apples '!!!!!!! There have been, I believe, 
 only two fogs since I have been here, and November is the misty mouth. 
 We shall be a jolly party if you come up. You will have me in the even- 
 ing, and doubtless renew your acquaintance with many pleasing friends : 
 Love to Ellen. Your Dutiful Son, CHARLES READE." 
 
 Of Charles Reade's career as a law student we have but 
 scanty records, and those of slender interest. Among his 
 legal acquaintances of the epoch were Chief-Justice Sir 
 N. Tindale, Mr. Benjamin Shaw, Q. C., Mr. Justice Lush, 
 Mr. Edwin James, Q. C. and M. P., and Vice - Chancellor 
 Shadwell. It was a curious coincidence that his first in- 
 structor in law should have been Samuel Warren, author 
 subsequently of "Ten Thousand a Year." One might 
 have presupposed that there would have been an almost 
 perfect assimilation between the brain that conceived 
 Tittlebat Titmouse and that which evolved Triplet. Yet, 
 sad to relate, the two of a trade failed to agree, and after 
 a year of Mr. Samuel Warren, Charles Reade shifted his 
 seat to the chambers of Mr. Matthew Fortescue, a warm 
 friend of his brother ; and then to reveal an ugly secret 
 dropped the law altogether for some years. In fact, 
 though he entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1836, he was not 
 called to the bar until 1842. 
 5*
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "MAGDALEN." 
 
 AFTER Charles Reade had been admitted actual Fellow, 
 a certain Dr. Sewell, brother of the Founder of Radley 
 College, and of the Warden of New College, claimed a 
 lay Fellowship in his stead. Had the claim succeeded our 
 author would have had to take Anglican Orders, or be 
 ejected from his Fellowship. In his MS. he gently de- 
 scribes what was really a very barefaced attempt to jockey 
 him. " There are only six lay Fellowships out of forty in 
 Magdalen College," he writes, " and I claimed one. Mr. 
 Sewell, a Queen's Counsel, about to succeed to a Fellow- 
 ship, claimed it too, on the score of his being of higher 
 standing in the University (i. e.^ not as a Fellow). The 
 matter turned on the interpretation of a statute; the col- 
 lege officers, by a majority of one, decided in favor of 
 Sewell. I appealed to the Visitor. The Visitor directed 
 the case to be heard before him. Neither side employed 
 counsel. I was victorious, and won my first litigation out 
 of eighteen, and retain my Fellowship to this day." 
 
 This tells only half the story. President Routh, at first 
 adverse, was won by his masterly argument over to his 
 side. The Visitor was the Bishop of Winchester, Dr. Sum- 
 ner, his mother's friend; who, however, to be quite im- 
 partial, referred the case to his legal assessor. The col- 
 lege was so indignant at their decision being overruled 
 that they passed a vote allowing Dr. Sewell to retain his
 
 "Magdalen." 107 
 
 Fellowship as a layman. Had Charles Reade lost, he would 
 have had to be ordained, or retire. A different measure 
 was meted to Sewell, the plain truth being that he was 
 popular with the common room. In this college kissing 
 has always gone by favor, and the alumnus who is not so 
 fortunate as to obtain its favor must expect that sort of 
 dissimulated love which proverbially kicks its recipient 
 down-stairs. It may be remarked, passim, that the boast- 
 ed Founder's statutes were cast to the four winds when 
 the interest of & persona grata chanced to be jeopardized. 
 It is to be hoped that this spirit of partiality has died a 
 natural death. 
 
 It was between the adverse decision of his unrighteous 
 judges of the common room and the reversal of this act 
 of attempted injury that an episode occurred in the life of 
 Charles Reade which may perhaps provoke a smile. It 
 was suggested to him by President Routh that if he chose 
 to abandon the law and take his degree in medicine, the 
 college, which was determined that, right or wrong, Dr. 
 Sewell should pose as one of their law Fellows, might gra- 
 ciously permit him to hold a lay Fellowship. Perceiving 
 that nearly all Magdalen was against him, and naturally 
 being most unwilling to lose his Fellowship, Charles Reade 
 went to Edinburgh to ascertain whether he could over- 
 come his strong prejudice against the dissecting room and 
 theatre. He thought he would begin with the latter as 
 being possibly the less severe ordeal to his sensibilities, if 
 not to his stomach. The experiment was not destined to 
 succeed. He forced himself to enter the operating thea- 
 tre, and saw a man bled. This was enough. Staggering 
 to the door, he fainted away, and left Edinburgh, veneseo* 
 tion, and horrors to people of a tougher fibre and a more 
 material nature. Had it not been for the good Bishop of
 
 108 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Winchester, and had Medicine offered the only medium 
 whereby he could retain his Fellowship, Charles Reade 
 would have succumbed to fraud rather than have escaped 
 at the cost of his moral and mental cuticle. As the event 
 proved, he was avenged by a prelate who assuredly never 
 more thoroughly magnified his office than when he defeat- 
 ed a common-room conspiracy; and from henceforward 
 till his last breath the subject of this memoir drew his ali- 
 mony from an unwilling and unsympathetic college. 
 
 He was, however, though victorious, none the less dis- 
 gusted. His enemies were they of his own household, and 
 he felt that they need not have been in such a hurry to 
 decide against one who might yet do their body credit. 
 The consciousness, however, of being out of place in the 
 society of which he was a member drove him afield. He 
 might have lapsed into a mere Oxford don. As it was, he 
 roamed abroad to learn in Paris the rudiments of dramatic 
 art and educate himself for the profession of letters. His 
 enemies by their very malignity had done him a good turn. 
 They saved him from Magdalen. 
 
 That institution, for some time after this episode, sel- 
 dom saw him except on urgent business ; albeit, the first 
 occasion that took him to Oxford, after the Sewell trial, 
 terminated in a way very gratifying to himself. 
 
 A certain Mr. Viner founded scholarships and fellow- 
 ships in law open to the whole University. The Masters 
 of Arts were the electors to the scholarships, and a scholar 
 in due course became a Fellow for a term of years. Prac- 
 tically the man who, being otherwise eligible, i. e., a grad- 
 uate, a barrister, and a layman, could command the most 
 votes, had the best chance of success. Charles Reade, on 
 a vacancy occurring, resolved to offer himself as a candi- 
 date. In the coaching days M. A.'s could not so easily
 
 "Magdalen." 109 
 
 crowd to Oxford as at present, and the election was usu- 
 ally determined by the votes of the residents, for the most 
 part college tutors and Fellows. It occurred to him that 
 the county might swamp the University, and his father's 
 influence in the shire may be estimated by the one fact of 
 his having been twice invited to represent it in the Tory 
 interest. His college might not accord him its support, 
 albeit there was a sort of code of honor prohibitive of op- 
 position to a member of the society. But for once he 
 could dispense with it. The noblemen and gentlemen of 
 Oxon and Berks, who happened to be Masters of Arts, 
 readily promised their votes and interest to the son of Mr. 
 Reade of Ipsden. His mother canvassed the clergy, and 
 where favorable answers were obtained offered convey- 
 ances free of cost. On the day of election Oxford swarmed 
 with squires and parsons whipped up for Charles Reade, 
 and thus when he came in head of the poll by a substan- 
 tial majority, some chagrin found expression within the 
 bosom of his college. 
 
 Charles Reade felt, and with reason, that he had admin- 
 istered a practical rebuff to his friends the enemies in 
 Magdalen, so by way of enjoying their discomfiture did a 
 deed his soul usually abhorred, viz., put in an appearance 
 at the solemn High-Table dinner. 
 
 They drank his health in the college brown-sherry with 
 the regulation formal courtesy. The etiquette of the High 
 Table demanded that a victory for the society should be 
 recognized, and the victor congratulated. 
 
 Soon, however, the nasty animus beneath the surface 
 began to crop up. 
 
 "It is all very fine, Reade," said one of them, whose 
 tongue was less guarded than that of the majority, "but 
 you know you have displaced two better men than yourself."
 
 110 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 It is easy to imagine the susurrus of sarcastic laughter 
 that encircled the table as Charles Reade was thus rudely 
 challenged. Said he quietly, " No ; better scholars, not 
 better men." 
 
 "How so?" was the cutting rejoinder. 
 
 " The Vinerian," replied Charles Reade, " is a law schol- 
 arship, and law is a practical sort of science. Now the 
 way in which my canvass was organized and carried out 
 was rather unusual, but it argues a talent of the practical 
 kind superior to that of my competitors. The University 
 in its wisdom has chosen right." 
 
 The High Table as a whole may not have endorsed this 
 apologia of the successful candidate, but some of the best 
 minds of the college had the wit to perceive the rising 
 star. Among them may be mentioned Bulley, successively 
 Senior Tutor, and President ; Newman, the wit of the 
 college ; Fisher, the present Senior Fellow, for whom, as 
 being a gentleman, Charles Reade to the last professed 
 the warmest regard ; Bloxam, the antiquarian ; and Moz- 
 ley, leader-writer to the Times, and afterwards Regius 
 Professor of Divinity. To this honorable list must be 
 added the names of Dr. Daubeny, the exploiter of the 
 atomic theory; and Mr. Edwards, the mathematical tutor. 
 As for President Routh, his regard for Charles Reade was 
 so thorough that when he received from the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor of the University of Cambridge a request to name 
 one of the Fellows of Magdalen as a recipient of the de- 
 gree of M.A., honoris causd, in that University, on the 
 occasion of the installation of Prince Albert as its Chan- 
 cellor, he at once sent in his name, and this, be it remem- 
 bered, before he had written a line. The few men of 
 brains whom the institution at that period could boast 
 already began to appreciate the future author. It was
 
 "Magdalen." Ill 
 
 the scum of the college that formed itself into a hostile 
 clique, and throughout endeavored to render Magdalen an 
 impossible place of residence for a gentleman, who, though 
 physically robust, was excessively sensitive. 
 
 In 1845 the office of Dean of Arts, tenable for a year, 
 fell in due course to Charles Reade's option. He deter- 
 mined to refuse it, albeit by such refusal he would have 
 forfeited the Vice-Presidency when his turn came, the 
 regulation being that a Fellow must take all the college 
 offices in succession, or abandon his claim to them. More- 
 over, the Dean of Arts would probably enjoy the privilege 
 of nominating a Demy, i. e., of making some fortunate gen- 
 tleman a present of an annuity for life, commencing at 
 about sixty, and ending with six hundred, a year. Tinder 
 the circumstances, to decline the office of Dean of Arts 
 was not quite worldly-wise ; but it entailed residence, and 
 Charles Reade had no ambition of stepping into a hornet's 
 nest. Eventually, at the urgent solicitation of his brother 
 William, who promised to come and share his rooms, he 
 reluctantly assented ; and Mr. Goldwin Smith, who at 
 that time was a resident undergraduate Demy, has put on 
 record his feelings of astonishment when the college offi- 
 cer, responsible for the moral conduct of the students, 
 appeared on the scene clad in a bright green coat with 
 brass buttons. This habiliment seems to have affected 
 lastingly the professorial mind of Mr. Goldwin Smith, 
 who possibly may still attribute the baptism of his crony, 
 John Conington, under the college pump to the laxity of 
 discipline encouraged by so grievous a decadence from his 
 canons of sartorial propriety. Anyhow, during Charles 
 Reade's year of deanery poor John Conington did suffer 
 an involuntary immersion at the hands of the Demies and 
 Gentlemen-Commoners, his offence being that he had en-
 
 112 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 \ 
 
 deavored to launch a debating society within the college 
 walls. Both he and his friend, Mr. GoMwin Smith, took 
 such dire umbrage at this indignity that they migrated to 
 University College. From a purely academical point of 
 view Magdalen sustained thereby an irreparable loss. An 
 offence of that sort, however, would have to be dealt with 
 by the Vice-President, and not by the Dean of Arts, so 
 that the don in the green coat with brass buttons could 
 not fairly be held to blame. Whether these riotous young 
 gentlemen were emboldened by the spectacle of Lincoln 
 or pea-green on the body of a dean may be open to dis- 
 cussion. Green, we know, is as revolutionary a color in 
 Ireland as is red in France. At that time of his life, how- 
 ever, Charles Reade was a harmless Tory. He strove to 
 propitiate the Fellows by playing whist in their common 
 room. He evoked the enthusiasm of the manly under- 
 graduates by his prowess with the willow on Cowley 
 Marsh. He fished the Cherwell with a casting-net, and 
 started archery in the grove, and bowls on the lawn. He 
 could not smoke, or imbibe the traditional port, but he 
 gave charming little dinner-parties, at one of which the 
 guests were surprised to find an entire hare placed before 
 each of them, in order, as their host phrased it, that no 
 one should quarrel with his neighbor about the back. He 
 devoured books in the Bodleian, and occasionally would 
 astonish the home circle at Ipsden by dropping in to eight- 
 o'clock breakfast after a seventeen miles' walk. He did 
 not enjoy it all, but endured it with the constancy of a 
 martyr, while, so far as the common room went, he escaped 
 any positive friction. Their little sarcasms and sly in- 
 nuendoes could not penetrate his crust of calm, impas- 
 sive, unuttering indifference ; and in the end they voted 
 Reade an incomprehensible man, who in their judgment
 
 "MagdaUn." 113 
 
 was not quite so negative as they had presupposed him 
 to be. 
 
 Now comes the oddest incident of this not very event- 
 ful year. As Dean of Arts he had a Demyship at his dis- 
 posal, and alone of all college officers since A.D. 1460, 
 when the first Demies were admitted, positively declined 
 to nominate. 
 
 Was this electoral purism ? Was it perversity ? Was 
 it sheer eccentricity? It may be ascribed to none of 
 these motives, but simply to the circumstance of none of 
 the candidates commending themselves to him. He would 
 not import into the college any one of whose merit, intel- 
 lectual and social, he did not feel conscientiously assured. 
 That was all. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was canvassed. Sir John Chandos 
 Reade, Bart., of Shipton Court, the head of his family, 
 wrote in right royal style to command him to nominate 
 one of his young friends. Then the son of that Mr. 
 Slatter, of Rose Hill, to whom he was indebted for many 
 a wheal on his young body, entered as a candidate, and 
 Charles Reade was urged to remember the benefits he 
 had received from diurnal flagellation, and make a hand- 
 some return for the moral elevation resulting therefrom. 
 Unfortunately for the pecuniary interest of the amiable 
 gentlemen thus pressed on the notice of the Dean of 
 Arts, he was not easily to be influenced. He averred that 
 he would neither disregard the mandate of the head of 
 his ancient family, nor prefer another to the son of his 
 whilom flagellant. He should therefore surrender his 
 nomination to President Routh, in whose judgment and 
 impartiality he felt the largest confidence. The common 
 room opened its mouth wide in wonder at this self-deny- 
 ing ordinance, but most assuredly Charles Reade did not
 
 114 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 suffer in its estimation; while the advocates of University 
 and College reform upheld him as a model worthy of imi- 
 tation, and as the initiator of a newer and purer system of 
 election. It is not necessaiy perhaps to echo this exag- 
 gerated encomium. Had a relative, or the son of a friend, 
 chanced to be a candidate, Charles Reade would have 
 duly recognized the claims of consanguinity or sodality. 
 His merit, if merit it was, consisted in declining to nomi- 
 nate merely for the sake of exercising his power of pat- 
 ronage, and above all he dreaded the responsibility of 
 introducing an unknown quantity into the college, if 
 Magdalen had been gracious to him, he would have re- 
 sponded to her benevolence with enthusiasm. As it was, 
 in lieu of being an alma mater she tried to pose as an in- 
 justa noverca, and at the last, after fifty years of Fellow- 
 ship, his cry was, " I will never enter their common room 
 again." But he was jealous for the honor of his college, 
 far more so than the gentry who were content to pick the 
 college purse while they raved about the Founder, and 
 romanced concerning statutes whose spirit they persis- 
 tently disregarded. 
 
 And so, thanks to the fraternal self-sacrifice of brother 
 William, who magnanimously devoted three weeks at a 
 stretch periodically in order to relieve Charles Reade 
 from boredom, the year of deanery was got through. 
 Goldwin Smith took umbrage at the green coat; but with 
 the exception of this superior person, no one quarrelled 
 with a dean who could not sink to the level of a don. 
 Magdalen in those halcyon days was an easy-going, 
 genial, academical club, and in summer really a very 
 charming place of residence ; indeed, brother William 
 ever after spoke of the college as luxurious and most 
 agreeable. A domestic man, he did not relish a pro-
 
 "Magdalen." 115 
 
 longed absence from his wife and children; but the hos- 
 pitality of Magdalen, and the excellence of its cuisine, 
 more than reconciled him to occasional spells of solitude 
 d deux with his absent and rather silent brother. 
 
 This was the last prolonged residence within the college 
 walls, with the exception of his year of Vice-Presidency, 
 that Charles Reade submitted to. The lines of his life 
 were not cast in Oxford, and his visits there were mere 
 episodes.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 PARIS AND GENEVA. 
 
 WE will now for the nonce dismiss Oxford, and revert 
 to Charlds Reade's happier and freer existence apart from 
 the academical corporation with which he possessed so 
 little affinity. 
 
 During his vacations as a law student he resolved to see 
 as much of the world as possible. Ipsden was his head- 
 quarters when he was not undergoing the solemn farce of 
 eating his Lincoln's Inn dinners, but he roamed afield, 
 chiefly, however, in his native lajid and in Scotland. The 
 coaching days were not those of luxurious travelling, but 
 he was a great walker, and some Oxford acquaintances af- 
 forded him alike hospitality, introductions, and splendid 
 sport in the Highlands. He was a gay, light-hearted 
 youngster at that period, with a fine taste for dancing 
 hornpipes and reels, and Scotland certainly attracted him 
 not a little. He remembered that his maternal grand- 
 mother was the daughter of an officer in the young Pre- 
 tender's army, and could therefore boast a slight strain of 
 Scotch blood in his otherwise English veins. The Scotch 
 character, moreover, interested him profoundly. He ad- 
 mired its solidity and caution. Hating their whiskey, he 
 was charmed by their high courage and splendid truthful- 
 ness. What religion he had was essentially Calvinistic, 
 and in his old age, when the strong convictions of youth 
 returned as the tide after the ebb, he preferred the simple
 
 Paris and Geneva. -117 
 
 Presbyterian form of worship to the ritual of the Churcli 
 of England. No marvel, therefore, that Scotland drew him 
 towards her, or that the sc'ene of one of his earlier and 
 perhaps most natural essays in the art of dramatic narra- 
 tion should have been laid in Scotland. " Christie John- 
 stone " was very much the product of the bright years of 
 his young manhood, though actually penned nearly two 
 decades later. It represented a revival of early impres- 
 sions, blended with a subsequent experience of the risks 
 and perils of herring fishing. Scotland seems to have ap- 
 pealed to him strongly, not merely as one devoted to his 
 gun, and to a certain extent an admirer of the picturesque, 
 nor solely because it had been idealized for the youth of 
 his generation with such rare skill by Sir Walter Scott, a 
 master he was taught by his Tory parents, if indeed he 
 needed teaching, to reverence ; but equally because he 
 found the Scotch so genuine, a people at once practical 
 and ideal. For Charles Reade, himself the most unprac- 
 tical and unbusiuess-like of all men, a dreamer who at 
 times was actually unconscious of what was passing around 
 him, held practical talent, as a quality beyond his compre- 
 hension, in high honor. Of course as a keen observer he 
 was never blind to the weak side of the North British 
 character. " Christie Johnstone " displays a close an- 
 alysis of the Scotch habit of thought, so much so that it 
 might have been written by a Scotchman born and bred. 
 Its every line evinces the friendly and admiring critic who 
 had journeyed to North Britain for amusement, and re- 
 mained to become warmly appreciative. Between the 
 years 1837 and 1847 his visits to the land of cakes were 
 chronic ; and when, in 1839, his brother William wedded 
 as his second wife Miss Murray of Ardbennie in Perth- 
 shire, Scotland offered a double attraction.
 
 118 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 In 1839 his fond mother seems to have provided him 
 with adequate funds for a tour on the Continent. The 
 route he travelled has since then become so wayworn as 
 to savor of the trite and commonplace. Everybody now 
 knows Paris, Geneva, and the Rhine by heart. It must be 
 remembered, however, that in 1839 the British tourist was 
 not much abroad. Railways were but commencing even 
 in England. Travellers, therefore, had to submit to the 
 weariful pace of the diligence, and the imminent risk of 
 accidents when that pace happened to be accelerated. 
 Hence a small tour through Western Europe involved 
 fatigue and expense to such an extent that most men 
 shrank from it, preferring to live at home at ease, and ac- 
 quire their knowledge of foreign parts from books and 
 newspapers. Fortunately we possess a fragmental record 
 of this episode in Charles Reade's life from his own pen in 
 the shape of letters sent home. They are the effusions of 
 youth and young Oxford, of a brain that had been satu- 
 rated with Aristotle, and trained to view all things human 
 and divine through academic spectacles. Yet they con- 
 tain flashes of original thought, couched in the language 
 of Readiana, and even at that early age indicating the bent 
 of his mind towards character-drawing. He went abroad 
 not so much to study architecture or stare at pictures as 
 to obtain a new view of men and manners. Those famil- 
 iar with his works will recognize in them his passion for 
 individuality and detestation of average. He may not 
 have been gifted with the keen eye of Dickens for oddity 
 and eccentricity, but a character devoid of distinctive col- 
 oring failed to interest him ; and we may perceive in the 
 following correspondence how eagerly he was groping 
 amid strange scenes after fresh types. There is but little 
 to show that at this period of his life he did more than
 
 Paris and Geneva. 119 
 
 dream of authorship ; he may or may not have forecast 
 his future, but anyhow he set to work in workmanlike fash- 
 ion, probing humanity below the surface, and acquiring a 
 knowledge of character while yet ignorant of the very 
 rudiments of dramatic construction. He shall, however, 
 tell his own tale in his own words. 
 
 The envelope wherein the following five letters were 
 sealed bears on the reverse this memorandum : 
 
 Four (the number actually was five) 
 
 letters from 
 Charles Reade 
 
 to 
 
 Papa 
 and 
 
 Mamma 
 
 A.D. 1839 Aetatis suae 25. 
 
 What brutal ink they are Avritten on ! 
 Sealed up Oct. 18 XGO 
 Whilst writing 2nd Vol. 
 
 Cloister and the Hearth. 
 
 Scene. 
 
 Gerard and the 
 Dusseldorf Doctor. 
 D.D. 
 
 The first is addressed to his mother at Ipsden House, 
 Wallingford, Berks, England ; and apparently, owing to 
 its being insufficiently stamped, the maternal purse was 
 mulcted to the extent of two shillings and tenpence, a 
 heavy penalty even for the days of the shilling postage. 
 It runs thus:
 
 120 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 BEDFORD HOTEL, RUE ST. HONOI:^, PARIS. 
 Wednesday, July 3, 1839. 
 
 "My DEAR MOTHER, I write a few lines to notify my safe arrival at the 
 French capital. I fell in with an acquaintance in London going as far as 
 Paris, and, as he speaks French, I was glad to close with the offer of his 
 company. This, however, delayed me longer in town than I liked, and 
 longer than I would have waited had the delay been first announced as a 
 condition of our travelling together. We went down to Southampton by 
 railway and coach, Francis Faber, whom I met in London, having dis- 
 suaded me from the long sea trip from London. Railway, forty-six miles ; 
 coach road, eighteen. 
 
 " On getting into the railway at Vauxhall I found a face opposite to me 
 that made me laugh. Thinks I, I am sure I have laughed at you before. 
 On taxing my memory, I became conscious that it was the ludicrous phiz 
 of a comedian, whom I had seen represent a miserly servant, whom his 
 miserly master had, in a paroxysm of generosity, promised a guinea, which 
 in a cooler moment he repented of, but which the other did not fail to ex- 
 tort. Learning from our remarks that we were going abroad, this gentle- 
 man set his eyes and tongue agoing, one as fast as the other, and drew a 
 rapid sketch of the tour we ought to make, and the route we ought to pur- 
 sue. This finished, our rapid vehicle set him down some miles from Lon- 
 don, on which he said, " God bless you !" and made a theatrical co-ngl. 
 
 " This youth's remarks did not stick as some people's do ; however, I re- 
 member, he said there were no cathedrals abroad so fine as the British, 
 whereupon I pushed him with Milan, Cologne, and Antwerp. 
 
 "The sea trip from Southampton to Havre was wearisome. I was 
 squeamish, though not vanquished. We started from Portsmouth at 
 twelve, and reached Havre at half-past ten. The harbor of this place, 
 where we landed, is like the locks ill a river, so narrow. As soon as ever 
 we ran it, ' Whoop,' says a chap on one bank, ' 'Oop,' says another on the 
 other, whereby we were given to understand that the Monarch, Captain 
 Forder, passenger, C. R. L. F. of M. C. (Charles Reade, Lay Fellow of Mag- 
 dalen College), was not undiscovered by the gens-d'armes, douaniers, and 
 other harpies. One of the former was on board of us the moment the ves- 
 sel touched the pier, occupied the passage-plank with his body, and took 
 all our passports. Our portmanteaus were in the hold of the vessel by law, 
 our bags we were allowed at once to take to the Custom - House, where 
 they were cursorily examined by the C. H. officers, as the portmanteaus
 
 Paris and Geneva. 121 
 
 were diligently searched the next morning at 8 o'clock. Every hotel keeps 
 a chap called a commissionaire, Anglice a decoy duck, whose business it is 
 to stand on the quay, pounce upon the arrivals before they can recover 
 their scattered senses, announce the immeasurable superiority of his inn, 
 and by way of commentary bustle thither with his victim's luggage. Being 
 prepared for this, we sang out, ' London Hotel,' whereupon all the other 
 ducks fled before a stout, noisy Frenchman, who poured a tide of very 
 tolerable English upon us, and carried us off to the London Hotel. We 
 slept in the middle of the house, yet up three pairs of stairs bricked floor 
 of course. Monsieur le Commissionaire rose with the sun, and secured us 
 places in the diligence. The coupe being engaged, we took the banquette, 
 an open place like a cab at the top of all, where the conductor or guard 
 sits with three passengers, the coachman sitting in a great seat bang over- 
 right the wheel horse's shoulders. 
 
 " Havre is a very fine town. There is a lofty hill a little way out fairly 
 studded with houses. On that hill live one hundred and fifty English 
 families. Our commissionaire bustled about, got our passports, showed 
 us the town, bolted into the great Church, jabbered so loud as quite to 
 drown the priests' gabbling, and exit sprinkling himself with some of the 
 Holy Water. Paris, and our route thither, which was magnificent in point 
 of scenery, is for another letter, better ink, paper, pens, etc. I beg to 
 assure you of my safety, and the pleasure I have already derived from my 
 trip. Your affectionate Son, CHARLES." 
 
 One would like to frame a guess as to who the compan- 
 ion of his travel was, and, further, as to the identity of the 
 comedian with the mirth-provoking visage. He has left 
 no clue to either. Had the former been an Oxonian his 
 name would doubtless have appeared, while as regards the 
 latter, the theatre being anathema at Ipsden, one feels 
 rather surprised that a comedian was alluded to even inci- 
 dentally, and still more that this was followed up by an 
 avowal of having seen him play. Perhaps Mrs. Reade 
 may have frowned and ejaculated impatiently when she 
 read that portion aloud to the family circle. But we may 
 rest assured this little lapsus calami about the theatre was 
 more than amply atoned for by the sly hit at the priest 
 6
 
 122 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 in the great church of Havre. Uncle Faber, from his 
 splendid solitude at Sherburn Hospital, had predicted the 
 downfall of the Papacy, the wish in his case being father 
 to the thought, and his sister-in-law of Ipsden firmly be- 
 lieved the good man to be one of the major prophets. 
 Son Charles knew that nothing was so likely to charm 
 his mother as a hard hit at anybody, or anything, papisti- 
 cal. Hence the allusion to priestly jabber may be taken 
 cum ffrano as a bit of diplomacy. 
 
 It seems strange that Paris, for which city he subse- 
 quently conceived such a strong affection, should not by 
 any means have taken him captive at first sight. Eight 
 years later, indeed up to the date of the Revolution of 
 1848, which fairly nauseated him, he idolized Paris, and 
 seemed when absent beset with a restless desire to revisit 
 it. Paris appears to have grown upon him, but not until 
 he had perfected himself in colloquial French, and was 
 able to sit out a French play without the aid of a dic- 
 tionary. 
 
 His first impressions of the gayest of gay cities may be 
 gathered from the following letter, evidently penned with 
 great care. Mrs. Reade was one of those domestic deities 
 that require much propitiation, and her favorite son had 
 the best reasons for desiring to keep in her good graces. 
 Vide the postscript. 
 
 " HOTEL BEDFORD, Tuesday, July 9. 
 
 " MY DEAR MOTHER, I have received through Lady Steele one letter 
 from you. By the time this reaches you I shall be, D. V., in Geneva, and 
 in possession of any other you may have sent there. My last letter left 
 me at Havre, where we slept, and were flea-bitten. On perambulating the 
 town in the morning (this being, you are to know, the first foreign town 
 I had ever seen) I began to look out for the points of difference. The 
 houses have an entirely different appearance, but in what the difference 
 lies it would not be easy to define ; however, they are higher, the windows
 
 Paris and Geneva. 123 
 
 open like folding doors, and have generally green blinds. They are also 
 all old, and this is the case in every part of France I have seen. Nothing 
 appears to have been built within the last two centuries. The streets 
 crowded with people, who wear blue blouses pretty generally. 
 
 " We left Havre at eleven o'clock in the morning, and as we were occu- 
 pied some time at the Custom-House, had not much time to make observa- 
 tions. The coupe being taken, we had the banquette. The first thing I 
 discovered was, that in France carriages take the right hand in passing. 
 We had a fresh coachman every stage, who drove horses just as English- 
 men drive pigs, let the reins fall upon their backs, and laid the whip into 
 them in forty different ways. The whip is everything with these fellows. 
 It is never idle, always either cracking in the air or stinging the cattle. 
 We drove out of Havre with five horses, two behind, three in front a 
 very common number. The wheels of the diligence were two thirds as 
 broad as those of an English broad-wheeled wagon, but we rolled along 
 at a good pace over a finer road than any in Oxfordshire, or, in fact, any 
 that ever I saw except the Great North Road. We had no reason to 
 regret not having taken the boat to Rouen, since the turnpike presents the 
 finer view of the two. The Seine is a magnificent river, and its beauties 
 are seen from the road, which never separates long from it, infinitely 
 better than they can be from the river. The way in which the river 
 first bursts upon your sight, as you wheel round a corner to descend a hill 
 that has taken you an hour to mount, is prodigiously fine. Another view 
 I particularly remarked. We had lost sight of the river some time, and 
 entered a very woody country. We were ascending a mountain in a very 
 serpentine manner, when, at a turn of the road, we saw at one moment a 
 huge basin of wooded hills, before, behind, and on the left ; on the right, 
 far below, two gigantic branches .of the Seine rolling through such a 
 plain ! grass, corn, groves of apple-trees, towns, villages, chateaux, steam- 
 boats, and large merchant vessels on the river, the air perfumed with the 
 apple-trees on the side of the roads. Rouen is first seen from a high hill. 
 Edinburgh is not to be compared to it! The audacious sweep of the river, 
 the mountains behind the town, the town itself, as picturesque an object as 
 either the mountain or the river, as if nature had planted it to give the scene 
 the magnificent cathedral, worth a thousand Notre Dames ! Oh, my eye ! 
 
 " We were annoyed with no pave between Havre and Paris except before 
 entering a town, when you have generally half a mile of it; but I hear we 
 shall travel a great deal on pave between Paris and Switzerland. The 
 towns are far more frequent than in England. Chateaux, I did not see
 
 124 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 many; the finest belonged to a ribbon -merchant, so trade flourishes over 
 here, I suppose. At Rouen they put us into the coupb without extra 
 charge, and mounted some snobs in the banquette. The diligence drivers 
 flanked all their acquaintances they met on the road, making the leather 
 thong crack about six inches from their skulls. However, it sometimes 
 happened that these foot-passengers touched their hats to the driver 
 (touching the hat in France is no more than nodding or winking in Eng- 
 land), in which case he always shifted his other instrument of recognition 
 to his left hand, and, drawing off his cap, bowed with graceful, respectful 
 empr easement. 
 
 " We had one nice scene after Rouen. The sun had just set, when, in 
 the middle of a tremendous hill, from which Rouen (at a great distance) 
 was visible, we, having eight horses, caught the Dieppe diligence with but 
 five. The Dieppe people got out ; incited by their example we did the 
 same. The road lay through a wood. Thirty or forty people walking by 
 the side of the two enormous machines, some smoking, others lighting 
 their pipes, all chatting, polite, and agreeable, produced a pleasant effect 
 At the top of the hill our humanity was rewarded by a fine retrospect. 
 We raced the Dieppe all the way to Paris, beat them when about three 
 miles from P. ; but as we clapped on a handsome set of horses two miles 
 from the city, just to make a show, our old friend rolled by, the driver 
 indulging in pantomimic gestures that ended in a flank all round for his 
 beasts. On reaching Paris I went into a warm bath, for which I paid 
 four francs and a half. A knowing man in the inn told me he gets his at 
 the same place for one franc six sous ; the fact i?, you must ask for a 
 simple bath, value one franc. I had a complete one, viz., one covered 
 with a piece of linen, price one franc and a half, which adds nothing to 
 your comfort. Take your own soap. I took what the man offered me, 
 for which I was charged thirty sous, at which preposterous price it is 
 actually sold in the shops. To be sure such delicious soap never found 
 its way to England ; it melts like a peach, and smells like nectar. I mean 
 te bring you a cake. 
 
 " Mr. Lane, the clerk of the hotel, speaks French and English with 
 equal fluency. I begged him to learn at the poste restante where Miss 
 Reade was. They refused to give him any information, and I hear this 
 is their common practice. Mr. Lane got me my Swiss passport, and has 
 been negotiating for a place in the diligence ; but, to my horror, just as I 
 had packed up everything, word came that the diligence was full till 
 Friday, when a place in the banquette, or interieure, was left ! The coupe
 
 Paris and Geneva. 125 
 
 taken for nineteen days except one place on Saturday! So here I am 
 booked for three days more in Paris, of which I am heartily tired. I 
 have dined twice with Lady Steele, and since this contretemps have ac- 
 cepted another invitation. I have been once at the theatre to see the 
 famous Mdlle. Mars, who, at the age of seventy years, enacts pretty girls 
 of seventeen. Such, however, was not the case this time. She repre- 
 sented Mdlle. de Belle Isle, a lady of rank and misfortune, who comes to 
 Paris to throw herself at the king's feet on behalf of her father and 
 brother in the Bastile. Ilere, as her suit has just begun to prosper, a 
 singular concatenation of circumstances brings her virtue under suspicion, 
 and every attempt she makes to clear up the mystery serves by a fatality 
 to make matters worse. The scenes between her and her chivalrous lover, 
 the Chevalier Detubigny, were very striking. At length, in defiance of 
 what appears to him the evidence of his senses, he undertakes the defence 
 of her honor. Then follows a scene in which he bids her farewell on the 
 eve of a desperate duel he has undertaken, unknown, of course, to her. 
 This was so well written and finely acted that, although I followed the 
 players with a book, the sentences of which I had partly learned by help of 
 a dictionary, I sniffed a little, and was very near yelping right out. I shall 
 never forget how the dog said those three words, l Je pars, GabrielleP 
 
 " ' Breathes there a man with soul so dead !' I shall be very glad to 
 return home, as soon as ever I have seen the principal beauties of Switz- 
 erland. I have picked up one or more little traits of character, national 
 and industrial, but not so many as I could have wished. Of the public 
 buildings in ' avis ' I will only say at present they are so magnificent and 
 numerous that after the first two days the mind is no longer capable of 
 surprise or much gratified by anything in that way I could gaze at. The 
 picture-gallery of the Louvre is an avenue, a long walk for robust persons. 
 Notre Dame is a humbug, unworthy to be the cathedral of Paris. Ver- 
 sailles I have seen, but could not gain admission. Before I leave Paris, 
 since I am to be detained here, I think I might as well write the letter I 
 promised my father, in which I will mention one or two of the things I 
 have seen and observed in Paris. In the meantime, love to all. 
 
 " Your affectionate Son, CHAULKS READE. 
 
 " P. S. In answer to something in your letter, I have not spent one 
 farthing of your money in knick-knackeries, and I will not spend above 
 one napoleon so during all my tour. 
 
 " Foi de Chevalier /"
 
 126 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 The postscript is very telltale. Mrs. Reade, who styled 
 her husband "Mr. Reade" when the clouds chanced to 
 have collected on her brow, and " ray dearest John " when 
 the sun shone, was, in her w r ay, a domestic tyrant. In 
 the twenties of his life son Charles was no match for her, 
 and we may read their mutual relations in the deferential 
 tone adopted by him when referring to the delicate sub- 
 ject of money. 
 
 The letter to his father, if ever written, is not extant. 
 Of the series, preserved apparently by his fond mother, 
 the next in chronological order is addressed to his brother 
 William from Geneva. What is now styled the Grand Ho- 
 tel des Bergues, in 1839 had not plastered itself with a gran- 
 diloquent epithet; grandeur being, apparently, the prod- 
 net of railways. It was tenanted at the time by one Hcrr 
 A. E. Rufenacht, and the note-paper placed at the disposal 
 of its guests was headed with a vignette representing with 
 average accuracy the section of the northern side of Geneva 
 towards the lake, including, of course, the "Bergues" itself. 
 
 " My dear William," he writes, " the above is A. E. Rufenacht's notion 
 of Geneva, viz., the place upon the borders of whose lake stands the inn that 
 calls him its master. All the beauties of this noble place lie on that side of 
 the lake which, for certain reasons, escaped our maitre-cfJioteTs picturesque 
 investigation. In point of fact, Geneva is not the dirty hole he has repre- 
 sented it. On his side of the- lake are some very high hills, to which his 
 vignette does no justice ; on the other side, at different distances from the 
 water-side, are the famous mountains of Switzerland. A. the town, most- 
 ly situate on steep, rising ground. B. C. mountains rising direct from a 
 thick fringe of trees, spotted with a few Swiss houses ornecs, on the very 
 brink of the water. E. a mountain lying a little back. F. G. others a long 
 distance down the lake. J. long, straggling, hundred - peak Mont Blanc. 
 X. a mountain overlooking the highest part of the town. 0. the two deep, 
 narrow streams in which the lake is made to rush through the town. 
 Mont Blanc is so distant that (other mountains being close) its vast height 
 reaches the mind only in the form of an obvious inference, i. e., you can see
 
 Paris and Geneva. 127 
 
 no part of Mont Blanc that is not either covered or sprinkled with snow, 
 but the fine eminences (not less, I imagine, than five thousand feet) near 
 at hand are clothed with vines to their very summits. I loitered about by 
 the side of the blue waters last night, and asked myself whether it was 
 possible I could be personally present at this famous city; yet I am sure 
 my arrival hither was not contrived with that magical celerity which nat- 
 urally dazzles the senses, and might excuse a person for fancying that 
 nothing is but what is not. Sir, I left Paris at 5 P.M. Saturday, and ar- 
 rived here Tuesday 6 P.M., seventy-seven hours, during which time I never 
 left the diligence, except at the ordinary stoppages, and twice every twenty- 
 four hours for breakfast and dinner, the only meals allowed to travellers 
 in French coaches. After being out of bed three nights, and encountering 
 dust and heat unknown in Britain, I went to rest at my usual hour, and 
 got up to breakfast at nine without the slightest feeling of fatigue. With 
 regard to the heat in the South of France and here, I need only say that I 
 rode in the diligence without my coat and neckcloth, and sleep without one 
 blanket, and the windows, as wide as folding-doors, wide open. 
 
 " Paris. I arrived there at seven in the morning, after twenty-one hours 
 of the best diligence in France, went to Lawson's English hotel, 323 Rue 
 St. Honore". Bath, breakfast, etc. It is so impossible to convey in a letter 
 any idea of grand public buildings that I shall reserve them for colloquy, 
 and confine myself to other matters of observation. I soon discovered that 
 the French understand pleasure better than we, and they pursue it steadily, 
 not boisterously nor laboriously, into which contrary extreme the English 
 are apt to fall, but with a graceful yet matter - of - course air. The most 
 dissipated keep what in London would be thought very early hours ; but 
 their evening pleasures commence early, and they are free from that stark, 
 staring, national madness which induces us to sit sipping wine three con- 
 secutive hours. Talk of the population of London, it appears nothing com- 
 pared with that of Paris to the eye of a walker ; at the same moment the 
 Boulevards at every part, the Tuileries gardens, all the places of public 
 amusement, and all the streets are so crowded you can hardly see the 
 ground : this is in the evening. The cafes, which arc extremely numerous, 
 have often large awnings erected outside them, under which some fifty 
 chairs are set. The visitants in fine weather sit here and sip their coffee, 
 or eat their ices in a delightful shade. One very cheap amusement is 
 Musard's concert one franc. The music, which is all instrumental, is ex- 
 ecuted in magnificent style ; the musicians play in a large building, roofed, 
 but opened on the side facing the gardens, between which and the said
 
 128 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 building nothing intervenes but a few pillars. In the building and out- 
 side hundreds of seats are placed, hundreds of persons walk during the 
 performance in the gardens and orange grove, from which the music is 
 heard to advantage, a noble cafe adjoining. The building and gardens 
 blaze with lamps, and the former with gold and silver columns. Calino's 
 concert is conducted on a similar plan, but here in the garden is an am- 
 phitheatre, where chaps ride with a spear at the ring, so much a turn. 
 Of course I have been all along on the lookout for little traits of charac- 
 ter, national and individual, but with no very brilliant success. However, at 
 Notre Dame I saw two French ladies encounter each other at the door of the 
 confessional. Instantly they both recoiled, courtesied a la mode, and insist- 
 ed A that B, B that A, should have the precedence. One would have thought 
 they were stepping into the salle-a-manger. At length one, with a deep ex- 
 pression of gratitude and affability, consented to go and confess her sins first. 
 
 " Government, which interferes with everything in France, kills all the 
 meat for the Parisian tables. There are in Paris four thundering slaugh- 
 ter-houses, something in the style of an English Royal Palace. One of these 
 I visited, and having to cross a moderate - sized river of blood and filth, I 
 showed signs of aversion, whereon my French conductor grinned from ear 
 to ear and said : ' Monsieur, ce n'est pas propre /' 
 
 " Again in the Royal forest of Versailles I found a haycock, a solitary 
 haycock. This is for the Frenchmen to jump over and upon, pour s'amuser. 
 The forest is full of people every evening, amusing themselves with con- 
 versation, soft balls, and dancing. I went one evening to see the lower 
 classes dance, having heard so much of their grace, etc. ; but was rather 
 disappointed. One or two of the men danced nicely, but they were some 
 of the jeune gens from Paris. There were only two aristocratic house- 
 maids, whereof one lolloped, the other spat. The ladies are so very ill-made 
 in France, that, of course, they cannot dance so well as English women 
 with one half of their immense practice could do. 
 
 "My attempts at speaking French are said by those who delight in re- 
 mote analogies to resemble the convulsive efforts of a chimney-sweeper to 
 swarm up a fresh - soaped pole to that joint of mutton which he shall 
 never attain. At the bath last night I asked for a comb ; they nodded as- 
 sent, and brought an egg ! I once soared in conversation as high as what 
 Aristotle calls a gnome, i.e., a sort of moral maxim sententiously expressed : * 
 
 * He highly recommends the dramatic poet to season his verse with a 
 judicious interspersion of these
 
 Paris and Geneva. 129 
 
 e. y., a cab-driver was working his machine over the stones to take me to a 
 neighboring village, and kept whipping his beast. Says I, ' Ne fatiguez pas 
 votre cheval. Les chcvaux sont les boiis serviteurs de r/iomme.' 1 ' on,' 1 says 
 the Frenchman with a look of intense admiration, his eyes glistening, and 
 (as they invariably do when anything bright strikes their minds from with- 
 in or without) took his horse a flank that sounded like the crack of a pistol. 
 A delicious effect was produced in the coffee-room at Lawson's hotel by the 
 unexpected intersertion of one word into what promised to be a romantic 
 observation. An Englishman said, ' The tomb of Eloise and Abelard in 
 the cemetery of Pere la Chaise is choked up with weeds and dirt. It's a 
 sad pity their tomb should go to decay in this manner, the parties (quelle 
 horrev,r /) having made such a noise in the world.' 
 
 " I went to the Morgue twice. There was a corpse there each time. 
 The first had no marks, the second a number of little cuts round the left 
 breast. If you walk over the Parisian bridges at night, they pitch you 
 over into the Seine, fish you up, and, bringing you to the Morgue, ob- 
 tain from Government 5 francs for finding what was, properly speaking, 
 never lost. There are fifty thousand soldiers in Paris. All the streets are 
 guarded with military, besides the gens - d'armes, but the bridges are not. 
 If you must cross a bridge at night, you ask for a couple of soldiers one 
 won't come, because he must return alone. They escort you over, and re- 
 ceive from you four or five francs. There was a small row in Paris just 
 before I came away, which detained my washerwoman from me an hour or 
 two. I can't say what was done. If fifty or a hundred citizens were 
 killed, a Parisian, male or female, would call it a trifling affair. 
 
 "Ashamed am 1,0 Bill, to send such a poor letter as this to England; 
 but I must this day ascend the hill that overlooks Geneva, and am anxious 
 to let you all know where I am, and what are my plans, without delay. To- 
 morrow I steam down the lake, visit Lausanne, with other places, and get 
 across to Chamounix. I have Nellie's map and a guide-book, and money 
 enough to buy the costume necessary for the hills and tour for a week be- 
 fore I return to Geneva, in doing which I shall touch at places on the lake 
 omitted purposely in going. By that time I expect to find a remittance, 
 which will enable me to go by diligence to Lucerne. Then I shall ascend 
 the Righi, descend it on the other side, get to Basle, and sail to Rotterdam, 
 stopping at places on the Rhine, or not, as may happen. I wish I had you 
 with me. One requires sympathy to season the very finest dish Nature can 
 dress for us. Best love to all at home. 
 
 " Your affectionate Brother, CHARLES READE. 
 
 6*
 
 130 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " P. S. I wrote from Dijon to my mother to ask for some money. If 
 she will send me a Bank of England note, just taking the number, and ad- 
 dress Poste Restante, or Hotel des Bcrgues, there is no chance of its mis- 
 carrying. I shall obtain in Geneva its full value in French money, which 
 is current everywhere, whereas the Genevese coin is rejected in parts of 
 Switzerland." 
 
 The above affords a fair idea of the writer's mental at- 
 titude at that period of his life. Addressed to a brother 
 who had been first the naughty boy of the family, then 
 sailor, next soldier, and subsequently a man of leisure en- 
 joying the income of an eldest son, it was penned with a 
 trifle less constraint than those to his father and mother, 
 yet in the full consciousness of its affording pabulum for 
 the Ipsden breakfast-table. Of all men Charles Reade 
 throughout his life was most unwilling to report himself, 
 or detail his every word and action. It is not too mucli 
 to affirm that he preferred to shroud himself in a thin veil 
 of mystery. This tour, however, was evidently undertak- 
 en on the pre-existent arrangement, that he was to narrate 
 at all events the outline of his journey. Doubtless the 
 route had been chalked out with his sister Nellie (Ellinor), 
 who was much attracted by the Continent. Hence the 
 passing allusion to her map as to a pole star. 
 
 This and the other letters of the series would be com- 
 monplace but for the indications they afford of the gradual 
 evolution of literary capacity. He wrote as he conversed, 
 sententiously, and with due regard to Aristotle's canon. 
 It must be remembered, however, that malgre his mild 
 philosophizing, he was then a bright and sprightly young 
 man, brimful of vigor, a pedestrian, and an athlete. It 
 was on his return from this very self-same tour that the 
 writer of these lines saw him jump on the Ipsden dining- 
 room table, an oval board with many legs, and, fiddle in
 
 Paris and Geneva. 131 
 
 hand, strike up a merry tune and dance the double shuffle. 
 Although a Fellow of Magdalen, he was almost a boy; in- 
 deed, it took him many years to don the gravity of man- 
 hood. He thought epigrammatically, and though he had 
 not yet begun to write his thoughts as he thought them, 
 his speech was invariably not merely pointed, but barbed. 
 His letters are of value to his friends as giving a clew to 
 the steady progress of his mind towards literature, and 
 especially towards the drama, the pole to which his whole 
 being seemed at all times and in all places to turn.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE HOSPICE OF ST. BERNARD. 
 
 THE next epistle of the series is addressed to his father, 
 and contains more of the Charles Reade of later days. It 
 is penned in a freer vein than the solemn essay he indited 
 on entering as a law student, but there are still ample evi- 
 dences of a desire to gain his father's appreciation. He 
 was writing to a man who enjoyed the reputation in his 
 own county of being an admirable raconteur, a ready wit, 
 and as quick at repartee as he was gentle in his sarcasm. 
 He knew the old Squire as a keen observer of human nat- 
 ure, and as possessing that practical talent which he him- 
 self lacked. In writing to his fond, exacting mother he 
 was always in leading-strings; in addressing his brother 
 he dropped to mere colloquy; but when attempting de- 
 scription for the perusal of his father he was put on his 
 mettle. Hence in this effusion, crude as it is, and barely 
 suggesting the future author, we detect more of decided 
 literary effort, and indeed a forecast of some of his best 
 work, such, for example, as the scenes in " The Cloister and 
 the Hearth," where he contrasts the mind of the Church 
 with that of the World. But here, as in all his earlier 
 letters, there is noticeable none of that magnificent polish, 
 still less the crystallization of ideas, which was the char- 
 acteristic of his style as an author. He had not as yet be- 
 gun to school his pen, and was wont in after-years to ridi- 
 cule the diffuseness which he subsequently labored to cor-
 
 The Hospice of St. Bernard. 133 
 
 rect. We see here none the less the quick eye for effects, 
 the clear diagnosis of men's minds, and the love of epigram, 
 which was one of his distinguishing traits through life. 
 All, it will be remarked, is in embryo, and at times shapeless 
 and commonplace, disjecta membra, requiring collocation 
 and concentration. A biography, however, must neces- 
 sarily be a record of development, and for this reason we 
 give the less matured as leading up by degrees to the best 
 of our author. The letter opens with lines quoted from 
 memory, as is evidenced by an erasure. We give it, as the 
 rest of this series, word for word : 
 
 " ' Seven weary uphill leagues we sped 
 The setting sun to see, 
 Sullen and grim he sank to rest, 
 Sullen and grim sank we; 
 Six sleepless hours of night we passed 
 The rising sun to see, 
 Sullen and grim he rose at last, 
 Sullen and grim rose we.' 
 
 MILTON, " Pr. R." 1st Book. 
 
 HOTEL DE LA TOUR, MARTIGXY, Wednesday. 
 
 " My DEAR FATHER, I write to you in the middle of a pedestrian tour. 
 On Friday afternoon last I walked from Geneva, knapsack on my back, to 
 Bonneville eighteen miles ; the next day to Chiles and Vallenches, char 
 to Chamounix. From Chamounix, the next day, I walked to^Montanvert, 
 and hopped about with a pole on the Mcr de Glace ; the next day from 
 Chamounix, whither one is forced to return from Montanvert. I walked, 
 and rode upon a chance mule, to Martigny ; from Martigny next day to 
 Orlieve, thence walked the grand route to L' Hospice de St. Bernard, from 
 thence to the Col de Ferry, Orlieve, and ?o to Martigny. In the course of 
 the excursion I have supped full of the terrible and sublime, and am now 
 no more excited by entering a gloomy gorge, with great masses of rock 
 bulging out from the top of great, soaring mountains over my head, than 
 you are when Green Hill happens to burst upon your view, as you destine 
 to destruction the hereditary beeches. I have been unfortunate with Mont
 
 134 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Blanc. Although nobody knows so well when the sun is out of bed as ho, 
 he wore his nightcap all the time I was at Chamounix, and when I got to 
 the other side of him he appeared no higher than his neighbors. The fact 
 was, he was the most distant of them all, and the ground, or rather snow, 
 I trod upon was seven thousand six hundred and forty feet above the level 
 of the sea. 
 
 " The Aiguilles, as they are called, that shoot up nearly under the travel- 
 ler's nose, when he is at the top of the little hill Montanvert, tower perpen- 
 dicularly like a spear's head. The light, fleecy clouds of a fine day sail 
 across their necks, but their points and heads peer out above everything, 
 so lofty and so near, that, like high buildings, they appear as you look at 
 them to be moving slowly along the sky. I care little how high above some 
 sea a hundred leagues off any given hill is known by calculation to be ; 
 the mountain that rises highest above the level of my eyes as I look at it 
 pleases them most. 
 
 " You have heard and read and seen pictures of the dogs of St. Bernard, 
 how they pick a dead man out of the snow, bark three times, lick him dry, 
 cut back to the convent (sic), ring the bell, nab the porter as soon as he 
 appears, and draw him by the coat-tails to the place, and whine till the 
 poor man is brought to life again with blankets and spirits in the kitchen ; 
 at other times, when they think it looks likely to snow, how they turn out 
 with a bottle of cognac round their necks, throw themselves, as if by merest 
 accident, in a traveller's way, refresh him, and slyly conduct him to the 
 monastery. 
 
 "Such tales I, of yore, amused myself with, but as soon as I had finally 
 fixed on my profession, it occurred to me that I must make up my mind 
 to conjugate the verb ' humbug' in the active voice alone. As I ascended 
 to St. Bernard I said to myself, 'What do these dogs really do?' Why, 
 they are taken out by a servant, and when they find a body, they scratch, 
 as every other dog omits no opportunity of doing. One of the monks, in 
 answer to the question I put, told me the dogs never went oui alone ; how- 
 ever, I must tell you, that when they find themselves in the immediate 
 vicinity of a body they set up a loud bark, which brings the accompanying 
 servant to the spot. So that others have flattered, and I done justice to 
 the animals. 
 
 " I must tell you something about my visit to the hospice. I started 
 from Martigny with a char-a-banc mule and guide, detached the mule from 
 the cliar at Sulde, a village half-way, and rode him to the hospice. On my 
 arrival I was shown by a monk into the salle-a-mangcr, where were five
 
 The Hospice of St. Bernard. 135 
 
 strangers, who rose on my entrance, and as we sat down to dinner immedi- 
 ately, I have no doubt I had been descried from a distance and waited for. 
 The dinner, unlike any other in this country, consisted of a succession of 
 single dishes, each carved by a monk, for I must tell you that, as there 
 were two ladies in the company, the monks could not, by their rules, dine 
 with us, as otherwise they would, but were represented by one of their 
 number. First, soup ; second, fritters, beignets de pommes, as they call 
 them ; third, stewed beef ; fourth, roast veal ; fifth, cheese and nuts, which 
 made a contemporaneous appearance. Our monk was young, well-bred, 
 and well-mannered. He wore the dress of his order a black fool's-cap, 
 with a round tassel at top, a coarse black robe belted round the waist, a 
 vest buttoned up to the throat with pretty little round convex buttons 
 planted half an inch apart, a military stock made of little beads, a piece 
 of white tape curled round his neck, and, descending his breast, was lost 
 to sight ; at the end of this no doubt hung some religious toy or other. I 
 caught (though you may be sure I was all ears) nothing of the conversa- 
 tion but this : he told us that a military man, a friend of the superior's, 
 having seen through the world, and imbibed a thorough distaste for it, 
 obtained a vacant place among the confreres of St. Bernard. His boxes, 
 five or six in number, were sent up, and the next afternoon he came. 
 ' Much cooler here than in the valley,' says he. ' Oui, monsieur, id Fair 
 est toujours vifj responded a monk. The next morning at breakfast there 
 was a palpable fog, or rather which of course, from its height, is an 
 every-day occurrence St. Bernard was deep in the clouds. The soldier, 
 tired of war's alarms, conversed a little, eat much, and meditated more. At 
 noon the sentinel saw a figure wrapped in a military cloak descending the 
 hill with rapid strides, and a note left in the refectory hoped the brethren 
 would not put themselves to inconvenience with the baggage, as its removal 
 from St. Bernard's was an affair of secondary importance, and did not call 
 for despatch. 
 
 " The wine here is delicious. For this I had been prepared by my guide, 
 who whn I asked him if the holy brethren drank wine, responded exactly 
 thus, ' Out, out, et du bon vin ! He ! he ! et du bon vin ! e.t du bon vin, he ! 
 he ! he ! et du bon vin, he ! he I lie ! he /' If no sign of mortification ap- 
 pears in the stomachs and faces of the monks of St. Bernard, it is never- 
 theless true that they devote themselves to a deadly climate for the benefit 
 of their fellow-creatures; four young monks out of their small number 
 were lying dead not long ago. In winter of course it is cruelly cold ; in 
 summer it is best described by the epithet (spelt aright) I have put above
 
 130 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 into a reverend gentleman's mouth. However, take an instance : there is 
 a little building adjoins the convent (sic) used as a morgue. Into this all 
 travellers found dead and unowned are put for the purpose of recognition. 
 Here, such is the nature of the air of St. Bernard, they remain for three 
 years in such a state that their friends would recognize them. The features 
 and character of the face remain, and the whole carcass turns into ' bones 
 and leather,' without decomposing. These things I saw within two yards 
 of me, but seeing is not believing ; my mind could not realize the thing, 
 and I was no more horrified by the sight than by Burns's description of such 
 things in ' Tarn O'Shanter,' though the reality in point of fact leaves the 
 fiction far behind. The monks have a harrowing plan of putting the poor 
 creatures in the morgue into the attitude in which they were found dead in 
 the snow.which of course enhances the ghastly effect. I have a distinct re- 
 membrance of one man who stands opposite the window, his arms folded 
 over his stomach, with as degagee an air as if he could step over the way 
 and shake hands with you in a moment : but I am thankful he does not 
 haunt me in my dreams, as perhaps he would some persons. 
 
 " After dinner the monk left us. We chatted, I with a German who 
 spoke English, and went to bed. At half-past six in the morning a single 
 knock, heavy and deep like an Oxford dun, and in came through the half- 
 open door the black fool's-cap ; it remained a moment, and exit. ' That 
 means I'm to get up,' said I, and up I got. As I was dressing I heard the 
 organ peal at a little distance with fine effect When I came down the 
 house was clear. All my fellow-voyagers were off. I drank three cups 
 of coffee, and then the monk of yesterday came to show me the place. I 
 was puzzled how to pay him, for you must know that the society is not so 
 rich as it was, and it is the thing for all who can afford it to pay as much 
 as they would at an inn, but no compulsion. However, I watched my op- 
 portunity, which soon occurred. The monk was showing me the chapel ; 
 I discovered at a distance the ' tronc des aumones.' On this I got my two 
 five-franc pieces in my hand, and as we passed the box, slipped them in 
 with a nothing-at-all sort of air. This, I was afterwards informed, is the 
 comme ilfaut method of doing the thing. I did not buy at Martigny a St. 
 Bernard puppy, because I was not sure how you and the mamma would re- 
 ceive it, and wax sure that I must give a good deal of money for it, without 
 the positive certainty of getting the genuine breed the puppies at the 
 hospital were all disposed of. As we were going my guide came up to the 
 monk and made a remark, on which the monk patted him on the back, 
 said, 'Ah, coquin f and, taking him by the ear, twisted him round a bit,
 
 The Hospice of St. Bernard. 137 
 
 and gave me to understand (I always use this phrase when I report a 
 Frenchman or a Swiss it is a safe one) that the fellow wanted to pass for 
 a wit. 
 
 " My journey has so far interrupted my pen that I must sign this letter 
 Friday, Geneva. In a day or two I hope to be on my way to Thim and 
 
 Lucerne. Mr. N is in my hotel, looking as stiff, awkward, and conceited 
 
 as ever. He the living representative of T ! Ma foil A worn-out 
 
 linen draper's yard-measure covered with a little worn-out manufactured 
 lace, a miserable mixture of crooked stiffness and graceless frivolity. But 
 I beg pardon. He is a neighbor of yours, and a friend of the Blackstones. 
 Peace be with him, and may he never, by inserting his great stolid coun- 
 tenance in a room where I am at breakfast, provoke me to abuse him, 
 pens, ink and paper, and your attention prepared for better topics. You 
 see I attempt no labored description of mountains. It is impossible. 
 Poets and painters fail to give an adequate or distinct idea of them. That 
 can only be gained by seeing them. The finest mountains I have seen are 
 the Mauvaise Langue, the Dent du Midi, another hill whose name I forget, 
 but nine thousand feet high, and covered with shining ice for a mile at the 
 top, the Aiguilles about Montanvert, and Mont Blanc, from a spot ten 
 miles west of Chamounix, where I confess he looked among his neighbors 
 qualig inter vibnrna cupressits. I shall write soon to my mother, and 
 would of course have written before, but that a traveller's letters are public 
 property in a family, unless indeed he records the sayings and doings of 
 Frenchwomen, in which case they would be as well confined to the perusal 
 of members of the foul sex in England. 
 
 " Your affectionate Son, CHARLES. 
 
 " P.S. If in consequence of my description you come to Switzerland 
 before I return, do not forget to ask at all the inns in the mountains for 
 Chamois cutlets !" 
 
 It was a strange coincidence that some forty years after 
 this visit to the Hospice of St. Bernard was penned, a 
 cousin of the writer, himself a retired officer, should have 
 donned the monkish cowl, and though he did not change 
 his mind quite so rapidly as the soldier tired of war's 
 alarms, who found the atmosphere of the Alps unpleasant- 
 ly vif, notwithstanding was led to discover that monasti-
 
 138 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 cisra was not his vocation. The cloister, even the Magdalen 
 cloister, with its Epicurean rule, was never to the taste of 
 our author. From its inception he held the mediaevalism 
 of his uncle's nephew, Frederic Faber, in as hearty con- 
 tempt as Carlyle's earnestness. In 1839, moreover, the 
 ordinary English gentleman knew less than nothing con- 
 cerning the Roman organization, and although nowadays, 
 to confuse convent with monastery, or to use each word 
 indiscriminately, would argue crass ignorance, at that 
 period it was considered virile to ignore the Roman Church 
 as an effete superstition, awaiting a final coup de grdce. 
 George Stanley Faber always spoke of Rome with rude 
 contempt, and his authority was reverenced at Ipsden as 
 being infallible. 
 
 The last letter of the series unfortunately was torn in 
 the opening, so it contains a few unimportant ellipses. It 
 is written in a vein of humor indicative of high spirits, 
 and literally teems with euphuism. Surely never was 
 there a more light-hearted, merry, free-handed young gen- 
 tleman ? In his later years, when life had become well- 
 nigh a burden, and the wild cry arose from lips satiated 
 with success, " Give me back my youth !" his mind re- 
 verted in bitter contrast to this golden span of his splendid 
 manhood. Those who knew him, moreover, only after a 
 long acquaintance with the world had superinduced a habit 
 of viewing every one, even his nearest and dearest, with 
 an eye of suspicion, could hardly have imagined how debon- 
 naire and simple his natural disposition was. His letter 
 shall give a likeness in miniature of what he was. As thus : 
 
 BERNE, Mercredi, Quatorze. 
 
 "Mr DEAR MOTHER, Amidst mountains and valleys though we may 
 roam, be it ever so level, there's no place like home. Thitherward my 
 face is at length turned, and I think you may expect me, if nothing cross
 
 The Hospice of St. Bernard. 139 
 
 should happen, in less than a week after receipt of this. I waited more 
 than a week for Mr. Baring's frank at Geneva ; it never came, and never 
 will come. However, I have given the Post at Geneva instructions to for- 
 ward it to Basle, where I hope to be in two days, and whither I sent my 
 luggage from Geneva par voulage. I was au desespoir, when most unex- 
 pectedly some money arrived from Oxford. On this, as I had written to 
 you to send me some to Cologne, I thought I could not do better than leave 
 Geneva, where I was wasting time and money most horribly. I made my 
 little tour through the Oberland, and if I find the money at Cologne, I shall 
 come bravely into port after visiting both Brussels and Antwerp. Mr. 
 Baring's frank I have given up ; however, I shall of course leave my direc- 
 tion on paper at the Post-office, Basle, as I did at Geneva, and perhaps 
 about the fall of the leaf the money you so kindly devoted to the least de- 
 serving member will flow gently back by some devious channel into the 
 bosom of our family at Ipsden. 
 
 " How few people ever dream of thinking for themselves, even in mat- 
 ters of taste, although every language possesses a proverb that hints at the 
 propriety of so doing. Chamounix, the great lion of tourists, is no more 
 to be compared to the Oberland than chalk to sardonyx. I grant that in 
 Savoy one gloomy gorge succeeds to another, wherever you go, in a sur- 
 prising manner ; but there is no contrast, without which all pictures are de- 
 ficient, and without which all scenes soon become distasteful. Now the 
 Oberland in the first place beats Savoy out of the field with its own weapons. 
 The Jungfrau, Wetterhorn, Silberhorn, etc., being infinitely grander than 
 Mont Blanc, which is a great sloping hill that never looks high, because 
 when you are close under it the top is fifteen miles from you, whereas the 
 mountains I have mentioned rise perpendicularly thirteen thousand feet 
 from the very green valley you walk upon, nothing but stone, ice, and ever- 
 lasting snow. Oh ! the walk over the Grunnig to Muhlinen, the first fifteen 
 miles nothing but rock, the last fifteen a broad valley between low hills, 
 bright green from top to bottom, watered with rivulets, and studded with 
 thirty thousand chalets, or picturesque little cowhouses. Then from 
 Muhlinen by the Thuner Sec, Interlaken, etc., over the Wenghern Alp to 
 the hotel at the foot of the Jungfrau. In this walk the contrast was in- 
 verted, and we passed through the relics of the rich valley of Frutigau, 
 walked through groves of walnut-trees, by the side of a lake bluer than 
 the sky. I saw the Stauback waterfall fall like a horse's tail three hun- 
 dred and twenty-six feet before it touched the ground. . . . ' Aujourdhui 
 nous avow vue lea arbres et les fruits, et au present nous present tense, les
 
 140 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 glacien IterneUet f said my guide as we stopped right opposite the Jung- 
 frau at the door of the Auberge, and at that moment a ram dcs vachcs, 
 sung in full harmony by some Swiss girls, stole over the Wenghcrn Alp 
 behind us, and made me feel as if I was that moment changed for the first 
 time from a vegetable to an angel. The walks from the Jungfrau to 
 Grindclwald, and from thence to Meyringen there you have the contrast of 
 juxtaposition, as before of succession, so to speak ; frowning crags on the 
 one side, laughing lawns on the other, all the way. The road lies over 
 grass, and every now and then you pass from the bright, hot sun into a 
 pine-grove, dark as a cavern and cool as a grotto, to emerge, perhaps, 
 when a new mountain may be ready to stare at you here and n new green 
 to smile on you there. 
 
 " I have ascended the Righi and the Rothorn, which is much higher ; 
 but the most wonderful scenes are not, in fact, the most thrillingly de- 
 lightful. I walked from Lucerne to the top of the Righi in four hours 
 and a quarter, in order to win a wager proposed by the Swiss that I could 
 not possibly do it under five hours. The town is eight miles from the bot- 
 tom of the hill. I am always tired and blown for the first two or three 
 miles in mounting a hill, but get fresher and fresher the further I advance. 
 Coming down kills me, Ufaut avoiter! However, I think with this training 
 I shall be able to walk against the old mule in September. Who shoots ? 
 I have seen one brood of a kind of ptarmigan, and two dead chamois, that 
 is all, in all my excursion. You didn't say where William thinks of going 
 if he leaves Ipsden in November. The habitable globe possesses no more 
 delightful spot than Crieff on a fine day, or rather the hill between Crieff 
 and Mcnzies. When I meet a woman on the road I draw off my tile, and 
 utter sounds to this effect : ' Guyten dacq yung fr !' This is looked for. 
 If you don't do it you are set down as un lete Anglais. I fall easily into 
 the manners of the different nations I pass through, and find myself in- 
 variably the originator of the conversation, whether my neighbor be French, 
 German, or Italian, or English. I find the foreigners as shy of beginning 
 with us every bit as we are with them. This is not a methodical letter. 
 When I return I will go over my route with you by the aid of Nellie's map, 
 and point out where I eat and slept. I will show you the scene of any 
 little incident I may have witnessed, and intersperse all with agreeable re- 
 flections such as are calculated to combine amusement with instruction. 
 Minds of the higher order will generalize. Have you mentioned in Mr. 
 Baring's letter whether the game is likely to be plentiful this year? 
 Probably not. I wonder what made me think of such a matter so trivial !
 
 The Hospice of St. Bernard. 141 
 
 I am vevy glad Mr. Blake consents to my visiting his office, and I hope I 
 shall have strength of mind and body to mount a little henceforth in the 
 social world as I have been lately doing in the physical. 
 " Love to all Your affectionate Son, 
 
 "CHARLES READE. 
 
 " P.S. You do not say whether our little Austrian has come back. I 
 packed up two Swiss songs for her ; whether they are either good or new 
 is a glorious uncertainty, because, though I can't read music, I have got 
 eyes, so selected my ' chansons ' according to the execution of the vignettes 
 on their backs. Also a shoe-horn made of a chamois' horn. . . . one or 
 two souvenirs of different places. Voila tout! Having now inserted in 
 this letter every phrase, French and German, with which I am acquainted, 
 I think it a proper moment to retire gracefully from public admiration !" 
 
 Here follows a pen-and-ink sketch of a traveller, knap- 
 sack and alpenstock, bowing his adieux with this added 
 apology : 
 
 " Sorry to spoil a work of art. If I had not dried the above with my 
 fingers you would have had to wait another day for the entire communi- 
 cation." 
 
 The "Austrian" alluded to in this letter is clearly his 
 sister Ellinor, a vocalist of some pretensions, who was 
 touring at the time in the Tyrol. The Mr. Baring who 
 failed to frank Mrs. Reade's letter was probably Mr. 
 Thomas Baring, the head of the firm whose father, Sir 
 Thomas, was for many years one of the firmest friends of 
 the Squire of Ipsden. Being ignorant of how to transmit 
 money abroad it is doubtful whether circular notes had 
 by then become an institution Mrs. Reade in all like- 
 lihood had requested her great banker friend to manage 
 this for her, but very possibly had omitted, by way of 
 preliminary, to forward him the money, for she was amaz- 
 ingly unpractical. Whether the missing letter ever reached 
 its destination remains a mystery without a clew. We
 
 142 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 may be certain, notwithstanding, that son Charles was not 
 a loser to that extent. 
 
 The passing allusion to the Ipsden birds, and the paren- 
 thetical inquiry, " Who shoots ?" tell their own tale. The 
 Ipsden estate ran from Stoke Marmyon, or Littlestoke, 
 the fine old homestead of which is a conspicuous object 
 from the railway bridge over the Thames at Moulsford, 
 to Stoke-row Common, by Nettlebed. Quite half the 
 estate is arable, and Ipsden farm being one of the most 
 productive of cereals in the county, birds were plentiful, 
 as also hares. The remaining half of the estate is dense 
 beech-wood, with a large rabbit-warren for its centre ; 
 and the weird common* where, after Prestonpans, Mary 
 Reade's ill-fated husband, General Mackintoshe, took ref- 
 uge from the pursuing soldiers of King George. Sport, 
 therefore, was a moral certainty, far more so than at pres- 
 ent, for whereas the woods now teem with pheasants, there 
 remain but few hares, and the rabbits have been well-nigh 
 exterminated. Partridge-shooting, however, was the spe- 
 cialty of Ipsden, and Charles Reade was as passionately 
 fond of it as his father. An inquiry, therefore, about the 
 birds, in an epistle dated August 14, somewhat empha- 
 sizes the writer's opening asseveration that "there's no 
 place like home." Switzerland evidently was all very well, 
 but not after August 31st. 
 
 It must be added that Charles Reade shot, as he did 
 everything else of the manly sort, well, but not with abso- 
 
 * Called the Scot's Common, because General Mackintoshe with his com- 
 panions encamped there. After three weeks' concealment by his father- 
 in-law, the General's lair was discovered, and he and his comrades bolted 
 over the Downs to Shoreham in Sussex, where they put to sea in a storm, 
 and were drowned. His widow lived and died at Ipsden. The spot is worth 
 a visit.
 
 The Hospice of St. Bernard. 143 
 
 lute equanimity. Few men bore the mortification of miss- 
 ing a bird with worse grace at the moment. Ten minutes 
 later the disappointment was forgotten, and he who in the 
 loudest terms would blaspheme all the Fates because a 
 miserable hare escaped destruction, would sit down to 
 luncheon and philosophize, strike extraordinary attitudes, 
 and even dance his favorite double shuffle. The game- 
 keeper, William Johnson, adored " Master Chawse," and 
 so also, to reveal a secret, did the local poacher, Jack 
 Clayton.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CREMONAPHILISM. 
 
 DUBING the years immediately following his brief tour 
 abroad, Charles Reade oscillated between London, Ipsden, 
 and Scotland. It is a matter for regret that we possess 
 the most meagre details only of his tours. He was a great 
 pedestrian, and withal preferred to carry his gun. The 
 Thames, moreover, in which his father owned a large eyot, 
 with sundry fishing rights, had made him a fisherman to 
 his cost, be it added, for it is a fact that he was unwise 
 enough to risk a few hundreds when they could ill be 
 spared from his exchequer in a herring-fishery venture, 
 which was far from proving a financial success. 
 
 It was his habit in those early days of railways to avoid 
 the trouble both of packing up, carrying luggage, and form- 
 ing plans an hour in advance, by keeping a complete outfit at 
 different points of the compass. He provided himself with 
 a wardrobe on a really lavish scale at Oxford ; a second 
 and similar outfit for Ipsden, where his chamber was held 
 sacred to his sole use ; and a third for his lodgings in town. 
 Thus he could appear at any one of these points without a 
 shred of luggage, and a very pleasant arrangement it was 
 for a gentleman who never quite knew his own mind. 
 Moreover, the telegraph was not then in the land, and rail- 
 way travelling without luggage is robbed of half its ter- 
 rors. He felt bored with Leicester Square. What more 
 sensible than to drive to Paddington, run down to Mouls-
 
 Cremonaphilism. 145 
 
 ford, and walk across to the paternal mansion ? Oxford 
 with its dons and duns wearied him. What better than 
 to stroll over Magdalen Bridge, put his best leg forward, 
 and by degrees pass Nuneham, Dorchester, Shillingford, 
 and Crowmarsh, until at length the glorious beech-woods 
 greeted his eye from White Hill, and he felt himself at 
 home ? Or mayhap the Squire's temper was ruffled, or his 
 mother forgot to be quite as fondling as usual. Then how 
 simple to order the carriage at a moment's notice, drive to 
 Reading and catch the express, which in three quarters of 
 an hour would land him in the metropolis ? 
 
 His lodgings in the vicinity of Leicester Square were a 
 curiosity. He had developed a craze for violins, and these 
 instruments, with rosin and catgut in profusion, lay strewed 
 about the floor, in combination with articles of wearing- 
 apparel, books, and playbills. To one entering the rooms, 
 however, the most startling phenomenon was what we may 
 term their fauna. The whole place was alive with squir- 
 rels, who bolted up the curtains, and seemed to enjoy them- 
 selves as in their native beech-woods at Ipsden. It was 
 from this coigne of vantage that Charles Reade sallied forth 
 in quest of character. Dickens had rapidly built up a rep- 
 utation by reproducing oddities, and it would seem that 
 our author, when he first began to dream dreams of author- 
 ship, imagined that the short-cut to literary success was 
 to pick up and photograph some human porcupine. In 
 after-years, as we know, he attached far more importance 
 to construction than to character ; but in early life, like 
 Jerrold, Albert Smith, and the rest of what may be termed 
 the Dickens school, he felt the fascination of inimitable 
 character delineation, and it is a fact that in his researches 
 among the by-ways of humanity he not only disguised 
 himself, but studied low life. It was probably while thus 
 7
 
 146 Memoir of Charles Hcade. 
 
 in quest of the odd and angular that he encountered a 
 craftsman learned in the art of fiddle-making, a being, 
 moreover, with as keen a scent for the habitat of a rare 
 violin as the truffle-dog for the fungus beneath the roots 
 of trees. Whether this man were a Belgian or a French- 
 man is uncertain. Enough that he had devoted his life 
 to the violin, not merely as a maker, but as a virtuoso, 
 and by his long connection with the trade in Paris had 
 acquired positive knowledge of where, throughout the 
 world, all the rarest violins were to be discovered. Be- 
 tween him and Charles Reade there existed for a time a 
 sort of partnership, and that he initiated his patron into 
 the mysteries of the craft may be inferred from the fol- 
 lowing anecdote : 
 
 Charles Reade was journeying from Scotland to Lon- 
 don, and as was his wont through life, even in the days 
 when he was far from rich, travelled first-class. The way 
 was long, and to relieve its tedium he fell into conversa- 
 tion with his vis-d-vis, an individual in every way prepos- 
 sessing. After a while the desultory chatter accidentally 
 turned on fiddles, and the stranger remarked, passim, that 
 he possessed one by a particular maker. 
 
 " Then," smiled Charles Reade knowingly, " I have the 
 honor of addressing Lord ?" 
 
 The stranger shook his head. 
 
 " No ?" echoed our author. " In that case you must be 
 Colonel ?" 
 
 The stranger at once confessed that the surmise was 
 correct, but asked how, in the name of wonder, he came 
 thus to be able to detect his identity. 
 
 "Because," said Charles Reade, "there are only two 
 
 violins of the maker you name in this country. Lord 
 
 has one, you the other." In a memorandum among Charles
 
 Cremonaphilism. 147 
 
 Reade's papers we find a casual allusion to the Cremona 
 violin as " a worthless thing," whereof, so he writes, I was 
 "the first connoisseur in England," from which we infer 
 that he lived to regret the time and money he had expended 
 on the cult of fiddles. 
 
 This fancy for fiddles had one disastrous effect it led 
 to a temporary disagreement between the clever son and 
 his fine old father, the Squire. Ipsden House is the ancient 
 manor-house. The mansion built by Thomas Reade for 
 his daughter on her marriage with Mr. Vachell was pulled 
 down in the last century, at the time when the timber of 
 the park was sold to pacify the mortgagees, and the park 
 itself was ploughed up. The Squire of that era converted 
 the old manor-house into a mansion by adding to and alter- 
 ing it. The whole is an architectural olla podrida, and to 
 render it more incongruous, as has been narrated, Charles 
 Reade's mother, when she came from Court to play chdte- 
 laine therein, induced her husband to paint the good old 
 brick a garish white. Now the Squire was a martinet as 
 regards order. When, therefore, son Charles imported 
 from London or Paris violins, and, further, thought fit to 
 convert his bed-chamber into a fiddle manufactory, all Ips- 
 den House knew that there was the chance of a storm, not 
 to say a cyclone. 
 
 However, as the Squire never dreamed of poking his 
 nose into every corner of the house, this little eccentricity 
 might have been hidden from him, albeit the odors of 
 varnish are themselves rather telltale. Unfortunately, son 
 Charles, the very genius of domestic disorder, was so impru- 
 dent as to try his combination of amber on the window-sill 
 of his bedroom, which happened to face the carriage-drive. 
 
 The effect can easily be imagined. Not only did the 
 sill present a surface of different shades of brown in hid-
 
 148 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 eous patches, but the white walls of the house also were 
 streaked with these umber fluids. The Squire saw this, 
 and exploded with indignation. What he said has not 
 been handed down to posterity. It must have been suffi- 
 ciently disagreeable, for his son Charles went off to Lon- 
 don in a huff, and thence to Paris. Moreover, to empha- 
 size his displeasure at the paternal rebuke, he did not com- 
 municate by letter or otherwise with Ipsden House for 
 more than six months. 
 
 His father bore this philosophically ; not so his fond 
 mother, who fretted and fumed and was quite half in- 
 clined to quarrel with her husband. However, at last filial 
 affection reasserted its sway. A letter arrived, and was 
 responded to by an urgent request that he would reappear 
 as though nothing had happened. This he did, and so the 
 ugly episode ended. 
 
 That his penchant for violins, which at this period of his 
 life amounted to an overpowering passion, was a serious 
 matter may be inferred from the subjoined. One smiles 
 to view him in the light of a tradesman a part he of all 
 men was least qualified to play. Suffice it that he left be- 
 hind no ledger, no balance-sheet, no record of transactions 
 for the simple reason that he kept none. 
 
 The following Petition to the Lords of the Treasury is 
 headed, in his MSS., 
 
 "HOW CUABLES KEADE WROTE BEFORE HE WAS A 
 WRITER." 
 
 His literary evolution, we perceive from internal evi- 
 dence, was now virtually complete. The nine years inter- 
 vening between 1839 and 1848 had made the mere scrib- 
 bler a master of English. He takes up the cudgels in self- 
 defence with characteristic vigor, and the narrative of fact
 
 Cremonapkilism. 149 
 
 needs no comment. It tells its own story, as Charles 
 Reade alone could tell it : 
 
 " I import old Italian and German Violins as Merchandise, paying the 
 Queen's dues, although the profits of this trade are so precarious that I 
 am the only importing Merchant in England. I have of late encountered 
 in the Custom-IIouse a spirit of extortion which many candid persons 
 think misapplied to articles of vertu having a mere speculative value. 
 For some time I have seen that I should have to Petition your Lordships 
 for the protection of my oppressed trade. The case that at last brings 
 me before you is this. 
 
 " About three months ago, I being occupied in London, there arrived 
 for me at Southampton a case containing a Violoncello and the carcasses 
 of some twenty old violins. My Southampton Agent wrote to me for a 
 valuation. He did not think it necessary to send me the number of the 
 Articles, nor had I an invoice or inventory. I sent down a valuation 50. 
 If I had seen the Goods landed myself I should have valued them about 
 80. I value upon a system, viz., about 4 a-piece for the carcasses of 
 these third and fourth rate Italian violins. They are worth no more, be- 
 cause it costs 2 of English work and of materials that have paid duty in 
 other hands to make one of these carcasses into a playable, salable in- 
 strument 
 
 " A London Officer went down to see the goods. This man is a super- 
 ficial Smatterer upon a deep and difficult subject. He is in that state of 
 quarter knowledge in which men are sure to fall into more dangerous er- 
 rors than when they know nothing at all. 
 
 " He began (on dit) by telling the Southampton Officers that I had 
 valued my goods at one sixth of their just value. He next observed that 
 he would give 200 for them himself : here was already a fluctuation of 
 thirty-three and one-third per cent, in this loose-tongued valuation. 
 
 " The next oscillation, as chance would have it, was 250. On this it 
 appears my Goods were stopped. 
 
 "Informed by my Agent that I was said to have undervalued to so 
 fraudulent an extent, I was astounded. In order to get to some under- 
 standing of what they were saying, I sent down Mr. John Lott, an intelli- 
 gent workman, to examine the case. He left me expecting to find a Bass 
 that has paid duty before, and some fifteen or sixteen fresh Violins. lie 
 found instead the said Bass and some twenty-two Violins and tenors ; but
 
 150 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 amongst the latter he recognized one or two that, like the Bass, had been 
 in the Country before, and paid duty at the same port. 
 
 " I petitioned the Honorable Board of Commissioners, as is usual, and 
 this was the line of my Petition. 
 
 " I frankly admitted the Goods were undervalued according to my own 
 system of valuation, through an error that merely respected the number 
 of articles ; but, on the other hand, I affirmed that the London Officer's 
 valuation was extravagantly false, and of this I besought their Honors to 
 admit sound evidence, viz., the judgment of the only competent persons hi 
 the Kingdom experienced London Dealers. 
 
 "And I petitioned to be allowed to amend my valuation, presuming that 
 competent evidence should remove that impression of excessive under- 
 valuation which hitherto rested on one incompetent witness. 
 
 " The Board's reply was, ' the Goods to be dealt with.' But it was my 
 fortune to catch a glimpse of a Document by which I learned the basis of 
 their Honors' decision was actually the London Officer's Estimate, 250, 
 accepted in full with all the respect due to a competent connoisseur. My 
 way of arguing is to begin with the points of Agreement. I agree with 
 the Honorable Board that if 250 is the true value of the Violin car- 
 casses detained at Southampton, there is no room for my explanation on 
 the ground of error, the difference between 50 and 250 is too great. 
 
 " On the other hand, if I should prove 250 to be as wide of the mark 
 one way as 50 is the other, and without the same excuse, I have a right 
 to presume, on the principle, ' Sublatd causa tollitur fffcdn&J that the 
 Commissioners would feel disposed, did it rest with them, to resign the un- 
 usual course into which they have been led by a natural error. I have not 
 lost my confidence in that Honorable Board's justice when properly in- 
 formed ; but something more than they can tell me it is necessary for me 
 to learn. 
 
 " It is not only the fate of a single consignment, but of an entire though 
 small branch of commerce that now depends upon your Lordships. 
 
 "To this innocent little commerce, profitable in a high proportion to the 
 Revenue, and what is singular in an import trade, tJie only stay at the same 
 time of the English Workman, terms are now offered that evade by a trick 
 the limits set by the tariff statute. They are terms under which the im- 
 port trade cannot maintain any existence at all ; this is my best excuse 
 for the tedious length at which I am compelled by the difficulties of my 
 subject to address your Lordships. 
 
 " The valuation (250) I attack rests upon nothing but the dictum of
 
 Cremonaphilism. 151 
 
 one solitary individual, an employe" in the Custom-House, supposed by the 
 Commissioners to have thoroughly mastered in his moments of leisure a 
 subject twice as deep, delusive, and difficult as that of ancient paintings, 
 and six times as delusive as any third business that exercises the critical 
 powers of man. 
 
 " My Lords, this is so far from being true that it is impossible ; it is an 
 impossibility well known to every Gentleman and Tradesman that knows 
 anything about the matter. 
 
 " There is no ploughboy in this nation who can square the circle when 
 he has unharnessed his team, and there is no amateur of violins who can 
 set the just value upon the peculiar varieties in one of my consignments. 
 
 " The Rational Amateur who has bought true violins at authentic sources 
 knows something ; knowing something, he knows his incapacity to tell the 
 makes and values of third and fourth rate specimens. It is only the mere 
 ignorant dreamer of the class who has not arrived to know even his own 
 ignorance. 
 
 " I would gladly evade the almost impossible task of trying to give your 
 Lordships any idea of the depth, variety, and difficulty of this kind of vertu. 
 
 " I fear I shall be very tiresome ; I entreat your Lordships' patience 
 whilst I attempt to explain the misty principles that govern the high value 
 of things worth in reality next to nothing. 
 
 "Since the year 1814, when men first arose that studied the principles 
 on which a violin should be constructed to sound well, the reputation of 
 old fiddles for tone has been justly shaken, and is now known by two thirds 
 of the world to be no longer sound, although it was sound between the 
 years 1750 and 1814 ; for during that interval no Fiddle Maker existed in 
 Europe capable of constructing a violin. At present there are more 
 scientific and intelligent Fiddle Makers than ever existed at Cremona. 
 
 " Still, all the intelligence of the present day has failed to discover one 
 secret possessed by Italy and Germany up to 1750, and lost to the whole 
 world about that time, viz., the secret of fusing amber and making a var- 
 nish of oil, said amber, and soluble gums, red, brown, or yellow, but abso- 
 lutely transparent. This varnish, pretty in itself, and prettier in an old 
 violin, because the wear and use of a century gives it light and shade and 
 picturesque forms, constitutes the only real reason why from j5 to 400 
 is given for musical instruments that in beauty of wood and in sound can 
 always be matched for thirty shillings from the immense mass of new 
 violins open to the public. 
 
 " If old violins have any fixed merit it is their appearance. We arc, in
 
 152 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 fact, agreed that, in a word, it is their wood which sets off their varnish, 
 and their varnish which sets off their wood. But where the amateur is of 
 necessity thrown out is here he is not in a position to estimate the value 
 of names what he is led to suppose a fixed merit can only be bought and 
 sold as such under the domineering influence of names. 
 
 " Merit never comes to bear until first filtered through the consideration 
 of name. If then a Man looks at twenty old fiddles, the merits of which 
 he can sec, but does not know who made each and how that Maker ranks 
 in the Market where is he ? and what is he ? A sailor on the wide Pacific 
 without a compass or a star is not more the sport of water and wind than 
 such a man as this is of flighty dreams and of brute chance. 
 
 " Your Lordships may depend on the following selection out of a thou- 
 sand parallel facts : 
 
 " No. 1. A Violin by Joseph Guarnerius of Cremona with plain wood and 
 pale varnish, worth therefore only 70. 
 
 " No. 2. A Violin by Joseph Guarnerius, with handsome wood and red 
 varnish, worth therefore 200. 
 
 " No. 3. Violin, Joseph Guarnerius, fine wood, red varnish, and without 
 a crack, 300. 
 
 "No. 4. Violin, Carlo Bergonzi of Cremona, finer wood and varnish than 
 No. 2, worth 40. 
 
 " No. 6. Carolus Ferdinandus Landolpis of Milan, same wood and varnish 
 as No. 4, worth 7. 
 
 " No. 6. Violin, Dominica Montagnano of Venice, worth 3. 
 
 " No. 7. Violin, Dominica Montagnano, finer wood and varnish than No. 
 3, worth 8. 
 
 " No. 8. An ugly broken-down fiddle, Amatus of Cremona, 25. 
 
 " No. 9. A fine specimen. Ditto. 40. 
 
 " No. 10. A finer still by his pupil, Francesco Rugger, 14. 
 
 "No. 11. A finer still, Giudantus of Florence, 12. 
 
 "No. 12. A finer still, Sanctus Serafin of Venice, 10. 
 
 "No. 13. An equally fine, Gatenari of Florence, 8. 
 
 "No. 14. A good-looking violin, Grancina of Milan, 6. 
 
 " No. 14. A better Levazza, Milan, 4. 
 
 "No. 15. Carlo Bergonzi, average, 15. 
 
 "No. 16. Matteo Gioffriller of Venice, twice as fine, and not distinguish- 
 able by an Amateur from the same make, worth 5. 
 
 " No. 17. The entire School of Venice, equal in merit to that of Cremona, 
 and possessed of quite as fine a varnish, but worth in the market 800 per 
 cent. less. 
 
 " I put it to yourselves, my Lords, whether anything short of real, tangi-
 
 Cremonaphilism. 153 
 
 ble, critical knowledge can guide a valuer through a labyrinth of which 
 this is only the first turn. 
 
 "Ask an Amateur how many names he knows, and he will quote you 
 about eight names ; ask him to write down upon paper the nice little dis- 
 tinctions and details of work by which he is to know even these few at 
 sight, he cannot do it : even this first page of a profound study is beyond 
 him. Why cannot he write them down on paper ? because he has not 
 really got them in his eye and his brain ready for use. 
 
 " Now what will your Lordships think when I tell you that, instead of 
 eight or ten, one hundred and eighty Makers are known to have worked in 
 Italy alone, and to have used that amber varnish which, seen by a dreamer, 
 is straightway taken by him for a proof of one of those eight or ten valu- 
 able varieties. Of these one hundred and eighty more than one half are 
 beneath the real connoisseur's notice ; but he knows more than sixty, fa- 
 miliarly knows them at sight, knows their work, their style, and their value, 
 and he knows them too positively to confound the other one hundred and 
 twenty with them. 
 
 "But this knowledge requires a rare combination of talent and oppor- 
 tunity. It demands a fine Eye, a strong memory, a clear head, the con- 
 stant practice of examining the insides as well as outsides of hundreds of 
 Specimens, and, above all, to have invested thousands of pounds in the 
 trade ; for no judgment can be formed except by risking loss as well as 
 gain upon it hundreds of times. 
 
 " This is why none but an experienced Dealer ever was a real Connoisseur, 
 nor ever will be as long as this world shall last. 
 
 " Now without the above advantages any person of mere general intelli- 
 gence and taste for old violins would be sure to overvalue my consign- 
 ments for this plain reason I am a great connoisseur, and when I buy 
 violins of low name and value do buy what ? not poor specimens of them, 
 but of course the finest specimens of them, which are little dearer than the 
 poorer ones. Now the chefs-d'oeuvre of a 4 maker are really finer, and 
 often much finer, than the average of a 40 Maker, or even of an 100 
 Maker. 
 
 " The Amateur has no idea of this, so when he sees a fine thing, he 
 argues backwards that it must be by a valued Maker. The tendency of 
 this error is clear : the value of it is far beyond calculation. Once begin 
 ascribing my goods to the narrow list of names known even by rote in the 
 City, or valuing them as they would sell if they could but come under that 
 narrow list of names, and a thousand per cent, over-valuation is an easy 
 
 7*
 
 154 Memoir of Charles Readc. 
 
 natural result. That result, my Lords, has once actually occurred to mo 
 and from the same quarter. 
 
 " There are three classes of persons in and about this class of vertu : 
 " 1. The connoisseur, who must have been many years a practised dealer. 
 " 2. The respectable intelligent Amateur, who has bought at their true 
 prices true violins of responsible Dealers or under judgment of such. 
 
 " 3. The Dreamer, who is always on the lookout for chances that imply 
 a contradiction in terms, such as ' to pick up ' (that is his phrase) a highly 
 valuable fiddle for a little money. 
 
 " He is capable of abusing understanding to such an extent as this. 
 " He knows that certain old violins fetch high prices only because they 
 are excessively rare, that if not excessively rare they could not be so valu- 
 able, that could they by a miracle cease to be excessively rare they must 
 then cease to be valuable, and yet he no sooner sees a flock of gray geese 
 come over the water than he says, ' Behold a flock of black swans,' and 
 he winds up a pretty piece of Idiocy by valuing the varieties that it seems 
 have become as common as dirt to please him at the value they had be- 
 fore they became common. 
 
 "It is his ground of faith that every good-looking old violin which 
 comes here is Cremonese, and that every Cremonese is highly valuable, and 
 can find a purchaser at once, like silks or brandy. 
 
 " Estimate the Haze in which these babblers are lost before they take 
 their first step. 
 
 " Of Foreign Fiddles carrying an appearance of value to these Smatter- 
 ers, thirty out of forty are not Italian even, but French and German ; out 
 of the Italian ones, thirty-six out of forty are not Cremonese, but made at 
 Parma, Mantua, Padua, Verona, Turin, Livorno, Florence, Naples, Rome, 
 Venice, Milan, and other Italian towns, and in towns and villages of the 
 Tyrol ; of the Cremonese, which alone carry high price, some are by un- 
 prized makers and have little value. Two makers alone could make sure, 
 upon anything like a forced sale, of fetching more than 15, and these, in 
 fact, are the only true property or secure investment. Need I add that my 
 case contains no single specimen of the rarer class. 
 
 " I have to complain of a valuation that proceeds on three broad and 
 grave errors : 
 
 " 1. An error critical, immense exaggeration of the importance of the 
 specimens. 
 
 " 2. A suppression or omission of a heavy drawback on the value of 
 my goods, under the only title that brings them beneath the Tariff at all
 
 Cremonaphilism. 155 
 
 " You are to understand that ray carcasses and scrolls of violins are 
 caught hold of by the Customs as Musical Instruments of Foreign manu- 
 facture. This is not strictly true. They are, in point of fact, Foreign 
 articles of vertu, and Foreign materials for English Manufacture of Musi- 
 cal Instruments. 
 
 "Before I can make these carcasses into Musical Instruments what 
 must I do ? Why, my Lords, I must go to a French importing House, and 
 buy the following materials and accessories that have already accounted 
 with the Customs in their hands, viz. : 
 
 20 Necks made of Harewood, 4s. a-piece. 
 
 80 Ebony pegs. 
 
 20 Ebony Finger-boards. 
 
 20 do Tail-pieces. 
 
 20 Bridges. 
 
 80 Strings. 
 
 This done, I must engage with an English Workman to take off tlie bellies 
 of every carcass except the Bass ; to cut out the old Bass Bars which will 
 not support the modern system of tuning a violin ; to shape and glue new 
 bass bars ; to open and clean and glue all the cracks in those twenty car- 
 casses and secure them with pieces ; to shape and fit the necks to the 
 scrolls and to the carcasses ; to shape and fit the finger-boards to the necks; 
 to cut and fit the bridges to each Instrument respectively ; to strengthen 
 the bellies of one half of them inside with pieces, carefully and laborious- 
 ly ; to string them up. 
 
 " To recut a Maggiui tenor, not salable in England unless recut this 
 alone is a 5 job. 
 
 " This drawback, my Lords, is at least 45 ; most workmen would ex- 
 pect 60 for it. Now this drawback has not been fairly put before the 
 Honorable Commissioners by the Pseudo- Valuer, and it is a very grave sup- 
 pression ; one effect of it is just this : A piece of stuff is valued by antici- 
 pation as high as all the garments to be made here out of that stuff and 
 supplied with linings and accessories. The other effect of it will be 
 treated elsewhere. And here I throw myself with confidence upon the 
 honor of the Commissioners of the Customs. Let them say, ' Was this 
 drawback placed before them in figures ?' If not, the present valuation is 
 rotten for want of detail on one whole side. 
 
 " But I would fain go farther, and ask even another question, and I 
 throw myself upon the honor of the Board, and in particular Sir Thomas
 
 156 Memoir of Charles Eeade. 
 
 Fremantle for the answer. Was it impressed upon the Board that my 
 goods are violins, etc., that could be sold at all to Violin Players upon being 
 cleared, or was the impression left that they are mere carcasses, broken 
 carcasses, which could only be sold to the speculating Dealer ? 
 
 " If the former impression has been left with the Board, their Judgment 
 has been fraudulently obtained ; if the latter, we come by another road to 
 what I said three months ago, and say now, that the Dealers and Work- 
 men are the only men who can value these battered carcasses. 
 
 " Oh ! my Lords, if you or the Commissioners would only condescend to 
 look at the things, you or they would see how shamefully they have been 
 imposed upon in this respect. Just see how the Commissioners have 
 backed and filled before they could drift into their false valuation. They 
 take the population of England at 1 5,000,000. This population has at its left 
 extremity 14,999,975 persons who would say, and with reason, on looking 
 at my goods, ' Rubbish, not worth 10 ;' at its right a few practical judges 
 capable of saying for what (although really worth nothing) they would 
 sell through the caprice of a small clique. The Commissioners with their 
 left hand set aside the 14,999,975, including themselves, on the plea of 
 ignorance ; then, instead of carrying out their idea, they wheel about, and 
 with the right hand set aside all who have real competent knowledge, and 
 so we get rid with one gesture of Common-sense, with a reverse gesture 
 we lose specific knowledge and arrive at a fool's paradise. 
 
 " I come to Error 3. This is an error that arises out of not knowing the 
 violin trade it is an important error, because 
 
 ' The value of a thing 
 Is never more than it will bring.' 
 
 The error principally consists in the use of false analogies to supply the 
 want of specific knowledge. There is only one other trade from which 
 any light can be thrown upon the old violin trade, and that is the Picture 
 Trade. By keeping this sister trade out of sight, and by drawing one's 
 notions, as a Custom-House Officer naturally would, from silks, linens, 
 watches, cotton, one is sure to go sixty or seventy per cent, out of the true 
 reckoning. The Buyers of other Merchandise are so numerous that one 
 can always be found if the Proprietor will set a moderate price. But here 
 it is the reverse. The public buyers are so few that it is impossible to 
 secure at any given period the profitable sale of a single violin, much less 
 twenty. The very idea of selling twenty fiddles at the same time, without 
 losing money by them, could never have entered the heads of one who
 
 Cremonaghilism. 157 
 
 knows this miserable trade. The whole annual trade of London in old 
 Italian violins hardly amounts to twenty bond fide sales ; most of the sales 
 neutralize one another, No. 1 coming back to the Dealer in part exchanged 
 for No. 2, and No. 2 for No. 3. 
 
 " Upon anything like a forced sale such as with satins, silks, etc., 
 might only entail a loss of fifteen or twenty per cent. the loss upon vio- 
 lins would be three or four hundred per cent, in many cases, incalculable 
 in others, ruinous in all. 
 
 " Any one who knows the trade knows there is but one way of selling 
 violins without being ruined by them, and that is to deposit them in shops, 
 and wait quietly one, two, three, four, six, fifteen, twenty years, until a 
 customer's caprice happens to give an opportunity of selling to advan- 
 tage. It is under the title of a Valuer that a man exists who leaves the 
 business or heaviness of return out of his calculation of average value. 
 
 " It seems odd that two Men should differ as to the meaning of so sim- 
 ple a phrase as this for every 100, 10 Tariff. Yet we do. The Pseudo- 
 Valuer says the Legislature demands of me 10 on the 1st of August, 
 1848, for every 100 I shall receive upon the 1st of August, 1851. I say 
 No, that is not 10 in a given 100, but 10 out of a 100 mutilated by 
 the loss of three years' interest and compound interest ; and it was in- 
 tended by the Legislature that for every 10 I pay the Customs on the 
 1st of August I should be able to get 100 before the end of the month, 
 or if I must wait for three years on the average, should in that case get 
 more than 100, and considerably more. 
 
 . " In this paper, my Lords, it is not my intention to ask of your Lord- 
 ships any other favor than Justice, or rather a chance of Justice. There 
 is nothing against me, my consignment of Goods, or the future existenca 
 of my trade, but a false statement made by an ignorant Monomaniac, and 
 colored partly to his wishes and partly by the suggestions of private specu- 
 lation. I ask to be permitted to bring that statement to some satisfactory 
 test ; it is not for me to decide the manner, but I hope it will be the exam- 
 ination upon oath of persons in the trade. Do not think that I am even 
 then in a better position than I deserve. There is no person in the trade 
 whose interest is identical with mine ; there are one or two who would do 
 me an injury if they could there is one who at this moment is amusing 
 himself with writing anonymous letters, filled with malicious falsehoods 
 against me. Do you think, my Lords, I would not rather fall into the 
 hands of even this fellow than of a mad Babbler about this kind of trade? 
 Certainly ; because a limit can be placed to such a man by examination
 
 158 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 on Oath ; but ignorance cannot be modified. Malice is a blackguard, but 
 Ignorance is a Wild Beast. 
 
 " The mighty favor I beg, my Lords, is, that my goods may be valued 
 by a body of Men who arc my rivals, or would be if they could ; and I beg 
 this favor, my Lords, on the high grounds of truth and justice. 
 
 " If an appeal to Caesar could make all proceedings pause in the most 
 distant Roman province, I hope an appeal to Truth and Justice cannot 
 fail to create a pause, and consideration here in England, especially when 
 that appeal comes direct to the rulers of the people. I appeal by name to 
 the Right Honorable Lord John Russell to give Truth and Justice a chance 
 by giving them a bare hearing that hearing which is their right and mine 
 has been up to this moment refused to them and me. 
 
 " I, a Merchant, though a small one, appeal to Lord John Russell by 
 name as a great patron of commerce. 
 
 " That great Gentleman is also appealed to by a small and unfortunate 
 gentleman, who declares upon his sacred honor that the proceedings about 
 to take place are unjust, ridiculous upon all grounds of Public Government, 
 originating in a blind greediness, that, carried out, would destroy the Rev- 
 enue by crushing trade, and approved by Commissioners upon the crass 
 ipse dixit of an uninformed, isolated, unconscientious Man, who has not been 
 examined on Oath, or cross-examined ; whose previous false, insane, extrav- 
 agant, and fraudulent valuations of similar property are known to everybody 
 but to the Commissioners, and shall be proved and attested by the Oaths of 
 numerous disinterested persons whenever your Lordships or the Board of 
 Commissioners are disposed to know the truth, instead of guessing at a 
 distance through a haze of illusory circumstances and babbling dreams. 
 
 "And so, my Lords, I come to you and humbly beg for that which in 
 most situations an Englishman can demand, Inquiry. Without Inquiry, 
 Justice has not the shadow of the Ghost of a chance, especially in my 
 case; by Inquiry I mean Examination on Oath and Cross-examination. 
 
 " My Lords, my fate is in your hands, and as God is my Judge, my com- 
 merce lives or perishes at a word from your lips. 
 
 " I am the last Importer left I can maintain my ground under the ten 
 per cent. duty. No other man in England can : the best proof is, no other 
 man attempts it as a Merchant. But once begin to tamper with that ten 
 per cent, duty by over- valuation, once substitute by sleight-of-hand twenty- 
 seven per cent., which in its honest English is what the Custom-House 
 proposes to me in Thieves' Latin, and your Lordships, in point of fact, 
 prohibit a patriotic Commerce.
 
 Cremonaphilism. 159 
 
 " You, my Lords, would not do such a thing ; but in order not to do it 
 you must actually interfere and prevent the Custom-House from doing it. 
 
 " The matter is now before you, my Lords, and from this hour whatever 
 is done, is done not by Subordinates, but by the Government, on the well- 
 known principles of Her Majesty's present Government. 
 
 " I throw_ myself now, and I shall again throw myself on them in my 
 document No. 2, in the course of which I shall show you why my com- 
 merce unlike every oilier in the World contains in. itself no principle of 
 protection against the private fraudulent speculations of Custom -House 
 Officers. At present I conclude by earnestly imploring the bare prelim- 
 inary justice of a bonafide inquiry into the marketable value of a partic- 
 ular Consignment, and the state and capabilities of the trade. 
 
 "And I hereby petition your Lordships to forbid the sale by Custom- 
 House Auction of my Goods until the false evidence at present before the 
 Commissioners has been brought to the touchstone of Cross-examination, 
 and compared with a mass of Evidence upon Oath, by which I am pre- 
 pared to compute it." 
 
 It may seem sti'ange that a Fellow of Magdalen, not 
 without ambition or industry, and gifted by nature with 
 commanding talent, should have embraced the law as a 
 profession merely to abandon it. Charles Reade, in his 
 undergraduate days, as his friend Canon Bernard Smith 
 testifies, always imagined himself a limb of the law, and 
 there is one pointed reference to his profession in his letter 
 to his father. Nevertheless, he resigned himself content- 
 edly to a dolce far niente style of existence, though never 
 even in his idlest moments did he cease to be a student. 
 In his papers we discover a rather embittered confession 
 of what he terms baldly a wasted youth ; and it is almost 
 certain that when he selected the title, " It is Never too 
 Late to Mend " for the book he then considered his chef- 
 d'oeuvre, it was his own career that suggested the well-worn 
 proverb. " I made notes," he writes in a singular vein of 
 self-reproach, " but I never wrote a book for the public till
 
 160 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 I was thirty-five. Then, at an age when most men's hab- 
 its are fixed, I began my real life." 
 
 From this we glean that he did not actually put pen to 
 paper seriously before 1850, in which and the succeeding 
 year he labored hard to make up for lost ground. " I 
 wrote," he says, " first for the stage about thirteen dramas 
 which nobody would play." 
 
 Before we approach what we will term, in his own 
 phraseology, his real life, we will glance once more at his 
 butterfly existence. 
 
 It will not unnaturally occur to the mind of the observ- 
 ant that such a man as Charles Reade, a handsome and 
 debonnaire gentleman, acceptable in society, with distin- 
 guished manners and powers of conversation amounting 
 almost to fascination, must have been influenced once, if 
 not more than once, by the fair sex. He preferred ladies' 
 society to men's even in his earliest days, and most assur- 
 edly had never any cause of complaint on the score of neg- 
 lect or coldness from women both clever and attractive. 
 At home he did not encounter a superabundance of society 
 of any kind. The deaths of their three eldest sons and of 
 their beautiful and brilliant daughter, Julia, saddened the 
 Squire and his vivacious wife, and caused them to avoid 
 society so far as their position rendered such avoidance 
 possible. His sister Ellinor, however, had her circle of 
 friends, who visited Ipsden at chronic intervals. It would 
 be erroneous, therefore, to suggest that Charles Reade kept 
 quite clear of the tender passion. But whatever he may 
 have felt or wished, circumstances had stamped him as a 
 non-marrying man. Marriage would have deprived him 
 of that small competence he valued so dearly his fellow- 
 ship at Magdalen. True, he might have married money, 
 but it may be affirmed safely, that had he married at all
 
 Cremonaphilism. 161 
 
 it would have been from a different and higher motive. 
 As a matter of plain fact, the alliance he may secretly 
 have coveted was, for pecuniary reasons, an impossibility. 
 He realized this, and never permitted himself to drift into 
 a false position. What might have happened had he been 
 endowed with independence, it is not quite difficult to sur- 
 mise. His dependence on the college was perhaps his 
 misfortune, since it interposed a barrier between him and 
 the one lady whom in the best days of his manhood he 
 idealized, and never forgot, even in his dying moments. 
 It was, perhaps, the inability to marry in accordance with 
 his inclination that kept him clear of all matrimonial ideas 
 of any kind. Yet he was very charming, and, without 
 knowing it, became the centre of any coterie. With the 
 loss of his lively presence the family circle soon gloomed 
 over, and it must be added that, if a favorite with the 
 elders, he was adored by his juniors of either sex. At 
 Ipsden, in the holiday time, his sister Julia's only son and 
 daughter, and his brother Compton's eldest son and daugh- 
 ter were regular visitors, and being much of the same age, 
 formed a pleasant quartette. 
 
 " Boys," said he, one dull afternoon to his two nephews, 
 "shall I take you out shooting, or sing you some songs ?" 
 
 The boys gave discordant answers. " Shoot," cried 
 young Allen Gardiner, then fresh from Harrow. " Sing," 
 pleaded the other. 
 
 " There," said Charles Reade, with prophetic solemnity, 
 " is an index of the future of both you fellows." 
 
 He was right. Young Allen became a roving mission- 
 ary in South America, and his other nephew joined the 
 choir of Magdalen. 
 
 He seemed, moreover, to enjoy at that time the society 
 of these nephews and nieces ; indeed, on one occasion he
 
 102 Memoir of diaries Reade. 
 
 deserted his beloved Paris to meet them, and grumbled 
 persistently for a week at our English climate. Not that 
 lie was in the least degree ungracious to the young people. 
 On the contrary, he brought down a complete set of arch- 
 ery for their amusement, sang them all his songs, and in 
 the evening wrote comic verses to make them laugh. Of 
 his nieces, and especially of his niece Anna, afterwards 
 Mrs. R. A. J. Drummond, he was more than fond, a thor- 
 oughly attentive cavalier. Looking back on these halcyon 
 days, his relatives, or rather those that survive, might well 
 feel that his singular amiability and good-nature more 
 than atoned for the inaction he so poignantly regretted ; 
 for after he began to slave at literature, and to hunger for 
 approbation, he developed an irritability to which pre- 
 viously he had been a stranger. Success changed him 
 certainly in respect of manner, sympathy, and predilec- 
 tion, though the alteration was mainly on the surface. 
 This was, perhaps, inevitable. Had he remained a mere 
 butterfly he would have escaped exertion and its results, 
 but his life would have been wholly ruined. It is a fact, 
 none the less, that toil hardens most men's natures, whereas 
 ease has the contrary effect. 
 
 It is remarkable also how rapidly labor aged him. As 
 late as 1853, when he walked in the solemn procession of 
 doctors and dons to the Sheldonian theatre to witness the 
 installation of the late Lord Derby as Chancellor of the 
 University, the query passed from mouth to mouth, " Who 
 can that very juvenile doctor be ?" and reached the ear of 
 his fond sister Ellinor, who was the guest of the venerable 
 Doctor Macbride, at Magdalen Hall. In 1845 he was in the 
 very prime of manhood. Then it was that at Liverpool he 
 hit Alfred Mynn, the Spofforth of the period, round the 
 field, and his scores not seldom ran up three figures. His
 
 Cremonaphilism. 163 
 
 prowess in the art of throwing a casting-net was extraor- 
 dinary, and he excelled in every manly sport he took up, 
 including archery, bowls, and skittles. There was a very 
 pretty skittle-alley in the groom's yard of Magdalen Col- 
 lege, and another in the Grove; and the college groom, 
 with his stable helpers, used to find plenty of employment 
 when Charles Reade happened to be in residence. Paris 
 could not make a petit-maltre of such essentially virile ma- 
 terial. Town, with its pleasures, failed to render his fibre 
 effeminate. He ate largely, drank very sparingly for 
 the most part cold water and tea took a superabundance 
 of exercise, and lived very much the life of Lord Beacons- 
 field's typical aristocrat, who was perpetually in the open 
 air, and never opened a book. 
 
 This last, however, applied to him in the comparative 
 degree only, for he read between his amusements, and at 
 forty boasted a mind more largely stored with the treas- 
 ures of English literature than that of any among his aca- 
 demical contemporaries. At that period Oxford had gone 
 crazed about medievalism and black letter. Theology 
 was its one topic if we except architecture; and students 
 who had fathomed the recondite mysteries of ogees, awm- 
 bries, corbels, and crockets were ignorant of Massinger, if 
 not of Milton. A bookworm like Mozley plodded to some 
 purpose, for he was not merely antiquarian, but realistic. 
 Yet, after all, where Mozley had one reader, Charles Reade 
 could boast ten thousand. The one appealed to a very 
 limited circle, the other to the widest and most lasting. 
 The one taught more Magistri, in parables, alias dramas; 
 the other by sermons, alias essays. Nobody desires to 
 speak of Professor Mozley otherwise than with the respect 
 his antlike industry and profound sincerity deserves; but 
 when an eminent public writer thought fit to quote Moz-
 
 164 Memoir of Charles JKeade. 
 
 ley as an exemplar of all that was admirable in Magda- 
 len, and to fling a sneer at the one Magdalen Fellow 
 of that epoch whose fame is in the least degree likely 
 to outlast this century, he evinced a lack of apprecia- 
 tion which unfortunately is only too common to academic 
 natures. 
 
 It was perhaps inevitable that a virile specimen of man- 
 hood enhanced by genius should be half scorned in a place 
 where mental virility was unknown, and pedantry passed 
 for talent. It was inevitable also that such a man, with 
 all the warmth of youth adhering to him, should be idol- 
 ized in the domestic circle. " We will use our brains," he 
 would say after tea in the lovely summer evenings, love- 
 lier nowhere within these four seas than at glorious Ips- 
 den, " we will use our brains." And so the whole family 
 clustered round him with paper and pencils, and scribbled 
 verses of all sorts in competition. Some few of these po- 
 etical essays were preserved, including those of Charles 
 Reade; but, needless to add, they are not worth repro- 
 duction. 
 
 It was characteristic, moreover, of the man who in after- 
 years was laughed at because his plays, forsooth, were al- 
 ways "so very good!" i. e., based on sound morality, that 
 neither Oxford, Paris, nor London could spoil his natural 
 and graceful simplicity. At forty he was quite half a 
 boy; at forty-five he played at cricket with the old zest; 
 at sixty -eight he entered heartily into tennis. His natural 
 spring was surprising, and enabled him, when in middle 
 age he took up his pen in right good earnest, to wield that 
 weapon as Mercury and not as Saturn. "Pick yourself 
 out, my good chap," was his advice to his nephew when 
 the cob he was riding rolled in a pond, rider and all. And 
 this advice, later on, he applied to his own case, The
 
 Cremonap/iilism. 165 
 
 time came when labor was no longer a matter of choice, 
 but of necessity, and he then demonstrated clearly that 
 as of yore he had played so could he work. His Pe- 
 gasus pitched him into the mud, and his wit pulled him 
 out.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PABIS AND IPSDEN. 
 
 THE Revolution of 1848 surprised Charles Reade in 
 Paris, and the conduct of its leading spirits, whereof he 
 was an unwilling eye-witness, caused him, in "Christie 
 Johnstone," to style the French Assembly " a den of wild 
 beasts fed on eau #ucree." 
 
 The subsequent horrors of the coup d'etat have almost 
 obliterated, as in some measure they eclipsed, those of the 
 antecedent revolution which expelled the citizen king, 
 who sought refuge on English soil as Mr. Smith. More- 
 over, the special reporter was an institution not then in- 
 vented, and although the Times gave graphic descriptions 
 of the scenes at the barricades, the English public were 
 informed of but a tithe of what occurred. At the moment 
 Compton happened to have a house at Hampstead, and 
 thitherward one evening, weary and flustered, his author 
 brother hurried to relieve the pent-up feelings of his rela- 
 tives. The Times had narrated with fidelity the strong 
 anti-English feeling prevalent among the intoxicated Re- 
 publicans, and it is a simple fact that a massacre of our 
 countrymen was considered imminent. The Republic 
 wished to consecrate its birth by a holocaust of harmless 
 guests, and it is marvellous that this vile project was not 
 carried into execution. We can only compare the appre- 
 hension of those who then had friends in Paris to that 
 evoked nine years later by the tidings of the Indian Mutiny.
 
 Paris and Ipsden. 167 
 
 " My dear Charles," cried his brother, as he welcomed 
 him eagerly, " you have had a narrow escape of your 
 life!" 
 
 " I have," replied Charles, solemnly; " they put me into 
 a damp bed at Boulogne." 
 
 Canon Bernard Smith relates that the one study Charles 
 Reade devoted himself to with passionate energy during 
 his undergraduate career was paradox. That may account 
 for this glib rejoinder. 
 
 As a matter of fact his life was in danger, and from 
 something far more dangerous than damp. He was lodging 
 over a barber's shop in close proximity to one of the bai 1 - 
 ricades where the fighting was fiercest, and had the bar- 
 ber dropped the faintest hint that an Englishman was 
 concealed on his premises, the wild beasts of the pave- 
 ment, with the blood -instinct hot upon them, would have 
 dragged him forth to torture and death. The barber, 
 however, was his very stanch friend. When he persisted 
 in going out to catch a glimpse of the fun, that excellent 
 Figaro insisted on lending him a blouse by way of cegii. 
 In that guise he passed easily for a Republican, but he 
 saw enough in two days to cure him of Paris forever. 
 
 The Garde Municipale, loyal to the core, fought like 
 heroes to stem the tide of revolution to no purpose. 
 Against them en revanche the whole storm of popular fury 
 burst. At first it appeared as though order would be re- 
 stored, but the barricades rose as by magic. A cab or 
 wagon was upset across the road. Then the paving stones 
 were ripped up by a thousand hands, the neighboring 
 houses looted of their furniture, and, presto, the mounds 
 they formed were guarded by blouse-clad ouvriers, some 
 with firearms, others with swords and crowbars. Against 
 them the Garde charged with varying fortune. If they
 
 168 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 broke through, the mob dispersed right and left, only, how- 
 ever, to reassemble as soon as the chance offered. The 
 friendly barber shouldered a musket and fired with the 
 rest on the Garde, till at last victory declared for the 
 mob; and then commenced those scenes of barbarity which 
 caused the blood of the English gentleman witnessing them 
 to run cold. They, the mob, broke the Garde, and took 
 them in detail, the worst fate being reserved for those who 
 surrendered. Three of these brave citizen soldiers were 
 burned alive. Charles Reade saw them pile the pyre around 
 them and light it, the while they danced and yelled the 
 carmagnole. For the mob was drunk not merely with blood, 
 but with ardent spirits and wine, the women being even 
 more brutal than the men. A fourth member of the Garde 
 was dragged in front of the barricade to suffer the same 
 fate, when, fortunately for him, a citizen recognized his 
 face as that of a friend, tore the blouse from off his own 
 back, rushed madly forward, and flung it over the head 
 and shoulders of the doomed man, crying aloud, as the 
 terror-stricken garde suffered himself to be thus clad, that 
 he was now a citizen. Incredible as it may read, it is 
 none the less true teste Charles Reade that this mad, 
 murderous mob burst into tears, and fell to kissing the 
 garde whom but for this meaningless incident they would 
 have ruthlessly murdered. He was verily plucked as a 
 brand from the burning. 
 
 A little of this experience went a long way with an ad- 
 venturer not wholly destitute of common-sense. At that 
 crisis a Red Republic was a possibility; a government 
 wielding an executive a bare probability. Under such 
 conditions Paris became metamorphosed into a paradise 
 of terror, and it needed but the whisper of a chattering or 
 malicious tongue to doom to death the young Briton in
 
 Paris and Ipsden. 169 
 
 the blouse, for that pallium, though for a citizen little 
 short of miraculous, on the back of an alien, and that alien 
 a child of perfidious Albion, would have been regarded as 
 a paltry fraud. To escape was the problem. The friendly 
 bai'ber laughed at the nervousness of citizen Charles, and 
 possibly was loath to lose his lodger; when, however, a mob 
 raving with blood and brandy took to incendiarism pour 
 s'amuser, Monsieur Figaro admitted reluctantly that things 
 had got to be a little unsettled, and agreed to facilitate 
 his lodger's exit. A cab was prevailed on to stop opposite 
 the door in the dead of night. Into it Charles Reade was 
 bundled, and at once crouched beneath a truss of straw. 
 The driver's orders were to crawl as though he were return- 
 ing with his straw to his stables, in order to avoid suspi- 
 cion. This programme was carried through to the letter, 
 and after a series of hair-breadth escapes Charles Reade 
 astonished and delighted his relatives by producing a 
 whole skin, though one unshaven and unkempt. He left 
 behind him a score of valuable fiddles and some pictures, 
 together with an extensive wardrobe, a portion whereof 
 only he was enabled to recover. 
 
 In this year, 1848, he spent a longer time than was his 
 wont at Ipsden. His father had almost lost his sight, and, 
 deprived of the field sports which had been his employ- 
 ment through life, rapidly developed acute depression of 
 spirits. The picturesque old gentleman with hair white 
 as the riven snow, and features statuesque in their chisel- 
 ling, used to roam his grounds all day leaning on the arm 
 of his valet, the tears coursing down his cheeks. 
 
 He fancied he was ruined. 
 
 Oddly enough, ten miles only from Ipsden at that very 
 moment, a millionaire, who had travelled up to London in 
 a wagon without so much as the typical shilling, and 
 8
 
 170 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 amassed a fortune in comparison with which the rent-roll 
 of Ipsden was a pittance, had to be humored by the dole 
 of a pauper. They gave him his out-door relief every 
 Saturday, and he took it in blissful ignorance that he was 
 the owner of some three millions of money. 
 
 The poor old Squire of Ipsden's illusion never reached 
 to that extent, but he was none the less persuaded that 
 ruin had overtaken him, and his son Charles was requi- 
 sitioned to try every expedient in order to ward off the 
 pitiable tears and moans. 
 
 In his youth the Squire had been fond of whist. The 
 strict regime of Messieurs Faber and Fry voted all sorts 
 of games of chance anathema, and for some fifty odd years 
 a card had not been visible in Ipsden House. The medical 
 men, however, prescribed amusement as the sole palliative, 
 and with great reluctance Mrs. Reade assented to son 
 Charles producing a pack of the devil's pictures. His mo- 
 tive was filial and humane, but the devoted son must have 
 wished ere long that he had hearkened to the voice of his 
 mother. It soon came to this: either the Squire must be 
 kept going at whist from breakfast to luncheon, from 
 luncheon to dinner, and so on till bed-time, or else he would 
 give way to low spirits, and that to an alarming extent. 
 Charles Reade in his latter days became as great a devotee 
 of whist as his sire, but this arrangement amounted to servi- 
 tude. Friends of the family were invited to visit Ipsden 
 simply to take a hand at the everlasting whist-table.* 
 
 * On one occasion the eldest surviving son, who, though sobered by age, 
 still enjoyed a practical joke, created by a simple trick the most profound 
 amazement in the minds of the three other persons, his mother, father, and 
 sister, who with himself were sitting at the whist-table. Making some ex- 
 cuse that the cards were mislaid, he went in search of them, and, having
 
 Paris and Ipsden. 171 
 
 Whatever difference may have temporarily separated 
 father and son in the past, there can be no doubt but that 
 at this crisis Charles Reade played a dutiful, and indeed 
 devoted, part. Moreover, it so happened that his sister 
 Ellinor at the moment was exerting all her influence to 
 build a new church at Stoke Row, a lonely hamlet in the 
 centre of the beech-woods on the summit of the Chilterns, 
 a portion whereof belonged to her father, who gave the 
 site for church and parsonage. Mrs. Reade felt it incum- 
 bent upon her to dose the bodies of the poor on her hus- 
 band's estate, while her daughter exercised a similar care 
 for their souls, and the project of a church for heathen 
 Stoke Row fired her enthusiasm. The era of excessive 
 church-building had not yet set in, so that what with Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge, the Church and the world, her task 
 was not quite superhuman. It necessitated, nevertheless, 
 a mountain of hard work ; and certain it is, that if Charles 
 Reade had as yet cherished any dream of authorship it 
 would have been placed in abeyance. He was, however, 
 then leading a homely and domestic existence, the general 
 utility man of the family circle, whist-player, begging-let- 
 ter writer, and game provider, not to mention companion 
 
 found them, Mr. Reade being the dealer, volunteered to deal for him. 
 Hearts were trumps. Each player took up his hand, when a loud excla- 
 mation was heard from Mr. Reade. " Good gracious," he said, " I have 
 got all trumps." "And I," excitedly cried his wife, "have all spades." 
 "And I," shouted William, " have nothing but clubs." "And here are all 
 the diamonds," said Ellinor. Not for a moment was a trick suspected. 
 The miracle, as it appeared to the players, created the most profound sur- 
 prise, not to say a feeling with three of the number of uneasiness ; the 
 fourth remained stolidly staring at the cards, which by common consent 
 were put away for that afternoon. The amazement was too profound to 
 permit of the game being played, nor did the culprit ever confess. Long 
 afterwards the wonderful occurrence formed the topic of conversation.
 
 172 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 to bis nephews during their holidays, and to their sisters 
 at other times. 
 
 At last the ecclesiastical business was settled, and he 
 shall tell the story himself in his letter to brother Edward 
 at Benares; 
 
 "DEAR EDWARD, I have long promised myself the pleasure of relating 
 to you the events of which our house and neighborhood have lately been 
 the scene events interesting to all right-thinking persons, but to none 
 more than yourself, who are acquainted with the natural beauties of our 
 wood-girdled hamlets, and the moral degradation which, alas ! has hitherto 
 disfigured them. 
 
 " You are aware what difficulties have been encountered. First, a con- 
 siderable sum was to be raised for the building of a church ; and this, 
 through the kindness and zeal of Christian friends, was our least impedi- 
 ment. 
 
 "Next, the endowment was to be obtained partly from the College of 
 St. John's, Cambridge, holding the great tithes of the parish, and partly 
 from surplus subscriptions, aided by a liberal provision, for which our ex- 
 cellent vicar, the Rev. R. Twopeny, is to be thanked ; and I am sorry to 
 say we encountered in the college a wearisome obstacle. 
 
 "All this arranged, our Bishop declined to consecrate the new church 
 until a curate should be found ready at once to undertake its service. 
 
 " I fear we did not at first appreciate our diocesan's wisdom in making 
 this stipulation ; but now we humbly confess our error. 
 
 " This last hinderance was not so easily removed as we hoped, as you 
 yourself might have anticipated. 
 
 " The secluded situation of Stoke Row the circumstance of there being 
 no house for the clergyman and no water fit for use within a distance of 
 several miles. 
 
 " These disadvantages, added to the smallness of the stipend, no doubt 
 deterred many of those whose zeal languishes without the allurements of 
 what is called society, and is incapable of dispensing with earthly lux- 
 uries. 
 
 "At last, however, one was found willing to labor in this new vineyard, 
 upon such terms as it offered, a gentleman and scholar, indifferent to 
 society of rich or poor, and content to divide his time between the doctors 
 of the Church and its services. His name is Cole.
 
 Paris and Ipsden. 173 
 
 " This was duly notified to the Bishop of Oxford, and after some few 
 changes the consecration was finally fixed for Tuesday, the 19th October, 
 1848. 
 
 " As the Bishop, the Archdeacons of Berks and Oxford, and other per- 
 sonages were to be entertained and sleep, on Monday, at Ipsden, consider- 
 able preparation, you may suppose, was necessary. My gun was put in 
 requisition, nor was Covent Garden neglected. My father alone remained 
 discontented with our efforts, on the ground of a falling off in our butter, 
 which used to be excellent, nor could he be brought to believe that a 
 Bishop could put up with butter so inferior to what he, by his position, 
 must be accustomed to. 
 
 "The solicitude after all was superfluous. The Bishop does not eat 
 butter. 
 
 "Our guests were all assembled on the Monday evening, when the 
 Bishop arrived in exact time. He made a hasty toilet, and immediately 
 reappeared. 
 
 " He had not brushed his hair. We understand it is not his custom. 
 " We were at opposite ends of the dinner-table the Bishop and I. 
 It was my fate to lead out Lady Catherine Berens. At the Bishop's end 
 of the table the conversation was as lively as it was dull where I was. 
 
 " Dr. Wilberforce's high and earnest tone in the pulpit, and his deep 
 fervor, whenever a religious subject, always welcome, is started, would 
 hardly prepare a common observer for his ordinary conversation, the 
 characteristic of which is decidedly humorous. I wish my situation had 
 permitted me to bring away some of those sprightly sallies with which he 
 entertained the ladies at his end of the table. 
 
 " Tuesday, a quarter-past eleven A.M., our caValcade started for the 
 new church. The Bishop, some time after the rest, led by me and Mr. 
 Pearson in my pony gig, arrived on Stoke Row Common. We saw a very 
 pretty sight, all the country people collected in their gayest colors round 
 the edifice. The church, which is small, was entirely filled with visitors, 
 after which a form was introduced, capable of accommodating a dozen 
 more of the inhabitants. They, however, preferred watching the vehicles 
 outside. 
 
 "The musical part of the service was provided by Mr. Benfield, of 
 Reading, his daughters, and dependants, and was done in a pure and sim- 
 ple style. The Bishop preached an excellent discourse. I wish I could 
 give you some idea of his eloquence and impressive delivery of sacred 
 truths, uttered in their full breadth without any mincing of the matter.
 
 174 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 My perverse memory contains rhetorical flowers, when the root was better 
 bringing away. 
 
 " He illustrated the difference between professing and true Christians 
 in the difference between dead things and living. 
 
 " ' These people,' said he, ' go through religious appearances from cus- 
 tom, because it is the fashion, because respectable people in their line of 
 life all do it dead things go with the stream, but living things go by a 
 course of their own, now with, now against, the stream.' Then he com- 
 pared the former characters to stones, on whom, perhaps, the gospel sun 
 shines for a while, the warmth dies away, and they are colder than the 
 very ground which surrounds them. How unlike those living things, the 
 fruits and flowers, which absorb these beams, and give them back in 
 beauty and perfume! 
 
 " Then he depicted a certain empty religion, of which, after describing 
 its pretensions, he pronounced ' it shrinks at singularity, faints under a 
 laugh, and dies under the Cross.' 
 
 " In short, to make a singular observation, the sermon ended too 
 soon. 
 
 "On the termination of the service, I went to make sure the musicians 
 were being taken care of. I found them very hungry, sitting round a 
 table, gazing on vacancy. I left them with the cheerless horizon broken 
 by a fillet of veal, a gigantic ham, and a cake, on which the table might 
 have been set, instead of it on the table. These provisions were kept in 
 abeyance for the clergy, on whose charity I knew I could presume. 
 
 " I need not describe our return ; it was conducted in the same order 
 we came. 
 
 " The Bishop dined with Mr. Twopeny at the vicarage, returning thence 
 to our house to sleep. Unfortunately, his coachman, to save himself 
 trouble, prevailed on ours (James Hutt) to go for his lordship to the 
 vicarage. When the carriage was announced, the Bishop was engaged 
 in interesting conversation, and did not move. So after a few minutes, 
 Mr. Twopeny's dolt of a man-servant came again to him. 
 
 " Dolt. ' Mr. Reade's horses are waiting, sir.' 
 
 " Bishop. ' I think you must be mistaken, doubtless my horses are 
 waiting.' 
 
 " Dolt. ' No ! no ! I tell'ee, it's Mr. Reade's carriage and horses as be 
 waiting.' 
 
 " So the prelate was actually bundled off, against his will, and, having 
 arrived, told us the tale in his dramatic way.
 
 Paris and Ipsden. 175 
 
 "Of course we were shocked that he should have thought of deferring 
 so much to our horses. 
 
 "Whereupon he reminded my mother that he had been admonished 
 twenty years ago, when curate of Checkenden, that he was not to keep the 
 Ipsden horses waiting ! 
 
 " Thus the grave events of the period were diversified by incidents of a 
 lighter character." 
 
 This letter, it must be remembered, was addressed to a 
 brother on whom he had not set eyes for twenty years. 
 Mr. Edward A. Reade at that time was Commissioner of 
 Benares, and one of the warmest supporters of Evangel- 
 ical Missions in the province of Bengal. From Benares 
 he was transferred afterwards to Agra, where, as a senior 
 member of the Sudder Board, and acting Lieutenant-Gov- 
 ernor of the North-Western Provinces during the Mutiny, 
 he rendered such signal service to India and its European 
 denizens as to have honestly merited promotion. Instead, 
 he was passed over in favor of his junior, who had been 
 out of harm's way at Calcutta. This job on the part of 
 Lord Canning was apologized for on the plea that Mr. 
 Edward A. Reade, though the warm friend of both the 
 Lawrences, and held in the highest estimation by the 
 native princes, whose loyalty his personal influence se- 
 cured, was nicknamed " Primitive " on account of inca- 
 pacity. There never was a grosser slander. He was 
 dubbed " Primitive" because of his supposed affinity with 
 Methodism, albeit really he was an attached Anglican of 
 the Low-Church type. In addressing a brother whose 
 belief was so pronounced as to have afterwards virtually 
 robbed him of the reward earned by unostentatious hero- 
 ism, Charles Reade adopted, let us say diplomatically, a 
 tone calculated to win his sympathy. When, in later life, 
 he reverted to the views which colored his boyhood, if
 
 176 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 not his young manhood, his pen often flowed much in the 
 same strain; and the theatrical acquaintance who accused 
 him of religious melancholia would be surprised possibly 
 to perceive the similarity between his style of 1848 and 
 that of 1881. In the former year, at all events, he was 
 free from melancholia, yet he writes as one in harmony 
 with Christianity. It is surely not necessary for a man 
 to be a lunatic in order to be a believer in the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ, and the assumption that Charles Reade lost 
 his head when he regained his conscience is one which, 
 on the ground of its impudence alone, arouses our just 
 indignation.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MBS. SEYMOUR. 
 
 WE are now approaching the period when Charles 
 Reade first essayed authorship. He had been a great, 
 because a wide,' reader, and the habit of assimilation and 
 rapid, though close, observation was destined to stand 
 him in good stead. Like almost every author who has 
 attained celebrity, he began by sowing a large crop of 
 literary wild oats. He believed himself to be a dramatist 
 born, and at the outset his thoughts focussed themselves 
 entirely on the stage. It seldom seems to have occurred 
 to him to essay fiction, albeit he conceived himself capable 
 of excelling in criticism should he ever attempt to exercise 
 that dormant faculty. There was at the time little to 
 encourage the playwright. There were, comparatively 
 speaking, but few play-houses, and those few in the hands 
 of a small clique. A good novel commanded a high price, 
 whereas a successful play yielded but a slender return to 
 the author who could not afford to back his own venture. 
 Charles Reade, however, thirsted not so much for gold as 
 for fame. True, his essentially unpractical nature and 
 rather expensive tastes had already dipped into his Fel- 
 lowship, and money was really a superior consideration 
 to one whose reversionary interest at that time was not 
 expected to exceed two thousand pounds, for he had re- 
 ceived from his father already nearly half a younger son's 
 portion. 
 8*
 
 178 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 No man, however, suffered less from the auri sacra 
 fames; none was less mercenary. His ambition was 
 pure. Give him fame. Let the dullards of the common 
 room and the heavy respectabilities of Ipsden learn that 
 he could, by an effort, rise far above their level. Let the 
 mighty world of two hemispheres own him as one of its 
 true aristocracy. That was the man's aim, and he direct- 
 ed all his efforts towards it. He wrote play after play 
 with the pen of the amateur, yet each one rising above its 
 predecessor, and none devoid of some scintilla? of brill- 
 iance. Three years he toiled along the weary road of fail- 
 ure, still cherishing a belief in himself, still preserving a 
 heart of grace, yet encountering disappointments such as 
 would have crushed a weaker nature. Worse still, as his 
 MSS. proved sterile, in like proportion his creditors grew 
 importunate. Oftentimes he was harried across the Chan- 
 nel to await the Bursar's check which should enable him 
 to return home; yet oftener he buried himself in dingy 
 courts and alleys to escape the attentions of Mr. Sloman. 
 
 At the close of 1849 his fine old sire paid the debt of 
 nature. His eldest surviving son, the new Squire, pressed 
 his mother still to occupy the old home where she had 
 been mistress for fifty -five years, and she remained at Ips- 
 den House until 1852. During these years Charles was a 
 constant visitor at Ipsden, and, when he confided to a fond 
 mother his pecuniary difficulties, that generous-hearted 
 woman at once permitted him to anticipate the sum he 
 would have to receive under her marriage settlement at 
 her death. He rewarded, it may be added, her confidence 
 by regularly paying interest. 
 
 This, however, served but as a stop-gap. His Fellow- 
 ship of Magdalen yielded little more than 250 net per 
 annum, and the Vinerian Fellowship about 80. He had
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 179 
 
 every incentive to labor, and as months rolled on his toil 
 redoubled, so much so that, under the strain of mental 
 work and disquiet, his health gave way, not indeed seri- 
 ously, for he was naturally robust and muscular, yet suffi- 
 ciently to augment the difficulties of his position. It was 
 the managers of theatres, who could not be persuaded to 
 accept his maiden dramas, that in the main caused the 
 mischief. Stupid people can persevere without belief in 
 themselves; genius never loses faith in itself till after re- 
 peated rebuffs, but when first it begins to suspect that its 
 confidence may be misplaced it succumbs, not under dis- 
 illusion, but rather under a keen sense of injustice. These 
 years of waiting for the dawn of hope aged and soured one 
 who had retained the freshness and sweetness of boyhood 
 into middle life. He complained bitterly of the absence 
 of sympathy; for which he yearned as the parched land 
 for the summer's rain. 
 
 He found it, at last, perhaps where least he could have 
 expected it. 
 
 At the Haymarket Theatre there was playing, under the 
 auspices of Mr. Buckstone, a distinguished comedian, Mrs. 
 Seymour. She was magnanimous and appreciative, and, 
 like many women of her calibre, could recognize the dif- 
 ference between a real and a sham gentleman. Ladies 
 whom the voice of scandal never sullied have been less 
 warm-hearted and charitable than one whom the world 
 knocked about, and who none the less gave back some 
 positive good for the evil she received. Had her father 
 never drifted to London from Somersetshire she would 
 have made a superlative farmer's wife and market-woman. 
 As it was, she passed through the dark furnace of London 
 life, and emerged from it a brave and benevolent woman. 
 
 Mrs. Seymour never was an actress of the very highest
 
 180 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 rank. She had brains; she was brimful of the dramatic 
 instinct, and played up to a certain level. She met Charles 
 Reade when she was at her zenith. She was taking the 
 lead at the Ilaymarket, was well-looking off the stage, and 
 could make up pretty, though her figure had become ma- 
 tronly. She was in receipt of a good weekly salary; she 
 knew every one who was any one in the land of Bohemia, 
 and, in short, her influence far transcended that of many 
 an eminent author, and of not a few lessees and man- 
 agers. 
 
 It chanced one night that Charles Reade saw this lady 
 play. Even in his earlier years he always had a slight 
 tendency to deafness, and Mrs. Seymour's ringing tones 
 saved him the trouble of listening with an effort. At once 
 he mentally appraised her as a great actress, a verdict not 
 universally endorsed, though undoubtedly she rose in suit- 
 able parts above mediocrity. 
 
 Besides her voice, he admired her vif manner, acquaint- 
 ance with the stage, and physique. Tastes happily differ, 
 and if everybody failed to share his unbounded admira- 
 tion of the actress, he was by no means her sole admirer. 
 It may, however, be safely predicted that he stood alone 
 in believing her to be a really great artist. Yet it was 
 to her as such that he went back to his chambers and 
 addressed a letter. 
 
 In this epistle he was direct rather than effusive. Hint- 
 ing broadly his appreciation, he nevertheless kept close to 
 the point, which was personal. He wished her to give him 
 an interview, in order to read a passage from a play he had 
 commenced. The response was in the affirmative. Mrs. 
 Seymour would see Mr. Charles Reade. 
 
 He called accordingly, hat in hand. He had been snubbed 
 all along the line by people of her craft, including Buck-
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 181 
 
 stone, Webster, and the rest of the theatrical set. It was 
 with diffidence that he approached her, perhaps with a 
 tinge of melancholy. 
 
 He read her a scene from an unfinished drama. She 
 listened as middle-aged women do who have been bored 
 perpetually by authors; not exactly with interest, yet not 
 altogether frigidly. 
 
 "Yes," she cried, when he concluded, "that's good! 
 That's plotting. But," with a merry stage-laugh, which 
 had become natural to her, "why don't you write nov- 
 els ?" 
 
 If she had uttered a coarse malediction Charles Reade 
 could have borne it stoically. This suggestion that he had 
 better try another line cut him to the quick. 
 
 " I am trespassing on your time," he said, rising hastily. 
 
 " Oh, no. Pray go on." 
 
 But he had heard enough. Politely, and without any 
 show of the offence he felt, he bowed himself out. 
 
 Whatever else she had learned, or omitted to learn, Mrs. 
 Seymour, at all events, knew the male sex by heart. A 
 glance at the pale face of the tall man, who barely touched 
 the tip of her fingers as he left the room, told her that he 
 was disappointed. She was essentially good-natured. She 
 felt sorry. Besides, he was a fine man, with the bel air of 
 one accustomed to society. 
 
 "Hard up, I suppose," she muttered, "like the rest of 
 them. Wanted me to buy his play for an old song, no 
 doubt but of course that's absurd. Still, I don't like to 
 see a fellow of his sort down on his luck, and I'll tell him 
 as much." 
 
 She was no more in love with Charles Reade than he 
 with her; perhaps it is no libel upon her to affirm that she 
 was quite beyond falling in love with any man. She could
 
 182 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 feel as a friend for man or woman, not as a lover; indeed, 
 to place her idiosyncrasies in their true light, we may an- 
 ticipate the course of events so far as to state that, some 
 twenty years later, she said, " I hope Mr. Reade will nev- 
 er ask me to many him, as I should certainly refuse." 
 This after they had been friends and theatrical partners 
 for so long. 
 
 To revert to our narrative. This kind-hearted woman, 
 whose conscience accused her of meanness, sat down and 
 indited a downright blundering but most considerate let- 
 ter. She began by expressing her regret that a gentleman 
 of his obvious birth and breeding should be out of spirits 
 on the score of money; adding that while, as a matter of 
 business, she could not make him an offer for his play, she 
 begged he would accept the loan of five pounds (bank-note 
 enclosed). A lady of her sort would not unnaturally con- 
 nect sad looks with empty pockets, and never for a second 
 suspect that it was baffled ambition which blanched Charles 
 Reade's cheek rather than the want of bank-notes. She 
 was soon to be disillusioned. 
 
 Her letter affected its recipient profoundly. He knew 
 how thoroughly she had misread him, but readily pardoned 
 the error in consideration of the sympathy her act evi- 
 denced so demonstratively. This time he would not wait 
 for an appointment, but called with her bank-note in his 
 hand. 
 
 " No," said he, his words expressing an emotion he very 
 rarely betrayed, " that is not what I need. But you have 
 unintentionally supplied it." 
 
 What passed at that interview is not known. Each had 
 learned in a moment to respect the other, and we may be 
 sure that a friendship thus commenced was from the out- 
 set regarded as sacred. It had, moreover, to develop.
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 183 
 
 They were as yet strangers; and if Mrs. Seymour found 
 for the first time a man of genius who cared neither for 
 money nor love, but coveted fame and friendship, celeb- 
 rity and sympathy, Charles Reade was equally charmed 
 by at last discovering a woman who could understand his 
 motives and ambitions, and was ready to give him what he 
 sorely needed, the first step on the ladder. 
 
 It must, moreover, be categorically asserted, on the in- 
 dividual authority of the late Mr. Winwood Reade, who 
 was a constant inmate subsequently of their house in Bol- 
 ton Row, that the friendship between these two was Pla- 
 tonic. Mr. Winwood Reade was an avowed atheist, the 
 bitterest enemy of Christianity of his age, a man who, on 
 philosophic grounds, despised morality. He would have 
 treated a liaison between his uncle and Mrs. Seymour, not 
 merely as a matter of course, but as derogatory to neither. 
 Yet it is a fact that he went out of his way to assure some 
 of those who were most deeply interested in his uncle of 
 his positive conviction that their relations were those of 
 friends only. And although Mr. Winwood Reade's views 
 were otherwise devoid of principle or belief, he was truth- 
 ful invariably, and on matters of fact worthy of credit. 
 
 It is all the more needful in limine to insist on this, be- 
 cause if Charles Reade's partnership with a practical woman 
 of the world was of the nature of a morganatic marriage, 
 their lives were a brazen fraud. For there was no con- 
 cealment, no dove-cote, in St. John's Wood, or other ex- 
 pedient to avoid the gaze of the world; on the contrary, 
 the author introduced the actress to his family as the lady 
 who kept house for him. He took her to Oxford, and in- 
 vited his college to meet her on the same footing. He 
 would have punished the man who dared insinuate that 
 Mrs. Seymour was his mistress. Nay more, she was per-
 
 184 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 fcctly free to wed whom she would after the death of her 
 husband; and he equally free, after that he had amassed 
 fortune sufficient to have enabled him to dispense with his 
 Fellowship. Neither did marry. The link remained un- 
 broken to the end. " Honi soit qui mal y pense." 
 
 From a literary point of view Mrs. Seymour's five-pound 
 note proved the nucleus of fortune and of fame. It con- 
 verted her into his fast friend, and her wit, never at a loss 
 for an expedient, assisted him at every turn. She was the 
 architect of his fortune, if not of his reputation. 
 
 Just previous to his first acquaintance with this lady he 
 had formed a sort of literary combination with the late 
 Mr. Tom Taylor, a Cambridge man, and a successful play- 
 wright. The Reade and Taylor alliance commenced with 
 " A Ladies' Battle " a singularly awkward translation of 
 a singularly pat title. The play, however, as adapted for 
 the British public by these authors, achieved something 
 more than a succes cFestime, being on the lines of drawing- 
 room comedy, an art as yet uninvented. 
 
 An industrious, on the average, yet occasionally desultory 
 writer, an unpractical and unmethodical man in his private 
 habits, Charles Reade began diaries, to break them off ab- 
 ruptly, and leave a hiatus of years. Fortunately, at this 
 intermediate stage of his career, when he was collaborating 
 as an obscurity with a celebrity, he jotted down a record 
 of his sensations. It is fragmentary, spasmodic, and care- 
 less, but, notwithstanding, affords a fair index of his mental 
 state. We append the following extracts : 
 
 " IPSDEN HOUSE, WALLISGFORD, May 7, 1852. 
 
 " I am so ill in mind and body that I have resolved to 
 go to Malvern. 
 
 " Hellevue Hotel) Malvern. What is more horrible than 
 being alone in a strange place at an inn, and it raining ?
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 185 
 
 " Then the doctors are like Eastern princes. Dr. Gully, 
 I am told, receives no visits after noon. So I am to take 
 mine ease in mine inn till to-morrow. 
 
 "May 18. On the lookout for characters. There is in 
 Dr. Gully's establishment a gentleman, a very wealthy man, 
 who leaves home and immures himself chez Gully, and 
 deserts all family connections. Why ? He says because 
 he eats too much pudding at home, and makes himself ill. 
 So far so good. But here comes an inconsistency. He 
 eats too much pudding chez Gully, and makes himself ill 
 in this temple of health. Now if a man's bowels are to go 
 wrong, why not in the bosom of his family ? I wish some- 
 body would explain this to me. He worries me. I don't 
 see it, and I loathe the unintelligible. But is this a char- 
 acter ? or tout bonnement im dne ? 
 
 " June 7, Malvern. I have now been a month in this 
 place, and were I to call it a month stolen from my life, it 
 would not be far from the truth. 
 
 "It has been a month of ennui and utter collapse of 
 bodily and mental power. Mine is a nature that requires 
 some little amusement, and also the sound of some little 
 human sentiment. Deprived of these for so many dreary 
 days, solitary and cheerless, my mind is collapsing, and 
 will go unless I save myself by flight. 
 
 " I came here to work ! What have I done. I have writ- 
 ten in these thirty days ten pages of a novel ; I have lost 
 health, time, and digestion. But it serves me right ! I 
 knew beforehand I could not write a novel in a dungeon. 
 I shall certainly run off one of these days. To Paris? 
 Anywhere, and wash the taste of this Dead Sea out of my 
 soul. 
 
 " Such is the result of a month filched from my short life 
 in this wretched place.
 
 186 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " June 17. Forty days, constant wind, so that I have not 
 been able to sit one half-hour in the air. No acquaintance 
 with a grain of feeling or brains, and I cannot stand dolts 
 or fleshy statues. 
 
 " Took what they call a lamp-bath the other day. I was 
 to perspire. No such thing. Fainted instead. More re- 
 fined, but less agreeable. 
 
 "June 24. How hard it is to find a horse that it is a 
 pleasure to ride, as rare as a play that does not yawn you, 
 or a woman that does not deceive you. For all that, I 
 have found a black mare whose paces are delicious. Like 
 all watering-place hacks, she is safer galloping down hill 
 than walking. 
 
 " Read Vol. I. of ' Pendennis ' an imitation of Field- 
 ing. 
 
 " I hear is thinking of taking the Olympic Theatre. 
 
 If he does he will keep it from becoming a dead letter to 
 ns authors, and consequently to the public, who find nov- 
 elty at every other place that professes to unyawn them. 
 Here they have got nothing hitherto but raw meat and 
 cold cabbage. 
 
 " How ludicrous is the amour-propre of English actors. 
 And their notion that no author knows the meaning of his 
 own words ! A play of mine loses so enormously when 
 not rehearsed by me that I fear I shall always torment 
 them for the sake of my own credit. What a difference 
 there was in the 'Ladies' Battle' brought out at a second- 
 rate theatre under my rehearsal and at a first-rate theatre 
 under Leigh Murray's. I have long ago made up my mind 
 to give actors and actresses my views in private, and inter- 
 rupt as little as may be upon the stage at rehearsal. 
 
 " Actors, however that is to say, English actors for 
 French actors esteem every word an author says about his
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 187 
 
 own work a favor are a little unjust, a little obscure in 
 their judgment on this point. I, for instance, do not teach 
 them acting or speaking. I don't teach my actors to speak 
 Shakespeare or Mark Lemon, I simply teach them how to 
 give my meaning to my words, and every competent dra- 
 matic author, however small a one, can do this. He can- 
 not speak beautifully, as actors ought, but he can give the 
 exact point of every sentence in his work, and the actor's 
 business is to tune those words, and point, and tone, and 
 dilate, and beautify them. This is done by Mrs. Stirling 
 in the long soliloquy, 'Ladies' Battle,' and was done all 
 through the play. 
 
 "Among the numerous fallacies of the stage is this. 
 That if A learns something from B, in that case B can't 
 learn anything from A. Nonsense. No actor ever plays 
 a part without my learning from him. Why ? Because 
 I am not an ass. And no great actor ever hears me read 
 my work without learning something from me. Why? 
 Because great actors are not asses. 
 
 "The great always learn more from the little than the 
 little from the great." 
 
 This last paragraph breathes the spirit and temper 
 which subsequently found vent in "The Eighth Com- 
 mandment." His heart always turned towards the stage. 
 It was more than a hobby, a consuming passion, and the 
 unsympathetic atmosphere of Malvern caused him to re- 
 vert entirely to London and his work in the world. 
 
 The next entry in his diary has a special value of its 
 own. It is stated albeit we have not been able to verify 
 the allegation that in America " Masks and Faces " is in- 
 variably announced as by Tom Taylor. As originally 
 produced in England it was by Tom Taylor and Charles
 
 188 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Rcade, and the former gained the lion's share of the credit. 
 In its latest revival under Mrs. Bancroft, we have it, on 
 the authority of Charles Reade himself, that " oddly 
 enough " his verba verberrima " not one single line of 
 Tom Taylor survived;" every line was Charles Reade's. 
 
 Bearing in mind that this was the first creation of his 
 prolific genius, and one worthy to rank side by side with 
 the dramas of Goldsmith and Sheridan, being, in fact, an 
 English classic of the highest merit, it is all-important 
 that its authorship should be defined. The following in- 
 dicates approximately the exact share Tom Taylor had in 
 the play as originally produced. Even that share was 
 whittled down, while in the long run, if Charles Reade be 
 a witness of truth, it was eliminated altogether. However, 
 this tells the tale : 
 
 "June 7. Dramatic annoyances have found me out 
 even here. My collaborates, Taylor, has written a new 
 denouement, and without submitting it to me has read it 
 to the Haymarket Company. This has hurt my amour 
 propre, and a nobler feeling of creative paternity. The 
 end of a play is all-important, and I feel that Woifington, 
 who is entirely mine, ought at least to have been subject 
 to my brush down to the last. What is the history of 
 this play ? I wrote a certain scene in which Triplet, 
 whose broad outlines I then and there drew, figured ; and 
 another personation scene containing Peg Woffington, 
 Colley Gibber, James Quin. I showed these to Taylor as 
 scenes. He liked these two characters, and we agreed to 
 write a comedy. 
 
 "I began. I wrote the greater part of Act I., and 
 sketched situations of second act, viz., the company as- 
 sembled in Mr. Vane's house, and Mrs. Vane's sudden ap-
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 189 
 
 pearance, Mrs. Vane's kindness to Triplet a mere sketch ; 
 and in Triplet's house the first picture scene almost as it 
 stands now ; and I wrote a little of a third act. Well, 
 Taylor came down to me, added to my first act, filled up 
 the chinks, got Vane into a better position, and made the 
 first act an act. 
 
 " I tbink it lay idle six months. He then went to work 
 and treated the rest in the same way. So that at this 
 period he was author of two thirds of the play, so far as 
 sentences went. He was satisfied with it, and read it to 
 Mrs. Stirling, who turned her back on him and said plump, 
 4 It won't do.' Full stop for a month or two. Then he 
 wrote to me, and I took the bull by the horns. Flung 
 Act I. into the fire and wrote a new act, dashing at once 
 into the main story. I took his cold stage creation, Po- 
 mander, and put alcohol into him, and, on the plan of the 
 great French dramatists, I made the plot work by a con- 
 stant close battle between a man and a woman. I then 
 took in hand Act II., and slashed through Taylor's ver- 
 boseness, losing none of his beauties, and he has some 
 pretty things in that act. Then I came to Act III., where 
 I found my own picture-scene wanted little alteration. 
 Then, with the help of a speech or two of Mabel's as 
 sweet as honey (Taylor's), I softened Woffington so that 
 she cried in the frame, and Mabel found her out. 
 
 " Then I offered the MS. to Taylor. He did not like 
 the fence-and-rail prepared for him, and he said, 'You 
 reconcile the two women, and I'll go on.' Well, I did so, 
 and I was not sorry to stop, for I was working in a high 
 key, and did not see my way to sustain it through a mist 
 of stagy manoeuvres that I saw ahead. However, while 
 at Paris I did actually finish the play on thin paper, and 
 sent it to my collciborateur.
 
 190 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " Taylor did not like my denouement. He altered it, 
 and read his to Webster, who did not like it. He has 
 altered it again, and so the matter stands.* 
 
 * The following communication from Mr. Arnold Taylor of the Local 
 Government Board throws additional light on the genesis of " Masks and 
 Faces :" 
 
 " Charles Reade and Tom Taylor first became acquainted in the winter 
 of 1850-51, or spring of 1851. 'Twas on this wise: Mrs. Stirling had put 
 into Tom Taylor's hands Reade's play of ' Christie Johnstonc,' and told the 
 former who and what the author of the play was. My brother brought 
 the play home with him to the Temple, where I lived with him and the 
 late Cuthbert Ellison, from August, 1850, to August, 1851. Hence my abil- 
 ity to fix the dates above given. Ellison and I were going to bed, when my 
 brother came in and said, ' Stop ; I want to read you a play by an Oxford 
 man, one Charles Reade, about whom Mrs. Stirling has been talking to me.' 
 
 " We listened to the play with great interest, and my brother warmly 
 praised certain parts of it, adding, however, ' It is utterly unsuited for the 
 stage, and so I shall tell Mrs. Stirling when I return her the MS.' 
 
 "The verdict was a sad disappointment to Charles Reade, but he ac- 
 cepted it, and subsequently published the story as a one-volume novel, in 
 which the original dramatic form is visible throughout. 
 
 " The above incident led to the subsequent intimacy of Reade and Tay- 
 lor, the introduction being made through Mrs. Stirling. We saw him from 
 time to time at our chambers, 3 Fig-Tree Court, Temple, and his great de- 
 sire then was to write a play in collaboration with my brother. 
 
 " In 1851 or 1852 he had the idea of a play founded on Peg Woffington, 
 and I have the authority of my brother's assertion, often repeated in my 
 own hearing, and that of others, who can corroborate me, that when 
 Charles Reade came to him on the subject, he had one character, and a 
 bit of one scene, together with some vague, crude ideas how the play was 
 to be worked into shape. 
 
 "In August, 1851, my mother, brother, and others of my family went to 
 live at Chiswick, and it was there that the play of 'Masks and Faces ' was 
 written, not entirely, but mainly in the form in which it was first acted. 
 
 "It was first played at the Haymarket in November, 1852. I conclude, 
 therefore, that the play must have been written at Chiswick, in the sum- 
 mer or autumn of that year.
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 191 
 
 "June 10. I have consented to let 'Masks and Faces' 
 be brought out altered to please Webster, who is not so 
 good a writer as an actor. 
 
 "Anyway, Charles Reade was our guest at Chiswick Lodge, and the 
 method of writing the play was this, that during the day (my brother being 
 in town at his office) Charles Reade wrote long passages, which were as 
 ruthlessly cut to pieces or rejected at night by my brother, when they sat 
 down together to put together and complete their work. And morning 
 after morning, as I well remember, when we were at breakfast, Charles 
 Reade used, half in sorrow, half in fun, to say to my mother, ' There, Mrs. 
 Taylor, my gentleman has been at his old game. He has cut out every line 
 of that dialogue, and all those sentiments you so much admired when I 
 read them to you yesterday afternoon.' 
 
 " In this way the writing of the play went on till its completion in three 
 acts. Among my brother's MSS. I have found a fair copy, made by my- 
 self for the authors, of an act No. 1. In this fair copy, corrected subse- 
 quently in my brother's handwriting, as the MS. shows, there is a great 
 deal wholly omitted from the play as acted, but a great deal which was 
 subsequently introduced by Charles Reade into his one-volume novel of 
 ' Peg Woffington.' 
 
 "Then followed further alterations. Very much to Charles Readc's 
 vexation, and contrary to all his ideas and wishes, the play was cut down 
 by my brother to two acts, and worked by him into the shape in which it 
 was finally acted at the Haymarket 
 
 " I have abundant proofs in letters of Charles Reade, written to my 
 brother in 1852, how much this change went against the grain with him. 
 He even objects to certain minor characters, and the names they bear. 
 Further, these letters contain repeated evidence that Charles Reade then 
 fully recognized the difference between himself, an unknown author, and a 
 successful dramatist like my brother. 
 
 " The latter, however, was never slow to do the fullest justice to a fellow- 
 workman. And, often as I have heard him mention the one character and 
 part of one scene already alluded to, I always heard him add, 'But the 
 beginning of the second act, the scene in the garret between Peg Woffing- 
 ton and Triplet and his family the best, I think, in the whole play was 
 entirely Charles Reade's.' 
 
 " ' Masks and Faces ' proving a great success, Charles Reade then, with-
 
 192 Memoir of Charles lleade. 
 
 "Taylor has been talking to me of the labor of collab- 
 oration. I told him labor is the condition of all excel- 
 lence. Results, not processes, are to be regarded. I only 
 
 out so much ns naming liis intention to my brother, produced the one- 
 volume novel of ' Peg Woffington.' 
 
 "This naturally set people asking whether the play of 'Masks and 
 Faces ' or the novel of ' Peg Woffington ' was written first ? If the latter, 
 all the credit of originality rested with Charles Reade, and Tom Taylor had 
 merely beet) asked to use his experience as a playwright, and throw the 
 story into dramatic form. 
 
 "My brother having remonstrated with Charles Reade on the line he 
 had taken, the latter then prefixed to the novel the dedication, dated 
 December 15th, 1852: 'To Tom Taylor, my friend and coadjutor in the 
 comedy of " Masks and Face?," to whom the reader owes much of the best 
 matter of this tale.' 
 
 " I find the same dedication repeated in a new edition of ' Peg Woffing- 
 ton,' published in 1857. 
 
 " I thought, and still think, and said so at the time to my brother, that 
 the language of the dedication was not adequate to the circumstances and 
 the facts. 
 
 "His answer, as far as I can recall it, was, ' Readc's a queer fellow, with 
 odd notions about the rights and wrongs of things, and Fm quite willing 
 to let the whole thing pass and be forgotten.' 
 
 "But the matter left, I think, a soreness on both sides, for it was not 
 until April, 1854, that their second play, 'Two Loves and a Life,' was pro- 
 duced at the Adelphi, and their third, 'The King's Rival,' at the St. James, 
 in October of the same year. 
 
 "Shortly after the production of 'Masks and Faces,' Charles Reade 
 produced a play, all his own, ' Gold,' which I well remember seeing at 
 Drury Lane. 
 
 " It is only necessary to recall that immature production to be convinced 
 that the hand that wrote it was incapable of the terse, sparkling, and pol- 
 ished finish of ' Masks and Faces.' 
 
 " The play, as first produced, was, as every one knows, an immense suc- 
 cess. It may therefore be inferred that the cutting down the three acts 
 to two, the changes in the scenes and incidents, the cutting out of some 
 and the insertion of other minor characters, all done by Tom Taylor,
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 193 
 
 wish I could reduce collaboration to a science, that is 
 all. 
 
 " I could write twelve halves of three-act plays in a 
 year, writing only between breakfast and luncheon ; but I 
 could not write six plays without hurting my brain. 
 
 "July 15, Durham. Made acquaintance here with a 
 charming, clever woman, beautiful as the dawn, and madly 
 in love with a man hideous as midnight, and not one idea 
 in his skull. There are such women, full of talent, yet 
 next door to idiots. Miss Chaworth utterly despised Lord 
 Byron, and venerated a brainless boor, a snob, a beast, who 
 leathered her with his riding- whip. 
 
 " It was not that she liked Jack, and admired George 
 but objected to his person. She respected the Beast and 
 despised the Man. 
 
 " July 20. I have written three copy-books of ' Peg 
 Woffington,' a novel. I hope to make a decent three- 
 volume novel of it; but whether any one will publish it is 
 another question. If not now, perhaps in three years' time. 
 Literature no doubt is a close borough. 
 
 against diaries Rcade's wish or consent, as his own letters show, had 
 much to do with the success of the play during its run at the Haymarket 
 in 1852, and subsequently at the Adelphi. 
 
 "I therefore sum up my narrative of what is within my own knowledge 
 by saying that I believe Mrs. Seymour had no acquaintance with Charles 
 Reade when ' Masks and Faces ' was written by him and Tom Taylor. 
 
 " That the idea of making Peg Woffington the heroine of a play was ex- 
 clusively Charles Reade's ; that the shaping of the play into the form in 
 which it was finally produced was Tom Taylor's. But that the credit of 
 the play should be equally divided between the two authors, as each 
 brought to the work qualities and powers peculiarly his own, the ultimate 
 result being the production of certainly one of the very best and finished 
 comedies of modern times. ARNOLD TAYLOR. 
 
 "SUUBITON HILL, Oct. 11, 1836.'* 
 9
 
 194 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " I am in love with Peg Woffington. She is dead, and 
 can't sting me. I love her, and I hope to make many love 
 her. 
 
 "August 3, Durham. My life is very monotonous. 
 Nothing but old people here now. No sympathy with my 
 pursuits. I am a most unhappy artist, to have no public 
 and no domestic circle. Praise and sympathy are the 
 breath of our nostrils. It is not all vanity. More than 
 other people we are here for the sake of others, and it is 
 crushing when no one cares for what we do. My friends 
 have good understandings and are great readers, yet no 
 one of them has ever expressed the least curiosity as to 
 what I write. Yet they have the impudence to bring me 
 trash to read in MS., in which a stiff, barren, conventional 
 set of incidents arc flung like blots upon paper, and gar- 
 nished round with texts of Scripture and endless reflec- 
 tions. 
 
 " Wait till I get to London, and organize a little society 
 of painters, actors, and writers, all lovers of truth, and 
 sworn to stand or fall together. Why. not'a Truth Com- 
 pany as well as a Gala Company ? Vun ixtut bien Tcmtre. 
 Now I think of it, there is, I believe, a company and a 
 steam-engine for everything but truth. 
 
 "I have finished my novel, 'Peg Woffington ;' I don't 
 know whether it is good or not. I wish to Heaven I had 
 a housekeeper like Molicre. No. man can judge his own 
 work. I hope now to work out my forte, criticism. But 
 how purposeless, hopeless, and languid I feel. On the 
 other hand, I know that if I don't do something soon, 
 some still more ignorant ape will fly the subject before 
 the public, and take the bread out of my mouth. It is 
 horrible how an idea never occurs to a single person, al- 
 ways to three. It is a feature of the day.
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 195 
 
 "August 10. I have sketched the plot of an original 
 drama ; I am studying for it a little. One of my char- 
 acters is to be a thief. I have the entree of Durham Gaol, 
 and I am studying thieves. I have got lots of their let- 
 ters, and one or two autobiographies from the chaplain. 
 But the other subject, the gold-diggings, makes me very 
 uneasy. I feel my lack of facts at every turn. On the 
 subject I wish I had some one I could consult ; but it is 
 utter solitude here. I have no friend, no acquaintance 
 
 that knows 
 
 Sound from Noise, 
 
 Bombast from Sublime, 
 Beauty from the Beast, 
 Smell from Stink, 
 
 or 
 II from II." 
 
 The next few sentences in the diary, at different dates, 
 may strike the reader as being a little hysterical. They 
 lead up, however, to a paragraph which may be termed a 
 revelation of the method of novel -manufacture which 
 Charles Reade invented. Few, if indeed any, among those 
 who achieved literary fame have set themselves a task so 
 laborious, and one necessitating such conscientious self- 
 sacrifice. It was to the faithful following of this same 
 hard rule that he was indebted for the magnificent success 
 of "It is Never Too Late to Mend," a work which, in ex- 
 tent of circulation, rivalled that of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
 and elevated its author at once to the first rank of novel- 
 ists. He had already laid the foundation of his future 
 reputation in " Peg Woftington," the drama of " Masks 
 and Faces " in novel form. He was preparing to follow 
 it up by " Christie Johnstone," a book based on his own 
 herring - fishery adventures. But these two were mere
 
 196 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 genre pictures. His chef d^ceuvre was impending, and 
 here, in these rough notes, he narrates how it was com- 
 posed. It was a double drama, so to speak, the first part 
 having for its moral the cruel Nemesis of society on moral 
 error; the second the auri sacra fames, which at the mo- 
 ment invested the Australian diggings with so weird an 
 interest. He here narrates how he actually collected ma- 
 terial for the former, how he proposed to obtain it for the 
 latter. 
 
 "Sept. 27, Magd. Col., Oxford. Have nearly finished 
 a great original play, a drama in four acts, containing the 
 matter and characters that go to a five-act piece. I sup- 
 pose I must go to London to push it. 
 
 "Mem. Not to let it go out of my hands. Not to 
 trust it in any theatre, because there are plenty of black- 
 guards about, and any fool could write a play that would 
 go down upon this subject. I am glad in one way of hav- 
 ing written this play. I want to show people that, though 
 I adapt French pieces, I can invent too, if I choose to 
 take the trouble. And it is a trouble to me, I confess. 
 
 " I am divided about my plans. I think I have only 
 two talents dramatic and critical. Of these, the best 
 policy seems to be to try the first, and make it lead to the 
 second. I shall need much encouragement and sympathy to 
 support me under the struggle. Where to find it them? 
 
 " The head of this society enters on his 98th year to-day. 
 
 " Oct. 23, London. Charles Reade in account with liter- 
 ature 
 
 Dr. s. d. Or. 
 
 Pens, Paper, Ink, 
 
 Copying, 11 11 
 
 Brains, 4000 
 
 4011 11
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 197 
 
 " List of my unacted plays: 1. 'The Way Things Turn.' 
 2. * Peregrine Pickle.' 3. 'Marguerite.' 4. 'Honor before 
 Title.' 5. ' Masks and Faces.' 6. ' Gold.' 7. ' Nance Old- 
 field.' 8. ' The Dangerous Path.' 9. ' The Hypochondriac.' 
 10. 'Fish, Flesh, and Good Red Herring.' 11. 'Rachel 
 the Reaper.' * I don't remember the rest. I am a little 
 soured, and no wonder. 
 
 " Just had a civil note from Kean, inviting me to read 
 my drama to him. This is the first bright speck in my 
 present destiny. 
 
 "June 14, 1853, Magd. Coll. My capacity for labor 
 seems wonderfully faint. I have scarcely written a page 
 since ' Christie J.' Still, I ought to make a great hit with 
 my drama ' Gold.' The very first work on modern Juda- 
 ism I took up showed me just what I had calculated on 
 in coming here, that the Jews are a people of whom we 
 know nothing, and who know nothing about the Christian 
 religion. Here is one of those rich veins with which a 
 hit is to be made. If I had but patience to read, I could 
 write the subject, I know, when I had the facts. Mem. 
 If ever I write a novel on ' Gold,' introduce a Jew and a 
 learned Divine (Chaplain of Tom Robinson's gaol), who 
 meet with a holy horror of each other, battle, argue, find 
 they were both in the dark as respects each other, and 
 that all supposed monsters are men no more, no less. 
 
 "June 17, 1853. Busy correcting proofs of 'Christie 
 Johnstone.' Fear there is an excess of dialogue in it. 
 I think I ought to throw some of that into narrative. 
 Mrs. Seymour thinks there is too much criticism in it. I 
 have no doubt there is. These are defects to me which 
 
 * "Dec., 1852. 'Masks and Faces' has been pretty successful. Am 
 now writing a Scotch story, and Bentley offers to publish on the same 
 terms aa ' Peg Woffington.' "
 
 198 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 judgment cannot correct. I lack the true oil of Fiction, 
 and I fear she will have to inspire me, as well as reform 
 me. The drowned fisherman's scene was admired by 
 Kinglake and by Tennyson ; but I feel how much more 
 a thorough-bred narrator would have made of it. 
 
 " June 20. The plan I propose to myself in writing 
 stories will, I see, cost me undeniable labor. I propose 
 never to guess where I can know. For instance, Tom 
 Robinson is in gaol. I have therefore been to Oxford 
 Gaol and visited every inch, and shall do the same at 
 Reading. Having also collected material in Durham 
 Gaol, whatever I write about Tom Robinson's gaol will 
 therefore carry (I hope) a physical exterior of truth. 
 
 " George Fielding is going in a ship to Australia. I 
 know next to nothing about a ship, but my brother Bill 
 is a sailor. I have commissioned him to describe, as he 
 would to an intelligent child, a ship sailing with the wind 
 on her beam then a lull a change of wind to dead aft, 
 and the process of making all sail upon a ship under that 
 favorable circumstance. 
 
 "Simple as this is, it has never been done in human 
 writing so as to be intelligible to landsmen. 
 
 " One of my characters is a Jew an Oriental Jew. It 
 will be his fate to fall into argument not only with Susan 
 Morton, but with the Chaplain of my gaol. It will be my 
 business to show what is in the head and in the heart of 
 a modern Jew. This entails the reading of at least eight 
 considerable volumes ; but those eight volumes read will 
 make my Jew a Truth, please God, instead of a Lie. 
 
 "My story must cross the water to Australia, and 
 plunge after that into a gold mine. To be consistent 
 with myself, I ought to cross-examine at the very least a 
 dozen men that have farmed, dug, or robbed in that land.
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 199 
 
 If I can get hold of two or three that have really been in 
 it, I think I could win the public ear by these means. 
 Failing these I must read books and letters, and do the 
 best I can. Such is the mechanism of a novel by Charles 
 Reade. I know my system is right ; but unfortunately 
 there are few men so little fitted as myself to work this 
 system. A great capacity for labor is the first essential. 
 Now I have a singularly small capacity for acquisitive 
 labor. A patient, indomitable spirit the second. Here I 
 fail miserably. A stout heart the third. My heart is 
 womanish. A vast memory the fourth. My memory is 
 not worth a dump. 
 
 " Now, I know exactly what I am worth. If I can 
 work the above great system, there is enough of me to 
 make one of the writers of the day ; without it, NO, NO. 
 "June 21, M. C. To-day I sat out upon the lawn 
 and scribbled six hours. There are about 'six days in 
 every English summer that one can write out of doors 
 without the paper being blown away and writer drenched. 
 This was one. It ended in thunder and rain. 
 
 " June 24. That humbug J. wants to cheat me out of 
 my due, under cover of his leading actress. Have told 
 him I will sue him. Think I shall tell her so too. A good 
 thundering quarrel would stir me up out of this wretch- 
 ed state of stagnation, and I'm just in the humor, ready 
 for all the world (except one), like a porcupine in cold 
 weather. 
 
 "June 29, Reading. That wretch Bentley has not 
 sent me the revised proofs of ' Christie Johnstone,' and I 
 wanted to give the book to my mother on her birthday 
 (July 7). She will be eighty, yet she went yesterday ten 
 miles in a fly, and wandered about the woods in a pony- 
 gig besides.
 
 200 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 "July 8, Magd. Coll. Spent several hours in Read- 
 ing Gaol yesterday. I hope that tree will bear fruits. 
 
 " There was one gaol-bird reading the Bible in Hebrew. 
 
 "July 10. Went to hear the assize sermon and see the 
 judges. Awful to behold. Going to the criminal court 
 to-morrow. I made myself cry to-day writing a bit of 
 my story, * Never Too Late to Mend.* Is that a good sign ? 
 Laura Seymour says I have pathos. I suspect I shall be 
 the only one to snivel. 
 
 " July 17. Went to-day to the chapel of Reading Gaol. 
 There I heard and saw a parson drone the liturgy, and 
 hum a commonplace dry-as-dust discourse to two hundred 
 great culprits and beginners. 
 
 "Most of those men's lives have been full of stirring 
 and thrilling adventures. They are now by the mighty 
 force of a system arrested in their course, and for two 
 whole hours' to-day were chained under a pump, wlrch 
 ought to pump words of fire into their souls; but this 
 pump of a parson could not do his small share so easy 
 compared with what the police and others had done in 
 tracking and nabbing these two hundred foxes one at a 
 time. No, the clerical pump could not pump, or would not. 
 
 " He droned away as if he had been in a country parish 
 church. He attacked the difficult souls with a buzz of 
 conventional commonplaces, that have come down from 
 book of sermons to book of sermons for the last century ; 
 but never in that century knocked at the door of a man 
 in passing nor ever will. 
 
 "" The beetle's drowsy hum ! ! ! 
 
 " Well, I'm not a parson ; but I'll write one, and say a 
 few words in my quiet, temperate way about this sort of 
 thing. 
 
 " But la ! it doesn't become me to complain of others.
 
 Mrs. Seymour. 201 
 
 Look at myself. Can't write ' Never Too Late to Mend,' 
 which is my business. 
 
 "Aug. 22, London. Tom Taylor has made me over 
 his chambers. They are in a healthier part than Covent 
 Garden, and I feel as if I could set to work. My plans : 
 I will work hard at my tale of ' Gold,' whether under that 
 title or another. I will hunt up two men who have lived 
 in Australia, and are very communicative ; from them I 
 will get real warm facts. I will visit all the London pris- 
 ons, and get warm facts from them for the Robinson 
 business. I will finish the 'Box Tunnel' for Bentley's 
 Miscellany. I will write plays with Tom Taylor his ex- 
 uberance makes it easy. I will prepare for publication a 
 series of stories under one title. I will play steadily for 
 hits. I will not be worse than the public or not too 
 much so. I will write better than ' Christie Johnstone.' 
 The story there is dry and husky. I will live moderate- 
 ly. I will take decisive measures for being out of bed at 
 eight."
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 VICE-PBESIDENT. 
 
 THE year 1851 brought Charles Reade to Oxford. It 
 was his turn to act as Vice-President, and there were 
 many reasons why he should hesitate before declining 
 that honorable post. First, it would add at least 100 to 
 his pocket-money, besides diminishing the cost of living 
 to a merely nominal sura. Secondly, he would have a 
 Demyship to give to one of his nephews. And thirdly, 
 the year was one of critical importance both to the col- 
 lege and its individual Fellows. Lord John Russell's Com- 
 mission had descended on Magdalen like the wolf on the 
 fold, and though President Routh sent a defiant reply 
 to the Queen's Commissioners, to the effect that he de- 
 clined to render an account of revenues he was not con- 
 scious of having misused, the sober spirits of the college 
 recognized the advisability of coming to terms with the 
 enemy. There was a general desire that Charles Reade 
 should act as their second in command, for poor old Dr. 
 Routh, verging on a hundred, was an embarrassment rath- 
 er than a bulwark. 
 
 In fine, Charles Reade yielded to the request of his 
 family and his college, and "at the end of all things" 
 alias Feb. 2. assumed the functions of Vice-President 
 for a twelvemonth. 
 
 He rendered signal service to the college. The Com- 
 missioners were anxious to convert the Fellows into sti-
 
 Vice-President. 203 
 
 pendiaries, at fixed salaries, in order that the balance of 
 revenue might be available for educational and profes- 
 sorial objects. Some of the Fellows rather favored this 
 project. But Charles Reade warned them that by so 
 doing they would cease to be masters in their own house, 
 and that the control of their vast estates would virtually 
 pass from them. The contest between the College and 
 their Parliamentary inquisitors raged during his year of 
 office, and continued afterwards for several years. 
 
 Three nephews were eligible for the Demyship in Charles 
 Reade's nomination. He selected the fittest in every way, 
 the son of his beautiful and brilliant sister Julia, Allen 
 Gardiner the younger, who fully justified his uncle's pat- 
 ronage by a first-class in the schools, and a subsequent 
 career of heroic devotion as a missionary in Chili.* 
 
 * Young Allen Gardiner had barely settled in college as Demy, when 
 in the middle of term the papers devoted several columns to the harrow- 
 ing account of the death of his father, Captain Allen F. Gardiner, R.N., 
 on the coast of Tierra del Fuego by starvation he attempted to obtain a 
 settlement on the mainland for missionary purposes, but owing to some 
 inexplicable bungling the provisions which were to have been forwarded 
 to him and his crew never reached them. It was the habit of his son, the 
 young Demy, immediately after morning chapel, to retire to his rooms, and 
 read a chapter of the Bible. This voluntary act of devotion saved him a 
 rude shock. The terrible news had been communicated to the press, and 
 not to the martyred sailor's family ; hence, Allen Gardiner was in happy 
 ignorance of his noble father's tragic end. His friends in the Junior 
 Common Room chanced to catch a glimpse of the awful news, and at once 
 removed all newspapers from the room, so that when Allen Gardiner en- 
 tered it to breakfast, he was spared a sudden blow. In the interim they 
 hurried to Mr. R, F. Ilessey, the junior tutor, who undertook to break the 
 news to his promising pupil, and did so with the delicacy and tact of a 
 scholar and a gentleman. The brave fellow bore up against this crushing 
 misfortune ; but then and there registered a vow that his father should 
 not have died in vain, a vow kept with fidelity. lie founded no less than
 
 204 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Magdalen was for many years Charles Reade's hardest 
 workshop. Whenever he was behindhand to any serious 
 extent with his copy, John Brooker, his faithful servant, 
 received a wire that his master was already en route from 
 Paddington, and a braised shoulder of lamb, or mutton, 
 with a tart to follow, was ordered for 3 P.M., the author's* 
 normal dinner-hour. The rooms he occupied in No. 2 New 
 Buildings were scantily furnished, MSS. and books litter- 
 ing in heaps on the floor, the walls being decorated with 
 looking-glasses instead of pictures. During his year of 
 Vice-Presidency he labored unremittingly with his pen, 
 receiving the formal visits of members of the college 
 with Bohemian informality in his shirt -sleeves, and not 
 quite earning the appreciation of his brother Fellows by 
 neglecting their high table and senior common room. Yet 
 such was the natural dignity of the man, that in no one 
 instance had he to encounter familiarity or disrespect. If 
 in his shirt-sleeves, if seated in the centre of a chaos of 
 paper and ink; if again so absent that sometimes he omitted 
 to answer a direct question, he none the less held his own. 
 His manner was far from slovenly, neither in truth was 
 his dress, which erred in being rather outre. He shaved 
 in those days punctiliously, and his linen was faultless. It 
 was impossible for the most self-assertive to take a liberty 
 with him; and when, on an occasion, a tradesman, whose 
 bill had remained in abeyance for some years, thought fit 
 to relieve his pent-up feelings at the expense of those of 
 the Vice-President, he repented his temerity. There never 
 was a Vice-President quite of the same pattern before 
 him, nor will be after him. Enough, that there have been 
 
 seventeen congregations on the seaboard of Chili, and only retired from 
 that sphere of work pre-eminently his own when he was passed over for 
 the Bishopric of the Falklands.
 
 Vice-President. 205 
 
 many his inferiors, and none altogether his equal, even in 
 the art of ruling a college so as to insure discipline with- 
 out making matters disagreeable all round. 
 
 In this same year he contrived to enact the parts of 
 diplomatist and don, playwright and novelist, with a cool 
 and clear head. He was, moreover, still young enough to 
 relish the cricket field and the river, and to shoot over the 
 college estate at Tubney. Never during his fifty years of 
 Fellowship was he on more cordial terms with the society; 
 perhaps because they began to perceive his merit, and 
 were wise enough to court the rising sun. He revived 
 archery, bowls, and skittles within the college walls, and 
 would spend the hours of the morning, when the men were 
 undergoing the prolonged torture of the lecture-room, in 
 pacing the entire length of the New Buildings, not under 
 cover of the cloister, but on the grass-plat, between the 
 New and Founder's Buildings. Oddly enough, he seldom 
 affected Addison's Walk, but would tramp with a rapid 
 shuffling step to and from the sunk fence of The Grove to 
 the edge of the Cherwell, in utter oblivion of the scouts 
 and others who constantly crossed his path. So far as can 
 be judged, his plan was to think out a scene, and while 
 thought was still hot and fresh in his memory, to dash up- 
 stairs, and commit it to MS. with a rapidity that rendered 
 his copy decipherable by himself only, and his faithful 
 copyist, one Saunders. He certainly resented bitterly any 
 interruption of his reveries; and when a member of the 
 college, however senior he might be, elected to stop his 
 progress and essay to inveigle him in gossip, the chances 
 were that he met with a cool, if not a rude, reception. 
 
 Oxford, moreover, was an unexceptionable place for 
 study. The Bodleian Library, with its ready and civil 
 attendants, the splendid modern library of the Union
 
 206 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Society, and the College Library, all gave him literary 
 material. Eschewing Chapel and Hall, and combining, as 
 we have endeavored to show, for the most part work and 
 exercise, he covered a very wide field in a very short 
 time; for he was never idle, and to stimulate his brain 
 drank strong tea at intervals from his three o'clock dinner 
 till he retired to bed. It was the life of an individual, not 
 of a gregarious human being; of one, moreover, who con- 
 ceived himself to be isolated in his academic home. Of 
 all the Fellows then in residence, Dr. Bloxam, a gentleman 
 who labored incessantly in the domain of antiquarian re- 
 search, alone inspired him with interest. 
 
 Not that he ever possessed the slightest affinity with 
 medievalism, as such. To the past he looked as to a 
 mine, rich in dramatic material, and hence perhaps recog- 
 nized in the antiquarian a man to supply him, if needful, 
 with suitable stage accessories. It may seem very busi- 
 ness-like to regard history as a collection of iinrehearsed 
 tragedies and comedies; yet so devoted was Charles Reade 
 to his art, that although he hated horrors constitutionally 
 and had fainted at the sight of blood, he blasphemed his 
 evil-fortune piteously because he arrived on the scene of 
 an accident five minutes too late. It was the Commemora- 
 tion, and he was strolling back from Iffley with his neph- 
 ews, when he remarked a huge pool of blood on the tow- 
 path. The Exeter College barge, returning from Nuneham 
 with a picnic-party, had been driven by a man who neg- 
 lected to spare his beast. The horse waited till the rope 
 was loosed, and then in revenge lashed out on his tormentor 
 with his hind-feet, and, catching the poor wretch full on 
 the temples, killed him then and there. 
 
 His nephews remonstrated with this strange mood of 
 his ; whereupon he rejoined, " Segnius irritant animos
 
 Vice- President. 207 
 
 demissa per aures quam quce sicut oculis subjecta fideli- 
 bus." 
 
 " But," they replied, " the sickening horror of the scene!" 
 " 21 faut souffrir pour etre belle," was his apology. 
 It was characteristic of Charles Reade's intense thor- 
 oughness that he never went to books for material, except 
 when he could not obtain it from his own, or other's, ex- 
 perience. His strongest scenes were those which he was 
 able to construct out of phenomena of his own observa- 
 tion; and next, those which he threshed out by conver- 
 sations with men who had actually witnessed them. His 
 motto was, that you could not be too truthful, provided 
 always that you could escape the error of verbosity. It 
 was with the design of gaining impressions, to be repro- 
 duced dramatically, that he roamed from jail to jail, and 
 strove to gain the confidence of jail-birds. Such an exer- 
 cise must, notwithstanding, have been to him as peniten- 
 tial as the spectacle of a fatal accident would have been 
 harrowing to his feelings, for he was naturally, under a 
 chilly and reserved exterior, one of the softest-hearted of 
 his sex. Yet he knew, as by prescience, that the stage 
 and dramatic narration were both destined to advance 
 from the artificiality of contemporary novelists whose 
 characters were fantoccini and whose plots dragged even 
 when they did not drivel towards accurate realism. True, 
 lie differed from the most philosophical of accurate real- 
 ists in his passion for dramatic situations, even when they 
 transgressed by sensationalism. But his ideal was closer 
 to that of George Eliot than might have been presup- 
 posed, having regard to the marked distinction between 
 their style and method ; and, as we have seen, in order to 
 follow that ideal he was ready to immolate sensibilities 
 which naturally were most acute.
 
 208 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 He also, who as a young undergraduate Demy had cov- 
 ered the panels of his college rooms with all the witti- 
 cisms he heard and read, in the first days of his successful 
 authorship began both to collect material in commonplace 
 books, which ere his decease had swollen to huge pro- 
 portions, and further to study the canons of style and 
 method,* or rather to frame them for his own guidance. 
 He desired above all things to combine conciseness with 
 perspicuity, and to write in such wise that his reader 
 should never skip a line. To this end he scribbled memo- 
 randa for his own guidance, whenever an idea seized on 
 his imagination. The fac-simile on following page will 
 give an idea of the severity wherewith he was disciplin- 
 ing both his brain and his pen. 
 
 With the termination of his year of Vice-Presidency 
 his official connection with Oxford ceased. He retained 
 his five rooms in Magdalen, and visited them occasionally, 
 preferring the depth of the long vacations, when the col- 
 lege was quite empty. His spell of residence, however, at 
 
 * Mr. Walter Besant has commented with singular felicity in The Gen- 
 tleman's Magazine on Charles Reade's method : " Strength, truth, anima- 
 tion," he says, " these are three excellent qualities for a novelist to possess. 
 They will not be denied to Charles Reade even by his enemies. There is, 
 however, a great deal more. He is a scholar and a student. He says 
 himself, ' I studied the great art of Fiction closely for fifteen years before 
 I presumed to write a line. I was a ripe critic before I became an artist.' 
 He has approached art therefore in the truest spirit, that of a resolute 
 student, who knows that there is much to learn, but is conscious of his 
 powers. I know no other example in history of a writer who deliberately 
 proposed to become a novelist, and spent fifteen years in preparation for 
 his work. . . . The possession, then, of scholarship which gives judgment, 
 taste, and discernment, strength of treatment, clearness of vision, fidelity 
 of portraiture, fidelity of incident, the careful study of art, the life of 
 action, truth in facts these are qualities which seem by themselves to 
 justify a place in the very first rank."
 
 210 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 any one time never exceeded six, and rarely attained to 
 three weeks. He soon wearied of the place and its uncon- 
 genial surroundings, although anterior to 1854 he was far 
 more comfortable in college than in town. He himself 
 alludes to the discomfort of his Covent Garden lodgings; 
 and certainly those of Tom Taylor, to which he succeeded, 
 deserved to be styled burrows in contrast with his beauti- 
 ful rooms in the New Buildings, facing on the south the 
 cloisters and towers of ancient Magdalen, and on the north 
 overlooking The Grove, with its browsing deer and the 
 romantic water-walk associated with the name and fame 
 of Addison, but equally so really with that of Collins and 
 Christopher North. The chambers of Tom Taylor were 
 over what was then the publishing house of Messrs. Chap- 
 man & Hall, in Piccadilly, and the bedroom was little 
 larger than a cupboard. The situation of course was ad- 
 mirable from a town point of view, but much the reverse 
 of sanitary; indeed, the move to Bolton Row later on af- 
 forded Charles Reade the space he of all authors most 
 needed, over and above the minimum cubic inches of oxy- 
 gen essential for health and vigorous brain power. Yet it 
 was partly in College and partly in Piccadilly that he 
 wrote his three first novels, together with his original 
 drama " Gold." 
 
 From the commencement of his acquaintance with Mrs. 
 Seymour, who persistently spurred her friend's Pegasus, 
 Charles Reade's life may be designated as a record conter- 
 minous with his books, plays, letters, and lawsuits. Never- 
 theless, on two notable occasions after his year of Vice- 
 Presidency, he descended on Magdalen College as a Deus 
 ex machind, to save the Fellows from blunders which they 
 were only too eager to perpetrate. Not long afterwards 
 he declared that he would write a novel called " The Pres-
 
 Vice- President. 211 
 
 ident and Fellows," merely to show the world how ex- 
 ceedingly silly a quasi-ecclesiastical corporation can be. 
 The theme, however, could not have been inspiring, for 
 the terrible menace ended as it began, in mere talk. 
 
 The first of these occasions was in 1854. Poor old Mar- 
 tin Joseph Bouth, in his hundredth year, had ceased to 
 exist on Christmas-eve. The veneration accorded to ex- 
 treme age was never more thoroughly exhibited than by 
 the college and its individual members, from the highest 
 to the humblest. Routh had been President sixty-three 
 years. He baptized his wife as an infant. He admitted 
 the grandson of Cox, the Esquire Bedell, a man he had 
 previously, i. e., some sixty years before, also admitted, as 
 chorister of the college. His regulation topic of conver- 
 sation was the Young Pretender and the Jacobite faction. 
 His diction, when he chanced to be out of temper, which 
 was seldom, was as full-flavored as that of another Martin, 
 the beacon of the Reformation. He never appeared with- 
 out a full-bottomed wig adorning his venerable cranium. 
 His favorite joke was to inquire after people long since 
 dead, and op being informed of their decease to express 
 astonishment. He hated the tutors of the College beyond 
 expression, and desired that Dr. Bloxam, the antiquarian, 
 should be his successor. His politics were those of Straf- 
 ford, his religion that of Laud, and it is to his influence 
 that the American Episcopal Church is indebted for the 
 real, or imaginary, Apostolic succession, inasmuch as he 
 persuaded Seabury to obtain episcopal consecration from 
 the Scotch Bishops. 
 
 This old man's autocratic temper was extraordinary.* 
 
 * Very rarely Dr. Routh visited London, but when he did venture so far 
 from the academic shades, he always travelled by a coach called the " Star." 
 Now as time passed and competition had increased, the owners of this coach
 
 212 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 The Cfesar of Magdalen, he was wont to affirm that any 
 member of the Foundation, not being a Fellow, could be 
 turned out nutu Prcesidis. Armed, however, as he be- 
 lieved himself to be, with such absolute authority, he so 
 used it as to render his college one of the least disciplined 
 in Oxford. When a Demy appeared three days after the 
 commencement of term, having in fact been detained in 
 London by the paramount claims of self-indulgence, and 
 when the tutors suggested that the gentleman should be rus- 
 ticated for this offence, Routh at once had them on the hip. 
 
 " Three days late, is he ?" whimpered the old fellow in 
 his childish treble. " Well, sirs, there has been a heavy 
 fall of snow, and as the gentleman resides in Norfolk, no 
 doubt the coaches have been detained along the road!" 
 
 " But," urged the tutors, " he could have reached Ox- 
 ford in a few hours by railway." 
 
 "Railway?" quoth Dr. Routh, incredulously. "Ah, 
 well, I don't know anything about that!" and so with the 
 typical flea in its ear minor authority was dismissed. 
 
 The old man refused to believe in the existence of the 
 G.W.R., whose whistle he heard every day of.his life. 
 
 On another occasion one of the choral clerks happened 
 to have been in residence some three years and three quar- 
 ters, but had not succeeded in passing " Smalls," the ex- 
 amination usually surmounted after three months' resi- 
 
 found it desirable to reduce the fares ; Dr. Routh alighted, as was his wont, 
 in Oxford Street, and was assisted respectfully by the coachman, to whom 
 he handed 1 7s. 6d. twenty-five shillings the fare, and half a crown the 
 gratuity to John who, as the money was being paid to him, said, " The fare, 
 Mr. President, is reduced to a guinea." Dr. Routh paused and reflected. 
 " Sir," he replied, " I always have paid twenty-five shillings, and I always 
 shall." Needless to add, a reverential bow expressed the submission of 
 the recipient to this solemn decision, by which he reaped the benefit of an 
 extra four shillings.
 
 Vice-President. 213 
 
 dence. The junior tutor called to request that this gen- 
 tleman should be removed from the college. The venera- 
 ble President at once assumed an expression of extreme 
 astonishment. " I don't know anything about your exam- 
 inations," he replied to the complaining don. "Have you 
 anything to say as regards the gentleman's moral charac- 
 ter or conduct?" The tutor responded in the negative. 
 " Then," cried the President in an outburst of righteous 
 indignation, " how dare you come here, sir, to attack a re- 
 spectable member of the college? His father, sir, is a 
 friend of my friend, the Bishop of Bath and Wells; and I 
 will not listen, sir, to any such frivolous allegations!" 
 
 The poor human fossil was writing a book one of the 
 sort that nobody reads when the dread summons sound- 
 ed; and, oddly enough, though it was virtually impossible 
 that his life could be prolonged, everybody seemed startled 
 by his death. It came upon the college like an earth- 
 quake; and men felt that they had lost a father, for Dr. 
 Routh, malgre his eccentricities, was the true friend of ev- 
 ery member of his splendid Foundation, and had a long 
 memory for faces far remote from Oxford influences. 
 Sawell, one of the senior chaplains, hurried to his bedside 
 to kiss his cold remains, and the Fellows resolved that he 
 should have the grandest funeral that could be organized, 
 and repose in front of the altar in the College Chapel. 
 Charles Reade was in London laboring at " It is Never 
 Too Late to Mend," with a good heart, thanks to the indis- 
 putable success of "Christie Johnstone;" but no sooner 
 did the news reach him than he hurried to Oxford the first 
 train. Le roi est mort! Vive le roif would be the next 
 cry; but, under which King, Bezonian? That was the 
 question, and one fraught with great anxiety for every 
 Fellow of Magdalen.
 
 214 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 The College was as yet unreformed and unmutilated. 
 It was still battling the Queen's Commissioners, though 
 not with the same pluck wherewith it had resisted King 
 James II. Much depended, therefore, on the character of 
 the man selected for its head, in succession to Dr. Routh. 
 If they elected a Liberal, the Commissioners would be em- 
 boldened to increase their demands, for the rent-roll of 
 Magdalen had risen to quite 30,000 a year, and that lump 
 sum constituted filr plunder. Besides, all the little col- 
 leges were bitterly envious of rich and beautiful Mag- 
 dalen, and burning with anxiety that it should be de- 
 spoiled. This election, therefore, was a crucial one; and 
 Charles Reade had registered a mental resolve that he 
 would carry his friend Bulley, a Tory, a High-Churchman, 
 but by no means a bigot, a sound Greek scholar, and the 
 son of the Reading Doctor, who had administered to the 
 corporeal necessities of Ipsden House. Bulley was then 
 senior tutor, and in respect of dignity of manner rivalled 
 one of his sire's patients, Lord Stowell. He was reticent, 
 cautious, and yet genial in a quiet way. He never did a 
 foolish thing, and never said a wise one. 
 
 On the other side was Andrew Edwards, ex-Mathemati- 
 cal tutor, a mild reformer, and so charming a gentleman 
 that it seems almost astonishing he was not elected by 
 acclamation. But for his Liberal principles his claims 
 would have outweighed those of Bulley; and, as it was, 
 he ran him close. 
 
 Thirdly, there was the then Vice-President, Mr. Harris, 
 who was supposed to be a more pronounced Liberal than 
 Mr. Edwards, and withal personally acceptable to the 
 junior Fellows. He was barely forty-two years of age, 
 whereas Edwards was fifty-six, and Bulley forty-eight. 
 The election, as will appear, was conducted on such lines
 
 Vice-President. 215 
 
 that Mr. Harris might have come in but for Charles Reade's 
 timely interf erence this with every apology to the unsuc- 
 cessful candidate. But first, before the new sovereign of 
 our academical state could be elected, the obsequies of 
 the monarch deceased had to be performed with due so- 
 lemnity. Mr. Harris, as President pro tern., had the ar- 
 rangements in his hands, and carried them out perfectly. 
 Unfortunately the old organ had been removed, and the 
 glorious new instrument, the chef d'oeuvre of Messrs. Gray 
 & Davison, was not yet in situ, while the ante-chapel 
 presented an appearance of unseemly litter. The choral 
 service, therefore, was necessarily unaccompanied; but Mr. 
 Blyth, the organist of that epoch, boasted some of the no- 
 blest treble singers in England, and certainly as the pro- 
 cession moved from the College Hall round the picturesque 
 cloisters to the Chapel, the effect of Croft and Purcell's 
 weird strains was most sublime. Among the Fellows who 
 clustered round the gaping grave, wherein, with the proud 
 " C " on his coffin, were deposited the remains of their 
 President, none in his surplice and doctor's hood looked 
 more impressed, or presented in himself a more impressive 
 figure, than Charles Reade. It may have occurred to 
 some, even then, that there stood the grand man with the 
 grand mind, who ought to have been President, the one 
 Fellow of the entire body worthy to be the pediment of 
 so noble a Foundation. That, however, was out of the 
 question. They wanted a pedant for their President, and 
 had Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron offered themselves, 
 they would have preferred some academical mediocrity. 
 It was clearly understood that there was to be no nonsense 
 of merit about the Presidential election. Nobody outside 
 the College walls had ever heard of such names as Bulley, 
 Edwards, or Harris. They resembled nothing more than
 
 216 Memoir of Charles Heade. 
 
 Dickens's " Noakes, or Stokes, or Brown, or Styles," all esti- 
 mable gentlemen, let it be freely admitted; nevertheless, 
 the most exalted positions in the first of English univer- 
 sities ought, one would imagine, to be reserved for those 
 who have made their mark, and earned an undying repu- 
 tation. As it was, the choice lay between three worthy 
 pigmies; and now let us hear what the mammoth who was 
 backer of one of these pigmies has to say : 
 
 " It is past one o'clock. I have been employed actively 
 ever since nine, driving an idea into some of the thickest 
 skulls I have ever encountered. It is a most fortunate thing 
 for the Rev. F. Bulley that I came down here this evening. 
 I don't know whether he will be President of Magdalen or 
 not; but this I know, that but for me some five to seven 
 of his supporters would have been cajoled into cutting his 
 throat to-morrow. I will explain this to you at a future 
 time. It is a matter of figures, very curious, and may per- 
 haps amuse you to see the blunder they were about to fall 
 into 
 
 " Tenez. I will try and explain it now: 
 
 "There are 37 Fellows, all of whom are compelled in 
 the first instance to give two distinct votes. The result 
 of this process is, that there will be at the head of the 
 poll two Fellows. Then these two Fellows are sent up to 
 the 13 senior Fellows, who choose one of them for Pres- 
 ident. 
 
 "The struggle lies between three men Bulley (my 
 friend and the favorite), Edwards, and Harris. Now, out 
 of the 37 men I believe there are 20 men who wish Bulley 
 to be President; and if the said Bulley could be placed 
 first, or even second upon the first process, there is no 
 doubt that the 13 seniors would choose him. But here is
 
 Vice-President. 217 
 
 the grand oversight they have all made. Harris's men 
 have been cajoling Bulley's men to give Harris or Edwards 
 their second vote, and most have agreed to; but Harris's 
 men may give all their second votes to Edwards, and Ed- 
 wards's vice versa to Harris, and in point of fact this will 
 be the case. Now see the result of this: 
 
 "Bulley's 20 friends register for Bulley 20 votes, for 
 Edwards 10, and for Harris 10. Seventeen men remain, 
 of whom 12 are Harris's friends, 5 Edwards's; but out of 
 this number, who all hate Bulley, no one will go to Bulley, 
 but 17 to Harris, and 17 to Edwards. 
 
 " Result. Harris, 27 votes; Edwards, 27 votes; and Bul- 
 ley, 20. 
 
 " N. B. Each Fellow must vote for two people. 
 
 " Upon these figures Bulley would never be sent up to 
 the 13 seniors at all, and either Harris or Edwards must 
 be the President. 
 
 " The error Bulley's friends have all fallen into may be 
 thus stated: 
 
 "Thirty-seven men, with two votes each, are 74 votes; 
 but Bulley's friends have counted them as only 37 votes, 
 and his 20 votes have appeared to make him safe, and so 
 20 out of 37 would; but it is 20 out of 74, and the odd 54 
 will put two men above Bulley and destroy him. 
 
 " Here is another way of stating it. Bulley has more 
 friends than Harris and Edwards put together; but Harris 
 and Edwards have no enemies, and Bulley has 17 enemies 
 who cabal to keep him out coute que coute, whereas Bulley's 
 poor simpletons give their second votes indiscriminately to 
 Harris and Edwards, or were going to; but I have stopped 
 some of them, thank Heaven. I wish you had seen me 
 attacking this blunder. I wish you had seen the pains it 
 cost me to make them sec it. 
 10
 
 218 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 "I wish you had seen the complacent supineness of 
 Bulley's friends, their cool ridicule of the idea that with 
 20 friends out of 37 he could run any risk. I wish you 
 could have seen their faces as I succeeded in convincing 
 them, not only that their friend was not safe if they played 
 the fool with their second votes, but that by G he had 
 not the ghost of a chance, which is the plain fact. I was 
 hours before I could get them to realize this; however, I 
 swore in a little band who promised me to neutralize their 
 second vote, and to enforce the necessity of this on their 
 friends. I think we shall certainly neutralize half; in 
 other words, I hope out of Bulley's 20 friends, 10 will 
 now give him virtual plumpers by giving their second vote 
 to any one except Edwards or Harris. Thus Bulley will 
 have 20 votes; 10 votes will be put out of the play, and 44 
 will remain for Edwards and Harris, and here is a grand 
 chance for Bulley. There will be a few muddle-heads in 
 the enemies' camp as well as ours, and if they do not divide 
 their 44 votes cetera desunt" 
 
 The two candidates sent up to the 13 Seniors for their 
 final decision were Bulley and Edwards, and the former 
 scored seven to Edwards's five. Harris, as Vice-President, 
 had the determining vote, but had he gone for Edwards, 
 Bulley would still have scored a majority of one. Well 
 might that worthy gentleman have exclaimed sic me ser- 
 vavit Apollo; for if Charles Reade, D.C.L., had not come 
 down by the evening train in the nick of time, Mr. Harris, 
 at present the esteemed pastor of Winterbourne Basset, 
 would now be President of Magdalen. 
 
 The next occasion when Charles Reade interposed his 
 brain to safeguard the interests of his brother Fellows
 
 Vice- President. 219 
 
 was about two years later. From 1851, when President 
 Routh openly defied the Royal Commission, to 1858, when 
 a compromise between the views of the Commissioners 
 and those of the College was finally settled, everything 
 was in abeyance. The Commissioners, being rapacious, 
 were more anxious to abstract a huge slice of the endow- 
 ment of Magdalen than to reform or reorganize the col- 
 lege itself. To this end they offered the governing body, 
 i. e., the President and Fellows, a tempting bait. Each 
 of these privileged persons in the future was to draw a 
 fixed income from the College revenues, and this stipend 
 was to be put at a higher figure than the existing divi- 
 dends. In return, the said President and Fellows were to 
 hand over the management and disposition of their estates 
 to the Commissioners. They were no longer to be their 
 own masters, but, as Charles Reade phrased it, to be sti- 
 pendiaries in their own house. The Commission, howev- 
 er, had shown too much of its hand. One of its proposi- 
 tions was to suspend, or in plain English abrogate, ten 
 Fellowships. Another was to found three Professorships 
 out of the moneys saved by this interference with the 
 Founder's arrangements. Now, it was very easy on these 
 lines to make an arithmetic sum of the loss and gain to the 
 dividends of the Fellows by some such experiment; and 
 this same sum showed, that after the suppression of the 
 ten Fellowships and the foundation of three Professorships 
 at 600 a year each, the dividend would go up about 30 
 per cent. Yet, incredible though it may seem, some of 
 the intelligent Fellows were ardently anxious to obliterate 
 themselves, to barter away the independence of their col- 
 lege, and to lose money to the tune of 30 per cent, in or- 
 der to gain an apparently immediate increment of a few 
 sovereigns. There is no limit to human cupidity or hu-
 
 220 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 man folly, and this piece of avaricious foolery simply in- 
 censed Charles Reade, who came down to fight the battle 
 of common-sense against uncommon idiotcy. He bore 
 down all opposition with Rupertlike impetuosity, and had 
 the satisfaction of feeling that his brain had been of real 
 service to a set of people who seemed singularly deficient 
 in that particular. 
 
 This is his account of his passage-at-arms. It reads 
 like " Veni, vidi, mcil" 
 
 "We hare been hard at it from 11 till 4. As I dine with the President 
 (Bulley), I sit down now to scratch off a line before it is too late. 
 
 " Well, I made a speech, a long speech. And carried the college with 
 me like one man. 
 
 " I was opposed by a fellow that is supposed to be influential ; but I 
 carried them with me, 19 votes to one, and sent up an amendment on a 
 vital clause. 
 
 " If the Commissioners receive it, I may say : 
 
 " ' I have saved the College that has been a good mother to me since I 
 was 17 years of age.' The worst is, this has interrupted my story, but I 
 hardly thought of Bentley once all day. Put that against it." 
 
 This success at a critical College meeting placed him on 
 good terms with Magdalen, and induced him to dedicate 
 the novel to which this letter refers, to 
 
 " That ancient, learned, and most hospitable House" 
 Would that the kindly epithets had lasted !
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 KEADE VS. BENTLEY. 
 
 His reference to Mr. Bentley has something in it almost 
 pathetic. When, in obedience to the dictates of common- 
 sense, he decided to convert into a novel his magnificent 
 drama " Masks and Faces," the first fruit, as he deemed it, 
 of his genius, he had been very well pleased to discover in 
 Mr. Bentley a publisher willing to take him by the hand. 
 The book was termed " Peg Woffington," and we may 
 safely affirm, without fear of contradiction, that in the 
 English language there exists no work of fiction written 
 so concisely yet with such graphic force. It would be 
 difficult to discover one word too many; even less easy to 
 suggest how without detriment to the intensity of the in- 
 terest a line of description could be added. We have al- 
 ready seen, from his own testimony, how he excised not a 
 few of Taylor's picturesque superfluities from the play; 
 nor was he less rigorous with his own copy. One winter's 
 night he sat for several hours in the rooms in Magdalen 
 of Dr. Harris Smith, younger brother of Canon Bernard 
 Smith number eight, Cloisters, first pair left and pen in 
 hand, essayed an epilogue to that play. At the moment 
 he was pleased with his shall we call it, doggerel? He 
 read it, and reread it to the writer of these lines, request- 
 ing him to suggest something more euphonious for the 
 concluding couplet, a task to which the brain of the said 
 nephew, then but a schoolboy, was by no means equal. At
 
 222 Memoir of Charles Heade. 
 
 the risk of raising a smile we recall this moribund epi- 
 logue. It ran thus: 
 
 " A hundred years have passed away 
 
 Since nil these leaves fell from the tree. 
 
 The tree still blows as green as ever, 
 , For artists perish, art dies never. 
 
 Gibber, and Woffington, and I, 
 
 Live but to make you laugh, and cry ; 
 
 And show you still, that here's the will, 
 
 The warm desire to please ye, 
 
 And find a way to make you stay 
 
 First impressions, however, never left a lasting mark on 
 an author whose powers of self-criticism and self-revision 
 were unbounded, always premising that he was not hurried 
 prematurely in celeres iambos, or any other form of print- 
 er's ink. Hence, out went these lines, together with some 
 of the Taylorian embellishments, and " Masks and Faces " 
 remains an eternal monument to the fidelity to art of hon- 
 est authorship. 
 
 He preferred " Masks and Faces " to " Peg Woffington," 
 and in his inmost heart felt, as a matter of preference, that 
 " the play's the thing !" Yet he had no cause to com- 
 plain of the reception of his first literary essay. The 
 Times led the way with a strong encomium; the reviews 
 followed suit. Certainly Oxford was beyond measure de- 
 lighted. The only grumble was, that he had not made 
 " Peg Woffington " sufficiently Irish indeed, it was pri- 
 vately hinted that he might recast the character on the 
 lines of Lever with advantage. That, however, was hyper- 
 criticism. He introduced " Peg " as a leading lady on the 
 London stage, not as a savage Irishwoman from Kerry; 
 and he could hardly have been far wrong in his presump-
 
 Beade versus Bentley. 223 
 
 tion that she had learned the English language. Indeed, 
 whether we regard this same conception as a drama, or as 
 dramatic narration, we are lost in admiration of its gor- 
 geous literary quality. Its author from first to last was 
 jealous for its honor. For example, writing some years 
 later from the Garrick Club to Mrs. Seymour at Brighton, 
 he says, "You are right, I think, to play 'Masks and 
 Faces ' with Mrs. Wyndham and Toole. Tell me how you 
 get on with it; and mind, nothing must be left to chance 
 with respect to the picture. Talk to Toole. Show him 
 in what state he is to take it on. And explain to him that 
 he must not really strike it in the Third Act." 
 
 Again, in a letter to Mrs. Seymour from Paris, of the 
 date probably 1852 or '53 (he never dated a letter), we find 
 this reference to, apparently, the play, though he gives it 
 the title of the novel: 
 
 " HOTEL NATIONAL, RUE NOTRE DAME DES VICTOIRES, PARIS. 
 
 " You may imagine with what pleasure I saw your well-known hand. 
 
 " Heaven forbid that the fate of the leaf should be yours ! 
 
 " See how dangerous are similes. You almost deserve that I should re- 
 mind you that you are not the leaf, but the plant, which is not injured, 
 happily, because it sacrifices a leaf to healing purposes. 
 
 "I am not in very good spirits about business. has already 
 
 brought out a play called l Les Chercheurs d'Or / and, of course, this is an 
 almost invincible obstacle to me. 
 
 " The theatres are very uninteresting. The weather is most oppressive 
 to the spirits, so, as usual, je suis tristc. 
 
 " We have translated the First Act of ' Peg Woffington,' and it looks 
 well in French. My translator, who is a dramatic author, is satisfied with 
 the First Act ; and the action of the other two is quite as rapid, so I hope 
 we shall do." 
 
 These brief excerpts will give an idea of how intensely 
 his mind was wrapped up in " Peg " call it drama, or 
 call it novel even while he was engaged on "Gold."
 
 224 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Never was a theme subjected to more careful, more lov- 
 ing elaboration. 
 
 "Peg Woffington," the novel, saw the light in the 
 summer of 1853, the last year of the venerable George 
 Stanley Faber's life. That able theologian, in the re- 
 cesses of his study at Sherburn Hospital, read the book 
 between 5 A. M., his invariable hour for rising, and 8.30, 
 the family breakfast hour, and was simply entranced by 
 his nephew's achievement. Strange to relate, he handed 
 it to a rather clever Irish lady, his guest at the time, who 
 in turn at dinner pronounced it to be "quite passable, 
 but devoid of imagination " quot femince tot sententice ! 
 This was not the universal verdict of the sex. Mrs. Reade, 
 for example, doffed her puritanism for the occasion, vowed 
 that her Charles had done himself credit, but sent him 
 with this warm meed of praise a loving hint that his 
 mother hoped he would never write a word he need after- 
 wards feel ashamed of. Perhaps we may hazard the as- 
 sertion that the book did as well as the play. The latter, 
 except in one particular, fared better subsequently under 
 the stage management of Mrs. Bancroft. The former was 
 the tentative effort of an unknown man. That alone will 
 account for the sum handed to him by his publisher, on 
 the half-profit system, reaching only the modest total of 
 30. 
 
 To say that the author was discouraged is to reveal an 
 open secret. Still the reviews had spoken words of strong 
 praise. He felt inspired to try again. 
 
 "Christie Johnstone" differs from "Peg "Woffington" 
 in being less concisely dramatic and more descriptive. It 
 is a beautiful, because an ideal, story, and the plaudits of 
 the press grew in volume and intensity. Here again, not- 
 withstanding, the reading public only displayed a mild
 
 Reade versus Bentley. 225 
 
 avidity, and the author netted another miserable 30. 
 This was indeed a sorry victory. He had evidently failed 
 to command the popular ear, and his robust intellect did 
 not fail to read the lesson of this succes cVestime. He per- 
 ceived that he must paint on a bigger canvas, and color 
 with varied and absorbing human interests. A weaker 
 mind would have been dashed, and given up. His was 
 spurred onwards to grander and more laborious exertions. 
 He never lost faith in his children, as he fondly styled 
 the products of his brain. Nor, as regards these two, was 
 his paternal affection misplaced. " Peg " must be peren- 
 nial. She has as much life in her as Lady Teazle. The 
 character of Triplet alone would suffice to render either 
 the novel or the play coeval with the English language. 
 " Christie Johnstone," odd, epigrammatic, and angular 
 as it may be termed, coruscates with a glorious tender- 
 ness, and when its author for once forgets to be terse, and 
 launches into description, he gives us in the rescue scene 
 one of the most vivid of word-pictures ever penned. He 
 was right to love these two novels blessed pair of sirens 
 the efflux of his earlier genius. The irony of fate de- 
 creed that just as he had to battle for his Fellowship, which 
 was his own, so also for the copyrights of these novels. 
 
 The following is his own version of the struggle, which 
 at the time affected him profoundly we might almost say 
 morbidly, for his fury against Messrs. Bentley was eva- 
 nescent, and after his dearly bought victory entirely ceased. 
 Perhaps it might be affirmed with truth that soon after 
 the hatchet was buried the old sentiment of friendship 
 revived. Certain it is, that both the Bentleys, father and 
 son, malgre their defeat, entertained towards their antag- 
 onist feelings of the most chivalrous character. They 
 fought him for what they imagined as it proved erro- 
 10*
 
 226 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 neously to be their legal rights. They lost, and they 
 lost with a good grace. It is gratifying to reflect that 
 his last as well as his first novel was issued by that emi- 
 nent, liberal, and honorable firm. 
 
 " I produced," he writes, " two novels in one vol. each, 
 ' Peg Woffington,' ' Christie Johnstone.' 
 
 " These were published on what is called the half-profit 
 system. 
 
 " Under this system, which encouraged many frauds, I re- 
 ceived for those two successful works only 60 for the two. 
 
 "My publisher endeavored to seize on the copyright, 
 which the agreement did not justify. 
 
 "I took proceedings and was defeated by a technicality. 
 
 "Costs 120." 
 
 Publisher persisted. Reade went at him again, em- 
 ployed no counsel this time, and was victorious. But the 
 judge, with manifest partiality, refused him costs. 
 
 " These came to 90. 
 
 " Receipts for two brilliant works, 60. 
 
 " Spent in protecting them from fraudulent appropriation, 220. 
 " Punishment for producing ' Christie Johnstone ' and ' Peg Woffing- 
 ton,' 160." 
 
 (N.B. The funny part of this is that in his righteous 
 indignation his arithmetic got hopelessly mixed ; on his 
 own showing his total costs were 210, his total receipts, 
 60. His penalty, therefore, 150.) 
 
 Then follows a dismal groan. 
 
 "After Reade had defeated this publisher, the other 
 publishers held^loof from him. For years he could find 
 no publisher, and was obliged to publish on commission. 
 The weekly papers, being all under trade influence, per- 
 sistently decried his works, and insulted him. But he
 
 Reade versus Bentley. 227 
 
 went doggedly on, publishing his own works in vol. form, 
 and learning their commercial value." 
 
 Mr. George Bentley, and the Publishing Trade gener- 
 ally, will, we trust, pardon this inclusion of a character- 
 istic memorandum. Into the merits of our author's quarrel 
 with the publishers it would be superfluous to enter, if, 
 indeed, such a quarrel existed outside the region of his 
 sensitive imagination. That he benefited is most improb- 
 able. Mrs. Seymour gave him. practical assistance of a 
 very valuable kind, but he belonged to the class of penny- 
 wise gentry who leave the pounds to shift for themselves; 
 and it is a fact that he omitted to square accounts with 
 the late Mr. Trtibner for so many years that his claim was 
 actually statute-run. Fortunately for him, he had to deal 
 with a man of scrupulous integrity, and thus obtained his 
 own. But it is none the less true that he was totally un- 
 conscious of Triibner being in his debt, just as sometimes 
 he would forget for twelve or eighteen months to draw 
 the check for his Fellowship from the Bursar of Magdalen. 
 
 From a business point of view, nevertheless, he was fully 
 justified in rescuing his copyrights from Messrs. Bentley. 
 At present these books are a genuine literary property, 
 and have a steady sale. In short, if at the moment penal- 
 ized to the extent of 150, and put to the excitement and 
 trouble of two lawsuits, he amply recouped himself. More- 
 over, his victory was a memorable one, since, whereas in 
 the first action, which failed, he employed as his counsel, 
 Mr., afterwards Mr. Justice, Lush, a lawyer second only 
 to Cockburn, who, nevertheless, broke down, in the second 
 action he trusted solely to the forensic genius of Charles 
 Reade, bai'rister at law of Lincoln's Inn, who never before 
 had held a brief, but who none the less triumphed where 
 Lush had failed.
 
 228 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Simultaneously with the publication of " Christie John- 
 stone " he sat down and wrote a critique of the book. He 
 styles it in his MS. 
 
 "CHRISTIE JOHNSTONE, 
 
 AN 
 
 AUTO-CRITICISM." 
 
 Needless, perhaps, to add it was simply a jeu d'esprit, 
 never intended, or offered, for publication, being, indeed, 
 simply the author's candid notion of what an honest critic 
 would say were he disposed to avoid the minimum alike 
 of praise and blame. It runs thus: 
 
 "CHRISTIE JOHNSTONE. 
 
 " A DRAMATIC STORY. 
 
 "The origin of this title appears to be the quantity of 
 pure dialogue in the work. 
 
 "To those effects in which the drama shines the volume 
 before us makes less pretension than three novels out of 
 four. 
 
 " We encourage this author to try again ; but must tell 
 him he has much to learn before he can hope to shine in 
 this sort of fiction. 
 
 " To write a good novel, a supple and changeable style 
 is required; but, above all, some warmth of imagination: 
 this it is which clothes incidents with those glowing de- 
 tails that make them vivid and interesting. 
 
 " The author of ' Christie Johnstone ' is full of details 
 but they are barren details. He deals in those minutiae 
 which are valuable according to the hand that mixes them ; 
 but he has not the art of mixing his materials. Hence 
 the compound, with some exceptions, is dry and lumpy.
 
 Reade versus Bentley. 229 
 
 "This is to be the more regretted as the materials are 
 in themselves decidedly good. 
 
 "We have in this country some dozen ladies and gen- 
 tlemen who have long ago written themselves dry; but 
 any one of whom would have made a charming story with 
 Mr. Reade's ideas. 
 
 " The plot, which is of that arbitrary kind that befits 
 a play rather than a story, can be disposed of in few 
 words: 
 
 " Like all weak plots, it runs in two channels, which are 
 more independent than in rightly constructed fiction, 
 whether story or play. 
 
 " A young, rich, handsome, clever Lord is ill and un- 
 happy. He suspects as the cause Lady Barbara Sinclair's 
 cruelty; but Saunders, his factotum, suspects his Lord's 
 liver, and calls in Dr. Aberford, who, defying drugs, treats 
 him as St. Luke might, and recommends him to make ac- 
 quaintance with the lower orders, to hear and relieve their 
 more substantial sorrows, to feel for them, and work like 
 them. Off goes my Lord to Newhaven, and goes in for 
 charity and perspiration. There Saunders, sent to catch 
 lower orders, secures two beautiful young fishwives. 
 
 " One of these, Christie Johnstone, catechises our Vis- 
 count, and draws out his spark of enthusiasm, whose ex- 
 istence neither he nor Saunders suspected. 
 
 "She then puts him on the road of charity; he learns 
 his first lesson about real afflictions from a fish -widow, 
 and this scene, showing the man of society, whose heart 
 is in him but asleep, with the woman of flesh and blood 
 and sorrows, is well written, though exaggerated. 
 
 "In the course of time Lord Ipsden, after a long and 
 fruitless search for adventures, heads a party of fishermen 
 and relieves a distressed vessel in a gale of wind.
 
 230 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 "But in the meantime he has fallen in with his cousin 
 Lady Barbara, and revived his hopes. These hopes soon 
 lead to mortification ; for the lady, a pupil of Mr. T. Car- 
 lyle, has discovered a male pupil, and this pair run down 
 the age together; and Lord Ipsden, whom she has always 
 considered a mere saunterer, finds himself de trop. So he 
 demolishes the earnest man in argument, and finds himself 
 still more de trop. 
 
 "He quits her for a week ; but meeting her accidentally 
 on Leith sands, is received graciously. She tells him laugh- 
 ingly that the earnest man has received his conge for run- 
 ning faster than herself from a bull ; and bursts into 
 rapturous applause of an heroic action she relates, and so 
 embellishes that his Lordship only just recognizes his own 
 feat. Her enthusiasm and his confusion are interrupted 
 by the sudden arrival of the identical skipper who had 
 been saved. This man pours out his manly gratitude and 
 sheers off. Her ladyship, a fine, generous creature, though 
 a goose, laughs, cries, makes the amende, and the rest may 
 be imagined. 
 
 " The other thread of the story is the loves of Christie 
 Johnstone and an enthusiastic young painter of genius. 
 This personage has all the weakness as well as intellect of 
 a great artist. His mother is determined to separate the 
 lovers, and the poor eloquent vacillator is bandied about 
 like a shuttlecock between two or three unintellectual 
 women with more iron wills than he, till we are ready to 
 throw the book at his head, and bid him pass it on to the 
 writer. 
 
 "At last Christie Johnstone finds all this out by arriv- 
 ing suddenly on a stormy dialogue between the artist and 
 his mother; and her pride and delicacy instantly close the 
 discussion and prevent the rupture. She drops the ring
 
 Reade versus Bentley. 231 
 
 of betrothal between the mother and son, and ends the 
 amour by gesture and silence that have something im- 
 pressive. 
 
 "But her spirits and health suffer, and she pines 
 secretly. 
 
 " The young artist is about to leave for England, and 
 would fain part friends; but Christie dismisses him with 
 a hauteur which ill represents her real feelings. 
 
 " Not long after, all Newhaven is watching a swimmer, 
 who, it appears, is in the habit of going out to the roads 
 and back. One spirit, quicker than the rest, compares the 
 time, the tide, and other circumstances, and doubts the 
 swimmer's safety. This is Christie, who throws off her 
 listlessness, and with her brother darts down to the pier, 
 and goes out in a boat amids the jeers of the others; be- 
 fore, however, she has made her first tack, the whole town 
 has come to her opinion, and it is in front of three thou- 
 sand spectators that she with difficulty and dexterity saves 
 her lover without discovering his identity, which her broth- 
 er, who hates him, is anxious to conceal from her. 
 
 " The feat has been seen by Lord Ipsden and Lady Bar- 
 bara from the shore; and Mrs. Gatty, the artist's mother, 
 who had learned in the heat of the business that it was 
 her son, has fainted and been carried to Christie John- 
 stone's house. 
 
 " Thus a dramatic close is prepared. 
 
 " Christie appears on shore, her color and spirits re- 
 stored by a brave action ; the mother comes from behind 
 one of the groups that were discussing the feat; the boy 
 comes up with his hair dripping, and Christie's name in his 
 mouth. 
 
 " The mother sees him and runs to him. 
 
 " Christie runs too, and, no longer mistress of herself, in
 
 232 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 going to fling her arms round him, flings them as it hap- 
 pens round her competitor, Mrs. Gatty. 
 
 " The old lady, a mighty stern sort of body, is still a 
 woman ; she cannot resist this ; her heart speaks louder 
 than her prudence and her years, and she embraces her 
 daughter; a fisherman blubbers, and everybody is happy, 
 not excepting tho sour critic who finds himself at the 
 end of the tale. 
 
 "Incidental to the Btory is an episode on a drowned 
 fisherman, and the manner in which the calamity is broken 
 to his wife. 
 
 "This is well imagined, but in the telling of it the true 
 oil of fiction is somewhat wanting. 
 
 " We have also a description of two contemporaneous 
 picnics on an island. One o,f them is composed of ladies 
 and gentlemen ; the other of fishermen and fishwives. It 
 is covertly and not without plausibility conveyed, that of 
 the two the snobs are the only pretenders to intellect and 
 savoir vivre in their amusements. 
 
 "In short, this writer has clearly a quick eye for all 
 that is good and clever in the lower classes ; we welcome 
 his aid, our own organs of vision having more than once 
 failed to make these discoveries. And we thank him still 
 more for his forbearance ; they who hold his sentiment 
 seldom let us go to bed till they have told us that cor- 
 duroy is virtue, and broadcloth and soap are vice: and we 
 are in some terror lest through hearing this too often we 
 may end our rational career by believing it. 
 
 " The author of ' Christie Johnstone' has good thoughts 
 which he could clothe with logic, but he cannot yet dress 
 them in the garb fiction requires. He should associate 
 himself with one of our authoresses ; we have several 
 whose abilities are his counterpart. He has plenty to tell
 
 Reade versus Bentley. 233 
 
 us and cannot tell it; they have nothing to say and say it 
 to perfection. 
 
 "The pair would produce a novel considerably above 
 the average; something we should read with pleasure and 
 lay aside with delight."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 VICTORY ! 
 
 WE now come to the supreme crisis in the literary life 
 of Charles Reade the moment when he awoke to find 
 himself famous. 
 
 His quasi-home in Piccadilly had been a chronic source 
 of annoyance in every way. Its nominal tenant was Mr. 
 Samo, Mrs. Seymour's husband, but this individual was 
 perpetually in hot water. Execution succeeded execu- 
 tion, each paid out with greater difficulty than its prede- 
 cessor; until at last, with the design of securing compara- 
 tive peace, Charles Reade was induced himself to become 
 tenant of a spacious mansion in Bolton Row". Thither 
 Mrs. Seymour moved her furniture and her lodgers, Cap- 
 tain Curling and Mr. Augustus Braham. It was an eccentric 
 arrangement, but, thanks to a thorough understanding be- 
 tween all the parties concerned, worked admirably. 
 
 As for Samo the impecunious, he discovered a suitable 
 retreat below stairs. He was now, poor man, no longer in 
 his own house, and therefore at last free from the atten- 
 tions of bailiffs. He enjoyed both ample provender and 
 peace of mind, and it speaks volumes for the relations sub- 
 sisting between his wife and her landlord, that he regarded 
 the latter as his true and honest friend, and never evinced 
 a. souppon of jealousy or suspicion. 
 
 It was in Bolton Row that Charles Reade completed his 
 Magnum Opus. " Gold " had previously taken fairly with
 
 Victory ! 235 
 
 a Drury Lane audience. The critics decried it as a failure, 
 but the length of its run disproved their verdict. It was a 
 thorough success,- the lessee of Drury Lane, in the six 
 weeks' run, netted a clear profit of 1500, and it provided 
 an important element for the great novel. 
 
 " It is Never Too Late to Mend " may be said without 
 qualification to have been the keystone of its author's 
 fortune. Tip to 1856, when it first saw the light, the 
 public had held its judgment in suspense. " Peg Woffing- 
 ton " and " Christie Johnstone " both paved the way for 
 their splendid successor. They prepared the minds of 
 readers on either side of the Atlantic for the sequel. They 
 had given eclat to their author's name, and, indeed, the 
 public was already on the tiptoe of expectation for his 
 next book. We must bear in mind that novelists of merit 
 at that time of day were but few. Bulwer, Dickens, Sam- 
 uel Warren, Thackeray, headed the list; and Mrs. Beecher 
 Stowe had proved herself to be a one-book author. Boys 
 read Smedley and Lever ; sentimentalists Miss Yonge, 
 while Jerrold and Albert Smith had their admirers. But 
 George Eliot and Wilkie Collins, Ouida and Miss Brad- 
 don, were as yet unknown, and the public had not as yet 
 been surfeited with fiction. 
 
 The book appeared. It might be presupposed from its 
 colossal and lasting success that it was welcomed by the 
 critics with a chorus of praise. Not so; criticism in this 
 country has always exhibited the beautiful incertitude of 
 cricket, and so perverted is its judgment, that, not infre- 
 quently, a book which is roundly rated has a better chance 
 of gripping the public than one which is indiscriminately 
 praised. 
 
 Nevertheless, the reviews were not all censorious; there 
 were some few honorable exceptions. Here and there
 
 236 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 might be discovered a pen with sufficient intelligence to 
 appreciate dramatic narration which happened to be dra- 
 matic. For example, The Critic, then in the hands of the 
 late Sergeant Cox, a publicist- gifted with rare brains and 
 unimpeachable honesty, wrote thus: "Paulo majora cana- 
 tntis ! Mr. Reade's novel, with the quaint and proverbial 
 title ' It is Never Too Late to Mend,' is one of the very few 
 first-rate works of fiction which we have met with in our 
 life. It is a principle - novel, aimed against a system, and 
 that system one of the most crying evils which affect man- 
 kind and disgrace humanity; it attacks that code of dis- 
 cipline which converts error into crime, crime into mad- 
 ness; which makes pickpockets burglars, and burglars mur- 
 derers; which under the pretence of philanthropy inflicts 
 tortures beside which the most cruel refinements of the 
 Inquisition were as gentle mercies; which treats the crim- 
 inal as a machine to be systematized and not as a soul to 
 be saved; it is levelled at the solitary, separate, and silent 
 system of treating criminals." 
 
 It would constitute a tax on patience were we to give 
 in extenso the entirety of this admirable, because just, 
 criticism. We cannot, however, forbear appending its 
 utterances on Mr. Eden, Charles Reade's model parson : 
 
 " The jail scenes give occasion for the introduction of a 
 character which we, without hesitation, pronounce to be one 
 of the very best in the whole range of fiction. This is the 
 chaplain of the jail, Mr. Eden; a man such as there are, we 
 fear, but few in existence a man, who, if he lived, would 
 be one of those chosen few whom the Almighty sends 
 upon the earth to soften the lot of poor, erring, miserable 
 sinners; one of those very few who constitute, as it were, 
 the salt of the human species. It will almost invariably be 
 found that where the novelist introduces a clergyman upon
 
 Victory! 237 
 
 the scene, he falls either into one or other of two errors: 
 either he represents him in an unfavorable light, as a cant- 
 ing, worldly-minded hypocrite, whose practices are the 
 very reverse of his professions; or else he makes a saint 
 of him, without one single feature of humanity in him, 
 from the gloria round his head down to the soles of his 
 martyred feet. Now, Mr. Eden is a man a man of like 
 passions with us all a man who feels for another, and 
 sympathizes with his weakness because he knows how 
 weak his own heart is." 
 
 In contrast to this straightforward criticism we have the 
 acidulated analysis of The Saturday Review. That paper 
 was then at its best. It was launched by Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge men as a corrective of the Scotticism and Hiber- 
 nicism of the press; its contributors were scholars and gen- 
 tlemen, not short-hand writers and penny-a-liners from 
 Edinburgh and Dublin. But in its zeal for thoroughness 
 and accuracy it not infrequently became pedantic, and 
 when it tried to be satirical succeeded only in being inso- 
 lent. At the same time it must be freely admitted that 
 The Saturday Jteview of 1856 and the succeeding years 
 revived the dormant science of criticism, and dealt a heavy 
 blow to the crass sciolism which then as always infests 
 the London press. That it fell foul of Charles Reade is 
 hardly to the credit of its prescience, yet even in its cen- 
 sure it could not without awkwardness conceal an under- 
 current of compulsory admiration. 
 
 The following are excerpts from its prolonged half-com- 
 plimentary snarl : " The plot is full of obvious faults, and 
 the language is disfigured with affectation. It is in every 
 way an uncommon book, uncommon in the power it dis- 
 plays, and the variety of knowledge it contains uncom- 
 mon in the beauty and force of its language, when the
 
 238 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 author forgets to be affected, uncommon in the interest it 
 excites and sustains. The plot, as we have said, is faulty. 
 'It is Never Too Late to Mend' contains in fact three 
 stories; not separated in form, but really quite distinct, and 
 hung together by a very slender thread. The first is a tale 
 of bucolic love; the second is the history of a badly man- 
 aged jail ; the third relates the adventures of two Austra- 
 lian gold diggers. Each has great merits in itself, but 
 the three do not combine to make a whole. . . . Every 
 chapter throughout the work is so written that we can- 
 not stop when we have once begun it. ... Mr. Reade 
 makes his miners talk as miners would talk, not like gen- 
 tlemen and poets in shooting-jackets. This seems to be 
 the great gift which Mr. Reade enjoys he can describe. If 
 he paints a country girl, she is like one, not like a marchion- 
 ess with the hat and crook of a shepherdess. His magis- 
 trates, navvies, and thieves move, talk, and behave as we 
 know they ought to. Of imagination in the sense of 
 creation (sic) there is not in this book any great trace, . . . 
 but it is not once in a year or once in five years that we 
 have a fiction given us so wide in its range, so true to life 
 as this, or containing a character so beautiful as that of 
 Susan Merton." 
 
 " Not guilty, but he mustn't do it again ;" or, perhaps, 
 rather, " guilty, yet he may do it again," such is the chame- 
 leon criticism of this Saturday Jteviewer. The man evi- 
 dently did not know his own mind; he was writhing under 
 a spell and struggling vainly to be free; he meant to curse, 
 but drifted off into blessing. 
 
 The Leader, a paper of some literary pretensions, advo- 
 cating Agnosticism and extreme Radicalism, follows suit, 
 but in a different vein. " The matter-of-fact romance," it 
 is prepared graciously to admit, " possesses many qualities
 
 Victory! 239 
 
 which will fix the attention of novel readers, and above all it 
 has the quality of readableness." After which piece of plat- 
 itudinous patronage, it at once darts off into spite. " With- 
 out being peculiarly fastidious," it avers, " the reader will 
 be frequently annoyed by certain defects of matter and man- 
 ner, but even the most fastidious will go through (sic) the 
 three volumes, interested, sometimes excited. . . . Mr. 
 Reade is a playwright rather than a dramatist. He shows 
 us some of the dramatist in ' Susan ' and ' George ;' but 
 the playwright predominates throughout the volumes. It 
 is seen in the constant and irritating striving for ' effect.' 
 He not only shows us that he is working up to a situation 
 a tableau on which the curtain may fall but shows us 
 the puerile efforts at effect in devices of printing, in tirades 
 of rant, in foolish woodcuts meant to be impressive. He 
 can write so simply, and writes so well when he writes 
 simply, that his friends should warn him against unworthy 
 imitations of the French novelists. Short chapters of a 
 few lines, and paragraphs of a few words, or sentences in 
 capitals, really are not effective, but only show that they 
 were meant to be so. When he does not show us that he 
 is trying to be effective, few writers are more so. When 
 he is not indulging in small affectations, he writes clearly, 
 eloquently, picturesquely. His style is graceful and strong. 
 His power of telling a story, not descriptively but dramati- 
 cally, is considerable; and he has a perception of what is 
 healthy in human nature, especially in women. With these 
 qualities we ought to see him produce a novel that would 
 not simply please the unfastidious. ' It is Never Too Late 
 to Mend ' is such a novel, though not taking a high rank in 
 its class. No one will reread it f The author has bestowed 
 great pains upon it, but he has been less careful with his 
 characters than with his details, and more solicitous of ef-
 
 240 Memoir of Charles lieade. 
 
 fects than of effect. What are the qualities which mado 
 the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Tom Jones,' 'Pride and Preju- 
 dice,' 'Ivanhoe,' ' The Scarlet Letter,' works so rereadable ? 
 Not their incidents. Not their 'effects;' but the quiet, 
 stealthy grasp of the imagination and the affections." 
 
 The meaning of this farrago seems to be (1) that Gold- 
 smith despised situation, not to say plot. That allegation, 
 teste the Lyceum Theatre, is untrue. 
 
 (2) That 'Tom Jones' by its stealthy grasp of the affec- 
 tions, beats Charles Reade's chef cFceuvrc. To which we 
 may reply that the pictures of some among the human af- 
 fections in the said 'Tom Jones' resemble those of the 
 canine species. 
 
 (3) That 'Ivanhoe' and the 'Scarlet Letter* are un- 
 dramatic. This again is false, albeit both are less dramatic 
 than the work which Charles Reade always terms in his 
 MS. ' Sera nunyuam^ his late, but not too late, master- 
 piece. 
 
 (4) That 'Pride and Prejudice' being the very opposite 
 of all Charles Reade's work, is on that account superior. 
 Well, some people like brandy; some weak tea; but it 
 won't do to argue that weak tea is stronger than brandy. 
 
 The rest of the reviews took up the same style of para- 
 ble, evidently in indecision whether to heave " 'arf a brick " 
 at the venturesome author who had broken new ground, 
 or to anticipate the public enthusiasm. In the United 
 States, criticism, as a science, was in its infancy; and most 
 of the leading journals contented themselves with an ex- 
 haustive analysis of the plot, one among the number, T/te 
 Boston Daily Evening Traveller, devoting no less than 
 three columns of close print to this achievement. Had the 
 voice of the press, whether cis-Atlantic or trans-Atlantic 
 prevailed, no doubt the book would have fallen stillborn.
 
 Victory ! 241 
 
 It happens, however, that the ultima, ratio does not lie with 
 quill drivers, whether of the highest culture, such as those 
 on The Saturday Review, or of the shoddiest mediocrity, 
 the briefless barrister and the shorthand writer. Beyond 
 these feeble voices is the great public, for whom alone 
 Charles Reade wrote, and this supreme critic returned no 
 qualified verdict. Malgrb the prophets, 'It is Never Too 
 Late to Mend ' was not only read, but reread, and not only 
 reread, but also read perennially. The book was triumphant. 
 They were right in their supposition, that this work had 
 caused its author the severest labor. Later on, a critic 
 described it as in places "verging on the confines of farce." 
 Yet every detail was verified. Every fact was obtained 
 by research and observation. The idle allegation of care- 
 lessness hurled at the most careful of writers was wholly 
 iinjustifiable, for in truth the book represents more than 
 four years' toil, and its literary quality is beaten out by no 
 common hand on no common anvil. As an indication of the 
 painstaking energy, we might almost write agony, of its 
 creator, we may fairly quote an extract from a brief and 
 hurried letter scribbled from the Garrick Club to Mrs. Sey- 
 mour, who then chanced to be on a visit to her brother-in- 
 law, Mr. Gibson, a Scotch clergyman in Selkirkshire. The 
 book was only in progress, that is to say portions of each 
 volume were outlined, but the whole was unconnected. 
 " My first volume," he writes, " will, I hope, take me up to 
 the death of Josephs. By which means in the second I 
 shall quite clear the Prison, and cut well into the other in- 
 terest. I think it will be a great work, much abused, no 
 doubt but, a reputation. If it is so, remember, I never 
 should hare effected so great a work without you. The 
 part with which I hope to please as well as dazzle was all 
 written in your presence, every word of it. 
 11
 
 242 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " My mother is delighted with Mr. Eden ; but I am sor- 
 ry to say she likes the Jew too. So that throws a doubt 
 upon her judgment." 
 
 So far as Mrs. Seymour is concerned, this was by no 
 means the language of compliment. She was his literary 
 and dramatic partner, and with her he discussed his plots, 
 situations, and characters. To her criticism he submitted 
 his dialogue. She possessed the faculty of perceiving at 
 a glance how the lines would play and how each chapter 
 would read. To term her part-author would be to exag- 
 gerate ; to underrate the aid she afforded would be an in- 
 justice. Those who knew him best would be the first to 
 bear testimony to the invaluable services rendered through- 
 out his career by this clever, if not very highly cultured, 
 woman. 
 
 The following, also to Mrs. Seymour, who apparently 
 was about to return from her long sojourn in Scotland to 
 their joint habitation in Bolton Row, seems to show that, 
 after all, and in spite of his prophecy that 'It is Never 
 Too Late to Mend ' would constitute the basis of his repu- 
 tation, he hardly dared expect a second edition. No author 
 ever felt so acutely the lash of criticism. A syllable of de- 
 traction in his eyes covered fatally a .multitude of lauda- 
 tions, and as the censors had elected to be censorious, his 
 hopes were rudely dashed, and barely able to revive. 
 
 "I am hard at work," he says, " punctually and steadily. 
 I really believe he (Bentley) is going into a Second Edition 
 next week. Criticisms in The Critic and The Spectator, 
 the former very warm, especially in praise of the Prison 
 business; the latter also warm on that point, but disgusted 
 with Meadows and Levi. So that if I listened to my critics, 
 there is nothing somebody or other would not cut out, and 
 if I listened again, there is nothing I should not restore.
 
 Victory ! 243 
 
 " There is an old Greek story of a painter who exposed 
 his picture in the market-place for criticism. 'Here is a 
 bit of black chalk,' said he, ' mark the faults.' The multi- 
 tude of critics marked out every square inch of the picture. 
 He washed off the marks. ' Now mark the beauties,' said 
 he. The critics marked every square inch of the picture. 
 
 " I never realized the wisdom of this story until now. 
 
 " I have just sent Webster a note consenting to treat on 
 his terms, for that drama you know. 
 
 "Also to Bentley, offering to purchase the copies of 
 'Woffington' that remain on hand. So you see I have 
 some faith in my ultimate success; all depends on this: 
 (1) Whether I can give up eating too much; (2) whether 
 I can have one cheerful sympathizing soul to bear me 
 up. 
 
 " I killed Carlo to-day and wept sore, snivelling, but not 
 saving his life any more for that. Snivelling over him 
 and killing him, syllable by syllable. Pah ! isn't it sick- 
 ening ? 
 
 " A Brewer is High Sheriff for our county. Yesterday 
 he gave a dinner to the magistrates, my brother among the 
 rest cost 600. There was a sugar-ship, six foot high, 
 full rigged, with guns !" 
 
 It is superfluous to add that his hesitating prognostica- 
 tion of a second edition was verified. It would be grati- 
 fying to know how many editions both in England and 
 America succeeded it. A bookseller at Clifton, three years 
 later, informed the writer of these lines that he sold more 
 copies of " It is Never Too Late to Mend" than of " Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin ;" probably the number of readers could only 
 be reckoned by the million. 
 
 In the following January an Irish lady wrote a string 
 of inquiries which Charles Reade answered as follows:
 
 244 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 "6 BOLTO.N Row, MAYFAIR, Jan. 7, 1857. 
 
 " MADAM, The details in question are founded on fact. 
 
 " Of course I have invented many things, but not a single horror. 
 
 " The Christian clergyman is a pure fiction ; there was no such creature 
 in that place, but Mr. Hawes is a living man. He has murdered his fellow- 
 creature exactly as I have described, has suffered three months' imprison- 
 ment in a debtor's prison, and is now abroad, angry with the Government, 
 thoroughly self-satisfied and un-hung, though not, I flatter myself, ungib- 
 beted. 
 
 " Those black facts have been before the public before ever I handled 
 them ; they have been told, and tolerably well told, by many chroniclers. 
 But it is my business, and my art, and my duty, to make you ladies and 
 gentlemen realize things, which the chronicler presents to you in his dim, 
 and cold, and shadowy way ; and so they pass over your mind like idle 
 wind. 
 
 "This you sometimes call 'being harrowed,' but ask yourselves two 
 questions : 
 
 "(1) Do you think you are harrowed one tenth part as much as I have 
 been ; as I could harrow you ? 
 
 "(2) I, one tenth part as much as Josephs, who died under the harrow ? 
 
 "I have answered your questions broadly. I will do better; I will put 
 it in your power to test that part of my story, if you think it worth while, 
 and it is well worth while. 
 
 " I will send you, as soon as I can lay my hand on it, a Blue Book, con- 
 taining the results of a Royal Commission held upon a certain gaol three 
 years ago. Here you will see my darker facts, and many more deposed to 
 on oath. 
 
 " Meantime, if you or any of your friends file The Times, look it over 
 from the 6th to the 16th September, 1853. 
 
 " I am glad you care whether these things are true or false. 
 
 " You have done wisely and well to come to me to know. 
 
 " I am obliged by your kind expressions ; and the length of this letter 
 will, I trust, show you that I am not indifferent to your good opinion. I 
 have the honor to be, Yours very truly, 
 
 READK." 
 
 It was a curious coincidence that, although the author 
 of " It is Never Too Late to Mend " here affirms with em-
 
 Victory ! 245 
 
 phasis that there was no Christian clergyman in the jails 
 he investigated in search of material, one of the jail chap- 
 lains on whom he passed this censure was subsequently 
 promoted to a living in the gift of the Crown for his 
 humanity in assisting in the reform of a too rigorous sys- 
 tem within the walls of the jail wherein he ministered; 
 and that this same gentleman should have only survived 
 Charles Reade by a few weeks. His defect apparently 
 lay in a lack of preaching power.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A VINDICATION OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 WE have hitherto purposely omitted to catalogue Charles 
 Reade's minor achievements prior to the issue of " It is 
 Never Too Late to Mend." To have dwelt on small suc- 
 cesses and yet smaller failures would have been to distract 
 the eye from the approaching climax. At the same time, 
 it may be only a fitting tribute to his muse to mention 
 some among his ephemeral works. 
 
 " Masks and Faces " placed his name forever among 
 English dramatists. Played first in 1852, it was succeeded 
 in the same year by a piece called " The Village Tale " at 
 the Strand Theatre. The year following witnessed the 
 production of " Gold," a drama in five acts, at Drury Lane. 
 This was the precursor of his yet grander drama of many 
 years later, and the basis of the third volume of "It is 
 Never Too Late to Mend." It may be fairly termed a 
 moderate success, since it saved Mr. Smith, the lessee of 
 Drury Lane. That gentleman was so hopelessly involved 
 that he contemplated a bolt to America or anywhere 
 immediately upon the failure of Charles Reade's drama. 
 After the first night he prevailed upon himself to try the 
 result of the opening week; and, after that period had 
 elapsed, began to feed the vultures out of his author's 
 brains. He had bargained to give 20 a week and a box. 
 This he adhered to, albeit he was a very Ethelred in his 
 payments. " Gold " not only cleared him of the birds of
 
 A Vindication of Shakespeare. 247 
 
 prey, but left him with a round sum in his pocket. Yet 
 the critics subsequently reviled the play as a failure! 
 
 In 1854 he collaborated with Tom Taylor in "Two 
 Loves and a Life," and also in " The King's Rival," which 
 was produced successfully at the Princess' Theatre; while 
 there emanated from his single pen in 1855 a comediet- 
 ta, styled " Nobs and Snobs," written for the St. James' 
 Theatre ; and in the same year he adapted from the French 
 " The Courier of Lyons," and collaborated with Tom Tay- 
 lor in " The First Printer," which was played at the Prin- 
 cess' Theatre. 
 
 1856 was consecrated to his great novel, and after that 
 for eight years he ceased to write for the stage. 
 
 " It is Never Too Late to Mend " seems to have exhausted 
 his energies, so much so that men were found to prophesy 
 that he would prove a one-book author. He wrote, it is 
 true, but with a pen that had for the nonce lost some of 
 its vigor and its charm. " The Course of True Love Never 
 did Run Smooth " was indeed a f alling-off after his glorious 
 " Sera Nunquam /" while " Cream," issued from the press 
 in 1858, seemed like a determined effort to wreck an estab- 
 lished reputation. " White Lies," we grant, contained 
 much of his former literary quality. He wrote it to order 
 for the London Journal, and, as was said with veracious 
 acerbity at the time, tried to descend to the level of a ser- 
 vant girl and shopboy circulation. He nevertheless con- 
 trived so to charm the readers of the London Journal 
 that the circulation of that popular weekly quadrupled, 
 and when the book was published at his own risk for the 
 libraries, though he had reason enough to complain that 
 the critics were no friends of his, it proved a startling 
 financial success. Certain wiseacres discovered that the 
 otory was a plagiarism from the French, and then pro-
 
 248 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 ccedcd to slaughter the author on that hypothesis. They 
 were wrong in their premises, if not in their conclusion, 
 but as usual had not the honesty to confess their error. 
 Others derided the lack of incident and the Gallicism of 
 a drama novel whose scene is laid in France and whose 
 characters, being French, ought, one would suppose, to 
 utter with French epigram, emotion, and vivacity. The 
 author deliberately painted a French book with French 
 coloring. But this was too much for the British critic to 
 comprehend. He railed because the French characters did 
 not talk conventional English, and the reading public seems 
 to have believed what the critics averred. In fact the 
 book was considered to be a failure, yet it boasts readers 
 to this day, its best justification. 
 
 " Love me Little, Love me Long," which followed 
 " White Lies," has found admirers, but not by the shoal; 
 while the " Autobiography of a Thief," with " Jack of all 
 Trades," disappointed those myriads on either side of the 
 ocean who were expecting eagerly another work worthy 
 a grand mind. 
 
 It was in 1858 that Fraser published a sensational paper 
 on Shakespeare. To this Charles Reade wrote a rejoinder. 
 Whether the paper in question was offered to some one of 
 the magazines cannot be determined. It may have been 
 rejected by the editor of Fraser himself, for aught we 
 know, rejoinders not being always acceptable to editorial 
 amour propre. Anyhow, it never has seen the light, and 
 we are glad to be able to lay it before the public as evi- 
 dencing in a marked degree his reverence for the Bard of 
 Avon, and also his exalted ideal of dramatic excellence. 
 It displays his own estimate of the functions of the drama- 
 tist, no less than of the intrinsic dignity of the drama. 
 Those who are careless of the reputation of a noble art
 
 A Vindication of Shakespeare. 249 
 
 may not unprofitably peruse the lofty sentiments of one 
 who begged that on his tomb, before aught else, should 
 be graven the title "Dramatist." 
 The essay is termed 
 
 "SHAKESPEARE AND THE STAGE, 
 
 "A CRITICISM OF A CRITICISM. 
 
 " The Fraser's Magazine for last month has a smart 
 article on ' Poets and Players.' 
 
 " The writer is happily unembarrassed with those doubts 
 that beset the heavy armed soldier of letters, who thinks 
 twice before he decides, as far as in him lies, subjects wide 
 and deep. 
 
 " We go with him in his rebellion against that domi- 
 neering phrase * legitimate drama.' 
 
 -" The moment words, the conventional not actual signs 
 of things, waver in meaning, falsehood can do anything 
 with them ; truth nothing but cut them out of her vocabu- 
 lary: and legitimate drama has been convicted before a 
 committee of the House of Commons of meaning so many 
 different things as to stand for nothing. 
 
 " We should be sorry to throw a universal slur on this 
 article of Fraser's; for there are sprightly, intelligent sen- 
 tences in it; but men must stand or fall by their sums 
 total. 
 
 " Truths pressed into the service of error lose their char- 
 acter; and we have truths here that could prove their alibi 
 in any court of reason. We have not time to laugh at 
 what we have paid that justice to before, but the following 
 conclusions are, we think, the writer's private property; 
 there is no reason why they should not remain so. 
 
 " 1. ' Shakespeare's plays are not good acting plays for 
 our day.' 
 11*
 
 250 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " The only argument he gives us for this monstrous lit- 
 tle proposition is an intelligent conjecture that comes two 
 hundred years too late. 
 
 " This is the point of it: that since we see the best act- 
 ing plays are those written for certain actors, a certain 
 time, etc., it is not likely a play written for Shakespeare's 
 company, age, and audience should make a good acting 
 play for the actors, stage, etc., of the middle of the nine- 
 teenth century: in other words, it is unlikely that Shake- 
 speare should be a wonderful (or unlikely) man; it is un- 
 likely that this actor writing female parts for ' little scrub- 
 by boys ' to play really gave them Portia, Rosalind, and 
 Lady Macbeth, which they could not play; it is almost 
 equally unlikely that a writer in Fraser should forget 
 Shakespeare was acted from 1790 to 1820, with ten times 
 the effect he ever produced in his own day; and that gen- 
 erally, though he hit his own times, he has hit other ages 
 harder. 
 
 "Yet the dramatic success of Shakespeare in ages not 
 his own is no less a fact than this weak surmise of Fra- 
 ser's is a fact and the difference between likely facts and 
 unlikely ones is only this: the latter are to be the more 
 cherished, for they have the greater value. It is by them 
 alone we are to correct our huge mass of erroneous expecta- 
 tions ; and to do this is the intellectual business of a sane 
 man's life. 
 
 "Shakespeare's contemporaries were great upon the 
 stage: but Shakespeare is great in separating himself 
 from their fate; he has distanced the bounds of their un- 
 doubted genius. 
 
 " Jonson is no more. Beaumont and Fletcher hold the 
 stage now by one claw out of fifty-one, ' The Maids' Trag- 
 edy.' Philip Massinger lives on the stage by { A New
 
 A Vindication of Shakespeare. 251 
 
 Way to Pay Old Debts;' Otway by his 'Venice Pre- 
 served.' 
 
 " The evidence that proves these their only good acting 
 plays for other ages than their own, proves far more in 
 favor of 'Macbeth,' 'Othello,' 'Lear,' and divers other 
 Shakespearian plays, which draw greater houses than these, 
 the sole permanent hits of men greater in dramatic power 
 than any Englishman of this day. 
 
 "It is an error in comparing the inherent scenic attrac- 
 tion of an old play with a new one to forget that merit is 
 one thing, novelty another. 
 
 " A play is but an incarnate story, and an old story well 
 told must yield to each new story indifferently told, though 
 it shall in time survive each. Supposing it true that all 
 novels compared with Scott's, and all acted plays compared 
 with Shakespeare's, are as smoke to fire, we should yet 
 read weak new novels, and flock to feeble plays. Only we 
 should not return to these vomits as we do. 
 
 " The Irelands palmed on a class, which our writer thinks 
 Shakespeare's best critics, viz., upon literary critics, a manu- 
 script play by Shakespeare; it was read, discussed: an an- 
 tiquarian or so said No! most of the critics said Yes! and 
 one of no mean fame, Dr. Parr, fell on his knees before the 
 manuscript. It was put on the stage: coal-heavers and 
 prentices set literary criticisms right in ten minutes. Why ? 
 The stuffed fish thrown down on a bank might pass for a 
 live fish, but put it in the water. No ! 
 
 "The stage is Shakespeare's home ; he had taught these 
 unlearned persons, prentices, and public what to expect in 
 a great acting play. 
 
 "Ireland's work mimicked his language and deceived 
 the predecessors of this gentleman, with names as great as 
 his own; but when it ventured into Shakespeare's magic
 
 252 Memoir of Charles Rcade. 
 
 circle tbe false spirit evaporated. We will now tell this 
 writer, the Irelands, and their conceited dupes, and all 
 cliques, past, present, and to come, what would happen 
 were a great play, brother to * Macbeth ' and ' Othello,' the 
 soi-disants, bad acting plays of Shakespeare, to be really 
 disinterred. So long as it was only printed and read there 
 would be differences of opinion: all the literary critics 
 would be more or less disgusted with its faults as a literary 
 composition. We should come to the spire with our two- 
 foot rules, and should talk of the ' evident traces of genius,' 
 and the 'frigid conceits,' and mere bombast with which 
 here and there the 'writer's most successful efforts are 
 marred,' etc., etc. all of which would be perfectly true 
 in the closet. 
 
 " It would then pass through the stage door, and come 
 a new thing into fair competition with Sir E. Bulwer and 
 others, who write what Fraser justly calls good acting 
 plays; it would not defeat these writers: it would anni- 
 hilate them. 
 
 " The lawyer would leave his quibbles; the philosopher, 
 if there is one, his speculations; the divine his commenta- 
 ries; the sot his cups; the actors of other theatres their de- 
 serted stages ; the great the Swedish thrush, to hear the 
 true nightingale sing at home. 
 
 " For years and years and years the theatre that held it 
 would be crammed to the ceiling with this single attrac- 
 tion. 
 
 " The manager would make a fortune, and running sly 
 would sell to some bolder speculator, who would make a 
 fortune after him, to his disgust; and at last a miracle 
 would top all these marvels, a reviewer who has seen in a 
 vision, not in a theatre, that there are as good acting plays 
 in this planet as Shakespeare's would see himself in the
 
 A Vindication of Shakespeare, 253 
 
 wrong, and would find that Shakespeare, actor and poet, 
 knows the business side of his business better than we 
 critics have as yet known any part of a part of ours. 
 
 " 2. Our writer ' cannot think that Shakespeare, were he 
 flourishing now, would write for the stage.' 
 
 " This surmise springs from an idea that the stage haa 
 fixed intellectual limits, and a witling of Fraser has dis- 
 covered what they are. But it is not so: the stage is no 
 more answerable for the bulk of its present faults than 
 paper and ink are answerable for bad books, and clever 
 monthly or quarterly twaddle. 
 
 " The stage was what man made it, is what man makes 
 it, and shall be what man shall make it. Shakespeare re- 
 divivus would write for the stage now, as then; but now, 
 as then, he would find it one thing and leave it another. 
 He would write it up to him, not himself down to it. 
 
 " The German critic who thinks Shakespeare was not 
 specially a dramatic poet has not read the man's works. 
 
 "Shakespeare tried the other experiment in an octavo 
 volume of undramatic poems, larger than the volumes with 
 which great poetic reputations have been made and ought 
 to be made. 
 
 " But those dreamy dunces bring simple ignorance or 
 simple conjecture against fact! 
 
 " Macaulay has beaten Shakespeare's head off at Roman 
 stories in verse ; but who, novelty apart, can try a fall with 
 him at home, i. e., upon the stage. If Moses was the law- 
 giver, Shakespeare is the dramatist of dramatists. 
 
 " 3. ' The true reason why rank, intelligence, and educa- 
 tion do not go to see Shakespeare acted, is that they stay 
 at home and read him.' 
 
 "This is matter of opinion; we are inclined neither to 
 abuse the better class for not flocking to see an old play,
 
 254 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 nor to give them all this credit. From seven till ten at 
 night is the theatrical period which happens not to be the 
 intellectual hour of society; on uncommon occasions the 
 higher classes are diverted from Shakespeare by music and 
 novelties, and in a general way by thin soup, strong port, 
 and weak chat; by a natural preference for the society of 
 living mortals over a dead immortal on boards or paper. 
 That Shakespeare is read in proportion to his literary 
 merits is a day-dream. 
 
 " The nation is full of thumbed Tennysons, but ita 
 Shakespeares are beautifully clean. I never caught but 
 two men reading this poet, and never a single woman in 
 our whole mortal career. We allow the editions: people 
 do buy Shakespeare, do shelf him, or ship him for the 
 colonies; they do more, they mean to read him, profess to 
 have read him; they look at his well-bound back, and hon- 
 estly think they must somehow have read him, but read 
 him they do not: we grant that 'his words of wisdom 
 have become part of our common knowledge.' But this 
 does not advance the closet one inch against the stage un- 
 less it can be proved that these words of wisdom have not 
 been caught from actors' mouths; it would be easier to 
 prove the contrary. 
 
 " What are the quotations in common use ? Those 
 coming from the plays oftenest acted; ay, and from the 
 stage copies too. 
 
 "At this moment, three literary men out of four think 
 * Richard's himself again ' is a Shakespearian line. Why ? 
 Because it is uttered on the stage for Shakespeare ; and 
 literature, like the public, takes what little it knows from 
 the stage. 
 
 "Among the phenomena of letters is this: no old lady 
 of either sex can write a novel without quoting ' to be or
 
 A Vindication of Shakespeare. 255 
 
 not to be;' which words he, she, and it understand to mean 
 ' to take place, or not to take place,' vide every bad novel 
 writer. 
 
 " Whence this universal misrepresentation of a writer ? 
 From the stage. These words have always been so weak- 
 ly pronounced on the stage that, separated from their 
 context, they lead the non-reader of Shakespeare wrong. 
 
 "The words of course mean 'to exist or not to exist': 
 the latter proposition ought to be marked as strongly as 
 the first that is to say, without robbing the ' not ' of its 
 stress; the second 'to be ' ought to be marked as strongly 
 as the first 'to be'; so spoken they could not be misunder- 
 stood when separated from the context. 
 
 " But they are not so spoken because actors are asses. 
 To him who reads the soliloquy the blunder is hardly 
 possible ; why then, out of so many who quote it, do all 
 misunderstand it ! Because Literature takes its Shake- 
 speare from the stage ! 
 
 "4 'Shakespeare is not of an age, but for all time, 
 whence it follows by a legitimate corollary that neither is 
 he of a stage, but for all climes.' When time and place 
 become identical this may be Ratiocination; it is to say 
 that duration implies change of locality. 'The Thames 
 will flow on forever; ergo, some day it must change its 
 bed.' 
 
 " We are ready to admit that the dialogue outside Por- 
 tia's house (Lorenzo and Jessica) is defiled at present upon 
 the stage; two creatures bawling. Moonlight, music, and 
 silence make us sigh for the closet and the speaking book; 
 and other poetic passages have often been soiled in the 
 vulgar hands through which the stage in its present state 
 passes them indeed, if the scale was the balance, these 
 passages would do wonders for this antiscenic theory.
 
 256 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 But our scale is not a balance, and for every such passage 
 there are ten in which the text can give the reader but a 
 shadow of the actor poet. On this point surely he alone 
 is safe evidence who reads the volumes by their own bare 
 light. In our minds what we have seen, and what we read, 
 have long ago been inextricably commingled. But emi- 
 nent scholars who have just studied Shakespeare's text, 
 and afterwards seen him even indifferently acted, have 
 confessed they learned more of the man by one such rep- 
 resentation than by many perusals, and this evidence is of 
 an impregnable nature. 
 
 " The reviewer, in estimating the force of Shakespeare 
 on the public when heard and seen, or read silently, is out 
 of his depth; he fancies, as a child or Dogberry might, 
 that written language is a galvanic telegraph from mind 
 to minds, and nothing lost in transitu. Alas ! this is the 
 brightest but falsest of all his dreams; letters are a clever 
 invention, but not so clever as that. Could a living poet 
 look into the souls of his readers he would see but a 
 sketch of the thoughts his words present to himself; but 
 if that poet had his tongue under command he could, by 
 speaking his lines, lay something of his colors on that 
 sketch. Spoken words are signs of thought ; written 
 words are signs of such signs. Could we evoke Shake- 
 speare and persuade him to speak his greatest lines, would 
 this lad pat him on the back and say, ' you are spoiling 
 the author, my good sir; write it down, you never meant 
 it to be spoken'? No! His prejudice would be cowed by 
 other prejudices, and he would relish these living words 
 more than their black shadows on paper. 
 
 "Yet this Shakespeare found in his day actors who, 
 though since eclipsed, could speak his greatest lines up to 
 his intention and more to his mind than he could himself;
 
 A Vindication of Shakespeare. 257 
 
 this is proved by his taking the second-rate parts in his 
 own plays. N.B. The only manager in creation that ever 
 did this or ever will. Que voulez-vous? He was Shake- 
 speare in this too; Fraser's decision against the Macbeth 
 and Hamlet of actors is therefore resolvable into Fraser 
 versus Shakespeare. 
 
 " Comparison of subjects ends the moment the adjec- 
 tive 'bad 'is covertly introduced inside a substantive; bad 
 speaking misleads the weak mind as to the nature of 
 speech; bad acting misleads the muddle-head about the 
 meaning of the word acting. 
 
 " The real condition of words is this: written words are 
 the fair, undisfigured corpses of spoken words. A vulgar 
 actor, or any bad speaker, mutilates these corpses more or 
 less; but an artist of the tongue, like Macready, Rachel, 
 or Stirling, restores to those corpses the soul and sunlight 
 they had when in the author's brain and breast. 
 
 "Since a comparative slur has been thrown on Mr. 
 Macready's 'Macbeth,' we will join an issue on that 
 ground. 
 
 " Let literary critics inspect these lines 
 
 ' Better be with the dead, 
 Whom we to gain our place have sent to peace, 
 Than on the torture of the mind to lie 
 In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave. 
 After Life's fitful fever he sleeps well. 
 Treason has done its worst : nor steel, nor poison, 
 Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, 
 Can touch him further' 
 
 and afterwards hear Macready speak them. If they have 
 not, as many of our literary friends have, ears too deaf 
 and uncultivated to judge the triumphs of speech, they 
 will acknowledge they could never have gathered for them-
 
 258 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 selves all the heavenly, glowing beauty this artist restores 
 to the stumbling letter of the text. 
 
 " No private reader could ever see these words as Glover 
 used to fire them: 
 
 " ' Will Sir John take Fanny without a fortune ? NO! 
 After you have settled the largest part of your property 
 on your youngest daughter, can there be an equal portion 
 left the elder? NO! Doesn't this overturn the whole 
 ey stem of the family? YES!' And this force is not su- 
 peradded, as our critic might think; it comes in most cases 
 by oral descent from the author. 
 
 "What mere reader would see the full value of the 
 ' Zaire, vous pleurez* of Voltaire? The author did. Act- 
 ors have succeeded to his mind as well as syllables, and it 
 is only by the stage these words are still Voltaire and more 
 than his shadow. 
 
 " The reader of Otway comes to these words, ' Remem- 
 ber Twelve.' He sees nothing in them and passes on. For 
 years these words were never spoken on the stage without 
 a round of applause. 
 
 " ' II se souvientj says Rachel, in ' Le Vteux de la Mon- 
 tagne? A murmur of admiration bursts from the cold but 
 intelligent Theatre Fran9ais; what are those words to any 
 mere reader ? 
 
 "Read the little modern play called 'Time Tries All'; 
 you are untouched by the letters of which it is composed, 
 yet when Stirling gives the author to the public, bearded 
 men are seen crying, and so it is more or less in all plays; 
 less so in Shakespeare's or Sheridan's than in unreadable 
 plays, but the distinction is one of degree, not kind. Shake- 
 speare's gain as much in themselves, as the diamond, by 
 being shaped and polished. The dumb-play, that great 
 pictorial narrative, is the ground- work of all human plays ; 
 the words are but the flowers.
 
 A Vindication of Shakespeare. 259 
 
 " Whoever can measure human talent has observed that 
 a novel equal to or a little inferior to a given play is thrice 
 as attractive to read; and why? Because the novelist 
 paints the dumb-play of his characters, and with his best 
 colors too; the dramatist is obliged to leave this to the 
 stage and the stage does it. Such, then, is the double 
 force of speaking looks, and burning -words, that it is im- 
 possible any play can be in the closet what it can be on 
 the stage if well acted. It was always the fate of the 
 stage to be most talked of by those who know least about 
 it. The stage is the unique repository of oral traditions in 
 lettered nations. 
 
 "The melodies Ophelia sings, and her pretty ballad 
 twang, have come from mouth to mouth since Shake- 
 speare's time, engraved on the boards, not printed in the 
 volumes. The business of the stage, the positions of tho 
 personages, are in many cases Shakespeare's; and it is not 
 to be doubted by those who know the stage that hun- 
 dreds and thousands of Shakespeare's own tones and in- 
 flections live on the stage and by the stage; to perish with 
 the stage, the towns, the palaces, the temples, and the 
 globe. 
 
 " N~on omnia possumus omnes. 
 
 " The man of letters, unless keenly on his guard, is apt, 
 by his fixed mode of acquiring knowledge, to be diverted 
 from that fine cultivation of the ear and eye which quali- 
 fies a man to say these words to the public about Kean or 
 Macready, in connection with Shakespeare. This is ex- 
 cusable; but a lettered nation, if wise, will fight against 
 those weaknesses that accompany its strength. For the 
 senses, like the stage, are what man chooses to make them. 
 They are avenues by which, if well kept, Wisdom and 
 Beauty have access to the soul. They can also be left
 
 260 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 fallow, blunted, perverted, or degraded. Wherefore the 
 stage is of service to man by preserving the great sense of 
 hearing from slowness, rusticity, and degradation; and the 
 great and Godlike art of speech from being lost! Ay! 
 from being lost! 
 
 " They have heard to little purpose who have not dis- 
 covered how much mouthing and very little correct speak- 
 ing there is in churches, courts of law, parliament, and so- 
 ciety. Great speaking there is none! except on the stage, 
 where there is so devilish little. This need not be so, 
 must not be so, will not be so, shall not be so ! But so 
 long as it is so, let us work from the centre which does 
 exist, and create a circumference. 
 
 " Let us foster the unique germ of this great art. Let 
 the stage be chastised, not stabbed; lashed, not barba- 
 rously tomahawked; let the average manager cease to carry 
 his want of morals to stupidity and his want of intellect 
 to a crime; let the average actor, that strange, mad lump 
 of conceit, ignorance, and stale tricks, be compelled to 
 learn something (at present he is the one spectator who 
 learns nothing) from those true artists of the tongue, the 
 face, and the person who now place art in vain by the 
 side of his threadbare artifice: who portray the emotions 
 with various and true looks, and whose golden lips shoot 
 g^eat words to the ear, burning and breathing a beauty, a 
 glory, a music, and a life that those words can never carry 
 to the soul through the cold and uncertain medium of the 
 eye."
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 VISITS TO ADDINGTON AND KNEBWOKTH. 
 
 AMONG Mrs. Reade's prelatical friends none was more 
 stanch than John Bird Sumner, successively Bishop of 
 Chester and Archbishop of Canterbury. To the last he 
 corresponded with her, and was keenly appreciative of her 
 society. Perhaps it may be superfluous to add that they 
 were both of the same way of thinking, evangelical to the 
 core. 
 
 In his earlier days this good churchman and charming 
 gentleman had been a constant visitor at Ipsden ; and 
 among Mrs. Reade's children, if we except her daughter 
 Julia, none attracted him more than Charles. Had the 
 son been infected with his mother's ardent religious zeal, 
 and embraced the clerical profession, Dr. Sumner would 
 have spared no efforts to push him to the fore. His bias, 
 as we know, lay in a different direction, but the archbishop 
 had a long memory for the young man in whom formerly 
 he had felt so warm an interest. No sooner had his reputa- 
 tion been firmly established by the triumph of " It is Never 
 Too Late to Mend," than the archbishop hastened to offer 
 him the hospitality of Addington. 
 
 It might be presupposed that Charles Reade, of all men, 
 would be the last to endure social penance under an archi- 
 episcopal roof. That, however, would be to do him in- 
 justice. The son of the most courtly of gentlemen, he 
 had inherited the very type of manner to charm Dr.
 
 262 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Suniner. He knew beforehand that he would be not 
 merely a welcome, but an appreciated guest; nor was he, 
 like many dwellers in the land of Bohemia, so wretchedly 
 narrow-minded as to despise scholarship and learning. 
 Over and over again he was heard throughout his career 
 to employ the same formula, "I like so-and-so. At all 
 events he is a gentleman," the inference being that it was 
 his hard fate to rub shoulders with very many bipeds of 
 the male variety who were much the reverse. Besides, in 
 the case of Dr. Sumner he had to encounter a dignitary as 
 keenly capable of relishing a dramatic situation or an 
 epigrammatic dialogue as his worthy uncle, Mr. Faber, 
 who on one occasion strove, though the Fates happened 
 to be against it, to bring him in contact with his warm 
 friend, the poet Sonthey. 
 
 He accepted the kindly archbishop's invitation, and this 
 is how he describes his sensation : 
 
 "ADDINGTON PARK, CROTDO*, Tuesday. 
 
 "I got here safe, and was ushered into a nice large bedroom with a 
 blazing fire of wood and coal. 
 
 "Quite a small party to dinner; in fact, one stranger only, a parson, a 
 chatty personage enough. One of the daughters, I find, composes songs 
 and sells them on half -profits. Some talk with her about that, 
 
 "Bob Sumner, the son, a mighty chatty young gentleman, caught me 
 going to bed, and offered me a cigar on the sly in his bedroom, said room 
 being about the size of our premises ; and having ascertained by its per- 
 manent odor that his baccy was good, I proposed that he should play a 
 solo on that instrument, and that I should be Nositor. 
 
 "Eyes sparkled in the usual way at so beneficent a proposition, and we 
 sat up talking. It is twelve o'clock (A.M.), and I have seen nothing of my 
 lord yet, so I doubt he is taking a rest after his solo. 
 
 "My bed was delicious, so delicious that I have examined its construc- 
 tion. The foundation is one of those spring}', French affairs; then, next 
 to the body, a single mattress a wool mattress, I think, but a foot thick ! 
 
 " I woke at eight, quite refreshed. It is a beautiful day, and I hear 
 some talk of walking out. That will bore me considerably.
 
 Visits to Addington and Knebworth. 263 
 
 " The dear old Archbishop is the same as ever : kind, gentle, and unas- 
 suming. I observed that a tendency I saw in him last time, to go to sleep 
 without warning, and wake again, and join in the conversation as if he had 
 never been away from it, has somewhat developed itself." 
 
 This may be taken as a singularly faithful picture of 
 a venerable prelate, who was advanced to the chair of 
 A Becket and Lanfranc, not so much because of promi- 
 nent force of character, as on account of his sterling worth. 
 Dr. Sumner became Archbishop of Canterbury, in con- 
 sequence of being personally popular with everybody who 
 was anybody. He was a scholar and a gentleman ; and 
 adorned his exalted office. 
 
 Another visit about this period was infinitely more con- 
 genial to the rising author. 
 
 It has been previously stated that among the numer- 
 ous clergy who from time to time accepted the hospital- 
 ity of Ipsden, Charles Pearson attracted the subject of 
 this memoir most. He had become, by favor of Lord 
 Lytton, Rector of Knebworth, and was desirous of bring- 
 ing together the junior and veteran novelist. As the 
 event proved, the associations of Knebworth Rectory and 
 Park were so agreeable as to have induced Charles Reado 
 to prolong his sojourn in Hertfordshire. 
 
 His first letter from Knebworth is to Mrs. Seymour, 
 who was sojourning with her sister, the wife of the Selkirk- 
 shire minister, Mr. Gibson. 
 
 " KNEBTTORTH RECTORY, STEVENAGE. 
 
 " Here am I, but, alas, sans nail-brush, sans tooth-brush, saws soda, sans 
 everything. 
 
 " At dinner yesterday, Bulwer, Sir W., and Lady Boothby, and a jolly 
 
 plump woman, a Mrs. B , a handsome face and lively. She wore a 
 
 wreath of artificial leaves, and diamonds in profusion, set on light sprigs ; 
 they shook like aspen leaves at every move, and I expected to see one flirt 
 out and glitter on the ground. It is not usual to wear 600 worth of dia-
 
 264 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 monds at a small dinner-party with the parson of the parish. But never 
 mind. Sir W. Boothby was six feet five, and quite as stout in proportion. 
 Bulwer is wonderfully like Mephistopheles, as drawn bj German artists. 
 
 " I got a splendid idea from him indirectly. I heard him telling Lady 
 
 B that he had photographs of maniac* in different postures. Lady 
 
 B , who is one of those sweet, smiling dolts, only stared, and told, as 
 
 soon as he was gone, 
 
 Mt A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.' 
 
 " Mrs, Pearson's remark : ' Poor man ! his head is full of his tci/t.' 
 
 " This is the gossip of the Rectory. Oh ! stop ! A trait of the hostess: 
 Dislikes ' Adam Bede.' Saw at once it was by a woman, and a coarse- 
 minded one. Calls it * an immoral book, very unfit for young men. Young 
 ladies may read it it won't do them any harm, because they won't under- 
 stand it.' 
 
 " Here's paradox for you !" 
 
 He writes further: 
 
 " I think the enclosed will give you as much pleasure just now as any- 
 thing I could tell you. And please put it carefully away inside my desk 
 in the blue room. It is sincere ; or he would not want me to go in for 
 the ' Christmas Tale.' 
 
 " We may also hope by this that the tale will not flag, for mind, D 
 
 has been reading a long way in advance of the public. 
 
 "To-day Mr. Owen Meredith, son of Sir E. Bulwer, called in a brown 
 velvet coat and waistcoat, salmon-colored shirt, and lilac tie. Very agree- 
 able and funny. 
 
 " He writes poetry, you know, and very well. 
 
 " That man P who intruded on me, pretending to know Bulwer, 
 
 has intruded on Bulwer pretending to know me, and has nearly poisoned 
 him. I wish I could get Bulwer and the Minister acquainted. He would 
 really do him some good. 
 
 " On Monday I return, but I don't as yet know by what train. No. of 
 AH the Tear Round duly received. Kind regards to Gibson." 
 
 To Mrs. Seymour he writes again: 
 
 "KSEBWORTH RSCTORY, STETXSAGZ, HERTS. 
 
 "They insist on my staying till Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday mom- 
 ing. I yield.
 
 Visits to Addington and JZnebworth. 265 
 
 " So please send me my letters till Tuesday ; I have got a little triumph 
 for you. 
 
 " The Times came to-day with only half the supplement. I asked Pear- 
 son the reason, and he said, ' Oh, that was all that could go by post under 
 the stamp.' 
 
 " So it seems a stamped copy is really weighed by the news agents, and 
 the copies are prepared for posting accordingly. 
 
 "The copies go on the railway by parcel, and are therefore always com- 
 plete when you buy at a station. 
 
 " I have been to see the monument of the Reades at Hatfield Church. 
 I am told nothing is left of old Brocket Hall. I have found out how it 
 passed away. 
 
 "Sir James Reade, who died in 1711, had no son, but only three daugh- 
 ters ; these would be co-heiresses, and sell, like idiots, and divide the 
 money, instead of one taking the estate and mortgaging it to two thirds 
 for the others. And so we lost Brocket Hall, as we got it by the petti- 
 coats! Mr. Pearson says it is a noble park, but the house is new. I 
 have no doubt the Mel bournes pulled down some fine old Tudor place, 
 and built a barrack instead." 
 
 This letter simply bristles with errors. The last Reade 
 who held and resided at Brocket was a spinster. Three 
 of her sisters were married : one to Mr. Secretary Win- 
 nington, the next to Sir H. Dashwood of Kirtlington, the 
 third to Mr. Myddleton of Chirk Castle. Their brother, 
 the last baronet of the Brocket line, died in Rome as the 
 monument says " while on his travels," but really in the 
 suite of the king over the water. On his death Edward 
 Reade of Ipsden, nephew of the first baronet, and on 
 failure of male issue heir of entail, claimed his estate. He 
 employed a lawyer in Wallingford to prosecute his claim, 
 and the man was incompetent. 
 
 The sisters and co-heiresses of the deceased baronet 
 
 were wealthy and in possession ; they asserted that before 
 
 their brother left England he had taken effectual measures 
 
 to bar the entail. Edward Reade was very old and too 
 
 12
 
 260 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 poor to engage in a costly lawsuit, and so might prevailed 
 over right. On the death of Miss Reade in 1760, this fine 
 demesne was sold, and twenty years afterwards passed 
 into the hands of Mr. Lamb, grandfather of the late Lord 
 Melbourne, and of his sister Lady Palmerston, and is now 
 possessed by her grandson, Earl Cowper. 
 The following is to Mrs. Reade: 
 
 " KNEBWORTH, Wednesday. 
 
 " DEAR MOTHER, I dined with Sir E. Bulwer and passed a pleasant, in- 
 structive evening. 
 
 " We drew from him a review of the great parliamentary leaders and 
 speakers of his day, and some traditions of the last generation of speakers. 
 
 " He depicted their characters, intellectual and moral, very finely and 
 very fairly. He insists that Palmerston and his contemporaries arc vastly 
 inferior to the rising men, 
 
 44 It may interest you to know whom he calls the five great orators of 
 the Lower House : Gladstone, Bright, Whitesidc, Cairns, D'Israeli, super- 
 eminent in irony, personality of every sort, and dramatic talent, but prolix, 
 and inferior in dealing with general subjects. I wish you could have heard 
 him, for you take more interest in politics than I do. 
 
 "Yours affectionately, CHARLES." 
 
 This is to Mrs. Seymour, Avho had returned to London: 
 
 " I shall come home Thursday, as I said, malgrt an invitation to dinner 
 from Sir E. L. for that day. He asked me what was my interest in defend- 
 ing French copyrights ? They are all alike. Incapable of public feeling, 
 unable to imagine its existence within a human breast. 
 
 " He is comic beyond the power of the pen to describe. Goe3 off 
 mentally into the House of Commons, and harangues by the yard with 
 an arm stretched out straight as a line. Puts on an artificial manner 
 Yaw! Yaw ! Yaw! and every moment exposes the artifice by exploding in 
 a laugh which is nature itself loud, sudden, clear, fresh, nai've, and catch- 
 ing as a ploughboy's. 
 
 "These periodical returns to nature in her rudest form, from a manner 
 which is the height of transparent artifice, are funny beyond anything the 
 stage has hitherto given us."
 
 Visits to Addington and JZnebworth. 267 
 
 'Taken in combination the last two letters are admira- 
 bly descriptive of tlie romanticist and cynic, the genius who 
 loved dearly veneer and prose. The concluding missive 
 to Mrs. Seymour travels away from Kneb worth to her own 
 concerns: 
 
 " It is a wet day, and I hope to do wonders with this little farce before 
 dinner-time. I dine with Sir E. Bulwer this evening. 
 
 "The Pearsons are most anxious I should stay with them to-morrow. 
 I have told them it depends whether I can be in London at 10.30 on Fri- 
 day, starting hence early that day. 
 
 " I do not understand whether R. has made a hit or not. I hope he has. 
 I have not much hopes for the ballet except Thompson they are all 
 sloppy ! sloppy ! which is the cause of failure in dancing, singing, preach- 
 ing, acting, everything and always will be ! 
 
 " I cannot see the fun of executing feebly the sort of dance the public has 
 seen done with fire and precision. That is not Burlesque, any more than 
 Miss Glyn's Stewart is burlesque. If merely doing things badly was fun, 
 how full of fun the stage and the world would be. 
 
 " One comfort is, the public is an ass. Let us hope that by deserving to 
 fail we may succeed." 
 
 Sir Edward Lytton-Bulwer, as he was then, Lord Lytton 
 afterwards, proved in one way a good friend to our author. 
 He introduced to each other the two Charleses of fiction, 
 Charles Dickens and Charles Reade. Remotely he was 
 of the same blood as the latter, and in art the / rater fra- 
 terrimus of each. His letter of introduction has been pre- 
 served, and runs thus: 
 
 "MY DEAR DICKENS, Herewith let me present to you Mr. Charles 
 Reade, whose works and pen are too well known to you to need length- 
 ened introduction. He would like to talk to you on a favorite subject of 
 his for improving the interest of authors. 
 
 " Yours ever, E. B. LTTTON. 
 
 " KNEB WORTH, November 25th, 1859." 
 
 Result. Charles Dickens clasped the other Charles by 
 the hand, and they became forever after fast friends.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 COMBATIVE. 
 
 IT was on the eve of the issue of " White Lies," when the 
 public had begun to think that the author of " It is Never 
 Too Late to Mend " was going to prove a one-book man, 
 that he permitted his enthusiasm for justice, always a rul- 
 ing passion of his, to hurry him into two acts of singular- 
 ly chivalrous unwisdom. 
 
 We have seen how he strove to enlist the sympathies of 
 Lord Lytton and Charles Dickens on behalf of the French 
 playwrights. He had availed himself, already, of French 
 brains had stolen, as he would have phrased it. But a 
 step had already been taken by our Legislature in the di- 
 rection of International Copyright; and it was still open 
 to question whether the dramatic rights of the foreigner 
 could be, as they ought in equity to be, safeguarded. 
 
 To test this, Charles Reade went to Paris, interviewed 
 M. Maquet, bought a play of his " The English Right of 
 Reproduction " for 40, and came home to assert it. To 
 commence operations he entered his claim at Stationer's 
 Hall, advertised his sole proprietorship, and had not long 
 to wait before it was challenged. 
 
 First, Mr. Sterling Coyne asked to be allowed to play 
 his own adaptation of Maquet's piece at the Surrey Theatre. 
 This was granted with reluctance. But no sooner had 
 Coyne's play been advertised than, presto, two unheard-of 
 authors announced another adaptation at the Strand. Mr.
 
 Combative. 269 
 
 George Annesley was accordingly instructed by Charles 
 Reade to warn them against this infringement of his rights; 
 and later, in company with an able solicitor, he called and 
 politely stated his resolve to attack them. They saved 
 him, however, the trouble of becoming plaintiff by com- 
 mencing an action against him for slander of their title, 
 which he had stigmatized as piracy. 
 
 He fought it out to the end, and won his case with costs; 
 whereupon one of the dramatic anonymuncules went bank- 
 rupt with all possible celerity; and the other, after going 
 to prison and threatening the Insolvent Court, eventually 
 paid a fraction of his debt by instalments. In the long 
 run, Charles Reade emerged from his litigation a loser of 
 210, not to mention time and temper. The latter found 
 an easement in the publication of a record of these pro- 
 ceedings. The book, styled " The Eighth Commandment," 
 is as terse, epigrammatic, and, we must add, hysterical as 
 its subject is dreary. He published it at his own risk, per 
 Messrs. Trttbner, and probably added to the losses of the 
 lawsuit not inconsiderably. A little more of this sort of 
 unwisdom would have wrecked an established reputation. 
 Mudie declined " The Eighth Commandment," and the re- 
 views refused to regard it as serious. Its author very 
 quickly perceived that he had perpetrated an error, and in 
 private acknowledged it. He had been in effect piling 
 Pelion super Ossam. 
 
 The Ossa to which we refer was a bit of Quixotism of a 
 different sort. His study of criminal life, if not the nat- 
 ural bent of his mind, had led him to believe, there being 
 indisputably an immense mass of injury and cruelty, in- 
 justice and oppression, in this wicked world, that it was 
 the mission of all good and true men to battle with it. 
 Dickens held very much the same idea; but he was prac-
 
 270 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 tical and uncnthusiastic compared with Charles Reade. 
 The latter, in the spirit of one of his knight errant ances- 
 tors, burned with a desire to redress wrong and punish 
 robbery. Hence, when a tale of suffering was poured into 
 his ears, they were only too ready to listen. 
 
 The first subject for whom he elected to break a lance 
 was a Mr. Fletcher. Certain near relations averred that 
 this gentleman was insane. Most assuredly, if manner be 
 at all a test of sanity or its opposite, most casual observ- 
 ers would have cordially agreed with the relatives. The 
 writer has a vivid remembrance of his prolonged agony 
 during a breakfast to which he was invited in order to 
 meet the said Mr. Fletcher. It may be that the gentle- 
 man's brain was abnormally excited by the conversation 
 happening to turn on his own grievance. But certes, when 
 a young man elects to brandish his knife in order to point 
 a moral and adorn a tale, one can but argue cerebral irri- 
 tation on his part and that, too, of a rather alarming 
 type, and wish he, or you, were somewhere else. What, 
 however, appeared to commonplace minds to resemble, let 
 us say, a splendid presentment of lunacy, to Charles Reade 
 seemed only a charming and natural vivacity. It would 
 be libellous to affirm that the gentleman was mad, nor do 
 we hazard so much as a suggestion of derangement. The 
 knife, however, which he employed much as the late M. 
 Jullien his bdton, might have been termed a colorable pre- 
 text. His champion, nevertheless, believed in him heartily, 
 and espoused his cause with amazing warmth. These are 
 his reflections concerning the Fletcher episode many years 
 after it had terminated, and he was a wiser man : 
 
 " In the intervals of writing novels and dramas," he re- 
 marks," I have had many lawsuits, for myself and others. 
 My own were principally in defence of my literary prop-
 
 Combative. 271 
 
 erty. Of the others, one is worth mentioning. There is 
 a commercial house of some importance, Fletcher & Com- 
 pany. The firm was troubled with a relative, a nephew, a 
 young fellow who drank, had fits, wasted money, and 
 above all, claimed 35,000 of the House as his father's 
 representative. They put him into a madhouse. He es- 
 caped, and threw himself on my protection. I found him 
 a solicitor, who took proceedings; and I kept the plaintiff 
 twelve months at my own expense, and brought him up to 
 the scratch, sober. He was examined eight houi'S, and his 
 sanity so cleared that defendants succumbed and com- 
 promised the case for an annuity." 
 
 He judiciously omits to state what this little business 
 cost him, over and above time, trouble, and ceaseless worry. 
 Enough that he cried after it was over, " No more Law- 
 suits ! No more Eighth Commandments ! No more 
 Fletchers !" 
 
 Unfortunately he did not entirely adhere to this ad- 
 mirable resolution. But of that anon. 
 
 It must have been clear to him at this point in his career 
 that he had frittered away at least three valuable years. 
 But he was still young, fond of cricket and American 
 bowls, with plenty of elasticity left, nor had he in the 
 least lost faith in himself. The one thing needful ap- 
 peared to be another big book a success, which should 
 rival, if not cap, his glorious " Sera nunquam." The crit- 
 ics had told him that there was nothing he could not do, 
 if only he would rise to his highest level, and he had but 
 to verify their flattering assurance. Hitherto he had 
 placed unbounded faith in what we may term Gallicism. 
 He was fond of asseverating that the French are the only 
 real masters of prose in Europe, and had written very 
 much with a French pen, though in his native tongue.
 
 272 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Qualified success, however, too closely akin to failure, had 
 shaken his belief in Anglo-French dialogue, scenery, and 
 situations. One must do in Rome as Rome does, and to 
 please the British public a writer has to consider British 
 sentiment. lie seems, therefore, to have gathered together 
 all the forces at his command for another supreme effort. 
 In "It is Never Too Late to Mend" he had paralleled 
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin." His next achievement would be 
 in the domain of the greatest master of romance, Sir 
 "Walter Scott. The threads of the book, as yet uncon- 
 ceived, came to him as by inspiration, one after another. 
 He read for it, and up to it, following his old lines, and 
 verifying each minute detail He labored so hard as at 
 last to weary of the labor it overtaxed even his Titanic 
 industry. But he achieved in the end a grand and lasting 
 result. He never regarded the book as his masterpiece, 
 proving thereby that the maker is seldom the best judge 
 of his own work. But the verdict has long since been 
 unanimous that this same painfully evolved monument of 
 fiction is not only his best, but, further, one of the rarest 
 gems of English literature. A Fellow of Magdalen, with 
 a very acute intellect of his own, on its first appearance 
 aphorized concerning it "There has been nothing like 
 this since Sir Walter Scott." 
 
 And now, so far as we are able to tell the story we 
 might almost say the adventures of this remarkable book: 
 
 He bargained with the proprietors of Once a Week to 
 contribute a serial to their columns. It has been stated, 
 on what seems to us authority, that after the appearance 
 of the first few numbers of this same serial, styled "A 
 Good Fight," Once a Week rose in circulation twenty 
 thousand copies or more, the figures having been dupli- 
 cated by some of the author's more ardent admirers. Of
 
 Combative. 273 
 
 the accuracy of this arithmetic we cannot speak with cer- 
 tainty. Enough that the story fascinated its readers, but 
 not, apparently, the editor of the magazine. 
 
 Its genesis db ovo is rather obscure. Before it dazzled 
 the public, no living being could have accredited Charles 
 Reade with a plunge into the moyen dye. 
 
 " What," cried he to the writer of these lines, who 
 during his undergraduate days had been severely bitten 
 by the prevailing Puginism of young Oxford, "are you 
 mediaeval ?" Yet, if the tone of this query were contemp- 
 tuous, it is none the less a fact that he evinced a curious 
 interest in his vis-a-vis on Number 2 Staircase, New Build- 
 ings, the Reverend Dr. Bloxam, who had been in his youth 
 Cardinal Newman's curate at Littlemore, and was im- 
 mersed in antiquities of all sorts, more particularly eccle- 
 siastical. This student's rooms were overcrowded w T ith 
 mediaeval curios, and might, at the time, have been termed 
 one of the sights of Oxford. Moreover, Dr. Bloxam had 
 just published the first volumes of a work involving im- 
 mense research, being, in fact, a catalogue raisonnee of 
 every member of Magdalen College from A. D. 1460 to 
 A.D. 1860. It is, therefore, more than probable that the 
 naked idea of " A Good Fight " occurred to its author's 
 mind from observation, not unmixed with amazement, of 
 the labors of his College friend and contemporary. Dr. 
 Bloxam had thoroughly and successfully antedated his 
 existence by several centuries. Charles Reade, on differ- 
 ent lines, might do likewise. 
 
 Events favored this beau rve. lie lighted, in the course 
 of his reading and researches his eye and mind were 
 ceaselessly burrowing wherever a book or paper presented 
 itself on more than one volume, which seemed to suggest 
 an appropriate clothing for the aforesaid bare idea ; above 
 12*
 
 274 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 all on a legend Latine Hedclitum, which told a drama with 
 more than parabolic brevity, and less than human callous- 
 ness. "Here," he said to himself, "is a fine field for an 
 artist. I have but to take these dry bones with their 
 beautiful and touching outline, breathe into them the 
 spirit of humanity, and they will last as long as the hu- 
 man, or, at all events, the English, race." To do so, he 
 had, perforce, to surmount a congenital distaste for all 
 things mediaeval, and strive to enter into the temper and 
 tone of a remote past. That which would have been 
 natural to a Bloxam, to him was so intensely artificial as 
 to necessitate not merely an effort, but an abnegation of 
 his most cherished intuitions. He did it, as he did every- 
 thing when his will was concentrated upon it, with force 
 and accuracy. He read, not only volumes, but book- 
 shelves and libraries, with patience, if not with avidity. 
 He achieved an act of devolution, and for the nonce be- 
 came mediaeval ; so much so that, just as Australians still 
 refuse to believe that the man who wrote the third vol- 
 ume of " It is Never Too Late to Mend " had never been 
 in Australia this on the evidence of Mr. Dampier, the 
 most eminent of Antipodean actors, and himself a master 
 of melodrama in like manner the reader of the "Magnum 
 Opus," to which we refer, might almost presuppose that 
 its author was a Dutchman of the period of Erasmus. 
 
 The earliest reference to " A Good Fight " that we can 
 light upon is in a letter addressed to Mrs. Seymour in 
 Germany. 
 
 "Triibner," he writes, "is in raptures with 'The Eighth 
 Commandment,' and says I can be one of the greatest 
 critics of the age, if I choose. 
 
 " I don't choose. 
 
 " Catch me at that work again !
 
 Combative. 275 
 
 " I have got a book over from Paris two large vol- 
 umes on the Hotels and Taverns of the Middle Ages. I 
 find much good matter in it for 'A Good Fight.'" 
 
 Again, in a letter a few days later : 
 
 " My efforts are now directed to this to make ' A Good 
 Fight,' if possible, so remarkable a story that Mudie shall 
 be forced to take copies at a fair price. 
 
 " I have written a page of ' Good Fight,' but have been 
 compelled to stop there, and to review, and try to digest, 
 my materials. I feel that I must not waste all this labor 
 by producing a mediocre effect. 
 
 "It shall be the last time I ever go out of my own 
 age. 
 
 " The same labor bestowed on a subject of the day, what 
 would it not have done for me ? 
 
 " There is something about this weather very dispirit- 
 ing. Perhaps that is what was depressing you when you 
 wrote. I have had the same feeling once or twice sinco 
 you were gone. I do not give way to it. On taking a 
 calm review of circumstances I see no reason to de- 
 spond. 
 
 " A man who steps out of the beaten track in every way 
 as I do, must expect greater difficulties than other people. 
 The question whether I can overcome them or not is not 
 settled. When I produce another ' Never Too Late,' and 
 the Cabal succeed in burking it, then I will give in. 
 
 "Not before!" 
 
 The next letter on this topic is so characteristic that we 
 give it in its entirety, premising that Mrs. Seymour seems 
 to have returned from Germany, and, after a flying visit 
 to Bolton Row, to have departed to her sister and brother- 
 in-law in Selkirkshire. We will add that Charles Reade 
 entertained the greatest reverence for this gentleman, Mr.
 
 276 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Gibson, Minister of Kirkhope. He calls him elsewhere 
 " My very dear friend." 
 
 "Thanks for your prompt letter," he says. "So you 
 arrived at the Holy fair vide that rogue Burns, his work. 
 Small troubles, observing you were in Scotland, have de- 
 scended on us like hail. Margaret has spilt grease in spots 
 all up the stairs. It rains taxes, and Win woods, and things. 
 
 " Per contra Millais has offered me 500 for ' Sir Isum- 
 bras.' So that you see I am all right there ! 
 
 " Brisebarre writes from Paris and promises to back me 
 in the Parisian press Maquet ditto. Of the English press 
 I have no hope, as you are well aware. 
 
 "I need try and keep my temper, and remember that 
 my lines will outlive theirs by many years. 
 
 "The book I have had over from France is long; but 
 full of curious knowledge. I don't despair of making < A 
 Good Fight ' a remarkable story yet, but, of course, I can- 
 not feel sure. 
 
 "I have twice attempted to show Conway Kensington 
 Gardens, and twice been caught in a thunderstorm. So I 
 have retired from the unequal contest, and he now lion- 
 izes himself. 
 
 " I hope you will have a fine day during your stay. 
 
 " Give my love to your host and hostess." 
 
 Again, and in a different vein : 
 
 "Yesterday I dined off pork chops, and they were so bad 
 I ate but one. I then made a horrible discovery that for 
 years I have been overeating. Dining off that one chop 
 and no pudding I was as light as a feather, and rather 
 brighter for dinner than otherwise. Oh, if I had the reso- 
 lution to act for ten years on that information ! 
 
 " Gerard is now just getting to France, after many ad- 
 ventures in Germany. The new character I have added,
 
 Combative. 277 
 
 Denys, a Burgundian soldier, a cross-bowman, will, I hope 
 and trust, please you. It will be a daring story altogether. 
 I shall give Gerard a scene with the Pope Pius II. 
 
 "To-day 18GO in London, an Irish laborer hits his 
 son with a leathern strap and iron buckle, and almost flays 
 him alive. He is remanded, but not imprisoned, but held 
 to bail. 
 
 "In 1560, as I learn by an undertaker's diary of that 
 time, a master licked his apprentice boy with a leathern 
 strap and iron buclde, and miserably excoriated him. 
 
 " They did not admit him to bail, but set him on a pil- 
 lory and flogged him till the blood ran down; and set his 
 victim bare-backed beside him to show for what crime, 
 and how exact the retribution." 
 
 Could he have had in memory, as he penned this nar- 
 rative of poetical justice with such gusto, the thick and 
 the thin canes of the Reverend Mr. Slatter of Rose 
 Hill ? 
 
 We now come to an episode in the record of "A Good 
 Fight," which was destined to give it the coup de grdce. 
 It would be invidious on our part to protrude any com- 
 ment on a quarrel between author and editor, neither shall 
 we do so albeit we have our own opinion. Charles Reade 
 shall be allowed to state his case in his own way, and the 
 world can form its own judgment on the merits of a dis- 
 pute which would have been the more regrettable had it 
 not in the long run conduced to the recasting of the book 
 to its infinite advantage. He writes from Magdalen Col- 
 lege thus: 
 
 " I am sorry to say that the editor of Once a Week has 
 been very annoying, tampering with my text and so on. 
 I have been obliged to tell him that he must distinguish 
 between anonymous contributions and those in which an
 
 278 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 approved author takes the responsibility by signing his 
 own name. 
 
 " Answer. That with every wish to oblige me, he can- 
 not resign his editorial function. 
 
 " Answer. That if he alters my text I will publicly dis- 
 own his alteration in an advertisement, and send no more 
 MS. to the office. 
 
 " On this he seems to be down on his luck a little. For 
 he confines himself to ending my last number on the fee- 
 blest sentence he can find out, and begging me to end the 
 tale as soon as possible, which of course I shall not do to 
 oblige him. But all this is unfortunate, and makes me 
 fear that I am a very quarrelsome man, or that other au- 
 thors must be very spiritless ones. 
 
 " It is rather ungrateful on the other side, for the story 
 has done great things for them, as far as I can learn. 
 
 "I don't think, however, this is their opinion. They 
 fancy that their paltry illustrations, which are far below 
 the level of the penny press, do the business. Well, I 
 plough on, convinced that when the " Good Fight " gets 
 into my hands, and you and I can see it all in one view, 
 we can make an immortal story of it by the requisite im- 
 provements. 
 
 " It has suffered in serial form by the marvellous inca- 
 pacity with which the numbers have been concluded." 
 
 Lastly, 
 
 " They are very anxious it should end. I have accom- 
 modated them. 
 
 " I have 'Away with melancholy!' reversed the catas- 
 trophe; made Gerard and his sweetheart happy; sent Kate 
 to heaven, and they and their weekly may go to the other 
 place. Any way the story is finished, and they are rid of 
 me, and I of them -forever!
 
 Combative. 279 
 
 " You are quite right. I shall have many a dig for it. 
 I don't know whether I am to blame or not. 
 
 " Is it not monstrous that a person whose name does not 
 appear should assume to alter the text of an approved au- 
 thor, who signs his name to the text in question ? 
 
 " Another little worry ! Sampson Low, Harpers' agent, 
 has only just let me know that Ticknor & Fields advertise 
 to publish ' Good Fight.' 
 
 "It is very wrong, when they know I have treated with 
 Harpers. A month ago I proposed to Low to print in 
 advance at Clowes, and send out last sheet well ahead. 
 
 " The noodle pooh-poohed it. They must all be wiser 
 than me. Now, too late, he sees his mistake." 
 
 Noodle here may be taken as a term of endearment, for 
 it is not one of Charles Reade's superlatives, and he always 
 professed a very warm regard for the venerable publisher, 
 now, alas, no more. 
 
 Thus it happened that." A Good Fight" reverted to its 
 author. He took it as so much material for a new, and 
 a far grander, work. 
 
 It had not touched his ideal, nor indeed had he as yet 
 so far mastered his enormous subject as to be fully pre- 
 pared to handle it as he would have phrased it immor- 
 tally. The rebuff must have been somewhat of a trial to 
 his sensibilities; and we have seen that he resented the 
 dry-nursing which some authors take with meekness and 
 mildness. All was well, however, that ended well. Once 
 a Week exposed itself to ridicule, for the collapse of the 
 plot was transparent; and the author had virtually led up 
 to a climax only to present a bathos, and after that to run 
 down with comic celerity. The fiasco did not hurt him in 
 the slightest degree, indeed it turned out for his benefit. 
 He reverted to his mediaeval explorations at Oxford with
 
 280 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 fresh zest, by no means hurrying himself, and stern in his 
 determination now that he was put on his mettle to 
 prove that his editorial censor was wrong, and he right. 
 In a word, he resolved that he would evolve a really solid 
 work of the highest literary art. 
 
 He did so. 
 
 We will reserve the account of this supreme labor of 
 his for another chapter.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 "THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH." 
 
 To appreciate Charles Reade's literary masterpiece, his 
 most enduring success, the highest flight of his vigorous 
 imagination, you must put yourself in the author's place. 
 
 It is a fact that more than one writer of fiction, being 
 of the gentle sex, has made her mark by describing dra- 
 matically the love-crisis of her own life. There is no hero- 
 ine to a woman's mind like herself. On that idol, espe- 
 cially when its heart happens to be shattered, she can lay 
 her most startling colors. The picture she paints may be 
 a very sublimated presentment of the original; yet in spite 
 of this harmless unveracity will be lifelike, for it repre- 
 sents, in outline at all events, pure nature. Besides, every 
 lady, like the rest of us perhaps, is so keenly in sympathy 
 with herself. We do not propose to hurl at our author 
 a wild accusation of being feminine. His mrilis cultus 
 was as pronounced as that of Achilles. Yet, perhaps 
 unconsciously, perhaps intentionally, the crux which his 
 genius invented in order to mar Gerard's life and love was 
 'his otoM, ftnct he depicted it as one into whose soul the iron 
 had entered. 
 
 Celibacy, like a demon Charles Reade with amusing 
 inconsequence styles it a heresy, thereby unifying such in- 
 congruities as doctrine and practice had gripped Gerard. 
 Celibacy also with its cruel claw held Charles Reade 
 prisoner. TTarl Cia^fffA married, he would* OB the lines
 
 282 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 of his belief, have lost his soul. Had Charles Reade 
 
 ma mi- ("I, In.' would li:ivr starved. T\v<> thirds of his liiV hud 
 passed before he could dream of dispensing with what 
 he often termed his prop, viz., his Fellowship at Magdalen. 
 His youth was gone. His middle age was all but gone. 
 Ilr was the victim of the Cloister, if ever man was. 
 
 And hermit or monk never realized this better than 
 Charles Reade. There must have been beneath the sur- 
 face an intensity of personal feeling to paint so graphically 
 the loss of love and home, and the dull, dogged determina- 
 tion to make the best of it. The reader's sensibilities are 
 probed to the core l>y the sorrowful talc, so dramatic, yet 
 dignified, and raised far above the stage level, by a singu- 
 larly undramatic ending. 
 
 To avoid any possible misconception, let it not be sup- 
 posed for an instant that the author identified Margaret 
 Brandt with Mrs. Seymour. The notion would be too 
 preposterous; the more so, because the author and the 
 actress neither contemplated nor desired marriage they 
 were fast friends; that was all. Margaret was a creation, 
 and a very lovely one; and if, as is more than probable, 
 she had a prototype in the mind of her creator, it was 
 certainly not a lady of mature age, gifted with a consider- 
 able aptitude for business. The unities forbid the bare 
 suggestion. 
 
 We have already learned from Charles Reade's hurried 
 letter that much of the pictorial accessories of the story 
 was obtained by a careful digest of the large tractate on 
 the Inns of the Middle Ages, which he picked up in Paris. 
 It is a singular circumstance that no trace can be gleaned 
 of his having paid even a flying visit to Holland; yet the 
 Dutch detail is so strikingly faithful as to lead to the be- 
 lief that he must have done so, perhaps circa 1859, per-
 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth." 283 
 
 haps many years previous to the book being so much as 
 dreamed of. This, however, must be taken for a bare sur- 
 mise. In private life he was silent to the verge of tacitur- 
 nity, and it seemed to be a rule with him never to refer to 
 himself, his experience, or his travels. It transpired, for 
 example, in his later years, that he had habitually made 
 purchases of pictures and curios in different places; yet 
 when he sat down to recollect where these valuables were 
 waiting to be called for, his memory was at fault. Some 
 he recovered; others, indeed most, were lost. His mind 
 seemed focussed wholly on the literary work he had in 
 hand, and seldom, if ever, to stray back as far as yesterday. 
 He was not only uncommunicative, but mostly oblivious; 
 nevertheless, so vivid was his imagination that he could 
 transport himself into any scene, and depict it accurately 
 by the aid of books or pictures. We have already seen 
 how minutely he described the Australian gold-diggings. 
 It is quite likely, therefore, that he may have pictured 
 Holland without ever setting eyes upon its canards, ca- 
 Jiaux, canaille.* 
 
 In the preface to " The Cloister and the Hearth " he 
 states that the major portion of the book has no connection 
 with "A Good Fight." The latter work has now practi- 
 cally no existence, having been in part merged in the for- 
 mer. He used his pruning knife, moreover, vigorously 
 
 * The New York Herald, in an obituary notice of Charles Reade, is re- 
 sponsible for an assertion that he journeyed to Germany and Holland in 
 order to collect materials for " The Cloister and the Hearth." We arc far 
 from desirous of contradicting this statement, but have to confess ourselves 
 powerless to verify it. The writer was resident within the walls of Mag- 
 dalen College during the period when Charles Reade was engaged on the 
 work, and also in constant communication with him. He has no recollec- 
 tion of a single allusion to any such tour, neither has any other relative.
 
 284 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 with the portions he did retain; and, as has been stated 
 in his letters, reversed the catastrophe, thus in reality cre- 
 ating a new drama-novel. 
 
 The book has always aroused so much of genuine inter- 
 est that we feel justified in continuing the series of letters, 
 scribbled currente calamo, but affording an inkling as to its 
 genesis. His researches for material were mainly con- 
 ducted at Oxford. He ransacked the shelves of Magdalen 
 College Library, a mine of wealth in itself, as also the 
 Bodleian. This is his first from his rooms in college to 
 Mrs. Seymour. 
 
 "Safe arrived self and puppy. He has run off this 
 morning, and, being an idiot, is lost pro tern. 
 
 "I came down with a Russian probably a noble. 
 Chatted with him, asked him to call on me, which he did. 
 I showed him the college, but could not get much out of 
 him about Russia. He seems to like England best in the 
 world, for all but climate. This he pronounces more mis- 
 erable than the cold of Russia. 
 
 " He says he never felt himself a man till he knew Eng- 
 land, and her institutions, customs, and laws. I asked him 
 if the officials took bribes in Russia, as reported, and he 
 said ' Yes.' 
 
 "I have corrected the MS. Altogether I do think 
 that 'A Good Fight' will be a unique story; and surely 
 this must tell sooner or later, since the reader thirsts for 
 novelty. So, courage, la camarade, le diable est mort /" 
 
 Whether he forgot that he had written on the previous 
 day, or imagined that he had written to some one else, 
 does not appear. He leads off, however, with a repetition 
 of his previous announcement. 
 
 "Safe arrived, as you see. The Queen came down to- 
 day to see her boy. Unluckily she arrived in Magdalen
 
 ''-The Cloister and the Hearth" 285 
 
 College just as I was warming on a little scene they al- 
 ways do, you know. 
 
 " Seriously, if she had come at a fixed hour, I would 
 have been at the gate to receive her. 
 
 "But any time from 12 to 2 was another thing. Carlo 
 is very ill. I can't tell whether it is distemper or what. 
 I can't make him eat anything. 
 
 " To-day I got oatmeal. The beggar won't touch it ! 
 I got to work nicely to-day." 
 
 Up to this point he adhered to the old title, "A Good 
 Fight." He now seems to have exchanged it for that the 
 story bears. 
 
 Here is an example of the vicissitudes of an author in 
 quest of material. 
 
 " Alas, indeed," he writes, " Stuck !" 
 
 " That is to say, I found such a wealth of material about 
 hermits in Magdalen College Library that I have filled 
 three more of those gigantic cards. 
 
 "Now my poor little head seems constructed on so nar- 
 row a basis, that whenever the ardor of research is on, the 
 ardor of writing is extinct. God knows whether I am in 
 the right path or not. 
 
 " Sometimes I think, how can the public appreciate or 
 care for all this labor ? At others I say, what real rea- 
 son have I to suppose that vast successes have ever been 
 achieved without labor and self-denial ? 
 
 " Sometimes I say, it must be dangerous to overload fic- 
 tion with facts. 
 
 "At others, I think fiction has succeeded in proportion 
 to the amount of fact in it. 
 
 "This much is certain: nobody has as yet produced a 
 true hermit in fiction, and Cervantes and Scott have :\ 
 lie-null .
 
 286 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " Then, when I find about five hundred famous hermits 
 in the Church, and no age without them, I calculate that 
 there must have been five hundred thousand obscure ones, 
 the very nature of the character being to avoid notice. 
 The theory then assumes an importance of another class, 
 and becomes a trait in human nature. 
 
 " And, from the year A.D. 250 to the present time, I find 
 they were always the friends of animals. To be sure, one 
 of them in a rage (we all get in a rage sometimes) did ex- 
 communicate a mouse, but when the mouse died in conse- 
 quence, he bitterly repented. 
 
 " The priest to whom he confessed his cruelty with 
 tears of compunction said, ' Drat them ! I wish you had 
 excommunicated the whole race !' 
 
 " I have filled three more great cards with the matter, 
 and I must now try to use only the very cream, and that 
 dramatically, not preachingly. It is too late in the story 
 for lecturing." 
 
 The next letter displays symptoms of fatigue. "I am 
 under way again," he writes, " but rather slowly. I think 
 this story will almost wear my mind out. 
 
 " However, I now see that, if I had not read all about 
 hermits, and worked out these cards, this part of my story 
 must have been all false. 
 
 " I have got a squirrel in and a robin." 
 
 He appears to have remained without a break in col- 
 lege, for this, as the previous letters, bears the Oxford 
 postmark. 
 
 " Gerard," he says, " is now Vicar of Gouda, after the 
 grand scenes in cell. 
 
 " Those scenes have not come out quite so brilliant as I 
 hoped; but they are very well, and the situation itself has, 
 I think, a prodigious value, and is new in fiction.
 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth." 287 
 
 " I don't know what I have to do now, but a few desul- 
 tory notices of his career as a parson, and then the un- 
 pleasant task of killing both Margaret and him. 
 
 "I hope to get to you safe and well by the ninth of 
 September, after polishing of Ipsden and Farley Hill. 
 Shall only shoot at Ipsden. Agree with you, why kill 
 anything as long as there are butchers ?" 
 
 The following bears the date Sept. 3, and is from Ips- 
 den: 
 
 " I send you up the greater part of vols. 2 and 3 ' The Cloister and the 
 Hearth.' 
 
 "Please call on Mr. Bentley with them and explain that vol. 1 will end 
 on page 36 of the present vol. 2, making 360 pp. ; vol. 2 either at 50 or 98 
 of present vol. 3, at the end of that string of strong situations with which 
 you happen to be acquainted, as I read them to you at Margate, concluding 
 with G.'s attempt at suicide. 
 
 " I am of opinion that matters quite distinct from Mr. Bentley's desire 
 to do business with me on liberal terms, of which I am convinced, or of 
 the merit of the book on which I have bestowed such prodigious labor, 
 will prevent our coming together this time. 
 
 " I cannot, therefore, give him the refusal upon any other terms. For 
 I feel I should be subjecting my whole work to a certain refusal, and it is 
 not worth while. 
 
 " These materials, the time I have bestowed, and my past performances, 
 furnish, I think, sufficient materials for a commercial decision. You can, 
 however, freely add whatever you know of the plot, and situations, etc., 
 not here contained, and pray give Mr. B. an unbiassed opinion. In fact, 
 you can read him this letter if you like. I shall follow very shortly on 
 its heels. Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " CHARLES READS." 
 
 Two months later the autumn he writes thus: 
 " I think I shall run up to town from Saturday till Mon- 
 day. I will never attempt an old-world story again. Good 
 heavens ! How often have I been stuck ! 
 
 "However, I have done 150 pages, and don't seem to
 
 288 Memoir of Charles Readc. 
 
 dislike the story. I hope to cram it with incidents, but 
 not to repeat the same ones." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Story goes slow. But is to be, must be, successful 
 please God. 
 
 " Henceforth I shall remember the advice, soyez de votre 
 siecle. I am convinced that learning and research should 
 be applied to passing, not to past, events. In the same 
 sense alone is Dickens a learned man, and mark the result! 
 
 " By-the-bye, I have accepted his invitation for the 18th 
 Jan." 
 
 Again, a few weeks later : 
 
 " Denys and Gerard are parted, and the story is now in 
 Holland, and I hope will soon be at Rome. 
 
 " When I have brought Gerard back, a monk, to Tergou, 
 I hope to come to Bolton Row, since, after that, the mat- 
 ter can be calculated (I think) to a few pages. 
 
 "I can't tell whether it will succeed or not, as a whole. 
 But there shall be great, and tremendous, and tender things 
 in it." 
 
 Lastly, from Dogmore End : * 
 
 " You will be glad to learn that last night, at nine 
 o'clock, amidst the cheers of my relations, I wrote the 
 last page of this tremendous work, which in all probability 
 will impoverish me for some time to come. 
 
 " No matter ! It is done 1 And I breathe again. 
 Strange to say, the last fifteen pages went smooth as oil ; 
 and I don't know whether it is parental vanity, but I think 
 they will live !" 
 
 That prediction has been, will be, verified. The only 
 difference of opinion is concerning its artistic value, both 
 
 * His brother William's residence, about seven miles from Henley-on- 
 Thames.
 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth." 289 
 
 absolute and relative. Here there exists by no means a 
 general consensus not a few of his critics contending that 
 "Romola," which followed close upon its heels, contains 
 characters more true to human nature and mediaeval life, 
 and sustains the interest throughout in a higher degree. 
 
 Without prejudging this controversy one way or the 
 other, we will afford our readers the opportunity of con- 
 trasting the verdict of differing critics, and for this pur- 
 pose select, on the side of Charles Reade, Mr. Walter Be- 
 sant, and an anonymous writer in Once a Week; and on 
 the side of George Eliot, Mr. W. L. Courtney ; with Mr. 
 A. C. Swinburne as neutral, albeit rather for Reade than 
 Eliot, so far as regards this particular theme and its treat- 
 ment. 
 
 First, the Pro's. 
 
 Mr. Besant writes : " There remains one book of his it 
 is his greatest work and, I believe, the greatest historical 
 novel in the language. I mean 'The Cloister and the 
 Hearth.' It has been my happy lot to pasture in the fair 
 fields of mediaeval literature, and my delight humbly to 
 attempt from time to time the restoration of life as it was 
 during or before the great Renascence. Now, life at all 
 times, except perhaps during the cave and flint-weapon 
 period, has been and is many-sided, complex, and perpetu- 
 ally varying. Think how it will fare in five hundred years 
 with the writer who attempts to portray England in this 
 year of grace ; by what mighty labors what examination 
 of old documents what comparisons, reading of contem- 
 porary essays, descriptions of functions, ceremonies, and 
 debates, estimate of forces as, the influence of the Land 
 League, the real power of the Nonconformists, the strength 
 of the Church, the prejudices of the people he will arrive 
 at something like a picture of life as it is now. And even 
 13
 
 290 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 in the hands of the most skilful, how meagre will probably 
 be the result! Because the historian will not be able to 
 understand the relative importance of questions, nor will 
 he perceive that what seems to him the most important 
 of events may have seemed to us a mere trifle compared 
 with the weight of a speech in the house, or a new book, 
 or even an article in a magazine. Therefore I do not say 
 that the whole of life, as it was at the end of the fourteenth 
 century, is in ' The Cloister and the Hearth.' But I do say 
 that there is portrayed so vigorous, lifelike, and truthful a 
 picture of a time long gone by, and differing in every par- 
 ticular from our own, that the world has never seen its 
 like. To me it is a picture of the past more faithful than 
 anything in the works of Scott. As one reads it. one feels 
 in the very atmosphere of **" mt.my flnp hrp?* 1 '" 1 ? i^ Q 
 air just before tlie great dawn of learning and religion; it 
 is still twilight, but the birds are twittering already on the 
 boughs ; it is a time when men are weary of the past, there 
 is no freshness or vigor in the poetry; all the tunes are. old 
 ^tunes. There is plenty of fanaticism, but no faith; under 
 the tiara the Pope yawns; under the scarlet cloak the 
 Cardinals scoff; in his chamber the scholar asks whether 
 the newly found Greek is not better than all the ecclesias- 
 tical jargon ; in the very cloister are monks secretly at 
 work on the new learning and cursing the stupid iteration 
 of the bell. Even the children of the soil are asking them- 
 selves, how long ? Alas ! they must wait till the greater 
 Jacquerie of 1792 relieves them; there is uncertainty ev- 
 erywhere ; there is the restless movement which goes be- 
 fore a change. There is, however, plenty of activity in 
 certain directions. Soldiers fight and great lords lead 
 armies; there are court ceremonies, at which knights feast 
 and common people gape; prentice lads go a wandering
 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth." 291 
 
 along the roads; with them tramp the vagrant scholars; 
 the forests are full of robbers ; the beggars are a nation to 
 themselves, and a very horrible, noisome, miserable nation ; 
 the towns are crowded within narrow walls; fever and the 
 plague are constantly breaking out; there is no ladder by 
 which men can climb except that lowered for them by the 
 Church; where a man is born, there he sticks. A fine 
 picturesque time, with plenty of robberies and murders ; 
 vast quantities of injustice ; with lords among the peasants, 
 like locusts among corn, devouring the substance ; with 
 fierce punishments for the wicked, but not so fierce as those 
 which certainly await most people in the next world; with 
 gibbets, racks, red-hot pincers, wheels, processions of peni- 
 tents, heavy wax candles, cutting off of hands, and every 
 possible stimulus to virtue; yet a world in which virtue 
 was singularly rare. All this life and more is in ' The 
 Cloister and the Hearth' not described, but acted. The 
 reader, who knows the literature of the time says to him- 
 self as he goes on, ' Here is Erasmus ; here is Froissart ; 
 here is Deschamps ; hero is Coquillart ; here is Gringoire ; 
 here is Villon ; here is Luther,' and so on, taking pleasure 
 in proving the sources. The reader who does not know, 
 or does not inquire, presently finds himself drawn com- 
 pletely out of himself and his own times ; before he reaches 
 the end he thinks like the characters in the book; but, be- 
 sides, there runs through it the sweetest, saddest, and most 
 tender love-story ever devised by wit of man. There is 
 no heroine in fiction more dear to me thanMararj 
 fllW&VB real; alw&V H llltf If Utt woman ; brave 
 hour; and forever yearning in womanly fashion for the 
 love that has been cruelly torn from her. 
 
 " ' Oh, my love,' cried the lover-priest at her death-bed, 
 'if thou hadst lived, doubting of thy Gerard's heart, die
 
 292 Memoir of Charles Beade. 
 
 . - -\ not so, for never was woman loved so tenderly as thou this 
 ten years past.' 
 
 " ' Calm thyself, dear one,' said the dying woman with a 
 \. heavenly smile ; ' I knew it, only, being but a woman, I 
 could not die happy till I heard thee say so.' 
 
 " Comparison between ' The Cloister and the Hearth ' 
 and 'Romola' is forced upon one. Both books treat of 
 the same period; similar pictures should be presented in 
 the pages of both. Yet what a difference ! In the man's 
 work we find, action, life, movement, surprise, reality. In 
 the woman's work we find languor, tedium, and the talk of 
 nineteenth - century puppets dressed in fifteenth - century 
 clothes. Romola is a woman of the present day ; Tito is 
 a man of the present day; the scholar belongs to us; Sa- 
 vonarola is like a hysterical Ritualist preacher; Tessa is 
 a modern Italian peasant girl ; nothing is mediaeval but 
 the names and the costumes. Yet I believe there may be 
 found people who call 'Romola' a great novel, and who 
 have not even read the story of ' Gerard and Margaret!'" 
 
 The above is a lengthy extract; nevertheless to have 
 curtailed it would have been to mutilate the ablest brief 
 that has been held and without retainer for the author 
 of "The Cloister and the Hearth." 
 
 The next, on the same side, issues from the pen of an 
 anonymous writer, and is closely analytical. Once a Week, 
 for the sake of this very book, had quarrelled with its most 
 illustrious contributor. It may possibly have intended the 
 article to which we now refer as an amende. It may be 
 termed fairly an apologetic criticism, as genuine as it is 
 honorable. 
 
 "In 1860," it commences, "Mr. Reade produced a me- 
 diaeval novel with an idea-ed title, * The Cloister and the 
 Hearth.'
 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth." 293 
 
 "His faithful imitator (George Eliot) soon followed 
 with a mediaeval novel, whose title was un-idea-ed, ' Rom- 
 ola.' 
 
 "Here the two writers meet on an arena that tests the 
 highest quality they both pretend to imagination. 
 
 " What is the result ? In ' The Cloister and the Hearth : 
 you have the middle ages long and broad. The story be- 
 gins in Holland, and the quaint Dutch figures live; it goes 
 through Germany, and Germany lives ; it picks up a French 
 arbalestrier, and the mediaeval French soldier is alive again. 
 It goes to Rome, and the Roman men and women live 
 again. 
 
 "Compare with this the narrow canvas of 'Romola,' 
 and the faint colors. The petty politics of mediaeval Flor- 
 ence made to sit up in the grave, but not to come out of 
 it. The gossip of modern Florence turned on the mediae- 
 val subjects and called mediaeval gossip. Romola herself 
 is a high-minded, delicate-minded, sober-minded lady of 
 the nineteenth century, and no other. She has a gentle, 
 but tame and non-mediaeval, affection for a soft egotist 
 who belongs to that or any age you like. One great histori- 
 cal figure, Savonarola, is taken, and turned into a woman 
 by a female writer sure sign imagination is wanting. 
 There is a dearth of powerful incidents, though the time 
 was full of them, as ' The Cloister and the Hearth ' is full 
 of them. There you have the broad features of that mar- 
 vellous age, so full of grand anomalies ; the fine arts and 
 the spirit that fed them the feasts, the shows, the do- 
 mestic life, the laws, the customs, the religion, the roads 
 and their perils, the wild beasts disputing the civilized 
 continent with man man uppermost by day, the beasts 
 by night the hostelries, the robbers, the strange vows, the 
 convents, shipwrecks, sieges, combats, escapes, a robber's
 
 294 Memoir of Charles Ileade. 
 
 slaughter-house burned, and the fire lighting up trees clad 
 with snow. And through all this a deep current of love, 
 passionate yet pure, ending in a mediaeval poem ; the bat- 
 tle of ascetic religion against our duty to our neighbors, 
 which was the great battle of the time that shook religious 
 souls. But perhaps we shall be told this comparison is be- 
 side the mark ; that a dearth of incidents is better than a 
 surfeit, and that it is in the higher art of drawing charac- 
 ters George Eliot stands supreme, and Charles Reade fills 
 an insignificant place. We will abide by that test in this 
 comparison. 
 
 "What genuine mediaeval characters to be compared 
 with those of Sir Walter Scott, for instance live in the 
 memory, after reading the two works we are now compar- 
 ing? 
 
 "'The Cloister and the Hearth' is a gallery of such 
 portraits, painted in full colors to the life. ' Romola ' is 
 a portfolio of delicate studies. 'Romola' leaves on the 
 memory: 1. A young lady of the nineteenth century, the 
 exact opposite of a mediaeval woman. 2. The soft egotist, 
 an excellent type. 3. An innocent little girl. 4. Savona- 
 rola emasculated. The other characters talk nineteen to 
 the dozen, but they are little more than voluble shadows. 
 
 "'The Cloister and the Hearth' fixes on the mind: 1. 
 The true lover, hermit, and priest, Gerard. 2. The true 
 lover, mediaeval and northern, Margaret of Sevenbergen. 
 3. Dame Catharine, economist, gossip, and mother. 4. The 
 Dwarf with his big voice. 5. The angelic cripple, little 
 Kate. 6. The Burgomaster. 7. The Burgundian soldier, 
 a character hewn out of mediaeval rock. 8. The gaunt 
 Dominican, hard but holy. 9. The Patrician monk, in love 
 with heathenism, but safe from fiery fagots because he 
 believed in the Pope. 10. The Patrician Pope, in love
 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth." 295 
 
 with Plutarch, and sated with controversy. 11. The Prin- 
 cess Cloelia, a true mediaeval. 12. The bravo's wife, a link 
 between Ancient and Mediaeval Rome. 
 
 " Philip of Burgundy does but cross the scene ; yet he 
 leaves his mark. Margaret Van Eyck is but flung on the 
 broad canvas, yet that single figure so drawn has suggested 
 three volumes to another writer, 
 
 " You can find a thousand Romolas in London, because 
 she is drawn from observation, and is quite out of place in 
 a mediaeval tale. But you cannot find the characters of 
 * The Cloister and the Hearth,' because they are creations." 
 
 Thus, and with no small enthusiasm, the admirers of 
 Charles Reade. We now turn to others, who, though will- 
 ing to admit our author's ability, view him from a stand- 
 point of their own. 
 
 First, Mr. W. L. Courtney: 
 
 " The crucial test (i. e., as to whether the ordinary novel 
 of Charles Reade is or is not ' a somewhat amorphous col- 
 lection of pieces de conviction ') is afforded by ' The Cloister 
 and the Hearth.' If a man can read it through in a sitting, 
 as he can ' Griffith Gaunt ;' if he is carried through it with 
 the same rapt attention, the same suspension of the critical 
 faculty which he experiences when dealing with a work 
 of real artistic construction, then, to such a man at all 
 events, the invention in the book is of equal power with 
 the facts. But if he takes in such draughts as he is able 
 to stand, being incapable of assimilating it in its entirety; 
 if he feels now and again as if he were laboriously getting 
 up a learned work on the Middle Ages, as is the case, it 
 may be suspected, with most readers, that the natural con- 
 clusion is, that 'The Cloister and the Hearth,' though a 
 work of great learning and industry, and containing in the 
 fortunes of Gerard and Margaret a love-story of almost
 
 296 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 idyllic sweetness, is yet not a work of art. ' Here,' one 
 may say (Mr. Walter Besant has actually said it), ' is Eras- 
 mus, here is Froissart, here is Deschamps, here is Coquil- 
 lart, here is Gringoire, here is Villon, here is Luther;' and 
 just for that reason it is imperfect. The scholar's learning 
 is standing out of the holes in the artistic armor; it smells 
 too much of the academic oil." 
 
 This, after the manner of inappreciative censure, while 
 apparently equitable, overshoots the mark. In the first 
 place " The Cloister and the Hearth " in point of length 
 exceeds " Griffith Gaunt " by more than a third nearly a 
 half, and that alone would preclude its being devoured at 
 a sitting. Moreover, the fortunes of Gerard are subjected 
 to a natural trichotomy. He is genuine lover, rover, and 
 at last Platonic lover alias priest, and the story follows 
 this division. Each part is homogeneous, nor will most 
 people object that by the time they have reached the con- 
 clusion they have forgotten the antecedent portions of the 
 story. This allegation of ours is the more verifiable, be- 
 cause really the golden thread of the idyllic love-story is 
 never severed. It holds together the members, even when 
 they seem to be most disjecta. "The Cloister and the 
 Hearth " can hardly be said to err in the direction of an- 
 other historical novel, "John Inglesant," which for lack 
 of an idyllic thread rambles aimlessly. However, Mr. 
 Courtney has narrated his own mental sensations; and if 
 those of the average reader harmonize with them, then of 
 course there must be some force in his contention. We 
 avow ourselves under the impression that he stands almost 
 alone in discovering no magic spell in a work of genius, as 
 well as of research but of course we may be partial. 
 Quot homines tot sententice. There are some people whom 
 "Hamlet" bores, and who snore through "As You Like It."
 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth." 297 
 
 Mr. S. S. Conant, of The Albany Evening Journal, U.S.A., 
 is responsible for a story concerning Charles Reade which 
 seems to indicate that he himself was more inclined towards 
 Mr. Courtney's than towards Mr. Besant's view. A stranger 
 once complimented him on " The Cloister and the Hearth " 
 as his best novel, whereupon the author's eye flashed in- 
 dignation, and he told his eulogist, then and there, that if 
 that was his opinion, he was only fit for a lunatic asylum. 
 
 We have, perhaps inequitably, placed Mr. Swinburne 
 partly in the same category with Mr. Courtney. Both 
 writers are masters of English and of analysis; but the 
 latter being an essayist pure and simple, and himself un- 
 dramatic, has less affinity with the dramatist, and more 
 with the philosophical writer who utilized her slender tales 
 to adorn a profound philosophy, and pointed her satire 
 on faith by means of character. Mr. Swinburne is more 
 righteous than Mr. Courtney, in that he blends criticism 
 with appreciation. " Mr. Reade's didactic types, or moni- 
 tory figures," he writes, "are almost unmistakable and 
 unmistakable as failures. Hawes, and even Grotait are 
 not the creatures of a dramatist, they are the creatures of 
 a mechanist ; you see the action of the wire-puller behind, 
 at every movement they make; you feel at every word 
 they utter that the ruffian is speaking by the book, talking 
 in character, playing up to his part. Too refined and 
 thoughtful an artist to run the least risk of such an error, 
 George Eliot, on the other hand, wanted the dramatic 
 touch, the skilful and vivid sleight of craftmanship, 
 which gives a general animation at once to the whole 
 group of characters, and to the whole movement of the 
 action in every story, from the gravest to the slightest, 
 ever written by Charles Reade. A story better conceived, 
 or better composed, better constructed, or better related 
 13*
 
 298 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 than ' The Cloister and the Hearth,' it would be difficult 
 to find anywhere; while the most enthusiastic devotees of 
 ' Romola ' must surely admit the well-nigh puerile insuf- 
 ficiency of some of the resources by which the story has 
 to be pushed forward, or warped round, before it can be 
 got into harbor. There is an almost infantile audacity of 
 awkwardness in the device of handing your heroine at a 
 pinch into a casually empty boat, which drifts her away 
 to a casually plague-stricken village, there to play the part 
 of a casual sister of mercy, dropped from the sky by provi- 
 dential caprice at the very nick of time, when the novelist 
 was at a loss for some more plausible contrivance, among 
 a set of people equally strange to the reader and herself. 
 
 " Again, I must confess my agreement with the critics 
 who find in her study of Savonarola a laborious, conscien- 
 tious, absolute failure as complete as the failure of his 
 own actual attempt to purge and renovate the epoch of the 
 Borgias by what Mr. Carlyle would have called the ' Mor- 
 rison's Pill' of Catholic Puritanism. Charles Reade' s 
 'Dominican' is worth a dozen such 'wersch,' ineffectual, 
 invertebrate studies, taken by marshlight and moonshine, 
 as this spectre of a spectre, which flits across the stage of 
 romance to as little purpose as did its original across the 
 page of history; but when we come to the minor characters 
 and groups, the superiority of the male novelist is so ob- 
 vious, and so enormous, that any comparison between his 
 breathing figures and the stiff, thin outlines of George 
 Eliot's phantasmal puppets would be unfair, if it were not 
 unavoidable. The variety of life, the vigor of action, 
 the straightforward and easy mastery displayed at every 
 Btep and in every stage of the fiction, would of themselves 
 be enough to place ' The Cloister and the Hearth ' among 
 the very greatest masterpieces of narrative ; while its
 
 11 The Cloister and the Hearth" 299 
 
 tender truthfulness of sympathy, its ardor and depth of 
 feeling, the constant sweetness of its humor, the frequent 
 passion of its pathos, are qualities in which no other tale 
 of adventure so stirring and incident so inexhaustible can 
 pretend to a moment's comparison with it unless we are 
 foolish enough to risk a reference to the name by which 
 no contemporary name can hope to stand higher, or shine 
 brighter, for prose, or for verse, than does Shakespeare's 
 greatest contemporary by the name of Shakespeare." 
 
 To quote another word after this magnificent exordium 
 would be impertinent and of the nature of anti-climax. 
 We said that Mr. Swinburne approached Charles Reade 
 with the censorship of a critic. His noble words tell in an 
 excess of majestic language his enthusiasm, and that not 
 sarcasm is the highest form of intelligent criticism.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 "HARD CASH." 
 
 FOB once the public and the critics were unanimous, 
 and the chorus of approval which greeted " The Cloister 
 and the Hearth" gave its author heart of grace. The 
 great book was alike so much of a study, and so altogether 
 a poem, as to have placed Charles Reade in the foremost 
 rank of literature. No carping detractor could decry it 
 as sensational. No candid friend could condemn it with 
 faint praise. It exacted homage from every man and 
 woman of brains ; and henceforward the name of Charles 
 Reade could never be mentioned except with honor. 
 
 Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the lady 
 who, at the moment, and indeed since, was being steadily 
 written up under the style of the greatest of contemporary 
 novelists, at once bowed the knee before success, and set 
 to work to plough with Charles Reade's heifer. 
 
 We may remark here, passim, that the artistic ideal of 
 the author of " The Cloister and the Hearth," and that of 
 the author of " Romola," were dissimilar. The former, 
 even in four volumes, could be nothing if not dramatic. 
 The latter was by nature so essentially undramatic as when 
 she attempted a situation to plunge hopelessly out of her 
 depth, and barely escape a bathos by concealing her utter 
 incapacity under a thick veil of description. George Eliot, 
 in respect of style, depth of thought, and diagnosis of char- 
 acter, justly commanded universal admiration; indeed, her
 
 "Hard Cash: 1 301 
 
 artistic excellence must have been supreme in that it could 
 invest the tame and commonplace with a special charm. 
 Whether she would not have risen higher had she been less 
 prolix, and more dramatic, may be open to surmise. Enough 
 that, if she could esteem Charles Reade so thoroughly 
 as to adopt ostentatiously a theme he had made his own, 
 he in turn was by no means so appreciative of her pen. He 
 rated Mr. Wilkie Collins far above George Eliot on account 
 of his mastery in the art of plot-weaving ; indeed, to be 
 candid, we have to admit on behalf of our author, a some- 
 what faulty appreciation of a genius in every way dissimi- 
 lar to himself. The late Mr. Winwood Reade narrated 
 concerning the sable houris of Central Africa that they 
 shrank from the white man, not merely as repulsive, but as 
 being, in respect of complexion from their point of view 
 leprous. In like fashion Charles Reade revolted from a 
 novel, differing toto coelo from a drama in novel form. 
 Such a work of art not merely failed to please, it positively 
 irritated him. The following letter displays somewhat of 
 this temper. His nature, we must premise with the strong- 
 est emphasis, was much too high-souled to be capable of 
 the pettiness of jealousy, least of all, of a woman. He 
 could pay a handsome tribute to such lady novelists as Miss 
 Braddon, Ouida, Miss Broughton, and his niece, the author 
 of "Rose and Rue." He worshipped Charles Dickens, 
 honored Thackeray, and on one occasion thought Trollope 
 worth dramatizing. But he had no stomach for the ful- 
 some eulogy piled on George Eliot, the less so because it 
 became an open secret that this bold advertisement was the 
 outcome of judicious wire-pulling. As an artist he con- 
 ceived it the right of every member of his craft to demand 
 a fair field and no favor. No marvel, therefore, if when, 
 stung by a keen sense of injustice, he delivered himself
 
 302 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 rather slightingly of the idol before whom, at the bidding 
 of her own Nebuchadnezzar behind the scenes, the entire 
 press of England did obeisance. 
 
 To Mrs. Seymour he writes: " I send you both The Corn- 
 hill and Temple Bar by book post, since there is matter in 
 each that interests. 
 
 " I can see no trace of George Eliot in the story called 
 ' Romola ' yet I don't know how to escape the conclusion 
 that it is her; for a story by George Eliot is advertised in 
 the July number of The Cornhill, and in the current num- 
 ber of The AtJienceum, and Thackeray is displaced to make 
 room for the garrulous lady or gentleman, whichever it be. 
 
 " However, after all I am not well read in Georgy Porgy's 
 works. But certainly this does not come up to my idea of 
 her. Is it egotism, or am I right in thinking that this 
 story of the fifteenth century has been called into exist- 
 ence by my success with the same epoch ? If it is Georgy 
 Porgy, why then Lewes has been helping her! All the 
 worse for her. The gray mare is the better horse. Any- 
 way I hope this is the story that Smith has been ass enough 
 to give 5000 for." 
 
 There is an acerbity in this, accentuated perhaps by the 
 conviction that his good friend Mr. Smith, whom elsewhere 
 he styles " The Prince of Publishers," and " That most 
 princely gentleman," should lose by "Romola." Apart 
 from that, the mind which had devoted years of incessant 
 toil to this same fifteenth century could but be sensitive 
 of anachronisms, and conscious of faulty drawing. Of 
 course it was galling to perceive a subservient press be- 
 lauding a distorted picture, and far exceeding the praise it 
 had grudgingly awarded his own masterpiece. Moreover, 
 if ever there lived a man inspired with a passion for jus- 
 tice, it was Charles Rende. This virtue to him meant all
 
 "Hard Cash" 303 
 
 tbe virtues condensed, and bis championship of Fletcher, 
 Lambert, the Stauntons, Valentine Baker, and many others, 
 proved conclusively that if he did resent injustice to him- 
 self, he was even more ready to avenge others. George 
 Eliot, who needed no factitious support, bounced on the 
 stage to play to a house crammed in every inch with the 
 claque. The anti-Christian ring, which to an almost in- 
 definite extent influences the daily and weekly press and 
 the leading magazines, rallied to a man round the strong 
 woman strong in her will, in her animalism, in her com- 
 mand of thought and diction and by a combined effort 
 placed her on a pinnacle; while so subtle was her method 
 that the warmest advocates of the very Christianity she 
 held up to ridicule were hoodwinked into joining in the 
 general chorus of admiration. Charles Reade held her 
 cheap, simply because he realized more acutely than the 
 rest the inherent defect of her ai-t; but it may safely be 
 affirmed that he would have passed her unnoticed but for 
 the venal paeans that deafened his ears and aroused his 
 righteous indignation. Since then much has happened, and 
 George Eliot, her works and ways, may be safely relegated 
 to the judgment of the twentieth century. Not Charles 
 Reade alone, but others also, have little reason to dread the 
 ultimate verdict, the contrast between puffery and priority. 
 The process of natural selection, which already has elimi- 
 nated from the book- shelf some tons of temporary successes, 
 may yet dispense with such interminable nebulae as, for ex- 
 ample, " Daniel Deronda." Even genius, minus dramatic 
 instinct, mole ruit sud. 
 
 It has been narrated already how in the interests of the 
 justice he loved so ardently Charles Reade extracted the 
 young man Fletcher from an asylum, and provided him 
 with alimony and law expenses for an entire twelvemonth.
 
 304 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 The chief witnesses for the sanity of this alleged lunatic 
 were Doctors Dickson and Rutledge. With the former of 
 these gentlemen Charles Reade established friendly rela- 
 tions, and eventually induced him to place in his hands a 
 mass of material relating to the subject of lunacy generally 
 and the working of the existing lunacy laws. It is to this 
 fact that we are indebted for perhaps the most thrilling of 
 all Charles Reade's romances. 
 
 In the preface to " Hard Cash " its author states that, 
 " like ' The Cloister and the Hearth,' it is a matter-of-fact 
 romance; a fiction built on truths; and that these same 
 truths have been gathered by long, severe, and systematic 
 labor, from a multitude of volumes, pamphlets, journals, re- 
 ports, blue-books, manuscript narratives, letters, and living 
 people sought out, examined, and cross-examined to get at 
 the truth on each main topic." The manuscript narratives 
 here referred to were from the pen of Dr. Dickson himself. 
 They were digested, analyzed, and purged of superfluities 
 by the patient care of Charles Reade, and, after that, clas- 
 sified for use under the generic title, " Dickybirdiana." 
 That, however, was not enough. The medical man who 
 had a soul above his profession, and moreover was blessed 
 with a very pronounced individuality of his own, deserved 
 a niche in the book to which he supplied, not indeed art, 
 but raw material, and Charles Reade has accordingly res- 
 cued the worthy man from oblivion. 
 
 " Dickybird," he writes from Magdalen, " comes down 
 to-day to sit for his portrait (unconsciously)." 
 
 Like " The Cloister and the Hearth," " Hard Cash" was 
 written almost entirely within the college walls. It was a 
 dreary life for a man so completely out of tune with Ox- 
 ford. With the single exception of his nephew, who as 
 chaplain resided in college, but was much occupied with
 
 "Hard Cash." 305 
 
 clerical and tutorial work, he associated with no one, rarely 
 entering the common room, never dining in hall, and at- 
 tending the chapel only on Sunday afternoon. The hours 
 were spent in the libraries or at his desk. He complained 
 bitterly of dulness, and seems to have had almost a school- 
 boy's longing for home; yet he stuck manfully to his self- 
 imposed task. For he was possessed by a double ambition, 
 to add to his laurels, and to effect another social reform. 
 It was his mission to gibbet abuses and injuries, to set the 
 ball rolling, in the hope that sooner or later the legislature 
 would spare a week or so from the incessant game of 
 scrambling for office, in order to stamp his ideas with the 
 hall-mark of authority. He was the pioneer, and nobody 
 thanked him, nobody recognized his honest labor. Virtue 
 in his case was its own reward. 
 
 Charles Dickens appears to have made overtures to him 
 for a serial on more than one occasion. Since Bulwer's 
 original introduction they had become such warm friends 
 that afterwards he referred to Dickens as "my master." 
 Immediately on the appearance of " The Cloister and the 
 Hearth," Mr. Wills, the great novelist's partner in All the 
 Year Mound, submitted a tangible proposal, to which at 
 first Charles Reade demurred, not so much on the score of 
 terms 5 a page being the sum offered as because Mr. 
 Wills wished to retain the American rights, at that time 
 worth about 300. 
 
 The following to Mrs. Seymour is, apparently, from Mag- 
 dalen: " I am sorry," he writes, " the letter and agreement " 
 (query, draft-agreement ?) " are locked up indefinitely, as it 
 makes it difficult for me to reply to Dickens's invitation. 
 I think I shall simply send him a line that I have been 
 advised of Wills's missive, but it is not yet come to hand; 
 and I am here for some days.
 
 306 Memoir of Charles Rcade. 
 
 " The post is an excellent institution, though you ladies 
 hate it so as a vehicle. 
 
 " I have had a fine rout among my papers, and am get- 
 ting into beautiful order. 
 
 "Before letting" (query, Bolton Row?) "I shall relieve 
 the storeroom of some more of my rubbish, and store it 
 in my old boxes in the back bedroom. This will leave 
 me room for my note-books, my invaluable note-books, 
 with which I have done nothing, literally nothing, up to 
 date. 
 
 " I think they must have me for All the Year Hound, 
 for Dickens is working on a shilling serial, and Collins go- 
 ing to Cornhill. So I shall stand firm about the Ameri- 
 can sheets, and, please God, shall publish the new story, 
 hot (i. e., writing each number up to time, instead of com- 
 pleting the whole before commencement) for All the Year 
 Mound. A clause gives me the right to bring it out three 
 weeks before terminating in the periodical, and when we 
 have made 5000 by publication we will combine a little 
 dramatic spec." 
 
 Pending the settlement of terms with Mr. Dickens, he 
 seems to have been engaged in dramatizing "It is Never 
 Too Late to Mend," and this probably is the " spec." to 
 which he alludes. His next letter runs thus : 
 
 " Last night young Yates performed a lecture, and I fell 
 in with him. Asked this evening by Mr. Alderman Spiers 
 to meet him and a painter, and Mr. Hepworth Dixon. I 
 am going. 
 
 " I believe personal contact softens downright asperities " 
 (this appears to have reference to the immemorial feud be- 
 tween Town and Gown, Mr. Spiers being a local trades- 
 man of a very high culture a noble-minded citizen). " We 
 shall see.
 
 "Hard Cash." 307 
 
 " Would you believe it ? I was so interrupted yester- 
 day that I had only time to reach the coup of Crawley be- 
 ing brought on arrested, and you know I won't work Sun- 
 day. I think a quarter of an hour on Monday ought to 
 do it. 
 
 "Dickens's duplicate agreement is signed and sent to 
 Magdalen College, Cambridge, so Wills tells me in a hu- 
 morous note. However, the bargain is struck, and I must 
 put my shoulder at once to the wheel. 
 
 " Smith's note offered me 2000 for a novel copyright 
 four years lowest price 5s., and another 1000 if pub- 
 lished in the CornhUl Magazine. Cash down on receipt of 
 MS. Please not speak of it, but advise me if you can. The 
 objection is, that he wishes to hold the absolute discre- 
 tion of publishing it in. The CornhUl or not. Now 2000 
 might not compensate me for the loss of the periodical 
 market. Suppose he decided only to publish as a book ! 
 For instance, Dickens gives me 800. Add America 300, 
 the balance of 2000 is only 900. But my Library Edi- 
 tion is worth more than that, or full that. However, you 
 think of it. I am puzzled, and have not yet replied." 
 
 The sentence " I won't work Sunday " may be quoted 
 as one among many indications of religious feeling, the 
 undercurrent which, in the fulness of time, was to roll in a 
 grand volume to the surface. Taken with numerous oth- 
 er excerpts from his letters and his books, it may serve as 
 a rejoinder to the slander of a soi-disant friend, who hurled 
 against him, while his remains were barely cold, the charge 
 of religious melancholia. He would not have thanked 
 such friendship. 
 
 Mr. Edmund Yates, in the columns of The World, bright- 
 ened a characteristic obituary notice of our author by a 
 genial reference to the knight-service rendered him by
 
 308 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 his brother - citizen of the republic of literati. " Many 
 years ago," he wrote, " I went to lecture at Oxford, stay- 
 ing with Mr. Spiers, where Hepworth Dixon and E. M. 
 Ward, R.A., were my fellow-guests. Just before going 
 into the lecture-room I was told by Mr. Phene Spiers, the 
 well-known architect, that it was the pleasant custom of 
 the undergraduates to chaff and bait every lecturer. Pre- 
 pared by this, after I had spoken for a quarter of an hour 
 with constant interruptions, I closed my notes, remarking, 
 as they did not wish to hear me, I certainly had no desire 
 to address them ; and, wishing them ' good-evening,' re- 
 tired from the platform. The place was full, and there 
 were many people who had come from a distance, and had 
 ordered their carriages an hour later; but I was firm in my 
 refusal to continue, and this caused a tremendous row, with 
 many threats of personal violence, from which I was only 
 extricated by the appearance on the scene of the well- 
 known form of Charles Reade, who, haranguing the 
 mob, claimed me as an old friend, and declared I was 
 perfectly right in declining to submit to their imperti- 
 nence. 
 
 "Reade's rooms at Magdalen were an extraordinary 
 sight, books piled on the floor and elsewhere in endless 
 profusion, MSS. littered about, scarcely a chair to be 
 found more like Mr. Fips's rooms in Austin Friars, into 
 which Tom Pinch was inducted." 
 
 It will be remarked that Charles Reade does not so 
 much as hint that he was the Deus ex machind to save 
 Mr. Edmund Yates's skin, but that the latter gentleman 
 hastened to acknowledge the obligation. The incident 
 was equally honorable to both. 
 
 From that moment onwards our author labored to pro- 
 duce " Hard Cash," availing himself occasionally of what
 
 "Hard Cash." 309 
 
 distractions Oxford could afford. This is what he has to 
 say after a short spell of work: 
 
 "I wish I could write more cheerfully about the story ; 
 but it is no use telling lies. I feel as if there was go in 
 me. But it is partly Dickson's fault. His ill- written, in- 
 articulate compositions have almost broken my heart. 
 Never was there a writer so inconsecutive and ill-arranged. 
 Well, he. shall pay for it. I have pasted a whole screen 
 over with his lines and topics, arranging them in some- 
 thing like order. 
 
 " There has been a great cricket match, all England 
 eleven against sixteen of Oxford. Three days' match, re- 
 sulting in a tie. My nephew, captain of the University 
 players " (Henry St. John Reade, then scholar of University 
 College, afterwards the Squire of Ipsden), " distinguished 
 himself considerably. I saw a good deal of the match, in- 
 cluding the finish. It was wonderfully exciting. 
 
 " I have invited three undergraduates to dinner, on the 
 distinct understanding they are to be pumped. 
 
 " This is all. You may imagine how monotonous life is; 
 but I should be happy enough if I saw the story growing." 
 
 Again, a few days later: 
 
 " Here are great facilities for reading. The Radcliffe 
 Library is fitted up like the British Museum. A good 
 stock of books are within your reach in the building, and 
 they communicate with the Bodleian, and get you any 
 book you want. I have read and taken notes, but cannot 
 write. Don't feel to know enough. But it is always the 
 same story now. And I always end by getting over it, 
 you know. 
 
 " The three numbers that are written read well. It is 
 Dickson gives me so much trouble with his confounded 
 unmethodical way of writing. However, I have papered
 
 310 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 one side of a screen with classified extracts from his works, 
 and now I am at others. I mean to make him break out 
 from prose to verse in conversation just as he does, and to 
 use his own lines. It will be new and droll, I think." 
 
 Again, two months later: 
 
 " I do nothing but write * Hard Cash,' and very hard 
 work it is. I send another number by this post, and real- 
 ly it does not read badly. To-day I finish the number I 
 ought to have finished yesterday, landing A. in asylum 3, 
 whence he escapes, I hope, in the next number. I have 
 got too much work in hand to be very dull." 
 
 This was succeeded by a somewhat brighter letter. 
 
 " Your beautiful friends, the deer," he writes, " have de- 
 veloped a trait which I remember of old. They fight in 
 October, and always on Sunday." (N.B. His rooms looked 
 out on the deer park of the College.) "Yesterday I heard 
 the well-known click of the horns. I looked out and there 
 was a brown deer and a fallow deer " (query, dappled ? all 
 the Magdalen deer are fallow) " hard at it. They fought 
 for about an hour, in which they worked round to the 
 front. I came down and found the brown driven against 
 the wall, and the other facing. Presently I saw the brown 
 down, and knowing he must be killed if something was not 
 done, I ran up and drove the fallow away. 
 
 " Presently an idiot of an undergraduate, not content to 
 let well alone, gets over the rails; but this brought the 
 brown one up, who ran a little way, and then sank down, in 
 which posture the other vicious brute instantly made at 
 him, and gave him an awful push. 
 
 " It seemed to take him on the shoulder, and if it did, he 
 is venison. But I really believe he was clever enough to 
 turn his head even in that posture, and receive it on his 
 horns. At least I see him about to-day, though rather stiff.
 
 "Hard Cash: 1 311 
 
 " I have contrived to leave behind me two small brown 
 volumes called * Voyages de Montaigne.' They are bound 
 exactly like ' Rabelais,' which is on the hall table, I think. 
 Will you send them down with all despatch, accompanied, 
 if possible, by ' Herder's Epidemics,' which I lent Dr. Dick- 
 son ? It is, however, ' Montaigne ' I am most in want of. 
 I feel like a man walking up a mountain. What I have 
 done is good, I think; but so much seems to be done." 
 
 As a matter of fact the aforesaid stag was so severely 
 wounded that it had to be taken to the college stables 
 and assigned a stall. Here, under the fostering care of 
 John, the groom, it grew so singularly domesticated that 
 it would eat bread out of your hand, and seemed quite 
 grateful for being preserved from its implacable enemy. 
 It recovered, put on adipose tissue, and in the form of 
 venison graced the high table at the succeeding " Gaudy." 
 
 As the book progressed his spirits rose proportionately. 
 
 " I have left off sugar, which I believe to be poison," he 
 writes; "and, do you know, I relish everything I eat since 
 I left it off. Is not that curious ? This morning I made 
 the novel reflection that bread-and-butter is nice. Re- 
 call to your mind my tirades against that innocent combi- 
 nation ! 
 
 " I am not at all in bad spirits now, thank God ! 
 
 " I already possessed one of the books Gibson (the min- 
 ister of Kirkhope) was good enough to recommend. I have 
 obtained the others, and four more in Nisbett's list; but 
 Gibson, as might be expected, had recommended the lest 
 ones. 
 
 "Simultaneously arrived yesterday a letter from my 
 agent Cornwallis, saying that Harper positively declined 
 my terms, and a line from Harper virtually accepting said 
 terms.
 
 312 Memoir of Charles Heade. 
 
 " Corny wanted the story for some mad periodical ven- 
 ture on which he is going to enter in full civil icar. Oh, 
 world, world ! 
 
 "This reminds me of the illustrious chairman's witti- 
 cism, Tom Taylor, at a dramatic and equestrian dinner. 
 ' The society does not propose to employ an agent. The 
 reason, as far as I can understand, is an etymological one. 
 Agent is derived from a Latin word " agere" " to do," and 
 agents have always been just to their derivation by doing 
 their principals.' 
 
 " Luckily, by one of those gusts of caution which you 
 have observed, I had already told Corny I should not re- 
 ceive Harper's answer through him." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " I have shaken off much of my lethargy since I finished 
 Dickson's works; and I believe his detestable, rambling 
 way of writing, and eternal repetition, caused my woe. 
 
 " I am now working on Jeaffreson's book, who is also a 
 rambling, disconnected creature, but not so bad as Dick- 
 son. 
 
 "Yesterday a bailiff got into an undergraduate's room 
 with an execution, and there remained. The undergrad- 
 uates put their heads together, and finding it would be 
 dangerous to use violence, adopted the following means: 
 They shoved hot shovels sprinkled with cayenne in at the 
 window, and sprinkled assafcetida. But the grand card 
 was sulphuretted hydrogen gas, which, by some means 
 unknown to me, they liberated from its sulphate, and blew 
 through the letter-box. 
 
 "In a word, they stunk him out; and I need scarcely 
 say they kept him out as soon as he emerged for vital air. 
 
 "We live in an age in which science is diffused, and 
 made useful as well as exalting."
 
 "Hard Cash." 313 
 
 There is a fine flavor of Goldwin Smith's green coat 
 about this, as also the next : 
 
 " I heard some crackers, and looking out of my window 
 saw the Tower with two long lines of bright red running 
 up it from bottom to top. Then looking farther to the 
 right, I saw in the chorister's playground two enormous 
 bonfires. So I put on my cap, and went there. 
 
 " The flame rose thirty feet, and all the elm-trees in the 
 neighborhood a bright yellow. I am now come in, stink- 
 ing of naphtha some young gentleman having, doubtless, 
 thought it a fair exercise of juvenile skill to level a fire- 
 ball at Dr. Reade. 
 
 " I approve at bottom, but stink all the same." 
 
 In the meanwhile " Hard Cash " was running its course 
 through Charles Dickens's admirable magazine ; but in- 
 credible though the fact seems to us at this date, it does 
 not appear to have been cordially welcomed by its readers. 
 The devotees of Dickens may have resented the substitu- 
 tion of another author for their incomparable favorite; yet 
 in the English language there exist few, if any, works of 
 fiction more exciting than " Hard Cash." True, it trenched 
 on ground already occupied by " Valentine Vox," yet in 
 a totally different vein, while the sea scenes were unique. 
 The author was able to refer both to a brother who had 
 been a sailor, and to a nephew in the Royal Navy. He him- 
 self had experienced the dangers of the deep, and the qual- 
 ity of those who go down to the sea in ships, during his 
 spell of herring-fishing; and if mal de mer kept him ashore, 
 and deprived him of the pleasure a trip to America would 
 have afforded him, he loved the salt truly. That the book 
 should have disappointed Dickens in any sense is unac- 
 countable, yet so it was. 
 
 The following letter tells the tale, gracefully: 
 14
 
 314 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " I should have been glad to give you another fortnight 
 at Kirkhope," he writes to Mrs. Seymour, from Bolton 
 Row; "and I was rather in hopes the minister's visit 
 might have been later. However, I shall be very glad 
 to see you both on the last day, or last but one, of Sep- 
 tember. 
 
 " I am going to Ipsden, but not for long. I think I shall 
 postpone my visit to the Pearsons. 
 
 "Wills called the other day, and reassured me with 
 ' Hard Cash.' They would not care if it ran fifty numbers; 
 but they want to end their tenth volume with the conclu- 
 sion either of ' Hard Cash ' or of its successor. Peevish 
 nonsense! The story has done them no good, in fact they 
 print three thousand copies less than at the outset. But 
 they seem to bear it very well, and ascribe the decline to 
 other causes. Wills is sure it will be a great hit as a book, 
 and Dickens swears by it. So now you have both sides of 
 the matter." 
 
 The work, as is stated boldly in the preface to Messrs. 
 Chatto's excellent edition, stung the profession to the 
 quick. Its author was handled insultingly by certain pro- 
 testing doctors, notably a Dr. Bushnan, physician to a 
 private lunatic asylum in Wiltshire. This was, as it proved, 
 a blunder. Charles Reade, following the old canon of 
 Aristotle, had taken facts for his starting-point, and was 
 armed with them cap dpie. As for the redoubtable Bush- 
 nan an Irishman probably, if one may judge by his name 
 he was confuted by a singular argumentum ad hominem, 
 being turned out of his own, as he stated, faultless asylum, 
 owing to circumstances which confirmed all that Charles 
 Reade had alleged. As that earnest assailant of cruelty 
 and injury urged to The Saturday Review, a man must 
 be six times a greater writer than ever lived, ere he could
 
 "Hard Cash" 315 
 
 exaggerate suicide, despair, and the horrors that drove 
 young and old to them, or write a libel on hell. 
 
 It was during the progress of "Hard Cash" that Mrs. 
 Reade breathed her last. She was en route to her dear 
 old home at Ipsden, where then resided, as tenant of his 
 elder brother, her dutiful son Edward, and was compelled 
 to halt at Reading. Son Charles was summoned to her 
 bedside, but arrived too late. This is his missive to Mrs. 
 Seymour, who seems to have started the same morning for 
 Kirkhope : 
 
 " I went down to Reading by the twelve o'clock train, 
 being convinced by a sadness that came over me last night, 
 and which you may have observed, that all was over. 
 
 " It was so. 
 
 " My dear mother departed this life at twelve last night, 
 after some hours of complete unconsciousness. Dr. Wood- 
 house had his hand on her pulse. 
 
 "She suffered from oppressed breathing early in the 
 day, but this had ceased. And, at the last, she did not 
 die, but merely ceased to live. She drew her last breath 
 just as she drew the one before it, and my sister could see 
 no change in her dear face when she was gone. 
 
 " Such was the peaceful close of a good life, that had in 
 very truth become a burden. The loss of her mind in so 
 great a degree, and the fear of complete imbecility, do 
 much to reconcile me to the inevitable separation. Still, 
 it must be felt. 
 
 " What years and what memories rise before me ! I 
 send off this hasty line." 
 
 It was felt and at the moment of writing, for the letter 
 from end to end is blotted with tears. 
 
 The little lady, who came from the society of royalty 
 as a bride to grace a humble home at Ipsden in 1790, rests
 
 316 Memoir of Charles Rcadc. 
 
 by the side of her noble husband in the old churchyard. 
 It was more like a triumph than a funeral. The aged poor 
 whom her bounty had fed, the children grown to maturity 
 whom she had taught, thronged the bier; and it was re- 
 marked that, just as at the obsequies of another in Willes- 
 den churchyard some eighteen years later, Charles Reade 
 seemed to stagger under the weight of grief. 
 
 He kept his mother's letters under the title " ReliquicB 
 Sacrce" and wrote upon them as an epitaph, " Blessed be 
 her memory." 
 
 Is it paradoxical to suggest that, in the mind that could 
 thus to the last retain a vivid sentiment of adoration for 
 a good mother, there must have existed a well-spring of 
 good?
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE DBAMA " SEKA NUNQUAM." 
 
 THE little spec, promised to Mrs. Seymour, on the conclu- 
 sion, if successful, of " Hard Cash," remained in abeyance 
 for some time. A friendly critic once styled the stage 
 Charles Reade's will-o'-the-wisp. That in a pecuniary 
 sense was true, and when his eulogist in Temple J3ar 
 sneered at a venerable Presbyterian divine for not declin- 
 ing a small legacy, because, forsooth, the money wherewith 
 that bequest would be paid was " earned " (sic) by a play- 
 wright, he omitted, with singular inconsequence, to strike 
 a debtor and creditor account between Charles Reade and 
 the theatre. The novelist made money, handsome sums 
 at times, by his novels; the dramatist was singularly un- 
 fortunate in nearly all his theatrical speculations. In 
 short, so far from the theatre having contributed to his 
 fortune, it actually diminished it. His Presbyterian friend 
 and mentor did not handle theatrical gold, for there was 
 none to handle. 
 
 We will at once, however, place our author's connec- 
 tion with the drama on its real basis. It was his ambition. 
 He held the drama to be the apex of all art, the superior 
 of poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture. To 
 musical composers he could be unjust; and we have seen 
 him throw down a volume of poems with the sarcastic 
 comment, " Beyond my comprehension." As we have al- 
 ready said, a novel obtained value in his eyes in proper-
 
 318 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 tion to its dramatic quality. Such being the bent of his 
 mind, it seemed to resolve in a circle round the stage. If 
 he wrote a successful novel, his first thought was, how 
 would it play ? He craved to see his characters at work, 
 to witness his situations; and to hear the thud of the gal- 
 lery's boots, the roar of its many-tongued throat, the ap- 
 plause of its horny hands. His one desire was to make 
 mankind feel, and be conscious of doing so. That was 
 why he could tolerate criticism with less equanimity than 
 a schoolboy the cane. The critics were too pachyderma- 
 tous, too case-hardened for feeling; and, worse still, they 
 spoke in accents of ice on behalf of a public he had 
 warmed to enthusiasm. 
 
 At last, after a lapse of many years, the course of events 
 brought him back to the theatre he loved so ecstatically. 
 He shall tell how it all came about in his own language. 
 The following fragment is entitled, with somewhat of the 
 acerbity of the spoiled child 
 
 "READE'S LUCK. 
 
 " Autobiography is a vile, egotistical thing. It always 
 must be. But there is a set-off: you learn something real 
 about the man, and that is what you will never learn from 
 anybody else. 
 
 "Let this, and my recent wrongs, be my excuse for 
 troubling you with one chapter of my public life. I can- 
 not divest such a thing of egotism, any more than I can 
 wash the spots out of a leopard; but I promise it shall 
 not be unmixed egotism, but shall lead to general conclu- 
 sions of public utility. 
 
 " In that reservoir of delights, the t Arabian Nights,' 
 nothing is more charming than the story of ' Sindbad the 
 Sailor,' and the art with which it is introduced: a poor,
 
 The Drama, "Sera Nunquam" 319 
 
 half-starved fellow, misfortune's butt, comes upon a gay 
 company feasting luxuriously; at the head of the table 
 sits a white-headed senior, the host; homage surrounds 
 him; slaves watch his hand; friends hang upon his words; 
 he is a type of ease, luxury, wealth, respectability. The 
 worn and hungry traveller stands apart and glares upon 
 banquet and host, and his heart sinks lower than ever. 
 Contrasting his hard lot with the luxury before him, he 
 murmurs at the inequality of things, and the injustice of 
 fortune. 
 
 " The next moment he would gladly recall his words; 
 for a servant comes and tells him the master of the feast 
 would speak to him; he goes trembling, and expecting 
 bastinado. 
 
 " ' Sit down by me,' says the host, and orders his plate 
 to be heaped. 
 
 " When he has eaten his fill, the venerable senior says, 
 quietly, ' I will tell you the story of my life.' 
 
 " Then the lucky man tells the unlucky one such a tale 
 of adventures, perils, wounds, hardships, sufferings, and 
 despair, as makes the unlucky man think light of his own 
 griefs. Through all these dangers and horrors had Sind- 
 bad the persevering passed, ere he got to be Sindbad the 
 seeming lucky. 
 
 " Now writers are not Sindbads, nor lead adventurous 
 lives; yet at the bottom of things, dissimilar on the sur- 
 face, lies often a point of similitude. And so when I read, 
 or hear people talk of one Charles Reade's universal suc- 
 cess, of his flashy but popular style, of his ease and afflu- 
 ence, I wear a sickly smile, and think sometimes of ' Sind- 
 bad the Sailor,' not lucky, but very unlucky and persever- 
 ing for, by Heaven, it has never been smooth sailing with 
 me!
 
 320 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 "In the year 1835 I began to make notes with a view 
 to writing fiction, but, fixing my mind on its masterpieces 
 in all languages and all recorded times, I thought so highly 
 of that great and difficult art that for fourteen years I 
 never ventured to offer my crude sketches to the public. 
 
 " I began at last, and wrote several dramas, not one of 
 which any manager would read; but theatrical England 
 at this time was a mere province of France. Observing 
 which, I crept into the theatre at last with a French 
 translation. 
 
 " From that I went to better things, and wrote several 
 plays alone, and in conjunction with my friend Mr. T. 
 Taylor; but though my talent, whatever it may bej is 
 rather for the drama than the novel, I was, after a hard 
 fight, literally driven into the novel by bad laws and cor- 
 rupt practices. 
 
 " Bad laws. The international copyright law of 1852 
 was intended to give a French dramatist the sole right to 
 translate and play his play in England for five years, and 
 so encourage home invention by restraining the former 
 theft. But while the act was being drawn, an English 
 playwright or two, who had all their lives stolen French 
 ideas, and held it a point of honor to die as they had 
 lived, crawled up the back stairs of the House of Com- 
 mons and earwigged the late Lord Palmerston. He, good 
 man, meant no worse, and saw no deeper, than this: ' Let 
 us make the best shopkeeper's bargain we can for Eng- 
 land.' But the result was that the English Sovereign, 
 the English Peers, and the English Commons took their 
 instructions from a handful of impenitent thieves, and dis- 
 graced themselves and the nation. They treacherously 
 conveyed into this otherwise noble statute a perfidious 
 clause, allowing ' fair adaptations and imitations ' of every
 
 The Drama "Sera Nunquam" 321 
 
 foreign drama to be played in England, in defiance of the 
 foreign inventor. 
 
 " This viper in the basket made the protecting clauses 
 waste paper, and perpetuated dramatic piracy from for- 
 eigners in its old, convenient, and habitual form of color- 
 able piracy. 
 
 "After this don't laugh at the words Perftde Albion, 
 for these words are true, by God ! 
 
 " Well, this wicked and perfidious law enabled a por- 
 tion of the anonymous press to monopolize the theatres, 
 or nearly. No fool can invent a single good drama, but 
 any fool can adapt two hundred good dramas from the 
 French; and any fool can write, just as any fool could 
 spit, the cant and twaddle, and impudence and ignorance 
 that some folk adorn by the acre under the blasphemous 
 title of ' dramatic criticism.' 
 
 "So when newspapers increased in number and size, 
 there arose a 'camaraderie? or compact band of play- 
 wright critics, writers calamitous to the drama, and fatal, 
 above all, to the dramatic inventor. This gang worked 
 in concert as they work to this day; they toadied actors, 
 however wretched; they praised every piece which was 
 written by one of their gang; they flew like hornets at 
 every outsider who did not square them with champagne 
 suppers, or other douceurs, pecuniary bribe included; and 
 then, as now, they sometimes levied blackmail on a man- 
 ager by a dodge I shall expose by and by. 
 
 " The managers of theatres, most of them actors, and 
 extremely sensitive to public praise or censure, truckled 
 to these small fry invested with large powers by reckless 
 journals, and would rather take a French piece, sure to 
 be praised by this little Trades' Union, than an English 
 piece, sure to be censured by them. 
 14*
 
 322 Memoir of diaries Reade. 
 
 "I struggled against this double shuffle for about four 
 years, and then I gave it up in despair, and took to novel?- 
 writing, against the grain, and left the stage for years. 
 
 "During my period of enforced exile from the stage I 
 suffered intellectual hell. I used to go to the theatres 
 and see that one piece of unnatural trash after another 
 could get a hearing, yet the market was hermetically sealed 
 to me. It is usual, under these circumstances, for the dis- 
 appointed man to turn anonymous writer, call himself a 
 critic, or judge, and, in that sacred character, revenge him- 
 self on the successful. Unfortunately, my principles and 
 my reverence for that great, holy, incorruptible science, 
 criticism, did not permit me this Christian solace; so I 
 suffered in silence, and with a fortitude which the writers 
 who babble about my irritability have shown they can- 
 not imitate in a far milder case. 
 
 "In 1865 I tried the London stage again under other 
 circumstances, to explain which I must go back a little. 
 
 "At Christmas, 1852, Drury Lane was in the hands of 
 a gentleman with great courage and small capital. He 
 invested his all in the pantomime ; and the pantomime 
 failed so utterly that after one week they took it off, and 
 pitchforked on to the stage a drama called ' Gold,' which 
 I had flung together in the same hasty way. This drama, 
 though loosely constructed, was English, and hit the time. 
 Not being stolen from the French by any member of the 
 trades' union of playwright critics, it was much dispraised 
 in the papers, and crowded the theatre, and saved the 
 manager. 
 
 " Afterwards, when the playwright critics drove me out 
 of the theatre, I was obliged to run cunning, and turned 
 many of my suppressed plays into stories. I dealt so 
 with 'Gold': I added a new vein of incidents taken from
 
 The Drama "Sera Nunquam" 323 
 
 prison life, and so turned the drama * Gold ' into the novel 
 ' It is Never Too Late to Mend.' 
 
 "But lo ! the novel being written by a dramatist, nat- 
 urally presented fresh dramatic features, and tempted me 
 to reconstruct a more effective drama. I offered it to one or 
 two managers. They declined, and gave their reasons 
 if I may venture to apply that term to the logic of gorillas. 
 
 "Presently piratical scribblers got hold of the subject, 
 and gorilla logic melted away directly in the sunshine of 
 theft. Managers, both in town and country, were ready 
 to treat for the rejected subject the moment it was of- 
 fered them, not by the inventor and the writer, but by 
 scribblers and pirates. Several piratical versions were 
 played, in town and country, with, a success unparalleled 
 in those days. Saloons rose into theatres by my brains, 
 stolen. Managers made at least seventy thousand pounds 
 out of my brains, stolen; but not one would pay the in- 
 ventor a shilling, nor give his piece a hearing. 
 
 " At last this impatient Charles Reade, like his prede- 
 cessor in impatience, Job, lost impatience, and went to 
 law with the thieves and the dealers in stolen goods. 
 
 " It was a long and hard fight that would have worn 
 out a poet or two ; but after three suits in the Common 
 Pleas, and three injunctions in Equity, I crushed the 
 thieves, and recovered my property. 
 
 " Then I tried the London managers of the day again. 
 I said, ' My amiable, though too larcenous friends, here is 
 an approved subject, which you can no longer steal ; but 
 that is your misfortune, not your fault: why not make 
 the best of a bad job, and put a few thousand pounds into 
 your pockets by dealing with the inventor?' 
 
 " No ; not one would deal with a writer for his 'own 
 brains.
 
 324 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " Haves run through the woods in tracks ; men run 
 through life in grooves ; and these had a fixed habit of 
 dealing with scribblers and thieves for the inventor's 
 brains ; and they could not get out of that groove at any 
 price. 
 
 " Seven mortal years did I offer my new popular drama, 
 ' It is Never Too Late to Mend,' to these bigots in vain. 
 
 " Seven mortal years did I see false, un-English, inhu- 
 man trash played at the very theatres which refused me 
 a hearing. 
 
 " At last a lady interfered, read my drama, and advised 
 Mr. George Vining to entertain it at the Princess'. He 
 did so, and the drama was brought out with great expec- 
 tation on the fourth day of October, 1865. 
 
 "The playwright critics were there in full force, and 
 several of them sat together in the stalls, as usual. But 
 the circumstances under which the play was played were 
 of a nature to disarm hostility. I had not troubled the 
 theatre for ten years ; and even now I was only produc- 
 ing, for my own benefit, a play that had been fully dis- 
 cussed, and approved, when played for the benefit of mis- 
 appropriators. 
 
 " It would be hard to find, even amongst the lowest of 
 mankind, a person who could not feel some little compas- 
 sion for an inventor that had been shouldered off the stage 
 for years by means of his own brains stolen, and who 
 now merely asked a percentage on his brains, and the 
 same justice which had always been accorded to those 
 brains, when sold for their own benefit, by dunces and 
 thieves. 
 
 "But, if you want a grain of humanity, or honor, or 
 justice, or manly feeling of any kind, don't you go to a 
 trades' union ; for you won't find it there. The play-
 
 The Drama "Sera Nunquam" 325 
 
 wright critics concerted the destruction of the drama on the 
 first night. They were seen to egg on Mr. Tomlins, the 
 critic of The Morning Advertiser, to howl down the prison 
 scenes by brute clamor. Tomlins, being drunk, 'his cus- 
 tom ever in the afternoon,' lent himself to this with in- 
 ebriate zeal, and got up a disturbance, which with a feeble 
 manager would infallibly have ended in the curtain being 
 let down and the play withdrawn forever. But, for once, 
 the clique ran their heads against a man. George Vining 
 defied the cabal on the stage ; and, at last, some fellows 
 in the gallery, shaking off their amazement at the miscon- 
 duct below, called down, ' Turn the blackguards out.' 
 Now when the dishonest blackguards in the stalls found 
 the honest blackguards in the gallery had spotted them, 
 they shut up, and prepared their articles for next morning 
 in dead silence. 
 
 " Next day, of course, they wrote the piece down unani- 
 mously. But they had overrated their power. The pub- 
 lic got scent of the swindle, rushed to the theatre, and 
 carried the drama triumphantly for 148 nights. The 
 profits were about 8000, of which 2000 came to me 
 on shares. The drama has outlived all the plays that 
 were lauded to the skies that year by the venal clique. 
 It was played in six houses this year, 1873. 
 
 "Finding themselves sat upon, the playwright critics 
 went and ate dirty pudding ; they had been talking about 
 liberty, and trying hard and publicly to get rid of the ex- 
 aminer of plays. Yet they now went to this functionary, 
 cap in hand, and humbly besought him to come to their 
 assistance, and stop Mr. Reade's play, since the ' Press ' 
 was powerless. This fractional clique has quite a mania 
 for calling itself the ' Press.' The Licenser received them 
 politely, but with a covert sneer ; expressed a respect for
 
 326 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 liberty, and objected to interfere with it except in ques- 
 tions of public morality." 
 
 To be perfectly frank, admitting that the stalls were by 
 no means crowded with the author's friends, the house it- 
 self, as a whole, was hardly favorable to the piled agony 
 of the prison scene. There are facts which, though highly 
 dramatic, had better be left to the imagination. The au- 
 thor had overdone his effect ; he had rendered tragedy 
 itself repulsive, if not ridiculous, and when in his cooler 
 moments he consented to tone down barbarity, his play 
 did not .lose in real strength.* It has been asserted as in- 
 controvertible that " It is Never Too Late to Mend " failed 
 to win enthusiasm at the outset. This Charles Reade's 
 
 * Before the play was produced Charles Reade sent the MS. to his warm 
 friend, Dion Boucicault, at Dublin for criticism. The reply of the latter 
 was so severe that it was deemed by its recipient worth a niche in his huge 
 letter-book ; the envelope containing it bearing the sarcastic inscription, 
 " Boucicault on MS. drama, ' Never Too Late to Mend.' Advises me to cut 
 out Jew and Jacky. Aha ! old Fox, they will outlive thee and me !" 
 This is the missive in question : 
 
 DUBLIN, 3 Dec. 
 
 " MY DEAR READE, I have read your drama, ' N. T. L. T. M.' There is 
 in it a very effective piece, but, like the nut within both husk and shell, it 
 wants freedom. 
 
 " 1st. It will act five hours as it stands. 
 
 " 2d. There are scenes which injure dramatically others which follow. 
 
 " 3d. There are two characters you are fond of (I suppose), but can 
 never be played. I mean Jacky and the Jew. 
 
 "4th. The dialogue wants weeding. It is more in weight than actors 
 as they breed them now can carry. 
 
 "Total. If you want to make a success with this drama, you must con- 
 sent to a depleting process to which Shylock's single Ib. of flesh must be 
 a mild transaction. 
 
 " Have you the courage to undergo the operation ? I'm afraid you have 
 not Ever yours, DION BOCCICAULT."
 
 The Drama "Sera Nunquam" 327 
 
 arithmetic alone goes far towards disproving. " Sera Nun- 
 quam " not only commanded success, but at once entered 
 into the programme of stock companies ; and to this hour 
 if a manager, be he London or provincial, colonial or 
 American, happens to be in difficulties, he falls back on 
 this drama as a sure and certain draw. It became, more- 
 over, from the date of its initial performance at the Prin- 
 cess' Theatre, a second fellowship to its author, a steady 
 source of income. Rarely did a week pass without a check, 
 larger or less, arriving on account of the representations 
 of this play. Now it was from Manchester, Liverpool, 
 Glasgow, or Leeds ; now from Mr. Dampier at Melbourne, 
 or Wagga-wagga ; now from the Cape, from Canada, from 
 India. 
 
 It won its way, nevertheless, to universal favor by stages, 
 if rapid ones. Two provincial revivals deserve especial 
 mention at Birmingham and at Liverpool. 
 
 The great metropolis of the Midlands welcomed it with 
 a sympathy most creditable to its reputation for progress 
 and humanity. But for the iron men of that iron city the 
 brutal Austin might have done myriads to death within 
 their jail. It was Birmingham, that Birmingham whose 
 religious prophet was the noble Angel James, and whose 
 political mouth-piece was equally honest John Bright, 
 which raised the cry. And when Birmingham utters, the 
 world must perforce listen. 
 
 " Painful as the incidents, delineated with so much force, 
 skill, pathos, and dramatic power, are," wrote an able pub- 
 licist to a Birmingham paper, " they are by no means equal 
 to the stern facts upon which the dramatist has based his 
 tragic scenes. The dismal history was described on our 
 local record, and is probably well-nigh forgotten by those 
 who were living at that time. . . .
 
 328 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 "On the 29th October, 1849, the jail (of Birmingham) 
 was opened, Captain Mackonochie being appointed gov- 
 ernor. He had been superintendent at Norfolk Island, 
 and introduced * the mark system,' under which no pris- 
 oner was entitled to any other food than bread and water, 
 but might earn an improved dietary, together with other 
 indulgences and rewards, in proportion to the numbered 
 marks he should obtain. This system the captain desired 
 to introduce into Birmingham jail. . . . 
 
 " The beneficial system was not allowed to continue in 
 operation for any length of time. In March, 1850, the 
 ofiice of principal warder became vacant, and Lieutenant 
 Austin was appointed. From the day Austin entered he 
 seems to have aimed at undermining the authority of the 
 governor. Quarrels arose. Austin jesuitically sent in 
 his resignation. It was not accepted, and shortly after 
 Captain M. was deprived of his appointment, . . . and 
 on October 21, 1851, Austin was appointed governor. 
 The humane system and the generally mild treatment to 
 which prisoners had been subjected were superseded by 
 others of harshness and cruelty. Between November, '51, 
 and April, '53, there were no less than twelve attempts at 
 suicide, and three in which the unfortunate prisoners suc- 
 ceeded in destroying their lives. A blue book is full of 
 harrowing details, such as make one shudder. Many might 
 be cited, but I shall 'be able only to find room for one. 
 This is that of the boy Andrews, which serves as the 
 model of 'Josephs,' the main difference being that An- 
 drews was driven to suicide, while in the drama the boy 
 Josephs dies in the arms of the chaplain. Edward An- 
 drews, a boy of fifteen years of age, was committed, March 
 28, 1853, for stealing four pounds of beef, for three months. 
 The chaplain described him as ' quiet, mild, docile ;' the
 
 The Drama "Sera Nunquam" 329 
 
 governor said he was of a ' sullen and dogged disposition.' 
 On March 30 he was put to work the crank ; one of the 
 witnesses deposed that, 'to accomplish the 10,000 revolu- 
 tions necessary for a day's work, a boy would exert force 
 equal to one fourth of an ordinary draught horse.' He 
 failed to perform his task on the 30th and 31st. On both 
 these days he was fed on bread and water only, not receiv- 
 ing any food whatever until night! 'His food seldom ex- 
 ceeded bread and water,' and on April 17 he was put into 
 the punishment jacket, where the arms were crossed on 
 the breast and tied together, motion being impossible. In 
 addition to the jacket a stiff leather stock was fastened 
 tightly round the neck, and the prisoner was strapped in a 
 standing position to the walls of his cell. On the I9th he 
 was again strapped for four hours ; on that occasion the 
 chaplain was attracted to his cell by shrieks of 'murder;' 
 on going there he found the poor lad suffering great 
 bodily pain in his arms, chest, and neck, crying and wail- 
 ing most piteously. The chaplain found that the stock 
 was fastened so tightly that he could not insert his finger 
 between it and the poor boy's neck. On the 22d and 
 24th he was again strapped. On this occasion a bucket of 
 water was thrown over him, and he was seen standing 
 with one sock and one bare foot on the wet stone floor of 
 his cell. On April 26 and 27 he was deprived of his bed 
 from 5.30 P.M. to 10 P.M. On the evening of the latter 
 day, as the watch was taking the bed to the cell, he found 
 him hanging dead." 
 
 Austin was indicted at "Warwick, convicted, and such 
 is the farce of English justice sentenced to three months' 
 imprisonment ! 
 
 "If," concludes the writer, "any one should doubt the 
 abhorrence of Birmingham people to such horrible inhu-
 
 330 Memoir of Charles JReade. 
 
 inanities, let him witness the performance of the drama. 
 He will then know by the uncontrollable sobs of the audi- 
 ence at the simulated sufferings of the victims, and by the 
 murmurs of execration with which the representative of 
 the wicked governor is greeted, how utterly Birmingham 
 despises wrong-doing and tyranny, and how entirely its peo- 
 ple compassionate the victims of cruelty and oppression." 
 
 Liverpool was, perhaps, less profoundly stirred than Bir- 
 mingham, but its splendid amphitheatre was packed to the 
 ceiling. The press, notwithstanding, elected .to pose as 
 censor. The Daily Post, for instance, considered the play 
 " burdened with a didactic purpose. The presentment of 
 mere physical pain to enforce a specific doctrine, whose 
 soundness is to be determined by the understanding, is 
 alike false in art and false in logic. A clinical lecture may 
 be a very proper means of combating an error of medical 
 practice, but its delivery on the stage, in the presence of a pa- 
 tient carefully simulating the throes of tetanus, would right- 
 ly be esteemed horrible in itself, and entirely out of place." 
 
 Suffice it that if that was the bright idea of Liverpud- 
 lian hypercriticism, it failed to influence Liverpool.* 
 
 Did space permit, we should desire much to chronicle 
 the numerous revivals of this celebrated drama in London 
 and the provinces, if, indeed, revival be not a misnomer 
 for that which, in one quarter or another, is perpetually 
 running. We must content ourselves with calling atten- 
 
 * Martin Farquhar Tupper " a man," selon Charles Rcade, " unreason- 
 ably pitched into " wrote thus : " I desire to congratulate you heartily on 
 having made popular so good and true a refrain as ' It is Never Too Late 
 to Mend.* Despair of good is the great and evil antagonist, which, so long 
 as there is Life and Hope, it is worth any MAN'S while to try and conquer. 
 And you possibly may have done more good by your acted morals at the 
 Princess' than many bishops in many cathedrals. Ferge, prosper."
 
 The Drama "Sera Nunquam" 33i 
 
 tion to a circumstance in connection with it which its au- 
 thor would have been the first to place in bold relief. "We 
 refer to the splendid support accorded the dramatist by his 
 leading actors. It would be unfair to Charles Reade to 
 affirm that Mr. Henry Neville created the character of 
 Tom Robinson. He did none the less all that a consum- 
 mate actor could do for a consummate author. He gave 
 Tom Robinson flesh and blood, soul and sinew ; and when, 
 later in the day, Mr. Charles Warner succeeded to his 
 role, he too brought histrionic qualities which entranced 
 Charles Reade. " The dog is so picturesque !" was his 
 terse eulogium of the other Charles.* Nor must we omit 
 Mr. Calhaem, who seemed to have adopted as his ideal 
 the missing link of the nebulous agnostics, and to have 
 called into existence in his proper person that impossible 
 paradox, the fusion of parallel species. 
 
 It is strange to reflect that there are Warners and Ne- 
 villes and Calhaems unborn ; destined, none the less, to 
 speak the words that Charles Reade thought and wrote, 
 and enact the scenes he stage-managed with such rare 
 skill. The curtain will not fall for the last time on thrill- 
 ing "Sera Nunquam" until our English tongue has gone 
 the way of Sanscrit, and the English passion for righteous- 
 ness has been merged in the lubricity of the wolf and the 
 jackal. And then if ever that comes the planet, like 
 other ephemeral things, will no longer be worth preserving. 
 
 * The following extract from the author's diary, dated January 18, 1879, 
 exhibits his appreciation of Mr. Charles Warner : " Sinclair (George Field- 
 ing) and Rose Leclercq (Susan) do not act up to Warner in Act I. They 
 let the play drop by their sluggishness and want of all genuine excitement 
 in these particular scenes. But of course they appear tamer by the side 
 of the exuberant Warner. However, when a leading performer sets the 
 tune in so bright a key, there is but one way the others must act up to 
 him, or the whole thing goes to pot, and the audience only attends when 
 the earnest man is on."
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THEEE NOVELS AND THBEK PLAYS. 
 
 CHARLES READE'S least flattering censors, while gen- 
 erally sparing their praise, have always pointed to one 
 among his works as being in every respect superior to the 
 rest. In " Peg Woffington " he was accused of staginess; 
 in ." Christie Johnston e," save the mark, of deficient im- 
 agination ; in " It is Never Too Late to Mend," and " Hard 
 Cash," of didactic pedantry; in "White Lies," of plagia- 
 rism. He was now to produce a novel which should es- 
 cape these several strictures, yet expose him to assailants 
 of a different kidney and a less critical mettle. The 
 book, in fact, for once satisfied the most exacting among 
 the republic of literati, while it converted into enemies 
 a section of his warmest admirers outside that charmed 
 circle. 
 
 We shall perhaps meet the equity of the case in ventur- 
 ing to suggest, that if only the honest objectors to " Grif- 
 fith Gaunt " on either side the Atlantic could have realized 
 its true purport as clearly as the men of letters gauged its 
 artistic merit, there would have arisen but one chorus, and 
 that of praise. Enough that its author, placed on the de- 
 fensive, delivered a vehement rejoinder in the brochure 
 entitled "The Prurient Prude," which forms one of the 
 more amusing items of " Readiana." Being, as he believed 
 himself to be, free in foro conscientice, he was quite ca- 
 pable of answering his detractors; and we feel ourselves in
 
 Three Novels and Three Plays. 333 
 
 consequence totally relieved from the slightest obligation 
 of constituting ourselves his apologists. He has spoken 
 for himself. 
 
 At the same time it is but just to his memory, and, above 
 all, to his fair fame, to place on record what evidence we 
 possess on his side. In handling a problem in morals 
 the motif of this book a writer lays himself inevitably 
 open to the charge of having drawn a veil which ought 
 never to be lifted. Such would be the impulsive, impatient 
 sentiment of many good men. Yet others, and minds of 
 a more philosophical temperament, would naturally view 
 the author from a different standpoint. Among such, we 
 may mention, with the especial reverence due to a poet, 
 Mr. Edwin Arnold, C.S.I., who wrote thus from the office 
 of The Daily Telegraph : 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. READE, I am proud to be summoned by you to stand 
 forward for your admirable book ' Griffith Gaunt.' What I wrote in 
 the notice to which you allude so kindly is what I think, and what I am 
 ready to repeat anywhere, if my friends here don't object to the publica- 
 tion of my name. As I confess to my printed opinion, you can subpoena 
 me in spite of them, however. I have been sickened to see and hear the 
 things vented against your noble piece of work ; I found in it what, let me 
 say, I always find in you, a sincere and loyal love of that which renders 
 beauty beautiful and manhood best I found in it Nature, too, who does 
 not read the weekly journals enough to forget why Moses wrote the Deca- 
 logue, nor what reason She gave him first of all to do it. I am no novel 
 reader, and in morals they call me a Puritan but I admire and marvel at 
 your exquisite and most healthy and excellent story, which teaches the force 
 of a true love over an unspiritual temperament, and paints a lady that is 
 indeed every inch a lady. To be brief, I lent the book to my sister when 
 I had read it : and will defend it as an enrichment of the best English 
 literature with hearty good will, at any place and time. 
 
 " Yours truly, and, for the book, gratefully, 
 
 "EowiN ARNOLD. 
 
 " C. READK, Esq."
 
 334 Memoir of Charles jReade. 
 
 So far as concerned this country the book met with but 
 few outward expressions of disfavor. It may be said, 
 without exaggeration, to have floated The Argosy. It 
 stormed the almost impregnable citadel of criticism. In 
 respect of imagination, sustained interest, variety and 
 vigor of incident, and, above all, of situation, it fulfilled 
 all, and more than all, the conditions of an ideal novel. 
 The characters lived and moved, and the dialogue as 
 might be inferred without the saying was terse and epi- 
 grammatic; perhaps we may add as an additional encomi- 
 um, rigorously true to nature. No one could grumble ex- 
 cept in regard of the motif; and, as it happened, the se- 
 verer censors were found, not in Exeter Hall, but in the 
 United States. 
 
 There was a print, affected by Brother Jonathan, bearing 
 the romantic title, The Mound Table. This organ of moral 
 perfection elected to regard " Griffith Gaunt " as of the 
 nature of a snake in the grass, and said as much, or rather, 
 to be strictly accurate, a good deal more. Charles Reade 
 rejoined with his normal pulverizing fury, and not con- 
 tent with having crushed his butterfly with a brickbat, 
 had recourse to legal proceedings. Here he was less tri- 
 umphant. In " The States " a verdict is said to depend 
 on your ability to procure a judge, and having secured 
 that vantage, to attract the sympathies of a jury. The 
 former of these requirements could be met by the dodgery 
 of your American legal representative; the latter was a 
 physical impossibility. The equity which decided the 
 Alabama Claims against England and our colossal Cock- 
 burn, in the teeth of the evidence, may be taken as the 
 measure of jurisprudence which obtains in an inchoate 
 community dominated by democratic license. It was in 
 vain for any limb of the law, be he Cicero or Demosthenes,
 
 Three Novels and Three Plays. 335 
 
 to attempt to establish a libel when the plaintiff was a 
 Britisher. The jury could not find directly for the de- 
 fendants, but they did so in effect by rewarding Charles 
 Reade damages to the extent of six cents. 
 
 The author smarted, but shrugged his shoulders. His 
 mind was not cast in the mould which would condemn the 
 cream of a great nation because of the sourness of its skim- 
 milk. We are able to place on record the fact that this 
 verdict, which in his own country would have sent him 
 in celeres iambos furentem, never changed his opinion of 
 America and her refined sons and daughters. He was 
 gratified when Americans paid him the compliment of 
 courting his acquaintance. He never lost an opportunity 
 of cultivating American ladies and gentlemen, and of dis- 
 playing his preference for all things American. When the 
 Harvard crew came over to row against Oxford, he offered 
 them hospitality; and has preserved among his collection 
 of choice letters one from Loring, their stroke. He corre- 
 sponded with Dr. Russell Lowell, and boasted the ac- 
 quaintance of Reverdy Johnson, General Sickles, and Ar- 
 temus Ward. Among his numerous American friends may 
 be especially named his kinsman, General Meredith Read, 
 who represented the United States at the Court of Athens, 
 and Mr. Howse, now the editor of a paper at Yokohama. 
 But for mal de mer he would have crossed to the other 
 side; and, once there, might have prolonged his visit al- 
 most indefinitely. To this excellent feeling Americans 
 themselves have readily testified notably Mrs. Fields, 
 wife of the eminent publisher, a lady whose recollections 
 of Charles Reade evince both the quality of genuine friend- 
 ship and the tenderness of womanhood. 
 
 " Griffith Gaunt " was the culminating-point of Charles 
 Reade's literary career. He had paid his debts, saved a
 
 336 Memoir of Charles Eeade. 
 
 handsome sum, earned reputation both as a novelist and 
 dramatist, while his Fellowship at Magdalen was now 
 yielding a dividend exceeding 500 a year. He resolved 
 accordingly to provide himself a permanent home; and 
 after some few contretemps and changes settled finally at 
 Albert Gate. 
 
 His residence has been described by himself in " A Ter- 
 rible Temptation," and by at least a score of others. It 
 was a Georgian house, facing Sloane Street on the south, 
 and on the north the park. The rooms were cramped, as 
 also the hall and staircase, but he diminished this incon- 
 venience by throwing out a large room at the back his 
 sanctum. There he wrote and received visitors, at times 
 entertained this mainly for the delectation of Mrs. Sey- 
 mour, for he was not convivial and not gregarious and 
 passed long solitary hours with his menagerie, his dogs, 
 his hares, his gazelle, and other fauna. The old Ipsden 
 craze for killing, the hereditary instinct of a sporting race, 
 quite deserted him. He had learned to reverence the great 
 gift of life, and had he lived longer might have attacked 
 the callous vivisectors, whom he always spoke of with the 
 loathing inspired by supreme blackguardism. 
 
 He said afterwards that the years spent at Albert Gate 
 were the happiest of his life. The struggle for existence 
 and fame was over. Mrs. Seymour, who had begun as his 
 literary partner, had grown to be his devoted friend, and 
 it is no reflection on either to admit that they were deeply 
 attached to each other. This lady, who was as sharp as a 
 needle at driving a bargain, in private life seemed possessed 
 by a ceaseless desire to do good. She sent small sums 
 anonymously to straggling curates. She helped largely 
 members of her own profession who chanced to^be out of 
 employ or in difficulties. She was a woman of prejudices,
 
 Three Novels and Three Plays. 337 
 
 but by no means of narrow sympathies. It would be flat- 
 tering her memory were we to hint that she possessed the 
 smallest scintilla of that sort of genius which goes to make 
 a good housewife. Most people would have defined the 
 menage at Albert Gate as splendidly uncomfortable; but 
 it happened that Charles Reade was of all human beings 
 both the most untidy and the least observant, so that rela- 
 tively to his comfort the huggermugger ways of the the- 
 atrical lady signified less than little. He lived his own 
 life, and in his own fashion. 
 
 His rule was to work from nine to three. Interruptions 
 may have deducted from these six hours an average of 
 two, but when pressed he would work on till four, and not 
 seldom in the evening. At a guess we may put his total 
 of labor at not less than five hours a day, but of this at 
 least one hour was expended in making cuttings from 
 newspapers and magazines for his " invaluable " note-books, 
 as he termed them. The World remarked, with singular 
 force, that he labored under the preposterous delusion that 
 he was destitute of imagination. It was this disbelief in 
 himself which caused him to accumulate masses of police 
 evidence, and other material, never, happily for his reputa- 
 tion, to be utilized. The dread of missing some good 
 thing caused him to waste at least three hundred hours per 
 annum on scissors-and-paste work, so that eventually, when 
 he came to catalogue and classify all this congeries of in- 
 formation, the headings alone covered twelve pages of 
 printed matter in double columns. The matter itself was 
 stored in guard-books, and digests, and is mostly of the 
 sort specially adapted to anecdotal journalism " Tidbits," 
 and the like. 
 
 Literature, unlike every other vocation, develops into 
 an ineradicable habit. The schoolmaster, the politician, 
 15
 
 338 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 the government clerk, soldier, sailor, parson, merchant, 
 doctor, tradesman, and artisan, all crave for their holiday. 
 The writer alone holds by force of habit to the rule, "Nulla 
 dies sine lined" We who remember Charles Reade as the 
 man of leisure, whose ergon was amusement, can but note 
 the contrast between different periods of his life. It is a 
 fact that he labored most sedulously when labor itself was 
 a matter of option. 
 
 At the same time it must be admitted that there were 
 moments when he seemed to require a spur. It was per- 
 haps the languor, after so marked a success as " Griffith 
 Gaunt," that induced him to enter into collaboration with 
 a warm personal friend, whom he esteemed highly as an 
 artist, Mr. Dion Boucicault. 
 
 The result was rated by the press as rather rococo. 
 " Foul Play " is not merely dramatic, but histrionic, and 
 might appropriately have been termed " The New Robin- 
 son Crusoe." It is a capital story, none the less sp because 
 it outrages probability ; and whatever merit it possesses 
 Charles Reade always readily accorded to his literary col- 
 league. " I agree with you," he says, as though criticising 
 his friend, rather than the book, " ' Foul Play ' is very sharp 
 and good. It was written on the right system. Bouci- 
 cault produced the greater part of it in pure dramatic dia- 
 logue, which makes an excellent backbone for me." Still, 
 he adds the book being still in progress " my work wor- 
 ries and discourages me; but somehow when it comes out 
 in print it seems all right. I am in the vein now." 
 
 The press, however, began to laugh. Mr. Burnand paro- 
 died the story in Punch, under the style of " Chicken-haz- 
 ard," and Charles Reade writhed under the very good-hu- 
 mored satire. He called it indignantly desecration of a 
 work of art, and could not bring himself to join in the
 
 Three Novels and Three Plays. 339 
 
 laugh. In vain did the writer of these lines assure him 
 that chaff is a delicate form of flattery, and that the rol- 
 licking fun of "Chicken-hazard" was never intended to 
 detract from his reputation. He was hurt, far more so 
 than when they styled two of his works immoral ; and per- 
 haps this feeling was all the more unreasonable because, 
 on the hypothesis that the travestie designed to hold 
 the book up to contempt, the individual actually affected 
 was its originator, Mr. Boucicault, and not its embellisher, 
 Charles Reade. 
 
 That, however, was by no means the end of his trouble. 
 The Pall Mall Gazette wrote a critique on the serial, sug- 
 gesting that the story was nothing more than an elabora- 
 tion of a French play, " La Portfeuille Huge." This was 
 news. In a letter from the Palatine Hotel, Manchester, 
 he earnestly requests Mrs. Seymour to obtain, without a 
 moment's delay, a copy of the above play, intimating his 
 ignorance of the author. In fine, whether the allegation 
 was verified, or the reverse, Charles Reade was individu- 
 ally innocent of plagiarism. 
 
 " Foul Play " was subsequently dramatized in spite of 
 a hint from a leading actress that " she could not think 
 how they were going to do it" and its initial performance 
 at Leeds seems to have been very gratifying to Charles 
 Reade. This is his description of the event: " ' Foul Play ' 
 came out last night. They began, with their usual judg- 
 ment, half an hour after the time, and the waits between 
 the acts were longer, by the watch, than the acts. 
 
 " With all these drawbacks it was an undeniable success; 
 and may, I think, work up to a great success. 
 
 "The best -played parts were Helen, Joe Wylie, and 
 Nancy Rouse. Coleman stronger than anybody in places; 
 but too slow and ponderous. Scenes good as a whole. 
 For once the performance has only suggested one cut.
 
 340 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " You will be pleased to hear that the first call was for 
 me. I was rather reluctant to bow, before an actor had 
 received ovation. But Coleman came and made me, and 
 certainly I was never received with the sort of enthusiasm. 
 Some of the men stood up, and the ladies waved their 
 handkerchiefs to me all over the house. I thought I was 
 in France." 
 
 In 1868 "Griffith Gaunt," in a dramatic form, appeared 
 before a Manchester audience with 'eclat, ; and it remains 
 on record that, had its author returned in 1884 from the 
 south of France to live, instead of to die, his desire was to 
 revive this drama in London under the auspices of Mr. 
 John Coleman. That Avas not to be; but the fact affords 
 evidence of a firm belief in the dramatic quality of the 
 most intense of all his narratives. 
 
 This was followed in the succeeding year by the adap- 
 tation of Lord Tennyson's pathetic idyl "Dora," for the 
 Adelphi Theatre. The vicissitudes of the drama are pro- 
 verbial, nevertheless the ill-luck of "Dora" may fairly be 
 styled unique. Never before had a piece been wrecked 
 owing to defective scenic accessories. There is but one 
 fatal step even from the sublimity of our ethereal laureate 
 to the painfully ridiculous, and this was achieved by to 
 be frank poor Mrs. Seymour, who, being cockney -bred, 
 could hardly realize the attributes of a cornfield. Suffice 
 it that when the farmer of the play pointed to his acres 
 of golden grain, which consisted of American cloth, the 
 audience was convulsed. "Misum teneatis, amicir" 1 was 
 passed from the lips of critic to critic, and "Dora" col- 
 lapsed. 
 
 It was a bitter pill for Charles Reade. He had not been 
 accustomed to failure, and moreover had lavished labor to 
 render his adaptation worthy of the immortal poet whose
 
 Three Novels and Three Plays. 341 
 
 theme he availed himself of. He registered then and there 
 a vow that some day he would give the drama a second 
 chance, and he kept it. 
 
 In 1870 his good friend, Mr. Smith, offered him a place 
 in the Cornhill Magazine, and he felt in consequence put 
 on his mettle to produce another magnum opus, the parallel, 
 if so it might be, of "Sera Nunquam" During the prog- 
 ress of "A Good Fight" about the year 1859 a lady in 
 indigent circumstances, residing then at Sheffield, had ap- 
 pealed to him for aid, and not in vain. He begged her in 
 return to furnish him with all the material she could ob- 
 tain relative to the action of the trades' unions in terroriz- 
 ing workmen. She replied that she could glean no facts 
 whatsoever, and this, strange to say, though she was offered 
 a handsome rate of pay, and was also in wretched circum- 
 stances. Charles Reade let her down with the epithet 
 " idiot," and turned to other sources for the information he 
 sought. Probably, from 1859 to 186 9, he had been steadily 
 collecting material for the book he was about to write. 
 Anyhow, recent events helped him, and he had but to make 
 some personal investigations in order to possess the frame- 
 work of a strong story. 
 
 He did so. What is more, he might have regretted his 
 ambition tractare serpentes, since, in plain English, he risked 
 his life. The assassins were so infuriated by his picture 
 of themselves and their dark deeds, that they actually pro- 
 posed to add him to the number of their victims, and sent 
 him formal notice to that effect. Whether they thought 
 better of it, or whether as they read on they perceived that 
 the author was no more a friend of the tyranny of capital 
 than of the tyranny of labor, and so had the wit to avoid 
 striking a friend in mistake for a foe, we know not. Suf- 
 fice it that the bntlum fulmen did no more evil than cause
 
 342 Memoir of diaries Reade. 
 
 a brave and honest soul many sleepless nights, and also ex- 
 acerbate his whole nature against the proletariate. 
 
 "What," cried he to his niece, "do you believe in the 
 workingmeii ?" 
 
 "Don't you?" was the halting inquiry of the lady. 
 
 "Nasty beasts!" was the scornful rejoinder. 
 
 It was their own fault. In his passion for justice, for 
 equal laws, and equal rights, Charles Reade was a demo- 
 crat. But he was also a gentleman pur sang, arid when 
 blackguardism proposed to have his blood for no other 
 reason than because he had borne testimony on behalf of 
 righteousness, he turned against it, as against a reptile 
 whose heart was as black as its hands. 
 
 Yet he went down to Sheffield, and other manufacturing 
 centi'es, with a mind impartial and open to conviction. He 
 did not hesitate to fix blame on the masters where he 
 deemed it due; and he expected that either side would 
 recognize the judicial attitude of a writer who had as little 
 liking for the brutality of plutocracy as for the brutality 
 of rattening. To demonstrate that he was actually on the 
 spot itself, we append quotations from two letters : 
 
 First from 4 Handsfield Road, Sheffield: 
 
 " I saw Broadhead yesterday, and indeed was in his bar- 
 parlor for nearly an hour. Noted his head, face, conversa- 
 tion; but of course we never touched the particular sub- 
 ject in which he is distinguished." 
 
 Secondly, from 332 Oxford Road, Manchester: 
 
 "Your letter was a great relief to me. Thank good- 
 ness, that Irish fiend " (a bibulous cook; Mrs. Seymour had 
 a penchant for Irish servants) " is out, and a Saxon in. 
 
 " Yesterday I received several men who had been beaten, 
 injured, shot by the Unions ; and in the evening a detec- 
 tive, the richest fellow in the world. Oh, for a short-
 
 Three Nvoels and Three Plays. 343 
 
 hand writer, to record the things I heard. Seriously, 
 were I Dickens, it would pay me well to take a short- 
 hand writer everywhere. I am getting anecdotes and racy 
 dicta. 
 
 " But the worst is, I don't succeed in finding Thomas 
 Wilde, which was my great object in coming here. Of 
 course I shall stick to it till the last; but I cannot consent 
 to spend another week in Manchester, a place I hate. I 
 would rather go, and come back to it when Wilde is found. 
 How I wished you had been with me yesterday what a 
 chapter of experiences it was !" 
 
 Shortly after the story had got under way in the 
 Cornhill, Charles Reade seems to have invited his dear 
 friend Wilkie Collins's criticism. If it were not heresy, 
 we should almost be tempted to hint that he reverenced 
 the plot- weaver of intricate texture as profoundly as Dick- 
 ens, the incomparable humorist. This would hardly be 
 correct, yet it may not be impertinent to add that whereas 
 he and Dickens were on terms of friendship, his friendship 
 with Wilkie Collins had ripened into intimacy. " Go at 
 once and see him," he on one occasion wrote peremptorily 
 to Mrs. Seymour, on hearing of his friend's illness, "in 
 bed or out of bed." 
 
 Mr. Wilkie Collins's reply to Charles Reade was as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 " CONSIDERATIONS FOB R. 
 
 " I start from the December number and I say the 
 interest in the character is so strong, the collision of human 
 passions is so admirably and so subtly struck out, that the 
 public will have no more of new trades' unions and their 
 outrages. They will skip pages 3, 4, 5, in the November 
 number they will resent the return to the subject in the 
 December number. I don't suggest alteration of these.
 
 344 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 ^ 
 I only say what I say as a warning for the future. Keep 
 
 to the cutlers, and keep the cutlers mixed up with Henry 
 Coventry, Grace and Jael, and you are safe. 
 
 " Now, as to the brickraakers, I have read the report. 
 They are even worse than the cutlers. But, as an artist 
 and a just man, you don't take the worst case for illustra- 
 tion. You take the medium case, which may apply gen- 
 erally to all trades' unions. 
 
 " If I had the story to finish, I should make the capi- 
 talist's difficulty in setting-up the buildings for working 
 Henry's invention arise from his knowledge of what the 
 brickmakers will certainly do. I should make him put 
 this forcibly in dialogue with Henry and I should make 
 Henry feel, exactly what the reader will feel, immeasurable 
 disgust at this repetition of tyranny, outrage, and mur- 
 der. ' What ! am I to go through it all again with the 
 brickmakers? More conspiracies, explosions, mutilations, 
 and deaths?' 'That's the prospect, Mr. Little !' 'Am 
 I to give up my inventions ; and are you to give up your 
 profits?' 'No; we are to look out for a ready-made arti- 
 cle in the shape of an empty building which will suit us 
 and give the brickmakers the go-by in that way.' 
 
 " The building is formed, as in your plot and there are 
 the brickmakers, just touched and dismissed, and the story 
 running on again, with the selling-up of the saw-grinding 
 machinery, and all the incidents which follow, with this 
 additional advantage, that Henry does not do over again 
 with the brickmakers what he has already done with the 
 cutlers. 
 
 "As to other points: 1. Hurry the story (if possible) 
 to Henry's proposal to Grace to marry him, and go away 
 with him, and to Grace's refusal. You want that strong 
 point, and that definite result, after keeping the suspended
 
 Three Novels and Three Plays. 345 
 
 interest so long vibrating backwards and forwards be- 
 tween Grace's two lovers. 
 
 " 2. I doubt a second blowing-up with gunpowder. Can 
 the necessary results be arrived at in no other way? Can 
 it not be done by a pre-arranged escape of gas, for in- 
 stance ? Or by some other explosive or destructive agent ? 
 "Query? "The scenes in the ruined church are so ad- 
 
 is no doubt ai- mirakl 6 an d original that I want the church to 
 ready in your p] a y an important part in the story. Would 
 
 plan-Mr. Raby \ / J 
 
 having alluded it be possible to make Mr. Kaby repair and 
 Se desecrated reconsecrate it for public worship ? Then to 
 building. make the marriage of Grace and Coventry take 
 place in it? And then to have the marriage invalidated 
 by some informality in the consecration, or in the regis- 
 tration for marriages, of the newly-restored church? 
 
 " I don't know whether such an event as this would be 
 legally possible ; or whether, if it could be possible, you 
 could harmonize my idea with your notion of the uncer- 
 tificated clergyman? 
 
 "But it seems to me a good point to make the old 
 church in which Henry has worked and suffered for Grace 
 the retributive agent in defeating Coventry, and uniting 
 Henry to the woman whom he loves. 
 
 " The first marriage celebrated in the church might be 
 the marriage of Coventry and Grace, and so all difficulty 
 about the marriages of other couples might be avoided. 
 
 " Or, perhaps, yoa already mean to end the story with 
 the marriage of Henry and Grace in the restored old 
 church? Anyhow I, as reader, certify the church to be 
 'an interesting character.'" 
 
 The whole of this is pasted in Charles Keade's volume 
 of invaluable letters, with the aside, " These are remarks 
 15*
 
 340 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 by my friend Wilkic, made at the 10th, or December No. 
 of my story, 'Put Yourself in His Place,' then running 
 in the Comhill Magazine. I was so fortunate as to please 
 him at last." 
 
 The curious reader is invited to take up the book from 
 the point named, and contrast the actual elaboration of 
 the plot with that here suggested by Mr. "VVilkie Collins. 
 It seems almost unfortunate that the two masters of fiction 
 did not lay their heads together and work it out this 
 without disrespect to the actual author, who certainly 
 kept the interest alive up to the last page. 
 
 Following the precedent of " Foul Play," Charles Reade 
 dramatized his novel promptly. It was a genuine drama, 
 and yet he complained, almost peevishly, as he labored 
 upon it in his college rooms, that it did not dramatize 
 easily. It was a doctrine of his, that to write a novel may 
 be possible for any one of average intelligence and some 
 artistic invention, whereas to write a play that would 
 play was an evidence of genius, not perhaps inevitably 
 of the highest order, but always of a quality transcending 
 mere talent. Pushed to its logical conclusion, his theory 
 would have reacted rather unpleasantly on himself; enough 
 that, like ambidexterity, it was one among the many para- 
 doxes he cherished as axioms. 
 
 Under the title " Free Labor," the play made its ap- 
 pearance on May 30, 1870, before the story had run its 
 course in the Cornhill Magazine. TJie Times commenced 
 a sympathetic notice with the somewhat startling compli- 
 ment : " Mr. Reade is as clever as he is crotchety." That 
 was perhaps rather irrelevant, a text hardly appropriate 
 to Jupiter's homily. As a matter of fact, Mr. Reade pro- 
 duced his play in a theatre consecrated to melodrama of 
 the most realistic type, and he did so with genuine stage
 
 Three Novels and Three Plays. 347 
 
 effects. Jupiter itself was obliged to admit that Mr. 
 Henry Neville, who played the part of Harry Little with 
 characteristic force and finish, did "actually forge real 
 edge tools, on a real anvil, with a real hammer and un- 
 commonly well." The burden of the piece fell entirely on 
 this one actor, whose genius really saved it from failure. 
 It was not destined to lasting popularity in the metropo- 
 lis, but succeeded better with provincial audiences, and 
 especially in Birmingham and Sheffield, where the theme 
 was sufficiently familiar. 
 
 The subjoined pair of billets doux were preserved by 
 Charles Reade among his literary curiosities : 
 
 "25?A May, 1870. 
 " B. WEBSTER, Esq. : 
 
 "Sir, You are about to produce, at the Royal Adelphi Theatre, Mr. 
 Reade's novel of ' Put Yourself in His Place/ under the name of ' Free 
 Labor.' Mr. Reade's novel is a gross outrage on trades' unions. He 
 knows no more about trades' unions than he does about the patent office, 
 which he attempts to describe in his work. I have every reason to be- 
 lieve that the play will be cried down on the first night of its representa- 
 tion. I am, sir, yours obedient, 
 
 "AN AMALGAMATED ENGINEER." 
 
 " DEAR SIR, ' Truth copies fiction of a certain order.' With regard to 
 your bill with the above heading, I heard it asserted by a printer (who has 
 what is called an ' Open House,' i. e., employs both unionists and non-union- 
 ists) that the recent outrage, reported in The Echo, was the result of what 
 had been seen on the Adelphi stage. I think you ought to hear these 
 things, because it shows the perversity of people. G. H. G." 
 
 We cannot conclude this chapter better than by ap- 
 pending the verba verberrima of the leading actor, whose 
 acknowledgment of a keepsake presented him by the 
 dramatist he had served so well will strike most minds, 
 as it strikes us, as being indicative of a warmth of heart 
 which perhaps may go far towards accounting for the 
 prolonged success of his histrionic career.
 
 348 Memoir of Cliarlea Reade. 
 
 "OLYMPIC THKATRK, June 6, 1871. 
 
 " MY VERY DKAR READE, I have no words hearty enough to express my 
 delight and gratitude for the splendid compliment you have been good 
 enough to pay me. I am overwhelmed I don't know what to say thanks 
 are commonplace, and my heart is boiling over with gushing sentiments, 
 which perhaps would not look well on paper, and could but feebly express 
 my true feelings. I am proud indeed, and shall ever be, of your noble 
 present, and flattering inscription. The association of my name with yours 
 is one of the most gratifying circumstances of my life. I have always had 
 intense admiration for you true friend, noble, kind-hearted gentleman 
 with words of fire for all things false and base. Believe me, your kind- 
 ness is thoroughly appreciated and with my heart's best thanks, I am 
 always, Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY G. NETILLE." 
 
 The writer will, we sincerely trust, pardon the inclusion 
 of this letter among others that embellish our pages. It 
 was one which the recipient valued so highly that he pre- 
 served, not merely the letter itself, but as he did in the 
 case of Charles Dickens the envelope also. This tribute 
 was not, we may add, presented especially on account of 
 Mr. Neville's impersonation of Harry Little, but rather be- 
 cause of a close association with other leading characters, 
 such as Tom Robinson and Robert Penfold, where the 
 author was deeply indebted to the actor. We have ven- 
 tured to print it, because it bears testimony, in simple yet 
 ardent language, to the exalted motives which invariably 
 actuated Charles Reade, and ever raised him far above 
 the level of theatrical money-grubbers. 
 
 " If," said our author on one occasion to a querulous 
 manager, " you had wished for a play to please the pub- 
 lic, you should not have asked me to write for you " in 
 other words he never deviated from his sense of art and 
 right to court a cheer. Let us say, in Mr. Neville's own 
 speaking language, his pen issued "words of fire for all 
 things false and base."
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 IDEAL JOURNALISM. 
 
 THREE novels dealing with social topics had already 
 invested their author with a new character. He was an 
 artist, perhaps primarily so, for, unlike Disraeli, he did 
 not utilize fiction as a medium for promulgating political 
 doctrine. But he was also stamped as a social reformer 
 of the most thorough sort, and people with a grievance 
 sought him out from all" quarters. He had set a very big 
 ball rolling should he follow it up ? 
 
 He thought seriously of so doing, in his own fashion of 
 course, for he was nothing if not individual. To this end 
 he proposed to run a magazine, which should comprise with 
 the solidity of the " Nineteenth Century," " Contemporary," 
 and " Fortnightly," something of the slaughtering quality 
 of Mr. Labouchere's " Truth"; but to be rigidly non-politi- 
 cal. The project never assumed a concrete form. He 
 discovered that to float a magazine costs several thousand 
 pounds, all of which may be lost, should either the public 
 or the advertisers disapprove. Mrs. Seymour at his el- 
 bow cautioned him. Inclination, moreover, prompted him 
 rather to lose on his plays than on social idiosyncrasies. 
 Hence the nebular magazine began and ended with a 
 prologue, which, as reflecting the mind of its author, de 
 omnibus reipublicce rebus, we append. 
 
 It is headed
 
 350 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 "TiiE SITUATION. 
 
 "The nation is improving, on the whole, in goodness, 
 wisdom, and wealth. Free trade prevails, and England, 
 following tardily the wisdom of Prussia, at last compels 
 low parents to educate their children. 
 
 " Drink still ruins the lower orders, and legislators have 
 not the courage to quench it in earnest, or perhaps cannot 
 afford to quench it. 
 
 " Taxation is crushing, and in some few cases unjust ; 
 in others, what sticks to the collector's fingers is so great, 
 and what reaches the public coffers so small, that the tax 
 becomes bad State economy. 
 
 " In Parliamentary elections we have given perjury and 
 rotten eggs trial upon trial ; and at last we are sick of 
 them. The tardiest begin to see that anything may be 
 better, and nothing can be worse, than wholesale perjury, 
 bribery, and riot : so d priori reasoning gives way to ex- 
 perience, and the ballot is to have a trial. As no nation 
 has ever given it up after trial, no more will England. 
 
 " There is more active religion than ever, and more re- 
 spectable infidelity. The religious repeat numerous prayers 
 in public, but as regards their fellow-men seldom act up 
 to their tenets : nor the infidels down to theirs, but only 
 talk one's hair on end. Some learned divines hover be- 
 tween the two camps : the right Reverend Father in God, 
 Cocker, whose teeth are longer than Spinosa's, has gnawed 
 away the details of the Pentateuch ; the Oxford doctors 
 have nibbled away a good slice of the New Testament. 
 The learned Renan has outdone Socinus; for he has proved 
 Jesus Christ a Frenchman : and that causes a reaction in 
 sturdy Anglo-Saxons, me included. 
 
 "The Sovereign has abdicated her highest prerogative;
 
 Ideal Journalism. 351 
 
 she no longer signs death - warrants : a subject decides 
 whether his fellow-subject is to live or die, which is un- 
 constitutional. So long as the monarchy exists it is the 
 law of England that no head shall fall but under the sign 
 manual of the Sovereign BlacJcstone. 
 
 "This is the Sovereign's privilege, but the subject's 
 right ; to rob him of it is to abolish monarchy. Conse- 
 quently, every man who has been hanged of late in Eng- 
 land has been killed unconstitutionally in a word, more 
 or less lynched. 
 
 "These excusable homicides are now done privately. 
 Certain shallow men urged on the State the scandal of a 
 public execution, and criminals are now hanged cannily 
 in a corner, without the Queen's sign manual. 
 
 " The deliberate slaughter in cold blood, even of a mur- 
 derer, can be justified on two grounds combined : retribu- 
 tive justice and public terror. This is the only sound 
 theory of capital punishment. But subtract publicity, 
 and the act is lowered to clandestine vengeance. Intelli- 
 gent men, who have seen these justifiable homicides, come 
 away shuddering, and saying to themselves, 'We have 
 seen a man's life stolen secretly.' 
 
 " Our judges, the mouthpieces of law are still chosen 
 from a band of outlaws highly respectable ones of course; 
 but so long as a client can, by law, defraud counsel of his 
 fee for service, if he does not take it in advance, and coun- 
 sel can, by law, take the fee, yet cheat the client out of 
 his services, counsel are outlaws. 
 
 " This anomaly of law actually leads to frauds upon the 
 suitor by distinguished counsel on their road to the judg- 
 ment-seat. The fraud is perpetrated by the influence of 
 the lawyers, because it does not work evenly ; the suitor 
 cannot actually defraud them, and they can and do de-
 
 352 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 fraud the suitor. The English public is mad to allow this Ro- 
 man fraud to live in the temple of English law and justice. 
 
 " For three mortal months in the year justice is sus- 
 pended for the convenience of a clique justice, which is 
 the breath of every nation's nostrils. The poor silly na- 
 tion submits to this. Perhaps if, instead of the Long Va- 
 cation, it was called ' The Suspension of Justice,' we should 
 not put up with so great an injury, so impudent and un- 
 grateful an insult. 
 
 " In the general practice of our law courts much reform 
 has been effected; but not half enough. The law reform- 
 ers have been lawyers; and no clique, however well dis- 
 posed, can see one half its own abuses prejudice and 
 precedent are too strong. Intelligent laymen must also 
 take the broom, or the Augean stable will never be swept. 
 The Buitor is too much oppressed and pillaged in our 
 courts; and the whole legal clique is given to forget that 
 he is the representative in their courts of that great and 
 generous public which supports the whole system of judi- 
 cature, and pays the judges their princely salaries, and 
 pays those who appoint the judges. 
 
 "Legislation the peers seem to be gradually retiring 
 from it. This is a pity. The House of Commons is an 
 arena of political strife; and quiet salutary measures are 
 not so welcome there as noisier measures; but, as regards 
 the true welfare of the whole nation, a measure about 
 which the great parties fight with a view to office, is often 
 a clique business, and a smaller national measure than one 
 which evaporates for want of piquancy, or is refused a 
 hearing for years, and then passed through pure apathy, 
 not appreciation. I may, therefore, in these pages invite 
 the peers to consider great but peaceful measures, bene- 
 ficial, not to party, but only to mankind.
 
 Ideal Journalism. 353 
 
 " Many wise laws have passed, and will ; a few great 
 defects and errors remain to be corrected. The most fla- 
 grant that occur to me all in a moment are : 
 
 " 1. The want of a sufficient law to detect and punish 
 with fine and imprisonment the adulteration of milk, and 
 the mere diluting of milk. It is an Herodian crime. In- 
 deed, it is wholesale slaughter of the community; for the 
 community is principally composed of children, and true 
 milk is their life, watered milk their death. France has 
 for many years detected this crime by science, and pun- 
 ished it by imprisonment ; we do neither, and more fools 
 we ! Adulteration ought to be attacked with more rigor; 
 something has been done, but not enough. 
 
 " 2. The difficulty of ejecting house-tenants who will nei- 
 ther pay nor go is monstrous. Such a tenant is a male- 
 factor, and the legislature has not observed it. If such a 
 malefactor holds a tenement worth only 20 a year, the 
 man he is robbing of the property can go to a police court, 
 and kick the robber out; but if the property is worth 300 
 a year, then there is no remedy for the victim but the slow 
 and costly process of ejectment, with loss of law costs and 
 six months' rent. In other words, the legislature has looked 
 through a microscope, and seen a small wrong to clear 
 property bigger than a great wrong. Where a little in- 
 disputable property is concerned, it sees the real sanctity 
 of property. Where a large indisputable property is con- 
 cerned, it forgets the real sanctity of property, and glues 
 its eyes on the sanctity of possession, which is a pure illu- 
 sion; and the larger the property the more disastrous the 
 illusion. 
 
 " We still hold to our PENINSULAR MANIA. 
 
 "In any part of Europe, except England proper from 
 the Tweed to Lizard Point, if a man and woman, through
 
 354 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 pure frailty, or temporary bars to marriage, cohabit and 
 have children, but afterwards repent and marry, their chil- 
 dren become legitimate. But here, in this little peninsula, 
 crammed with lawyers, but bare of jurists, the parents can 
 repent, and legitimatize themselves, the sinners, but not 
 their children. These last are still picked out and pun- 
 ished without remorse, yet they are the parties who never 
 sinned at all. This peninsular mania will be exposed in 
 these pages by one who has no personal interest in the 
 question, but is justly ashamed of his peninsula, and not 
 to be humbugged by the cant of King John's barons, nor 
 Queen Victoria's bombastical pettifoggers. 
 
 " The wrongs of authors are still bitter, and a disgrace 
 to the legislature. 
 
 " Muddlehcads still call copyright a monopoly; and can- 
 not, or will not, see it is intellectual property, and has noth- 
 ing whatever in common with monopoly; and this fatal 
 misuse of language is a main source of the foul injustice 
 to authors at home and abroad. Acting on this fallacy, 
 the government of 1847 committed one of the most bar- 
 barous acts of spoliation and tyranny that ever disgraced 
 the legislature of any country in modern times. It actu- 
 ally pillaged English authors, without warning, of their 
 colonial property. It had no more right to rob us of that 
 property than to take our coats off our backs the moment 
 we land in Quebec. 
 
 "Street houses are still a gigantic blunder: they are 
 built with irrational roofs, inaccessible roofs, combustible 
 staircases on the top floor, doors and windows square and 
 hideous, instead of arched and beautiful, plaster ceilings, 
 hidden drains, stifling rooms, deadly cold passages, etc. 
 They are fire-traps, dens of smoke and effluvia; they arc 
 chronic swindles, for they are so built, piped, glazed, and
 
 Ideal Journalism. 355 
 
 painted that they must be a constant expense to the holder, 
 and a milch cow to the builder. Buy any other new thing, 
 and you get rid of the maker; but buy a new house, and 
 you must be always sending for him to grope for his hidden 
 work, and patch his bad work, and clean his abominable 
 casements, and repaint God Almighty's beautiful woods, 
 to paint which woods at all is but to defile them. (See my 
 letters to the Pall Mall Gazette.} 
 
 "The Fine Arts. England is the paradise of painters. 
 They are honored more than the artists of the pen. They 
 are paid a great deal more than they are worth, measured 
 by European pictures and prices; but long live these in- 
 sular and amazing prices, for the painters gain and the na- 
 tion too. High prices encourage long labor and produce 
 better pictures than low prices do; and good pictures are 
 a national treasure: they cost the nation nothing; for the 
 purchase money stays at home, and they will be one day 
 exported to the colonies, and bring specie in, though they 
 never took specie out. 
 
 "These artists have a double market, the picture and 
 the copyright. 
 
 " They are allowed to charge the public a shilling a head 
 for entering their great shop, though the public built it for 
 them, and by entering buy a hundred pictures that other- 
 wise might not be sold or not so well sold. This is with- 
 out a parallel in Europe. 
 
 " Music is highly rewarded in the persons of many singers 
 and a few fiddlers ; but the higher artist, the composer, is 
 vilely paid. To sweeten his substantial wrongs, he is petted 
 by the women, including Her Gracious Majesty, who knights 
 him promiscuously. Like the dramatist, his invention is 
 discouraged by the competition of the stolen music ; and 
 this fraud on the foreigner, and discouragement to the na-
 
 356 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 tive composer, especially of opera, is the sure fruit of a 
 foul and perfidious clause England, to her deep dishonor, 
 smuggled into the International Copyright Act of 1851. 
 This piece of national folly, and base treachery, was dic- 
 tated by a playwright or two, who crawled up the back- 
 stairs of the House of Commons and earwigged the late 
 Lord Palmerston ; it offers a premium, not only on the 
 theft, but on the adulteration of foreign musical composi- 
 tions. Barbarity added to crime! (See my evidence in 
 the Parliamentary Commission, and my fruitless appeal to 
 the honor of the House of Lords ' The Eighth Command- 
 ment.') 
 
 "The fine art of writing is not honored as it deserves, 
 and as it is honored in more refined nations. 
 
 " Though it is the highest of all the arts, and gains an 
 Englishman the most honor abroad, it is slighted at home 
 by Queen, Lords, and Commons, who, moreover, in this do 
 but echo the brutality of the nation. Of all those gentle- 
 men who sit in the House of Peers, few deserve to sit there 
 better than the late Charles Dickens did. Decompose the 
 House, and you resolve it into a few truly noble names; 
 but the bulk is nothing of that sort: sons, or grandsons, of 
 plebeians who rose to be judges and peers, but rarely to be 
 jurists; the sons, or grandsons, of commonplace men, who 
 got into the Commons by bribing small towns, and stick- 
 ing to a minister right or wrong. A few old nobles, de- 
 scended from gallant soldiers; others, like the bold Buc- 
 cleuch, and the canny Cawmil, descended from robbers and 
 murderers who, we know, deserved the roadside gibbet, 
 but got their neighbors' lands and the peerage instead. 
 Yet this miscellaneous company, into which a banker was 
 lately drafted, simply and solely for having a lot of money, 
 was too divine an assemblage for Charles Dickens to enter!
 
 Ideal Journalism. 357 
 
 He was the greatest genius of the century, the greatest 
 benefactor of his country, the great apostle of sympathy. 
 He found classes glowing with antipathy to each other, and 
 infused a little of his own boundless charity into them. 
 Twenty years before he died the highest honors of the 
 State were his mere due yet they were never offered him; 
 and the nation, whose darling he was, was insulted by this 
 act, the child of blind cliquism and a sordid, narrow, hog- 
 gish, and, above all, snobbish estimate of public merit and 
 true glory. 
 
 " But this is only a part of a false and porcine estimate. 
 Look into the fine arts themselves, and you will find they 
 arc publicly honored here in strict proportion to their 
 brainlessness. 
 
 " The highest title our backward Anglo-Saxon concedes 
 to any fine art is Knighthood. Now music is the one art 
 that demands little or no brains; indeed, it is often con- 
 nected with downright and proverbial silliness; so knight- 
 hood is showered on it. Third-rate composers and second- 
 rate organists Knighted! 
 
 "To paint well, requires mind; so fewer good painters 
 are knighted than mediocre musicians. 
 
 "To write poetry, philosophy, narrative, fiction, dra- 
 matic fiction, immortal history, incorruptible criticism, re- 
 quires a larger mind and higher soul than to paint well; 
 so knighthood never comes at all to those diviner arts. 
 
 " In other words, where the fine arts are concerned, sen- 
 suality, and not mind, distributes the paltry honors of the 
 State, with the discriminating soul that belongs to the 
 Anglo-Saxon hog, young as yet in this branch of civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 " A Republic has been openly hinted at as sure to come 
 soon or late, and The Times has paved the way for un-
 
 358 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 prejudiced discussion by printing a letter of Mr. Potter's. 
 A few years ago Potter and his editor would have been in- 
 dicted for sedition. 
 
 "But the feeling of the nation does not run straight 
 that way. Even if it should, the House of Brunswick need 
 not fear; it has its musicians and painters bound by grati- 
 tude to defend it; and so supported it will not expect nor 
 need, when the 'pinch' conies, any champion so mean and 
 feeble as the Pen. 
 
 "But, to tell the truth, our immediate danger is from 
 what I call A DIRTY OLIGARCHY, i. e., a set of associated 
 mechanics, who regulate their own numbers by terrorism, 
 and so secure a monopoly, and then abuse that monopoly. 
 
 "Mr. Potter may prate about a republic, but his lambs 
 are stiff oligarchists; they are also bloody, crafty, cowardly, 
 remorseless tyrants, compared with whom emperors and 
 Caesars are just and humane, and don't smell. 
 
 " The House of Commons, for obvious reasons, defers to 
 this odoriferous oligarchy steeped in innocent blood; the 
 peers are asleep in re, or do not comprehend that there can 
 be an unwashed oligarchy as brutal, barbarous, and dan- 
 gerous to the nation as they themselves are charming, in- 
 offensive, and clean; and so this odoriferous oligai'chy bids 
 fair to oppress talent and enterprise, drive much productive 
 kind of capital out of the country, and clip the wings of 
 labor down to eight hours a day; finely, we shall then com- 
 pete in manufacture with nations working ten hours a day, 
 and not too drunk to work at all on Monday. Give the 
 second horse ten seconds start for the Derby; what does 
 it matter? it is only ten seconds. 
 
 " This dirty oligarchy, and not a republic, is England's 
 rock ahead. 
 
 " In matters international, nations, led by us, have done
 
 Ideal Journalism. 359 
 
 a great stroke of wisdom. Many years ago we made good 
 old Chaucer's prophecy without exactly intending it, and 
 the world has learned a great lesson: it sees that one na- 
 tion works best in glass, another in silk, another in wood, 
 another in gold, another in wool and iron, and so on; and 
 no nation is superior in many things. Thus national vanity 
 the silliest of all vanities is corrected, and talent inter- 
 changed, and nations can easily profit by each other. 
 
 " But a greater and harder lesson remains to be taught 
 systematically. The wisdom of the mind is also distrib- 
 uted among nations as equally as mechanical skill: no na- 
 tion realizes this; yet it is so; and would be seen in an 
 hour if the wisest laws and the wisest customs of each na- 
 tion could only be brought into one building, and presented 
 to the senses. That unfortunately cannot be. This im- 
 palpable wisdom can only be shown on paper, and not 
 vividly like the national products of industry. Yet, here 
 a periodical will rise above all books, and be a small Crys- 
 tal Palace of ideas: if lovers of mankiild will co-operate 
 with me, and, striving nobly against blinding prejudices, 
 will rise to the occasion, weigh the bits "of superior wisdom 
 they have seen in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and 
 bring them to a focus in these pages. My own reading in 
 this kind has been long and large; but no man's private 
 stores can build so great a work a work which, if it pros- 
 pers, will promote the interchange of that wisdom which 
 is above rubies; will tend towards that world- wide, blessed 
 uniformity of laws in civilized nations, and that great, but, 
 alas, too distant good, the unity of nations. 
 
 "A few superior women are pushing themselves into 
 medicine, and have all my sympathy. Others are talking 
 well, but talking only, and blaming men too much, women 
 too little. But it is childish to sit still and howl at men
 
 360 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 because they are better educated. Are men educated by 
 God ? Are women educated by men ? Man is a slightly 
 superior animal, educated by a slightly superior animal. 
 Woman is a somewhat inferior animal, educated by a 
 somewhat inferior animal. This is the double obstacle to 
 their competition. Let women, then, who are truly ambi- 
 tious for their sex, leave baying the moon and lay the first 
 stone; let them begin to raise the young and their sex by 
 rational education. At present female education is the 
 blind leading the blind: women forget that in many es- 
 sential things they are savages compared with men, and 
 that before they can run on all four legs in our race-course 
 they must first walk with all those four legs into the pale 
 of civilization, as we have. 
 
 "To touch on those narrower subjects which may be 
 expected of me: 
 
 " I find that Literature, directly or indirectly, owes its 
 sad degradation in England to an excess of anonymous 
 writing; one branch is directly degraded by it, and from 
 a great height. I mean the branch which is blasphemously 
 miscalled 'criticism.' I find that anonymous criticasters 
 are often corruptible and scarcely ever scientific in their 
 judgments. There is scarcely a writer in the island whose 
 name signed at the bottom of his critique would not rather 
 weaken than strengthen its authority; and this is a terri- 
 ble phenomenon in any art or science. It arises pailly 
 from the want of scientific principles, and still more from 
 the excess of the anonymous. In France this deplorable 
 phenomenon does not exist. The anonymous criticaster 
 is deprived of those two great guides, without which no 
 class of men ever yet went straight reward and punish- 
 ment : he is neither punished for dishonesty and blunders, 
 nor rewarded for purity and infallibility. The result is
 
 Ideal Journalism. 361 
 
 inevitable, since all classes of men are what circumstances 
 make them. "We have a shoal of criticasters with little 
 moral and no intellectual principle ; they admire in the 
 dead what they dispraise in the living ; admire in a 
 Frenchman what they dispraise in an Englishman ; ap- 
 prove in their friends what they condemn in their ene- 
 mies ; labor to say smart things, but not to say true 
 things ; and are as often wrong as right in their judgment 
 of any new work. This need not be. Literary judgments 
 might be as pure and as accurate as the decisions of the 
 judges in our courts at Westminster. But this will never 
 be until a few able literary judges sit habitually in day- 
 light, like the judges at Westminster; and, like those 
 judges, cultivate accuracy, apply precedents fairly to new- 
 born works, and go by evidence, not conjecture. 
 
 " Criticism is a science that does not exist in esse, but it 
 does exist in posse; and I propose to lay the first stone of 
 that science in these pages. 
 
 " The feats of that science, which at present only exists 
 in fitful flashes, are not eloquent phrases, nor flippant 
 sneers, nor even witty periods, but judgments on new-born 
 works, which judgments time confirms. 
 
 " International copyright is just and needed to raise the 
 literary character. Any class to be respectable must be 
 well-to-do. No class, except ministers of religion, can be 
 poor and noble. A class without property is a tribe of 
 Bohemians. Copyright is the authors' property; it gives 
 them a stake in the country; and international copyright 
 gives them a stake in other countries, and interests them 
 in keeping the peace. Now anonymous writers in this 
 respect have an interest opposed to that of mankind. They 
 are always tempted to set nations by the ears, because they 
 are propertyless Bohemians and penmen who fatten on war. 
 16
 
 362 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " I shall fight tooth and nail for international copyright 
 and stage-right, and under these heads correct the strange 
 delusions of English legislators and the English public. 
 
 " This little enumeration of things that might be better 
 will, I hope, excuse me for intruding a new periodical into 
 so great a crowd. 
 
 " However, I shall not be too hard on the public, nor 
 Tun by excess of public virtue into the Bankruptcy Court. 
 I know the public taste : it is for exciting and amusing 
 lies, not for truth, justice, and European wisdom. Well, 
 let us compound. I will give you a reasonable dose of 
 lies ; only when you have drunk them with the eagerness 
 they do not deserve, come, pray, sip the nobler elixir that 
 is to do you good."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 WISDOM AND FOLLY. 
 
 " Put Yourself in His Place " was Charles Reade's last 
 great novel. Already he had wearied of dramatic narra- 
 tion, and his whole mind seemed focussed on the theatre. 
 His dramas were being played with varying success in the 
 provinces mostly at his own risk; and the excitement of 
 theatrical speculation seemed to possess a fatal fascination 
 for him. 
 
 It happened, however, that Messrs. Cassell required a 
 serial for their magazine, and the terms they offered at- 
 tracted him. At the moment their editorial department 
 was being supervised by the Rev. Teignmouth Shore, 
 since then one of the Queen's chaplains, and Mr. John 
 Williams, a former scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, 
 and a first-class man. The Fellow of Magdalen was much 
 gratified to find the literary management of a great firm 
 in such capable and appreciative hands; and so highly did 
 lie esteem Mr. Teignmouth Shore that he preserved a com- 
 plimentary letter of that gentleman, whereunto he append- 
 ed the following remarks: 
 
 "Rev. T. Shore. Editor of CasselPs, 1871. This truly 
 amiable and intelligent gentleman is CasselPs head editor 
 at a liberal salary; and I believe the firm has never regret- 
 ted the unusual step of making a gentleman controller of 
 their business. Certainly under his rule the firm has made 
 great advances."
 
 364 Memoir of Charles Rcade. 
 
 That any novel-writer should have hit on such a theme 
 as that which forms the backbone of " A Terrible Temp- 
 tation," and have utilized for its development the columns 
 of a magazine supposed to be largely supported by the 
 simple puritanism of England this indeed beggars be- 
 lief. Yet so it was ; and the author himself seems to 
 have been at the outset dubious of so perverse an experi- 
 ment. 
 
 Under date Monday, October 30th, 1870, he writes : "I 
 have lately signed with Cassell, and am languidly working 
 on a weekly serial. Have written one number. Rather 
 smart, I think, but also rather loose. I fear it will offend 
 the mothers of families. Indeed, query will Cassell pub- 
 lish it? 
 
 "Yet, is it really wrong to tell the truth soberly? viz.: 
 that young men of fortune have all mistresses ; and that 
 these are not romantic creatures, but only low, unculti- 
 vated women bedizened in fashionable clothes ?" 
 
 The book has a value of its own, in that it gives the 
 portrait of the author painted by his own hand, and by 
 no means in flattering colors ; also, a descriptive account 
 of the same author's sanctum, together with a close analy- 
 sis of his method of working. The above extract from 
 his diary shows that in intention he was far from being 
 sinister ; nevertheless, littera scripta manet, and he puts a 
 powerful handle into the grasp of his enemies, while his 
 friends were taken aback. It was hoped that the man 
 whose life had been threatened by the Sheffield ratteners ; 
 the author whose grip of social problems was as firm as 
 that of a Roebuck or a John Bright, might have taken his 
 place among the practical social reformers of a reforming 
 age. A great statesman was reported to have thrown down 
 the book with the angry criticism : " He has wrecked a
 
 Wisdoin and Folly. 365 
 
 reputation." The firm of Cassell, Fetter, & Galpin felt 
 chagrined, and said as much. The wolves and jackals of 
 the press fell upon him with ferocity. He rewrote, under 
 pressure, a portion of the serial while yet it was running 
 through the pages of Cassell's magazine. Love, reverence, 
 gratitude cannot induce us to offer a fuller apology for 
 this, the one real blunder of the author's beneficent career, 
 than that which is implied in his own words he meant well. 
 
 He suffered for his indiscretion, moreover, in pocket as 
 well as otherwise. These are his reflections : 
 
 "A successful author ! My story, 'A Terrible Tempta- 
 tion,' declined by all the publishers I offered it to. Smith, 
 with compliments, says he is afraid to publish it. 
 
 " Chapman, who was hot on it, now says nothing. He, 
 or his wife, have read it. 
 
 "I foresee that the librarians will all band against it, 
 as usual ; and at fifty-seven years of age, plenty of hot 
 water coming. Well, it is one more fight ; that is all, for 
 fight I must, or be crushed entirely. And this is what 
 they call a lucky writer !" 
 
 The next sentence, and those following, betray symp- 
 toms of penitence : 
 
 " Letter to Coleridge, Solicitor-General, reminding him 
 of the promise I made to expunge an intemperate passage 
 in ' It is Never Too Late to Mend,' and sending him copy 
 of the amended book. 
 
 "I have actually forgotten whether this, or July 16th, 
 was dear Julia's birthday. Ah, sweet saint ! I hope you 
 don't see me, my follies and ! Here is a horrible wish ; 
 so much for not being a Christian. 
 
 " I am depressed by my inability to find a subject that 
 interests me to write on." 
 
 Our American cousins, whose propriety had been shocked
 
 366 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 by " Griffith Gaunt," went simply frantic over " A Terri- 
 ble Tempation." Across the Atlantic they have a habit 
 of styling a spade a powerfully-epitheted agricultural im- 
 plement, and Charles Reade was by no means let down 
 gently. He got his deserts, and something also by way 
 of compound interest. For example, the Philadelphia 
 Telegraph declared "that 'A Terrible Temptation' was 
 written in Mr. Reade's most slang-whanging style." The 
 New York Sun called it "a piece of carrion literature, 
 whose putrescence attracted the keen scent of the publish- 
 ers, and whose sickening odors, thanks to their enterprise, 
 now pervades the land." The Utica Morning Herald be- 
 gan by dubbing Charles Reade " King among all living 
 novelists," and proceeded promptly to preach revolution 
 on the ground that the king had erred. Nevertheless, it 
 cannot bring itself to be totally disloyal. " The book," 
 it avers, " is none the less gi'eat because it is so contempt- 
 ibly indecent." That, after all, if plain speaking, cannot 
 be dismissed as mere malediction. It gives the author his 
 meed both of praise and blame. The New York Tribune, 
 of all transatlantic journals the least censorious, summed 
 up our author thus : " His flashing satire reminds one 
 more of the subtle deadliness of an Italian stiletto than of 
 the crushing blows of the Oriental scimitar." Poetical 
 very. 
 
 We forbear to linger over this unfortunate book. To 
 this hour, those authors of lesser light who experienced 
 the motions of the green-eyed monster because of Charles 
 Reade's command over fortune are able to point to it as 
 to an ugly blot on a fair picture. The people who indite, 
 what an eminent publisher styles with cruel acerbity, the 
 pork-chop variety of literature, are able to console them- 
 selves with the thought that, after all, Charles Reade once
 
 Wisdom and Folly. 367 
 
 dropped somewhere near to their normal level. Enough 
 that, commercially, it was the least profitable of all his 
 works. This is his own confession : " Yesterday I treated 
 with Chapman & Hall for ' A Terrible Temptation.' He 
 gives me 600 for a 3 vol. edition of 1500 copies. Should 
 this be exhausted, fresh arrangements to be made. This is 
 a pitiable decline on former sales. He gave me 1500 for 
 limited copyright of ' Griffith Gaunt.' Bradbury & Evans 
 gave me 2000 for ditto of * Foul Play.' The serial in its 
 first form will soon be the only considerable market open 
 to me." 
 
 His next novel, " A Simpleton," appeared in serial form 
 per London Society, at that time edited by one of the most 
 fascinating of lady novelists, Florence Marryat. The title 
 was unattractive ; and the author, having finally discarded 
 youthful irregularity as a source of dramatic interest, fell 
 back on one among his many crotchets. It requires genius 
 to invest anything so essentially pragmatical with charm, 
 and. this much Charles Reade did. 
 
 The book owed not a little to the practical talent and 
 suggestive brain of Mrs. Seymour. She had already, and 
 was partly conscious of it, the seeds of an internal com- 
 plaint, destined in the course of a very few years to shorten 
 her life, and was inclined to attribute it to the evil effects 
 of tight-lacing. Here we have a cue to one of the lead- 
 ing features of the story. Others will be easily surmised 
 from the subjoined letters addressed to her from Mag- 
 dalen : 
 
 "It was quite a grand wedding" (of his niece) " and went 
 off very fairly. The women, unfortunately, were divided 
 into two classes the idiotic gigglers, the dead silent. A 
 fine day, and I drank my beautiful native air; slept at Ips- 
 den one night.
 
 868 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 "At 10.30 drove to Goring station waited half an 
 Lour. 
 
 "Train to Didcot fifteen minutes. 
 
 " At Didcot Availed an hour and a half. 
 
 " Train to Oxford half an hour. 
 
 " Reached here on a dismal, discouraging, wet afternoon. 
 
 "Fire in small room, which stinks of paint still, so 
 lighted one in north room. Shall go to work at once, so 
 pray send me some little material, no matter how rough, 
 every day. 
 
 " Jot it down. 
 
 " Fling it on paper. 
 
 " Scenes. 
 
 " Observations. 
 
 " Single lines. 
 
 " Make a heading ' Rosiana,' of detached simple things 
 for her to say or do. 
 
 " Oh dear ! I feel rather old to have to work so hard !" 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Thanks for hint. The ladies, enthusiastic school-fel- 
 lows, shall quarrel in the auction-room, and part forever. 
 
 " But can you not remember any little bit of color you 
 have seen or heard in auction-rooms any bit of Jew's chaff 
 any incident ? 
 
 " If so, send it by return, or it will be too late, for I shall 
 have passed through that topic, and got to servants and 
 dress. 
 
 " I feel miserable at having to write about these things, 
 yet I know I must. Now or never, I must give a picture 
 of the inexperienced householder's troubles e. ff., house- 
 agent's lies, repairs, inaccessible roof, tile loose man goes 
 up and makes two holes for the plumber. Chimney- 
 sweeper takes away the lead and charges Is. Qd. Mention
 
 Wisdom and lolly. 369 
 
 the pipes. The passing workman knocks the pipes to- 
 gether. Every workman had in to repair begins by de- 
 stroying, and then goes away and can't be got." 
 
 Ever since the Sheffield ratteners thought fit to honor 
 him with a murderous menace, his dislike and distrust of 
 the British workman became more and more rooted. In- 
 dividual artisans, who happened to be in distress, partook 
 of his bounty, but he vastly preferred to give to other 
 classes. He believed in their dishonesty ; and on one 
 occasion when something had gone wrong with one of his 
 London houses, wrote to Mrs. Seymour, " The fact is, you 
 and I are much alike. We are a couple of wise fools. 
 Very fit to guide each, other, but not able to take care of 
 No. 1, though I, for my part, have all the inclination." 
 
 There he wronged Mrs. Seymour. No daughter of Eve 
 was more shrewd and calculating. None less capable of 
 disbursing a shilling in mistake for elevenpence. 
 
 As for the honest proletarian, he did his little best to 
 perpetuate the author's prejudice. When Charles Reade 
 was dying, and doted, with the fondness of a broken heart, 
 on his pets, some pretty Belgian hares, a blackguard, im- 
 ported to do repairs because, forsooth, his employer re- 
 fused to submit to gross extortion had the heartless bar- 
 barity to leave the garden-door open; and the author's fa^ 
 vorite hare strayed into the streets to fall a victim, very 
 possibly, to this identical ruffian. One can but regret that 
 a myriad-handed class, eminent for such virtues as industry 
 and truthfulness, should be traduced by its exceptions. 
 Tbe warmest friend of labor failed to convince Charles 
 Reade that the samples he had encountered were other- 
 wise than representative and typical. 
 
 "A Simpleton " had so fairly exhausted its creator that 
 Mrs. Seymour despaired of his attempting another novel. 
 16*
 
 370 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 He found himself by no means reviled, but dismissed with 
 a good-tempered laugh. This was little to his taste. His 
 precedent works had received such an amount of attention 
 as was in itself a tribute to their calibre. He flung down 
 his pen. 
 
 Mrs. Seymour held her peace, waited till the mood 
 passed; but was none the less surprised to perceive how 
 unready the pen of the ready writer had become. With 
 admirable tact she let well alone for the nonce. He had 
 other fish to fry to wit, various minor theatrical ventures 
 in London and the provinces, such as " Shilly-shally " * 
 and "The Double Marriage," produced at the Queen's 
 Theatre not to omit " The Wandering Heir n in its 
 dramatized form; as a story it appeared in The Graphic, 
 as he puts it, " with no great effect," a verdict Mr. Locker 
 would probably hesitate to endorse. For this latter piece 
 he engaged the services of no less an artist than Miss 
 Ellen Terry, in succession to Mrs. John Wood, who made 
 the character of Philippa. It will be remembered that Mr. 
 
 * This drama led to a very regrettable dispute between friends and liter- 
 ary comrades. It was an adaptation from Anthony Trollope's clever story, 
 " Ralph the Heir " ; and its author being at the time in Australia, the 
 adapter took his consent as a matter of course, intending to offer him half- 
 profits in the theatrical venture. Mr. Trollope, however, fired up at his 
 friend's French-leave, and delivered himself in a tone of acerbity. Charles 
 Eeade apologized, and there the incident should have ended. Unfortunate- 
 ly the piece proved a failure, and this confirmed the unflattering view Mr. 
 Trollope always entertained of Charles Reade's capacity ; while the other, 
 stung by what he regarded as Trollope's ingratitude, delivered himself of 
 some sneering epithets of which, perhaps, " mediocre " was the most of- 
 fensive. Yet in private life each author spoke fraternally of the other, 
 and this although neither appreciated the other's handiwork. Certainly 
 Mr. Trollope, when not in a splenetic vein, could say some very kind and 
 generous things of Charles Reade.
 
 Wisdom and Folly. 371 
 
 George Annesley, his brother Compton's partner for many 
 years, represented Charles Reade when he championed M. 
 Maquet. Moreover, a branch of the Annesley family is 
 located in Oxfordshire, so that the author was dealing with 
 a theme in every way congenial when he seized on the 
 famous Annesley romance. From what we can glean, he 
 expected that it would eclipse the Tichborne case, then 
 dragging its weary length through the courts. 
 
 At last the moment arrived when, for the first time during 
 a space of twenty years, the successful author resembled 
 the frozen-out workman in actually having no work to do. 
 
 " You want a suggestion," said Mrs. Seymour, " some- 
 thing to spur you." 
 
 He yawned. He wanted nothing of the kind. Yet he 
 abhorred idleness. Nulla dies sine lined, he had already 
 dubbed " the eleventh commandment." 
 
 At last the suggestion came, ab extra, and much more 
 than mere suggestion. He opened up, in consequence, a 
 negotiation, through the writer, with Messrs. Tillotson, for 
 a new novel, on the theme misogynism; but this came to 
 nothing, and the book eventually appeared for reasons 
 which need not be stated specifically; suffice it that they 
 were never revealed, even to Messrs. Blackwood anony- 
 mously in the columns of JBlackwood's Magazine. There 
 was, however, no mistaking the wand of the magician. 
 Critics, readers, even those who skim and skip, all agreed 
 that " The Woman-Hater " must be Charles Reade's hand- 
 iwork. The characters, and the working of the first vol- 
 ume, may have seemed dissimilar to any he had previously 
 produced. The plot, also, might have been termed a new 
 departure. But the character of Rhoda Gale, M.D., was 
 obviously, unmistakably his no other hand could have 
 conceived or drawn it.
 
 872 Memoir of Charles Eeade. 
 
 At last, when the book appeared in volume form, the sur- 
 mise of a friendly public was verified, and "The Woman- 
 Hater " bears the name of Charles Reade. 
 
 Oddly enough, the lady-doctor, which may be said to 
 have given the hall-mark to the book, was the one feat- 
 ure that exposed it to censure. The first volume ran so 
 smoothly and dramatically, the interest aroused was so in- 
 tense, that the break caused by the insertion of this prag- 
 matical character could but be viewed with disfavor. It 
 seemed to give the narrative an ugly twist and disturb its 
 threads. For all that, the book pleased the general reader. 
 It dealt with character and incident, and erred neither in 
 respect of sensationalism nor eroticism. Ina and Zoe were 
 both eulogized, notably in his exhaustive criticism by Mr. 
 Walter Besant. 
 
 Nevertheless Charles Reade was dissatisfied. "I will 
 write no more ' Woman-Haters,' " he remarks in his diary, 
 "for the jenny-asses of this nation to refuse to read." 
 
 It was while he was engaged on this book that he took 
 up the cudgels on behalf of a certain James Lambert a 
 hero and a martyr, as he elected to crown him. Across 
 the Tweed there was no small scepticism as to the hero- 
 ism or martyrdom of Lambert. The Scotch uphold every- 
 thing national, from thistles to haggis, as being most su- 
 perior; but they are as hard-headed as clannish, and by no 
 means relish being found fault with. Now the charge 
 preferred against Caledonia stern and wild, and Glasgow 
 in particular, was one of crass indifference to the very 
 qualities a Scotchman holds most in honor. The Scotch 
 excel in bravery and endurance, the leading characteris- 
 tics of heroes and martyrs. Hence, when a Southron 
 pulled them up short, they felt affronted. 
 
 There were, however, exceptions. A priest of the Ro-
 
 Wisdom and Folly. 373 
 
 man obedience in Scotland sent Charles Reade a mite, and 
 with it so genial a letter as to have been deemed by its 
 recipient worthy a corner of his guard-book. Other per- 
 fervid Scots followed suit, while in England the story of 
 Lambert, as narrated in the columns of the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, tapped the ever-ready purse of our kindly public. 
 It was remarkable that his own countrymen took Charles 
 Reade on trust, whereas the blue-bonnets across the bor- 
 der discounted him heavily. 
 
 Up till then no one had suspected the novelist of genu- 
 ine philanthropy. It was presupposed that, when he cham- 
 pioned prisoners, lunatics, and honest workmen, he merely 
 utilized, with utter insincerity, these social elements for 
 the purpose of agony-piling. Nay, more, he was accused 
 broadly of wilfully exaggerating, of adding carmine to 
 human blood, of doubling the horror of death itself. The 
 world had yet to learn how cruelly it misjudged a vivid 
 and picturesque mind a mind which never saw as others, 
 and could only express its thoughts in harmony with its 
 own very acute emotions. This story of Lambert may have 
 been in fact though certainly never in intention col- 
 ored, but if so, it was by a generous and magnanimous 
 pen. It affected its readers very much after the fashion 
 of the prison-scenes in " Sera JVunquam y" indeed, as an 
 illustration of that, we may cite a letter from Sir Arthur 
 Helps, begging the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette to for- 
 ward at once a copy of the paper to be shown to the 
 queen. 
 
 So much of the ground of the biographer is already oc- 
 cupied by the various collection, published under the ge- 
 neric title " Readiana," that we can only notice in brief 
 some among his more striking letters and essays. 
 
 In the Daily Telegraph he broached a theory of ambi-
 
 374 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 dexterity. On all sound physiological principles he was 
 totally in error, nevertheless no advocatus diaboli in the 
 Middle Ages ever defended a sophism with such consum- 
 mate skill. Miss Braddon, Mrs. John Maxwell, wrote him 
 a letter with her left hand by way of experiment, and it 
 is legible. One swallow, however, does not make a sum- 
 mer, and, after all, few of her sex can boast the rare versa- 
 tility of " Lady Audley." The rest of the world did not 
 so much as essay to impose on the left the functions of the 
 right hand. 
 
 In the same journal Charles Reade took up the cudgels 
 on behalf of four condemned persons. Here his zeal for 
 abstract justice caused him to exhibit an almost painful 
 oblivion as to the hideous moral obliquity apart from 
 criminality of the parties whose advocate he voluntarily 
 constituted himself. Justice, however, was his grand pas- 
 sion. He seems to have declined mentally to discuss the 
 question of innocence or guilt, and to have adhered dog- 
 gedly to the point he raised, viz., that the miserable quar- 
 tette were illegally condemned. His letters were of the 
 sort that could not be gainsaid. Before their appear- 
 ance it was publicly stated that the law would take its 
 course albeit strenuous efforts were being made on behalf 
 of the girl, who might have been termed the causa causans 
 of all the wrong. Within four hours of the appearance 
 of Charles Reade's final letter, bearing the title " Hang in 
 haste, repent at leisure," the noose was cut, all four pris- 
 oners were respited, and rightly or wrongly not one 
 was hanged. 
 
 Charles Reade's analysis of the Tichborne cause celbbre 
 was contributed to an ephemeral paper styled Fact. It 
 served to clear away the cobwebs spun with persistence 
 rather than ability by Dr. Kenealy. Both this and the
 
 Wisdom and Folly. 375 
 
 brief he wrote for the Stauntons would seem to demon- 
 strate -a capacity for law as well as for litigation. He 
 might have sat on the judicial bench had he devoted his 
 energies to his profession. Is it, however, a matter for 
 regret? Let his country decide. We should have lost 
 "Triplet," "Susan Merton," "Christie Johnstone," "Mar- 
 garet of Sevenbergen," " Gerard," " Ina and Zoe," " Cou- 
 peau and Tom Robinson." We should not have gained, 
 for the law, a Lush, still less a Cockburn. Better as it 
 was. 
 
 We have seen how, with a design of exploiting the 
 many original ideas wherewith his brain teemed, he at 
 one time thought of speculating in a magazine. This idea 
 abandoned, he varied its form and expanded it on differ- 
 ent lines, preserving, however, its original essence. He 
 proposed to himself to adopt, as a vehicle for his great 
 thoughts, some journal with a colossal circulation, having 
 in his eye, probably, that one which was readiest always 
 to give him a place. 
 
 "The plan I propose," he writes on Jan. 1, 1878, "is, 
 to make the most of my interest a journal; to make and 
 shake the nation, and make it write to me; for I have dis- 
 covered that the only creature who knows much and vari- 
 ous things is the public. 
 
 "I open the year with these designs, but none of that 
 certainty I shall accomplish any one of them which marks 
 our sanguine youth. My contemporaries, and even my 
 juniors, fall daily around, and I observe that nobody calls 
 their deaths untimely. I therefore am due. That is clear, 
 and vitce summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. 
 But then, as I don't know the hour of my death, why should 
 I lie down and wait for death's chariot to roll over me ? 
 The time is certainly come when I ought not to write fool-
 
 376 Memoir of Charles Eeade. 
 
 ish or wicked or frivolous things for the public; but should 
 I die in the middle of a sentence warning the good not to 
 be uncharitable, the wicked not to despair, then, methinks, 
 I should die well better perhaps than if I died repeating 
 prayers like a parrot in St. Paul's Church. 
 " My first topic will be, I think, 
 
 " THE DAKK PLACES OF THE LAND. 
 
 "(' TJie dark places of the land are full of cruelty: Ps. zx.) 
 
 " And if that does not sicken, 
 
 " THE WISDOM AND FOLLY OF NATIONS." 
 
 Of these essays, the former appears in "Readiana;" the 
 latter we append, inasmuch as it amplifies the author's 
 project as formulated in brief above. 
 
 "THE WISDOM AND FOLLY OF NATIONS. 
 
 "Men overrate themselves and everything connected 
 with them. For centuries human astronomers overrated 
 the globe. They knew it for a second-rate planet, and a 
 puny orb compared with the sun; yet they assumed it to 
 be the centre of our planetary system ; why ? because 
 they were born on it. That form of egotism is cured, but 
 not the disease itself. Men still overrate one part of this 
 overrated planet; they think one small section of the earth 
 excels all others in wisdom and virtue. The proof ? I, 
 the great I, was born upon it. This is sham patriotism, 
 real egotism, and injurious folly, for it closes the greatest 
 gate of mundane improvement, and makes frontiers a 
 limit to the mind. Whoever travels much, reads much, 
 and loves truth more than vanity, shall find that every 
 nation is wise and foolish, has much to teach, and much 
 to learn. Probably these letters will evoke a thousand
 
 Wisdom and Folly. 377 
 
 examples of this wholesome truth. Meantime accept a 
 poor specimen by way of mere preliminary. China teach- 
 es Europe to economize labor in one way; she constructs 
 high water-wheels with concave steps. These, let down 
 into a running stream, raise the water, and discharge it 
 from the highest steps down an incline, and so irrigate the 
 meadow. Macartney made this known in Europe. France 
 uses it. This same China has the wit to see that the re- 
 spectable trader who sells bad meat is a felon. But this 
 same China puts written prayers into a wheel and turns 
 them for the good of the soul, and proclaims in shop win- 
 dows, ' Gods made and mended.' 
 
 "The French have always, in my day, been socially 
 wise, but politically unwise. They extract much innocent 
 pleasure from e very-day life; but they are too prone to 
 hope, from experiments in government, that amelioration 
 of man's lot which can only come from the popular exer- 
 cise of private industry, self-denial, and other virtues. 
 
 ' How small of all the ills that men endure 
 The part that kings or laws can make or cure.' 
 
 This people invented pisciculture, which was wise, and has 
 massacred the small birds; and that is foolish. 
 
 " The Prussians were the first to protect children against 
 selfish parents, by compulsory education, and to disregard 
 all the outcry against it: this same wise people goes on, 
 century after century, printing with obscure letters which 
 the superior wisdom of Venice swept away soon after the 
 invention of printing; and all unprejudiced nations have 
 followed Venetian wisdom. 
 
 "The Turks have long seen that a man who sells un- 
 wholesome food is a felon, and not a civil offender, as we 
 in our folly imagine. But these sensible Turks practise 
 polygamy, which is unwise.
 
 378 Memoir of Charles Iteade. 
 
 "In England we try questions of law most admirably. 
 The Judges in Banco deliver each bis own opinion, with a 
 noble independence; whereas Continental Judges, like the 
 doctors at Trent, agree to agree. Our Criminal Tribunals 
 are without appeal, which is foolisb, and yet folly upon 
 folly cling to a method which is eternally failing to dis- 
 cover the truth, often condemns the innocent, and very 
 often acquits the guilty. We try issues of fact in civil 
 cases very honestly by strict rules of evidence, that ex- 
 clude some truth but more falsehood; but we are behind 
 our age and our neighbors in the machinery of justice. 
 Although the nation is dotted with cities larger and more 
 enlightened than London was when the very youngest of 
 our great courts was established, we refuse to all those 
 cities competent jurisdiction and judges worthy of the 
 name. Instead of dividing the country into legal dioceses, 
 which is the Continental and rational system, we cling 
 to superannuated metropolization and strolling justices. 
 Mark the consequences. While the London judges are 
 traipsing about the country, trying hurriedly, and some- 
 times not trying at all, provincial cases that ought to be 
 all carefully and patiently tried in Bristol, Birmingham, 
 Manchester, Oxford, Nottingham, and York (for trial by 
 jury becomes a national lure if only London judges are 
 allowed to sum up the evidence), our vast metropolis is 
 handed over to the dominion of injustice for three mortal 
 months. Only conceive! Justice cut off at the fountain- 
 head for one fourth of the whole year justice, which is 
 the breath of every nation's nostrils, and every city's. 
 The Lord's day, Christmas day, and Good Friday are the 
 only days on which justice ought to intermit. The na- 
 tion is unwise to allow any other cessation of justice, and 
 unwise to allow it to be called vacation; for that term sets
 
 Wisdom and folly. 379 
 
 the convenience of a small clique above the vital interests 
 of a great nation, and egotistical phrases, once accepted 
 by a country, perpetuate unjust acts. 
 
 "The year 1851 was an epoch in the history of man- 
 kind. Several countries compared the products of their 
 skill, which is a kind of wisdom, and even that narrow 
 comparison opened the eyes of national egotism; we all 
 got a glimpse of the salutary truth that every nation has 
 much to learn and much to teach. Successive exhibitions 
 confirmed this truth, and the world is profiting. 
 
 "Now if the laws and customs and habits of various 
 nations could be brought into one building and submitted 
 to our senses and our judgment, that exhibition of things 
 mental would teach a nobler and a wider wisdom. The 
 comparison of material objects teaches manufacturers, but 
 this would create lawgivers and guide philanthropists. 
 
 " But no Crystal Palace can do the world so great a ser- 
 vice. Can it be done at all ? 
 
 " I once thought of a book as the vehicle of comparison; 
 and made copious notes accordingly. But now I am hum- 
 bler, and therefore most likely wiser. A book written by 
 one man, and containing the fruits of his own travels, re- 
 searches, and inquiries, is too small a vehicle for so great 
 and dignified a theme. 
 
 "The Crystal Palaces point to the only way. There 
 must be many contributors from every nation, and there 
 must be a grand receptacle. I think the columns of a great 
 journal might be the Crystal Palace to receive sifted con- 
 tributions, and leave the world wiser than they found it."
 
 CHAPTER XXVm. 
 
 FRIENDS, FAUTOBS, AND FAVORITES. 
 
 BEFORE we approach the last success of the author, who 
 considered himself to be before all else a dramatist, a suc- 
 cess the sweetness whereof was doomed to turn to bitter 
 ere it was so much as sipped, it may be well to notice in 
 brief his social life, and also some among the many friends 
 of his literary career. 
 
 The twelve years of Albert Gate were perhaps the hap- 
 piest, as they were certainly the most prosperous, of his 
 entire span. His residence may not inaptly be termed a 
 bijou. It was cosey without being cramped, enriched with 
 works of art throughout; at the back a complete rus in 
 urbe, shaded by the trees of the park, on the reverse facing 
 the confluence of three fashionable thoroughfares. In spite 
 of chronic theatrical losses, which absorbed considerably 
 more according to his own reiterated asseveration than 
 half his receipts from literature, he enjoyed an almost un- 
 limited command of ready money, nor was he ever a stu- 
 dent of petty economy. The somewhat commanding man- 
 ner he had inherited from his splendid sire was redeemed 
 by sweetness and affability; and although his bent was 
 never that of a gregarious animal, his society was sought 
 eagerly chiefly of course by people possessed of some 
 brain power. At thirty-five he had been, so to speak, 
 played out his fellowship virtually pawned, his patri- 
 mony spent. At fifty-five he could boast himself a gen-
 
 Friends ', Fautors, and Favorites. 381 
 
 tleman of some fortune; his fellowship was alike unem- 
 barrassed and doubled in value, and his books and plays 
 yielded him a fluctuating revenue. 
 
 But, above all, the business partnership with Mrs. Sey- 
 mour had developed into so tender a friendship as is sel- 
 dom found to gild the relations of people united only by 
 the tie of mutual esteem. Dean Mansel, in his inimitable 
 satire " Phrontisterion," sings, " To the bosom of his col- 
 lege fondly turned the childless man." In Charles Reade's 
 case the bosom of his college was about the very hardest 
 pillow his mind could conceive; the most unsympathetic, 
 the most inappreciative. Mrs. Seymour was not a wife, 
 but she proved herself a faithful housekeeper to the child- 
 less man, the compulsory celibate. Perhaps, without dis- 
 respect to her memory, we may say that her kindly sym- 
 pathy caused him to forget his loneliness. Certes, it became 
 part and parcel of his existence, and when it ceased his life 
 was wrecked he died by inches. 
 
 There occurred one episode in his tenure of the pretty, 
 Dutchlike residence at Albert Gate which might have 
 terminated disastrously, but for the ten minutes' extra 
 tenacity of a man always eager to fight for his own hand. 
 
 Lord Beaumont, in the interest of Belgravia, let it be 
 freely admitted, promoted a private bill to form a roadway 
 directly from Sloane Street into the park. This bill, had 
 it passed, would have entailed the demolition of Charles 
 Reade's domicile, and his opinion was not asked as to wheth- 
 er he would be prepared to sacrifice the nest he had made 
 for himself on the altar of public weal. Had he been con- 
 sulted, a very ferocious negative would have been the re- 
 sponse. As it was, his blood rose. He painted " Naboth's 
 Vineyard" on the door-posts of his gate, and denounced 
 the offending nobleman as the Ahab of the nineteenth
 
 382 Memoir of Charles lieade. 
 
 century. All the town took up the tale, and Lord Beau- 
 mont's scheme could not have been forwarded by the gen- 
 eral chorus of laughter which ensued. 
 
 " Going to open a new pub over there ?" remarked a 
 Putney bus-driver, not very well instructed in his Old 
 Testament. " Rum sign to give it, too ! Who's Na- 
 both ?" 
 
 However, Charles Reade did not evaporate in this vari- 
 ety of protest. He went to work in right good earnest to 
 defeat Lord Beaumont's bill. That nobleman had a very 
 excellent case. There can be no doubt that an entrance 
 to the park facing Sloane Street would be alike picturesque 
 and of advantage to equestrians. It became simply a ques- 
 tion which of the two was the stronger, the peer or the 
 popular author ; hence the latter, fighting as he was for 
 hearth and home, put forth all his strength. 
 
 In his guard-book are two letters: from Lord Sherbroke, 
 who, as Mr. Robert Lowe, was his tutor in the old days at 
 Magdalen; and from Lord Selborne, who, as Mr. Roundell 
 Palmer, was occasionally his convive in the common room. 
 Both respond graciously to his request for an interview; 
 the latter especially, who says, "I have seen with much 
 interest and pleasure your distinguished career as a man 
 of letters." They bear the following superscription : " Two 
 fellow collegians of mine, Robert Lowe and Lord Selborne 
 Roundell Palmer. Threatened with spoliation in the 
 year 1878 by one of those engines of clandestine iniquity, 
 a private bill, I was obliged to seek interviews with these 
 gentlemen after forty years. They were both very kind, 
 as big men generally are on these occasions." 
 
 Next, he enlisted on his side the eloquence and intelli- 
 gence of a lawyer having the ear of the House of Com- 
 mons, Sir Henry James. For the end he had in view this
 
 Friends, Fautors, and Favorites. 383 
 
 was most fortunate, inasmuch as he was quite in the mood 
 to dictate to both Houses of Parliament dogmatically, and 
 any such line of conduct would have damaged fatally his 
 chances. Sir Henry James, like a prudent advocate, be- 
 gan by taking his irrepressible client in hand. 
 
 "My dear Reade," he writes, "I am not surprised at 
 your indignation which is very clearly shown in your 
 petition. But if you wish to succeed in defeating the bill, 
 you must act with moderation, and take some practical 
 steps for that purpose." He then proceeds to formulate 
 a course of action so as to obtain the support of the Com- 
 missioners of Works. Not to prolong the tale of litigious 
 acrimony the bill was eventually withdrawn by its pro- 
 moters, mainly in consequence of a letter in the Daily 
 Telegraph from Charles Reade. This effusion was by no 
 means what its author intended he styles it denaturalized, 
 at Sir Henry James's suggestion; the fire and fury, in fact, 
 having been forcibly eliminated. However, when a few 
 clays later he received this missive, "Dear Reade, take 
 down the 'Naboth's Vineyard.' Bill is withdrawn," 
 he recognized the wisdom of his counsel's advice, and 
 his comment on Sir Henry James is, "He saved me 
 my property from oligarchical spoliation. Long life to 
 him !" 
 
 He has more to say on the following page. Sir Henry 
 James probably failed to realize at a glance how com- 
 pletely incapable Charles Reade was of comprehending 
 badinage, chaff, or the sort of fun which obtains among 
 juniors, and is really benevolence, not ill-nature. Here 
 he was pre-eminently his mother's son. We have already 
 remarked on his perversity in regarding * Chicken Hazard ' 
 as truculent, whereas it was nothing worse than rollicking 
 fun. This is what he writes of Sir Henry James: " A very
 
 384 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 able lawyer. Will be a judge if he lives and chooses.* 
 Has judicial temples. Made fun of me at the club, in a 
 way that rightly or wrongly mortified me from an able 
 man. Was obliged to write a gentle remonstrance. His 
 manner of receiving it does him very great credit." Here 
 follows a very graceful note from Sir Henry James, amply 
 justifying this encomium; and then: "This gentleman 
 has since laid me under a deep and lasting obligation. A 
 private bill to despoil Albert Terrace. I appealed to 
 James as a man of principle. He read the facts coldly 
 at first, but fired up on principle; whereas vulgar minds 
 are only to be fired by their passions. He advised me, 
 encouraged me, fought for me in the Commons, and with 
 the very wind of his good sword laid the oligarchs low." 
 
 That Charles Reade was an admirer of lawyers gener- 
 ally is by no means the case; indeed, he possessed a happy 
 diagnosis of judicial as well as forensic ability, while 
 blunderheadedness on the bench or at the bar aroused his 
 scorn. For example, in Mrs. Seymour's action against the 
 Curling family, wherein he posed as her champion, he 
 writes : " My successes have been hardly won. In this 
 case I had to dismiss Jessel afterwards Master of the 
 Rolls for incapacity (sic) ; Ballantyne for colloquy with 
 defendant's attorney; Teesdale, 'his solicitor,' because of 
 her chief clerk's incapacity ; and Rickard's managing clerk !" 
 After this candid avowal, praise from him becomes doubled 
 in value the more so because he was sparing of it where 
 lawyers were concerned. We can only discover, among 
 his remains, four members of his profession for whom he 
 expressed decided reverence; these were Mr. Justice Lush, 
 
 * This ia prophetic. While these lines were in the props Sir Henry 
 James refused a judgeship.
 
 Friends, Fautors, and Favorites. 385 
 
 Lord Selborne, Sir Henry James, and Mr. Henry Matthews, 
 the present Home Secretary. The last-named gentleman, 
 styled " an able junior," won for him the Curling case, vice 
 Jessel and Ballantyne as he puts it, dismissed and he 
 sums up with the reflection that he never would have 
 obtained this satisfactory result " but for my eccentricity 
 and resolution in kicking rogues and fools out of the case, 
 one after the other." 
 
 When not lashed to fury by a lawsuit, or writhing be- 
 neath the double thong of some critical censor, his days 
 passed evenly and pleasantly. His pen, his club, the 
 theatre, an evening at home, or with his family, such was 
 the normal round; while Sunday afternoon was devoted 
 to his sister Ellinor so long as her life lasted ; and Sunday 
 evening to the reception of friends, for the most part thoso 
 of Mrs. Seymour. The rule nulla dies sine lined kept his 
 mind fixed on the work he had on hand, and beyond a 
 doubt the older he grew the more he loved his literary 
 labor. We give a few casual excerpts from his irregular 
 diaries to afford a rough idea of his social life: 
 
 "June 8, 1871. My birthday fifty-seven years old; 
 present from Ellinor, at Brighton, pencil-case. Compton," 
 (his brother), " staying with me. This day twelvemonth 
 died my good friend and master, Dickens ! Multis ille 
 bonis flebilis. Dinner. Sole, goose, cherry pie, omelet, 
 clotted cream. William came in the evening, brought me 
 some grapes. I say, what a pity a fellow can only be born 
 once a year! 
 
 " June 25. Received the visit of Miss , a Yankee 
 
 girl, who wants to lecture here I believe on Dickens. I 
 was weak enough to be decoyed into a promise to hear her 
 lecture privately with a friend or two. Not so weak as to 
 go though. Mean to be more on my guard against the 
 17
 
 380 Memoir of Charles Readc. 
 
 egotism of the people who come to me. In a personal 
 interview everybody gets the better of me. This girl tells 
 
 me Miss boasts in America of great intimacy with 
 
 me, and announces a lecture about my life. I really in- 
 tended to send her some particulars; but I fear the whole 
 thing will lower me, the lady being a failure. Oh ! what 
 caution, what prudence the world requires. 
 
 "July 16. Dined Boucicault. Sat next to General 
 Sickles, who murdered Key, his wife's corrupter, and after 
 imprisonment fought gallantly in the civil war, and now 
 goes on crutches ; one leg I fear. An intelligent man. 
 Has every hopes of the negro : opportunities of studying 
 him. Shook hands with him at parting. Did not feel any 
 repugnance to him. No use saying I did. 
 
 "January 1. A large supper- party. Thirty- seven 
 people: Lords Londesborough and Newry, Hon. F. Wing- 
 field, H. Matthews, Q. C., Mr. Lake, Miss Braddon, Henry 
 Neville, Miss Pateman, the rising actress, and several very 
 beautiful actresses. 
 
 " By Mrs. Seymour's skill three tables across the room, 
 one taking advantage of entrance. Nobody crushed. 
 Servants room to wait at all the tables. Two girls did 
 all the waiting without any trouble. No green-grocer in 
 white gloves. No bad music. No dancing. Yet all merry 
 till 4 P.M. 
 
 " My nieces, Cecy and Florence, called to wish me good- 
 bye on their way to India. They seem quite insouciantes. 
 Florence explained to me why I have no wrinkles 'Be- 
 cause you are not married.' 
 
 " October 21. First night of 'The Frozen Deep,' Wigan 
 was good enough to give, me an excellent box. Invited 
 
 Dallas and Mrs. D , Miss Glyn. Miss Braddon in the 
 
 house chatted with her. Says she got the plot of ' Birds
 
 Friends, fctutors, and favorites. 387 
 
 of Prey' at my table. The play poorly acted. It is a 
 pretty play, but wanted a head at rehearsal. Too much 
 narrative; but, after all, original and interesting, and the 
 closing scene great and pathetic. Ah, yes ! let us see the 
 goodness and beauty of the human soul on the stage. 
 There is little enough of it to be seen en ville ! 
 
 " Dined with Sir Charles Taylor. Oysters, thin soup, 
 turbot, little mutton pies much peppered, fillet of black- 
 cock (delicious), haunch of red-deer (very fine, and for a 
 wonder tender), ham, jelly, cream, grouse, Italian sardines, 
 little oat-cakes. Six people. No celebrities. Rubber. 
 Perdidi pecuniam. 
 
 "Breakfast 9.30. Just skimming two newspapers, to be 
 read more carefully after dinner, wasted till 12.30. Thus 
 I never get a day's work and never shall. Pasting in ex- 
 tracts Percy about animals, till nearly three. Tedious 
 work. It being almost impossible to classify them prop- 
 erly at once, I paste them first into a book as classificanda. 
 Then by degrees I may cut them out, and put them in a 
 guard-book in some order. But it is not easy to me. I 
 have the desire for method, but not the gift. 
 
 "January 21. Letters and journals read, and breakfast 
 over by 10.15 A.M. 
 
 " 2 P.M. Pasted in a few extracts Percy. 
 
 "3 P.M. Wrote my first story for publication, title, 
 ' A Special Constable.' The c Special Constable ' is a dog. 
 In its original form it is a mere newspaper anecdote, striking 
 to a man of imagination, but not to the public thirty-five 
 lines of print. I have made it from an anecdote into a story. 
 
 " 4 P.M. Story completed a good day's work." 
 
 This story was the first of the series he terms JZon. 
 Fab., published in JBelyravia as " Good Stories of Men and 
 Animals."
 
 388 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " Dined with Boucicault to warm his new dining-room. 
 Convives Yates, Sir II. Thompson, Webster, a foreigner, 
 a gentleman whose mouth was entirely concealed with hair 
 that looked like a mat, O'Dowd, Boucicault, Reade. No 
 ladies. Clear turtle, thick whiting pudding, lobster, cut- 
 lets, salmon suchet. An entree, and a turkey-poult larded. 
 Pease, potatoes, ham. A pleasant dinner as it always is 
 when there are no ladies to confine the conversation within 
 their own narrow bonds but not so brilliant as sometimes. 
 Yates good company. Billy Russell was threatened, but 
 did not come, unfortunately." 
 
 [N.B. Mr. Edmund Yates was throughout a prime fa- 
 vorite with our author, so much so that he could not bring 
 Irmself to accept the more than handsome overtures of the 
 Whitehall Review, lest he should appear in opposition to 
 his friend.] 
 
 "Poor old Billy" (his brother William) "has taken four 
 stalls for boxing night, i. e., for ' It is Never Too Late to 
 Mend.' I told my leading lady. Of course, I added he had 
 forestalled the public. She said that was clever. So be it. 
 
 "Whist. Lost 3 10s. to Sergeant Ballantyne, of whom 
 I generally win. Ballantyne bets me 1 in the rubber and 
 the usual odds, five to two on the first game. 
 
 " Perdidi diem. A thoroughly blank day. Not a stroke 
 of work, though I have a great subject on hand. Morning, 
 a few letters. Then two hours' company. Then four 
 hours' whist proh pudor ! Dinner, and a French novel. 
 At my age such a day is monstrous, and ought to fill me 
 with shame. 
 
 "Letters. Extracting dialect from the drama 'Joan.' 
 Whist won 23s. Dinner at 6.50, instead of 6.30. Home 
 in good time too. Pheasant, beefsteak pudding, pint of 
 sparkling Moselle.
 
 Friends^ Fautors, and Favorites. 389 
 
 " Dies prce omnibus infelix. Perdidi super whistam se- 
 decim libras. dies nefastus /" 
 
 The above extracts, selected almost at random, give a 
 fair picture of the author's manner of life. He was at that 
 period an honest and laborious toiler, yet a firm believer 
 in the virtue of an amusement which now usurped the 
 hours dedicated in his youth to field sports, cricket, skittles, 
 bowls, and, be it added, battledore and shuttlecock, a very 
 favorite game of his. He seemed to reproach himself for 
 sitting so long over the card-table. Mrs. Seymour, on the 
 other hand, favored his whist. " It distracts his mind," 
 she said, "from his work, and cheers him." Doubtless 
 this may have been the case as a rule ; yet evidently when 
 his day's losses reached 16 he was inclined to fret, and on 
 such occasions this particular feature in his daily routine 
 seemed to pi'ick his conscience. As the years rolled on, 
 and his reputation was not being enhanced, a feeling of 
 dissatisfaction stole upon him, and at last he thought seri- 
 ously of standing for some constituency as an independent 
 candidate. Here, however, he encountered the strenuous 
 opposition of Mrs. Seymour. 
 
 "Whatever -you do," she cried to the writer of these 
 lines, "don't on any account urge your uncle to embark 
 on a career for which his irritability unfits him." 
 
 Mrs. Seymour may have judged rightly, and certainly 
 Charles Reade's age seemed almost to offer a bar to a 
 political experiment. Anyhow the notion never got beyond 
 mere discussion; the course of events took another, and 
 a sadder, turn. 
 
 In connection with the ordinary social life of our au- 
 thor we believe it will be of interest both to mention 
 in brief his chief literary friends, and also, where it is 
 feasible, to append his verdict on them and theirs on him.
 
 390 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Next to Lord Lytton, the novelist, whose letters he re- 
 ligiously preserved, Charles Dickens occupied the highest 
 place in his esteem. He styles him, as we have already 
 seen, his master, and held his genius in love and reverence. 
 On one occasion he had the alternative of meeting at din- 
 ner a member of the aristocracy, whom he had every desire 
 to cultivate, or Charles Dickens. His reply was caustic. 
 " If I am asked to meet a celebrity or an obscurity," he 
 wrote, " I prefer the celebrity." 
 
 Among many letters, the longer referring to the not 
 very alluring topic of international copyright, addressed 
 by Charles Dickens to Charles Reade, it is hardly possible 
 to make a satisfactory selection. Here is a kindly frag- 
 ment: " I must write you a line to say how interested I am 
 in your story, and to congratulate you upon its admirable 
 art and its surprising force and vigor." 
 
 Again, this from Gadshill: 
 
 " Mr DEAR READE, You once gave me hope of your coming down to see 
 me here ; could you join our family party on the last day of the old year ? 
 If so, I should be delighted to see you, and to show you an old castle, and 
 an old county in a new-year's day ramble. 
 
 " Faithfully yours always, 
 
 "CHARLES DICKENS." 
 
 Under this honored name Charles Reade wrote in his 
 guard-book but one word, " Eheu !" a fitting tribute. He 
 held Charles Dickens to be the greatest Englishman of the 
 century, and never hesitated to express his indignation at 
 a system which has choked the peerage with third-rate 
 lawyers and tenth -rate politicians, while it has almost 
 persistently excluded genius. His own labors on behalf 
 of the oppressed, his self-sacrificing philanthropy, his 
 championship of right, never received the smallest recog- 
 nition ; and on the one occasion when he headed a deputa-
 
 Friends, Fautors, and favorites. 391 
 
 tion on the subject of international copyright to interview 
 Lord Beaconsfield, that eminent personage exhibited the 
 quality of his breeding by yawning in his face. He had 
 not to yawn twice. Charles Reade came to an abrupt 
 pause in the very core of his subject, bowed, and re- 
 tired. 
 
 Among his epistolary treasures a letter of Miss Hogarth 
 was especially cherished. It is addressed from Gadshill 
 on the eve of departure from that home which the supreme 
 novelist had created and adorned. 
 
 This lady writes: 
 
 " MY DEAU MR. READE, My dearest brother-in-law left me a legacy of 
 all the little familiar objects in. his room and on his writing-table. And I 
 understood him to mean that I should distribute them among the many 
 friends who loved him. My task has been a very difficult one as you may 
 suppose the ' objects ' being so very few in proportion. So I am obliged 
 to give the merest trifle to each. But I am quite sure that you who loved 
 and reverenced him as he deserved will be glad to have something that 
 belonged to him familiarly, even though the thing is of no value in itself. 
 Therefore I venture to send you this little pen-tray as a relic. It belonged 
 to our little sitting-room at the office a place that he was very fond of 
 and used very much, so that this little article was constantly under his eye, 
 and associated with his familiar every-day life. Will you accept it from 
 me with my love and regard ? You don't need to be told by me still I 
 think it will be pleasant to you now to have a fresh assurance of the 
 affection and esteem in which he held you. You did not meet very often ; 
 but I never heard him speak of you except with the heartiest and most 
 cordial expressions of admiration, respect, and personal affection. 
 
 " We leave this dear place forever next Monday. It will be a good 
 thing for us all now when that wrench is over; but it is a terrible hour to 
 look forward to. 
 
 "Believe me, my dear Mr. Reade, affectionately yours, 
 
 "GEORGINA HOGARTH." 
 
 The above is inscribed by Charles Reade, " a valued let- 
 ter from Miss Hogarth, giving me Dickens's pen-tray, and
 
 392 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 assuring me of his kindly feelings towards me, which in- 
 deed he never left me in doubt of." 
 
 His idolatry of Charles Dickens caused our author per- 
 haps to underestimate not only George Eliot, but Thack- 
 eray also, and Trollope. The last-named novelist, if quick 
 to resent what he deemed a liberty, was filled with kindly 
 sentiments for his brother in art, and spoke of him with 
 warmth. Charles Reade was more appreciative of a writer 
 of the same school Mrs. Oliphant possibly because of 
 her sex, for he was indisposed towards severity where lady 
 authors were concerned, provided that they were not un- 
 duly belauded, and avoided the philosophical error of dul- 
 ness. He has preserved some of this lady's letters, but 
 without comment. Next to Dickens, however, he ranked, 
 qualis inter viburna cupressus, his very dear friend, Mr. 
 Wilkie Collins, "an artist of the pen. There are terribly 
 few among writers," was his terse eulogium, the plain fact 
 being that this past master in the art of dramatic construc- 
 tion excels all competitors just where most English authors 
 fail. His plots resemble nothing so much as the intricate 
 arabesques of an Oriental designer. Their complexity 
 dazzles, yet they are always simple, never obscure. More- 
 over and here they commanded Charles Reade's most 
 earnest enthusiasm they, or rather some of them, lend 
 themselves intuitively to the stage. They dramatize easi- 
 ly and naturally; indeed "The New Magdalen" may be 
 fairly termed one of the most effective of modern dramas. 
 Mr. Wilkie Collins, therefore, if we may put it so, hit 
 Charles Reade's ideal, and secured, in consequence, that 
 sort of genuine admiration which an author offers his 
 brother in art when he esteems him greater than himself. 
 For ourselves, we refrain from instituting a comparison 
 between writers in every detail dissimilar. It is enough
 
 Friends, Fautors, and Favorites. 393 
 
 that Charles Reade rendered due homage to his friend, 
 and towards him was as appreciative as affectionate. He 
 preserved his letters as heirlooms for his family in a 
 word he believed in him both as a man and as an author 
 whose future is assured. 
 
 In no less esteem did he hold another of the great novel- 
 ists of the Victorian era. Mrs. John Maxwell (M. E. Brad- 
 don) possesses that special quality which Charles Reade 
 cultivated as a prime essential of dramatic narration viz., 
 the faculty of enchaining a reader without a halt or break. 
 It was this idea which caused our author, malgre the ex- 
 ample of Dickens, to describe a story within a story as " a 
 flaw in art " i. e., it destroys the main interest. No sooner 
 had this most charming writer gained a reputation, as it 
 were by a stroke of the pen, than Charles Reade hastened 
 to court her acquaintance, and this soon ripened into friend- 
 ship. He was ever grateful for the generous hospitality 
 of Lichfield House, but most especially so when he could 
 monopolize the attention of its mistress. He avowed him- 
 self, in fact, thoroughly happy in the company of Mrs. 
 Maxwell, delighted with her conversation, interested in 
 herself, her books, and all that concerned her. We are 
 fortunately able to append this lady's own brief remi- 
 niscences of a friend, and a very sincere one also. Would 
 that in return we could reproduce the hundred and one 
 kind words he had always on the tip of his tongue for 
 her ! 
 
 "One of the brightest memories of my literary life," 
 she writes, " is my memory of Mr. Charles Reade. He 
 sought me out at the outset of my career, and extended 
 the hand of friendship to a beginner in literature with a 
 generous kindness which never failed me in after-years. 
 He had a chivalrous and protecting spirit in all his deal- 
 17*
 
 394 Memoir of Charles Readc. 
 
 ings with women, or with the weak; the same spirit which 
 so often urged him to fight on the losing side, and to bring 
 to bear all the power of his fiery pen in the cause of the 
 fallen or the oppressed. He, who in public life was the 
 fiercest of foes and partisans, where wrong or injustice 
 had to be encountered, was in domestic life the gentlest, 
 meekest, loveliest spirit; the ideal gentleman and Christian, 
 full to overflowing of that charity which suffereth long 
 and is kind. 
 
 " How many traits of gentleness I could recall, did I not 
 fear to lapse into triviality. One little incident struck me 
 as characteristic of his benevolence and thoughtfulness for 
 others. He was in the habit of having his manuscript 
 copied in a large, bold hand on foolscap paper, leaving 
 about half of each sheet as margin for corrections and in- 
 terpolations. 
 
 " ' My copyist calls every day for more work,' he said, 
 'and I don't like to disappoint him, poor fellow, so he 
 keeps me up to the mark, when I am inclined to be idle.' 
 
 " His house was a refuge for the destitute and the unhap- 
 py. To be in trouble was a passport to Charles Reade's hos- 
 pitality, and that faithful friend of long years who bright- 
 ened his home by her genial presence was of the same 
 temper. To nurse the sick, to comfort the mourner, to 
 create an atmosphere of friendliness and easy, gracious 
 hospitality was as natural to Laura Seymour as to Charles 
 Reade. 
 
 "To children his manner was delightful; and he never 
 seemed bored by their presence. In many of his tastes, 
 notably his gastronomical tastes, he was still a child; liked 
 jams and tarts and puddings, and had a childish leaning to 
 the unwholesome, rather than the wholesome, in diet. His 
 love of pets, and strange ones, was in some wise childlike.
 
 Friends, Fautors, and Favorites. 395 
 
 Well do I remember his effort to acclimatize a small ante- 
 lope in his back garden, and his pride in the melancholy- 
 looking beast which stared in at us through the plate-glass 
 doors of his study. He tried hard to tame a hare, to be 
 to him what Puss was to Cowper; but the animal was too 
 stupid to appreciate or understand the honor conferred 
 upon him. Only man's true and loyal friend, the horse or 
 the dog, was worthy of Charles Readc's love. His note- 
 books were a hobby and a pride; but as these are known 
 to the public, I will not dwell upon them. Once I ven- 
 tured to ask if these huge storehouses of miscellaneous in- 
 formation really repaid him for the trouble of collecting 
 them. He was not angry, but answered, meekly, ' Well, 
 perhaps they do not. I sometimes doubt if they are not 
 too voluminous to be useful;' yet with a glance of pride at 
 the elephantine red-backed folios ranged at the base of his 
 cyclopean writing-table. 
 
 "To have him all to one's self, as it were, in a long even- 
 ing of discursive talk, drifting from one subject to another, 
 was unalloyed delight. Would that there had been a 
 Boswell to remember and preserve all such conversations. 
 Deepest thought and strong originality marked all his 
 ideas and opinions upon men and books; and no man I 
 ever met had a more generous appreciation of the merits 
 of his contemporaries or a greater reverence for the mighty 
 dead. I remember once, when looking through his books 
 with him, he laid his hand upon Campbell's ' Life of Lord 
 Mansfield,' and said, ' What a man that was! Some of his 
 judgments exhibit a sense of justice that was almost di- 
 vine.' And there was a touch of pathos in the earnestness 
 of his tone. 
 
 "He had a profound contempt for the theorists who 
 argue that Shakespeare was an incapable and an impostor,
 
 396 Memoir of Charles JReade. 
 
 a mere stalking-horse for Lord Bacon. It was a sign of 
 incipient madness, he declared, to have any doubt as to 
 the identity of him who wrote ' Macbeth ' and ' Othello.' 
 * It was no more in Bacon's power to have written those 
 plays than it was in Locke's or Dugald Stewart's. The 
 whole bent and character of the man's mind was differ- 
 ent.' 
 
 " Poet, dreamer, and thinker as he was in hours of re- 
 laxation, in all the business of life he was severely prac- 
 tical. Never was a man more in the movement of his 
 time. I told him once that I rarely read the newspapers, 
 as I had only too little time for reading books. 'You 
 should read the papers,' he said, ' and leave books alone.' 
 
 " Late in the evening he would seat himself at the piano, 
 and, after playing a few chords, would sing some old-world 
 ballad, in a low voice which was full of tenderness. Those 
 simple, pathetic songs seemed a fitting close to the long 
 evening of talk. Never can I forget those evenings in our 
 house or in his, nor his genial welcome at all times, pleased 
 to be taken by surprise in his picturesque working-room, 
 half library, half picture-gallery, always greeting his 
 friends with the same gentle cordiality. 
 
 " Difficult to believe that this most gracious and excep- 
 tionally courteous English gentleman was the bellicose 
 Charles Reade, whose spirited advocacy of his own cause, 
 when smarting under piracy, or malevolent libel, had all 
 the force and vigor of Cicero or Edward Clark." 
 
 Charles Reade was, perhaps as regards the male sex at 
 all events a man of few friends, yet with many acquaint- 
 ances, and oftentimes rated an author as his friend, as it 
 were for the sake of sympathy, and because he respected 
 his brain-power. Thus, for example, he styled Mr. James 
 Rice, " one of my few friends on the press, as it is called
 
 Friends, Fautors, And Favorites. 397 
 
 a Cambridge man ;" adding, ns a foot-note, " and has since 
 written * Ready-money, Mortiboy.' " Elsewhere he has more 
 to say in favor of the excellent book, and does not omit 
 in his eulogium the senior partner in its production, Mr. 
 Walter Besant. Strange to relate, he failed to perceive 
 merit in " Ouida " till the writer of these lines placed in 
 his hand that tragic idyl, " Two Little "Wooden Shoes," 
 when he at first burst forth into rhapsody. Miss Brough- 
 ton he summed up briefly as "a spirited girl." To the 
 sterner sex he is not always quite so civil, e. g., he thus 
 describes Mr. Mark Twain : "An American humorist, and 
 really has much humor. But oh ! his speech. Knock a 
 macaw's head on an iron rail !" Mark Lemon he dismisses 
 as a genial companion and a writer of smart farces, add- 
 ing sorrowfully the valedictory " Gone !" his tribute to 
 those among his circle who had left it. For Shirley 
 Brooks he has no more to say than that he was his good 
 friend. 
 
 It would be unhandsome on our part if we failed to 
 enumerate among Charles Reade's brothers in the Repub- 
 lic of Literati his earliest friend and collaborator, Mr. Tom 
 Taylor, or his literary partner of later days, Mr. Dion 
 Boucicault. Mr. Tom Taylor, in a certain sense, may be 
 deemed the medium whereby he first appeared before the 
 public. He was that estimable gentleman's frequent guest. 
 Mr. Arnold Taylor describes their collaboration in " Masks 
 and Faces "as thus: "One was the cutter-out; the other 
 the cuttee." Whether that be a correct representation of 
 the creative process which resulted in so grand a success, 
 or only partly accurate, certain it is that at that time 
 Charles Reade leaned on Tom Taylor for advice, and re- 
 ceived from him a boon he sorely stood in need of, viz., 
 encouragement. Many years later, when Tom Taylor's
 
 398 Memoir of CJiarles Reade. 
 
 race was run, and the gifted musician who had been his 
 life's partner was a widow, Charles Reade evinced his ap- 
 preciation of Tom Taylor's aid in a manner alike charac- 
 teristic and delicate. He knew how deeply he was in- 
 debted to the strong man who placed his foot for him on 
 the first rung of the ladder of fame. 
 
 We have already noticed Mr. Dion Boucicault's share 
 in "Foul Play." This collaboration gratified Charles 
 Reade more thoroughly than any during his lifetime; and 
 although he could chaff Mr. Boucicault as " a sly fox," 
 esteemed both his society and friendship very highly. On 
 one occasion, when a remark was hazarded in disparage- 
 ment of a drama by this gentleman, he returned con- 
 temptuously on the speaker with the query, "Will you 
 find me another man in England who could write such a 
 comedy ?" Nor was his belief in Mr. Boucicault ever 
 shaken indeed, he envied his capacity for commanding 
 both the tears and laughter, the astonishment and delight, 
 of the Gallery. 
 
 Charles Reade's acquaintance with journalists was not 
 quite as extensive as might have been presupposed. Mr. 
 Yates he thoroughly liked, but chiefly as a novelist who 
 possesses a strong grasp of plot and situation. Mr. Edwin 
 Arnold he corresponded with for many years, and on a 
 great variety of subjects. His appreciation of the poet 
 and essayist, the scholar and the Orientalist, may be in- 
 ferred from the simple fact that he cherished all letters 
 from this gentleman having reference to his books. He 
 has headed his name in his guard-book with the Horatian 
 compliment, Integer vitce scelerisque purus ; and in men- 
 tioning the fact of Mr. Arnold having sent him a copy of 
 " Hero and Leander " merum sal he defines it says, " I 
 never meet this excellent person, but our mutual respect
 
 Friends, Fautors, and Favorites. 399 
 
 remains unchanged ; and I often see in The Telegraph al- 
 lusions and passing illustrations that show me how well 
 he has read, and understood, my works." Mr. Greenwood, 
 erst of the Pall Mall Gazette, gave him a place in his col- 
 umns on more than one occasion, and their intercourse was 
 agreeable and cordial. 
 
 He dubbed him " a most intelligent and business gentle- 
 man." George Lewes, on one occasion, wrote, " An article 
 by you that wouldn't be worth printing would be a curios- 
 ity in its way it must be so infernally wrong." Mr. John 
 Oxenford he describes "as a very genial companion;" and 
 he displayed his esteem for John Forster by preserving his 
 autograph, as also that of Mr. Sutherland Edwards. Never- 
 theless, although he elected to inscribe along with the 
 more exact designations, dramatist and novelist, that also 
 of journalist on his tombstone, he never fraternized large- 
 ly with the press-gang. Politics, and, indeed, political men, 
 failed to interest him. His was not the type of mind to 
 stomach compromises or to tolerate party manoeuvres; 
 hence his impatience of home politics indeed, he was far 
 more affected by those of the United States; and it is quite 
 the case that none were more welcome at Albert Gate than 
 Americans. He defined Reverdy Johnson as " a just man ;" 
 wrote warmly of Dr. Russell Lowell, and was ever charmed 
 by the society of his distant cousin, General Meredith 
 Read, of the U. S. Legation at Athens. 
 
 The force of circumstances, no less than inclination, 
 brought him into close connection with the dramatic pro- 
 fession. Mrs. Seymour's personal friends were all, of 
 either sex, wearers of the sock and buskin. They thronged 
 her portion of the Albert Gate home ; and generally, though 
 not invariably, were acceptable to its master. Devoted to 
 the drama, he could but assimilate up to a certain point
 
 400 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 with its exponents. Yet, to be strictly truthful, even 
 these very charming people could bore him. " It's all 
 very well," he said, apropos of his histrionic friends, " if 
 you will be content to sit by the hour and listen to the 
 record of their triumphs, then they are delighted with 
 you." In extenuation of this speech we may add that he 
 was too easily bored, and not seldom went off into a brown 
 study, leaving the individual addressing him to run on, and 
 run down, d discretion. The habit of total self-abstrac- 
 tion had become rooted ; and often when an auditor con- 
 demned his inattention as rude, he could not help himself. 
 It required a woman, and one with a well-stored mind, a 
 versatile tongue, and quick sympathy, such as Miss Brad- 
 don (Mrs. John Maxwell), to hold his attention for any 
 length of time ; and there were a few a very few mem- 
 bers of the theatrical profession thus endowed, whose com- 
 pany was to him supremely grateful. 
 
 Among them we may mention first, and most particu- 
 larly, the two gifted sisters, Kate and Ellen Terry. The 
 latter he regarded almost in the light of a daughter ; on 
 the former he lavished praise, such as in his younger days 
 he would have reserved solely for Mrs. Stirling. This is 
 his deliverance on the elder sister : 
 
 " The sweetest, tenderest, and most intelligent actress 
 of the day. Young in years, but old in experience, and 
 fuller of talent than ever an egg was of meat. She shone 
 most, to my mind, in modern characters, and her forte lay 
 in the pathetic. She represented with great truth all fem- 
 inine sorrows. I have seen actresses with more fire, but 
 none to equal her in sweet and gentle pathos. The mo- 
 ment she stepped on the stage the manly breast took a 
 keen interest in her. I had only twice the good-fortune to 
 do business with her. Aged thirteen she played Joliquet
 
 Friends, Fautors, and Favorites. 401 
 
 in 'The Courier of Lyons,' and Dora in my poetical drama 
 was her last creation. She played the two parts to abso- 
 lute perfection. In ' Dora ' she sang ' The Brook ' to her 
 dying lover; broke down in the middle of the words, * For 
 men may come and men may go' shed real tears, and 
 then by an effort finished the song. This was genius. She 
 had little voice, but by dint of brains far outsang the 
 operatic singers. Her face not remarkably pretty in abso- 
 lute repose, but beautiful under the illumination of expres- 
 sion. Dora, terrified by her uncle's violence, swoons away 
 at last. Miss Terry did this with such absolute truth in 
 all the details that I went behind the scene one night to 
 watch her more closely. But if I had gone with a micro- 
 scope this honest and careful artist would have borne the 
 test it was quite indistinguishable from a real faint; and 
 the little hysterical sobs with which she came to, and then 
 the gentle weeping, and the dovelike way she said, ' His 
 hard words frightened me so,' was infinitely feminine and 
 lovable. At twenty -six years of age she married Mr. 
 Arthur Lewis, and left the stage forever. 
 
 " We had her on the boards, though, in 1870. I pro- 
 duced the 'Malade Imaginaire.' We got Kate to rehearsal, 
 and after rehearsal she gave me her ideas in my room; 
 and in her excitement pulled me all down the room, 
 with amazing vigor, I remember. This young lady 
 attends the theatre constantly on first nights, and the 
 eight of her face always gives me a thrill of pleasure. 
 Such is the power of association, set agoing by memory 
 of her rare talent and intelligence. She was an actress 
 who never whined. Now, the women all whine upon the 
 stage." 
 
 Miss Ellen Terry has assumed all the laurels her clever 
 sister gathered, and added withal to them more than one
 
 402 'Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 crown of her own. She has played in two hemispheres as 
 the representative actress of England, her genius having 
 commanded the generous, if not always ungrudging, plau- 
 dits of our intelligent and hypercritical American cousins. 
 The following paragraph of Charles Reade's catalogue 
 raisonnee was penned before this great artist had attained 
 her zenith, and at a time when she was overshadowed by 
 her elder sister. Its strain is that which might be applied 
 to a clever debutante of tender years, who regarded the 
 white-haired dramatist as her quasi-father, and, indeed, ad- 
 dressed him playfully as such. 
 
 " Yes, dear papa," she wrote, " I hope to be with you 
 to-morrow at dinner. Thank you for saying I may come. 
 Most affectionately your Ellen Terry. 
 
 " Love to Mrs. Seymour." 
 
 Whereupon Charles Reade, in giving this pretty billet 
 a niche in his guard-book, appends this comment : 
 
 TERRY. A young lady highly gifted with 
 what Voltaire justly calls le grand art deplaire. She was 
 a very promising actress married young to Mr. Watt the 
 painter. Unfortunate differences ended in a separation, 
 and instead of returning to the stage she wasted some 
 years in the country. In 1873 I coaxed her back to play 
 Philippa at the Queen's Theatre, and she was afterwards 
 my leading actress in a provincial tour. She played Helen 
 Rolleston very finely" ("Foul Play"). "In 1875 engaged to 
 play Portia at the Prince of Wales' Theatre ; and her per- 
 formance is the principal histrionic attraction, the Shylock 
 of Mr. Coghlan being considered somewhat slow and mo- 
 notonous. 
 
 " Ellen Terry is an enigma. Her eyes are pale, her nose 
 rather long, her mouth nothing particular. Complexion
 
 Friends, Fautors, and Favorites. 403 
 
 a delicate brick-dust, her hair rather like tow. Yet some- 
 how she is beautiful. Her expression kills any pretty face 
 you see beside her. Her figure is lean and bony, her hand 
 masculine in size and form. Yet she is a pattern of fawn- 
 like grace, whether in movement or repose. Grace per- 
 vades the hussy. In character impulsive, intelligent, weak, 
 hysterical in short, all that is abominable and charming 
 in woman. 
 
 " DIALOGUE. 
 
 " ELLEN TERRY. * And who is your leading lady now 
 that I may hate her ?' 
 
 " CHARLES READE. * Miss ' 
 
 " ELLEN TERRY (rubbing her hands). 'Oh, I'm so 
 pleased. She can give you a good hiding. She will too !' " 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Ellen Terry is a very charming actress. I see through 
 and through her. Yet she pleases me all the same. Little 
 duck !" 
 
 It was a decided misfortune for the success of Charles 
 Reade's later dramas, more particularly " Drink " wh ereof 
 more anon that he was unable to secure the services of 
 this lady, whose devotion to him was indeed filial, whose 
 capacity for the creation of character is unrivalled. That* 
 was not to be. She had already assumed the foremost po- 
 sition on the stage, and had greater aims to fulfil. But 
 that she never faltered in her regard for her " Papa-in-art " 
 must ever be a subject of gratulation to those who, like 
 ourselves, reverence his memory; the more so, because he 
 must often have tried her temper when she was his lead- 
 ing lady, for in matters of stage management he was a 
 tyrannical disciplinarian. For all that, the man and the 
 woman of genius learned to esteem each other; and he
 
 404 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 watched her upward career, not merely with pleasure, but 
 Avith a sort of paternal pride. 
 
 It will go without the saying that the creator of that 
 superb part, " Peg "Woffington," felt no small indebted- 
 ness to the lady, who, malgre an inevitable facial dissimi- 
 larity to the Irish actress of history, enacted the part 
 sympathetically, and with rare fascination. Below a very 
 natural and sweet letter of hers, ending with a cordial 
 " God bless you !" Charles Reade has inscribed these 
 words, "Mrs. Bancroft (Marie Wilton), a gifted and 
 amiable artist, who in this letter makes too much of my 
 friendliness, which both she and her husband had so richly 
 earned by their kindness and courtesy to me." On another 
 page in the same volume is a cordial note from Mr. Ban- 
 croft, which the recipient retained for the writer's sake. 
 
 A prime favorite with Charles Reade was that most 
 vivacious and sparkling of comedians, Mrs. John Wood. 
 He has a strong word of commendation for this lady, 
 whose natural vein of fun oozes out at all times and in 
 all seasons ; e. a., on board the good ship Calabria, off 
 Queenstown, she wrote, " Tell Mrs. Seymour I shall never 
 forget her, for I owe her two-and-sixpence ;" and, a few 
 lines further on, " I have been a little sick, and hope to 
 ' be more so." This is his definition : "MRS. JOHN WOOD, 
 an actress with real humor, almost the only one left us by 
 burlesque. Since writing this and other letters to me, she 
 has become a manager and has played, inter alia, Phoebe 
 in ' Paul Pry ' with an effect never attained before. Charm- 
 ingly droll, on the stage and off it. Since writing this has 
 astonished the public by her performance of Philippa, in 
 my drama, ' The Wandering Heir.' " 
 
 Another lady of sterling merit who obtained our author's 
 approbation as an artist, and his esteem on account of her
 
 Fautors, and Favorites. 405 
 
 womanly qualities, was Mrs. Bella Pateman. Elsewhere 
 he expressed his conviction that she was destined to ad- 
 vance to the front rank of her profession when as yet she 
 was only a debutante. In his guard-hook he writes of her 
 in terms expressive of sincere admiration indeed, the con- 
 cluding words have themselves the significance of volumes. 
 
 This is what he has to say : " MRS. PATEMAX . A re- 
 spectable actress. The tender and true affection between 
 her and her worthy husband are beautiful to see in a thea- 
 tre That den of lubricity." 
 
 Last, but not least, among Charles Reade's theatrical 
 friends of the fair sex must be mentioned the brightest 
 ornament of the profession, one whose genius and whose 
 virtues alike illumine and exalt the stage, Mrs. Kendall. 
 Always gentle and playful with children, he visited this 
 lady's nursery at the time when his mind was absorbed 
 with ambidexterity, and essayed to teach the little ones 
 how to use either hand and arm indifferently. The ex- 
 periment of course was futile, but the remembrance of 
 this professional lecture has lasted in Harley Street to this 
 very hour. Is it not true that what good men do even 
 if it be of dubious utility is destined to live after them ? 
 
 Among Charles Reade's theatrical friends of the sterner 
 sex, the name of Henry Irving stands prominent. It was 
 his boast that he, in the wilds of Manchester was the 
 original discoverer of this rare nugget. Mr. Irving denies 
 the soft impeachment. Nevertheless it was, though erro- 
 neous, as firm an article of Charles Reade's belief as was 
 George the Fourth's in his presence at Waterloo. Be that 
 as it may, no critic ever understood the great actor more 
 analytically than Charles Reade. When speaking of his 
 series of triumphs at the Lyceum, he seems to us to have 
 hit the very centre of the gold when he affirmed that all
 
 406 Memoir of Charles Iteade. 
 
 must be attributed to Mr. Irving's presence, his magnetic 
 power over an audience. This potentiality exists alike in 
 actors and orators of the highest calibre. It is quite apart 
 from speech, for the spell is cast before a word is uttered. 
 It was noteworthy especially in Samuel Wilberforce ; and 
 is possessed in a high degree by Dr. Parker. The late 
 Rev. Robert Aitken was endowed with this gift in so great 
 a degree that before he had spoken a dozen words his 
 suppressed emotion seemed contagious, and the church 
 resounded with sobs. It was this sublime quality which 
 Charles Reade, the most acute of all observers, and not 
 the least susceptible of emotion, perceived in Mr. Irving, 
 before that great artist was a known man ; and it was his 
 boast that whereas Tom Taylor failed to recognize it, it 
 came to him as a revelation. Needless to add that, like 
 all lovers of the drama, he rejoiced that this country and 
 this age should possess so splendid an exponent of the form 
 of art he loved so well. Mr. Irving's letters to him were 
 preserved religiously, as precious treasures. 
 
 "We have already adverted to his love and respect for 
 Mr. Henry Neville. There was, apart from the stage, 
 much to evoke both sentiments. Those who have perused 
 these pages must have learned, if they knew it not before, 
 that Charles Reade was pre-eminently both a man and a 
 lover of art. Mr. Neville was here his alter ego. He is 
 an enthusiastic volunteer, and had he been a soldier would 
 have adorned the profession of arms. He is also a draughts- 
 man of no mean capacity, and thus also was in harmony 
 with one who boasted himself a connoisseur of pictures as 
 well as of violins. It was a singular coincidence that the 
 descendant of the Ipsden smith and they had a grand 
 forge there in the olden days, when the beechen logs served 
 for fuel and coal was a luxury should have set manly
 
 Friends, Fautors, and favorites. 407 
 
 Henry Neville to forge a blade on the stage, and perhaps 
 himself have instructed him how to go to work. Certainly, 
 not merely ' Put Yourself in His Place,' but ' Sera Nim- 
 quam ' also, owed much to this same sterling artist a debt 
 Charles Reade was ever ready to acknowledge in full. 
 
 Mr. Charles Warner and Mr. J. L. Toole were both 
 claimed by our author as, if we may put it so, his selec- 
 tions. The former may be termed fairly one of the big- 
 gest trumps a dramatist ever held in his hand. He im- 
 parted life, vigor, and romance to the character of Tom 
 Robinson, and as Coupeau was phenomenal ; indeed, he 
 not only created the character, but saved Charles Reade's 
 adaptation of ' ISAssommoir.'' As a small token or re- 
 minder of their joint success the author gave' the actor a 
 cup bearing the inscription, "Hoc Carolo Carolus f rater 
 in arte dedit." They were in truth fratres fraterrimi ; yet 
 at the outset the author felt a little bit piqued. " Let 
 them praise Charley Warner as much as they will," he 
 pleaded, "but it is not quite fair altogether to ignore 
 Charley Reade." 
 
 Whether Mr. Toole was indebted to Charles Reade for 
 sponsorship is not quite so clear. That gentleman's first 
 London engagement was under Mrs. Seymour at the St. 
 James' Theatre, so that it would seem likely that the 
 manageress may have been influenced by the judgment 
 of her partner in theatrical speculation. Mr. Toole made 
 a success in " Honor Before Titles," one of our author's least 
 known dramas ; and played Triplet to Mrs. Seymour's 
 Peg Woffington, at Edinburgh. He writes, " I knew 
 Mr. Charles Reade very well, and liked him very much, 
 and I think he liked me. He was greatly in earnest in 
 all his works, and once brought an action for libel against 
 the Morning Advertiser, respecting one of his plays called
 
 408 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 ' Shilly-shally.' He was veiy anxious for me to appear in 
 the witness-box, and give evidence in the dress of the char- 
 acter I acted, and act the scene before the judge and jury ! 
 Of course I did not do so." The more's the pity, we can 
 but remark. The deadly-dulness of the bar witticisms 
 would have been pleasantly relieved by the apparition of 
 Mr. Toole in panoply. 
 
 The circumstances in connection with a letter from Mr. 
 "Wilson Barrett to Charles Reade happen to be of so deli- 
 cate a nature relating in fact to a money question that 
 we feel ourselves unable to publish it. Yet we can but 
 regret our inability to do so, for assuredly a more mag- 
 nanimous and chivalrous communication from manager to 
 author was never penned. This great actor had barely 
 attained his zenith when the terrible blow descended that 
 shattered the artistic life of Charles Reade. It was as a 
 man, and a gentleman therefore, that he knew Mr. Wilson 
 Barrett for the most part yet he lived to see him play 
 and appreciate his genius. 
 
 There remain two histrionic celebrities, each of whom, 
 owing to their Yankee flavor, interested Charles Reade. 
 Mr. Jefferson he styles "a distinguished American actor, 
 known here by his personation of ' Rip Van Winkle ' 
 also a very intelligent man off the stage." Of Mr. Sothern, 
 representative of Lord Dundreary, etc., he writes, " This 
 gentleman is a dry humorist. I believe he professes to 
 mesmerize ; and, in imitation of Davenport Brothers, he 
 can get his hands out of any knot I can tie. His Dun- 
 dreary is true comedy, not farce, as fools fancy. He is as 
 grave as a judge over it, and in that excellent quality a 
 successor to Liston. He plays nothing downright ill, ex- 
 cept his first act of ' David Garrick.' His immobility of 
 countenance during the scene with the merchant is false
 
 Friends^ fautors, and Favorites. 409 
 
 and feeble in itself, and singularly out of character David 
 being historically famous for mobility of countenance and 
 varying expression ; whereas this actor plays that scene 
 with the face of a wooden dolt, though the lines give him 
 every opportunity of changing his expression from grave 
 to gay, from lively to severe." 
 
 Space forbids our handling in detail every member of 
 that brilliant theatrical circle whereof Charles Reade 
 might have boasted, quorum pars magnet, fui. He 
 writhed under Mr. Burnand's euphuistic satire, yet pre- 
 served a genial epistle of his, commencing with " No 
 Larks," as a friendly memory of the buried hatchet. 
 Boddam Donne he defines as a ripe scholar and a good 
 friend; Miss Furtado he praises for her beauty, but blames 
 for an excessive tremolo. Horace Wigan earned the epi- 
 thet "a dry old chip;" on Benjamin Webster he was even 
 more severe: "an admirable actor," he calls him, "when 
 he happens to have studied the words." To Mr. John 
 Clayton he is more civil: "Actor, and a promising one. 
 This young man gets up wonderfully well. As a rule 
 that part of the art is not learned early in an actor's ca- 
 reer. I declare that he must be a painter, he varies his 
 head and face so finely." Miss Ada Cavendish is " an 
 actress of some power, very handsome, a clever woman." 
 Mr. Kendall, "a good actor." Mr. R. Buchanan, "a very 
 clever fellow." Of Mr. Hare he always spoke as of the 
 very truest gentleman who ever enacted the role of gen- 
 tleman on the stage ; and, like the rest of the world, he 
 avowed himself an admirer of that brilliant yet brief me- 
 teor, Miss Ada Isaacs Menken, as thus : " A clever woman, 
 with beautiful eyes very dark blue. A bad actress, but 
 made a hit by playing Mazeppa in tights. She played one 
 scene in ' Black-eyed Susan ' with true feeling. A triga- 
 18
 
 410 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 mist, or quadrigamist, her last husband, I believe, was 
 John Ileenan, the prize-fighter. I saw him fight Tom 
 King. Menken talked well and was very intelligent. She 
 spoiled her looks off the stage with white lead, or what- 
 ever it is these idiots of women wear. She did not rouge, 
 but played some devilry with her glorious eyes, which 
 altogether made her spectral. She wrote poetry. It was 
 as bad as other people's would have been worse if it 
 could. Jlequiescat in pace. Goodish heart. Loose con- 
 duct. Gone !" 
 
 A lover of pictures, Charles Reade was perhaps too dog- 
 matic in his ideas to assimilate much with painters. He 
 has written of Sir Frederick Leighton that he is one of 
 the best-read men of the age. He described Sir J. E. 
 Millais as the English Titian, and Mr. O'Neill won his fa- 
 vor. In his last years he gave a commission to an Italian 
 lady to paint on the lines of Gainesborough's Blue-boy 
 a portrait of his great nephew, Master Scott Reade; and 
 was annoyed that the hanging committee failed to recog- 
 nize its merit. Frankly, he was by no means easy for a 
 painter to please, and in his musical notions approximated 
 Philistinism. He cared for none but broad effects, and 
 upheld Handel as the Shakespeare of music. Art, from 
 his point of view, is not for higher natures, but for all ; 
 and what transcends the comprehension of the average 
 human being and fails therefore to influence, was, from 
 his point of view, valueless. Hence he underrated the 
 genius of composers, and had few musical friends. 
 
 Victor Hugo appreciated his genius, none the less, per- 
 haps, because he wrote in French as well as in English, so 
 also did Brisebarre, Maquet, and Zola. In his guard-book 
 is a very touching letter from Hugo, ending, "Je salue 
 votre noble esprit." In this volume also he cherished the
 
 Friends, Fautors, and Favorites. 411 
 
 autographs of "my invaluable friend," Rev. J. Gibson, 
 minister of Kirkhope, of Ham Friswell, with a sketch of 
 Mrs. Seymour, Lords Hartington and Newry, Mr. W. H. 
 Smith, the poet Southey, Lord Townshend a very benev- 
 olent gentleman Artemus Ward, Mr. Smith " The Prince 
 of Publishers " Dean Gaisford, Mr. Hollingsheacl, Arch- 
 bishop Sumner, Mr. James Fields, of Boston " and a very 
 clever writer, let me tell you " General Meredith Read 
 " my American cousin " James Lambert " The Hero 
 and the Martyr " Mr. John Blackwood, Miss Dickens, Mr. 
 Dicey, George Vining, Mrs. Charles Matthews, Buckstone, 
 Bernal Osborne, Webster, Mr. Trubner, "worthy Mr. 
 Plimsoll, who deserves a civic crown," Baron Grant, Al- 
 derman Mechi, Mr. C. Thorne, the American actor " with 
 an admirable gift of representing suppressed emotion " 
 Mr. Henry Morford, an American journalist "I think 
 he once told me he had had eleven bones broken, first and 
 last " Baron Tauchnitz, Mr. James Rice, Shirley Brooks, 
 dating from " Noah's Ark, second deluge " Mrs. Leh- 
 mann, a daughter of Robert Chambers on the death of 
 Charles Dickens Dr. Bandinel, the Bodleian Librarian 
 at Oxford, Mr. Henry Matthews, Q. C., Alfred Wigan, 
 Mr. Forbes Robertson, Reverdy Johnson, Lord Shaftes- 
 bury, and last, not least, a letter from his venerable mother 
 in her ninetieth year. The book may fitly be described 
 as a curiosity of epistolary literature.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 IT was on a lovely June afternoon in 1879 that a cab 
 drove up hurriedly to the portal of a house in Claverton 
 Street, and from thence emerged a tall, handsome gentle- 
 man, white bearded, but erect and picturesque, bearing in 
 his hands several colossal volumes. In another minute 
 he had ascended rather breathlessly the staircase, and 
 greeted affectionately his niece, Mrs. Compton Reade. 
 
 "You are the musician of the family," he said this 
 lady studied under Otto Goldsmith at the Royal Acade- 
 "and I have come to requisition your services." 
 
 The colossal volumes proved to be "Lcs Chansons de 
 Noel," a superb collection of all the Yuletide music of 
 Fair France, carols, whose origin is lost in the obscurity 
 of remote ages, tender, sweet, and romantic, if at times 
 crude as the Gregorian plain-song or the ancient Greek 
 modes. 
 
 " We are to have a carol sung in the snow," he said, 
 "with harp accompaniment; and now to select one." 
 
 The reference, we need not add, was to his forthcoming 
 drama, entitled "Drink" already in rehearsal at the 
 Princess' Theatre. 
 
 His niece's fingers and wits were soon at work. To 
 make a selection from some hundreds of pastoral chan- 
 sons, was no easy task. A quick instinct, however, and 
 an eye trained to read music at sight, rapidly winnowed
 
 Dead-Sea, Fruit. 413 
 
 those utterly unsuitable, whether from peculiarity of 
 rhythm or lack of melody. After about three hours' stiff 
 work the choice was reduced to three, and eventually a 
 strain selected, which, though simple, has all the intense 
 charm of true pathos. 
 
 " The very thing," cried Charles Reade, ecstatically. 
 
 It was a curious coincidence that Gounod's "Messe 
 Solennelle " was at the moment unknown in this country, 
 if written at all. One among the gems perhaps the gem 
 par excellence of that sublime composition, is " The Bene- 
 dictus ;" and we need say no more than that the resem- 
 blance between that dulcet melody and the " Chanson de 
 Noel " selected by Mrs. Compton Reade for the snow 
 scene in "Drink" is, to say the least, remarkable. 
 
 Having further begged for a march from her facile pen 
 for the entr'acte music, Charles Reade insisted that his 
 niece should attend the final rehearsal. " They will make 
 a bungle of it if they can," he pleaded. Accordingly we 
 all appeared at the Princess' Theatre on the Saturday 
 afternoon, the piece being set down for Whit-Monday. 
 There was the usual confusion : the property-man invis- 
 ible ; the minor players, apparently, by no means perfect 
 in their parts ; positions to be studied ; while the lessee 
 wanted a harmonium in lieu of a harp, which would have 
 wrecked the effect of our lovely " Chanson de Noel." They 
 manage anything vocal, outside the range of noise and 
 clap-trap, infamously on the stage, having no more idea 
 of part-singing than pigs. However, somehow the rehear- 
 sal was got through ; but Charles Reade, who dined with 
 us, seemed fairly out of spirits. 
 
 " Seymour is ill," he moaned, " and for the first time 
 can't be present at my first night. A bad omen !" 
 
 We who had witnessed what Mr. Warner could do, and
 
 414 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 foresaw the surprise in store for the audience, tried to 
 cheer him. In vain. 
 
 Monday came. The house was crammed never fuller, 
 if so full. There had been a little difference behind the 
 scenes between the two ladies who, on the lines of the 
 play, were bound to souse each other in the wash-house 
 scene, neither being ardently ambitious of a drenching, 
 yet each feeling morally convinced that the other ought 
 to submit to immersion. If both these admirable people 
 shirked that terrible ordeal, the curtain would fall for the 
 first act on a coup manque. We watched with breathless 
 interest. 
 
 Jam satis. One of them escaped the soapsuds, but the 
 other caught her avalanche full. That was enough for 
 the gallery. The spectacle of one of her majesty's ser- 
 vants dripping on the stage with real water exhilarated a 
 Whit-Monday gallery. There was a roar for encore. 
 
 From that point the success of the play was assured. 
 The audience having got itself into a good temper, be- 
 came first fascinated, then thrilled; and when Mr. Warner 
 enacted the incurable drunkard battling with temptation, 
 yet ever yielding, and at last descending, as it were, to a 
 living hell, every one felt that this was not a play merely 
 for laughter it was horrible to the verge of disgust ; but 
 its realism approached the sublime. 
 
 Those who had seen " L'Assommoir " at the Ambigu 
 Theatre, confessed at once that the English adapter, in 
 eliminating three fourths of the filth, had idealized mag- 
 nificently the French author's drama; and when Mr. Gooch, 
 the lessee, came on to tell how this version was neither a 
 piracy nor a theft, but produced with the sanction of M. 
 Zola, who shared in the results, there remained nothing to 
 dim the lustre of the triumph, except the one sad fact of
 
 Dead-Sea Fruit. 415 
 
 Mrs. Seymour's absence, and that to Charles Reade spoiled 
 it all. At the moment he may have striven to lull his ap- 
 prehensions; yet because his great friend was lying ill he 
 could not enjoy it. " Drink " was infinitely his greatest 
 success in the metropolis, from a pecuniary point of view. 
 Thousands came rolling in where before he had received 
 but tens. He recouped himself for a fraction of those vast 
 losses by theatrical speculation which he himself set down 
 at an almost fabulous total, for he shared the venture with 
 Mr. Gooch, who proved a most excellent partner. But the 
 turn of the wheel came too late. It seemed almost to 
 mock his misery. 
 
 More than a year previous to this date indeed, as early 
 as March, 1878 we find in his diary a long account of 
 Mrs. Seymour's ailments. " I have nearly lost poor Sey- 
 mour," he writes, " by internal gout. She had a month 
 of agony followed by long prostration. It appears to have 
 been caused by many worries, and by applying cold water 
 to an attack of podagra. The gout was cured thereby in 
 a few hours, but the malady resented this and crept to the 
 vitals. Her predecessor, Betterton, is said to have killed 
 himself in forty-eight hours by this treatment. He was 
 implored to play for some friend's benefit while laboring 
 under gout got rid of it with cold water, acted, and died. 
 
 "Seymour's natural inability to eat was against her. 
 She was exhausted by pain, and not supported by nutri- 
 ment. Tried homoeopathy first; then allopathy. The gout 
 was on one occasion relieved by belladonna, administered 
 by me, at her request, not in a large dose. 
 
 " She was attended twice a day by Quain, who refused 
 all fee. Her illness showed this, at all events, what love 
 and respect she is held in by all who know her, women es- 
 pecially, who love her because she is singularly free from
 
 416 Memoir of Charles lleade. 
 
 the vices of her sex, vanity, and malicious babbling. I 
 took her down to Brighton, but it did her little good; in- 
 deed, she had a slight relapse there. Since then she has 
 had short attacks, but she has returned to the theatre." 
 
 By the summer of 1879 this terrible disease, warded off 
 only by violent medicines of the kind that cure only to 
 kill, had gained upon her. If she had had her way it is 
 tolerably certain that " Drink " would neither have been 
 written nor played; and it was her scepticism as regards 
 its success that helped to damp Charles Reade's spirits. 
 When, moreover, the verdict went in favor of the play 
 unanimously, she was too ill to rejoice. Her countenance 
 changed. The intense sufferings she underwent warned 
 her of the approaching end. There was life in her body, 
 but no hope. 
 
 The writer of these lines essayed to cheer her albeit 
 ineffectually. She begged for new-laid eggs from the 
 country and these he was able to bring her yet when 
 they came she could not touch them. 
 
 " She is a dying woman," moaned Charles Reade in 
 her hearing. 
 
 That, alas, was true. 
 
 For a long time past this lady, to the outside world a 
 Bohemian pure and simple, had been engaged in works of 
 charity unknown to a soul but herself. She had saved 
 a little money; and, oddly enough, though never a church- 
 goer, sympathized very acutely with the struggles of the 
 inferior clergy as they are termed, work in this world 
 being a symptom of inferiority of the Church of Eng- 
 land, who were laboring among the London poor on sti- 
 pends such as noblemen's flunkeys would have rejected 
 with contempt. She had a very sharp eye of her own, 
 and could tell accurately whether a man in a black coat
 
 Dead-Sea Fruit. 417 
 
 was a wolf in sheep's clothing, or genuine; and her plan 
 was to forward small sums all she could afford anony- 
 mously to the latter variety of parson. Like many of her 
 type she focussed her mind's eye on the philanthropic as- 
 pect of Christianity, and further deemed the poor gentle- 
 man who endures in silence more worthy of support than 
 the howling proletarian or yelping mendicant. Perhaps 
 she was in a measure right albeit charity should know 
 no class. Certainly her benevolence did her great credit, 
 and afforded indirect evidence of a latent belief in re- 
 ligious principles, wherewith otherwise she had but little 
 affinity. Feeling the sands running out, and possibly re- 
 membering with some compunction the uncompromising 
 verities enforced by her saintly brother-in-law, the minis- 
 ter of Kirkhope, she startled yet gratified Charles Reade 
 by requesting him to bring a clergyman to her bed- 
 side. 
 
 Here, however, a difficulty presented itself in limine. 
 They did not know their vicar, and the probabilities were 
 strongly against a total stranger bearing comfort to a dy- 
 ing woman. At this juncture a happy thought flashed 
 across Charles Reade's mind. He had a slight acquaint- 
 ance with the Vicar of Willesden. In him he recognized 
 a gentleman of warm sympathies and liberal, though 
 strictly orthodox, views. Thither he went as a suppliant. 
 
 Not in vain. Mr. Wharton was compelled, by the rule 
 of the Church, to ask the permission of the incumbent, in 
 whose parish Albert Gate is situate, to visit Mrs. Seymour. 
 This being promptly and kindly given, the dying sufferer 
 was consoled in her last moments by a gentle and earnest 
 voice. With her Charles Reade received the Sacrament 
 for the first time after a lapse of many years; and she 
 passed away calmly, her last words being commendatory 
 18*
 
 418 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 of those among Charles Reade's relatives who, in her judg- 
 ment, loved him best. 
 
 It was an awful blow. No words that could be penned 
 are able to describe its force and intensity. To tell the 
 tale of the mighty agony of a majestic spirit would need 
 the genius of an _<3schylus, or the brain that could con- 
 ceive a Lear. The man's mute dignity was heartrending 
 to witness. His pathetic eye seemed to say, " Look at a 
 broken heart." Brother Compton, his playmate, compan- 
 ion, and counsellor, was at once by his side. Mr. Listen 
 Reade hurried across from Germany. We do not exag- 
 gerate when we affirm that the gravest anxiety weighed 
 on all at the moment as to whether he would survive the 
 bitter ordeal of the funeral, for he was not only stunned 
 and bruised in mind, but in body also so out of health as 
 to render a collapse more than likely. 
 
 By the kindness of Mr. Wharton a last resting-place for 
 Mrs. Seymour was provided at Willesden. She begged to 
 be buried in a churchyard, and not in a cemetery a very 
 proper request, and quite in consonance with common- 
 sense, inasmuch as the future of our cemeteries teems with 
 very unpleasant possibilities. Her desire was of course 
 law, and she lies undisturbed at Willesden. 
 
 The funeral demonstrated precisely Charles Rcade's es- 
 timate of her popularity. There were at least six times 
 as many theatrical people gathered round her grave as 
 around that of Charles Reade, five years later. The whole 
 profession seemed to be present. She was of course one of 
 them, on the same plane; whereas, if we may say so with- 
 out offence, Charles Reade towered above them, as the eter- 
 nal firmament above the ephemeral butterfly. Their hearts 
 were more with her than with him. She was their com- 
 rade, and it was well they assembled en masse to honor her.
 
 Dead-Sea Fruit. 419 
 
 The scene \vas painful in the extreme. Supported by 
 the loving arm of his brother Compton, Charles Reade 
 tottered behind the bier, his bosom heaving with sobs, his 
 frame bent. He was almost beside himself with emotion ; 
 and had not his brother gripped him firmly, would have 
 flung himself on the coffin, for the grave was open, and 
 the sarcophagus of Mull granite, now shrouding it, had 
 not been erected. The writer has performed the rites of 
 the Church many hundred times, yet never has taken part 
 in a ceremonial so pitiably tragical. It was curious to 
 note how the actors and actresses, accustomed as they are 
 to simulate mental torture, seemed to recoil from this ex- 
 hibition of it in stern reality. He passed through their 
 ranks and they were all familiar faces as one in a 
 dream rather we should say, as one expecting to die. 
 
 Death all but supervened shortly afterwards. The ac- 
 tion of his heart became irregular, and to such an extent 
 that, but for the genius of Mr. Goodsall, whose incessant 
 care exceeded all praise, it must have ceased. His brother 
 shifted his quarters to Albert Gate, acted as his secretary 
 and amanuensis, strove gently to distract his attention 
 from the open wound, and, as all will testify, proved a 
 lenitive influence. The drainage, unfortunately, of Albert 
 Gate was in so defective a condition that he fell ill, and 
 his place was subsequently supplied by various members 
 of the family. The home, however, where in Mrs. Sey- 
 mour's society the sufferer had passed so many days of 
 happiness and contentment, was in itself an aggravation 
 of his sorrow. Every chair, table, book, reminded him of 
 his pain ; and in the end he could bear the sight of these 
 memories no more, and moved to his brother's residence 
 between Shepherd's Bush and Acton. 
 
 "I have lost," he writes, " the one creature who thought
 
 420 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 more of my interest, health, and happiness than her own 
 a poor old man of sixty-five ! Unable to live alone in the 
 house where I was once so happy with her, and unable to 
 find a companion I could endure in her home, I have for 
 a long time slept at my brother's house and only visited 
 my own house for three or four hours every day. The 
 drive in and out has, I think, been good for my health ; 
 and the society of my nieces, who are very kind, has at 
 all events often broken my deep sense of solitude and 
 utter desolation. Even in that house I have many par- 
 oxysms of grief, but I have also intermissions. This day 
 I have mustered up resolution to sleep here" (at Albert 
 Gate). "I am sitting in the studio, a large room, silent as 
 the grave, though in the heart of London. The great 
 simple fireplace she planned to heat this cold north room 
 does its work nobly ; but, ah me ! Ah me ! Her seat by 
 that fireplace is empty, empty forever ! 
 
 "March 16, 1880. Alone in the world this six months, 
 after pining to a skeleton" (too true !) "for the loss of my 
 darling, and two or three ineffectual attempts to live in 
 the house where she made me happy. I come over this 
 day from Coningham Road to try and spend a night here. 
 My heart is like lead. I no longer ignore God, as I used. 
 On the contrary, I pray hard, and give money to poor peo- 
 ple, and try to be God's servant. But, oh, it is so hard, 
 and impalpable, and the world so full of vanity by com- 
 parison. 
 
 " Yet my only time intermissions of misery have been 
 while doing a little act of good, or communing with my 
 friend, the Rev. Charles Graham, who is an Apostle; and 
 I can believe that God, pitying my tears and prayers, has 
 given me his affectionate friendship to console me and 
 temper the wind. Oh, to think that for five-and-twenty
 
 Dead-Sea Fruit. 421 
 
 years I was blessed with Laura Seymour, and that now 
 for the rest of my pilgrimage she is quite, quite gone. 
 Not one look from her sweet eyes not one smile Oh, 
 my heart ! my heart ! I am wretched. I have lost my 
 love of the world. I have not acquired the love of God. 
 And, I have no companion. My brother Compton tried 
 to live with me and could not. The beastly drains made 
 him so ill ; he nearly died. 
 
 " My dogs, and the portrait of my lost darling they 
 are all I have. Ah, would to God I could add that I have 
 my Saviour. 
 
 " I believe he is here, and pities me, but from want of 
 faith I cannot feel his presence. O God, increase my faith! 
 
 " Two great successes at the Princess' Theatre ' Nev- 
 er Too Late to Mend ' and ' Drink ' have improved my 
 fortune ; but I really think have added to my grief espe- 
 cially the latter, which my darling never could enjoy for 
 pain and suffering, though she would ask for the receipts 
 and be pleased in the intervals of her pain. 
 
 " My poor lamb has also left me all her savings my 
 tears stream afresh when I think of it. Every shilling of 
 that sacred money is devoted to God and the poor, and 
 even in that cause it is wormwood and agony to me to 
 spend it. 
 
 "God's will be done. I am very wretched; but, once 
 more, God's will be done. 
 
 "August 11, 1880. That attempt to live on in my own 
 house failed, and I returned to Coningham Road" (his 
 brother Compton's residence) " to sleep. 
 
 "Between that date and this I visited Ipsden and Mar- 
 gate, where God enabled me to be of service in spiritual 
 things to my dying brother" (William). "Also to St. Leon- 
 ards, where my old friends the S e's received me coldly;
 
 422 Memoir r>f Charles Reade. 
 
 and I soon left, feeling more than ever that I had lost my 
 one constant and unselfish friend. 
 
 "I am now making another attempt to live here" (at 
 Albert Gate), "my fourth or fifth. I have kept my diary 
 more regularly than this, and written myself down the 
 poor reptile I am in all that pertains to godliness. 
 
 "I write this in my studio. It looks north, and is al- 
 ways more depressing than my drawing-room. Mem. : to 
 work in my drawing-room, until I can stand this large 
 grotto better. 
 
 "Oct. 16, 1880. I remember that when I was a little 
 boy everybody noticed my extraordinary helplessness. 
 My dear sister Julia noticed it particularly at Sandgate, 
 seeing how feebly I got off the coach, like one that ex- 
 pected to be lifted down. Once I fell off a coach into a 
 man's arms, as I was getting up. 
 
 " Of late years I used to hang fire at any good or useful 
 thing, until she helped and drove me. I could not put my 
 papers to rights on the table without her help. 
 
 "I can't do it, now she is gone, without help. I begin, 
 but cannot effect it. It is the same in the things of God. 
 I wish in my weak way to serve him, and do good to his 
 people. But I hang fire. I don't trouble about it. I 
 wait till the deserving poor shall seek me which is just 
 what the deserving poor don't do. Impetuous in all tem- 
 pers and desires, I am so languid in good. 
 
 " Here is all prepared for Laura Seymour's dole, yet I 
 lack energy to go and draw the money and complete. 
 Death, or loss of reason, will, I fear, take me postponing 
 eorne good thing. Why don't I trouble in good acts, as 
 she did ? 
 
 "Why? Because my heart is not with God. 'Oh, 
 quicken thou me according to thy word!' "
 
 Dead-Sea Fruit. 423 
 
 These sorrowful extracts reveal the writer's mind. In 
 the first poignant ecstasy of bereavement he had leaned 
 helplessly on the brother who had been throughout near- 
 est and dearest to him. There he found such sympathy 
 as was helpful so far, at all events, as human warmth 
 can help a broken heart. Throughout the long nights his 
 nieces watched by his bedside, for the paroxysms he al- 
 ludes to were violent and overwhelming, and would arouse 
 the entire household. The suggestion on the part of one 
 who has publicly claimed the honor of Charles Reade's 
 friendship, that he was suffering from monomania, may 
 be dismissed as inexact if not insulting. Acute sorrow 
 cannot be designated mania, even though it be associated 
 with religious emotion. In evidence of this we may point 
 to the sentence wherein the sufferer dreads lest he should 
 lose his reason the strain being so great. Such fear is 
 in itself rational, and proves mental balance. No mad- 
 man ever yet feared that he might be going mad indeed, 
 the insane believe firmly in their sanity. Here, as else- 
 where, the gentleman in question has forgotten what is 
 due to the memory of one with whom he is anxious to as- 
 sert the tie of friendship. 
 
 It was his brother Compton who introduced him to the 
 divine whom he styles an apostle. Opinions differ; and 
 the estimate one man adopts of another depends largely 
 on the standpoint of each. We do not expect a licensed 
 victualler to uphold a temperance lecturer as a model of 
 all the virtues, nor an experimental physiologist to bless 
 the antivivisection society. Making every allowance for 
 the antagonism subsistent between an actor and a repre- 
 sentative of Calvinism, it was hardly equitable on the 
 part of the soi-disant friendly pen which gibbeted Charles 
 Reade as a lunatic to malign his spiritual consoler as an
 
 424 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 obscure Nonconformist. The Rev. Charles Graham may 
 not enjoy the notoriety of a player of the third, or the ce- 
 lebrity of a player of the first, rank, but he happens to be 
 the recognized representative of the established Church of 
 Scotland in London, and as such is not wholly unknown; 
 while on the other side of that thin dividing line, the river 
 Tweed, he is as much of a Conformist as our gracious 
 Sovereign Lady hei'self. It may have been Charles Reade's 
 Weakness of intellect, but he certainly expressed himself 
 astonished speaking from an Oxonian point of view at 
 this clergyman's storehouse of learning. Mr. Graham's 
 age, his intellect, his character, his earnest eloquence 
 above all the signal service he rendered a great and sor- 
 rowing soul might have shielded him from a stolid sneer 
 and that too in a magazine issuing from New Burlington 
 Street. But enough. By all, except perhaps the more 
 lubricious clement of the dramatic profession, the written 
 encomium of the author will be held to outweigh the 
 censure of Temple Bar ; and, apart from Charles Reade, 
 a communion which boasts the foremost theologian of 
 this age Professor Drummond can very well afford to 
 ignore this type of assailant. Unable, as he puts it, after 
 reiterated attempts, to endure either the solitude or asso- 
 ciations of Albert Gate; and needing, over and above the 
 unremitting attentions of Mr. Listen Reade, constant care 
 a task for which his nieces were by experience well quali- 
 fied being also anxious for the society occasionally of his 
 good friend, Mr. Graham, Charles Reade proposed to his 
 brother what may be termed an act of mutual self-denial. 
 He had Albert Gate on his hands, but would not live there. 
 His brother had built for himself a model residence, suited 
 to the requirements of his family. This last was hardly 
 spacious enough to meet the necessities of both brothers.
 
 Dead-Sea Fruit. 425 
 
 He proposed, therefore, that they should each give up his 
 house take on long lease a pair of semi-detached villas, 
 nearer London, and by removing the wall of partition be- 
 tween the gardens create one lai'ge lawn. After sundry 
 alterations this plan took effect, and the brothers moved 
 to their two residences, dos d dos, but communicating by 
 means of a veranda. 
 
 The sacrifice was all on one side; but the elder brother 
 had the profound satisfaction of witnessing its happy re- 
 sults. Charles Reade was aroused to interest by the 
 excitement of moving. A foe to paint, and a lover of 
 varnish, he had all his doors and wainscots scraped, and 
 displayed the grain of the wood. He bustled about, fitted 
 up his new home with every comfort, and actually began 
 to put on flesh. He started a menagerie of Belgian hares, 
 which fraternized quite comfortably with Mrs. Seymour's 
 pair of toy terriers ; and the passers-by on the tram-cars 
 wondered to behold what seemed to be a warren in a Lon- 
 don suburb. In the summer tennis occupied a large slice 
 of the day; and his relations, at all events, hoped he had 
 settled down calmly to a new life or rather to have re- 
 verted to that of his boyhood and young manhood. Mr. 
 Graham was his chief consolation beyond his own pre- 
 cincts, and within them he seemed tranquillized by the 
 devoted affection of his brother. 
 
 A public charge of monomania religious monomania, 
 it is styled, but the adjective hardly qualifies the indict- 
 ment having been preferred against Charles Reade, we 
 deem it right to adduce evidence beyond that of ourselves 
 to demonstrate its falsity. Mr. Graham writes, "The 
 statement of Mr. Charles Reade being ' a monomaniac on 
 the subject of religion' is utterly without foundation. 
 Monomania, according to the definition of medical sci-
 
 420 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 ence, means ' disordered or erroneous persuasions of the 
 mind on one subject.' I conversed with Mr. Reade more 
 than one hundred times on the subject of religion, and 
 never detected in him any ' disordered or erroneous per- 
 suasion ' in relation to it. On the contrary, I have always 
 been impressed with the soundness of his judgment on ev- 
 ery subject within the wide range of our conversations. 
 More than a dozen times we met at my house, and entered 
 into conversation on religious and other questions with 
 medical men and ministers of the gospel, and all were 
 charmed with his superior intelligence and with the sound- 
 ness of his views, as well as the sincerity of his heart. If 
 my esteemed friend was a monomaniac on the subject of 
 religion, I have never met a man of sound mind upon it." 
 This is witness. Now for its corroboration. Charles 
 Reade writes to Mr. Graham as follows: 
 
 " I have never been downright ill since my darling died until Monday 
 night last. Then my chronic cough became very violent, with headache 
 and depression. My brother, who has kept me company in this sad home, 
 left me ; and I was not only ill, but quite alone, in a house where hitherto 
 a loving nurse had hovered over me in sickness. This overpowered me so 
 that, I am ashamed to say, I prayed to die. 
 
 " In sheer terror I have left home, and come to my brother for a day or 
 two. 
 
 " Alas, I am not Christian, but Famt-heart ; or, rather, like Christiana, 
 I need a Great Heart to cling to in this bitter and complicated trial. 
 
 " Forgive the egotism which intrudes its woes upon you. Those who 
 live for others arc soon singled out and taken advantage of. 
 
 " Yours, gratefully and ashamed, CHARLES RKADE." 
 
 Again: 
 
 " DEAR MR. GRAHAM, I was sorry not to see you on the eve of your 
 journey ; however, I hope my good wishes caught you flying, and that you 
 are being refreshed in body and spirit by this visit to your native country. 
 You were certainly being overworked here, and some relief of tension nec- 
 essary.
 
 Dead-Sea Fruit. 427 
 
 ' Neque semper arcum 
 Tendit Apostle.' 
 
 " Your return, however, will be welcome both to the many who, like 
 myself, love you in private, and to the congregation of Avenue Road chapel. 
 " Looking forward to your return, I am, my dear friend and consoler, 
 " Ever yours affectionately, CHARLES READE." 
 
 Again, in reference to the above-mentioned move: 
 
 " DEAR MR. GRAHAM, Cough gone, and pain in my chest much abated, 
 but this is the 14th day of close imprisonment. I am weary of inaction 
 and confinement. 
 
 " Do you remember the character of Mr. Weary o' the World, in the 
 ' Pilgrim's Progress ?' I seem to myself to resemble him more than I do 
 Christian, or Faithful, or Hopeful. 
 
 "We have offered Mr. B 120 a year for his two houses on a long 
 
 lease. Thereupon he sent his agent to ask my brother to call on him. 
 
 My brother excused himself from doing that. Then Mr. B wrote and 
 
 declined. 
 
 " Till this letter came I was beginning to think it was ordained I should 
 leave my old abode, and all associations not worth cherishing, and begin 
 life again at sixty-seven on the Uxbridge Road. 
 
 " Now I hardly know what to think. 
 
 " At the request of a lady in Melrose Gardens I sent a trifle to a poor 
 clergyman in Wales. He has not acknowledged receipt. Should be glad 
 to know whether he had got it. I do not like to write and ask him. 
 
 " It seemed odd not to acknowledge a donation. 
 
 "Yours affectionately, CHARLES READE." 
 
 The above letters, written at long intervals, fail to give 
 the smallest support to the slander of monomania. The next 
 will be read by some with contempt, by others with ap- 
 probation; but by all, except the most exacerbated, with 
 respect for the writer's sincerity : 
 
 " 8 CLARENDON VILLAS, MARGATE. 
 
 " DEAR MR. GRAHAM, I arrived here at seven, and found my brother " 
 (William Barrington) " pale and emaciated, and by loss of teeth somewhat
 
 428 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 inarticulate. He felt my coming, which was a comfort, for the sight of 
 the place has set my heart bleeding as freely as ever. I did propose to go 
 to Hastings to-morrow, but I have postponed leaving this place for the fol- 
 lowing reasons : here is a dying Christian surrounded by living Christians. 
 Yet death and eternity have never been mentioned during all this sickness." 
 (We have reason to believe that here he was in m-or^we give his letter 
 simply as an index of his mind, and with apologies to those whom with 
 well-meant zeal he takes to task.) " All for want of a little courage. Now, 
 as I earnestly hope people will talk about nothing else in my dying cars, 
 I have taken upon me, though a very poor Christian compared with others 
 in this house, to break through this unhappy reticence. I have spoken to 
 him of his death as probable. I have examined him as to his condition, 
 and read to him a selection from the service called ' The Visitation of the 
 Sick ;' and I find him so humble, penitent, and full of faith that I have pro- 
 posed to him to take the Communion with me after preparation. His par- 
 ish priest, who is zealous, will be at his bedside at four this afternoon, and 
 so I do hope the ice will be broken. 
 
 " This will postpone my visit to St. Leonards. With kind love to you and 
 yours, Yours very sincerely, CHARLES READE. 
 
 " Lovely weather sunset a hundred colors !" 
 
 The above offers a complete vindication, except to those 
 jaundiced minds who, like dumb, driven cattle, focus their 
 eyes on the ground, and, themselves never looking up- 
 ward, decry all religious emotion as insanity, and all re- 
 ligious conviction as imbecility. 
 
 But enough of small slander. Suffice it, that during the 
 most acute period, when his friends, who were eye-wit- 
 nesses of such torture as only the grandest mind could en- 
 dure without lesion, had only too grave cause to apprehend 
 the loss of his reason, he was as yet a stranger to Mr. Gra- 
 ham. When, subsequently, he came within range of that 
 divine's beneficent influence, his spirit by degrees calmed; 
 and never during life was his brain more cool, more judg- 
 matical, better tempered to endure the strain of external 
 phenomena.
 
 Dead-Sea Fruit. 429 
 
 Of his great philanthropic work between the years 
 1879-1883, it is not for us to speak particularly. "What 
 he had inherited from Mrs. Seymour he distributed with 
 his own hand and much also of his own small fortune, 
 his donations in one year amounting to the large total of 
 3000. Cases have been publicly cited of his delicate lib- 
 erality. They could be multiplied almost indefinitely. 
 
 On one appeal for alms from an actor he wrote: 
 
 " Fatal procrastination ! I meant to have given this 
 poor fellow the money he asked, but he died before I could 
 reach him confound it all !" 
 
 Was that monomania f
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 VIA CALCANDA. 
 
 AT the close of 1881 "William Barrington Reade passed 
 away; his eldest son, Win wood, had succumbed some six 
 years previously to disease contracted in Ashantee; his 
 successor, therefore, as Squire of Ipsden, was his second 
 son, Henry St. John Reade, successively head boy of Ton- 
 bridge, scholar of University College, Oxford, captain of 
 the Oxford eleven, and first-class man. This gentleman, 
 who married the granddaughter of Dr. Vincent, Dean of 
 Westminster, had chosen the scholastic profession, and 
 galvanized the Grocers Company's group of schools at 
 Oundle, from a paltry handful of thirty boys to a big 
 public school nearly ten times that number. On attain- 
 ing the dignity of squire he, however, amidst loud regrets, 
 resigned his post of pedagogue, and organized a huge 
 housewarming at Ipsden. 
 
 Thirty - two descendants of venerable John Reade met 
 on that happy occasion. Of this company Charles Reade 
 was, of course, the cynosure. Ancient rustics, who re- 
 tained vivid recollections of "Master Chawse," came to 
 pay their respects to the silver-bearded author. There 
 was a cricket match improvised, and other homely festivi- 
 ties ; while, to tell the boys and girls something of their 
 origin, the drawing-room tables were covered with the 
 records of the Reades of a remote past. There, in black 
 letter, a terra incognita to the eyes of all but the instruct-
 
 Via Calcanda. 431 
 
 ed, were the title - deeds of the manors conveyed by one 
 Andlett of Abingdon, reputed to be King Hal's barber, 
 to William Reade of Beedon. Three hundred and fifty 
 years had passed since then, with many vicissitudes for 
 the race. There, too, was the inventory of Catherine 
 Reade's furniture, when in the reign of Edward VI. she 
 brought her husband, a certain Mr. Thomas Vachell, of 
 papistical proclivities, to live at Ipsden. There were the 
 letters of the cavalier Edward when locked up in Oxford 
 Castle for debt, and much of strange interest, though of 
 later date. 
 
 " Alas !" sighed the successful author, as he perused 
 these records, " that I should have done so little for the 
 family!" 
 
 The said family happens to be one of the very few re- 
 maining which held a territorial position antecedently to 
 the Wars of the Roses. Mr. Evelyn Shu-ley omitted it from 
 his catalogue the murderous maniac, who represented the 
 senior branch having, just before the publication of the 
 said book, aliened Beedon, which had been in the posses- 
 sion of the family for more than five centuries, and with 
 that the ruins of Barton Court, a hallowed memorial of the 
 bravery of Sir Compton Reade. Mr. Shirley, however 
 although, of course, he would not include Ipsden in his 
 list, it having been purchased a few years after the arbi- 
 trary chronological limit he fixed omitted to take into 
 account the estate at Taynton, which at the moment re- 
 mained the property of Sir John Chandos Reade, and had 
 been in the family before the reign of Henry VI. There 
 was cause enough for Charles Reade's deep - heaved sigh. 
 Beedon had gone to a banker, and Dunstewe, renamed 
 in Charles II. 's time, by Sir John Reade of Brocket Bar- 
 ton, in honor of the greater Barton which lay in ruins to
 
 432 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 a brewer. Brocket bad passed to the descendants of Sir 
 John Brocket's land-agent ; and Sbipton, the royal resi- 
 dence, with the " ancient inheritance of Taynton," by the 
 will of the said homicidal Sir John Chandos, to his butler. 
 Boarstal was the property of strangers, and thus, of all 
 the manors, Ipsden alone remained. Little by little in the 
 lapse of centuries the race, once so opulent and powerful, 
 had been dwindling into insignificance; no marvel, there- 
 fore, Charles Reade regretted that, like his father, he had 
 avoided a political career, and thereby lost the chance of 
 rehabilitating the old name. 
 
 It was a bright gathering for the children, yet to the 
 seniors sorrowful. At the open doors of the old house 
 there seemed to enter familiar faces and forms the ven- 
 erable squire and his courtly wife; sister Ellin or; young 
 Allen Gardiner, Julia's handsome son; Anna, doomed, as 
 Mrs. R. A. J. Drummond, to face the fire of the mutineers 
 in India. The shadow of sorrow seemed almost to pass 
 over the scene in anticipation, for the reign of Henry St. 
 John Reade at Ipsden was destined to be but brief, and 
 the sounds of rejoicing but the prelude of the death wail, 
 to be heard only too soon. 
 
 It was now three summers since* the decease of Mrs. 
 Seymour had, as it were, dashed the pen from Charles 
 Reade's hand. Messrs. Scribner, through Mr. "Warne, 
 offered him 4000 for a novel and his nephew pressed 
 him to write fiction in a serious vein but the answer was, 
 " Why should I ?" The theatrical people came buzzing 
 about him with the design of inveigling him in some spec- 
 ulation, but to them he was deaf. He had, as he phrased 
 it to Mr. Graham, another Master, and his self-imposed 
 task of almoner-general cheered and invigorated him. It 
 is a fact -that, as he played tennis on the lawn at Ipsden,
 
 Via Calcanda. 433 
 
 every one could but note how, to all appearance lastingly, 
 he had recovered from the effects of that blow which had 
 been all but fatal. His face had filled out. He was no 
 longer lean, but well clothed with adipose tissue. His 
 spirits had revived. He enlivened the table with racy 
 anecdotes. Three years had given him a measure of re- 
 juvenescence. 
 
 Had he continued thus, it is not too much to affirm, he 
 would have been with us to - day. As it fell out, the new 
 orb of existence waxed only to wane. 
 
 He allowed himself, contrary to his better judgment, to 
 be over-persuaded into a dramatic collaboration, which 
 eventually led up to a theatrical speculation. It is super- 
 fluous to hazard a criticism of the drama called " Love and 
 Money," produced at the Adelphi Theatre ; inasmuch as 
 whatever credit belongs to the play must be set down to 
 the score of Mr. Pettit. Suffice it, that the excitement of 
 the stage, its surroundings and associations, injured irre- 
 coverably a delicate constitution. He became irritable and 
 restless. Mr. Graham testifies that he was unhappy, if not 
 remorseful; for although he always stoutly maintained 
 that the drama ought to exercise a regenerating influence 
 on society, and tend to the mental and moral exaltation of 
 man, he could, when in the mood, be none the less severe 
 on the environment of playhouses and their " lubricity," as 
 he has emphatically termed it in his guard-book. For him 
 the theatre possessed the quality of strong, of overpower- 
 ing, magic. It was cruel kindness to apply that wand in 
 order to drag him against his conscience whither he would 
 not. However, so it was to be. 
 
 From a pecuniary point of view he gained nothing, even 
 when the receipts of the novel, based on the drama, are 
 added to the sums he received less loss by its represen- 
 10
 
 434 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 tations in England and America. The sum paid him by 
 Messrs. Tillotson, of Bolton, for the issue of " Love and 
 Money " * in serial form did not, by any means, cover his 
 disbursements to a single actress. It may be a hard re- 
 flection, but it is a true one, that this Barmecidal reversion 
 to the theatre cost him money, labor, time, temper, peace 
 of mind, health, and life itself. 
 
 Yet in spite of so ill-advised an attempt to run with the 
 hare and hunt with the hounds, and certain outspoken re- 
 monstrances from his brother Compton as to the folly of 
 all this, his mind never faltered in its loyalty to those who 
 were true to him. He may have neglected Mr. Graham's 
 advice, yet his love for that sterling friend remained un- 
 shaken. He gave reiterated assurances of his deep affec- 
 tion for those near relatives who had devoted themselves 
 to him. Soon, too, his old ailments returned with re- 
 doubled vehemence, and he needed sorely all their solici- 
 tude. The racking cough became his constant compan- 
 ion. He fell away to a skeleton. Food seemed poison. 
 
 * Afterwards issued, both in America for Messrs. Harper's Bazar, and 
 in Temple Bar, under the title " A Perilous Secret." Mr. W. F. Tillotson, 
 who was approached originally by Charles Rcade's nephew in 1875, in ref- 
 erence to " The Woman-IIater," endeavored for many years to persuade 
 him to write for his syndicate. In reply to one among many overtures, in 
 May, 1878, Charles Reade wrote : "Dear Sir, I am at home every morning 
 till two, and very happy to talk to you about anything but novels. The 
 public is an ass, and does not understand mine. So I am not in a humor 
 to waste time and labor and skill." Eventually Mr. Tillotson was equally 
 surprised and gratified by Charles Reade offering him the serial use of 
 " Love and Money," provided terms could be arranged as actually oc- 
 curred with Messrs. Harper & Brothers for simultaneous publication in 
 America. It was a singular coincidence that the first and last novel of 
 Charles Reade should have been published in this country by the eminent 
 firm of R. Bentley & Son, of Ne.w Burlington Street.
 
 Via Calcanda. 435 
 
 There was at times a look of death visible on his face 
 albeit his spirits varied, and his niece remarked, with sim- 
 ple truth, " Uncle Charles is so very young." Elasticity 
 of spirits, however, was neutralized by spells of melan- 
 choly, coupled with a strange restlessness. He had no idea 
 that he was dying, yet hardly cared for life. When the 
 writer wished him happy returns of his birthday, he pain- 
 fully startled his well-wisher with, " Belay that, my boy !" 
 It was a pitiable change, more especially to those who knew 
 only too well what had been the cause. 
 
 Towards the close of 1883 he resolved to escape the 
 London fog his enemy, though by no means the worst 
 one he had and to that end roamed abroad, attended only 
 by a secretary. It was the wish of his family that one 
 of their number should accompany him, but he preferred 
 solitude. At first the change did him good, and he wrote 
 to his nephew the writer then resident at Elton Rec- 
 tory, to invite himself during the ensuing spring, begging 
 especially for some trout-fishing. Soon, however, the dark 
 tide began to roll, and he drifted on its billows to realize 
 the nearness of the bourne whcreunto he was hastening. 
 
 Under date Cannes, Jan. 1, 1884, he writes thus: 
 
 "In March, 1883, I nearly died of bronchitis, which 
 with me is chronic, and has paroxysms. For the first 
 time was unable to eat. 
 
 "When I got about again, little spasms came on in 
 stomach or bowels about one o'clock. I stopped them at 
 first by eating a little. 
 
 "But, by and by, they came on at all hours and were 
 painful. I lost flesh and appetite, and took to sipping 
 milk to stop them. A month or two more and they be- 
 came frequent and tormenting. 
 
 "Soon I found myself with no appetite for meat, and
 
 436 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 drinking milk instead of tea. After several months of it, 
 wasted to a skeleton, I left England. Journeys made me 
 worse, and when I reached Cannes, early in December, I 
 was in agonies day and night. A paroxysm of bronchitis 
 fell on me, and I felt myself in danger. But Providence 
 sent me a good friend, though a humble one, in \kcfcmme 
 dv chambre. I cut down the fever that hitherto accom- 
 panied my cough, and, weakened as I was by pain, I pulled 
 through. She administered hot linseed plasters for my 
 agony. 
 
 "A fortnight ago I gave up meat altogether, and my 
 torments began to retire directly. Now I often have a 
 day without a pang. 
 
 "Present diet: 8 A.M., tea, nearly all milk, two poached 
 eggs. Brandt's jelly or else cream. About 11, a raw egg 
 and milk. At 1, pea-soup, strong of the meat. About 3, 
 milk. 5, strong soup lentils. 7, powdered biscuits and 
 lots of cream. At night, whenever I wake, raw egg and 
 milk. I often eat eight raw eggs in the twenty-four hours. 
 Weak in body, and rather weak and desultory in mind, 
 bringing up a good deal of mucus, sometimes cough, but 
 no violent pains. Three weeks ago I thought I had a 
 schirrus, a something inside me, and must die. Now I 
 think I shall live, though of course I am always in danger 
 of bronchitis. 
 
 " Diet this day, Jan. 2 : At 8, poached eggs, cream, hot 
 milk. At 11, eggs and milk. 1, pea-soup. 3, a glass of 
 milk hot from the cow set me coughing directly. At 4, a 
 little powdered biscuit and cream. At 5, strong soup with 
 flower of lentils. At T-, stewed plums and cream. Chilly 
 and inclined to cough. Result. Pain in chest at night, 
 but slept from 9 till 5. After dressing rather brisk, walked 
 in corridor. If I can walk, it will be a new era.
 
 Via Calcanda. 437 
 
 " Jan. 3. At 8, poached eggs, cream, hot milk, little tea. 
 
 "Feb. 6, 1884. Either the climate of Cannes or the 
 open carriages in which the hot sun tempts me to ride, 
 have made my emphysema and chronic bronchitis twice as 
 bad as they were in England. Even without exertion I 
 pant for breath. Sometimes I pant in bed. 
 
 " This day, after long threatening to leave the beguiling 
 seaside, I have moved to the Hotel Richemont. Soup a 
 failure a mere consomme, although the mistress, an oblig- 
 ing Englishwoman, promised me faithfully an English 
 soup. I have to tell her to make the cook stew the meat 
 before she boils it, so to-morrow we shall see. Examined 
 this day by Dr. Frank. He finds considerable induration 
 of the lower liver, but without any pronounced lump 
 great emphysema, but the bronchial tubes clear. The 
 stomach and intestines seriously disordered. 
 
 " What is all this but a general breaking-up of the sys- 
 tem ? He sees no help or alleviation but the right diet, 
 air, and sleep. 
 
 " This first day of Richemont my secretary has prevailed 
 on me to walk to the dairy, where I buy my milk. He 
 carried a chair, into which I sank several times, coming 
 and going. I did not quite get to the dairy. On the way 
 I found a cottage with three female goats. I sat at the 
 cottage door in the sun and drank nearly two half pints 
 of warm goats' milk. It seemed to agree with me. God 
 willing, I will do this every day that the weather is fine!" 
 
 These extracts tell, with no further description, the 
 rapid descent. What improvement there seemed to bo 
 may be termed illusory. Each bulletin grew more de- 
 spondent. He signed letters only, dictating them to his 
 secretary, who appears to have been very attentive and
 
 438 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 sympathetic. There could have been little doubt, in his 
 own mind, that the end was approaching. 
 
 In the midst of this intermittent anguish, moreover, an 
 event occurred which filled him with horror and apprehen- 
 sion. 
 
 His nephew Henry, the bright and genial squire, who 
 had but just settled down with his young wife and family 
 in the dear old home at Ipsden, came up to London to con- 
 sult not one doctor, but several. Those who, in the later 
 summer of 1882, had seen him play cricket with the activ- 
 ity and strength of an undergraduate, to the admiration 
 of all who saw it, must have deemed it incredible that this 
 hale, vigorous man, not burdened with superfluous flesh, 
 a stranger to vice of every description indeed, a model 
 scholar and gentleman should be suddenly cast for death. 
 
 Yet so it was. To spare his fond wife, who was in 
 ignorance of the imminent danger, he asked to be allowed 
 to occupy his Uncle Charles's empty house. Thither to 
 him flocked the doctors, but their art was unavailing. 
 With rare fortitude he laid himself down on his uncle's 
 bed to die, writing in pencil the tenderest and sweetest 
 farewells to alt he cared for. He suffered, as strong men 
 must, who are cut down in their prime; but the fatal in- 
 ternal disease did its work rapidly. It seemed but a few 
 days from the time when he lay down on Charles Reade's 
 bed, and his passing away. 
 
 Of all the Reades who, since 1539, had enjoyed the 
 Ipsden estate, his tenure was the shortest, two years and 
 two months only. 
 
 So tragic an occurrence would have filled a soul of the 
 coarsest fibre with compassion and grief. Here was a man 
 of middle age whose career had been one continuous, un- 
 broken success; he had inherited a position, not indeed of
 
 Via Calcanda. 439 
 
 great opulence, but of honor. The lines had fallen to him 
 in a pleasant place, for Ipsden is the Eden of England. 
 Yet, as it were in a few short hours, this vision of happi- 
 ness and beauty ended. No single circumstance could 
 have affected the mind of Charles Reade more acutely. 
 The echoes of the passing bell wafted across the sea must 
 have sounded like notes of warning. From that moment 
 his desire was intense to return home. Debility deferred 
 his journey more than once; and it was not until the hor- 
 ror of dying in a foreign land overpowered him that he 
 mustered resolution to move homewards. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the dietary he selected at 
 Cannes was utterly wrong. The liver was the seat of all 
 his maladies; and for a man of mature years, afflicted with 
 a diseased liver, to live on eggs and cream, seems, indeed, 
 infatuation. It came to this, that everything he swallowed 
 both poisoned and caused him internal pain. Weakness 
 of an alarming character supervened, aggravated by the 
 cruel cough. It seemed dubious whether he could reach 
 home alive. 
 
 At last his nieces received a telegram summoning them 
 to Boulogne. They had barely recovered from the labor 
 and anxiety of attending on poor Henry St. John Reade's 
 death-bed ; but at once hastened across the Channel to find 
 their beloved uncle mentally prostrate, and in a pitiable 
 condition. 
 
 He was very deeply attached to them, and their pres- 
 ence for the nonce revived him. By their assistance the 
 journey to Uxbridge Road was painfully accomplished; 
 but there was no hope death had stamped its mark on 
 his face. 
 
 " I am come home to die," was his feeble whisper. 
 
 That was the obvious fact; but his eagerness to reach
 
 440 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 Shepherd's Bush was caused by a wish he had repeatedly 
 expressed, viz., that he might pass away surrounded by 
 the prayers of his own flesh and blood. There had been 
 a time in his life when his relations with his family were 
 by no means of the most cordial nature. For that, with a 
 magnanimity peculiarly his own, he openly blamed him- 
 self, and for many years sought to make amends by acts 
 of kindness and generosity. It was but natural, therefore, 
 that he should crave at the last for the sympathy he valued 
 most; none the less a terrible ordeal, however, was that 
 journey from Boulogne. His nieces feared he would die 
 in the railway-carriage. 
 
 He expressed himself very anxious also for a parting in- 
 terview with the gentle and faithful divine who had been 
 his mainstay during the darkest hours of his life. To his 
 bedside came, by his urgent request, Mr. Graham, and the 
 confidences there exchanged left no doubt as to the state 
 of his mind. He had been preparing for the dread change, 
 and in view thereof had composed his own epitaph 
 to remain as a confession of the belief he cherished so 
 ardently. 
 
 The intelligence of his arrival and critical state aroused 
 universal interest; telegrams rolled in from all parts not 
 excepting the United States. The leading literary and 
 theatrical celebrities thronged his portals; but by the strict 
 injunctions of the medical men in attendance were, reluc- 
 tantly, denied admission. The sufferer himself implored 
 that his last hours should be undisturbed; and when a 
 quondam theatrical friend insisted on a moment, just to 
 press his hand, he may not have recognized him, or may 
 have been unwilling to do so. His mind remained fairly 
 unclouded, and in the presence of Mr. Graham he roused 
 himself to join in that friend's commendatory prayer.
 
 Via Calcanda. 441 
 
 The naturally virile constitution of the once muscular 
 man did not, as was expected, give away at once. In weak- 
 ness and suffering he lingered on, and that for many days 
 beyond the doctors' expectations. The bright light flick- 
 ered, and flickered; now became obscured, only to burst 
 forth again; now seemed to vanish altogether. Nature 
 struggled bravely, and more than one published bulletin 
 in the daily papers held out false hopes. Even the doctors 
 allowed themselves to be deceived. His brother Compton 
 alone grasped the terrible truth, and watched for the end. 
 
 It came and, by one of those strange coincidences 
 which appeal so forcibly to those whose faith shines 
 brightest, on the afternoon of GOOD FRIDAY. 
 
 We need hardly point the symbolism. Memor esto 
 servi Tuil 
 
 Under a large plain sarcophagus, of Mull granite, in the 
 southeastern angle of Willesden churchyard, by the side 
 of Mrs. Seymour, whose virtues he had extolled in a high- 
 ly eulogistic epitaph, Charles Reade reposes. It will be 
 for others to say what his life and labor shall be valued at 
 in the time to come. To us he was endeared, not merely 
 by brain, but by heart; not solely because he was great, 
 but because he was good also. He left his faults behind 
 him, to be forgotten. His virtues remain, and shine with 
 increasing lustre. With all the reverence due to a de- 
 parted soul we append his profession of the faith that was 
 in him, a document written with a dying hand, yet one 
 whose pulses were warmed by high hope : 
 
 HEBE LIE, 
 
 BY THE SIDE OF HIS BELOVED FEIEND, 
 
 THE MORTAL REMAINS OF 
 
 CHARLES READE, 
 
 DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, JOURNALIST. 
 
 19*
 
 442 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 His last words to mankind are on this stone : 
 
 " I hope for a resurrection not from any power in nat- 
 ure, but from the will of the Lord God Omnipotent, who 
 made nature and me. He created man out of nothing; 
 which nature could not. He can restore man from the 
 dust, which nature cannot. 
 
 "And I hope for holiness and happiness in a future life 
 not for anything I have said or done in this body, but 
 from the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ. 
 
 "He has promised His intercession to all who seek it, 
 and He will not break his word; that intercession once 
 granted cannot be rejected; for He is God, and His merits 
 infinite; a man's sins arc but human and finite. 
 
 " { Him that cometh unto Me I will in nowise cast out.' 
 t If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, 
 Jesus Christ, the Righteous; and He is the propitiation 
 for our sins.' AMEN."
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 CHARLES READE literally writhed under the lash of the 
 Rev. Dr. Stanton's aspersions in the American press, destined 
 only too soon to be reprinted in England. Nothing in the 
 whole course of his career stung him so cruelly to the quick 
 as did this bogus psychography of himself perpetrated by a 
 clerical journalist. It was not petty pride. He never blamed 
 his friend Mr. Graham, who in truth was as much the victim 
 of betrayed confidence as he himself was. But he felt bit- 
 terly the practical lampoon which upheld one, who had been 
 a harmless Bohemian all through, in the light of a saint. 
 Not condescending to respond to a sham eulogium which 
 really amounted to an impudent libel, he could scarcely sit 
 still under some of the accusations hurled with such cool 
 recklessness at himself and Mrs. Seymour. Hence he sent 
 for a warm friend and brother in art, Mr. Joseph Hatton ; and 
 that gentleman, who at the moment had all but arranged to 
 collaborate with him in a new branch of dramatic narration, 
 viz., fiction founded on a sacred subject an idea which fell 
 through solely on account of Charles Reade's health re- 
 sponded at once to the call. He found the injured man 
 seated with Mrs. Seymour's portrait in his hand, overpowered 
 by emotion, indeed bathed in tears, yet anxious to tell the 
 truth concerning his most cherished convictions, to prove by 
 chapter and verse those numerous professions of belief which 
 occur in all or nearly all his works. Mr. Hatton, needless to 
 add, offered him the true sympathy of an artist and a man of 
 the world being alike pained at the spectacle of grief, and 
 unable to conceal the scorn and righteous indignation that
 
 444 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 stirred his breast. After some discussion, it was arranged 
 that Charles Reade should tell his own unvarnished tale in a 
 letter to Mr. llatton, which the latter would communicate to the 
 American press, with his own comments. Yet even then the 
 true gentleman, with a chivalry all his own, made a distinct 
 stipulation that Dr. Stanton should be handled temperately. 
 
 " I have often," writes Mr. Joseph llatton, " thought of de- 
 scribing that memorable day when we discussed the affair 
 his gentleness, his tenderness, his desire that I should, in dis- 
 cussing the subject, not use ' too strong words.' " 
 
 This communication, which enlightened the transatlantic 
 public, has never been reproduced in this country, and we 
 deem it alike due to Charles Reade, and courteous to his gen- 
 erous champion, Mr. Joseph llatton, to lay it before the read- 
 ers of this Memoir. It is entitled " CHARLES READE'S FAITH," 
 and addressed to " THE NEW YORK TIMES." 
 
 "An article headed ' THE CONVERSION OF CHARLES READE ' 
 is going the round of the journals. 
 
 "The writer, Dr. Stanton, has not read Charles Reade's 
 works, nor consulted any educated person as to their char- 
 acter; yet he describes his religious opinions, as well as his 
 manners and personal appearance, and gives his own view of 
 certain facts confided to him by the Rev. Charles Graham, 
 with a warning that Mr. Reade shrank from newsmongers' no- 
 toriety. The worst of these violations of private intercourse 
 is, that the purveyor of gossip on such terms dares not sub- 
 mit his copy for correction to those whose confidence he has 
 betrayed, and so indelicacy breeds inaccuracy. 
 
 " I called upon Mr. Reade the other day, and found him 
 deeply grieved that the most sacred feelings of his heart 
 should have been wormed out of his spiritual adviser in the 
 name of religion, and adulterated for the purposes of trade ; 
 but though much distressed at some of Dr. Stanton's fig- 
 ments, he was very desirous not to disturb the general im- 
 pression that he is weaned from the world, and humbly de-
 
 Appendix. 445 
 
 sires to serve God. This has kept him silent, but he said he 
 would write me a letter and then leave the matter in my 
 hands. I have since received the letter in question : 
 
 "'No. 19 ALBERT GATE, June 14. 
 
 " ' MY DEAR HATTON, I shall indeed be grateful if you will assist me to 
 correct just two of Dr. Stanton's errors that wound me cruelly, and can 
 edify nobody. 
 
 " ' First That during the lifetime of Mrs. Seymour I held Rationalistic 
 views, and perverted my darling friend's mind with them ; and this was, 
 as he understands, the cause of my remorse after her death. 
 
 " 'Second That "in spite of this, Mr. Graham was able to assure me 
 she did not die without Christian hope." 
 
 " ' 1. I was instructed in the Christian verities from my cradle by my 
 dear mother, who was a saint and a deeply-read theologian. I have de- 
 clared my faith in my books many times, and, in face of that public dec- 
 laration, Dr. Stanton's statement is really too unscrupulous in itself, and 
 the base of another calumny ; for my deceased friend, though a less in- 
 structed, was a firm believer. She acted the Gospel more than she talked 
 it ; but she could speak too. I remember once, when some sceptical opin- 
 ions were mooted before her, she said, with a certain majesty and power 
 she could command on uncommon occasions, 'AND WHAT CAN THEY GIVE 
 
 THE WOULD TO MAKE CP FOR THE GLORIOUS HOPE THEY WOULD ROB IT OF !' 
 
 " ' These were her words to the letter. 
 
 " ' 2. Mrs. Seymour and I were old people, you know. During the nine- 
 teen years I lived in the same house with her she led an innocent life, a 
 self-denying life, and a singularly charitable life. In the exercise of this 
 grace there was scarcely a Scriptural precept she did not fulfil to the let- 
 ter. She was merciful to all God's creatures ; she took the stranger into 
 her house for months ; she cared for the orphan ; she visited and nursed 
 the sick ; she comforted the afflicted in mind ; she relieved the poor in 
 various classes of life, constantly hiding her bounty from others, and 
 sometimes from its very objects. Those charities are still continued out 
 of her funds, and through the influence of her example. 
 
 " ' God drew her nearer to him by five months of acute suffering. She 
 bore her agonies (from cancer of the liver) with meek resignation, and 
 sorrow for me, who was to lose her, but none for herself. 
 
 '"Several days before her death she made a distinct declaration of her 
 faith, viz., that she relied not on her good and charitable works, but only 
 on the merits of her Redeemer. Three days before her death she par- 
 took of the Holy Communion with fervent responses and such an ex- 
 pression of pious rapture as I never saw on any human face before.
 
 446 Memoir of Charles Reade. 
 
 " ' My grief for her is selfish. You know what I have lost a peerless 
 creature, wise, just, and full of genius, yet devoted to me. She alone sus- 
 tained me in the hard battle of my life, and now, old and broken, I must 
 totter on without her, sick, sad, and lonely. 
 
 " ' My remorse is for this. I had lived entirely for the world, and so dis- 
 quieted her with my cares, instead of leading her on the path of peace, 
 and robbed God of a saint, though not of a believer. I did also afflict my- 
 self with doubts of her eternal welfare, but where there is great affection 
 there is always great solicitude. Bereaved Christians torment themselves 
 with this tender anxiety more than bereaved Rationalists do. Mr. C. Gra- 
 ham, when he knew the particulars of her life and death, never shared my 
 anxieties. He removed them entirely. That living evangelist showed me 
 my doubts were in reality doubts of God's goodness and wisdom, and of 
 his special promises. But the words Mr. Stanton has put into his mouth 
 deny the faith and ignore the charity of her whole life, and cast negative 
 hope, which is positive doubt, upon her condition at her death. 
 
 " ' Christian parents who have lost their young, and all who have 
 cherished a Christian love and buried its object, will surely sympathize 
 with my bleeding heart, and aid me to correct these cruel surmises of 
 brutal gossip. 
 
 " ' For the reasons I gave you, do not object to minor inaccuracies ; but 
 kindly make it understood that I do not in my own person endorse any 
 man's religious animosities. It would ill become me to asperse the 
 Church of England or any other community that has bred holy men, 
 whose shoes I am not worthy to tie. I am, my dear Hatton, 
 
 " ' Yours sincerely, CHARLES READE.' 
 
 " The public will miss in the above singularly touching 
 letter the pungent philippics of this master of English invec- 
 tive. Under the inspiration of the great author's gentler 
 mood, I suppose I ought not even to try and supply their 
 place ; yet it seems to me that Dr. Stanton has been guilty of 
 an outrage, not only upon his own sacred calling, but upon 
 the profession of journalism. ' Interviewing ' has become an 
 established institution of the press on both sides of the At- 
 lantic ; but it is conducted openly, and always with the con- 
 sent of the person whose views are sought for publication. 
 Dr. Stanton imports a vicious feature into the collection of 
 news and opinions when he plays the role of a detective of- 
 ficer, and uses his intimacy with a clerical brother to prey
 
 Appendix. 447 
 
 upon the secret workings of another man's heart, to proclaim 
 to the world his private thoughts and hopes and feelings; 
 and, worst of all, to distort and misinterpret them at last. If 
 Dr. Stanton had been a trained journalist instead of a clerical 
 scribbler, he would not have failed at least to describe ac- 
 curately what he saw and heard ; and a long experience of 
 journalism enables me to say that the most daring interviewer 
 would have asked permission or guidance from the person 
 most interested before converting that person's private griefs 
 and sorrows into newspaper ' copy.' 
 
 " One cannot read the cold-blooded work of the Rev. Dr. 
 Stanton without feeling that under the cloak of a religious 
 mission he has done a wicked and cruel wrong. Nor has he 
 gone astray unwittingly. Warned that Mr. Reade was sensi- 
 tive as to anything being said in the papers about his conver- 
 sations with Mr. Graham, he nevertheless 'works up' into a 
 newspaper article all he has heard in Mr. Graham's family cir- 
 cle. This not being quite strong enough for a genuine sen- 
 sational letter, he evolves from his own inner consciousness 
 the idea that Mr. Reade has been ' converted ' from rational- 
 ism to Christianity. Nothing could be more false, not even 
 Dr. Stanton's analysis of Charles Reade's grief. Those who 
 have any knowledge of English classics need not be reminded 
 of the broad, practical Christianity which pervades the writ- 
 ings of Charles Reade, whom Dr. Stanton evidently heard of 
 for the first time the other day. All his works bear witness 
 against this charge of rationalism. ' Peg Woffington,' ' Chris- 
 tie Johnstone,' ' Put Yourself in His Place,' ' The Cloister 
 and the Hearth ' where are we to find nobler lessons of 
 life or a more refreshing Christianity than in these models 
 of masculine fancy and sterling Anglo - Saxon literature ? 
 Taking up at random the last-mentioned work, I came upon 
 one of the most heartfelt interpretations of religious faith 
 and fervor in all the range of fiction : 
 
 "'"Forever!" he cried aloud with sudden ardor; "Chris-
 
 448 Memoir of Charles Iteade. 
 
 tians live 'forever,' and love 'forever,' but they do not part 
 ' forever.' They part as part the earth and sun, to meet more 
 brightly in a little while. You and I part here for life ; and 
 what is our life ? One line in the great story of the Church, 
 whose son and daughter we arc ; one handful in the sand of 
 time, one drop in the ocean of ' forever.' Adieu for the little 
 moment called ' a life.' We part in trouble ; we shall meet in 
 peace. We part creatures of clay ; we shall meet immortal 
 spirits. We part in a world of sin and sorrow ; we shall meet 
 where all is purity and love divine ; where no ill passions 
 are, but Christ is, and his saints around him clad in white. 
 There in the turning of an hour-glass, in the breaking of a 
 bubble, in the passing of a cloud, she, and thou, and I shall 
 meet again, and sit at the feet of angels and archangels, and 
 apostles and saints, and beam like them with joy unspeakable, 
 in the light of the shadow of God upon his throne, forever, 
 and ever, and ever." ' 
 
 " I know that the churches put faith above works. That 
 is their business. Christ taught the Gospel of works, the 
 blessing of doing good. Fifteen years ago I met Charles 
 Reade for the first time. I had long known and admired 
 him through his books. Since then I have known him, as 
 
 O ' 
 
 all his friends have, as a generous, liberal, warm-hearted 
 Christian gentleman. 
 
 " As for poor, dead Mrs. Seymour, I feel inclined to quote 
 against the reverend reporter of the Independent the protest 
 of Laertes at the grave of Ophelia, which, with the change of 
 one word, admirably fits the situation : 
 
 " ' I tell thee, churlish priest, 
 A ministering angel shall our sister be 
 When thou liest howling.' 
 
 "JOSEPH HATTON. 
 " GARRICK CLUB, LONDON, June 17, 1880." 
 
 THE END.
 
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