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 WWDJSITY OF CALlFOflNiA
 
 UBHARY 
 
 OMYERSITY OF CALIFOfWIA 
 
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 ISAAC FOOT
 
 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY 
 
 WITH SOME BEFLECTIONS
 
 ' One of the pleasantest books that has appeared for some time.' 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 Fcp. 8vo. limp green cloth ; or cloth boards, gilt top, is. 6d. 
 
 SOME LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 'To say that Mr. Payn is seen at his best in the book is as much as 
 to say that it is remarkably pleasant reading. The stories it contains 
 are not all new. . . . But, old and new, the stories are all well 
 told. . . . And then the spirit of the book is eminently generous and 
 gay. ... In brief, his book is one of those which, like that of Maxim 
 du Camp, if for somewhat different reasons, leave a good taste in the 
 mouth. . . . For that reason, if for no other, It should have readers in 
 abundance.'— The Athenjeum. 
 
 'In a season of biographies and reminiscences Mr. Payn's "Recollec- 
 tions " have several peculiarities of their own. First they are short — 
 we wish they were longer. . . . Again, Sir. Payn's Memories are all 
 good-natured. . . . Thirdly, Mr. Payn's Memories have nothing to do 
 with politics. . . . Mr. Payn's "Recollections" are quite full of anec- 
 dotes of authors, editors, publishers, yea, even of publishers' readers, 
 and are everywhere buoyant and attractive with humour and good 
 humour.'— The Satueday Review. 
 
 ' Mr. James Payn's reminiscences do not constitute anything like a 
 regular autobiography, but may be described as a number of very 
 amusing and good-natured anecdotes and sketches of literary people 
 couuected by their reference to his own lite, but hardly pretending to 
 form a whole of any kind. Though its form may be called irregular, 
 it i* really the most convenient that could have been chosen.' 
 
 The Tdies. 
 
 ' One would have to be in a very melancholy mood indeed not to 
 like these " Recollections," so full they are of good stories, good spirits, 
 and good sense ; and even in such a mood it could not be but cheering 
 and refreshing to read with what generous admiration Mr. Payn speaks 
 of his great contemporaries, Dickens, Thackeray, TroUope, and the 
 rest.'— The World. 
 
 London : SMITH, ELDEE, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.
 
 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY 
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES PAYN 
 
 /■-■ 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' LOST SIK MASSIXGBERD ' ' BY PROXY ' ETC. 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1894
 
 ^ 
 
 -4 
 
 I
 
 TO 
 
 GEOEGE SMITH 
 
 THESE GLEAMS' ARE DEDICATED 
 
 IX MEMORY OF 
 
 TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP
 
 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY 
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONSi 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 One of the many regrets which, in common no 
 doubt with many of my contemporaries, I feel as 
 my life draws to its close, is that I have kept no 
 record of the various scenes I have witnessed, the 
 pleasant people I have met, or even of the dates at 
 which those experiences of my life that would have 
 more or less interest for the world at large, have 
 taken place. I have met a great many persons, 
 as the phrase goes, ' worth knowing,' heard very 
 excellent stories, been regaled with a great deal of 
 wit, but have only a confused recollection, such as 
 
 ' Copyright, 1894, in the United States.
 
 2 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 one has after a prolonged banquet, of the good 
 things that have been set before me. In attempting 
 to recall them I have also an additional difiticulty 
 in not feeling quite certain whether at some time 
 or other I have not already woven them into some 
 essay or story, since I have written very much, and 
 made what is called * copy ' of a good many inci- 
 dents and characters, in speaking of which I may 
 be telling an old story without being aware of it. 
 There is nothing of our own — not even the button 
 at the back of our shirt-collar — so treacherous as 
 our memory. An old writer tells us that ' good 
 wit never agrees with a good memory. A moist 
 brain full of spirits and apt for invention does not 
 long retain impressions.' This is comforting to a 
 certain extent, but I wish my recollections were 
 more vivid. As to dates, I never had the power of 
 recalling one. Even that of my own birthday I 
 only remember because my family give me presents 
 upon that day, but as to when their birthdays 
 happen (and it becomes my turn to give them pre- 
 sents) my mind is a blank.
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 8 
 
 I was born at the very end of ' the little month ' 
 as it is affectionately called, but easily escaping, 
 for it was not a Leap Year, the disadvantage of 
 getting only a fourth of the presents aforesaid. 
 When I read in autobiographies how accurately my 
 fellow-creatures remember the incidents of their 
 childhood, I feel humiliated and abashed, for I 
 remember scarcely anything of that period, i 
 recollect, however, when I was a very tiny boy, my 
 mother complaining to the gardener that we Ijad 
 no grapes in the greenhouse. ' How is it that 
 Mr. Brown and Mrs. Jones have such fine grapes 
 they tell me, and we have none ? ' ' Well, I tell 
 you how it is, ma'am,' he replied, ' they lies,' and 
 I think this must sometimes be the case with 
 the autobiographists when narrating their early 
 impressions. 
 
 The associations of my childhood are mostly 
 with the night time, during which I suffered horii- 
 bly ; whether it was cowardice or imagination, the 
 effect of the dark with its loneliness upon me was 
 appalling. Many a man will sympathise with that 
 
 11 2
 
 4 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 graphic picture Mr. E. L. Stevenson has drawn of 
 a child going up to bed — 
 
 Now my little heart goes beating like a drum, 
 
 Witt the breath of the Bogie in my hair ; 
 
 And all round the candle the crooked shadows come, 
 
 And go marching along up the stair ; 
 
 The shadow of the balusJ'^rs, the shadow of the lamp, 
 
 The shadow of the child that goes to bed — 
 
 All the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp, tramp. 
 
 With the black night overhead. 
 
 But going to bed was nothing to the sohtary 
 terrors when I got there, terrors of I knew not 
 what, but which were as real to me as fire or bur- 
 glars. Scores of times have I crept out of my cot, 
 and in my nightgown waited on the stairs by the 
 dining-room till the servants trooped out from 
 prayers, and I knew that in a few minutes more I 
 should have company. People talk with bated 
 breath of the existence of Evil in the world, but the 
 apprehension of Evil, round about the bed head, 
 that haunts the innocent child, is at least as hard 
 a nut to crack. We find out things as we grow up, 
 but they make the lives of millions miserable, some 
 of whom do not grow up. My old nurse used to
 
 WITH SOME KEFLECTIONS 5 
 
 say to me when I ^Yas naught}^ ' It's no wonder, 
 Master James, that you are so afraid o' nights,' 
 thereby not indirectly hinting that the Devil him- 
 self was at the bottom of it. By this she aggravated 
 my fears not a little ; but I have since come to the 
 conclusion she was right, for that it should enter 
 into the nature of Providence to terrify a defenceless 
 child is a theory too strong for a stomach perhaps 
 exceptionally delicate upon such points of theology. 
 My earliest recollection of a habit at that time 
 of life was a trick I had of hiding under the dinner- 
 table when there was a party, and nipping the legs 
 of the guests, both male and female, to give them 
 the impression that I was a dog. This might have 
 been funny, but does not now strike me as being 
 weh-behaved. It is said that everyone must learn 
 by personal experience, but I was so fortunate as 
 to be cured of this offence at the expense of another. 
 A very morose cousin of mine, who well knew who 
 had pinched him, kicked out, as he thought (or 
 rather as he said he thought), at the supposed dog 
 with such unnecessary violence that (faihng to hit
 
 6 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 me) he broke (or barked) my uncle's shin. It was 
 A lesson to me for the rest of my childhood, nor 
 did the old gentleman soon forget it. 
 
 The strongest impression on my mind at that 
 time of life is my finding a half-sovereign one day 
 in my little waistcoat pocket. This may be thought 
 a small thing, but if the adult reader was to find a 
 thousand-pound note crumpled up in his purse the 
 circumstance would not be more astonishing to him. 
 Half-a-crown at that time had been the extent of 
 my resources ; gold was as unknown to me as pla- 
 tinum. Without revealing my tremendous secret 
 to any member of the household I ran down the 
 street to the local Bank, with the official of which 
 (through my father being treasurer for the county) 
 I was quite familiar. I tendered it to the head 
 clerk, not as a sum to be paid in to my current or 
 deposit account, but as an asset of which I had 
 some doubt, simply because my possession of it 
 seemed too good to be true. ' I am sorry to say, 
 Master James, that the half-sovereign is a bad one ; 
 you see it is not milled,' was his reply. I did not
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 7 
 
 see that nor anything else, for the sun seemed to 
 have gone out of the heavens. It was the sudden 
 reduction from riches to poverty which upset me. 
 But what was really a very curious question and 
 one which remains unanswered to this day, who 
 could have had the brutality to i^lay such a trick 
 upon a little bo}' ? 
 
 It is not the importance of an incident that 
 impresses itself upon our imagination, but its 
 inexplicabilit3% As I was reading my Bible one 
 day in a village church when I was a young man, 
 in order to become oblivious to a very dull sermon, 
 I came upon the passage ' The days of his youth 
 hast Thou shortened,' with a drop of fresh blood 
 upon it. It was certainly not my blood, and still 
 less likely to be anybody else's, and the circumstance 
 made a great impression upon me. I felt it was a 
 prophecy of early death, which can hardly be said 
 to have been accomplished, I once consulted a 
 theologian upon the point, and he remarked that, 
 notwithstanding its nonfulfilment, it might never- 
 theless have been a warning ; wliat he doubtless
 
 8 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 meant was that it was the explanation of a (com- 
 paratively) blameless life. But at all events, how- 
 ever slight the circumstance, it will always seem to 
 me a most remarkable one. 
 
 The next thing I remember is equally trifling, 
 ])ut illustrates an old-world portion of ecclesiastical 
 life — that part of life at least which one passed in 
 church. I must have been a little older, and we 
 were living at Letcombe House, near Wantage, 
 which we rented of the squire. We had his pew 
 upon the understanding that he was to use it him- 
 self when he had a mind, and his presence in it 
 gave me ;i ' learlul joy.' It was a very large affair, 
 hung round with red curtains (like a bar parlour), 
 and with a huge fireplace. It was my self-imposed 
 mipsion to make up the fire in winter, with the 
 special injunction laid upon me that in so doing I 
 was not to make a noise. This was not for the 
 sake of the clergyman, and far less of the congre- 
 gation, but in order that the old squire's slumbers 
 should not be disturbed. Nobody minded his going 
 to sleep, which regularly took place when the ser-
 
 AVITII S03IE REFLECTIONS 9 
 
 mon began, but his snoring was tremendous. It was 
 a sound that could not be ignored, and must have 
 been discouraging to any divine. Strange clergy- 
 men were much put out by it, and would make sig- 
 nificant pauses in their discourse, which had the 
 desired effect of waking him. ' Sent to sleep with 
 sound and waked with silence,' the old squire would 
 utter such vocal sounds as made the parson regret 
 his success. ' Eh ? ' ' What ? ' ' Who spoke ? ' 
 ' Put some more wood on, Jimmy,' and with that 
 prudential speech he again retired to the ' land of 
 Nod.' 
 
 The squire was no less a person than Thomas 
 Goodlake, at that date an old man beyond the 
 seventies, but who had been in his time the hand- 
 somest man in Berkshire. He was the Chairman 
 of Quarter Sessions, and greatly respected and 
 admired, but much impoverished in fortune. His 
 money had almost all gone to the dogs, chiefly 
 greyhounds, of which he still kept a large kennel. 
 As a child I always pictured him accompanied by 
 some of those beautiful animals, with Fortescue
 
 10 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 (flash of memory), his trainer. He was a great 
 hoK riiant, and to the last kept an excellent table. 
 His taste was always consulted when he was asked 
 out to dinner, and he was helped (like Royalty) 
 before the ladies. I remember, when I was about 
 fifteen, sitting opposite to a dish of snipe with one 
 landrail. 'Mr. Goodlake,' I said, 'will you have 
 some snipe or the landrail ? ' 
 
 ' Why, you young fool,' was the uncompromising 
 reply, ' the landrail of course.' 
 
 His recipes for every description of delicac}' 
 were thought very highly of. I have one in my 
 dear mother's handwriting, entitled 'Mr. G.'s mince- 
 meat,' which is admu-ably characteristic. ' Choi 
 the suet in pieces, tlie size of small dice,' is one of 
 the recommendations ; and the whole precious 
 mixture was to be put in jars and buried in the 
 earth. 
 
 Many a time have I met the squire in his 
 brougham, in which his huge bodj' exactly fitted 
 like a chestnut in its shell, and been given an invi- 
 tation that had less charm for me, in my ignorant 
 
 1
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 11 
 
 adolescence, than for him. 'I have a Severn 
 sahnon for dinner, my boy, and a couple of Ayles- 
 bury ducks.' 
 
 Where our tastes more coincided was for the 
 game of whist. He taught me, when a very saiall 
 boy, how to play it, and never had tutor a more 
 enthusiastic pupil. I have cause to be grateful to 
 him, for he thus laid the foundation of the greatest 
 source of amusement and recreation in a long and 
 busy life. I was never a first-class player — which, 
 considering the time I have devoted to the game, 
 does not speak well for my intelligence — but I was 
 a very tolerable performer from an early age. Even 
 when too young to be a partner, I used to watch 
 the game with eager interest, and often, when the 
 kind old squire was present and had been fortunate 
 at his shilling points, he would give me a handful 
 of silver ' to go to school with.' I have nothing but 
 humorous and pleasant memories of him, but I can 
 fancy his not having been a favourite with strait- 
 laced people. The country side was full of stories 
 of his hot youth : among others this one. He had
 
 12 GLEAMS OF ME3I0KY ; 
 
 an aunt from whose demise he justly entertamed 
 great expectations ; he waited with patience till she 
 was ninety years of age, and then caused a large 
 cannon to be fired off from a hill-top in the vicinity 
 of her residence, with no evil design, but simply to 
 draw the attention of the authorities to the fact 
 of her existence m case of their having forgotten all 
 about her. 
 
 He had sown his wild oats long before I knew 
 him, but there had been a fine crop of them, of 
 which he thought very little. My last remem- 
 brance of him was at a dinner at which a bishop 
 was present. The conversation, turning on human 
 frailty, became a little too improving for the squire. 
 ' Well,' he said, taking vast quantities of snufiF, 
 and dropping it as usual over his ample white waist- 
 coat, ' I can only say, my lord, that if I were to 
 write all my little peccadilloes upon yonder wall, 
 there would be nothing to blush at.' I was greatly 
 alarmed lest he should do it, and so, I believe, was 
 the bishop. His political creed would now be con- 
 sidered pecuHar. 'I voted,' he used to say, for
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 13 
 
 Catholic Emancipation and the Eeform Bill, and I 
 have lived to see the evils of both,' 
 
 In my youth I lived for years among the Berk- 
 shire downs, a marvellous expanse of springy turf, 
 blown over by the most delicious airs, and, though 
 treeless, not without a certain wild beauty. In 
 addition to the famous Ridgeway, which had seen 
 the march of the Eoman legions, there were for the 
 lovers of archgeology barrows and encampments in 
 all directions ; but what took my boyish fancy most 
 were the crosses cut on the turf to mark where 
 waggoners had been run over, or more frequently 
 travellers * smoored ' in the snow. It was very 
 unpleasant to be caught on the downs in snow or 
 fog, and, indeed, it was easy enough to lose one's 
 bearings on them at any time of the year. I 
 remember a carriage used by some of my people 
 in those early days with curtains that drew in front 
 of it, and a good part of a summer's night on one 
 occasion was spent in it, waiting for the mist to 
 lift. It was like sitting in a room with a blind, but 
 without a window.
 
 14 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 The pleasantest spectacle on the clowns was the 
 string of racehorses which were trained upon them. 
 They took their trial gallops there in the early 
 morning ; men with horsewhips investigated the 
 gorse to make certain no touts were concealed there ; 
 and giant ladders were brought, with just room for 
 the owner and trainer to stand on a little platform 
 at their junction to watch the trial from end to 
 end. 
 
 The two things, however, with which my 
 memory especially associates the downs was the 
 hawking and the hoop-hunting. The first lasted 
 but a little while — I think onlv for two seasons — 
 and was then discontinued, but it was a most 
 picturesque spectacle. The hawks, with their hoods 
 and bells, upon the wrists of their keepers, waiting 
 to be loosed at the prey (which, by-the-by, were 
 only crows), the mad gallop over the turf, with one 
 eye in the air and the other looking out for roads 
 and ruts, the pursuit and escape or death of the 
 game, and the white lure that brought the noble 
 birds back to their masters. I have not described
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 15 
 
 the thing technically, and quite probably all wrong ; 
 but the humorous side of the proceeding was that 
 not one of those who took part in it out of ten knew 
 what they were doing, their knowledge of the cus- 
 toms of the Middle Ages being exceedingly limited. 
 The general feeling of the sportsmen was, 1 think, 
 that they preferred hunting and coursing — or at all 
 events some sport that admitted of one's seeing 
 where one was going — to hawking. 
 
 A more juvenile amusement belonging to the 
 downs, but with infinitely more fun in it to my 
 boyish taste, was hoop-hunting. All that was 
 requisite to enjoy this pastime was a high wind. 
 We took our hoops— half a dozen of them some- 
 times — to the top of the first hill and started them ; 
 then, after one minute's 'law,' we followed them, 
 but never caught them save by misadventure. 
 Their speed was incredible, and far surpassed that 
 of the bicycle. Down one hill and up another, 
 apparentl}' at the same rate ; and when any ob- 
 stacle, such as a road with high banks, intervened, 
 they surmounted it with deer-like leaps and bounds.
 
 16 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 A more graceful sight could hardly be imagined. I 
 have known a hoop run five miles, and only stopped 
 because it arrived at a ' bottom,' the limit of the 
 downs in that direction. It would have needed a 
 racehorse to overtake them. "We got the hoops 
 from a brewery owned by an uncle of mine, and 
 whenever the smell of brewing — delicious aroma — 
 comes to my nostrils, I am, for half a minute, a 
 boy again, capless, careless, with my foot on the 
 turf and the wild west wind in my hair. 
 
 Our neighbours — not very numerous — were 
 chiefly clergy. One of them, unusually learned, 
 was much given to Greek quotations. I was learn- 
 ing Greek at that time— a language which I w'as 
 glad was dead and wished was buried — and those 
 sonorous lines of his, to which the ladies listened 
 with reverent awe, irritated me extremely. One of 
 them asked me once in a hushed whisper the 
 translation of one of these quotations. ' You are at 
 school,' she said, ' and ought to know.' I gave her 
 to understand, with an opportune blush, that it was 
 scarcely meet for a lady's ear.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 17 
 
 Good heavens ! ' she cried, 'yon don't mean to 
 
 say 
 
 * Pray don't quote me in the matter,' I put in 
 pleadingly ; * but I really — no, I really couldn't tell 
 you ' — which was quite true. She went away and 
 told all her lady friends that Mr. C. indulged in 
 quotations which were not such as could be trans- 
 lated to modest ears. It injured his character for 
 a long time, but cured him of a very bad habit. It 
 was my first appearance in the role of a public 
 benefactor. 
 
 I had another adventure with a cleric — Mr. A.^ 
 in another part of the country, at a much earlier 
 age. I was again only a witness — though this time 
 not a false witness — but the affair impressed itself 
 indelibly on my memory. This clergyman was an 
 old friend, and I was stopping in his house. He 
 was a very handsome, kind old fellow, and the best 
 shot in the county. The lord of the manor was a 
 real lord, and the rector entertained a very proper 
 respect for him on that account, though he had few 
 other claims to it. Thej^ got on very well for souk;
 
 18 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 time, but at last, as was inevitable, my friend being 
 very quick-tempered and his lordship exceedingly 
 arrogant, they fell out. The parson was no more 
 asked to his lordship's shooting parties ; but it so 
 happened that the rectory fields, which were rather 
 extensive, lay in the centre of his lordship's pre- 
 serves, and when his great battues were held the 
 rector also invited his party of friends, and, as all 
 his lordship's game were driven across this strip of 
 ecclesiastical property, they made excellent bags. I 
 was in Mr. A.'s study one morning, reading * Cap- 
 tain Cook's Voyages ' as I lay on the floor — my 
 favourite literary position at that time — when Lord 
 B. was announced. I had only met one lord in my 
 life before, and was delighted at this second oppor- 
 tunity. Because I was so very young that it did 
 not matter, or because my host forgot my existence 
 altogether (bemg on my stomach under the table), 
 I was not directed to withdraw, and thereby I 
 became a spectator of the interview. His lordship 
 was not of an imposing appearance, and, almost 
 inarticulate with rage, he let out at the rector with
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 19 
 
 great vehemence about his conduct concernmg the 
 game, and every now and then paused for breath. 
 ' Pray go on, my lord,' said the rector on these 
 occasions, in a tone of voice which even to my 
 inexperienced ears seemed the reverse of concilia- 
 tory. At last his lordship, puffing and blowing, 
 observed, ' There, now you know what I think of 
 you. If you had not been a clergyman I would 
 have said a great deal more.' 
 
 Then the rector rose from his chair — the whole 
 six-feet-two of him — and pointed to the door. * If 
 I had not been a clergyman,' he said in a terrible 
 voice, 'you would not have dared to say half as 
 much. Now be off with you.' I had known him 
 speak in the same tone only to trespassers and 
 poachers. It was a most exciting scene, and long 
 afterwards, whenever I heard the phrase ' The 
 Church militant,' I associated it with my venerable 
 host. 
 
 Though an old man, he was very strong and 
 active. Lord B. was the patron of the living, and 
 one of his methods of annoying him, after this 
 
 c 2
 
 20 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 little encounter, was continually to send people 
 down to look at him, with an eye to the purchase 
 of the next presentation. Whenever the rector 
 used to see a fly from the station coming down the 
 drive with a stranger in it, he would ring the bell 
 for his manservant. * If that gentleman asks for 
 me, John, tell him I'm exercising the colt.' At 
 which piece of information the stranger would drive 
 away with very black looks indeed. 
 
 The other lord I had had the honour of know- 
 ing, when I was a very tiny little chap, was of a 
 different kind. He came down to stay with us 
 when my father was Clerk to the Thames Commis- 
 sioners — a remunerative post at that time — and 
 spent a whole morning, I remember, directing 
 envelopes. ' Mamma,' I said, pointing to the 
 eminent person, with a dumpy finger, ' Papa's got 
 a new clerk.' My mother looked distressed, but 
 Lord C. roared with laughter. * A very good guess,' 
 he said, * young gentleman.' As a matter of fact, 
 the day being wet, and his lordship very good-
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 21 
 
 natured, he had been occupying himself in writing 
 * franks ' for my father. 
 
 The first attempt to educate me — which, I am 
 sorry to say, from first to last was a most disastrous 
 failure — took place somewhere at this period. A 
 Dissenting schoolmaster who had a small com- 
 mercial academy in the town, which it was quite 
 out of the question, with my High-Cliurch principles 
 and exalted position, I should attend, came for 
 a couple of hours in the early morning for my 
 instruction. His name, by a miracle of memory, I 
 remember to have been Thynn, and so very tender 
 were my years that I thought he was called so on 
 account of his lean and lank appearance. I believe 
 the poor fellow was half-starved, for when on one 
 occasion he was asked to breakfast he amazed me 
 by cutting oft" that projecting foot of the bacon 
 which nobody eats, along with the usual slice, and 
 devouring it with apparent relish. What ridiculous 
 and futile things abide in our memories ! That is 
 positively all I remember of my first preceptor.
 
 22 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 It is dangerous, however, to reproach persons 
 with this faiHng, to which the following example, 
 that subsequently came under my notice, testifies. 
 A tutor of a college, more remarkable for his satire 
 than his urbanity, asked some question in the 
 combination-room of the bursar, to which the latter 
 replied rather petulantly, ' How should I know ? 
 One can't remember everything.' * No,' replied 
 the other softly, ' but this was so very unimportant.' 
 After some years the tutor was appointed Eegius 
 Professor of Greek. He had an impression that 
 he could hold both posts, and did so for some time, 
 till it was discovered that it was illegal. The fact 
 was ' ferreted out ' by the bursar, who blandly 
 remarked that it was just one of those insignificant 
 and unimportant matters that suited his capacity. 
 A slight is alwaj's a misnomer as regards him who 
 uses it, for the whirligig of time never fails to bring 
 its revenges, and in this case it cost exactly a 
 thousand a year. In point of time this incident 
 ought not of course to have found a place here, but 
 if I had not put it down when it came into my
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 23 
 
 mind, it is ten to one I should have forgotten it 
 altogether. 
 
 My bacon-eating tutor was the first rung, as 
 it were, of a long ladder of preceptors. I am quite 
 ashamed of myself when I think of the very * liberal 
 education ' — or the education which at all events 
 was liberally paid for — I received, and the very little 
 that came of it. It cost my dear mother from first 
 to last, I believe, more than two thousand pounds ; 
 but if ' payment by results ' had been the principle 
 on which it had been conducted, it would have 
 been — well, I don't like to mention the sum, but — 
 something in two figures. It is sometimes said in 
 defence of an extravagant expenditure, that it at 
 all events gave the spendthrift a great deal of 
 pleasure ; but though I had what I am confidently 
 assured were the advantages of a good education, I 
 did not at all enjoy them. 
 
 This seems to have been predicted by a poetess 
 of my acquaintance who was accustomed to charm 
 my childish ear with fairy stories, and who, fifty 
 years ago and more, sent me written in print, for I
 
 24 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 could not then read handwriting, this very pretty 
 
 poem : — 
 
 I am far from the land where my young hero grieves, 
 And dull are the images fancy now weaves, 
 To those glittering visions of warriors and dames. 
 That erst sprang at the bidding of gallant Prince James. 
 
 Who himself well portrayei.1, in his childhood's fresh prime, 
 A miniature knight of the good olden time. 
 Ever prompt in the fray or the banquet to share, 
 Ever courteous and kind with his own lady fair. 
 
 'Tis hard that dull pedants with book and with rule 
 Should scout the philosophy taught in my school ; 
 For wand light as fairy's wield birch rod instead. 
 And cram with dry learning your poor little head. 
 
 Yet in morals and manners, or marvellous feat. 
 Can Trojan or Greek with my worthies compete? 
 Would Hercules dare with Prince Lupin to vie, 
 Or pull Nessus' shirt through a hue needle's eye? 
 
 To Sir Gawaine or Cherry, in amorous suits, 
 What seem Theseus and Paris but unpolished brutes ? 
 Just as Venus and Helen light characters were 
 By Finetta the prudent or Princess all fair. 
 
 Be yours then, my boy, the true Knight Errant 's part. 
 To aid, to redress— ready hand, open heart — 
 To your creed, to your Queen, to your country rest true, 
 Nor till one love prove faithless, e'er seek for a new. 
 
 Thus when honours and greatness have fallen to your lot — 
 Field Marshal, Prime Minister, Heaven knows what — 
 j\lay your parents stand gazing in transports of pride. 
 And my prettiest granddaughter blush as your bride.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 25 
 
 I don't know at what period it took place in 
 my young life, but for some time I was haunted 
 by the idea — begotten, I fear, as much by egotism 
 as imagination — that I was the only person in the 
 world worth consideration. This is, of course, 
 not uncommon ; but my view was that I was 
 the only person in the world who had any real 
 existence at all ; that the others were but shadows ; 
 and that the whole universe was one vast de- 
 ception, the object of which was to make a fool 
 of me. That this fantasy must have lasted for 
 some time and made a strong impression on me, is 
 certain, for I was old enough to write a poem about 
 it:— 
 
 When the doors have closed behind us, and the voices died away, 
 Do the singers cease their singing, and the children end their 
 
 play? 
 Do the words of wisdom well no more through the calm lips of 
 
 age? 
 Are the fountains dried whence the young draw hopes too deep 
 
 for the faith of the sage ? 
 And, like the flower that closes up when the east begins to glow, 
 Doth the maiden's beauty fade from off her tender cheek and 
 
 brow ? 
 Are they aU but subtle spirits changing into those and these. 
 To vex us with a feigned sorrow, or to mock us while they please?
 
 26 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 All this world a scene phantasmal, shifting aye to something 
 
 strange, 
 Such as, if but disenchanted, one might mark in act to change. 
 See the unembodied beings that we hold of our own kind, 
 Friend and foe, and kin and lover, each a help to make us blind, 
 Set to watch our lonely hours, ambushing about our path. 
 That our eyes may never open till their lids are closed in death ; 
 And when so closed, will these things be as though we had ne'er 
 
 been born, 
 And e'en without those tears which are dried swift as the dews by 
 
 the morn. 
 That makes us feel these fancies more, so strange doth it appear. 
 How the memory of a dead man dies with those he held mos 
 
 dear, 
 As though there was an end, with life, of the mockery that 
 
 beguiles 
 Our every act, tricks out our woes, and cheats us of our smiles, 
 And makes to love, and scorn, and hate, and parts and reconciles. 
 
 I dare say this theory has been entertained by 
 others, but it affected me unpleasantly in a weird 
 and uncanny fashion. Much has been said of the 
 strange consciousness we sometimes feel of some 
 situation or conversation having been somewhere 
 or some time previously experienced : on tw 
 occasions this duplicate impression has occurred to 
 myself, but these had not the force or seeming 
 reality of the above fancy. 
 
 I was far from being an idle boy — and my worst
 
 "WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 27 
 
 enemies will hardly accuse me of being an idle man 
 — but somehow I never cottoned to my studies. I 
 never liked Latin, and I detested Greek. Great 
 heavens, what have I not suffered from that hate- 
 ful tongue ! One hears talk of the ' Dead Hand ' 
 and its enormities, but what are they compared 
 with the brutalities inflicted on the young by the 
 dead languages ? The bubble of classical education 
 has burst now, or is in process of bursting, but in 
 my day it was a blister, and it was applied to every 
 boy. The whole system was a cruel despotism 
 tempered by cribs ; but for them we should have 
 perished miserably among the paulo-post futurums 
 and the aorists. If I had suddenly become rich at 
 fourteen or so I would have founded an asylum for 
 schoolboys who could not understand Greek, so 
 much I pitied them as well as myself ; but it would 
 have been a gigantic undertaking. What would 
 have seemed very humorous, if it had not been so 
 hard, this language, though being so admittedly 
 difficult, was taught at my school by means of a 
 Latin grammar ; moreover the subjects of study
 
 28 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 were mostly the poets. To any one who knows the 
 British schoolboy the attempt to teach him poetry, 
 even in his own tongue, would seem quixotic 
 enough ; conceive, therefore, what came of the 
 efforts to teach him Greek poetry. Healing Time, 
 it is true, in nine cases out of ten, when we become 
 twenty-five years of age at farthest, erases every 
 scrap of this language from our minds ; but I shall 
 never forget what I suffered in the attempt to 
 acquire it. "When I think, too, that at least eight 
 hundred pounds out of that educational expendi- 
 ture must have been paid for Greek — my Greek — 
 (for it is a most expensive commodity) — I cannot 
 but think there was a good deal of imposition (as 
 indeed there certainly was in one sense) in connec- 
 tion with it. 
 
 It may well be remarked, ' You tell us what you 
 did not learn at your various educational seminaries, 
 but not what you did learn.' That is just my 
 difficulty. May I be taught Greek in another world 
 if I know what I did learn ! The three E's (which 
 1 have found very useful) I mastered before I left
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 29 
 
 home. Perhaps I acquired * the tone '—a mysteri- 
 ous and costly commodity only to be procured at a 
 public school — but that is doubtful. At the same 
 time I read a great many books (chiefly novels and 
 poems) which were not in the curriculum during 
 recreation hours, and while my young friends tried 
 to forget their woes in the intoxication of cricket, a 
 game which, in my ease, unlike tea, equally failed 
 to cheer or to inebriate. 
 
 If I did not * love my larning,' it was not 
 because I disliked my tutors, with whom, on the 
 whole, I got on much better than with the boys. 
 The boy is charming in Art, and sometimes quite 
 virtuous in Fiction ; but in real life he is intole- 
 rable. His wit is buffoonery, his humour is practical 
 joking, his deity is the head boy in the school, and 
 his devil is the head-master. He loves idleness, 
 cruelty, dirt, and athletic exercises like the savage. 
 There is a delusion abroad that he does not share 
 the weakness of the adult for wealth and station ; 
 but he has in reality a very accurate notion on 
 which side his bread is buttered, and would sell his
 
 30 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 soul for five bob, half to be paid in tuck. He has 
 also a fine contempt for the poor. 
 
 His treatment of the usher is an illustration of 
 this. That unhappy individual — a very different 
 person from the under-master of a public school, of 
 course — is the target for his pupils' scorn ; his 
 frayed and threadbare garments, and, above all, his 
 Sunday suit — but too often much too brihiant — are 
 everlasting subjects for their ridicule. Captives, 
 among the North American Indians, are given over 
 by them to be tormented by the children before 
 their final doom ; this is what the gods do with 
 ushers. What have the poor wretches done, one 
 wonders, to deserve such a fate ? The boys invent 
 all kinds of crimes as havmg been what old Burton, 
 calls ' a cause ' ; but the chief crime of all ushers 
 has probably been their poverty. It was an evil 
 hour in which necessity suggested to them this 
 hopeless calling. Every other occupation may 
 lead to something better save this one. There was 
 an Archbishop Usher, I believe ; but he was only a 
 namesake. The sole individual, as far as I know.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 31 
 
 who became eminent while in this profession was 
 ugene Aram — and he was more notorious than 
 amous. Dr. Johnson, it is true, was an usher, but 
 be gave up that business early. Nothing gives me 
 so amazing an impression of his independence of 
 character as the fact that it survived even that 
 ordeal ; for an usher must have neither will nor 
 way of his own, no opinion, no anything ; but is 
 the mere humble instrument of his employer. 
 
 In the first school I went to — a preparatory one 
 for Eton— there were two such men, Mr. D. and 
 Mr. G., who, because of the difference in their alti- 
 tudes, were called ' Dwarf ' and ' Giant.' They 
 had many other nicknames, but these were the 
 least uncomplimentary ones. There was a little 
 boy at that school who was very unhappy ; he was 
 told by his guardian (for he had no parents) that 
 such was the lot of small boys, and that, as to 
 bullying and the rest of it, he must not distress 
 himself, because when he got old enough it would 
 be his privilege to make the lives of other small 
 boys equally unpleasant in his turn. This brilliant
 
 32 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 prospect failed, however, to comfort him, and the 
 dehcate Httle creature, whose position suggested 
 nothing so much as an Itahan greyhound in a 
 kennel of bulldogs, was, like Niobe, all tears (and 
 smears), even during the hours of study. During 
 those allotted to recreation he was, of course, much 
 more miserable. He wrote to a little sister at home, 
 bewailing his sad case, and describing how he wept 
 in school-time ; and his guardian read the letter, 
 and, at her instigation, came over to investigate 
 matters. Then it was that I pitied Mr. D. and 
 Mr. G. even more than the schoolboy. The object 
 of the head-master was to discredit the child's 
 statements ; or, at least, prove them grossly ex- 
 aggerated. So the two ushers were summoned to 
 the drawmg-room. 
 
 ' These two gentlemen,' said the head-master to 
 the visitor, ' who have every opportunity of seemg 
 what passes in school-time, will tell you whether 
 your ward was, as he has written to his sister, 
 crying all lesson-time. Mr. G., what do you 
 say?'
 
 ■^ITH SOME REFLECTIONS 33 
 
 Mr. G. had both seen and remarked upon the 
 child's distress during the period mentioned, but 
 what nas he to do ? To tell the truth would be to 
 lose his situation. ' No, sir,' he said (but with a 
 very high colour), 'no boy was crying during 
 lesson-time.' 
 
 * And you. Mr. D,, what do you say ? ' 
 
 The Dwarf had a little more conscience, or per- 
 haps, reflected he was risking less (by 10/. per 
 annum) than his colleague. ' I cannot say, sir," he 
 murmured, ' that my attention was particularly 
 directed ' (though it had been) ' to the young 
 gentleman.' 
 
 It was a most unhappy exhibition, and when the 
 news came, some six months afterwards, that the 
 httle fellow was dead, both the Giant and the Dwarf 
 were very sorry — on their own account. 
 
 The usher that I best remember was during a 
 later period of my life, when I was at what is now- 
 called a ' cramming ' school, preparatory for the 
 Woolwich Academy. He was essentially ' a char- 
 acter ' — not, perhaps, a very good one, but he 
 
 D
 
 34 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 interested me. He was a scholar, or seemed to be 
 one by comparison with the other masters, including 
 his employer, and was always quoting scraps of 
 Greek, which was Greek indeed to his hearers. The 
 attire of some fancy ushers I have known, as regards 
 the Sunday suit, may be described as ' not neat, but 
 gaudy ' ; but Mr. Casterton (as I will call him) had 
 no weakness of this kind. He had, indeed, like 
 •Joseph (whom, in some other points, he by no 
 means resembled) a coat of many colours ; but it 
 was made up of shreds and patches, and resembled 
 those patchwork quilts in which our grandmothers 
 delighted, save that they were all old patches. 
 This was, of course, his study coat ; he had no 
 pride in it^-he prided himself only on his scholar- 
 ship — yet he forbore to wipe his pen (as was the 
 custom with his brethren) upon his lappets ; he 
 always wiped it in his hair. This was very grey, 
 and the ink made it more juvenile looking, which 
 was erroneously thought to be his object. He 
 detested the head-master (though not so much as 
 I did), and relieved his feelings by abusing him iu
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 35 
 
 the Greek language. I know this because, sure of 
 my sympathy, he was so good, in a confidential 
 moment, as to translate one of these Philippics ; 
 his name for our enemy was Thersites — * the basest 
 Greek,' as he was careful to inform me, ' that ever 
 came to Troy.' Where he made a more regrettable 
 mistake, to my mind, was in having ever come to 
 Woolwich. 
 
 If Mr. Casterton was not the eldest usher that 
 ever wore grey hairs (streaked with ink), he wns 
 the eldest I ever knew by far, and it seemed to me 
 a pleasant trait in him that he delighted in fiction. 
 But such fiction ! One has heard of great scholars 
 relaxing their gigantic intellects over Sir Walter 
 Scott and even Miss Austen, but this gentleman 
 relaxed his over penny novelettes. These were not 
 so common then as they are now, but they were 
 equally dull, and dealt even more exclusively with 
 Duchesses and Countesses. An adventure that 
 befell him, if told as it took place, would have more 
 befitted the pages of ' Eoderick Eandom ' than of 
 this modest history. He had a private scheme for 
 
 D 2
 
 36 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 starting an opposition school to that of his principal, 
 which he was so foolish as to impart to some boys 
 of larger growth. He showed them his advertise- 
 ments in the newspaper, and they answered one of 
 them. The result was that Mr. Casterton went to 
 town to visit the disrespectable mother of two 
 imaginary pupils. He came back after a prolonged 
 absence with an eye that was still black and a 
 thirst for revenge that was never slaked, the cir- 
 cumstances under which he had undertaken the 
 enterprise being such as to render the revelation of 
 his grievance impossible. 
 
 The reference to * Roderick Random ' suggests a 
 view that was entertained in ni}- young days as to 
 the effect of coarse literature upon the youthful 
 mind. It was said that it shrank from the gross- 
 ness of vice, and was more liable to be injured by 
 the delicate suggestions of it than by its actual 
 picture. ' Don Juan,' for examj^le (to take a very 
 mild specimen of the latter class), was thought to 
 be less hurtful than ' Lalla Eookh.' This may be 
 so with girls (though I doubt it), but certainly not
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 37 
 
 ■with boys. Humour, no doubt, of which there is such 
 a plenty in Smohett and Fielding, is a disinfectant of 
 coarseness with natures that possess humour ; but 
 unfortunately it is only a very few boys who have 
 this gift, and what most pleases them in ' Roderick 
 Random ' and ' Tom Jones ' is just what should 
 please them the least. In saying this I know that 
 I run counter to the opinion of many cultured 
 persons even now ; but I am too old for illusions of 
 this kind — if, indeed, I was ever so weak as to 
 entertain them. I am told boys have been much 
 improved since I was one of them, and it may be 
 so ; but certainly in my time they more resembled 
 those described by Cowper in his ' Tirocinium ' than 
 by Mr. Hughes in ' Tom Brown.' As to the 
 abominable cruelty too often characteristic of them, 
 there is an explanation for it known to all physiolo- 
 gists, though not, apparently, to pedagogues ; it is 
 evident, indeed, to the most superficial observer 
 that this hateful attribute (save in exceptionally 
 brutal natures) ceases at the period of adolescence. 
 In my day it seemed to be considered, with
 
 38 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 res2:)ect to boys, that the possession .of 3'outh was 
 happmess enough for anybody, and that httle care 
 need be taken to decrease the sum of its miseries. 
 I am now a very old boy indeed, and have had my 
 share of the toils and troubles, the cares and woes, 
 of adult humanity ; but its darkest hour cannot be 
 compared with the wretchedness I endured at my 
 first school. In that respect my experience coin- 
 cides with that of Anthony Trollope, which is 
 curious, since my sorrows did not arise from the 
 same cause, and our characters had little in com- 
 mon. I cannot but ascribe some of the extra- 
 ordinarily high spirits I possessed as a young man 
 — and in a less degree for many years afterwards — 
 to a sense of emancipation from school slavery. 
 Thomas Hood, it is true, remarks that *it is little 
 joy to know one's farther off from heaven than 
 when one was a boy,' but that arose from an opti- 
 cal illusion with resi3ect to the neighbourhood of 
 the poplar tree to the sky. 
 
 When I was a boy I had a pony, but though on 
 good terms with it, could never make it the object
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 39 
 
 of worship which that species of property generally 
 becomes to its possessors. I belonged to an equine 
 family and perhaps got a little bored with too much 
 horse as a topic of conversation. Why country 
 hosts should take their guests to their stables as a 
 morning treat was what I could never discover. 
 It is not a rose garden. When still a very young 
 man I was the cause of a great deal of mirth 
 in the family circle by coming home from Eeading 
 races on somebody else's horse. A friend had 
 lent me a bay one to ride there, and I had come 
 back upon a bay one, but it was not the same bay. 
 As there were a score of horses in the tent, and 
 this one was brought out to me by the man in 
 charge of them, I took it upon trust. Many years 
 after I learned by the fate of another what a risk I 
 had run. An acquaintance of mine, Mr. E., a 
 barrister in large practice, who thought less of his 
 horse than his briefs, and was, indeed, a very care- 
 less rider, was accustomed to ride into town every 
 morning and put up his horse at a Westminster 
 livery stable, close to the courts. On one occasion
 
 40 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 he returned somewhat earlier than usual, and rode 
 off. Another barrister, Mr. B., who knew him well, 
 and was accustomed to use the same stable, arrived 
 later and called for his horse. When it was 
 brought out, he said : ' This is not my horse.' * I 
 am very sorry,' said the man, * but there has been 
 a mistake ; your horse has been given to Mr. E.' 
 ' Then he is a dead man !' cried Mr. B. And so it 
 was. B.'s horse was a buck-jumper, and poor E., 
 whose steed was a very quiet one, and who never 
 dreamt he was bestriding a strange animal, had 
 been thrown over his head and killed on the spot. 
 
 Though never mucli attracted by athletic games, 
 I became a member of a county cricket club, but 
 did not long remain an active member. The ball 
 on one occasion persisted in its undesirable swift- 
 ness, even after it had passed the wicket at which 
 it was aimed ; a natural impulse caused me to 
 attempt to stop it with my straw hat instead of my 
 hand. So far from this act of self-sacrifice (for the 
 crown of my hat was carried away) being appre- 
 ciated, it was considered an unscientific proceeding,
 
 WITH SOME KEFLECTIONS 41 
 
 and I was never invited to play again. I found the 
 luncheon-tent, however, very pleasant, and the 
 conversation of the vice-president, whose age ab- 
 solved him from being bowled at, most entertaining. 
 He commiserated my youth and innocence, and 
 gave me several precepts for my future conduct of 
 a practical nature. Here are two of them : ' If 
 any one offers to bet you, my lad, that a reputed 
 pint holds no more than three-quarters of a real 
 pint, take him. It commonly does not hold more ; 
 but fill the bottle and put the cork in, then turn it 
 upside down and fill ' the kick,' and you will find it 
 does hold more. You may pick up many a half- 
 crown by this little plan. 
 
 His other piece of advice was even still more 
 ingenious. ' When tossing (especially for money) 
 never cry " tails," but always " woman." Suppos- 
 ing the coin is one of her present Majesty's reign, 
 and it comes down heads, cry " Woman it is," and 
 it is ten to one that your opponent will not discover 
 the subtlety of your device.' These moral precepts 
 he inculcated with the gravity of Socrates in his
 
 42 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 instruction of youtli, but without his verbal quibbles. 
 To say that this is what comes of a man having 
 passed fifty j'ears of his life in playing cricket 
 may be generalising too hastily from insufficient 
 data, but the example seems to tend in that di- 
 rection. 
 
 My acquaintance with this old gentleman must 
 have been early in those halcyon days when the 
 chrysalis state of schoolboy, or more accurately the 
 grub, hae passed, and the butterfly existence of 
 undergraduate has commenced. There is, however, 
 110 parallel in the insect world compared with the 
 bright and brilliant change that took place in my ease. 
 The ' Transmigrations of Indur ' have little more 
 surprising and nothing more delightful in them. 
 I cannot conceal from m3^self that as a boy I was 
 very> very far from, popular. I dare say there were 
 much better (or worse) reasons for this ; but on 
 inquiry of a contemporary in later years as to what 
 he thought was the cause of it, he answered ; 
 '■ Well, for one thing ' — as though to go through 
 the whole list would have been fatiguing — * you
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 43 
 
 were so blooming facetious ' ; only he used a much 
 stronger word than ' blooming.' 
 
 At the University they do not object to facetiae. 
 My male relatives who had gone to college were all 
 Oxford men, and I believe it was because I was 
 supposed to possess certain mathematical gifts that 
 I was sent to Cambridge. I am at a loss to know 
 what they were, and I am afraid that they merely 
 consisted in a distate for the classics. However, it 
 was fortunately not expected that I should take 
 honours ; it would satisfy my mother if I took my 
 degree, or, in other words, if I took any other course 
 than that in my mind, which was to go at once to 
 London and commence a literary life upon my own 
 account, against which the fact that I was very 
 poorly equipped for it was not one of her objec- 
 tions. She thought, dear soul, that I was clever 
 enough for anything, but feared Bohemia and its 
 temptations, of which she had heard something, 
 heaven knows how, but knew nothing. So to 
 Cambridge I went, rather unwillingly. Those who 
 knew me best had considerable doubt whether I
 
 44 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 could muster sufficient learning to pass the entrance 
 examination into Trinity ; but this feat was 
 accomplished, and though I have always detested 
 examinations and read for them against the grain, 
 yet somehow or other I have always got through 
 them — not without difficulty, far from it, but 
 without discredit. There is rather a large class 
 of persons in the world, I think, w^ho have no great 
 aptitude for this or that, but when their heads are 
 put at it, like a hunter's at a bullfinch, and there 
 is no escape from the ordeal, acquit themselves 
 well enough to no one's astonishment more than 
 their own. 
 
 I have used the grub and the butterfly as a 
 metaphor to express the transition of the school- 
 boy to the undergraduate not so much from its 
 novelty as for its applicability. A grub, and 
 generally a dirty one, he suddenly finds himself in 
 possession of a dressing-case, gorgeous clothing, 
 and what seems to him unlimited credit. A 
 summer lasting three years lies before him in 
 which he may bask in the sunshine or flit from
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 45 
 
 flower to flower, and then his Httle life is ended — 
 the sUde is removed from the magic lantern, and 
 the day of illusion is done. Of course there are 
 those who come up to the University ' to stay,' and 
 who, if they have staying powers, dp so ; but to 
 the majority that period of existence remains a 
 thing apart for the rest of their lives. If they 
 cannot convince themselves that that fine careless 
 rapture they can never recapture, let them revisit 
 their Alma Mater after a few years, and find how 
 utterly they are out of tune with it. I enjoyed 
 College life immensely ; hut with those who think 
 that a University course is a good training-ground 
 to fit us for the world without, I cannot agree. 
 
 When a young gentleman of literary tastes, but 
 not of classical or mathematical attainments, goes 
 to College, he generally gravitates toward the Union. 
 To distinguish himself there as a speaker has 
 almost as great an attraction for him as to appear 
 in print, and it is an ambition easily gratified. His 
 public is ready made for him, perfectly willing to 
 listen to him — within certain limits — and not in-
 
 ^6 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 disposed to applaud if be is tolerably amusing. 
 At this distance of time I may say witbout self- 
 flattery that I was a popular speaker — tbougb it 
 would be more correct to say reciter, for I learned 
 all my speeches by heart. So long as I sat in my 
 chair I have had no difficulty at any time of my 
 life in talking, but directly I got on my legs the 
 faculty of thought has deserted me. I could only 
 remember, and sometimes, alas ! not even that. I 
 well recollect breaking down in a most brilliant 
 oration from the circumstance of my having put 
 the notes for it in a wrong pocket, and being 
 exposed to the scathing eloquence of a Unionic 
 opponent in consequence. My forlorn and humi- 
 liated condition, as I stood hke a penitent before 
 it without a word to say for myself, aroused the 
 good-natured sympathy of the House, whose en- 
 couraging cheers, however, onlj'' rendered me more 
 helplessly idiotic ; but that adversary of mine, who 
 could talk by the hour about nothing at all, was 
 merciless. 
 
 * The hon. member,' he said, ' appears to have
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 47 
 
 left his wits at home, which is apt to be the case 
 with those who learn their speeches by heart.' 
 
 But by that time I had foimd mj notes, and, 
 instead of arranging my gown like Julius Csesar, as 
 had been my intention m order to die decently, 
 managed under its folds to catch a sight of them. 
 
 * It is true,' I replied, ' that I give some time 
 and preparation beforehand to what I am about to 
 say here, because I think it more respectful to this 
 House than to give them the first thing that 
 happens to come into my mind.' 
 
 Nothing better pleases an audience, whatever it 
 be, than to have itself complimented, and thunders 
 of applause greeted this senatorial rebuke, after 
 which the recitation proceeded without a hitch. 
 Even when my reputation, however, as a politician 
 (of the humorous kind) was more established, it 
 was still subject to occasional depreciation. In an 
 assembly of graver and more reverend seigniors 
 than I was accustomed to find myself, a professor of 
 acknowledged learning, but who had exposed him- 
 self to public ridicule on more than one occasion
 
 48 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 by injudicious behaviour, was expressing his opinion 
 that the speakers at the Union were a set of fools. 
 He was near-sighted, and, of course, unaware of 
 my presence ; and the host, wishing to make 
 matters less unpleasant to me, observed : 
 
 * I think you must allow that our friend Payn 
 is an exception, professor.' 
 
 * Oh, certainly ; I had forgotten him. Payn is 
 a funny fool.' 
 
 ' Never mind,' whispered my host, comfortingh', 
 * the professor does not know much about humour.' 
 
 ' No,' I replied, lugubriously ; ' but he knows a 
 great deal about folly ' — a remark which was con- 
 sidered by some people as rather smart for an 
 undergraduate, and by others as rather impudent. 
 
 After all, getting one's speeches by heart is not 
 so bad as getting other people's speeches and 
 delivering them as one's own. An instance of it is 
 recorded in the ' Sketches of Cantabs,' where one 
 honourable member leaves the House incontinently 
 because his oratory has been word for word antici- 
 pated ; and it was not an uncommon case. The
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 49 
 
 Union in other respects was not a bad imitation of 
 St. Stephens. The audience was very good-natured, 
 and not more boisterous at their worst than is the 
 House on an Irish night ; but perhaps they were a 
 little less tolerant of bores. To those whose future 
 lives lay in the direction of politics it was un- 
 doubtedly a useful training- ground, and many an 
 eminent politician do I remember assuring his 
 friends that ' he came down to the House that night 
 with no intention of addressing it,' in the same 
 Parliamentary sense that he uses the words to-da}'. 
 I am much afraid that the record of my studies 
 at the University, if published in the ' Education- 
 alist,' would not be for edification. As to classics I 
 had an excellent memory, and could quote more 
 largely from cribs than most people. This gift 
 always enabled me to take a respectable place in 
 the College examinations ; but on one occasion it 
 had a very sad result, for it created the impression 
 upon the head lecturer that I must have taken the 
 crib in with me. Indeed, nothing could convince 
 him to the contrary but my sitting down in his 
 
 E
 
 50 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 apartment and then and there putting on paper 
 the whole translation over again, which I did, I 
 believe without one word of alteration. 
 
 ' You certainly have a great deal of reading in 
 your head,' he acknowledged ; but added, I thought 
 unnecessarily, ' that is of a certain description.' 
 
 And, indeed, I had probably read more than he 
 had, though not quite the same kind of literature. 
 
 As to mathematics, I had an intimate friend, a 
 lecturer, who made me to some extent practically 
 acquainted with them ; for, having persuaded the 
 College to supply him with models for illustration 
 of his subject, he constituted me his assistant. 
 The pulle3^s and things did not always work very 
 well — indeed, sometimes did the very contrary to 
 what science had predicted of them — and it was 
 my mission to remedy matters. There were some 
 anonymous lines written about : 
 
 Dodson and pup 
 Coaxing a pulley that wouldn't pull up. 
 
 And of the glee of the lecture-room at seeing 
 
 The state 
 Of total prostration of man and weight.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 51 
 
 But it was not the pup's feelings that were hurt by 
 them ; science never disappointed me. It was to 
 my honoured principal (and confederate) that the 
 world is indebted for the only touch of pathos to be 
 found in statics. * But when A B is on the same 
 line with C D, E F vanishes, the weight is sup- 
 ported by the immovable fulcrum G, and the body 
 is at rest.' If this be read with the proper tender- 
 ness of intonation, and with a drop of the voice 
 at the conclusion, it rarely fails to draw tears. 
 
 The only other branch of science I cultivated at 
 the University was whist, at which I was a perse- 
 vering student. ' Any fellow will play on a wet 
 day,' an enthusiast of the game used to say, ' but 
 give us the man who will play on a line one,' and 1 
 was always the man given to them for that purpose. 
 There are no possible circumstances in which 1 
 have not taken a hand at that attractive amuse- 
 ment ; though some of them no doubt would l)e 
 considered peculiar. At a county ball held at a 
 famous inn, to which in my adolescence I was taken 
 by my family contrary to my wislies — for square 
 
 E 2
 
 52 GLEAMS OF MEMORY 
 
 dances used to strike me as insipid, and round ones 
 made me sick — there was no arrangement made 
 for whist-players. In company with three other 
 devotees we therefore took possession of a bedroom, 
 in which, however, there was no table, and played 
 upon the washing-stand. At Cambridge I have 
 driven out in the summer time in a dog-cart with 
 (what are now) two prominent senators and a 
 divine of great reputation, and played whist with 
 them in a wood. If it had been a dramatic repre- 
 sentation in the open air, it could not have caused 
 more excitement among the agricultural population, 
 and as they persisted in standing round us in 
 several rows and offering their unsought advice as 
 to the conduct of the game, we were compelled to 
 give it up. 
 
 Perhaps, however, my most amusing experience 
 in connection with the game was with a long vaca- 
 tion party at Wastwater, where it drizzles for half 
 the week and pours for the other half. A dignitary 
 of the Church was detained there by stress of 
 weather, and every morning inveighed against our
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 53 
 
 custom of sitting down to cards directly after break- 
 fast ; but as time went on and the weather became 
 worse, he grew to take a nearer and nearer interest 
 n our proceedings, and on the fifth morning, after 
 circHng round the table like a dove about a dovecote, 
 announced his intention to take a hand. 
 
 When I look back upon what is now a long life, 
 the slice of it that has been occupied in that en- 
 trancing game has been rather a large one — some- 
 thing like two hours j^^^f diem upon every ' lawful 
 day '■ — but it does not strike me as having been 
 misspent. It has been almost the only relaxation 
 of a very hard-working existence, and is mingled 
 with many pleasant recollections and agreeable 
 companionships. 
 
 Only once in my life have I played whist for 
 high points — gambled in fact — for they were much 
 higher than I could afford, and I don't regret it. 
 It was at a card club, where, if a stranger was 
 asked to dinner, he might for that one evening join 
 in the play. It was when I was young and foolish, 
 and a friend invited me to dine there and ' have a
 
 54 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 sh}'.' ' But if I lose two rubbers, I shall come awa}-,' 
 I said. 
 
 ' By all means. Some very distinguished per- 
 sonages go away after one. They say they are 
 " not going to stand and be shot at." ' 
 
 ' But I shall also go away,' I said, ' if I win two 
 rubbers.' 
 
 ' Wh}^ not ? Some very distinguished person- 
 ages also do that. They say they feel " woolly," 
 and go home with their plunder.' 
 
 The next day my friend met me. ' How did 
 j'-Qu get on ? ' he said ; ' you left early I noticed.' 
 
 'Yes; I felt "woolly."' 
 
 As I have said, I am far from regretting the 
 experience, but I do not wish to repeat it. It was 
 not pleasure, though it was profit. 
 
 I have never on any other occasion willingly 
 plaj^ed for stakes that I could not afford, which is 
 the only proper definition of gambling. "When it 
 is of consequence to win, and of greater consequence 
 not to lose, whist ceases to be a game and becomes 
 a profession ; but so long as we play for stakes
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 55 
 
 that are in accordance with our means, I confess I 
 see no more harm in it than in any other social 
 pleasure. It is one of those accomphshmcnts 
 which a man must acquire early in order to beco ne 
 a proficient at it ; and some men who have that 
 advantage, though with plenty of wits, and great 
 love for the game, never do so. Such a one, for 
 example, was Bernal Osborne, though he rather 
 ' fancied himself ' as a performer, and seldom fore- 
 bore to conceal any dissatisfaction with his partner. 
 A very nice young fellow, who did not know who he 
 was, and was playing with him for the first time, 
 once came in for these symptoms of disapproval. 
 
 ' It is no use your scowling at me, old gentle- 
 man,' he presently observed, ' for I play as well at' 
 I can.' 
 
 Osborne's face was a study, and when the 
 rubber was over he came round to me to discuss 
 the outrage. 
 
 ' Did you ever hear such a remark, and upon 
 me, too ? Did you ever see me scowl at my partner 
 in my life ? '
 
 56 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY; 
 
 I was obliged to say that I had sometimes seen 
 him wear an expression which, in a bad light, and 
 translated by one unacquainted with him, might be 
 thought the reverse of conciliatory ; but in a few 
 minutes the offender came up to us and made a 
 handsome apology to Osborne, who received it very 
 gi'aciously. 
 
 While speaking of whist, by the by, I might as 
 well have mentioned one or two experiences of that 
 game, which I have played very literally with all 
 sorts and conditions of men, from the Prince of the 
 Blood to the farmer. It is the habit of some per- 
 sons, by way, perhaps, of impressing the state of the 
 score on their minds before leading, to say, ' We 
 have a treble and,' adding the rest of the score 
 or not, as happened, though I have noticed the 
 omission to be the more usual. A good player, 
 but who had the misfortune to be too free with his 
 ' h's,' remarked on one occasion, * We have a treble 
 hand,' whereupon one of his adversaries observed, 
 * You have no right to say so, sir, and you deserve 
 to have your cards called.' It was one of the few
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 57 
 
 instances I have ever known of a man's super- 
 abundance of ' h's ' being brought home to him. 
 This sort of half-completed sentence is peculiar to 
 whist players. If a player renounces, his partner 
 never — never says, ' Have you no club '? ' (or what- 
 ever it is), but ' Have you no — er — ? ' Then, after 
 a long pause, he may say ' no club ? ' but it is 
 generally omitted. I do this myself, but have no 
 notion why I do it. 
 
 One of the funniest things I know regarding 
 the game happened to the greatest authority on 
 whist now living. When, as a young man, he first 
 joined a club of repute he was (he says) very 
 modest. As a spectator he was watching four old 
 gentlemen playing their game, when he saw a card 
 on the floor face downwards beside one of them. 
 On the impulse of the moment he said, 'You've 
 dropped,' then stopped, remembering that no out- 
 sider should interfere on any pretence. ' I beg 
 your pardon,' he added humbly, ' I should not have 
 spoken.' ' Never mind,' said the old gentleman he 
 had addressed, ' what is it ? ' ' Well, you have
 
 58 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 dropped a card, sir ; ' and he picked it up and gave 
 it to him. The old gentleman thanked him 
 urbanely, and began to play ; he had four by 
 honours and would have easil}^ won the game, 
 luit that unfortunately he held fourteen cards, 
 which vitiated the deal. The card belonged to the 
 other pack, both, as usual at the club in question, 
 l)eing white ones. It was not a good beginning for 
 the future authority on whist. 
 
 Of course unpleasantnesses will sometimes arise 
 at whist, as at vestry meetings or elsewhere, but I 
 have known no serious ones. A most humorous 
 fracas once occurred at a club of which I was a 
 member. Two men, both excellent whist-players, 
 had quarrelled about some social matter, and did 
 not speak. B. carefully avoided A.'s table, but A., 
 who had no such delicate feelings, remorselessly 
 cut into B.'s. At last, growing very indignant, ' If 
 he does it again,' confided B. to me, ' and he is my 
 partner, I'll lose the rubber for him. I'll not revoke, 
 because that would be unfair, but Til not win a 
 trick.' I was young and frivolous at that time, an
 
 WITH SOME REFLErXIONS 59 
 
 looked forward to this operation with intense in- 
 terest. On the ensuing day A. did cut into B.'s 
 tablf», and they icere partners. The way in which 
 B. disposed of his kings to A.'s aces and trumped 
 his best cards was quite amazing ; all that A. said 
 was, ' Very pretty play.' 
 
 The best of the joke was, however, that a member 
 of the club had brought a friend— the then Presi- 
 dent of the College of Physicians — to see B. play, 
 who had a great reputation. When it was all over 
 I heard the visitor remark, ' Well, I have no doubt 
 Mr. B. is a very fine player, but I confess I could 
 not understand his game.' A. did, however, per- 
 fectly, and never cut into B.'s rubber again. 
 
 At the clubs which we now find at every 
 fashionable seaside place or health resort tliere is 
 not much difficulty in finding entrance, so that side 
 by side at the whist table sit persons of an aristo- 
 cratic type M'ith others who have only money — and 
 often very little of that — to recommend them. A 
 very rich individual, but whose education had been 
 neglected even to the exclusion of the letter ' h,
 
 60 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 very much %ncied himself at the whist-table at R., 
 a feeling whioh was not recij^rocated by his partners. 
 On one occasion he played very ill indeed with 
 Colonel J. of * The Travellers.' He defended his 
 play, however, when rebuked, with vigour, and 
 continued to defend it after the Colonel's de- 
 parture. ' 'Ang me,' he said, 'if I don't know how 
 to play whist as well as any man, let it be W'ho it 
 will.' 
 
 * Still,' observed someone, ' your late partner 
 knows something about the game, and is thought 
 very highly of as a player at " The Travellers." ' 
 ' Very like he may be ; but for my part I don't 
 think " 'ighly " of them commercial gents.' 
 
 Hypnotism had in my College days never been 
 heard of, but there was a kindred branch of 
 mesmerism — electro-biology — much cultivated by 
 travelling professors, and it would not be unchari- 
 table to say mainly in the hands of quacks. One 
 of them came down to Cambridge and gave a lecture 
 in the Town Hall. I had not the faintest belief in 
 such things, and stared at the little leaden disk
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS; 61 
 
 that was given to me by the operator with indiffer- 
 ent eyes. In a few minutes, however, I was spell- 
 bound. As the lecturer discovered that I was fairly 
 well known (I think I was then President of the 
 Union) among the undergraduates who filled the 
 hall, he gave his particular attention to me, to my 
 intense annoyance. I was unable to remember 
 my name (which he defied me to utter) or that of 
 my College ; he offered me a sovereign to strike 
 him (which I would gladly have done for nothing), 
 but I was powerless, and in short nobody could 
 have been made a greater fool for half an hour or 
 so (he might have gone on doing it for ever, and so 
 far he exhibited moderation) than I was by that 
 professor of electro-biology. I was wax in his 
 hands, and, what was worse than all the amuse- 
 ment I gave, the audience was cynical. Not one 
 amongst them but believed that I was shamming 
 and in league with the lecturer. My position, 
 therefore, was doubly humiliating. 
 
 The next day my friend W. G. Clark, the Pu lie 
 Orator, invited the professor to his rooms, and the
 
 62 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 performance was repeated before a much more 
 select audience. The professor was as successful 
 with me (confound him !) as on the previous day, 
 as also with a young gentleman who now wears a 
 silk gown and enjoys a great reputation. The ex- 
 planation of the matter given by a great scientific 
 authority present was only partially satisfactory to 
 either of us. He said there was uncpiestionably 
 some odic force in the experiment, but that its effect 
 was limited to persons of lively imagination — and 
 to idiots. I have since had cause to know that as 
 regards mesmerism I possess considerable ' receptive 
 power,' but, what seems very hard, am quite unable 
 to practise upon other peo])le. Having pubhshed 
 more than a hundred volumes, I have doubtless 
 sent a good many of my fellow-creatures to sleep, 
 but never designedly. As to sending myself to 
 sleep, 1 am thankful to say that has very seldom 
 Ijeen necessary ; I go there without sending. What- 
 ever may have resulted fro:n my use of the pen, 
 or rather the pencil (for I never write at a desk, 
 but on a ' block,' and generally lying down), I have
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS G3 
 
 worked as hard at my calling as any man — and 
 perhaps a little harder. I attribute my ability to 
 do so to the large doses of sleep I have always 
 taken in defiance of proverbial philosophy. ' Seven 
 hours for a man, eight for a woman, and nine for a 
 fool.' says the old saw, but I have always exceeded 
 the fool's allowance. The great Napoleon could, 
 we are told, sleep when he pleased, which so far 
 allies me to genius, for I possess the same power 
 and exert it much oftener than he did. Still there 
 have been occasions when Morpheus has refused 
 liis aid ; and as an expert in sleep I may be allowed 
 to give advice under such circumstances. I have 
 never found counting things of the least use (per- 
 haps the calculation was wrong), but I have gener- 
 ally found the conjuring up of a particular landscape 
 — always the same landscape— efficacious. It should 
 be monotonous in character, a level plain with one 
 or two sleepy churches in it ; or a great water with 
 no tidal movement. In my case it is the Thames 
 valley seen from the Beikshire downs, with Witteii- 
 ham Clump on the horizon ; when in a very short
 
 64 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 time the pleasant fields and farms are seen to ' mix 
 in one another's arms,' and my closed eyes never 
 reach the Clump at all. Another suggestion I would 
 venture to make to the sleepless is, never to think 
 of plans for the future ; they might just as well get 
 up and put them on paper, as regards any hope of 
 sleep from tJicni ; let them dwell upon the past, 
 which, though it may have regret in it (and plenty 
 of it), is free from anxiety or expectation.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 65 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 I HAD been ' devoted to literature ' of a kind that 
 is injuriously called ' light ' from childhood, and had 
 spoilt reams of good paper with juvenile compo- 
 sitions. There were probably few undergraduates 
 who had written for so many periodicals (which is, 
 however, a very different thing from writing in 
 them) as I had ; and I now p'il)lished a volume of 
 poems, which, if not a financial success, proved a 
 great advantage to me. I may venture to think 
 they had some merit, since they at once introduced 
 me to some of the more genial College authorities, 
 whose acquaintance as a non-reading man I could 
 never have made. W. G. Clark, of whom I have 
 already spoken, was one of them, whose knowledge 
 of English literature was not inferior to the classical 
 attainments for which he was so widely known. lie
 
 66 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 was very literally a host in himself, and gave 
 the brightest dinner parties in college. Of my 
 obligations to him, both then and for years after- 
 wards, I can never speak too highly. George 
 Brimley the critic was another of those elder 
 friends, whom it would be ungrateful indeed not to 
 remember, for he gave me my first review — in the 
 ' Spectator.' I have had hundreds of notices, at 
 least as favourable as I deserved, since then, but 
 none which gave me such ineffable pleasure. I 
 will not say it was ' a turning point in my career,' 
 as is the usual term for such thmgs, because I don't 
 suppose that anything could have turned me from 
 the course I had marked out for myself, but it en- 
 couraged me in it exceedingly. 
 
 There is a great deal of bad feeling among 
 authors in respect to criticism, which mainly arises, 
 I think, from an exaggerated estimate of its power 
 for good or es'il ; whereas it can do little good to a 
 bad book and little harm to a good one. The com- 
 plaints seem to come chietiy from the writers of 
 fiction, and it is finite true that reviewers of that
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS -67 
 
 class of literature are not often of a high class. 
 The latest joined of the staff are put on for that 
 duty ; the young dogs are ' blooded ' on the novels. 
 Their contributions to criticism would hardly be of 
 much importance save for the belief many people 
 attach to whatever appears in print. Strange to say 
 there are no more superstitious folks as regards this 
 matter than journalists themselves. They have 
 been ' through the mill,' they know all the ropes 
 that move her ladyship the Press, but they retain 
 a mysterious respect for * pretty Fanny's ways ' 
 that is quite touching in its simplicity. Used as 
 they are to type they never get ' case ' hardened. 
 I have known a journalist speak quite gravely of an 
 essay upon some great genius about whom every- 
 body has made up their minds, though he knew it 
 was written by some one who knew nothing about 
 the subject, simply because it appeared in a peri- 
 odical of good standing. Nothing can be more 
 ridiculous than this fetish, but if it influences 
 the journalist, how much more must it affect the 
 novelist ! 
 
 F 2
 
 63 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 It is not to be disputed that a favourable review 
 may assist a j'oung author in ' bringing him on ' 
 (hke early asparagus), and there are critics who 
 have the intelligence to recognise merit and the 
 courage to express their opinions ; but the ordinary 
 reviewer, who is also more bent upon doing himself 
 justice than his author, is ' funky ' of bestowing 
 praise where it has not yet been given, and finds 
 detraction much more easy work. This is the real 
 casKS heUi which the young author has with the 
 reviewer. As for the old and established author, 
 it may still heighten his pulses to be praised, but it 
 makes no difference to his literary circulation. 
 Those who like him read him, however he is de- 
 preciated by the critics, and those who do not like 
 him will not be induced to read him by the most 
 eulogistic recommendations. Upon the whole, there- 
 fore, I do not think the authors' grievance is a very 
 grave one, and if a writer is so sensitive as to be 
 made miserable for more than twelve hours by an 
 unfavourable review, it seems to me that he has 
 mistaken his profession. An author of eminence
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 69 
 
 once told me that his wretchedness arising from 
 this source endured with him precisely for a week, 
 until the next issue of the peccant periodical, when 
 it pitched into somebody else. 
 
 Another matter which is much debated in con- 
 nection with literary affairs is whether a writer is 
 ever justified in bringing out a book at his own 
 expense. Of course the publisher is the proper 
 person to take the risks if you can find one ; but 
 suppose the book is a volume of poems ? If Milton, 
 junior, should bring the MS. of a new ' Paradise 
 Lost ' in his pocket, and nothing else, to Pater- 
 noster Row, in manuscript it would remain. No 
 publisher, therefore, I need hardly say, defrayed 
 the expenses of my little volume of verse, the pro- 
 duction of which, however, I have never regretted : 
 its social profits were very considerable, though its 
 financial ones were nil. For intelligent society is 
 just what a young man of character is most in need 
 of and finds it most difficult to get. His usual 
 difficulty is that he can find no one to sympathise 
 with his ambition, or share his tastes ; indolent and
 
 70 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 pleasure-loving, as are most of his class, he fritters 
 his time away in amusements, which in future life 
 he cannot easily dispense with, even if he does not 
 hecome a confirmed idler ; above all, he acquires 
 no sense of comparison, and takes for wit what is 
 merely flippancy, and for humour what is only the 
 possession of high spirits. In later life he generally 
 becomes a citizen of Bohemia, which he believes to 
 be the greatest Eepublic in the world, though it is 
 merely a metropolitan district. 
 
 From this fate, as I believe, the publication of 
 my little volume saved me, by introducing me to a 
 higher sphere of companionship than was to be 
 found in ordinary undergraduate life. The days 
 when a College fellow meant a don have long de- 
 parted, and even in my time there were many men 
 — at all events at Trinity — whose tastes were not 
 restricted to academic pursuits, but who were in 
 closer touch with the modern world of letters than 
 any I had yet met with. Indeed, up to tbat date I 
 had only met with one man in any way connected 
 with literature, Thomas Noel, a very hermit as
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 71 
 
 regarded any knowledge of his literary brethren, 
 and who was so little kno^vn himself that his 
 pathetic poem ' The Pauper's Drive ' was for years 
 attributed to Thomas Hood. He was a bookworm 
 of the legitimate type, and a great student of 
 Elizabethan literature. Boy as I was, I was the 
 means of making him known to Miss Mitford, of 
 whom he became a constant correspondent, and who 
 introduced his poems to the public in her ' Eecollec- 
 tions of a Literary Life.' A childless widower, he 
 lived alone, in a picturesque but secluded residence, 
 and though one of the gentlest and most affection- 
 ate of men was shunned by his Jieighbours, for the 
 heinous offence, as I always understood, of having 
 buried the only child with whom he had been 
 blessed in his garden instead of the churchyard. 
 In these days it would have been considered, at the 
 worst, but an eccentric act of affection. 
 
 Indeed, after a long life, during which there have 
 been many changes in public opinion, there is 
 nothing, as it seems to me, which has altered more 
 than the liberty which I now see accorded to private
 
 72 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 judginent in matters connected with the grave, and 
 beyond it, over which society— who nevertheless 
 took far less interest in them than at present — used 
 to claim the most absolute jurisdiction. If a man 
 went to chapel instead of church, it was almost 
 thought, as our parish clerk in Berkshire always 
 expressed it in the Creed, that ' he dissented into 
 hell, and if he went neither to church nor chapel, 
 be was of course an atheist. 
 
 My Cambridge friends, of the elder sort, though 
 most of them belonged to the clergy, w-ere free from 
 these prejudices, and freed me from them. 
 
 Though I had been by no means brought up ' in 
 the strictest sect of the Pharisees,' unless fox-hunt- 
 ing folks can be so described, yet my ideas upon 
 spiritual matters were of the narrowest. There 
 were some old Eoman Catholic gentry in our neigh- 
 bourhood whom we used often to visit, but it was 
 certainly long after childhood that I regarded them, 
 not indeed with the horror of a good Protestant, but 
 with a certain awe. In one particularly kind and 
 genial family I was as a boy a constant visitor, but
 
 WITH SOME KEFLECTIONS 73 
 
 I could never think of them as of other friends, and 
 regarded their very beautiful private chaj^el — 
 especially towards the gloaming — in anything but 
 a religious light. From their great library, full of 
 illuminated missals and marvellous records of the 
 old faith, I snatched a fearful joy, and when the 
 kind, plump priest, who used to play bowls with me 
 on their green, chanced to come in and ask me with 
 his placid smile what I was reading, I thought of 
 the Grand Inquisitor and perspired freely. 
 
 I find it the most difficult of all efforts of 
 memory to recall those feelings now ; they seem as 
 far away as the Dark Ages, which is indeed their 
 proper habitat, and separated from me, not by a 
 lifetime, but by seons of time. Since then I have 
 known men of all creeds (some of them, as it still 
 strikes me, very queer ones), but the longer I live 
 the more I am convinced that Belief, however 
 goodly the seed, is not to be compared in importance 
 with its fruit. Behaviour. 
 
 It is not to be supposed, however, that the 
 friends of whom I speak were Freethinkers of the
 
 74 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 vulgar sort ; but they ' fought the spectres of the 
 mind and laid them ' without the assistance of holy 
 water. It was new to me to hear questions of ' dog- 
 matic theology' debated, especially by persons so 
 much ' at their ease in Zion,' but it was intensely 
 interesting. The discussions were not without their 
 mixture of humour, but of a very different sort from 
 the flippancy with w^iich such subjects are often 
 treated by that portion of the undergraduate world 
 which is not ' serious.' To think, without fear or 
 Fcoff, is a lesson which most 3'oung men are much 
 in need of ; and to do this was now taught me. I 
 had friends of my own year and time too, dearer 
 and nearer than these, and with gifts as great 
 though as yet undeveloped, and some of them, I am 
 thankful to say, death has not yet taken away from 
 me. Indeed, if I were to sum up the advantages of 
 a University education in a word, it would be its 
 opportunities for making friendships. Unlike those 
 of our school time, they have root and bear trans- 
 plantation, and year by year they increase though 
 they cannot multiply. As to the education itself,
 
 AVITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 75 
 
 it is best and shortest to sa}^ that I was incapable 
 of profiting by it, and only 'just escaped from dis- 
 gracing myself,' as the then Master of Trinity used 
 to put it, by taking an ordinary degree. 
 
 I had been for some time engaged to be married, 
 and had also, which was not quite so agreeable to 
 me, undertaken to ' go into the Church.' Litera- 
 ture, it was thought, was not a good profession to 
 marry upon, and to judge by the profits it had yet 
 produced me, it was certainl}^ not. As an initial 
 step to my becoming a divine, it was, however, 
 necessary to pass ' the Voluntary ' — a theological 
 examination in my case very inappropriately 
 named — and at the brink of this I, so to speak, 
 shied. I overheard two friends discussing the 
 matter. ' He has no " call," ' observed the more 
 serious of the two. * He has a "call,"' returned 
 the other, ' but it is in the opposite direction.' 
 The observation was an injurious one as regarded 
 the literary profession, but its personal application 
 was so far true that I doubted my fitness for the 
 ministry. It is true I had once preached an extem-
 
 76 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 pore sermon, followed by a ' collection,' for two poor 
 persons (one of them the preacher^, but that suc- 
 cess had not convinced me of my suitability for the 
 priestly office ; it was not that ' it was not good 
 enough,' but that ' / was not good enough,' and in 
 that moral conviction I turned my back upon ' the 
 
 Voluntary, ' and the Church of England lost a 
 divine. 
 
 During even my imdergraduate days I was 
 constantly attempting, with the perseverance of a 
 terrier watching at a rat hole, to enrich the periodi- 
 cal hterature of my country. When I hear a judge 
 say to a prisoner, ' If you had used only haK the 
 intelligence you possess in the ptirsuit of some use- 
 ful and honourable calling,' kc. 1 always think of 
 the hundreds of young persons who are always 
 attempting to get into print. It is the same sort 
 of instinct that actuates the habitual criminal, but 
 when the judge adds, ' you would have been success- 
 ful ' i^Le. in the calling) I think he makes a mistake. 
 The saying that a good chess-player is a good 
 mathematician spoilt is a similar error. Human
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIOyS 77 
 
 intelligence, and especiallT where it is considerable, 
 has a tendency to be special, to run in a groov : 
 and with regard to the aspirants after a Kterary 
 life who have come in my way, though the vast 
 majority of them have known bad fortune, the 
 most capable ones did succeed, and in all prob- 
 ability would not have done so in anv other 
 calling. 
 
 Moreover, even when they do not succeed, some 
 of them never give up the idea that they ought to 
 do so. Indeed, the chronic rejected contributor has 
 often so ' good a conceit of himself ' as is not to be 
 expressed except in his own words. Here are a 
 couple of genuine letters embalmed in an editor's 
 album : — 
 
 * Deap. Sir, — Being a student of poetry, and a 
 member of a notorious Literary Association, I want 
 you to embrace in yom- respected organ a poem of 
 mine. It is a poem of a high and sustained type, 
 and would be greatlv suited to vour organ. I have 
 appeared in other periodicals and have four years'
 
 78 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 labour to recommend me to you. I feel sure you 
 cannot do better than accept me as a regular con- 
 tributor to your organ, which I know j^ou will do, 
 when you perceive the stamp and quality of my 
 work, and the prolific power of my mind. I have 
 drunk deep at the stream of literature, and been 
 fascinated by the Greek grandeur of literary work- 
 manshij}. I have lately studied the Sonnet, in the 
 perfect Italian style, and have Sonnets which you 
 would greatly appreciate. When will you take this 
 poem I have referred to, and what is your price, if 
 I become a regular contributor ? for unlike most 
 writers I have an originalit}^ of expression which is 
 astonishing, and its originality is full of, and bathed 
 in, beauty of thought-expression. I love to wander 
 in the clime sublime, and pick all the finest, and 
 most Heaven-reflecting, of the tiowers of thought. 
 Kindly reply.' 
 
 A writer of this kind is not easily persuaded 
 that he has mistaken his profession. He is too 
 se.lf-confident to be angry at rejection. Self-conli-
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 79 
 
 dence, however, may exist with an honest indigna- 
 tion. The second gentleman kicks against the 
 pricks : — 
 
 ' Sir, — As one of those that dechned to accept 
 my "Essay on the Ancient State of Literatm-e," I 
 call upon you for the second and last time to peruse 
 it. If, after careful studying the article, you 
 remain unshaken in your determination to deny 
 me or my fellow- victims justice, and basely to 
 sacrifice the sacred cause of literature to your own 
 sordid cupidity, I have no more to say, for re- 
 proaches are idle. And hopelessly callous as you 
 are, I must for the future leave you to the con- 
 science of which you have such a plentiful lack.' 
 
 The despotism of editors is not so arbitrary as 
 it used to be. My memory does not go back to the 
 fear in which the * Quarterly,' ' so savage and 
 slaughterly,' used to be held ; one would have 
 supposed it took its name from its quartering as 
 well as executing its victims. In my time nobody 
 cared much for the attacks of the heavier reviews.
 
 80 GLEAMS OF MEMORY 
 
 partly, perhaps, because they were generally 
 belated, and did not bear down upon authors till 
 their reputation had been established ; but the 
 power of the weekly organs of literature was still 
 considerable. The then editor of the ' Athenaeum,' 
 Hepworth Dixon, was greatly feared by the small 
 fry of literature, and not much liked by the large 
 fry. It is well known that Thackeray had objec- 
 tions to his daughter becoming an authoress, from 
 the apprehension of what Dixon might write of her 
 work. I remember as a young man, when speak- 
 ing rather gushingly of the kindness I had received 
 from editors in Dickens' presence, he observed with 
 a droll look that he concluded I had not yet made 
 the acquaintance of Hepworth Dixon. I had met 
 him, however, at dinner, and had had rather a 
 humorous experience of him. I was sitting next 
 to a great Eastern scholar, who had told me quite 
 as much as I wanted to hear of Assyria, and was 
 still going on, when he was suddenly interrupted by 
 the host, who, in a tone of conciliatory reproof, 
 observed, * Professor So-and-So, silence, if you
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 81 
 
 please, Mr. Hepworth Dixon is about to say some- 
 thing.' I forget what he said, but the rout of the 
 Assyrian was complete, and amused me exceed- 
 ingly- 
 
 Before I took my degree I had paid my first 
 visit to the Lake Country, and it made a great 
 impression on me. I had been brought up in the 
 South, and had never beheld a mountain, much 
 more such an assemblage of them as is to be se-^n 
 at the Head of Windermere. It is the fashion 
 among people who travel with Cook's tickets to 
 Switzerland to sneer at the Lake Hills, but the 
 fact is that the elevation from which their big 
 brothers of the Continent are viewed is so much 
 greater that they do not loom so much more 
 largely in proportion, nor make the difference 
 between hill and plain so much more pronounced. 
 It is only in a few cases, such as the Jungfrau, 
 where the mountain springs up on a sudden (like 
 the mountains in the ' comparative heights ' of the 
 school geographies), that the contrast is so very 
 marked ; in the case, for instance, of Mont Blanc, 
 
 a
 
 82 GLEAMS Of MEMOEY; 
 
 its head is lost in its high shoulders. At all events, 
 when I visited Switzerland after having seen the 
 English fells, the peculiar effect of mountains on a 
 denizen of the valley was not as striking as when 
 I first saw the Langdale Pikes, It must, however, 
 be confessed that I love the Lake district as a 
 faithful husband who loves his wife upon his 
 golden wedding day no less than when she was his 
 bride. From first to last it has been the locality 
 most dear to me, quite independently of its asso- 
 ciations, though they, too, have been of the most 
 attractive kind. It was there that I first made the 
 acquaintance of persons it would have been a stroke 
 of good fortune to know anywhere — Miss Martineau, 
 Matthew Arnold and his brother William, AUing- 
 ham and Clough, the poets, and others — but who, 
 met amid such scenes of beauty and far from the 
 moil and toil of town, were seen at their best. 
 
 I visited the district, while an undergraduate, 
 with companions of another but not less genial 
 kind, for I spent part of a long vacation there more 
 than once with some of my College contemporaries.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 83 
 
 We did not ' paint ' the district * red,' which would 
 have been an inappropriate colour, but we made 
 matters lively there. We were always fixed on 
 some wild expedition or another, and carried it out 
 whatever was the weather, and in that locality it 
 is generally wet. Never shall 1 forget that pouring 
 day in which we made the Honister Crag round 
 from Keswick on horseback. An intelligent guide 
 had taught us how to keep our cigars alight even 
 in tempest by holding the lighted end inside our 
 mouths ; it was very convenient, if a little suffocat- 
 ing, but it made us present rather a demoniacal 
 appearance to the beholder. 
 
 More for the fun of the thing, I fear, than f()r 
 love of the picturesque, we resolved to see the sun- 
 rise from some mountain top. Fairfield was the 
 favoured one, and with infinite pains a tent was 
 taken up there and pitched for the night. This 
 was lit by four gigantic carriage lamps, and save 
 that, like all tents, it was always too hot when it 
 was not too cold, was a tolerable shelter so long as 
 it stood. But as the night grew on a wind arose 
 
 a 2
 
 84 GLEAMS OF MEMORy 
 
 such as destroyed the tents of the children of Job, 
 and treated us even worse, for ours came down 
 as we were intent on our cards, and with it the 
 four lamps, whereby some of the party were burnt 
 rather severely before they were extricated, since 
 the flapping canvas drowned their cries. It must 
 have been, I think, after this adventure that the 
 following lines were written, which I find in a 
 note-book of that epoch ; they were evidently the 
 ' moral ' of a narrative poem : — 
 
 But why your poetical people go 
 
 To such very great heights, and sometimes in the snow, 
 
 To see what they've just left behind down below, 
 
 I really can't tell, for I really don't know. 
 
 It did not snow that night, but it rained in 
 torrents, and anything more forlorn than our 
 appearance when morning dawned it is difficult to 
 imagine ; on the other hand, nobody could see us 
 six inches away, for it was a thick fog, and I need 
 not say we never saw the sunrise. 
 
 On another occasion, with native assistance, 
 we dragged up a well-furnished luncheon basket to 
 the summit of Helvellyn, when, by some infernal
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 85 
 
 mismanagement, it escaped from our hands and 
 was precipitated down the height of Catch-it-who- 
 can, or some such name. Nobody could catch it 
 of course. The fate of a very large plum cake, the 
 pride of our landlady, was particularly distressing ; 
 it escaped from the companionship of the other 
 things in the basket and took a tour of its own, 
 making great leaps and bounds till, after one 
 gigantic somersault, it broke into a thousand 
 pieces. 
 
 As a rule, I do not like mountains, except to 
 look at. The tourist's notion that Heaven must 
 be ' a Switzerland all downhill ' strikes no sym- 
 pathetic chord within me ; coming down, to my 
 mind, is only less objectionable than going up, in- 
 asmuch as it does not last so long. 
 
 In the first year of my marriage I spent the 
 winter in Ambleside. By that time I knew the 
 Lake Country thoroughly well, but only in its 
 summer dress. To see it put on its winter garb, 
 from the white cap on the summit of the green hill 
 that marks ' the first snow on the fell ' to the vast
 
 86 GLEAMS OF JMEMORY ; 
 
 snow-shroud over vale and mountain, was a glorious 
 experience ; yet how seldom is it taken advantage 
 of, though within the reach of so many ! That on 
 a frosty morning one can leave London and the 
 same night behold the skaters upon Eydal Lake by 
 moonlight is an idea that never occurs to anyone ; 
 vet no transformation scene ever beheld on the 
 stage can be more comj)lete. It is veritable fairy 
 land, with such accessories in isle and rock and 
 snow, and in the echoes from the everlasting hills, 
 as no manager, however enterprising, could supply. 
 It is no wonder that, of all the splendours of his 
 mountain home, Wordsworth dwells upon it as its 
 crowning glory. 
 
 In those days Ambleside was a very primitive 
 spot as compared with its modern aspect, and I 
 remember that in the butcher's shop the joints 
 bespoken by the inhabitants were marked with 
 their names to prevent them being inadvertently 
 disposed of to others — Mr. Jones's leg, Mr. 
 Eobinson's heart, and other customers' limbs. 
 
 The success — as I have some reason to think it
 
 "WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 87 
 
 — of my little volume of verse encouraged me, like 
 another person but slightly connected with litera- 
 ture, to ' drop into poetry ' for a season. I wrote 
 eome ' Ballads from English History,' which were 
 published by Harrison Ainsworth in ' Bentley's 
 Miscellany ; ' looking back at them at this great 
 distance of time, and perhaps because of it, I seem 
 to recognise some merit in them. * The Death of 
 Cromwell,' from which I venture to reprint a verse 
 or two, was perhaps the best of them.' 
 
 There is never much difficulty in getting mode- 
 rately good poems published in certain periodicals 
 if it is distinctly understood that no payment is 
 expected for them. But, indeed, the sums I got for 
 my prose contributions at this time were often so 
 infinitesimal that they might, so far, have almost 
 been poetry. One or two of these compositions 
 found their way into respectable channels such as 
 * Household Words ' and ' Chambers's Journal,' 
 
 ' Upon reconsideration I spare my readers ; that is one temp- 
 tation overcome, at all events ; and I also remember that I 
 reprinted the poem in Married beneath Him.
 
 88 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 and were of course duly remunerated ; but the 
 majority of them appeared in obscure periodicals, 
 all of which are dead. This, however, did not 
 prevent the descendant of one of their proprietors 
 attempting, a quarter of a century afterwards, to 
 lay hands upon some of these effusions. He wrote 
 to say he had one or two of my early sketches in 
 his possession which he thought I might like to 
 have. At first I thought he was referring to the 
 original MSS., which he might quite possibly have 
 considered curious ; but it turned out that they 
 were four little stories, extending to about ten 
 pages in all, of which ' he held the copyright.' 
 The stories had been republished, with others, with 
 the consent of the proprietors of the various perio- 
 dicals, as was stated on the title-page. This he 
 affected to know nothing about — had no recollection 
 of any such permission having been granted (as, 
 indeed, after four-and-twenty years, was likely) by 
 the publisher of whom he was ' the direct representa- 
 tive,' and finished by demanding ' compensation.' 
 I referred him to my legal adviser and heard no
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 89 
 
 more of him ; but, on unearthing some early hte- 
 rary accounts, I found that the aggregate sum 
 received for the four stories was 3Z. 15.?. ! This is 
 only an illustration of what every author of repute 
 is liable to meet with from the too enterprising 
 publisher. In dealing with Grub Street, which 
 necessity compels when he is young and unknown, 
 he cannot be too careful about the wording of its 
 little agreements. 
 
 There are some dangers, on the other hand, 
 against which no prudence can guard. There is 
 the title of your first book, for example. You flatter 
 yourself you have hit upon a good one, but whether 
 it is a new one you can never be certain. The 
 institution of Stationers' Hall, like the existence of 
 snakes and mosquitoes, may be (who knows ? ) of 
 advantage to somebody, but not to the author. 
 The books are catalogued under their writers' names 
 (which you don't know), instead of by their titles ; 
 it is, therefore, impossible to discover whether your 
 title has been used before or not. But when your 
 book is published you receive this information with
 
 90 GLEAMS OF MEMORY 
 
 a claim for damages. The enterprising publisher 
 again steps in. He has produced a work, many 
 years ago, which fell still-born from the press, but 
 is now going to realise something ; it was publisbo/l 
 under the very title you fondly imagined you had 
 invented, and though any confusion that could 
 possibly arise in consequence must be to his advan- 
 tage, he, too, requires * compensation.' The case is 
 a particularly hard one, since it is obvious that the 
 name was chosen for its apparent novelty ; if one 
 ' hit upon ' ' Vanity Fair ' or ' Martin Chuzzlewit,' 
 it would be a different matter. But though there 
 is no justice in the claim, there is law upon its 
 side, and the poor author suffers. My first misbap 
 of this kind was brought home to me by the pro- 
 prietor of the serial in which a certain novel of mine 
 was appearing. ' The coincidence might have been 
 a very serious trouble to you,' he said — ' injunction 
 in Chancery and so on — but I have settled the whole 
 thing for j-ou for five-and-twenty pounds.' He 
 forgot to say that the enterprising publisher had, 
 in the first instance, made his claim upon Jiim, and
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 91 
 
 that he had disposed of the affair in this satisfactory 
 manner at my expense. 
 
 ' The myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty,' 
 says the poet of passion, ' are worth all your laurels, 
 however so plenty,' and there is no doubt his lord- 
 ship was right, only one does not discover the fact 
 till one is much older. Now I reflect upon it, I 
 not only ought to have been, but was, exceedingly 
 happy at the age he mentions. At four-and-twenty 
 I was happier still, for I had married one of the 
 prettiest and (as was subsequently proved) the best 
 of wives ; we were living, or rather lodging, in my 
 favourite haunt the Lake district, and I had seri- 
 ously taken up my favourite pursuit of literature. 
 It was an idyllic life we spent at Rydal Cottage, 
 under the shadow of Nab Scar, and lulled by the 
 music of the beck that flowed at the garden foot. 
 
 We had little to live upon, but sufficient for 
 our simple needs ; I have always shrunk from the 
 cold touch of poverty, and am thankful to say I 
 have never felt it. Wealthy — nor indeed what is 
 called ' well off' — I have never been. I am not
 
 92 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 philosopher enough to consider this an advantage, 
 but what has been borne in upon me a thousand 
 times is the conviction that the notion that society 
 — by which I mean really good society — is influ- 
 enced in the least degree to our discredit because 
 one has ' small means ' is the merest delusion. 
 There are ' carriage people,' of course, that is people 
 who are proud of their carriages and never forget 
 that they possess them, but I am speaking of people 
 really worth knowing, of whatever rank. A man 
 of character, with independence of spirit, is not only 
 never patronised, but no attempt is made to do it. 
 Of course, if he chooses to undergo the humilia- 
 tion, it is open to him, but it is like going on all 
 fours when the ceiling is of the ordinary height. I 
 had always a dislike, I think, to this mode of loco- 
 motion, but what would have preserved me from it 
 at all events was my devotion to comfort. Swell- 
 dom would never have suited me because of its 
 inconveniences. I resemble the beggar who, when 
 reproached for his useless life, replied, * Ah, sir, but 
 you don't know how idle I am.' I am not idle, far
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 93 
 
 from it, but I am indolent beyond belief ; in my 
 poorest days I would always rather have given a 
 man a shilling than have obliged him by crossing 
 the road ; trouble of all kinds is hateful to me ; 
 the details of business — even my own business — 
 are intolerable ; but let me have my own poor way 
 and don't ' fash me ' with matters of fashion and 
 convention, and I am the most contented soul 
 alive. To this apparently selfish attitude I believe 
 I owe much of the happiness of my life ; it has 
 saved me from a hundred temptations ; been the 
 means of escape from many a gilded chain, and 
 even caused many virtues to be attributed to me, 
 such as modesty, which, as a matter of fact, I do 
 not possess. I am afraid I have never experienced 
 that sense of inferiority as regards any human 
 being that is so wholesome, we are told, to enter- 
 tain in the presence of our betters. And I have 
 not found that my betters resented it. The fact 
 is there is nothing which persons of intelligence 
 welcome so much (because it is so rare) as natural- 
 ness, and though in my case it may have arisen
 
 94 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 from a low motive - devotion to personal comfort — 
 natural I have always been. 
 
 Naturalness, however, has this defect, that when 
 persisted in, it renders artificiality and affectation 
 in others much more hateful to us than they really 
 deserve to be, and even the polish of good manners 
 and the dignity inseparable from a great position 
 to be ' suspect.' Every advantage, however, has 
 its drawbacks, among which is a too attentive study 
 of human nature. It became my profession to study 
 my fellow-creatures, and the consequence has been 
 a most unwelcome recognition of defects in persons 
 ])oth near and dear to me. These are among the 
 things which it is much better not to know, nor is 
 it to be supposed that I spared myself — at least as 
 interesting a subject of vivisection as other peoi)le 
 — but got at the back of my own mind with perfect 
 ease, and was exceedingly sorry to have taken ad- 
 vantage of the opportunity. Some people are much 
 better than they seem to be to the world at large, 
 while others are considerably worse, and I do not 
 require to be told — and should consider it very
 
 WITH SOME KEFLECTIONS 95 
 
 officious of anyone to tell me — to which of those 
 classes I belong. 
 
 There is probably no error more widespread and 
 well established than the idea that we do not — or 
 rather cannot — know ourselves ; we can if we choose, 
 or if, as in my case, we are compelled, make our own 
 acquaintance perfectly well. Of course we may be 
 wilfully blind, but is it possible that anyone would 
 take an interest in such a matter equal to our own, 
 or have one tithe of the opportunities of observa- 
 tion ? As to seeing ourselves as others see us, that 
 is a very different thing, though that too a good deal 
 depends upon whether we present ourselves to our 
 fellow-creatures full face or edgeways. 
 
 I do not suppose that the literary profession has 
 a greater crop of disappointments than any other, 
 but he who is born to follow it feels them more 
 than other people ; he is more easily depressed 
 (though also more easily exhilarated), and sees no 
 silver lining behind the cloud. This is especially 
 to be regretted, since there is no calling in which so 
 many misfortunes turn out to be blessings in dia-
 
 96 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 guise. The chief one of them is that which we 
 foolishly deplore the most, namely the impossibility, 
 when we are very young, of getting our effusions 
 published at all, a thing which in our later years we 
 have always reason to be thankful for ; moreover, 
 what we congratulate ourselves upon often turns 
 out anything but an advantage, as when we are in 
 too great a hurry to dispose of our copyrights, or for 
 the sake of appearing in print bind ourselves per- 
 haps for years to some far-seeing publisher. 
 
 My first great literary disappointment was con- 
 nected with a magazine called ' The Picture ' ; it 
 was so called because it had a frontispiece printed 
 in colours, the first experiment, so far as I know, 
 of that description It was undertaken by a man 
 of substance, and the editor he appointed had the 
 good sense to perceive merit in my youthful pro- 
 ductions. He arranged with me for a series of 
 articles, and no one who has not been in the same 
 position can understand the satisfaction that con- 
 ferred upon me ; for what the neophyte in literature 
 desires above all things is permanency of employ-
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 97 
 
 ment : to be on ' tlie staff ' of some periodical or 
 another with a heavenly vision perhaps, far away in 
 the clouds, of an editorship for its crowning glory. 
 Now, such was the malice of fate that the excel- 
 lent and substantial mdividual who started ' The 
 Picture ' was killed by a railway accident on the 
 very day when the first number of his magazine 
 ai^peared. I never knew him personally, but I am 
 confident he had no more genuine mourner than 
 myself; for with him the whole undertaking 
 perished, and I was left with half a dozen articles 
 read}'' written for that luckless jDeriodical on my 
 hands. I have always been, so to speak, half a 
 dozen articles ahead with everything, not from 
 forethought and prudence so much as from nervous- 
 ness and the fear of not being ready for what was 
 required of me, I doubt if there has been any 
 more dependable contributor as regards punctuality 
 since the art of printing was invented. 
 
 How^ I became possessed of this virtue I do not 
 remember. At one time I could scarcely have had 
 it, since when a cadet at the Military Academy at 
 
 H
 
 98 GLEA3IS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 Woolwich I came back from town one Saturday 
 after tattoo, and my leave (which I loved) was 
 stopped for the rest of the term. Perhaps it was 
 this lesson that cm-ed me. At all events I have 
 always guarded myself as well as I could against 
 misfortune ; my motto was * No risks,' as the goose 
 said when she stopped under the entrance to the 
 barn. It is commonly said, by persons who are 
 never in time for anything, that being before the 
 time is not punctuality, but the great Duke of \Yel- 
 lington ascribed all his success in life to being 
 ' always a quarter of an hour too early.' This 
 prudence or punctuality was once of immense ser- 
 vice to one very dear to me. "VYhen my wife and 
 I were a young married couple, we chose, among 
 other picturesque places, for a summer home, Lyn- 
 mouth ; and one day we went with a little party 
 for a picnic in one of the neighbouring bays. It was 
 arranged that some male friends wilh myself were 
 to return over the cliffs, and my wife and another 
 lady, with her father and brother, by the sands. 
 We were rowed to the spot in a boat, which after
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 99 
 
 the picnic took back the plates and dishes, and the 
 last words the boatman said were, * Be sure, ladies, 
 you start at four o'clock at latest, for the tide will 
 come in fast, and this is the only place which has 
 a path up the cliff.' 
 
 Somehow or other, notwithstanding his warning 
 words, and also some from myself, the sand-party de- 
 layed, and we were glad to see them safe into the next 
 bay. We had no idea that the ease with which they 
 accomplished it was to be their ruin, for the margin 
 seemed so great that they saw no reason for ex- 
 cessive haste, and doubtless loitered. If they had 
 walked ever so fast, however, it is doubtful whether 
 they would have got home in safety ; for the tide 
 came up very fast, and they only got into the 
 second bay by wading, that is, the gentlemen 
 waded and carried the ladies on their shoulders. 
 In a few minutes the way they had come was barred 
 by the sea, and they saw only too plainly that to 
 pass round the next point was absolutely impossible. 
 The cliffs were insurmountable and the tide tearinjj; 
 in like a mill-race. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 I believe that the}^ all behaved very well, though 
 in all human probability they knew their fate was 
 sealed. They passed a terrible quarter of an hour, 
 and then round the farther point came into view the 
 boat, and, though wet to the skin, they managed to 
 get into her. * It was well,' said the boatman, * that 
 the .young gentleman had paid him to wait,' and in- 
 deed but for my ' fidgetiness ' — as it had been called 
 up to that date — they would all four have been 
 drowned. Of course this virtue may be carried too far. 
 I had a female relative more ' fidgety ' than myself, 
 and on one occasion it was important she should go 
 to Exeter by the Flying Dutchman. She arrived at 
 Paddington long before her time, as she thought, 
 and yet found her train at the platform, at which 
 she was very triumphant. But presently she found 
 herself on a siding. She asked the guard for an 
 explanation, and for the first time discovered that 
 she was in a ' Parliamentary,' which started half an 
 hour before the express, and was shunted to let it 
 go by. On that occasion the laugh was with the 
 unpunctual members of the family.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 101 
 
 Some authors can only write as it were on 
 compulsion, when they hear the press thundering 
 behind them, but even the most distant sound 
 of it would have been sufficient to paralyse my 
 energies. I was always afraid of being ill, and 
 unable to perform my promised task, and to have 
 written against time would have made me ill at 
 once. But what was the use of this prudential 
 conduct as regarded ' The Picture ' ? The six 
 articles I had written expressly for it seemed 
 suddenly to have become waste-paper, as the 
 sequins in the Arabian story turn to dead leaves. 
 The articles, indeed, were short ones, but here was 
 a permanent engagement gone for ever. It seemed 
 a terrible blow, but as it turned out was by no 
 means a matter to be regretted. The executors of 
 the owner of the periodical paid me half price for 
 the articles bespoken. I afterwards enlarged them 
 all (for in those days I was very extravagant with 
 incident and they could afford expansion), and 
 received five times as much for them as had been 
 originally promised ; and a few months afterwards
 
 102 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 I was a regular contributor to ' Household Words,' 
 a periodical of a much better class than ' The 
 Picture ' was ever likely to have been. I mention 
 this circumstance for the benefit and encouragement 
 of the junior bar of letters, and it is but an example 
 out of many in my literary life where what seemed 
 to be most unfortunate has turned out to be a 
 cause of rejoicing. 
 
 People talk of an * idea ' for the most part with 
 ridicule ; but in imaginative literature at least it is 
 very valuable, and, like most things that are precious, 
 hard to find. The most curious thing about it is, 
 however, the difficulty of keeping it ; in this respect 
 it excels quicksilver. One would think that when 
 a thing of this kind struck you, you would not be 
 likely to forget it ; it seems at the time that there 
 is little else so well worth remembering, and that 
 while Memory holds her seat, this conception, so 
 brilliant and original, will cling to it. At the 
 moment, perhaps — for an idea may strike you at 
 any time — you may not be in a position to set down 
 the germ of it. Some fellow asks you a question
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 103 
 
 about the weather, or the Habeas Corpus Act, and 
 in one instant it has flown for ever. All that it 
 leaves behind it is the sense of the magnitude of 
 your loss. It is like a fish getting off your hook of 
 which you have hardly seen anything and will never 
 see anything more, but which you are conscious 
 was the very largest fish that ever was seen. 
 Therefore I earnestly warn all young gentlemen of 
 the pen, if they do happen to have an idea, to set 
 it down in black and white at once, if it is but on 
 the cuff of their shirt. 
 
 Before I had my hands full of work I kept up a 
 pretty frequent correspondence with persons more 
 or less my contemporaries and of similar tastes 
 and pursuits. Some of these afterwards attained a 
 considerable eminence in letters. One of them was 
 Calverley, whom all the world now knows as one of 
 our best parodists and translators. Notwithstanding 
 the genial character of his work, his animal spirits 
 were not high till he took pen in hand, when the_y 
 at once began to mount. In writing to me of a 
 visit he had been making to the New Forest he
 
 104 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 says : * I must confide to you two pieces of English 
 which charmed me mightily. (I.) I asked a young 
 lady if a dog which accompanied her was her dog 
 or one of her sister's ; and she said, " Oh, it's all 
 our dog," and then asked me if that was correct 
 English. I said I thought it admirable English 
 and a boon to our language. I added that I would 
 ask the great Skeat, but whatever he said I should 
 retain my belief. 
 
 ' (11.) Another young lady, an enthusiastic 
 horsewoman, watching a friend of hers with much 
 admiration as she rode away, remarked to me, 
 quite as a natural phrase to use (it was the first 
 time I had even seen her), " I like to see a girl look 
 comfee on her gee." ' 
 
 A bearded friend of ours, Joseph W., was the 
 occasion of a parody from Calverley's pen, * John 
 Anderson, my Jo.' Here is his introduction to the 
 composition : — 
 
 ' Sir, — As a literary man you will be interested 
 in the discovery I have recently made of the sub- 
 joined poem. It was written across the MS. (which
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 105 
 
 I happen to possess) of one of Burns' s published 
 letters, and unquestionably in his hand. We have 
 here no doubt the authentic version of what has 
 been hitherto only seen in a garbled form. The 
 absurdity, you will observe, is satisfactorily got rid 
 of (a true Calverley touch) of persistently calling a 
 man " Jo " whose name was " John " ' — 
 
 Jo Creditor!, my Jo, Jo, 
 When we were first acquaint 
 Your chops were neatly shaven. 
 Your bonny brow was brent ; 
 Now you're a trifle bauld, Jo, 
 Atop, but all below 
 You're hairy as a Hieland cow, 
 Jo Crediton, my Jo. 
 
 Another literary friend of my early days was 
 Walter Thornbury, a well-known writer, but because 
 he was a very prolific one not so well thought of, 
 perhaps, as he deserved to be. He turned his 
 hand to everything, which the public, too mindful, 
 perhaps, of the proverb about Jack of all Trades, 
 always resents. He wrote, however, some vigorous 
 and stirring verses, and knew how to tell an old- 
 world story well. Curiously enough, though iu his 
 
 /
 
 106 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 books, SO far as I know, there was no grain of 
 humour, he wrote amusing letters, though in a 
 worse hand than my own. Next to Dean Stanley 
 and Lord Houghton, his handwriting was the least 
 legible I ever knew, and in days when the type- 
 writer had not been discovered this made a serious 
 difference in his printer's account. Here is a letter 
 introducing a doubtless illegible MS. to my notice 
 when I was a very young editor indeed : — 
 
 ' My dear Sultan, — Behold one of the most 
 humble, grateful, and devoted of your slaves. 
 Deign to cast your one remaining eye with favour 
 on the 13,000 gold kincots, the 7,000 peacocks, and 
 the 1,400 r^d tailed apes I now offer before your 
 scintillating throne, and placing your crescent 
 slipper on the nape of my neck, do not — do not 
 exclaim (as is so often your wont), " A bowstring 
 for this dog ! "" or better, " Quick, Mesrour, thy 
 sabre!'" 
 
 It was very difficult for me to decline the MS. 
 oi a contributor of this kind. The two classes of 
 my fellow-creatures who have been always most
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 107 
 
 attractive to me are the kind and the humorous ; 
 indeed, the latter are generally (though I regret to 
 say not ahvays) also the former. I have a very 
 large experience of clever people, and I hope I know 
 how to appreciate them, but cleverness without 
 humour, and especially without kindness, is from a 
 social point of view, at least, a poor thing. You 
 can illuminate j-our house with electricity, but 
 neither with sheet nor forked lightning. 
 
 The fault of barristers is their cleverness ; it 
 often causes them to pretend to cynicism, when 
 they are in reality quite as good-natured as other 
 people ; they are afraid of being thought senti- 
 mental and capable of being taken in, which never- 
 theless sometimes happens even in spite of their 
 precautions. Upon the whole, and for a ' scratch " 
 companion, I prefer a doctor to a man of any other 
 calling. He may not be very good as a conversa- 
 tionalist, but he is rarely very bad, like a cheroot. 
 He has had a genuine experience of life, and has 
 seen down to the depths of it ; a sick man does not 
 attempt to deceive his doctor, or put the best face
 
 108 GLEA3IS OF MEMORY; 
 
 on his character as he does with a priest. More- 
 over, what is very unusual, your doctor knows more 
 about you, professionally at all events, than you 
 know about yourself. He does not tell you about 
 it, it is true ; not a word of that aneurism you 
 carry about with you, and which will some day kill 
 you in half a minute ; but your consciousness that 
 he may possess such knowledge makes him interest- 
 ing. The best suggestions I have had made to me 
 for plots for my novels have come from doctors, to 
 whom I have also had cause to be grateful for many 
 thmgs. 
 
 A humorous reminiscence occurs to me in this 
 connection. An old friend of mine once told me 
 that he was about to entertain a party entirely 
 composed of this profession. 'Let there be one 
 exception, and ask me,'' I said, and accordingly I 
 was invited as Dr. Payn. After dinner the conver- 
 sation took a professional turn, and it made my 
 hair stand on end to hear the exceeding frankness 
 with which the art of healing was discussed. Drugs, 
 it seemed, on the whole did more harm than good,
 
 AVITII SOME REFLECTIONS 109 
 
 and if Nature were let alone altogether, it was 
 probable that more people -wonld be left alive in the 
 world. One old gentleman, who sat beside me, had 
 alone forborne to join in this astounding conversa- 
 tion, and, emboldened by his silence, I privately 
 confessed to him that I was but a layman, and 
 inquired whether these things were true. 
 
 ' Certainly not,' he replied. ' It is only a way 
 we doctors have of talking when we are alone 
 together. Leaving things to Nature means letting 
 them go to the Devil. Wlien a man is ill, what 
 Nature is really driving at is to kill him. That is 
 the long and the short of the matter.' 
 
 And this amazed me even more than what his 
 confreres had said. 
 
 Sir C. L. was once on his holiday in Italy many 
 years ago, when he got a line by messenger from 
 his old friend Lord A., then residing near Milan : 
 'I know, my dear L., you do not exercise your 
 profession in yoar vacation, but for the sake of old 
 times I think you will come and see me. I am 
 very ill, dying I believe, and nobody can find out
 
 110 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 what is the matter with me.' The good physician 
 of course obeyed the summons. He found his 
 lordship hving in a lovely villa, in charge of a 
 beautiful young woman, who spoke of his state of 
 health with tears. He was certainly very ill, ap- 
 parently dying of some irritant poison, though all 
 the doctor's skill could not detect its nature. He 
 had his suspicions, however, as to who administered 
 it. One morning, when the lady was out on her 
 usual ride, he took the liberty to go into her apart- 
 ments and overhaul them thoroughly. On a shelf 
 in the dressing-room he found a very delicate 
 chopping instrument with infinitesimal bits of 
 horsehair on it. Then he knew all about it. This 
 horsehair was put into his lordship's food, and 
 acted as a constant irritant. Sir C. went straight 
 to him, and inquired whether he had made his will. 
 
 • Yes.' 
 
 ' You have left this young lady a good deal of 
 monev, I conclude ? ' 
 
 * Yes, I have. But why do you ask ? ' 
 ' Does she know it ? '
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 111 
 
 * Yes, I have told her, poor dear.' 
 
 ' Well, that poor dear is the person who is com- 
 passing your death ' — and he produced the chop- 
 ping machine. His lordshi^D, after much argument,, 
 was convinced and deeply affected. 
 
 * Well,' said Sir C, ' let me send for a police- 
 man.' 
 
 ' A policeman I Certainly not. She has be- 
 haved ill, I grant, but she is an angel.' 
 
 ' Let me at all events pack the angel off.' 
 
 * What, send the poor dear away ! Impossible ! 
 I could not live without her. I am sure she will 
 be very penitent and sorry.' 
 
 Sir C. had a long and most dramatic interview 
 with her and found her very sorry — to have been 
 found out. She promised not to do it again. 
 
 ' If you do,' said Sir C, ' you will be hung, that 
 I promise you. I shall keep my eye on Lord A., 
 and if I hear of his illness or his death I will come, 
 if it be a thousand miles, to investigate it, and if 
 you have tried to murder him a second time I will 
 not spare you.'
 
 112 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 But the old lord and the young lad}' lived on 
 together (as m the fairy tales) very happily ever 
 afterwards. In my novel ' Halves,' I have used 
 this incident, though of course under wholly 
 different circumstances. 
 
 This was, as I may be allowed to say since it 
 was not my own, a very good plot, and it was not 
 the only one for which I have been indebted to 
 other people. As a rule, what one's friends con- 
 sider as * a capital subject for a novel,' and make 
 one a present of with the air of bestowing some- 
 thing very valuable indeed, is absolutely useless ; 
 but I have known exceptions, and the plot of the 
 ' Confidential Agent,' as I have elsewhere said, 
 was dreamt by a friend. My own dreams have 
 been unfruitful, though there was a ghost story, 
 ' The Prince,' which came to me lately during 
 slumber, and frightened me far more than its 
 readers. One plot I purchased. "When I say plot, 
 of course I mean some striking incident, which 
 may not occupy ten lines, or two minutes in 
 the telling, but which takes the fancy by storm.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 113 
 
 If it does not do that, it is valueless to the story- 
 teller. 
 
 * By Proxy ' was simply evolved from the idea 
 of a man not performing a promise to his dead 
 friend. It is, I believe, my most popular novel ; 
 but though the local colouring has been pronounced 
 accurate enough by residents in China, a great 
 authority once informed me that though the jjopu- 
 lace would have torn the author of the sacrilege 
 described to pieces, the mandarins would have 
 taken no notice of it. When the villainy of the 
 chief character was denounced as exaggerated and 
 out of nature, on one occasion I remember my dear 
 old friend. Sir Francis Doyle, observed, ' That is 
 rubbish ; I know Penny cuick quite well.' And so 
 did I, though it was not the same person. 
 
 Sir Francis was one of the most delightful old 
 men I have ever known, and the kindest. How 
 many times, weak and ill as he then was, has he 
 climbed up my office stairs to tell me something 
 that he knew would give me pleasure, or make me 
 smile. He was a humorist and also a great lover 
 
 I
 
 114 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 of horses (as we all know from his fine poem on 
 tlie Leger) which is, in my experience, a rather 
 unusual combination. His last letter to me, too 
 personal to be printed here, is very touching 
 and characteristic. 'How false,' he says, ' is the 
 notion that when we grow old, troubles no longer 
 affect us as they used to do. I do not care for 
 prolonged life ; and death, after having lived twenty- 
 four years longer than Shakespeare, ought not to 
 be dreaded.' 
 
 Another class of letters, which delicacy forbids 
 me to publish, are those which I have received in 
 my capacity as editor from persons of both sexes 
 to whom I have been able to extend a friendly 
 hand. It cost me little, and has been repaid ten 
 times over by their appreciation of it. If, as we 
 are told, it is the part of a generous nature to 
 magnify slight benefits, those who adopt the 
 hterary calling must indeed be graciously endowed. 
 Some of these folks have been successful, and 
 some have not, but they have equally remained 
 my friends ; in the former case, when they have
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 115 
 
 surpassed me in fame and fortune, I may honestly 
 say that no touch of jealousy has mingled with my 
 congratulations, and in the latter they have felt 
 that I did my best for them and forbore to abuse 
 the plaintiff's attorney. Some acts of theirs have 
 been so touching, and have cast such a pleasant 
 light on human nature, that (since it involves no 
 breach of confidence) I cannot resist the pleasure 
 of recalling them. 
 
 A correspondent of mine, to whom literature 
 had been its own reward (and not a great one even 
 at that), emigrated with his wife and family to 
 California. I had never seen him, and never ex- 
 pected to hear from him again, for he had given 
 up the pen for the pickaxe, and become a miner. 
 When he had been six months away he sent me a 
 registered letter, with quite a large lump of gold in 
 it. ' When I left England,' he said, ' I privately 
 promised myself to send you the first nugget I 
 should find, and here it is.' My wife wears it, but 
 not as a jewel; it seems to us set in something 
 
 I 2
 
 116 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 (though invisible) more beautiful and precious than 
 pearls or diamonds. 
 
 Curiously enough I received from the same far- 
 off land, and also from a miner, another gift to 
 which I attach an equal value. He had been thrown 
 from his mule and became incapacitated from work- 
 ing, so had turned the natural gift he possessed for 
 painting to that art. So great it was indeed, that 
 though he had never received a lesson, the first 
 picture (water colour) he sent to the Academy on 
 his coming to England was accepted ; but at the 
 time in question he was well content to keep the 
 wolf from his cabin door by selling his sketches to 
 the miners. As a novel of mine had chanced to 
 please him, when he was prostrated by his accident, 
 he sent me a charming picture for illustration of a 
 scene I had portrayed in it ; and that, too, I think, 
 if it could be environed with the feelings that moved 
 him to such an act, would become it better than 
 the finest frame. 
 
 Another gift, or rather the offer of it, for I was 
 fortunately able to stop it in transitu, as it would
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 117 
 
 have been obtaining goods under false pretences, 
 has also a pretty history. In a certain American 
 periodical I had been writing some articles on birds' 
 eggs, and for professional purposes had described 
 myself as a crippled boy, whose only pleasure was 
 in collecting them. The editor wrote to me that a 
 fine collection of American eggs had been sent to 
 his care, the property of an American boy (quite 
 unknown to him), who, being himself in health, felt 
 that they would give me a greater pleasure than he 
 took in them himself. 
 
 The strangest letter I ever received was from a 
 person of no particular eminence, whom I should 
 have thought incapable of exciting even so mild an 
 emotion as surprise. I had known him from early 
 years, but of late had seen very little of him. 
 Thoroughly high principled, he was, however, rather 
 conventional in his opinions, and, to say truth, some- 
 what uninteresting. Still, old association has its 
 influence, and I was really glad to see Alfred 
 Hunter's handwriting upon the envelope placed 
 upon my breakfast table one morning. What he
 
 118 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 could have to write to me about, however, I could 
 not conceive : 
 
 ' Ilex Park, Yorkshire. 
 
 ' My deak Friend, — It is a very long time since 
 we met, but I have not forgotten you. You have 
 made your way in the world, and I do not doul)t 
 that you have deserved to do so ; yet I dare say, to 
 use rather a vulgar expression, you have had more 
 praise than pudding. At all events, money must 
 1)6 a consideration to you as to every one else, and 
 therefore I make no apology for what follows, and 
 it gives me sincere pleasure to have the opportunity' 
 of putting 3^ou on what our sporting friends when 
 we were young and foolish used to call (I think) " a 
 good thing." The idea is my own, and has been 
 divulged to nobody. With you alone, the friend of 
 my youth, I wish to share it. It is nothing less 
 than a grand scheme of becoming rich beyond the 
 dreams of avarice (as Dr. Johnson puts it) by black- 
 mailing. You and I know a number of persons of 
 position, all of whom, of course, have committed 
 themselves in some way or other ; some perhaps
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 119 
 
 criminally, if so, so much the better. Let us worm 
 ourselves into their confidence and extort husli- 
 money. What do you say to starting a Limitt d 
 Company (only you and me) for this purpose ? ' 
 
 Now Alfred Hunter never made a joke in his 
 life, and if this was his first joke some excuse miglit 
 be made for it ; but there was nothing funny about 
 the letter except its extreme seriousness and the 
 quotations, both of which were characteristic of 
 him. 
 
 I did not feel at all inclined to reply to it, but 
 called next day upon a cousin of his in the City, 
 with whom I had a slight acquaintance. * How is 
 Alfred Hunter ? ' I said, after a little talk. ' Very 
 well, the last time I heard of him,' he replied, I 
 thought a little gravely. * And prosperous I hope,' 
 said I. ' He writes to me from some part in York- 
 shire.' ' Good Heavens ! don't you know ? ' in- 
 quired my companion. ' It's a lunatic asylum ; 
 poor Alfred has been in confinement these five 
 years.'
 
 120 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 I am aware that these reflections are dreadfully 
 digressive, but that I cannot help. If I do not 
 write down what happens to come into my mind at 
 once, it is gone for ever ; ' and no great loss ' per- 
 haps will be the reflection of the reader. When a 
 man comes to the end of his life, and flatters him- 
 self that he is giving his fellow-creatures the 
 experience of it, it often happens that he is only 
 giving them the lees of the glass. What I was 
 going to say some time ago, a propos of letters from 
 literary persons, was that in these latter days they 
 are from a literary point of view seldom worth 
 reading, chiefly from their brevity. To paraphrase 
 a famous line, ' their worst they give, their best 
 they keep ' — for printing purposes. The demand 
 for their productions from the public is too great 
 and pressing to admit of their favouring private 
 friends beyond a genial word or two. Two genera- 
 tions ago this was not the case. Dickens, indeed, 
 wrote letters as good as any of his books, and 
 comparatively long ones, but he had a boundless 
 store of ideas, and could afford to bestow them in
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 121 
 
 all directions and as it were with both hands. 
 George Eliot also wrote long letters to her cor- 
 respondents — the dullest in the language ; there 
 are some unpublished ones lying before me, arti- 
 ficial, pompous, would-be philosophical, but un- 
 speakably dull. She had no gift of letter-writing 
 at all. It is amazing to compare her efforts (for 
 they are full of effort) in this way with the ease and 
 charm of an authoress like Miss Mitford, for ex- 
 ample, with whom of course in other intellectual 
 respects there can be no comparison ; but Miss 
 Mitford belonged to a literary generation which did 
 write letters. Miss Martineau, too, wrote good ones, 
 though of a very different sort. I have scores of 
 the letters of both in my desk, only alike in that 
 they are full of home kindness. Both those maiden 
 ladies were essentially motherly women. 
 
 We hear a great deal about the difficulty young 
 authors find in getting a hearing, of the * close 
 boroughs ' which all magazines of standing are 
 sure to be, and of ' favouritism ' in literature gene- 
 rally. This is a very old superstition, and at one
 
 12-2 GLEAMS OF ilEMORY ; 
 
 time may have had some foundation in fact ; but 
 the thing complained of has not existed to any ex- 
 tent worth speaking of for a couple of generations. 
 I can witness to its absence at least for forty years. 
 Literary cliques there have, of course, always been, 
 and will be to the end of time ; mutual admiration 
 societies very amusmg to the old stager, but which 
 offend the neophyte by their exclusiveness, and the 
 great discouragement which they think it their 
 duty to afford to all applicants for their assistance ; 
 l)ut there is no more favouritism in periodical 
 literature than there is sentiment in business. 
 "What an editor wants is a good article, and if he 
 takes bad ones out of friendship, he soon finds 
 cause to repent it. He does not need advice, and 
 still less objurgation upon this point ; like Mr. 
 Pickwick when he fell through the ice, and was 
 entreated by Mr. Winkle to keep himself up for his 
 sake, he follows the precept for his own. As re- 
 gards myself— though thanks to my early ac- 
 quaintance with Miss Mitford, as stated in my 
 'Literary Recollections,' I was personally intro-
 
 AVITir SDME REFLECTIONS 123 
 
 duced to several persons of eminence in Literature 
 — it was no sort of use to me in getting employment. 
 I knew no editor, nor anyone who had influence 
 with editors ; and though I have received great 
 kindness from many of them, as regards advice, do 
 not consider myself under obligations to them as 
 regards acceptance : it would be a bad compliment 
 indeed both to them and to me were it otherwise. 
 
 A dear friend to whom I used to speak of this 
 matter because it interested him, though he know 
 nothing about it, being a theologian pure and 
 simple, was the late Dean Burgon. He was a very 
 old friend of my family, and was so good as to 
 entertain a regard for me, far beyond my deserts, 
 especially when judged from his own standpoint. 
 He was one of those * whose eyes grow tender over 
 drowning flies,' yet believe in the harshest dogmas. 
 His biographers, in extolling him as a theologian, 
 have quite lost sight of his affectionate drollery, 
 which had a charm of its own I have seen in no 
 other man. His last letter to me, written within a 
 few days of his death, and beginning ' My dear
 
 124 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 Jimmy,' is full of it. I have often described, though 
 I believe not in print, a delightful scene in which 
 he refused to christen a male child ' Venus.' It 
 was when he was officiating as curate at West Ilsley 
 in Berkshire. The people there were very primitive, 
 and I remember how the poor clerk got into hot 
 water for giving out Eousseau's Dream to the 
 parish choir ; to him it was a mere piece of music 
 innocent as Jacob's dream, but not so to Burgon. 
 ' How dare you mention that horrid man and his 
 nasty dream within these sacred walls, sir ? ' But 
 the christening business was a still finer incident. 
 ' Vanus ? I suppose you mean Venus. Do you 
 imagine I am going to call any Christian child 
 after that abandoned female, and least of all a 
 male child ? ' 
 
 The father of the infant urged that he only 
 wished to name it after his grandfather. 
 
 ' Your grandfather ! ' cried Burgon. ' I don't 
 believe it. Where is your grandfather ? ' He was 
 produced : a poor old soul of eighty or so, bent 
 double, and certainly not looking in the least like
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 125 
 
 the goddess in question. ' Do you mean to tell 
 me, sir, that any clergyman ever christened you 
 " Vanus," as you call it ? ' 
 
 •' Well, no, sir ; I was christened Sylvanus, but 
 they always calls me " Vanus." ' 
 
 How dear old Burgon enjoyed it ! His tempest 
 of indignation was stilled at once ; and his queer 
 face, always the gravest of the grave during an eccle- 
 siastical ceremonial, puckered into an irresistible 
 smile. He was the most natural man, despite 
 his dogmatic opinions, I ever knew, and though he 
 exceedingly magnified his priestly office, without 
 the slightest affectation or pomposity, he loved 
 children dearly, and was never tired of playing 
 with them. There is a story told of him after he 
 became a dignitary of the Church, which, if it is 
 not true, deserves to be so. Eeturning from his 
 cathedral in full canonicals, he saw one of his 
 juvenile playmates, as he thought, approaching 
 him, and hiding behind a corner he came out with a 
 cheerful ' Boo.' It turned out to be a little old widow 
 lady, who very nearly had a fit on the spot, and
 
 126 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 could not be persuaded for many days that his 
 reverence had not gone mad. 
 
 A well-known public favourite once gave an 
 entertainment at Chichester, and being still in his 
 bed the next morning at the hotel, was called upon 
 by the Dean (a perfect stranger to him), who con- 
 gratulated him upon his talents, and gave him 
 several useful wrinkles for his future i^erformances. 
 Dean Burgon wrote the lives of ' twelve good men,' 
 but I refuse to believe that any one of them could 
 have been a purer, better, or more unselfish man 
 than himself.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 127 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 There is nothing that brings the conviction home 
 to a man that he is growing old more than the 
 occasional reminiscence of some incident which, 
 from its nature, could hardly have ha.pi)ened with- 
 in a couple of generations. People were coarser 
 then than they are now, and more outright in their 
 repartees. I remember as a boy a Colonel B. at 
 Portsmouth, who was very kind to me in his way, 
 but of a violent and, indeed, uncontrollable temper. 
 He had been in his youth a notorious fire-eater, 
 and he had passed his latter years in tropic climes, 
 which had not cooled his disposition. So long 
 had he been away that he knew little of the modern 
 usages of society, and appeared at a great ball in 
 the neighbourhood of the town in white trousers. 
 This had been the evening attire of officers in
 
 128 GLEAMS OF MEilOEY ; 
 
 uniform in the West Indies, where he had last 
 hailed from, but in England it was as unknown as 
 the dodo. There were probably two hundred of his 
 brother officers in the ball-room, and he alone in 
 ' ducks.' The hostess was a friend of my family 
 and had kindly sent me an invitation, though I 
 was much too young for such an entertainment, 
 and I never shall forget the excitement caused by 
 the Colonel's appearance. Feeling the uniqueness 
 of his costume, he sought me out. perhaps as being 
 the only person present unconscious of its incon- 
 gruit3^ Every one cast an oblique look at his 
 ducks and hid an involuntary smile ; but what took 
 all my attention was the Colonel's face, as he gazed 
 about him wanting to shoot somebody : its scarlet 
 was ample compensation for the absence of colour 
 in his legs. The way in which he swore under his 
 breath — though I could hear him — was something 
 terrible, and had all the attraction of novelty. 
 However, no blood was spilt, and he presently got 
 away, but the story was all over the town. The 
 next day a noble earl of royal descent came down
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 129 
 
 to Portsmouth and was entertained by the mihtary 
 at luncheon. He knew nothmg of Colonel B.'s 
 temper, and how it had been exasperated the niglit 
 before, or he would certainly not have selected him 
 as the recipient of a rudeness ; but his lordship 
 was given to express himself coarsely, and with- 
 out regard to the feeling of others. The Colonel 
 was hacking at a chicken of which the guest of 
 the day had expressed a wish to partake, and not 
 being accustomed to wait, got impatient, and thus 
 delivered himself : ' It was a saying of my royal 
 father, Colonel B., that good carving showed the 
 gentleman.' 'Was it, indeed'?' returned the 
 Colonel, all the indignation which had been bottled 
 up for twelve hours suddenly finding vent ; ' and 
 what was the opinion of your royal mother upon 
 that subject?' It was not perhaps a very witty 
 rej)artee, but it was an exceedingly effective one, 
 and made a great sensation. But the whole scene, 
 as I heard it described, seems to belong to the days 
 of the Eegency. 
 
 I have my full share of the weakness of human
 
 130 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 nature, but I do not remember that I was ever 
 shy ; and perhaps my freedom from this attribute 
 prevents my quite appreciating the torture of those 
 who suffer from this calamity. Still, I can feel for 
 them, and two incidents still remain in my mind 
 which, at the time, almost drew tears from my 
 eyes. 
 
 A clergj^man of my acquaintance, Mr. S., was 
 a perfect victim to this mental disease, and he had 
 one of those pink-and- white complexions which 
 betray its existence by a modest blush on the very 
 slightest occasion. He lived a solitary life as a 
 curate in an out-of-the-way part of the country, 
 till in an evil hour a scion of a noble house per- 
 suaded him to become * warming-pan ' for him in a 
 rich living in Devonshire which he himself was 
 not at present old enough to hold. Until lodgings 
 could be procured for him, S. was invited to stay 
 at the family seat, which, as generally happened, 
 was full of company. Poor S. felt himself there 
 like a lish out of water, and a very small fish. A 
 bevy of fair and fashionable young ladies made
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 131 
 
 existence intolerable to him by occasionally address- 
 ing him in public ; by a young lady in private I 
 do not think that S. had ever been addressed. He 
 used to go into the neighbouring town daily to 
 procure articles of furniture for his lodgings, and 
 the lady of the house asked him at the breakfast- 
 table one morning what his plans were for the day. 
 * Well,' he said, turning red as a rose, * I am going 
 into Exeter to buy a pair of drawers.' I am sorry 
 to say for the manners of the aristocracy that this 
 little mistake of a ' pair ' for a ' chest ' caused a shout 
 of inextinguishable laughter, and poor S.'s face 
 remained for a week less like a rose than a peony. 
 When instituted in his new office he went round 
 the parish to make acquaintance with his congre- 
 gation. It was very wet weather, and he got almost 
 swamped in the Devonshire lanes, but he persisted 
 in his duty. On one occasion he called on an 
 honest farmer of the good old school, who asked 
 him how he liked Devonshire. * Oh, I like it ex- 
 ceedingly,' said S. ; ' but I find it rather muddy, 
 I notice, however,' pointing to the farmer's boot, 
 
 E. 2
 
 132 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 * that you take very sensible precautions to keep 
 yourself out of the wet.' ' Well, you see, Mr. S., 
 I've got a club-foot.' S. waited to hear no more, 
 but fled instantly from the house, and only after 
 much solicitation could he be induced to remain in 
 the living. The farmer never understood why he 
 had run away, and thought he had been taken 
 suddenly ill. 
 
 "WTiat he suffered, however, was nothing to what 
 I subsequently suffered in consequence of S.'s 
 mishap. I thought the story very humorous, and 
 told it in my best manner at a large dinner-party 
 at a house at which I had never dined before. 
 During the narration I received a violent kick on 
 the leg from my next neighbour, but thought it 
 accidental. The tale was received in total silence, 
 and it was some time before general conversa- 
 tion was resumed. ' That was a very amusing 
 story,' whisjoered my neighbour. Being very 
 angry at the want of appreciation shown to it, I 
 put in quickly : ' But, you would say, deuced stupid 
 people to tell it to.' ' No, my dear fellow, it isn't
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 133 
 
 tliat, bat our host has a chib-foot.' Then I knew 
 what S. had suffered, and wished I could have run 
 away as he did. In all such cases, however, the 
 man who has inadvertently put his foot in it in this 
 manner should comfort himself with the reflection 
 that his own feelings are much more lacerated than 
 those of the person on whose account he has been 
 made wretched. He knows one has spoken in 
 ignorance, and if he is a good fellow feels pity 
 rather than anger. 
 
 It could only have been in accordance with the 
 fitness of things if the circumstance that caused 
 Mr. Decimus Green's retirement from the Church 
 had happened to Mr. S. Mr. Green I knew ; he 
 could ride well, a gift not generally associated with 
 shyness, but was as shy as a fawn. He had bought 
 a high-mettled mare cheap, for whose legs a sea 
 bath had been recommended, and though she 
 could be taken to the water she could not be 
 persuaded by the groom to enter it. Mr, Green 
 thought he would do better than the groom, and 
 when he took his own bath in the sea in puris
 
 134 GLE.13I3 OF ME3I0KY ; 
 
 naturalihus resolved that the mare should take 
 hers. She was brought down to him and he 
 mounted her, but after a sharp struggle she turned 
 short round, and before he could throw himself off, 
 made straight for the Httle town of which he was 
 (or rather thought he was) the perpetual curate. 
 
 He was not fastened to his steed, like Mazeppa ; 
 he was not a voluntary equestrian, like Lady 
 Godiva ; but he had not the presence of mind to 
 throw himself off, and, like the other lady in the 
 ballad, he had * nodings on.' That day was the 
 last day of his curacy. 
 
 Another true tale of a curate by no means shy, 
 but who felt the sensation for once, and I have 
 done with my illustrations of this weakness. He 
 was a relative of my own, and had proper views of 
 comfort and even luxurv. I remember that even 
 the pieces of Hnen on which he wiped his razors 
 were frilled. He was a handsome, pleasant fellow, 
 and more popular among the county famihes than 
 country curates are wont to be. In return for 
 their hospitahty he resolved to give some of them
 
 WITH SOJIE EEFLECTIONS 135 
 
 a little dinner. The \iands were unexceptionaLle, 
 and as it was winter time be even provided hot- 
 water plates for his guests. His man, however, 
 who was also his groom, had had little experience 
 as a butler, and when the guests trooped down to 
 dinner each found a hot- water jDlate on his or her 
 chair. It was winter time, and the j)Oor fellow 
 had, from their conformation, mistaken the purpose 
 for which these plates were intended; but it was a 
 bad five minutes for a host who j)iqued himself on 
 having everything perfect. 
 
 It is difficult in this world to always avoid being 
 placed in a false position. H., a dear friend of 
 mine, of great University reputation, was once 
 staying with me in Edinburgh. His manners were 
 most courteous to strangers, but he was very 
 fastidious and particular. Walking down Princes 
 Street one day a gentlemanly young fellow thus 
 addressed him : ' Excuse me, su", but I have never 
 been in this town before, and though a Scotsman, 
 do not know which is Scott's monument.' My 
 friend told him. and finding him greedv of infor-
 
 136 GLEAMS OF MEMOKY ; 
 
 mation, like Dr. Johnson's young waterman, who 
 was 'ready to give what he had ' to know about the 
 Golden Fleece, discoursed to him of various matters. 
 Presently a police inspector stopped them, and 
 inquired of H. ' whether he was aware that he 
 was walking with the most notorious thief in Edin- 
 burgh.' Lord Byron tells us that the most 
 gentlemanly young man he ever met in his life was 
 a pickpocket, and H. always declared the same 
 thing of this agreeable stranger. 
 
 H. was bursar of his college, but decided to leave 
 Cambridge for the Bar, and arranged with C, the 
 great conveyancer, to read with him. C, though 
 so learned in the law, was ignorant of University 
 matters. In speaking of his new pupil, he said 
 what a really interesting and accomplished man he 
 was ; it was most satisfactory to see persons of 
 that stamp (H. was senior classic) desirous of be- 
 longing to a learned profession ; it was curious, too, 
 that his talents had been recognised, for, bursar 
 though he was, he had brought personal introduc- 
 tions with him from two of her Majesty's judges.
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 137 
 
 C. had got into his head that a bursar was a sort 
 of butler. 
 
 The falsest position in which I ever saw any 
 of my fellow-creatures was unhappily shared by 
 myself. I once accompanied a great moral philo- 
 sopher and a distinguished mathematician to a 
 dinner at Greenwich. After the feast we strolled 
 into the grounds of Greenwich Hospital to smoke 
 our cigars ; my companions, who had dined ex- 
 ceedingly well, were deep in a discussion upon 
 ' Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,' when it 
 was rather vulgarly interrupted by a policeman. 
 ' Now 3^ou ought to know that no smoking is allowed 
 here, gents, so just you throw them cigars away.' 
 My distinguished friends regarded the man in 
 philosophic silence, and left me to argue with him. 
 I pointed out to him that the building under which 
 we sat was of solid stone, and not combustible by 
 any number of lighted cigars ; but the guardian of 
 the law was deaf to rea.son, and we had to comply 
 with his monstrous directions. We moved away, 
 as we thought, well out of his beat, and in a more
 
 138 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 retired part of the grounds lit fresh cigars, and the 
 interrupted discussion about ' Fate, free will, fore- 
 knowledge absolute ' was renewed. Then, all of a 
 sudden, the same policeman put his helmeted head 
 round the corner. ' Ah, you're at it again, are 
 you ? Well, now you will all three just come with 
 me to the police office.' The philosopher and the 
 mathematician were, in short, in custody, and so 
 was I (but that was comparatively of no conse- 
 quence). They walked quietly (it never came to 
 the frog's march) to their doom, as though there 
 had been no such thing as free will and foreknow- 
 ledge in the world, but only fate. After a severe 
 lecture from the sergeant in charge, we regained 
 our liberty, but I am sure that my two companions 
 (at all events) had never been in so false a 
 position in their lives. 
 
 The most striking specimen of a false position 
 was perhaps that in which a friend of mine, not 
 unknown in the commercial M^orld, found himself 
 in his efforts to escape the jury list. He had 
 evaded it for some time by the assistance of an
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 139 
 
 official in consideration of a certain douceur, but he 
 had got tired of paying what had been in fact an 
 annuity, and wanted the thing to be done with for 
 good and all. Tor ten pounds,' said the official, 
 ' I will guarantee that you shall never be troubled 
 again ; ' and the money was paid. When the day 
 came for his attendance at the court, my friend (John 
 Jones, let me call him) could not resist the temp- 
 tation of seeing how his money had been invested, 
 and repaired to "Westminster, where justice w'as 
 then administered. He described the sensation of 
 hearing ' John Jones ' called out as rather peculiar ; 
 it was called out a second time, and he could hardly 
 resist answering to his name ; when it was called 
 out a third time he felt quite eerie, and much more 
 so at what took place in consequence. A person in 
 deep mourning, and with a voice broken with emo- 
 tion, exclaimed, ' John Jones is dead, my lord." 
 And his lordship, with a little reflected melancholy 
 in his tone, observed, ' Poor fellow ! scratch his 
 name out.' 
 
 Another case of a gentleman finding himself in
 
 140 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 a false position (though he had no idea of it) was 
 that of Sir C. A., a constant attendant at the whist 
 table of a country club. He had grown grey (or so 
 he used to say, but afterwards discarded that form 
 of words) in the service of his country, and had 
 done so for some years, when one day he appeared 
 at our club with hair as dark as the raven's wing. 
 
 Nobody remarked upon it, though of course 
 everybody noticed it, and he actually was under the 
 impression that his transformation had not been 
 observed. ' Did you notice,' he said to a confiden- 
 tial friend after the rubber, * anything different — as 
 regards — ahem ! — my hair ? ' ' Well, I see you 
 have taken to a wig.' ' What ! you saw that, did 
 you ? But you're a deuced observant fellow. You 
 don't think anyone else saw it, eh ? ' ' Well, I am 
 sure that Tom (the old card-room waiter) didn't, 
 for he asked me what was the strange gentle- 
 man's name, that he might put it down in the 
 book.' 
 
 When I look back upon my life immediately and 
 for some years after my marriage it seems — or 
 perhaps I should say it ought to have been — an
 
 WITH SOME rxEFLECTIOXS 141 
 
 ideal one ; I had enough for our needs, and Avhat- 
 ever I made by my pen was an extra, and I delighted 
 in my work as much as others in their play. 
 
 We became acquainted with the most picturesque 
 parts of the country in the search for a residence, 
 and when tired of it we went elsewhere. 
 
 Youth, a breeze 'mid blossoms playing 
 Where hope clung feeding like a bee, 
 
 Both were mine ; life went a-maying 
 With youth, and love, and poesy. 
 
 It is only when we become old and ill, and ' one 
 ceases to be eager ' about anything, that we can 
 estimate the truth and pathos of the poem that 
 contains those lines. It pictures for us as no other 
 poem does, save the ' Tears, Idle Tears ' of Tenny- 
 son, that crown of sorrows, the remembrance of 
 happier things. How pathetic is the writer's pre- 
 tence of ignoring it : — 
 
 youth ! for years full many and sweet 
 'Tis known that thou and I were one ; 
 I'll think it but a fond deceit, 
 
 1 cannot think that thou art gone. 
 
 Thy vesper bell hath not yet tolled, 
 And thou wert aye a masker bold. 
 Life is but thought, so think I will 
 That youth and I are housemates still.
 
 142 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 How vain, ho\Yever well meant, are the efforts 
 to extol old age and the advantages of a protracted 
 existence which only gives us a longer time for 
 melancholy comparison ! How destitute of conso- 
 lation is the argument that we have had our day, 
 and should now be content, among other things, to 
 * go wooing in our boys ' — a thing that can never 
 be done by proxy. I confess, however, I had my 
 share (though not, I protest, what is termed in 
 the play my ' whack ') of the joys of youth, and 
 especially as regards the pitching our tent at will 
 in the greenest pastures. But as time went on 
 and flocks and herds increased but slowly, and 
 our family very fast, my face was turned towards 
 that city which, from the time of "Whittington, has 
 always to sanguine natures seemed j)aved with gold. 
 Then, instead of camping under the greenwood 
 tree, we took lodgings in London. 
 
 Our first experience in this way was in 
 strong contrast to the Arcadian bowers we 
 had been accustomed to — a drawing-room floor 
 in a genteel street running down into Hyde Park,
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 143 
 
 where, whatever else was wanting, I found ' copy ' 
 enough. 
 
 We had not been there many days when an 
 altercation between our landlady — yellow as a 
 guinea and dirty as a Scotch bank-note — and her 
 milkman ' forced itself,' as Mrs. Cloppings said, 
 ' upon my ear.' 
 
 ' Everybody is getting out of patience with you 
 and your artful ways,' he said. * Your landlord is 
 going to put in the bailiffs on Monday morning, 
 and if he were not, I would do it myself. The milk 
 you have had from me without payment for your 
 lodgers is past belief : you might have bathed in it.' 
 
 This picture of toilet luxury in connection with 
 this lady was even more appalling than the threat 
 of legal proceedings. I concluded it, however, to be 
 Eastern metaphor ; but as to the bailiffs, I thought 
 the statement only too likely to be solid fact. 1 
 therefore took such measures as were in my power 
 for self-defence. It was on a Saturday that I 
 received this warning, and Sunday I understood 
 was a day of freedom from executions ; but in those
 
 144 GLEA3IS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 days the law permitted the goods of a lodger (other- 
 wise than his personal raiment) to be seized for 
 rent, so I took what little property of value we 
 possessed, in a portmanteau, and deposited it in 
 friendly keeping. As it happened, there was no 
 execution, but plenty of other dramatic incident. 
 One day the landlady showed my wife the most 
 beautiful collection of shawls and gowns, which she 
 offered to her at half their value. In any case they 
 would have been beyond her means, but what 
 naturally astonished her was how this impecunious 
 female had obtained possession of them. Her story 
 was that she had been lad3''s maid in a fashionable 
 famil.y, and that her old mistress and her friends 
 were wont to give her their new clothes to sell for 
 ready money while their husbands paid the bills. 
 This was not a pretty explanation, but the truth of 
 the matter was a great deal worse. A few days 
 afterwards, returning home unexpectedly, I found 
 in my little smoking-room on the ground-tloor a 
 number of bags and boxes, which I afterwards dis- 
 covered had been ' conveyed ' from a neighbouring
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 145 
 
 railway station ; and indeed it turned out that I 
 had been so fortunate (from the ' copy ' point of 
 view) as to have taken lodgings at the principal 
 receiving-house for stolen goods in that neighbour- 
 hood. 
 
 The first book of tales I ever published (' Stories 
 and Sketches ') contained one called ' Blobbs of 
 Wadham,' the foundation of which is the accidental 
 likeness of two strangers to one another. This was 
 the case with another Trinity man, whom I had 
 never seen, and myself. Not only was I often ad- 
 dressed by persons who took me for him, but people 
 used to ask, a propos of nothing, whether I knew 
 So-and-So. I remember making a considerable 
 impression upon a chance passenger in a railway 
 train on the Cambridge line, who was staring at me 
 rather hard, by suddenly observing, ' No, sir, I do 
 not know Mr. So-and-So.' It had been the very 
 question he was going to ask me, but my anticipating 
 it seemed to him so uncanny that he got out at the 
 next station. Mr. Sherlock Holmes had not at that 
 time been heard of. When I came to know my 
 
 l4
 
 146 GLEAlVrS OF MEMORY; 
 
 double I saw but little resemblance between us 
 except that we both wore an eyeglass ; but I believe 
 no one does see any likeness to himself in anybody, 
 so true it is that after having beheld one's natural 
 face in a glass one straightway forgets what manner 
 of man he is. The exception was Narcissus, which 
 proves the rule. 
 
 Another humorous incident on the same rail- 
 way line was as follows : — I was travelling up to 
 town with two undergraduate friends, A. and B., 
 the former of whom was a particularly shy man. 
 AVe wanted to play whist, but disliked dummy ; 
 and the only other man in the carriage was a very 
 High Church clergyman, as we knew by what was 
 then called his M.B. waistcoat. B., however, cut 
 the cards and shuffled them, and looked at him 
 appealingly ; while A. murmured, * Don't I don't ! 
 he will think we want to play the three-card trick.' 
 "VVe two, however, were resolute. At last it was 
 agreed that we should draw lots who should ask 
 him to play, and the lot fell upon poor A. I can 
 Boo him now, pink and palpitating, as he made his
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 147 
 
 plaintive request. * Well, of course,' said the 
 parson, * that is just what I have been waiting 
 for.' And I remember that he won our money. 
 
 In those early days the three-card trick was 
 not the national institution it has since become : 
 the ' gentlemen of the road ' at that time used the 
 three thimbles. The Cambridge line was much 
 infested by these persons till cleared of them by a 
 well-known personage, whom I will call Mr. Hunt. 
 He was a London money-lender of great disrepute, 
 whom some of my young friends had dealings 
 with, and perhaps he resented that the sovereigns, 
 which ought by rights to have been his, found their 
 way into these rascals' pockets. At all events he 
 undertook the (to him) unusual role of the guardian 
 of youth and public benefactor. Mr. H. was a 
 tall and powerful man, but had the agile fingers of 
 a conjurer, and thimble-rig was child's play to him. 
 Attired richlv with studs and chain, and with an 
 agricultural cast of countenance, his entrance into 
 their compartment was gladly welcomed by the 
 three rogues. After a modest interval the thimbles 
 
 L 2
 
 148 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 were produced, and he lost a pound or two ; then, 
 pretending to be ' pricked,' as the gamblers call it, 
 he offered to bet five-and-twenty pounds that he 
 would discover the pea. The money was staked 
 on both sides and put on a vacant seat. Then Mr. 
 Hunt said, after an apparently careful inspection, 
 
 * The pea is there,' and there it was under the 
 thimble. Then he seized the bank-notes, crammed 
 them into his pocket, and produced a life preserver, 
 
 * Whoever touches me,' he remarked, * is as good 
 as dead.' The three sharpers had the sense to 
 perceive that he was in earnest, and they were also 
 astonished and demoralised by what they had 
 witnessed ; for nobody knew better than them- 
 selves that there had been no pea. Mr. Hunt also 
 knew it, and had brought one with him to supply 
 the deficienc}'. They never troubled the Cambridge 
 line again. 
 
 Mr. Hunt figures in one of my short stories 
 called * Amalek Dagon.' Perhaps the facts on 
 which one or two of my fictions were founded may
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 149 
 
 have some interest. The first short story, or 
 about the first, I ever wrote — a very short one, 
 called * Change for Gold ' — was founded on a very 
 curious circumstance in the life of Beckford, com- 
 municated to my informant by the old Duke of 
 Hamilton. When Beckford had exhausted Art 
 and Pleasure he had a morbid passion for new 
 sensations, and found one by a strange accident in 
 an intending suicide. He was a young man, with 
 a wife and child, once in good circumstances, but 
 reduced by poverty to great straits. He had come 
 to the conclusion that his wife, whom he had 
 married contrary to the wishes of her family, would 
 be better provided for if he were out of the world ; 
 but, at all events, life had become intolerable to 
 him. Beckford paid him a sum yearly, which 
 placed them in comparative affluence, upon the 
 understanding that he should disappear and never 
 see them again. Twice a year he visited his patron 
 to describe his feelings as a voluntary exile from 
 home and kin, and afford him a study, as it were,
 
 150 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 of a human document. If I remember right, he 
 eventually broke his word (which he ought never to 
 have given) and escaped from this strange slavery. 
 ' Blondel Parva ' is a tale of life assurance, 
 founded on some curious facts that took place in 
 Edinburgh in the early part of the century. The 
 clothes of a merchant of high repute were found on 
 the shore of the Forth, and it was concluded that 
 he was drowned. He was very popular, and his 
 family, who were much attached to him, were 
 greatly sjanpathised with ; and the more so sine 
 they were left far worse provided for than had been 
 supposed. He had, however, insured his life for a 
 very large amount, which secured them competence. 
 By help of this money and his own exertions, 
 the eldest son in course of time amassed a large 
 fortune. Many years afterwards two of the judges 
 were walking across the North Bridge in Edinburgh 
 when they were accosted by a beggar. One of them 
 gave him something, and excused himself to the 
 other for such injudicious charity on the ground 
 ' that the old fellow was so like poor F.'
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 151 
 
 * My dear friend,' said the other gravel}^ ' I 
 never forget a face. That was F. himself.' 
 
 And so it turned out. F. had pretended to 
 commit suicide in order to save his family from 
 ruin ; and after years of voluntary exile, during 
 which he suffered great privations, he had been 
 unable to resist the temptation of once more be- 
 holding his children before he died. He had no 
 intention of revealing himself to them, and fancied 
 that no one else could recognise him, but he felt 
 that the judge had done so, and therefore made 
 himself known to them. He died at home a few 
 weeks after his return : the money obtained from 
 the life assurance office was repaid with interest, 
 and the matter was hushed up. Curiously enough 
 this very case was used as a plot by another 
 novelist only a year or two ago ; and the scene of 
 it, no doubt by misadventure, actually laid where 
 it had occurred, in Edinburgh. 
 
 ' Carlyon's Year ' is the story of a man who 
 had only one year given him by the doctors in 
 which to live. A friend tells me that it much
 
 152 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 disappointed a sporting gentleman of his acquaint- 
 ance who had been led to suppose from its title 
 that it was the history of a Derby favourite. 
 
 * A Perfect Treasure ' was taken from the story 
 of the Nancy diamond ; it was entrusted after the 
 battle to a faithful servant, who fell among thieves, 
 and, to secure its safet}^ swallowed it. It is prob- 
 able that no family retainer has ever been regarded 
 with such solicitude for the quarter of a century as 
 he was. The first cheap edition of the work was 
 brought out with a picture by Sir John Millais, the 
 woodcut of which, I suppose, happened to be in the 
 publisher's possession, and seemed to him to illus- 
 trate the subject ('A Perfect Treasure '), for it was 
 a little baby in its mother's arms. 
 
 When I re-peruse the httle story, ' How Jones 
 got the Verse Medal,' I cannot resist the conviction 
 that the original of that fortunate young person 
 was Tennyson. I heard the tale while I was an 
 undergraduate, and wrote the story before years 
 had brought the sense of reverence ; and it must be 
 confessed that ' Timbuctoo ' is a poem that does
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 153 
 
 hot itself preclude levity. The examiners for the 
 year (as I heard the tale) were three — the Vice- 
 Chancellor, who had a great reputation hut a 
 violent temper, and did not write very well ; a 
 classical professor who knew no poetry that was 
 not in a dead language ; and a mathematical 
 professor. It was agreed that each should signify 
 by the letters ' g ' and ' h ' (for ' good ' and * bad ') 
 what he thought of the poems, and the Vice had 
 the manuscripts first. When the mathematical 
 professor got them he found ' Timbuctoo ' scored 
 all over with g's, and though he could not under- 
 stand why, nor indeed the poem itself, did not 
 think it worth while, as he afterwards said (though 
 the fact was he was afraid), to ask the Vice his 
 reasons ; so he wrote ' g ' on the poem also. The 
 classical professor thought it rather funny that both 
 his predecessors should admire so unintelligible a 
 production ; but, as he said, ' he did not care one 
 iota about the matter,' and so wrote ' g ' on it also ; 
 and as no other poem had three ' g's,' the prize was 
 unanimously awarded to the author of ' Timbuctoo.*
 
 154 GLEAMS OF MEMORY 
 
 After all was over, tlie three examiners happened 
 to meet one da}', and the Vice, in his absolute 
 fashion, fell to abusing the other two for admiring 
 the poem. They replied very naturally and with 
 some indignation, that they should never have 
 dreamt of admiring it if he himself had not scored 
 it over with * g's.' *"G"s,"' he said, 'they were 
 " q's," for queries, for I could not understand two 
 consecutive lines of it.' 
 
 * The Blankshire Thicket ' was Maidenhead 
 thicket, near which I lived in my youth. It had 
 an almost unequalled reputation for highway 
 robbers. A farmer (I think his name was Cannon) 
 was stopped one night as he drove home from 
 Reading market and robbed by two footpads. He 
 was a powerful and courageous man, but as he had 
 no weapon he had to give up his money-bag. As 
 he drove along, full of bitter rage, he suddenly 
 remembered that under the scat of his gig was a 
 reaping-hook that he had taken to Beading to be 
 mended. Then he drove on to the thicket (which 
 is, in fact, a common), and making a long detour
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 155 
 
 came into the road again half a mile or so on the 
 Heading side of where he had been stopped before. 
 The footpads, as he anticipated, were still at their 
 post, waiting for more prey, and of com'se they 
 took the farmer for a fresh victim. So amai^ed, 
 however, were they to see their old friend again 
 that they ' hardly knew where they was,' as he 
 expressed it, when he leapt out of the gig and laid 
 about him with his cutlass (as they doubtless 
 thought it) with such effect that one was left for 
 dead upon the road and the other took to flight. 
 Upon the former the good man found his money- 
 bag, and drove home rejoicing. He was a local 
 hero for many a day, and none the less because it 
 was whispered that he had found other moneys 
 upon the person of his prostrate foe, and kept them 
 as the spoils of war. 
 
 ' The Calderton Arms ' alluded to in the same 
 story was the 'Orkney Arms' (or Skindles), now 
 80 well known to all the river-loving public. The 
 story goes that early in the century the landlord 
 was a strong Radical, and could command a dozen
 
 156 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 votes ; but his prosperity had a sad drawback in it 
 in the person of his only son, a good-for-naught. 
 During a certain Blankshire election a Tory sohcitor 
 was staying at the inn, and had occasion to go to 
 London for the sinews of war. His gig was stopped 
 on his way back on Hounslow Heath by a gentle- 
 man of the road. 
 
 * I have no money,' said the lawyer, with pro* 
 fessional readiness, ' but here is my watch and 
 chain.' 
 
 * You have a thousand pounds in gold in a box 
 under the seat,' was the unexpected reply ; ' throw 
 back the apron.' 
 
 The lawyer obeyed, but as the horseman stooped 
 down to take the box the lawyer knocked the pistol 
 out of his hand and drove off at full gallop. He 
 had a very quick-gomg mare, and before the high- 
 wayman could find his weapon, which had fallen 
 into some furze, was beyond pursuit. 
 
 The next morning the lawyer sent for the land- 
 lord. ' Yesterday,' he said, ' I was stopped on 
 Hounslow Heath. The man had a mask on, but I
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 157 
 
 recognised him by his voice, which I can swear to. 
 I knew him as well as he knew me. You had 
 better speak to your son about it, and then we will 
 resume our conversation.' 
 
 The landlord was quite innocent of his son's 
 intended crime, but he had reason to believe him 
 capable of it. He went out with a heavy heart, 
 and when he came back his face showed it. ' Well,' 
 he said, with a sort of calm despair, ' what steps 
 do you intend to take, sir, in this matter ? ' 
 
 * None to hurt an old friend, you may be sure,' 
 answered the lawyer ; ' only those twelve votes you 
 boasted about must be given to our side instead of 
 yours.' Which was accordingly arranged. 
 
 The story of 'Double Gloucester,' in ridicule 
 of the absurd custom, now fallen into disuse, of 
 naming parts of the same street, and even oj^posite 
 sides of it, by the points of the compass, had an 
 actual illustration in my own experience. We 
 lived at that time in Gloucester Crescent, Hyde 
 Park ; in a line with it was Gloucester Crescent 
 North. A friend from the country, who had come
 
 158 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 up to act as godmother to one of our children, 
 arrived at the right number, but in the wrong 
 Crescent, where lived two maiden ladies. She was 
 ushered into the drawing-room, where they received 
 her a little stiffly. She took them for London 
 friends of the family, and that, like herself, they 
 were a little early for the ceremony. By way 
 of conversation she observed, ' Well, and how is 
 the dear baby ? ' They protested, with a natural 
 indignation, that there was nothing of the kind on 
 the premises. 
 
 On another occasion, when we gave a juvenile 
 party, a totally unknown little boy made his 
 appearance — and it was a very fine one — among 
 the other guests. His attire was splendid, both as 
 regarded colour and texture, and he was not the 
 least dismayed at finding himself among strangers. 
 His nurse had left him at the wrong party, but it 
 is impossible he could have made himself more at 
 home had he been at the right one. He did not 
 know his own name or address, but referred all 
 inquiries to * Nursey.' In consideration of his
 
 WITH SOIVIE EE FLECTIONS 159 
 
 position he was allowed to do exactly what he liked, 
 and he dominated the whole company in the most 
 absolute fashion. We should have more appre- 
 ciated the humour of the situation if we had been 
 quite sure of his being called for, which did not 
 happen till long after the other little guests had 
 departed, so that we had more than a mauvais quart 
 dlieure upon his account. The idea of any per- 
 manent addition to our family at that time was a 
 serious one. Upon explaining to his attendant 
 that a mistake had been made, she was so good as 
 to say that if her little master had enjoyed himself 
 it mattered nothing. 
 
 • The Savan Triumphant ' was an experience 
 of my cousin, Frank Buckland, who himself related 
 it to me. He belonged to a fishing club on the 
 Thames, which held its meetings once a week, and 
 the chairman for the evening was the one who 
 had caught the heaviest fish. On one occasion a 
 Mr. Jones was the fortunate individual ; it was the 
 first time that he had earned the honour, and he 
 was very proud of it, though his prize fish had only
 
 160 GLEAMS OF MEMORY 
 
 been a barbel. One of the members of the chib 
 was unable to stay to dinner, and asked Jones for 
 the fish to take home with him, as it was not to 
 form part of the menu. He consented, though 
 rather unwillingly, and nothing was heard of the 
 matter till the next meeting, when Buckland 
 chanced to be present. 
 
 * A curious thing happened about that barbel 
 which Jones gave me last Saturday,' observed its 
 recipient ; ' it had swallowed a little pike.' 
 
 * You will not make me swallow that,^ observed 
 Buckland confidently. * A barbel could not do it ; 
 its conformation forbids it.' 
 
 ' You may theorise as you like,' returned the 
 other, but I must be allowed to believe the evidence 
 of my senses. I saw the jack taken out of the 
 barbel with my own eyes.' 
 
 ' I don't believe it,' said Buckland. 
 
 The conversation, in fact, was growing very 
 warm when Jones broke in with, * Don't quarrel, 
 gentlemen ; you are both of you in the right. The 
 fact is I was so afraid that somebody might catch
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 161 
 
 a heavier fish than I that I poked the little jack 
 down the barbel's throat with my fishing-rod, to 
 make him weigh more.' 
 
 'An Arcadian Revenge,' which reads farcically 
 enough, had its origin not only in real life, but in 
 high life, the principal, though passive, actor in it 
 being a member of the Royal Family. It was, of 
 course, an ol)ject of ambition to his county neigh- 
 bours to get him to visit them, in which some suc- 
 ceeded and some did not. The A.'s were among 
 the fortunate ones, and, after the most ingenious 
 intrigues, got him to promise to attend one of 
 their lawn-tennis parties. The B.'s, who were their 
 nearest neighbours, were less ingenious, or had less 
 good luck, and he declined their overtures, which 
 naturally made them furioas with the A.'s. It 
 happened that though both families had very ex- 
 tensive gardens, their tennis-grounds were con- 
 tiguous, and, indeed, only separated by an iron 
 fence. When the party to meet His Royal Highness 
 (to which the B.'s had not been asked) adjourned 
 from the lunch eon-table to i)lay their game, they 
 
 M
 
 162 GLEAMS OF MEMOKY ; 
 
 found the B.'s servants hanging the clothes from 
 the wash on lines in the neighbouring tennis-ground 
 — a spectacle which reduced the A.'s from the highest 
 state of social exultation they had ever enjoyed 
 down to the lowest condition of despondency and 
 shame. His Royal Highness, though short-tempered, 
 was good-natured, and pretended not to see the 
 various articles of underclothing, which an un- 
 fortunately high wind made unusually consj)icuous ; 
 but when one of them escaped from its pegs and 
 settled, like a gigantic bird, on the guest of the 
 afternoon, he used — like the mother of Lady Vere 
 de Vere's friend — some words that ' scarce were fit 
 for her ' (or anybody else) ' to hear,' and the party 
 broke up in great disorder. 
 
 It is very seldom that in biographies any men- 
 tion is made of a class of persons who have, never- 
 theless, a good deal to do with our lives, and have 
 the power to a considerable extent of making them 
 pleasant or otherwise — namely, our domestic ser- 
 vants. In these humble memoirs at least they shall 
 find a place.
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 163 
 
 Folks talk of faithful servants nowadays as if 
 the breed had died out years ago. This is not my 
 experience, and I have had a large one. It is not 
 quite true, perhaps, that good masters and mis- 
 tresses make good servants, or at least not so true 
 as it used to be, because in these days there is a 
 desire for independence and a dislike of subordina- 
 tion in the lower classes which of old did not exist ; 
 but if employers behave themselves as they should 
 do, and show consideration and sympathy, both 
 parties meet in general with their reward. The 
 first cook we ever had had been a kitchenmaid in 
 a private hotel which had been our home for some 
 months. In a small way she was a born artiste 
 as regards culinary matters, but that was not her 
 highest merit : she was the most loyal and faithful 
 creature it is possible to imagine, of extraordinary 
 simplicity, and yet of an amazing cunning which 
 was always put in practice for our advantage. An 
 example, of the former of these attributes was given 
 in the first few months of our acquaintance. An 
 esteemed bachelor friend, C, had been staying with 
 
 M 2
 
 164 GLEAilS OF MEMORY; 
 
 US for a few daj^s, and on the morning of his de- 
 parture Mar}^ came into the drawing-room and 
 deposited five shillings in m\' wife's lap. She was 
 not only the cook, but could turn her hand to any- 
 thing, and was as well known to all our guests as 
 the parlourmaid, who, with a nurse, made up at 
 that time all our little household ; still, she had 
 never before figured as a source of income, and the 
 sight of those five shillings astonished their reci- 
 pient a good deal. It turned out that in the hotel 
 xf^she had come from it was understood that any 
 ' vails ' she received should become the property of 
 her employer, and C. having given her five shilhngs, 
 she had hastened to lay that donation at the feet 
 of her mistress. It was quite difficult to persuade 
 her that they were her personal perquisites. 
 
 On one occasion our kitchen chimney took fire, 
 and almost before the crowd could collect she had 
 got on the roof and stopped the conflagration with 
 a wet blanket. "When the firemen arrived with 
 their engine she met them with her sweetest smile 
 (she was not a plain cook in any sense, but a very
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 165 
 
 pretty one) , and assured them that in our house, at 
 least, no accident of the kind they were in search 
 of had taken place. 
 
 * Why on earth did you do that, Mary ? ' inquired 
 her mistress. 
 
 'Why because, ma'am,' she replied, not without 
 some contempt in her tone, ' if I had not sent them 
 somewheres else they would have charged you a 
 guinea.' Of course she was morally in the wrong, 
 but in the service of her master and mistress (bless 
 her) she had no scruples. 
 
 When she felt herself to have been wronged,* 
 she was the most resolute of women. It was her 
 custom in the summer time in London to go twice 
 a week, as early as five o'clock or so, to Covent 
 Garden, and to come back in a cart laden with 
 every sort of commodity of the best and cheap- 
 est for the maintenance of our household. One 
 morning she came back almost immediately in a 
 violent passion, with an eloquent account of her 
 having been chucked under the chin and kissed 
 by a policeman in theEdgwareEoad. Master, she
 
 166 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 said, would of course see her righted, but until that 
 was done not a stroke of work would she put her 
 hand to. 
 
 Master did not like the job, but he knew' his 
 Mary too well to attempt any oj)position, and to 
 Marylebone Police Office he took his steps. 
 
 The inspector was very civil, but thought the 
 charge unfounded ; suggested even that the young 
 woman might be hysterical (fancy our Mary hys- 
 terical !) and recommended that the matter should 
 be dropped. I quite agreed with him, but assured 
 him such a course was impossible. 'Very good,' 
 he said, ' I'll have the men brigaded at eight o'clock 
 to-night, and the young woman can come and look 
 at them and identify the offender — if she can.' 
 
 At eight o'clock Mary and I went to the station. 
 There were about fifty policemen in two lines, wait- 
 ing to receive her like a guard of honour : there 
 was a space between them, so that she might walk 
 in front of each, and read ' between the lines,' if 
 she could, for the right man. The force giggled 
 a little, but even that did not disturb our heroic
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 167 
 
 cook. She marched slowly up one line and down 
 the other, said she was ' not quite certain,' and 
 asked leave to do it again. This time she stopi)ed, 
 like a learned pig at a letter, exactly opposite to 
 one ' intelligent officer,' scrutinised him closely, and 
 then observed, ' That is the man.' And it was the 
 man. It was admitted that he had been on duty 
 in the Edgware Eoad at the time in question, and 
 we were promised that he should be duly punished 
 for his offence. 
 
 The end of Mary, so far as we were concerned, 
 was sad and mysterious. She left us after fourteen 
 years, at the request of her aged i3arent8, and 
 though we wrote to her and to them again and again, 
 we received no reply of any sort. 
 
 We have not always had such nice cooks as 
 Mary — few people ha^e^ — though on the whole we 
 have been fortunate with them ; but on one occa- 
 sion we had a cltef of the first class, though only 
 for a short time. We had been a good deal 
 troubled about cooks at that time ; had had a 
 succession of them, each worse than the other as
 
 168 GLEAMS OF MEMOKY ; 
 
 regards the art she professed. We had been 
 obliged to keep them for a month, and had only 
 not been poisoned. At last I said, ' Never will we 
 engage a cook again till she can show how she can 
 cook,' They had all assured us that they could 
 send up dinners ' fit for a prince ; ' perhaps they 
 did, but, if so, princes must be easily satisfied. 
 This resolution of mine very much thinned the 
 ranks of the candidates who applied for the situa- 
 tion. They said it was a humiliating proposal, 
 and one which no one who respected herself would 
 submit to. If they said they could cook, not to 
 believe it was throwing doubt on a lady's statement. 
 At last one came who positively smiled at having 
 to prove her words ; she had the best credentials 
 as to her cuHnary capacities, and assured us that 
 they fell short of her merits. I so far believed her 
 as to ask some people to dinner who really knew 
 what a good dinner was (a knowledge, by-the-by, 
 only possessed by a very few persons), and it was 
 arranged that she was to have a guinea for her 
 services. The guests arrived, and, being old friends,
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 169 
 
 were informed of the circumstances, so they re- 
 solved themselves into a sort of committee of taste. 
 The dinner was a perfect success ; indeed, I have 
 never sat down to a better one. We congratulated 
 ourselves on having at last discovered a perfect 
 treasure, who would live with us as long as life 
 would last, though such excellent cooking would 
 probably ensure exceptional longevity. When the 
 feast was over and the guests departed, I told my 
 man that I would pay the cook her guinea with my 
 own hands, that I might compliment her upon her 
 genius. ' I think you had better not do that, sir," 
 he replied. ' Perhaps to-morrow morning she may 
 be better.' ' Better ? she could not be better ! ' (I 
 was still thinking of her only as regarded her art.) 
 ' What is the matter with her ? ' 
 
 * She is not in a fit state, sir, to take her wages.' 
 From what I knew of my man I felt from this de- 
 scription that she must be in a parlous state indeed. 
 
 ' Do you mean to say she is intoxicated ? ' 
 
 * No, sir, intoxicated is not the word ; she is 
 lying dead drunk on the kitchen floor.'
 
 170 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 It was quite true, for I went down and looked 
 at her. She had had a quantity of stout, and then 
 a bottle of port wine, while she had been sending 
 up the dinner ; she said that ' constant support ' 
 was necessary to her during that responsible duty. 
 And she had done her duty to the very last — a 
 particular kind of roe on toast, of which I have 
 still a grateful remembrance. Then this great 
 artiste succumbed. She was really a cordon bleu, 
 but so constituted that she had never held any 
 situation beyond a month, during which (except 
 in February) she had been drunk from thirty to 
 thirty-one days : a brilliant genius, but with this 
 little failing, like Sheridan. 
 
 Menservants are generally liked better by their 
 masters than their mistresses ; they are said to 
 have the facultj^ of getting the length of their foot ; 
 and such is the innate selfishness of the male sex 
 that so long as a man is personally well attended 
 to he does not much mind how other folks are 
 neglected. I am really afraid there is some truth 
 in this, for though I have had some excellent men-
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 171 
 
 servants in my time, it is certain they have not 
 all been so good as I thought they were. Jackson, 
 a most grave and dignified character, was an ex- 
 ample of this. He never unbent even to me, but 
 he treated me at all times with kindly condescension. 
 He had received his orders from another quarter 
 to ' look after ' his master, and he did so on one 
 occasion with unnecessary particularity, even to the 
 extent of removing my hat from my head when I 
 came indoors. Of course, I did not speak of it to 
 liim — if you had known Jackson you would have 
 understood the impossibility of such a course — 
 but I mentioned it elsewhere. 
 
 ' Ah, you have found him out at last, have you? ' 
 was the enigmatical reply. 
 
 What could it mean ? A few days afterwards, 
 on the occasion of our giving a little dinner-party, 
 I found out what it meant. On handing me the 
 champagne, Jackson whispered confidentially in my 
 ear, ' Will you have some sham ? ' and the moment 
 afterwards saw by my face that he had betrayed 
 himself to a too-confiding master. Still, I could
 
 172 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 not but admire his subsequent behaviour — the 
 conduct of a general who, though beaten, resolves 
 not to be disgraced. He no longer trusted himself 
 to wait at table, but remained at the sideboard, 
 supporting himself slightly on his elbow, like a 
 classical statue, and issuing his orders to the 
 parlourmaid. Of course, the next morning he had 
 to go. And here again he exhibited a fine sagacity, 
 for, knowing that no worse could hapj)en to him, he 
 saw no reason why he should not make himself as 
 happy as possible with the very cause of his un- 
 doing, and accordingly came up for his wages in a 
 very advanced state of intoxication. He was still 
 stately, but for a little lurch in his gait, and looked 
 like a bishop threatened with sea sickness. 
 
 ' There are your wages,' I said coldly — ' your 
 month's wages — though you don't deserve them.' 
 
 He had a slip of jDaper in his hand, the contents 
 of which he compared with shaking fingers with the 
 amount. 
 
 ' No, 3^ou don't ! ' he said, with his superior 
 smile and even a touch of his old pitying con-
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 173 
 
 descension. * I wants my board wages, and I don't 
 go till I gets 'em.' 
 
 Then he backed against the wall and leant 
 against it — the six feet four of him— a fixture, as 
 it seemed, for life. A policeman was sent for, but 
 informed me that his duties must be confined to 
 seeing tl^at no unnecessary violence was used in 
 expelling .Jackson from the premises. Had not two 
 undergraduate friends of the family happened to 
 be in the house at the time he would probably have 
 been with us now, but with the utmost willingness 
 they seized the intoxicated Colossus by the shoulders 
 and ran him into the street in half a minute. It 
 is a great mistake to suppose (even though the 
 police force refuse their assistance) that force is no 
 remedy. Still, I was sorry for Jackson ; his end — 
 the being run out with such celerity — became him 
 less than any portion of his sublime existence. 
 
 Strange customs have come and gone in my 
 time, and social alterations of various kinds. At 
 one time there was a craze for the revival of a 
 certain custom of our ancestors in connection with
 
 174 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 hospitality. It had been resuscitated many years 
 before by the ' Young England ' party, and was 
 once more dug up from its grave, like other 
 
 Usages thoroughly worn out, 
 The souls of them fumed forth, the hearts of them torn out. 
 
 This was the turning the junior members of the 
 family into table-waiters, to do more honour to the 
 guests. This was done in some cases amongst 
 people of the highest rank, and very distressing 
 and embarrassing the guests felt it to be when the 
 Lady Gwendoline or the Lady Ermengarde came 
 round with the entrees. On one occasion, at the 
 house of an eminent man, I noticed that when 
 the dinner was announced his pretty daughter of 
 sixteen had no cavalier allotted to her, and re- 
 marked to her on the wickedness of the omission. 
 
 ' Oh, I am not going to dine,' she said, with a 
 smile and a blush, ' but only to wait upon you.' 
 
 She evidentl}' did not enjoy her office (which 
 made the meal very unpleasant to me), but per- 
 formed it with much grace and dexterity. Her 
 brother, a public-school boy a year younger,
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 175 
 
 resented the arrangement exceedingly; with a hand 
 deep in one pocket and a dish in the other, he 
 came lohing up with his ' sweethread ' and ' cro- 
 quettes ' as though he vashed they might choke us, 
 and I heartily forgave him for the aspiration. In 
 some countries the custom is almost universal, hut 
 it certainly does not suit the English public-school 
 boy. 
 
 Before the Crimean War there was a certain 
 military club in London composed of very ancient 
 members indeed ; only a few colonels e^'en were 
 in it, and those of advanced age ; the rest were 
 generals and field -marshals. There is a legend 
 that the hall-porter declined to admit a member 
 who ran up the steps ; such a thing was not only 
 unparalleled, but seemed to him to be impossible. 
 After peace was proclaimed there was an influx of 
 comparatively young colonels into the club, whose; 
 advent was much resented by the aborigines. One 
 of them told me of his adventures the first day. 
 He was reading the Times on one of the standing 
 newspaper-frames, when all of a sudden he found
 
 176 GLEAMS OF MEMOEY ; 
 
 himself reading the Morning Post. An old general 
 who wished to change his paper had quietly turned 
 the thing round. Mj friend was not remarkable 
 for good temper, and I asked him what he did 
 under circumstances which even to my civilian 
 mind seemed calculated to j)rovoke a breach of 
 the peace. 
 
 ' Well,' he said, ' I got a good gi-ip of the stand 
 with both hands, and then whirled it round about 
 forty revolutions to the second. The way in which 
 that ancient veteran staggered back and fell into 
 an armchair was a caution.' 
 
 The new arrivals were denied the first read of 
 the evening papers. M}^ colonel said, ' They were 
 snatched away from us, sir.' However, in the 
 reading-room one afternoon he found only a dozen 
 warriors, all with one arm, except one, who had but 
 one leg. He said to himself * I shall get my paper 
 to-day.' But when the servant came in with them 
 the veteran with one leg took the whole of them 
 from him, tucked them under his arm like a sheaf, 
 and gave one to each of his friends, like a patent 
 distributing-machine.
 
 WITH SOME EEFLECTIONS 177 
 
 It was in this club that two members of the 
 committee swore to blackball a candidate who had 
 committed the heinous offence of being under sixty 
 years of age. When they quitted town for the 
 summer, they left word with the secretary that they 
 should be telegraphed for if Colonel B.'s election 
 came on. And in due time he did telegraph for 
 them ; one came from Dublin and one from Corn- 
 wall to keep B. out of the club. As it happened 
 he got in, and the two veterans were wild with fury 
 and the secretary. 
 
 ' Indeed, gentlemen,' said the poor fellow, ' I 
 couldn't help it. Indeed, but for you he would 
 not have got in ; for had you not put in an appear- 
 ance on the committee there would not have been 
 a quorum.' 
 
 It is curious that, while amateur acting is 
 looked down upon, plays sometimes succeed in the 
 drawing-room which fail in the theatre. This may 
 be explained by the fact that the audience is more 
 friendly ; but in some cases the piece is reahy less 
 well acted by the professionals. Wilkie Collins's 
 
 Is
 
 178 GLEAMS OF ilEMOEY ; 
 
 * Frozen Deep ' was an example of this. When 
 Charles Dickens and Company acted in it, it was a 
 great success, but on the boards it was a failure. I 
 sometimes fondly think that my poor play, ' The 
 Substitute ' — a small thing (in a mere couple of 
 scenes), but my own — came under the same cate- 
 gory. It was received in a private house, where it 
 was acted well and carefull}-, with every mark of 
 favour, but failed — and deserved to fail — upon the 
 stage. It was there played very vulgarly, whereas 
 it required very delicate treatment. The plot was, 
 I believe, original. A rich old English bachelor, 
 Mr. P., engages himself in Paris to a young lady 
 of fashion, who jilts him on the weddhig-day. He 
 has written home describing her various accom- 
 plishments to his friends, and the disappointment 
 is a very bitter one. Out of pique he at once 
 marries the housemaid at the hotel, who has been 
 very good to him. The fun consists in his intro- 
 ducing her at home as his original fiancee, and 
 in her successful efforts to support the character, 
 accomplishments and all. If it was not funny, I
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 17i) 
 
 don't know what fun is; and yet — well, no matter, 
 the British stage was the loser, for 
 
 I was so disgusted 
 
 That I took and cussed it, 
 
 And did not try again. 
 
 What was rather singular, I rewrote it as a 
 story, which was popular enough, when half a 
 dozen persons wrote to me to ask permission, on 
 account of its dramatic character, to adapt it for 
 the stage, where it had already run for six weeks 
 (at the Court Theatre, hut with a scratch company 
 and in the off season) without attracting the least 
 attention. As Mr. Brummell's valet observed of 
 his master's neckcloths, * this was one of our 
 failures.' 
 
 I notice among recent publications ' The 
 Eeligion of a Literary Man.' This ought to be 
 very interesting, for hitherto men of letters have 
 thought with Thomas Hood that ' faith and prayers 
 are among the privatest of men's affairs.' It is 
 said that Charles Dickens left behind him a record 
 of his views upon spiritual things, but only intended
 
 180 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 for the use of his children, and not for publication. 
 Leigh Hunt has given us ' The Eeligion of the 
 Heart,' a book that deserves to be better known, if 
 only because it is typical of the faith of a great 
 many cultured persons, and full of tenderness and 
 charity. As to orthodoxy, I have never met with 
 it in any man of letters, even though he may 
 nominall}'' have belonged to some established sect. 
 It is quite curious how, as regards this class at 
 least, the clergy misunderstand the causes of those 
 various conditions of the human mind which they 
 denounce under the common term of ' infidelity.' 
 The days when the publication of the ' Evidences 
 of Christianity ' acted as a panacea for it are over ; 
 men's doubts are no longer historic doubts. 'Lord, 
 I believe ; help Thou my unbelief,' is as common a 
 cry with many of us as ever, but except with .a few 
 scholars the historical question has comparatively 
 slight interest, as com^Dared with ' the riddle of the 
 painful earth ' — what seems amiss in the moral 
 government of the world. Nor do the old stock 
 phrases about the ' Origin of Evil ' and the Immu-
 
 ■WITH som:e keflections 181 
 
 table Laws of Order or of Nature produce much 
 effect upon modern minds. The question that 
 puzzles them is put further back, and inquires, Who 
 is responsible for the laws ? It seems to them 
 impossible that omnipotence and benevolence in 
 combination can permit the outrageous crimes and 
 cruelties that go on every day in the world. The 
 Powers of Evil do not seem to be, at all events for 
 the present, subjugated to those of Good. 
 
 This, of course, has always troubled men's 
 minds, but not so much as of late years, when 
 the condition of other people has begun to awaken 
 sympathy. It is quite extraordinary how callous 
 even the most religious persons in the past have 
 often been to the miseries of their fellow-creatures, 
 both in this world and the next. They have, 
 indeed, expressed their gratitude for being safe 
 and sound themselves, but not without a feeling of 
 complacency that others are not so fortunate. It 
 is this callousness which has rendered the man of 
 letters — impulsive and sensitive, soft-hearted yet 
 easily moved to indignation, and charitable even
 
 182 GLEAMS OF MEMORY ; 
 
 towards the sins he is not inchned to — unortho- 
 dox and something more. There may be in him a 
 want of submissiveness to the Divine Will, and 
 certainly of that unquestioning faith which is the 
 comfort of so many souls, but there is no lack of 
 human love and sympathy ; and the man who 
 loves his fellows, we are told, is very near to loving 
 his Creator. At all events, the feeling I have 
 described seems to me to have more or less per- 
 vaded the minds of almost all men of letters with 
 whom I have conversed upon spiritual thmgs. Be- 
 cause literary men are not as a rule churchgoers, 
 they are often considered irreligious or as complete 
 Gallios in the matter ; but this is not at all my 
 experience of them, and I have lived in their midst 
 for nearly half a century. 
 
 A very distinguished member of the clergy used 
 to say, with those half- shut eyes that always 
 showed when his vein of humour was touched, and 
 which caused it to be said of him that he never saw 
 a happy moment : * What strikes one as so queer 
 is that belief in their particular dogma is made the
 
 WITH SOME KEFLECTIONS 183 
 
 essential point of all sects, all of which save one — 
 and perhaps even that — must be wrong.' 
 
 Who damns every creed but his own 
 Must look for a limited Heaven, 
 And is like a man laying long odds 
 When the long odds to him should be given. 
 
 It never seems to strike a theologian that his 
 calculation is contrary to the doctrine of chances. 
 
 Before I end, let me say a word or two more 
 about my much-maligned profession. That use is 
 second nature is a common truism, yet few people, 
 I imagine, have had it brought home to them more 
 forcibly than myself. The question has often been 
 put to me by those who have been good enough to 
 take an interest in my writings : ' How do you 
 manage, when you are ill or out of spirits, to write 
 in the same unmistakably cheerful strain as usual ? ' 
 I have often wondered myself, but without con- 
 sciousness of the difficulty thus suggested. In 
 times of trouble of many kinds, of severe physical 
 ailments, of domestic bereavement, and even with 
 death under the very roof, my pen, when I found 
 myself at my desk, has turned to ordinary matters
 
 184 GLEAMS OF MEMOKY ; 
 
 with perfect facility, and treated them in its habitual 
 airy manner. It may not be a good manner, but 
 it has become my own, and misery itself has no 
 power to make it sad. I write these very lines 
 in the acutest pain from rheumatic gout in my 
 gnarled fingers. Yet, after all, how slight is this 
 moral victory of second nature compared with that 
 she displays in physical matters ! A man of middle 
 age, with whose family I am acquainted, found one 
 of his eyes affected, as he thought, by reading small 
 print at night, and applied to a famous oculist for 
 advice. He examined him very carefully, and 
 presently inquired whether he found any incon- 
 venience from the other eye — the right one. 
 
 ' None whatever,' was the reply. 
 
 ' Still,' said the oculist, drily, ' it is very import- 
 ant for you to preserve the sight of your left eye, 
 inasmuch as you have never seen with the other 
 since you were born.' 
 
 There was some inherent defect in the retina 
 which forbade it, and yet up to the age of five-and- 
 forty this man had not discovered that he had not
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS 185 
 
 two ej'es like other people. The fact is certain, 
 though it has been justly remarked that he could 
 never have winked with his left eye or he would 
 have found himself in darkness. 
 
 As to the calling of Literature, which has been 
 
 so much abused of late by some of its own followers, 
 
 if I were to live twenty lives I would choose no other 
 
 profession. It is the brightest and most genial of 
 
 all of them, and, so far at least as my experience 
 
 goes, the most free from jealousies and acrimonies. 
 
 There are times, of course, when one would like to 
 
 sentence a critic to be put to death ' to slow music,' 
 
 but I have never felt inclined ' to put my knife ' — 
 
 unless it was the paper-knife — into any of my 
 
 brother authors. They are very pleasant company, 
 
 as kindly friends as can be found, and more inclined 
 
 to look upon one's faults with tenderness than what 
 
 are invidiously termed the respectable classes. The 
 
 pursuit of letters makes us friends all over the globe, 
 
 but it does not lead to fortune. Leisure in old age 
 
 has been unhappily denied me. I suppose without 
 
 vanity I may say that, as regards popularity, I 
 
 o
 
 186 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 have been in the first dozen or so of story-tellers ; 
 but my gains have been small indeed when com- 
 pared with anyone in the same position in any other 
 calling, A judge and a bishop get 5,000Z. a year 
 and a retiring pension. I have been exceptionally 
 fortunate in receiving such small prizes as litera- 
 ture has to offer, in the way of editorships and 
 readerships, but the total income I have made by 
 my pe^i has been but an average of 1,500/. a year 
 for thirty-five working years. As compared with 
 the gains of Law and Physic, and, of course, of 
 Commerce, this is surely a very modest sum, though 
 it has been earned in a most pleasant manner. 
 
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