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 ESSAYS OF A LITERARY VETERAN
 
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 'iud((B.PiiliUnh'dbyRmtibFUfrAro.i5,W»terinfi i
 
 The Backwater of Life 
 
 OR 
 
 Essays of a Literary Veteran 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES PAYN 
 Hi 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 WITH A PORTRAIT 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDEE AND CO. 
 
 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1899 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 
 /-
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 TiiE Essays in this volume arc reprinted by 
 permission of their respective proprietors from the 
 following periodicals : — The Cornhill Magazine, TJie 
 Nineteenth Century, The Forum, The Strand Magazine, 
 The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Youth's 
 Companion.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 JAMES PAYN. By Leslie Stephen 
 
 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 
 
 ON OLD AGE 
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 
 
 ON CONVERSATION 
 
 ON TAKING OFFENCE 
 
 TAKING THE WATERS 
 
 GETTING INTO PRINT 
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 VALE ! . . . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ix 
 
 3 
 
 17 
 
 41 
 
 63 
 
 81 
 101 
 113 
 125 
 147 
 177 
 195 
 219
 
 JAMES PAYN 
 
 NO one, I fancy, who has read the essays 
 collected in this volume will feel him- 
 self a stranger to the author. It is sometimes 
 asserted that the author and the man may be 
 two unlike souls in one body. I never knew 
 an instance myself; though, of course, the 
 aspects of character revealed in books may 
 be different from those which are prominent in 
 social intercourse. Payn scarcely showed even 
 this difference. The simplest and most trans- 
 parent of men, he could no more write than he 
 could talk without the frankest self- revelation. 
 Readers, however, may like to have some direct 
 testimony to the personal impression made 
 upon those who knew him. As one of his 
 oldest friends, I ought to be able to say some- 
 thing to the purpose ; though I have nothing 
 to say in which my testimony would differ 
 from that of the many who shared my privilege.
 
 X JAMES PAYN 
 
 What I can say will be best illustrated by a 
 brief summary of his career. Payn himself 
 wrote two autobiographical books.^ He begins 
 the first by avowing that his memory for dates 
 and details is defective ; and I must admit that 
 his statements suggest one or two chronological 
 puzzles which might give trouble to a minute 
 biographer. But he had both a vivid recollec- 
 tion of many characteristic anecdotes, and a 
 skill in relating them briefly and brightly, 
 which more than atone for any little slips of 
 fact. I can neither repeat them at length nor 
 condense them without injury. I am content 
 to say that the judicious reader should turn to 
 Payn's own narrative. It is the main source 
 of my information, though I can add a detail 
 or two which he has not mentioned. 
 
 James Payn was born at Cheltenham on 
 28th February 1830. His father, William Payn, 
 was the disinherited, or partly disinherited, son 
 of a rich man. When thrown by his father's 
 death upon his own resources, he set to work 
 energetically, and obtained the clerkship to the 
 
 ' Some, Literary Recollections (1884), and Gleams of Memory 
 (1894).
 
 JAMES PAYN xi 
 
 Thames Commissioners, a post, as his son 
 says, then of considerable value. He lived at 
 Maidenhead, was well enough off to keep the 
 Berkshire Harriers, and was a bright and 
 popular man, compared by Miss Mitford to a 
 'hero of the fine old English comedy.' He 
 died before his son was of sufficient age to 
 remember him distinctly. Payn thought that 
 he had not inherited his father's aptitude for 
 practical affairs, and most certainly was him- 
 self anything but a Mirabel or other fine 
 gentleman of the Congreve type. His per- 
 sonal qualities were perhaps inherited from 
 his mother — the kindest, and one of the most 
 beautiful, of women, as he tells us, who alone 
 understood him, and whose ' pet ' he naturally 
 became. That he must have inherited a very 
 strong idiosyncrasy from some one is demon- 
 strable ; for heredity and ' environment ' explain 
 everything, and Payn's environment was curi- 
 ously unfavourable to the qualities which he 
 actually developed. No author whom I can 
 remember was ever more distinctly set apart 
 by nature for his calling. Many men have 
 shown literary proclivities at an equally early
 
 xii JAMES PAYN 
 
 age; but their tastes have often been fostered 
 by external circumstances. They have been 
 nursed in libraries, or had sympathetic and ap- 
 preciative parents, or shown the talents which 
 schoolmasters can recognise and encourage. 
 Payn's literary propensities had none of these 
 adventitious supports. They throve in an un- 
 congenial atmosphere. His father, a sportsman 
 and an active man of the world, would naturally 
 be in sympathy with the country gentlemen of 
 the district. He put his boy on a pony and 
 took him out with the hounds. But the un- 
 natural child found hunting a bore, longed for 
 his books when waiting by the covert-side, and 
 would even go as far as to invent a 'nasty 
 tumble' as a pretext for riding home to The 
 Mysteries of Udolpho and Peregrine PicJde. 
 He lived within reach of the vale of White 
 Horse, where Tom Brown, or his double, Tom 
 Hughes, was growing up to be the ideal of 
 English public schoolboy, watching ' backsword' 
 play, learning to wrestle, and preparing himself 
 to become a prophet of ' muscular Christianity.' 
 Payn, though he speaks affectionately of some 
 boyish recreations on the downs, was so far
 
 JAMES PAYN xiii 
 
 from becoming an athlete that he learned to 
 detest even the milder forms of the vice. His 
 cricket seems to have ended when he stopped a 
 ball — horrible to relate ! — with the crown of his 
 straw hat, and was properly excluded from all 
 ' elevens ' thenceforward. A preparatory school 
 to which he was sent at the age of seven was 
 'hateful' to him. He gained some popularity 
 as a story-teller, though, like Scheherazade, he 
 told his stories under severe compulsion. He 
 Avas a slave, though a slave with an amusing 
 accompUshment. Even Eton, to which he was 
 sent at the age of eleven, was equally repulsive. 
 The happiness of school life as celebrated in 
 Tom Brown was, according to him, a fiction; 
 and he agreed with Thackeray's view of the 
 brutalities of the old fighting and fagging 
 system. Even in those days, I may venture 
 to say, for I must have been Payn's contem- 
 porary at Eton, delicate boys could find a 
 public school enjoyable ; and 1 am not quite 
 sure, heretical as the opinion may be, that the 
 change has been so great or so entirely for 
 the better as is often asserted. Payn does 
 not seem to have sufibrcd much bullying. He
 
 xiv JAMES PAYN 
 
 says that the ' cruelest thing that happened 
 to him ' was the rejection of an article which 
 he sent to the school magazine: a premature 
 experience of a calamity not generally reckoned 
 as one of the schoolboy trials. Payn's literary 
 taste might have been expected to recommend 
 him to schoolmasters if not to boys. But his 
 talents were of the wrong kind. He was not, 
 and never became, a tolerable scholar. The 
 attempt to cram him with classical knowledge 
 only gave him a rooted hatred for the languages, 
 especially for Greek. He regarded it with a 
 kind of personal aversion : it was dead, and he 
 wished, as he says, that it had been buried. 
 His inability to learn any foreign language was 
 indeed singular. Some French and German 
 were painfully drilled into him at a later 
 period ; but he was never even up to the 
 average tourist standard. He disliked visits 
 to the Continent, where, as is well known, lin- 
 guistic skill is required; and he looked with 
 amusing reverence upon any one who was his 
 superior in the art. He spoke to me once of a 
 friend who had been able to translate a letter 
 in some unfamiliar tongue, with a kind of awe,
 
 JAMES PAYN XV 
 
 as though the performer of so strange a feat 
 had discovered the key to cuneiform writing. 
 Meanwhile, no schoolmaster could be expected 
 to discover talents so little germane to the 
 ordinary course. In a year or two Payn left 
 Eton on receiving a nomination to the Koyal 
 Military Academy, and was sent to a crammer 
 at Woolwich. The system seems to have been 
 atrocious. He was made to spend weeks in 
 learning Euclid by heart. He was at first kept to 
 the treadmill so rigorously, that he had no time 
 for his favourite reading ; and he solaced him- 
 self by occasional escapades which might have 
 led to worse results. He managed to spend his 
 Sundays in London — not at the house of his 
 respectable relations. He went to the Derby, 
 and for lack of funds rode back on a hearse; 
 and, on one famous occasion, he raised the 
 eightpcnce necessary to take him and a friend 
 back to Woolwich by preaching from a tub 
 while the friend went round with the hat. 
 Somehow or other he got into the Academy, 
 even passing third in the examination, and 
 spent a year there till he was obliged to leave 
 by the state of his health. He observes that,
 
 xvi JAMES PAYN 
 
 not being a Smollett, he could not give a full- 
 length picture of the manners and customs 
 of the place. Happily his literary ambition, 
 though not as yet successful, gave an innocent 
 vent for his energies. The army, then, was 
 not to provide a sphere for Payn's talents ; 
 and a certain prejudice against the military 
 view of things in general was apparently the 
 only result of this education. The next mould 
 into which it was attempted to force him was 
 the clerical. He passed a year with a private 
 tutor in Devonshire before going up to Cam- 
 bridge. The tutor was a delightful and cour- 
 teous person : familiar with, but neglected by, 
 the aristocracy. Here Payn seems for the first 
 time to have been really happy. For the first 
 and only time in his life, too, he showed some 
 athletic skill, and describes himself as ' quite a 
 remarkable proficient' with the leaping-pole. 
 He speaks of flying from bank to bank of a 
 deep lane over the heads of astonished wag- 
 goners. I may infer, perhaps, that his health 
 was improving in the fresh country life; and 
 in such pleasant surroundings he even took 
 some interest in his studies. He was thought
 
 ^ 
 
 JAMES PAYN xvii 
 
 to have mathematical abiUty; and I rather 
 suspect that the behef had some foundation. 
 I am no phrenologist: but Payn's head, with 
 the prominent brow, often reminded me of 
 some famous mathematicians whom I have 
 known ; and his skill in whist showed, I suppose, 
 some capacity for calculation. If, however, he 
 had any mathematical gift, it was suppressed 
 by the consuming desire for literary excellence. 
 While he was in Devonshire, he began at last to 
 appear in print. His first success was a poem 
 called ' The Poet's Death,' which was published 
 in Leijjh Hunt's Journal. Some ' ballads from 
 English History ' got into Bentley's Miscellany ; 
 and he not only wrote, but received payment 
 for, an excellent epitaph on a 'gleesome, flea- 
 some, affectionate ' pointer called ' Jock.' Then, 
 too, he received three guineas for a prose article 
 upon his life at Woolwich, Avliich was accepted 
 by W. H. Wills, Dickens's sub-editor in House- 
 hold Words. The fee was spent on a pig to 
 be presented to his Devonshire tutor; and he 
 has told us with characteristic humour how 
 the pig eloped during his journey. A more 
 important result followed. The governor of the 
 
 b
 
 xviii JAMES PAYN 
 
 Woolwich Academy complained to Dickens of 
 the article, and a correspondence followed which 
 for the first time brought Payn into direct 
 communication with the man whom he after- 
 wards delighted to describe as ' The Master.' 
 
 Meanwhile Payn entered Trinity College in 
 October 1849, still with a view to the clerical 
 profession. There, a short time afterwards, I 
 first had sight of him. My reminiscence is 
 trifling enough, but it left a distinct impression, 
 not, I think, uncharacteristic. I was attending 
 a little debating society where we were dis- 
 cussing the old problem as to the truth of 
 ghost-stories. 'Let any one of you wake at 
 dead of night in the solitude of his own room,' 
 said Payn, 'and see if he dare to summon 
 himself three times by name in a loud voice.' 
 I have never dared to perform the ceremony ; 
 nor do I in the least know what the proper 
 inference would be from the alleged fact. But 
 I do very distinctly remember my impression 
 of Payn. In those days I was inclined, like 
 my contemporaries, to attach rather exces- 
 sive importance to success in examinations. 
 Payn, it was understood, was not to win
 
 JAMES PAYN xix 
 
 glory in that direction; but somehow he en- 
 joyed a kind of reputation which, if less 
 definite, had a mysterious charm. He was an 
 author, though as yet of humble rank. Now 
 the Cambridge don of those days, whatever his 
 defects, often had a considerable — I will not 
 say exaggerated — respect for authorship. He 
 was, if anything, rather anxious to show that 
 his academical seclusion was not incompatible 
 with literary culture. Payn fondly thought 
 that even the great scholars agreed with him 
 in their hearts as to the merits of Greek. 
 They could not openly agree when he called a 
 tragedy of ^Eschylus an ' idealess composition ' ; 
 but they smiled benevolently and, as he hoped, 
 significantly. Payn generally respected such 
 knowledge as lay beyond his own studies ; but 
 on this point I think that he could never be 
 convinced. He had one simple test. When 
 somebody published a collection of Greek wit, 
 Payn felt that it was impossible to laugh at 
 these ancient jokes as you laugh at Sam Weller. 
 Of all hypocrisy, forced laughter is the most 
 easily detected and the most offensive to a 
 genuine humourist ; and men who could affect
 
 XX JAMES PAYN 
 
 to be amused were to be suspected when they 
 affected to be awestruck by the sublime and 
 beautiful. Payn's heresy was too natural and 
 sincere to be offensive. It might shock a 
 pedant, but could only amuse a true scholar. 
 Payn, in any case, was warmly welcomed by 
 some of the Trinity dons. Among them was 
 W. G. Clark, most urbane and amusing of 
 hosts — then ' public orator,' equally at home in 
 Aristophanes and Shakespeare. Another light 
 was the great Latin scholar Munro, who was 
 also one of the simplest and most cordial of 
 men. George Brimley, a man of much literary 
 promise, was librarian of Trinity, and a con- 
 tributor to the Spectator. He afterwards showed 
 his taste by an enthusiastic panegyric upon 
 Tennyson in the Cambridge Essays; and he 
 now praised a little volume of poetry (Stories 
 from Boccaccio) published by Payn as an 
 undergraduate. ' The review,' says Payn, ' was 
 like ten thousand tonics in a single dose.' He 
 always called it to mind when himself review- 
 ing a young author; and, in fact, it was the 
 first formal admission of his claims to literary 
 consideration.
 
 JAIMES PAYN xxi 
 
 There were other Trinity dons of those days 
 whose recognition was worth having. When 
 admitted to their circle, I had something of the 
 feeling of Boswell when elected to the Literary 
 Club. I still think that the society was charm- 
 ing, and the conversation as good as I have ever 
 heard. Payn made friends for life, and kept up 
 his connection with the university for a period 
 much longer than is usual for men who do 
 not obtain fellowships. His visits in later 
 years were always occasions for rejoicing and 
 modest conviviality. Here I need only say 
 that he found a specially congenial set of 
 younger friends at Christ's College. Calverley, 
 Sir John Seeley, Sir Walter Besant, and Pro- 
 fessor Skeat were members of the College ; and 
 the famous examination paper upon Pickwick, 
 set by Calverley, indicates sufficiently one of 
 their attractions for Payn. The devotion for 
 that masterpiece and its author was at its 
 height, and entirely fell in with Payn's hero- 
 worship. 
 
 Payn put a very low estimate upon the educa- 
 tional value of his university course: the know- 
 ledge was not worth a tenth of the price paid
 
 xxii JAMES PAYN 
 
 for it. He admitted, however, that it gave grand 
 opportunities for making friendships. He had 
 taken full advantage of these opportunities : 
 he had not only acquired friends, but he had 
 been encouraged, and his self-confidence raised, 
 by communication with fresh young minds, full 
 of literary enthusiasms. 
 
 Now, at last, Payn could yield to his 
 strongest impulse. He gave up the intention 
 of taking orders : he had no call, or, as he says, 
 had a stronger call in another direction. His 
 education had all gone by contraries. It had 
 been a series of attempts to train the growing 
 tree into the conventional shape ; the tree had 
 refused to obey, and perhaps only shot out 
 more vigorously into forbidden forms. That 
 might possibly be a kindness in disguise, 
 though not a kindness for which the recipient 
 could be grateful. It had certain effects upon 
 Payn's intellectual position. He took himself 
 to be a ' radical,' as the name was understood 
 in those days. It implies something very 
 different now. He shared, at any rate, the 
 radical antipathies to the forces by which he 
 had declined to be moulded : to the ' barbarian '
 
 JAMES PAYN xxiii 
 
 type — in Matthew Arnold's phrase : the sport- 
 ing, athletic, rough squirearchy, whose tastes 
 were reflected in the public school system and 
 the mihtary and ecclesiastical embodiments of 
 the same spirit. He was a bit of a ' Bohemian ' : 
 not as indifferent to moraUty, but as resenting 
 dress-coats and social proprieties, and feeling 
 himself most at home with the free and easy 
 journalist and literary gentleman. His radi- 
 calism, in short, was that which is represented 
 by Dickens, and corresponds to the middle- 
 class sentiment of the period — not to any strong 
 democratic or socialist tendency. Dickens's 
 caricature of the pompous officials of the Cir- 
 cumlocution Office and the effete aristocrats 
 who put their faith in ' blood,' expressed some 
 of Payn's prejudices ; and, on the other side, he 
 was equally in sympathy with Dickens's hatred 
 of the rigid Puritans and economists, the 
 Stigginscs and the Gradgrinds, and love of the 
 soft-hearted, improvident, and generous Bohe- 
 mians, who illustrate all the Christian virtues, 
 Payn, in short, believed heartily in the morality 
 of the Christmas Carol, and resented any 
 criticisms of Dickens's ' sentimcntalism.' Sucli
 
 xxiv JAMES PAYN 
 
 sneers, he said, were only fit for the ' drawing- 
 rooms and the clubs — the people who don't 
 think and the people who don't feel' When 
 he wrote this, Payn had long been a thorough 
 club man himself, though for drawing-rooms 
 he had little enough taste; and had learned 
 that good sense and kindly feeling are often 
 conspicuous in men to whom Pall Mall is the 
 centre of the universe. Though in some sort 
 a refractory member of his own class in society, 
 he had too many ties of affection and sympathy 
 with it to be a radical of the uncompromising 
 variety. In politics, however, Payn had no very 
 strong interest ; though he discussed the 
 popular questions with his friends at the 
 Reform Club, and refused to follow Gladstone's 
 conversion to Home Rule. In early years, he 
 showed his tendency in his novels — where the 
 wicked baronet of fiction made his appearance ; 
 and an article upon his early novel {The Foster 
 Brothers) in the Saturday Review was headed 
 ' The Bloated Aristocracy.' The author (Sir 
 J. F. Stephen) afterwards laughed over this 
 assault with him ; but, adds Payn, ' I was 
 never so tickled with the reminiscence as he
 
 JAMES PAYN XXV 
 
 was,' A lively dislike for pompous officialism, 
 dogmatic priestcraft, pedantic scholarship, and 
 stiff-backed militarism remained equally marked 
 to the end of his life, 
 
 Payn went out in the first-class of the ' Poll ' 
 at the end of 1852, He was now fully resolved 
 to take to the literary career, which to the end 
 he declared to be the most desirable in the 
 world. He trusted to it to make his living, 
 and had soon strong motives for the industry 
 which speedily became habitual. He was 
 already engaged, and on his twenty-fourth 
 birthday, 28th February 1854, gained the great 
 blessing of his life by his marriage to Miss 
 Louisa Adelaide Edlin. Of the greatness of this 
 blessing I cannot speak. The union lasted for 
 forty-four years till Payn's death ; and to those 
 who know what a perfectly happy marriage 
 means, I need say no more than this, that he 
 made such a marriage, and, to the end of his 
 days, had an ever-increasing sense of its un- 
 speakable value, Payn settled at first in a region 
 appropriate to authorship : lie was still, indeed, 
 under the one inevitable illusion of a young 
 author — he imagined that he was to be a poet ;
 
 xxvi JAMES PAYN 
 
 and I may remark parenthetically that if he 
 could not, and did not afterwards, claim that 
 title in a very lofty sense, his verses were 
 pleasant reading, and, like everything else that 
 he wrote, free from any affectation of the 
 qualities which he did not possess. A young 
 poet was in his place at Ambleside, where he 
 spent the winter of 1854-5, and for some time 
 he lived 'an idyllic life' in ' Rydal Cottage, 
 under the shadow of Nab Scar.' Words- 
 worth was dead, but literature was still repre- 
 sented by the brave and kindly Miss Martineau. 
 To her Payn had been introduced by his and 
 his father's old friend, Miss Mitford. These two 
 ladies were in some sense his literary god- 
 mothers, and he has described them vividly 
 and afiectionately. They gave him good 
 advice and encouragement. He observes, 
 however, what is clearly true, that he owed 
 nothing to introductions. An editor in real 
 life has the strongest motives for accepting 
 new contributors on their merits, and not 
 because they may be recommended by emi- 
 nent and irresponsible literary ladies. Payn 
 had, in his undergraduate days, watched
 
 JAMES PAYN xxvii 
 
 opportunities for getting into print, 'as a 
 terrier watches a rat's hole,' and had here and 
 there found an open door. In the first year 
 of his married life he made £32, 15s., and this 
 modest income was quadrupled the year after- 
 wards. Household Words and Charahers's 
 Journal were his main supports, and he began 
 to publish articles every week or oftener. Leitch 
 Ritchie, editor of Chambers's Journal, was in 
 failing health, and presently invited Payn to 
 be his ' co-editor ' ; five men out of six, says 
 Payn, would have said stt6-editor. In 1858, 
 accordingly, Payn settled in Edinburgh with a 
 regular occupation. A year later Ritchie went 
 to London, and Payn became the sole editor of 
 the Journal. He was now thoroughly entered 
 in the profession of letters ; but there was one 
 drawback. Edinburgh had lost its old position 
 as a great literary centre. There were still a 
 few men there of whom he speaks gratefully : 
 Robert Chambers, author of the Vestiges and 
 one of the proprietors of the Journal, was a 
 valued friend, though his brother, a co- 
 proprietor, William Chambers, was never to 
 Payn's taste, lie just saw De Quinccy, and he
 
 xxviii JAMES PAYN 
 
 had some acquaintance witli Alexander Russel 
 of the Scotsman, Dean Ramsay, Hill Burton, 
 Alexander Smith, and others. He discovered 
 that there may be such a thing as humour 
 in Scotland, as well as very hearty goodwill. 
 But the literary leaders of the time lived in 
 London. Then there was an east wind in 
 Edinburgh, bad for a delicate family. The 
 same isothermal line, said Robert Chambers, 
 passes through Edinburgh and London. Still, 
 said Payn, I never knew of a four-wheeled cab 
 being blown over by an east wind in London, 
 as has just happened in Edinburgh. Moreover, 
 there was a spiritual east wind of Puritanism 
 which was still less to Payn's taste. A Scottish 
 Sabbath was more than he could bear with 
 composure. Dogmatic rigidity vexed him ; 
 and when his landlady remonstrated with him 
 upon drawing up the window-blinds in his 
 house on Sunday, he felt the weight of custom 
 to be more than he could bear. Payn, in 
 short, could never become acclimatised in the 
 Scottish atmosphere, physical or moral ; and in 
 1861 he was glad to be able to remove to 
 London. Robert Chambers made the same
 
 JAMES PAYN xxix 
 
 change of abode, and Payn continued to edit 
 the Journal. 
 
 In London, Payn settled in the Maida Vale 
 region, and there he remained for the rest of 
 his life. He became a thorough Londoner ; he 
 loved in the early years to wander through 
 many regions of the metropolis ; he studied it, 
 he says, as a botanist studies the flora of his 
 district, 'with unspeakable interest and delight.' 
 He recorded some of his experiences in a 
 volume called Meliboeus in London, for which 
 he always retained a paternal affection. He 
 became intimate with a large and ever widen- 
 ing circle of friends, especially among his 
 own profession. No more thorough Londoner 
 walked the streets, or rather — for Payn walked 
 as little as was possible — paid fares to hansom 
 cabmen. Payn could appreciate country 
 scenery when it came in his way ; but he had 
 none of the passions for sport or rambles on 
 foot which take a man habitually into country 
 districts. His absorption in the profession 
 which lie loved so well kept him steadily at 
 his post. ' For the last twenty-five years of 
 my life,' he says in 18.S4, 'I have only had
 
 XXX JAMES PAYN 
 
 three days of consecutive holiday once a year,' 
 Year in and year out, he was turning out 
 novels and articles, editing and reading for 
 publishers, with admirable punctuality; and 
 with a tenacity of purpose which suffering and 
 illness were unable to break down. In such 
 a career there was naturally little in the way 
 of remarkable incident. I may briefly say that 
 in 1871 his friend Robert Chambers died; 
 and the editorship, which he now held under 
 William Chambers, became less agreeable to 
 him. Differences of opinion arose, and in 1874 
 Payn gave up the post. In the same year, 
 however, he formed a permanent connection 
 with Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. He began 
 to read for that firm in 1874; and in 1883 he 
 became editor of their periodical, Tlie Gornhill 
 Magazine. He held this post until growing 
 infirmity compelled him to give up the duties 
 in 1896. Here I may say briefly that Mr. 
 George Smith of that firm was a valued friend 
 from their first acquaintance. Payn himself 
 told one anecdote which it is impossible to 
 omit in this connection. He was accused in 
 some paper of having refused the famous
 
 JAMES PAYN xxxi 
 
 John Inglesant. He at once appealed to Mr. 
 Smitli to contradict the report. Mr. Smith, 
 taken by surprise, was unable to conceal that 
 it had some foundation. The letter-book was 
 produced, and Payn convicted of the blunder, 
 of which Mr. Smith had all along been aware 
 without ever revealing his knowledge to the 
 offender. Payn heartily appreciated the gene- 
 rosity, and was glad to tell the story at his 
 own expense. John Inglesant has been so 
 generally appreciated that I may venture to 
 add a comment. Its interest depends upon the 
 interpretation of certain religious and philo- 
 sophical phases of thought, which were entirely 
 outside of Payn's habitual sphere of reflection ; 
 and, moreover, I suspect that, however great its 
 merits, it was not at all easy to foretell that 
 they were such as would command a com- 
 mercial success — and that was the point for 
 Payn's consideration. 
 
 To the world at large Payn was chiefly known 
 by his novels. His first regular novel, The 
 Foster Brothers, was founded on his college 
 experience. It did fairly, and was republished 
 in America ; but his ' first success,' as lie says.
 
 xxxii JAMES PAYN 
 
 was The Family Scapegrace, suggested by a 
 casual acquaintance with a lion-tamer, known 
 in his profession as Tickerocandua. This, how- 
 ever, Avas eclipsed by Lout Sir Massingherd, 
 which appeared in Chambers's Journal in 1864, 
 and is said to have raised the circulation by 
 20,000 copies. Payn took his literary title 
 from it for several years, but made his chief 
 success by his novel By Proxy, which appeared 
 independently in 1878. To my mind, the most 
 amusing of his stories was a shorter one called 
 A Perfect Treasure; but I cannot profess to 
 make a confident choice in so wide a field. 
 Novel succeeded novel with exemplary regu- 
 larity, and Payn could reckon a literary output 
 of more than a hundred volumes. Few men, 
 he tells us incidentally, can write a ' three- 
 volume novel worth reading under nine months,' 
 — a business-like view which is suggestive of 
 his own methods. To Payn, it may be said, 
 novel-writing meant simply straightforward 
 story- telling ; he had no wish to propound 
 religious or social or psychological theories, or 
 to embody a philosophical conception of human 
 life. He never, like his master Dickens, wrote
 
 JAMES PAYN xxxiii 
 
 attacks upon political abuses, or aimed at em- 
 phasising a particular moral. He was, as lie 
 had been in his early boyhood, a Scheherazade, 
 and took, I may perhaps say, the same view of 
 his art as the author of the Trois Ifousquetaires. 
 Payn, in conversation, was especially dehghtful 
 in the department of anecdote. Nobody could 
 tell a good story more effectively or with more 
 contagious dehght. When such a story struck 
 him as specially suitable, it was worked up 
 into an episode, or perhaps became the plot, of 
 one of his novels. I often had the opportunity 
 of watching the process. I would look in upon 
 him at his office, and be greeted with some 
 quaint narrative which had come in his way; 
 and, naturally, every one possessed of an 
 amusing incident would be glad to find so 
 sympathetic a hearer. Then it would bo 
 gradually elaborated. He would write down 
 the nairies of the imaginary characters on a 
 sheet of cardboard, each at the head of a 
 column. Then the necessary dates and facts 
 would be inserted in the appropriate columns, 
 till a full scheme was drawn out and all points 
 of genealogy and so forth made abundantly 
 
 c
 
 xxxiv JAMES PAYN 
 
 clear. A writer who Avas liable to fits of lofty 
 inspiration might perhaps be trammelled by 
 so methodical a procedure. For Payn's purpose 
 — the clearest possible development of an in- 
 genious situation — it answered, I think, very 
 well; and, whatever limits there might be to 
 his talent, the reader might at least be sure 
 of having a thoroughly clear, bright narrative 
 written with unflagging spirit. In early days 
 I had a compact Avith Payn that I should 
 revieAv his novels in a certain periodical, re- 
 serving to myself the right to speak frankly. 
 I fear that I sometimes used that right rather 
 freely, but Payn took my criticisms with un- 
 failing good-humour. Only once he was vexed 
 when I had suggested, by way of apology, that 
 he had Avritten too hastily. Never, he declared, 
 had he failed to do his best for want of taking 
 trouble. That, I think, was no more than the 
 truth. He did what he wished to do, and what 
 his talents fitted him to do, like a thorousrh 
 workman, and, Avithout further criticising, it 
 may at least be said that the vivacity, the 
 simplicity, and the kindly feeling which is 
 always coming to the surface, make him a
 
 JAMES PAYN XXXV 
 
 delightful showman for the creatures of his 
 imagination. His sense of humour may some- 
 times lead him to take liberties with his 
 reader ; he cannot always resist a bit of down- 
 right burlesque ; and if an incident is dramatic, 
 he does not inquire too closely into probabilities. 
 Like Dickens, he hates his villains with amus- 
 ing fervour; and, instead of bestowing upon 
 them some touch of human nature, blackens 
 them so thoroughly that they are only fit for 
 starvation in hollow trees, or at the bottom of 
 Cornish mines, or for boiling or immersion in 
 lava streams, or for some other of the ingenious 
 catastrophes from which their diabolical shrewd- 
 ness can never save them. Of course, there is 
 always a charming girl to fall in love with, and 
 a happy ending such as the unsophisticated 
 reader desiderates. Perhaps to enjoy Payn 
 thoroughly one should be thoroughly 'un- 
 sophisticated,' dislike vice and villains, bo 
 indifferent to pessimistic philosophising and 
 aisthetic refinement, and have a certain regard 
 for morality and decency. But, given those 
 conditions, none of his hundred volumes will 
 fail to be good reading.
 
 xxxvi JAMES PAYN 
 
 Piiyn naturally appreciated the qualities 
 which had most affinity to his own. Ho ap- 
 preciated them, too, with a fervour which was 
 delightful to observe. Dickens, of course, was 
 his great idol, I feel a certain twinge of 
 remorse when I remember a catechism through 
 which he once put me. He discovered that I 
 was unsound in regard to some (not all, I must 
 add) of the qualities which he attributed to ' The 
 Master.' I felt as if I had been confessing to 
 a lover that I believed his mistress's beauty 
 to be deformed by a cast in her eyes. Or rather, 
 I seemed to have given him such pain as a 
 benevolent inquisitor might feel on discovering 
 heresy in a dear friend. When Payn refused 
 to bow before some of my own idols it did not 
 hurt me. Perhaps I am not so good a wor- 
 shipper as altogether to dislike a little occasional 
 blasphemy ; but at any rate Payn's antipathies, 
 and he had a good many, were due at most to 
 a pardonable misunderstanding. He was too 
 much repelled by apparent misanthropy to 
 admit that it could be the rough outside of 
 a noble nature. He hated priggishness and 
 solemn aS'ectation with a heartiness which
 
 JAMES PAYN xxxvii 
 
 misrht blind him a little to some solid merits. 
 
 o 
 
 Puritanical self-righteousness shocked him even 
 to excess. But nobody could be more cordially 
 enthusiastic about the merits which really came 
 home to him. All who wrote of him at the time of 
 his death agreed in admiring his entire freedom 
 from jealousy. Nothing, indeed, gave him more 
 unalloyed pleasure than to discover some one 
 likely to be a successful rival in his own line. 
 He was proud to have discovered some such 
 writers in his editorial capacity, and did his 
 very best to encourage them and to spread 
 their reputation. His dislikes, right or wrong, 
 had nothing to do with the petty personal 
 feelings which occasionally bias the irritable 
 race of authors. His enthusiasms w^ere as 
 natural as everything about him ; and it was 
 obvious that the bare thought of making in- 
 vidious comparisons between himself and others 
 never even entered his head. His spontaneous 
 delight in other men's merits was one of the 
 most obvious and characteristic of his peculi- 
 arities. Other men may suppress jealousy; in 
 Payn it did not seem to exist. 
 
 Payn, I am glad to think, had his reward.
 
 xxxviii JAMES PAYN 
 
 Trouble came to him at times; domestic 
 anxieties and sorrows of which I cannot speak, 
 except to say that he bore them bravely and 
 cheerfully. But among the consolations was 
 the steadily -growing circle of affectionate 
 friends. He had known and been on the 
 pleasantest terms with most of the literary 
 lights of his time ; and in his recollections he 
 has sketched many of them, and always with 
 a bright and kindly touch. Besides the inimi- 
 table Dickens, he had knowli Thackeray and 
 TroUope and Charles Reade and Wilkie Collins, 
 and others whom we then took to be great 
 lights, though a rising generation is beginning 
 to discriminate and classify. But, as the old 
 order changed, Payn was never left in solitude. 
 He more or less apologises for his love of whist. 
 It was, he says, his only recreation, and gave 
 him a couple of hours daily for relaxation. 
 The apology is quite sufficient, I think ; but he 
 might have added another. At the Reform 
 Club and elsewhere it made him known to 
 friends who had other merits besides skill in 
 his favourite recreation. When physical infirmi- 
 ties made it impossible for him to frequent
 
 JAMES PAYN xxxix 
 
 his old haunts, the Whist Ckib to which he 
 belonged made an arrangement which it is 
 pleasant to remember. Four members went 
 by rotation to his house in Warrington Cres- 
 cent, Maida Vale, twice every week to give him 
 the pleasure of a rubber. Few men, I fancy, 
 have received such a proof of the kindly regard 
 of their friends. I am as incapable of playing 
 whist as of writing a novel; but to me, as to 
 many others, it was an act of self-indulgence 
 to spend one of the other afternoons at Payn's 
 house. He had become so disabled by rheum- 
 atic ffout that he could not leave his chair; 
 
 o 
 
 his hands were crippled; he suffered to some 
 degree from deafness; and he had frequent 
 attacks of severe pain. Like other men of his 
 temperament, he had to pay for frequent exhila- 
 ration by corresponding fits of depression ; and 
 his health in other respects would have been a 
 sufficient excuse for more lusting want of spirits. 
 For some years before his death his life seemed 
 to many of us to hang upon a thread. Any 
 attack might prove fatal. Some of the essays 
 here republished reflect his melancholy moods 
 to some extent ; and yet as a rule his spirits
 
 xl JAMES PAYN 
 
 rose whenever he took his pen in hand. Payn's 
 buoyancy, indeed, Avas irrepressible. After the 
 inevitable inquiry about his symptoms, a 
 conversation always became animated, and to 
 me, certainly, he was invariably the communi- 
 cator instead of the receiver of cheerfulness. 
 Nobody could fail to be touched by his gal- 
 lantry. Once, when driving home in a cab, he 
 broke a bloodvessel in the lungs, and came 
 very near bleeding to death. He was happily 
 saved, and next day (if I am not mistaken) 
 wrote a lively account of his adventure in his 
 weekly column in the Illustrated London News. 
 His contributions to that paper would give a 
 pretty complete impression of Payn's conversa- 
 tion in his later years. Though they were 
 apparently the spontaneous outflow of an in- 
 exhaustible reservoir, he had of course to keep 
 the reservoir supplied: he found materials in 
 plenty in current journalism ; but he was also 
 fond of many quaint books, old and new, de- 
 voted to anecdotic literature, and had assimi- 
 lated supplies from a great many sources, not 
 least from the talk of his friends. It was a 
 real pleasure to tell Payn of any amusing
 
 JAMES PAYN xli 
 
 anecdote. Nobody could seize a good point 
 more quickly or enjoy it more thoroughly ; and 
 this was certain to be repaid in kind, and with 
 compound interest. Old stories from school 
 and college days came up as freely as the best 
 witticism from the clubs; and though, as I 
 have said, hardly a keen politician, he was 
 abundantly supplied with all such talk, political 
 or social, as interests editors and journalists. 
 To spend an hour or two with Payn Avas to 
 some of us to have the sensations of a hermit 
 suddenly dropped into the London world, and 
 discovering not only that he was in the full 
 flow of actual living and breathing human 
 interests, but also that the most genuine kind- 
 liness and warmth of heart may be kept fresh 
 and sweet by one who was not above a keen 
 interest in all the talk of the day. This leads 
 to the most obvious reflection suggested by 
 Payn's career. ' If I were to live twenty lives,' 
 he says, ' I would choose no other profession ' 
 than the liLeniry. ' It is tho brightest and most 
 genial of them all, and, so far at least as my 
 experience goes, the most free from jealousies 
 and acriinoiiies.' Yet the profession has its
 
 xlii JAMES PAYN 
 
 characteristic temptations; as, for example, to 
 superficiality, to craving for notoriety, and to 
 cynical indifference to truth. The problem 
 whether you should do your best or do what 
 pays best for the moment occurs with painful 
 persistency, and too often leads, if not to the 
 wrong choice, to an unsatisfactory compromise. 
 Payn's remarkable freedom from some of these 
 characteristic weaknesses was due above all to 
 a quality which he rightfully claimed; what- 
 ever else he might have been, he said, he was 
 ' natural.' That was indisputably true. He had 
 taken to literature as some people take to 
 drink, simply because he could not help it. 
 It was his nature. But he was also much too 
 simple to take his impulse for a proof of 
 supereminent genius, or to set down failure to 
 the malignity of critics or the stupidity of 
 mankind. He accepted the position for which 
 experience proved him to be fitted, learned 
 to understand his own powers, and did them 
 full justice by good, honest, hard work. Payn, 
 therefore, had none of the affectation or 
 querulous discontent of unrecognised genius, 
 and, if he did not aim too high, never failed to
 
 JAMES PAYN xliii 
 
 do his best within his own limits. He was 
 neither spoilt nor soured, and remained to the 
 last as friendly, spontaneous, and trustful of 
 his friends as he was when I first knew him 
 among his old college chums. It was impos- 
 sible not to love a man who had to the end 
 so much of the simple kindliness of a child. 
 There was not a touch of the morbid in the 
 man's whole character. His indomitable fun, his 
 hearty dislike of meanness or pretension, and 
 his eager response to every show of friendly 
 feeling, were an unconscious appeal for sym- 
 pathy and respect. When, in his last years, 
 his sensitive nature was tried by many suffer- 
 ings, his talk never showed a touch of bitter- 
 ness; he never said an unkind word; and he 
 could extract a harmless jest even from his 
 own infirmities. 
 
 No reader will require to be told how much 
 of this was due to the domestic happiness to 
 which he has made a pathetic, though reticent, 
 allusion in his essay on ' The Backwater of Life.' 
 I must not venture to approach that subject 
 more nearly. T will venture to mention one 
 little incident, the concluding one, alas! of our
 
 xliv JAMES PAYN 
 
 friendship. When Payn was in his last illness 
 — the end of which could hardly bo doubtful, — 
 he obtained some relief from one of the medi- 
 cines employed. He reflected that it might be 
 useful for a trifling evil of which I had com- 
 plained. He managed with difSculty to write a 
 little pencil-note to me, explaining the case, and 
 enclosing a prescription. That note, written 
 with obvious difficulty, reached me shortly 
 before his death, and is now a pathetic me- 
 morial of a friendship of which I am proud, 
 and to which I owe more than it would be 
 here possible even to indicate. 
 
 Payn died on the 25th of March 1898, at his 
 house in Warrington Crescent. Mrs. Payn sur- 
 vived with two sons and five daughters. One 
 of the daughters, wife of Mr. G. E. Buckle, has 
 since followed her father. 
 
 LESLIE STEPHEN.
 
 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE
 
 I 
 
 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 
 
 T is a strange feeling to one who has been 
 immersed in affairs, and as it were in the 
 mid-stream of what we call Life, to find oneself 
 in its Backwater: crippled and helpless, but 
 still able to see through the osiers on the island 
 between us what is passing along the river — 
 the passenger- vessels, and the pleasure-boats — 
 and to hear faintly the voices and the laughter, 
 and the strong language mellowed by distance, 
 from the slow-moving barges. The Backwater 
 has its good points; the stream is clear, the 
 autumn woods that overhang the hither bank 
 are fair to look upon, and the plunging of the 
 weir, Avhere all things end, has a welcome 
 sound when the moon shines out and floods 
 the scene with silver. Sometimes on darker 
 nights its roar is menacing, but after a while 
 the sinister sound is lost and it changes to a 
 deep solemnity : then wo wonder, as we listen,
 
 4 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 
 
 not without fear, as to what may be upon the 
 other side of it. No one who has once been 
 carried over it can come back again. There 
 is the Mainstream, the Backwater, and the 
 Weir, and there ends the River of Life. 
 
 Many of us never reach the Backwater, our 
 journey being cut short abruptly; and few of 
 us wish to reach it. It is, no doubt, a shock 
 to exchange sound for silence, action for immo- 
 bility. We, who thought ourselves so strong, 
 cannot at first resist a bitter sense of humilia- 
 tion at being reduced to dependence upon 
 others. There are three ways of reaching the 
 Backwater — by illness, by poverty, and by dis- 
 grace — but in the last case many prefer the 
 Weir. Some persons, tired for the time of the 
 stress and strain of existence, express the desire 
 that they could escape from it, and be sheltered 
 and serene (as they term it) for the remainder 
 of their days ; but this is a very different thing, 
 when they come to experience it, from what 
 they imagine it to be, and very different also 
 is the going into retirement of one's own will 
 and being seized by the rough hands of Fate 
 and laid upon the shelf
 
 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 5 
 
 There lias been a deal of nonsense written, 
 chiefly by doctors, who have their reasons for 
 being upon good terms with her, about ' kindly 
 Nature.' Nature, like many other folk, can, 
 when in good humour, be kind enough ; but 
 she is also capable of great cruelties, which 
 she inflicts with no enjoyment to herself 
 indeed, but with the most absolute indifference 
 to the sufferings of humanity. Her character, 
 for all her smiles and superficial attraction, is 
 that of the genial tavern brawler who, after 
 grievously ill-using his boon companion, takes 
 him home and tends him, whereat all the 
 neighbours exclaim : ' How tender are his 
 ministrations ! ' but they forget that it was he 
 who caused the patient to be in want of 
 healing. She does but pick you up — and not 
 always that — after she has knocked you down. 
 To speak of her in this fashion will doubtless 
 appear shocking to most people, but on the 
 Backwater we speak as we find. It is one of 
 the peculiarities — I do not say the advantages 
 — of our position that things seem as they are, 
 and not as they look to be, and very, very far, 
 alas ! from what we wish thciii to be. Tluit
 
 6 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 
 
 Nature should be ' so careful of the Type ' 
 is no doubt a reflection consolatory to the 
 philosophic mind, but we cannot all be 
 philosophers, and it must be owned she is 
 strangely reckless of the Compositor. If one 
 has owed her something in the past, we 
 of the Backwater are by this time quits with 
 her. 
 
 There is another thing, among many, on 
 which we who are 'laid by' find ourselves in 
 disagreement with the general voice. A great 
 writer puts into the mouth of one of his 
 characters, a very old and feeble man, the 
 aspiration, ' Heaven keep my memory green ! ' 
 It is a comfort to him to remember his youth ; 
 and this view is almost imiversally accepted. 
 I cannot say that it is the view of us who 
 live — or let us rather say exist — on the Back- 
 water. We agree rather with the poet who 
 tells us that 'a sorrow's crown of sorrows is 
 remembering happier things.' 
 
 We think of the far back time when with 
 strong and supple arras we paddled our own 
 canoe upon the river, with companions full of 
 the high spirits of youth. How we ' put our
 
 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 7 
 
 backs into it ' as we made the banks fleet by 
 and enjoyed our blameless victories: 
 
 Ah, youth, for years full many and sweet, 
 'Tis known that you and I were one, 
 
 sings the poet, but we did not ourselves know 
 it. We were too happy to be aware of our 
 happiness. We were unconscious, as ' o'er airy 
 cliffs and glittering sands' we took our way, 
 of our likeness to 
 
 Those trim skiffs unknown of yore, 
 On winding lake or river wide, 
 
 That need no aid of sail or oar. 
 That heed no spite of wind or tide. 
 
 But in this body ' that does us grievous wrong ' 
 we remember that it was so, with unspeakable 
 sorrow. Some tell us that we have had our 
 day, and should be content. Perhaps we 
 should be so, but it is cold comfort. Others 
 say, ' Think how many of your fellow-creatures 
 are worse off.' What a text for Christian souls 
 to preach on ! It is one of the most terrible 
 of our roflcctions to remember that this is the 
 case ; to know lluit so many like ourselves arc 
 crying, 'Lord, help us!' and waiting, as it
 
 8 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 
 
 seems to us, in vain for His reply. It is said 
 in Holy Writ that ' sorrow may endure for a 
 night, but joy cometh in the morning'; that 
 is not our case, but the contrary. The 'dead 
 unhappy night' is not so sad for us as the 
 first grey streaks of dawn, when we recognise 
 that another weary day, all emptied of delight, 
 is awaiting us. 'O Lord, how long?' is then 
 our bitter cry. It is said, and with truth, that 
 the spectacle of the happiness of others should 
 always make a good man happy ; but even 
 when, as Heaven knows, there is no envy and 
 no grudge, one cannot but feel the sense of 
 contrast. 
 
 Perhaps our greatest trial is to watch the 
 lovers as they drop down the stream in their 
 light skiff, the boy leaning forward upon his 
 oars to gaze the better at his fair companion, 
 and she with down-drooped eyes, but a smile 
 that proclaims her consciousness of his scrutiny, 
 hangs one little hand in the water and watches 
 it escape through her fingers. The time has 
 come and gone long ago wherein we ought to 
 have been content ' to go wooing in our boys ' ; 
 but that love-making by proxy, with the
 
 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 9 
 
 fruition for others, was never, as history tells 
 us, a very welcome proceeding. And now, the 
 remembrance of what was once so bright and 
 sweet and fair, the parting and the meeting, 
 the glance that was mirrored in a flash from 
 loving eyes, the tell-tale pressure of the gentle 
 hand, the stolen kiss so tenderly forgiven, is 
 of all remembrances the most intolerable. 
 Selfish ? Yes ; do not suppose that self, 
 though different indeed from what it used to 
 be, with no bravery of pretence about it, queru- 
 lous, degraded, does not still cling to us : it 
 is only to be washed away by the cleansing 
 waters of the Weir. Yet, after all, we have no 
 envy, nor would we deprive our fellow-creatures 
 of a single pleasure if we could. It is the mere 
 sense of loss, irremediable and complete, that 
 causes our despair. It will be shocking to 
 many persons (who are still alive and in the 
 world, however, and can follow the pursuits 
 they love) to loarii that such views are enter- 
 tained by individuals in our position. We 
 are generally depicted as being ])hilosophic 
 or resigned, just as the blind (Clod lidj) them !) 
 arc always described as 'cheerful'; 1 do not
 
 10 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 
 
 know on whose account this hypocrisy is 
 maintained. 
 
 Alas ! we have nor hope nor health, 
 Nor peace within nor calm around, 
 
 Nor that content surpassing wealth 
 The sage in meditation found. 
 
 But it is not to be wondered at that others 
 should take a brighter view of our condition. 
 Just, again, as in the case of the bHnd, who 
 are seen at their best in company, and strive 
 to hide their sad deficiency from those who 
 visit them, so when our friends come to see 
 us, we put on our best looks, and draw on our 
 little store of smiles to welcome them; and 
 they give a good report of us to our acquaint- 
 ances (' bright and cheery as ever, I do assure 
 you '), and never guess that when they have 
 gone the curtain falls, and our darkness is 
 deeper than ever. 
 
 These visits of our friends are at once the 
 cause of our joy and of our sorrow. It is 
 sweet to be remembered after social death. 
 Our most tender reflection is the thought that 
 when nothing can be gained by it, not even 
 the reciprocity of geniality, these dear kind
 
 THE BACKWATEE OF LIFE 11 
 
 folks leave their business or their pleasure, 
 and look in upon us, day after day. The 
 Backwater is not a lively scene. It is always 
 in the shadow projected by the platform above 
 the Weir, and the noise of the falling waters 
 is very melancholy; yet these good souls do 
 not desert us. Nay, there is something in our 
 condition that touches them in quite a re- 
 markable manner. Even those who, when we 
 were among them, were mere acquaintances 
 develop the most friendly feeling, and make 
 us ashamed of our previous ignorance of its 
 existence. To ' kindly Nature,' as she is called 
 by those who have experienced only her good 
 offices, we have, to tell the honest truth, but 
 little to be thankful for; it is to men and 
 women that our feebly beating hearts go forth 
 in unspeakable gratitude. There is one — one — 
 consolation in our miserable lot, that it has 
 brought us face to face with the immeasurable 
 goodness of Humanity. Let the divines say 
 what they will of those who have been made 
 after the image of their Creator ; let them 
 heap upon them all the faults of their fallen 
 nature; let the cynics aver that what seems
 
 12 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 
 
 good in them is only another form of selfish- 
 ness : wo on the Backwater have good cause 
 to know that these traducers lie. O Love, 
 that cherishes its object when all that makes 
 it lovely has dej^arted, that prefers to possess 
 it useless as a broken toy rather than to lose 
 it, that slaves for it and sacrifices its all to 
 give it daily comfort, that holds all menial 
 ofiices as gracious opportunities for mitigation 
 of discomfort and of pain, we know you now 
 as we have never known you before. 
 Friendship, whose smile has been always dear 
 to us, but of the greatness of whose fond and 
 faithful heart we have never guessed, forgive 
 us for our former ignorance. If even there be 
 no heaven hereafter, there are ans^els here. 
 Alas ! though our gratitude can be told, it can 
 never be shown. There are two words that 
 ring in our ears far more sorrowfully than the 
 warning of the weir : ' Too late ! Too late ! ' 
 We are as dead men, though (thanks to these 
 angelic visitors) not ' out of mind.' We think, 
 if a miracle were worked and we could * sret 
 about again,' that we should spend the re- 
 mainder of our lives in striving to repay them.
 
 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 13 
 
 in doing the like kind offices we have received 
 from them to others in the same sad case as 
 ourselves. There is no harm in having such 
 thoughts, and, alas ! no good. 
 
 News is brought us of what is going on in 
 the world — in politics, in literature, and in 
 social life. It interests us very much, but 
 in quite a different fashion from the old one. 
 We are no longer actors but spectators, and, 
 as it seems to us, at an immense distance from 
 the stage. The performances are, as it were, 
 in another planet. Our visitors, with tender 
 instinct, select only such topics as are agree- 
 able to us, and strive to conceal from us the 
 reason — that wc are too weak for opposition. 
 But, alas ! we knoAv the reason very well. A 
 certain morbid sensitiveness takes the place of 
 intelligence with us, and on the other hand 
 is unsuspected. They are unaware — as, indeed, 
 how could it be otherwise ? — that their lightest 
 remarks sometimes distress us. They forget 
 when they praise the weather that we shall 
 never more feel the sunshine, nor breathe the 
 fresh air, nor put foot to tlic ground again. 
 Again, in their wish to cheer us, they profess
 
 14 THE BACKWATER OF LIFE 
 
 to see some improvement in our condition, 
 which in fact never takes place. The best 
 that happens is that the change for the worse, 
 which is continuous, is imperceptible. Ordinary 
 invalids have their 'good days.' With us on 
 the Backwater it is not so; there are only 
 days that are less bad than the others. What 
 is worse than all, some good folks think to 
 raise our spirits by the reflection that we may 
 live for months, and even years, longer. Because 
 they are in love with life themselves, they 
 think that, though in some less degree perhaps, 
 it is dear to us also; they cannot conceive a 
 state of existence in which one's chief hope 
 and constant prayer are to get it ended. 
 Others, from equally kind motives, find another 
 ground of congratulation in the fact that, 
 though the nearness of the Weir is evident, 
 we are not moved by it. They do not under- 
 stand that one of the saddest conditions to 
 which the human mind can be reduced — not 
 from faith, but from pain and weariness — is 
 no longer to fear the Shadow feared of man.
 
 ON OLD AGE
 
 ON OLD AGE 
 
 WRITERS have expatiated upon this sub- 
 ject from very early times, though not, 
 unhappily, from the earliest (if Methuselah 
 could have been induced to send the Nineteenth 
 Century B.C. a signed article, it would have 
 been really worth reading), but it is not likely, 
 since so many people have had the experience 
 of growing old, that anything very original 
 can be said about it. If ' to live is to learn,' 
 however, there may still be something novel, 
 since the life of one generation is not the 
 same with that of another, and there are 
 peculiar circumstances which affect particular 
 classes. 
 
 To the majority of us old age is merely the 
 gradual attenuation of life ; a thing ' like copper 
 wire, which grows the narrower by going 
 further'; the same dish, save that it has be- 
 come insipid : an echo of existence, which in 
 
 B
 
 18 ON OLD AGE 
 
 prolongation sounds fainter and fainter. Unless 
 disease accompanies it, there is nothing to dis- 
 tinguish it, in a very marked manner, from the 
 rest of adult experience. Of course there is the 
 physical change, but this does not set in to any 
 serious extent till very late. The years are not 
 yet come of which we are compelled to say, 
 ' We have no pleasure in them,' and when ' the 
 clouds return after the rain.' The almond-tree 
 may flourish and the daughters of music may 
 be brought low (so far, at all events, that their 
 high notes are thrown away upon us), but we 
 have still what are cheerfully described as ' all 
 our faculties.' We transact all our business, 
 often, indeed, sticking to it closer than ever. 
 We say ' What ? ' a good deal oftener than we 
 did, and some of us ' No.' (If there is to be 
 but one word left to us, that seems to pater- 
 familias to be the best.) We like it to be 
 thoroughly understood that we are not going to 
 divest ourselves of our garments before going 
 to bed. We even still take our pleasures, 
 though more sadly; they may have lost their 
 zest, but something remains ; there is the feast, 
 though it is the second day's feast; the joints
 
 ON OLD AGE 19 
 
 have already become hashes, but the day of 
 cold mutton is still afar off. 
 
 Moralists and philosophers have done their 
 best, when they have themselves reached that 
 time of life, to eulogise ' old age ' ; but they do 
 not deceive even the young. ('These old 
 gentlemen,' says Youth, with its callow cynicism, 
 ' are Foxes who have lost their tails.') They 
 have done the same thing with poverty, and 
 with the same ill-success. It has had no 
 exhilarating effect upon poor people. The 
 reasons why old men have written in praise 
 of old age are not far to seek : they say with 
 Johnson, ' Do not let us discourage one another.' 
 They are in for it, and they make the best of it ; 
 it is not well to cry stinking fish. Moreover, 
 there is a natural tendency among well- 
 principled persons to make light of the ills of 
 humanity ; they fancy they are paying a com- 
 pliment to Providence, and perhaps even con- 
 ciliating it. There are many old men who say, 
 and quite truthfully, that they would not be 
 young again if they could ; but what they mean 
 is not, of course, that they would not exchange 
 weakness for strength, and disillusion for hope.
 
 20 ON OLD AGE 
 
 but that they have no desire to live their life 
 over again. The clinging to existence that we 
 so often see in even very old men does not 
 arise from love of it. Pope, sitting by Sir 
 Godfrey Kneller's deathbed, and finding him 
 much dispirited, told him he had been a good 
 man, and would doubtless go to heaven. ' Ah, 
 my good friend,' was the deplorable but pathetic 
 reply, 'I wish God would let me stay at 
 Whitton.' It was not, however, the attractions 
 of Whitton that he had in his mind. 
 
 When old men ape young ones they afford a 
 sad, and in fact rather a gruesome, spectacle, 
 like that of a death's-head moth fluttering 
 among butterflies ; but it does not often happen. 
 Their efforts to rival them in ordinary trans- 
 actions are plucky endeavours to go on with 
 the battle of life ; not to throw up the sponge 
 before they are compelled. Their ardour for 
 work is sometimes excessive; indeed, in some 
 cases they are seized with a desire for gain, 
 which under the circumstances looks very like 
 madness; but they are privately conscious of 
 a sad falling-off in promptitude; their judg- 
 ment may be as good as ever, but their in-
 
 ON OLD AGE 21 
 
 tellectual motions are tard}^ Those with 
 whom they were wont to consult are often no 
 longer with them ; they have become isolated. 
 'Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,' is a 
 line very appropriate to their condition. It 
 seems curious that Shakespeare should have 
 mentioned ' troops of friends ' as accompani- 
 ments of old age. This statement is only 
 true as regards those who have the gift of 
 exciting personal attachment : the longer they 
 live the larger is the number of those attracted 
 to them; but with the vast majority of man- 
 kind, friendships are made in youth, but after- 
 wards by no means easily, and therefore when 
 men come to be old they have only their 
 contemporaries, a small and dwindling ' troop,' 
 whom they can call their friends. 
 
 Perhaps the best part of old age is its sense 
 of proportion, which enables us to estimate 
 misfortunes, or what seem to be such, at their 
 true value. We have lived to recognise some 
 of them as blessings in disguise ; and at all 
 events they do not take such exaggerated 
 forms in that quiet atmosphere as they were 
 wont to do in the chantrcful cloudland of
 
 22 ON OLD AGE 
 
 youth. We also know by experience how 
 soon most of theni ' blow over.' There is, 
 however, one exception — that of death. When 
 an old man is robbed, for example, of the 
 bride of his youth, the being who has cheered 
 his path from manhood, and in whom alone he 
 has always found sympathy, the blow is fatal, 
 not of necessity (alas !) to his life, but to all 
 that made it, as it seems to him, worth living. 
 It is said, indeed, that such a loss is rendered 
 less severe to old men because they will soon 
 be united to the object of their affections: 
 
 Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the 
 
 next ; 
 I too shall go in a minute. What time have I to be 
 
 vext 1 
 
 But to most of us this is but cold comfort; 
 it may happen, but it also may not; there 
 is no direct assurance of it, even for the most 
 pious; and at the best, how weak is belief 
 compared with certainty, the meeting we hope 
 for beside the loss we know ! Tennyson, it is 
 true, affirms that death does not harrow the 
 feelings of the old as of the young. 'The 
 Grandmother' tells us that the time when
 
 ON OLD AGE 23 
 
 slie could have wept with the best has long 
 gone by ; but this poor lady was exceptionally 
 old, and the loss she could not weep for 
 was not that of a life companion. 
 
 The man we are all best acquainted with — 
 Dr. Johnson — enjoyed himself in old age to 
 the full. But he had had no enjoyment pre- 
 viously. Prosperity had been unknown to 
 him till middle age had passed away. His 
 society was more sought, his conversation (or 
 what did duty for it) more prized, his wit and 
 wisdom more welcomed, after his grand cli- 
 macteric than before it. This no doubt caused 
 him to take too rose-coloured a view of old 
 age. When the Bishop of St. Asaph observed 
 that an old man must lose faster than he gets, 
 Johnson replied, * I think not, if he exerts 
 himself.' Whereupon his Lordship was dis- 
 creetly silent. The Doctor says again, ' There 
 is nothing of the old man in my conversation,' 
 which was true enough as regards its intelli- 
 gence, but not the nature of it, which was 
 essentially mature and consummate. In his 
 heart he knew perfectly well what is amiss in 
 our late autumn, and how the disease of ' anno
 
 24 ON OLD AGE 
 
 domini' had begun to tell upon him. When 
 Boswell, as usual, assenting too readily to his 
 patron's views, expressed a wish to experience 
 old age, the Doctor was much irritated, and 
 thundered out : ' What, would you have de- 
 creptitude ? ' 
 
 The difference between youth and age as 
 regards the conduct towards us of the other 
 sex has been plaintively expressed : ' When I 
 was young my civilities were taken as pro- 
 testations of love ; but now my protestations of 
 love are taken as civilities.' 
 
 As a rule the poets, though they have a bad 
 reputation for it, do not, when their hair is 
 grey, philander even in verse, and have no 
 illusions as to the undesirableness of growing 
 old, under however favourable circumstances. 
 
 What are myrtle and wreaths to the brow that is 
 
 wrinkled ? 
 'Tis like a dead flower with Maydew besprinkled. 
 The myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty, 
 Are worth all your laurels, however so plenty. 
 
 Rogers, who was often complimented on 
 being a fine old man, used acidly to reply, 
 ' There is no such thing, sir, as a fine old man.'
 
 ON OLD AGE 25 
 
 A less known but not less admirable writer 
 has, however, given us a description of one 
 who may well be called so : 
 
 If he wears his own hair, it is white, in spite of his 
 favourite grandson, who used to get on the chair behind 
 him, and pull the silver hairs out, ten years ago. If he is 
 bald at top, the hairdresser, hovering and breathing about 
 him like a second youth, takes care to give the bald jDlace 
 as much powder as the covered ; in order that he may 
 convey to the sensorium within a pleasing indistinctness of 
 idea respecting the exact limits of skin and hair. He is 
 very clean and neat ; and, in warm weather, is proud of 
 opening his waistcoat half-way down, and letting so much 
 of his frill be seen, in order to show his hardiness as well 
 as taste. 
 
 • •••••• 
 
 In his pockets are two handkerchiefs (one for the neck 
 at night-time), his spectacles, and his pocket-book. The 
 pocket-book, among other things, contains a receipt for a 
 cough, and some verses cut out of an odd sheet of an old 
 magazine, on the lovely Duchess of A., beginning : 
 ' When beauteous Mira walks the plain.' 
 
 Eanelagh was a noble place ! Such taste, such elegance, 
 such beauty ! There was the Duchess of A., the finest 
 woman in England, Sir; and Mrs. L., a mighty fine 
 creature ; and Lady Susan what's-her-namo, that had that 
 unfortunate affair with Sir Charles. Sir, they came 
 swimming by you liivc tlic swans. 
 
 He calls favourite young ladies by their Christian names,
 
 26 ON OLD AGE 
 
 however slightly acquainted with them ; and has a privi- 
 lege of saluting all brides, mothers, and indeed every 
 species of lady, on the least holiday occasion. If the 
 husband, for instance, has met with a piece of luck, he 
 instantly moves forward, and gravely kisses the wife on the 
 cheek. The wife then says, ' My niece, sir, from the 
 country ' ; and he kisses the niece. The niece seeing her 
 cousin biting her lips at the joke, says, ' My cousin 
 Harriet, sir,' and he kisses the cousin. 
 
 Witli the exception of a falling-off in quick- 
 ness of the mental powers, partly compensated 
 for by their greater maturity, and of some 
 alteration in the emotions, old age, as we have 
 said, is generally but a prolongation of the 
 past; but there are not a few cases when, 
 in addition to the weight of years, chronic 
 ill-health or accident withdraws us altogether 
 from active life, a circumstance which, though 
 inconvenient and deplorable, is not without its 
 advantages, immaterial indeed, but by no means 
 unimportant. In the first place, it bestows 
 leisure before the period when the waning of 
 the mind renders it compulsory ; like a spec- 
 tator who watches a vast procession from some 
 secure and retired spot, such persons have 
 an unusual opportunity of looking at life from
 
 ON OLD AGE 27 
 
 the outside. They are in the world, but no 
 longer of it, and regard it with dispassionate 
 view. The most ordinary and simple pleasures, 
 such as are enjoyed by the humblest, are denied 
 to them. If the test of humanity is that of 
 walking erect upon the earth, they have fallen 
 below even that standard. Their feet will 
 never brush the dew upon the upland lawn, or 
 linger beside sea or river; Nature, save so 
 much of it as can be seen from a window, 
 is henceforth hidden from them ; it is sad and 
 strange to reflect that, if ever again they be- 
 hold its beauties, it will be in another world. 
 Will there be woods and streams, they wonder, 
 there, and what we falsely call ' the eternal ' 
 hills ? ' Wet or dry ' is a phrase that has no 
 more significance to them ; they will not feel 
 again the soft-falling summer rain, nor the 
 cheerful sunshine, nor see the Avave pass over 
 the wheat, nor the shadows across the pool. 
 The value of these treasures of sight is only 
 known to him Avho has lost them ; he may not 
 have been one addicted to outdoor pursuits, 
 or specially attracted by the country, but tlic 
 thought that they arc denied to liim is a very
 
 28 ON OLD AGE 
 
 bitter one ; one may be fond of home, yet 
 resent being a captive to it, and still more to a 
 single room, or perhaps even an armchair. No 
 one who is not helpless can understand the 
 misery of helplessness; it is a degradation only 
 to be compared with disgrace, a humiliation 
 unspeakable, and not to be mitigated (nay^ 
 rather otherwise) by the tenderest of minis- 
 trants. A\niat is one of its worst features is 
 the effect it has upon the nerves; movement 
 has become the associate of danger, and is 
 therefore abhorrent, and the stiller we are, the 
 greater is our likeness to death. 
 
 We do, indeed, belong less to the living than 
 the dead, and the familiarity we lose with the 
 one is transferred to the other. That is one 
 of the good sides (for it has many facets) 
 of chronic invalidism : we look on both worlds 
 with equanimity ; not, of course, with indiffer- 
 ence — far from it — but with neither expectation 
 nor tremor ; we have done with those emotions. 
 Another cause of congratulation is the absence 
 of rivalry. For all races, whether for fame, or 
 place, or fortune, we are ' scratched ' ; there 
 is now no reason why our neighbours should
 
 ON OLD AGE 29 
 
 not wish us well. They have, of course, be- 
 come no less in our eyes — indeed, in some ways 
 they loom larger, or rather it is we who have 
 grown more insignificant — yet we regard them 
 much as a human observer watches the in- 
 habitants of an anthill. What industry, what 
 excitement, what ceaseless toil ! How strange 
 is the reflection that we ourselves once pain- 
 fully pulled about those sticks and straws, and 
 went over and over again that uneven ground ! 
 We feel, however, no element of contempt 
 for such labours, but, on the contrary, a 
 sympathetic solicitude. We take generally a 
 pleasure in the assiduity and success of our 
 fellow-creatures that was before unknown to 
 us; it is the substitute for our own pleasure. 
 If we had the power we would be a little 
 Providence to them. People come to us con- 
 fidingly for advice, feeling sure that it will be 
 disinterested, and with an instinctive conviction 
 that we cannot be ill-disposed towards them; 
 besides, we have more time for thinking than 
 other folks, and (alas !) we are always at home 
 to everybody. We arc not quite useless even 
 yet. ' They also serve who only stand and
 
 30 ON OLD AGE 
 
 wait ' ; and when we can't stand we can still sit 
 and serve — a little. 
 
 On the other hand, our enemies — and who is 
 without them ? — no longer annoy us. Indeed, 
 they have ceased reviling ; to them we are as 
 dead men, ' out of mind,' to whom the proverb 
 Be mortuis applies. And our friends are twice 
 our friends. No one who is not ' laid by ' can 
 understand the depths of human sympathy. 
 Even our acquaintances become our friends, 
 and the least soft-hearted of visitors murmurs 
 to himself, ' Poor soul ! ' or perhaps (with equal 
 commiseration), 'Poor devil!' What is most 
 curious is the interest, if we have in any way 
 become known to the public at large, complete 
 strangers take in our physical and mental 
 condition. If prescriptions could cure us we 
 should be in rude health indeed. The materials 
 are sometimes a little difficult to procure. I 
 have seen a letter from New Zealand recom- 
 mending an old gentleman suffering from 
 rheumatic gout to bathe in whales. In that 
 island whales, it seems, are occasionally thrown 
 up on the seashore, when rheumatic patients 
 hasten to lie in them during the progress of
 
 ON OLD AGE 31 
 
 their evisceration for purposes of commerce. 
 The extreme rarity of whales upon the Thames 
 Embankment seems to have been unknown 
 to the writer. Some correspondents give most 
 excellent sanitary advice, but too late for its 
 practical application. An aged poet who had 
 lost the use of his limbs was exhorted by 
 an admirer to dig, ' even if it were but in his 
 back garden,' for an hour or two every morning 
 before breakfast; all that was wanted, he was 
 assured, for complete recovery was ' profuse 
 perspiration followed by a healthy glow.' 
 
 Sometimes — though, it must be added, very 
 rarely — these communications are not so 
 friendly; the occasion of a writer's retirement 
 and inferred secession from the world of letters 
 is taken advantage of to remind him of his 
 moral misdemeanours. 
 
 A friend of mine, whose literary effusions had 
 been singularly blameless, had on one occasion 
 humorously commented on a eulogium de- 
 livered by a foreigner in high position, on the 
 complete absence among the upper classes in 
 England of anytliing approaching to bad lan- 
 guage. Ho said that he had stayed in many
 
 32 ON OLD AGE 
 
 great houses, and mingled with persons of all 
 ages, from none of whom had he heard one 
 'cursory expression.' It was well known, my 
 friend had written, that this witness to charac- 
 ter was, unhappily, very deaf; nor would it be 
 likely that in the presence of an alien of such 
 high position strong language would be indulged 
 in by anybody. It was very true that English 
 gentlemen did not express themselves with 
 the unnecessary vigour they used in the last 
 century, but he feared that the statement that 
 'a big, big D' is never indulged in must be 
 substituted for Mr. Gilbert's well-known phrase 
 of 'hardly ever.' He went on to quote the 
 remark of the American humorist, that when 
 a person, however respectable, trod with his 
 stockinged foot upon ' the business end ' of a 
 tin-tack, he rarely confined himself to saying 
 ' Dear me ! ' There was nothing in what my 
 friend wrote upon the subject but the most 
 harmless badinage, far less the slightest ap- 
 proval of bad language, yet, when in his sere 
 and yellow leaf he had to resign active literary 
 employment, he received the following com- 
 munication : —
 
 ON OLD AGE 33 
 
 Sir, a judgment has fallen upon you at last, as it is 
 fitting it should fall upon those who use, and advocate the 
 use of, blasphemous and disgusting language. You have 
 written, that even well-principled persons are wont to 
 indulge in it on verj'^ small provocation. [This refers to 
 the tin-tack.] To you and your pothouse companions [the 
 society frequented by my poor friend was quite painfully 
 respectable] 'big D's,' as you call them, may be common 
 enough, but, let me leU you, in Christian families they are 
 utterly unknown. Perhaps, however, it is but natural that 
 persons of your description should cultivate the sort of 
 language that will no doubt be spoken hereafter in that 
 place to which you are (I hear) hastening with rapid 
 strides. 
 
 Here followed the writer's name and address, 
 which, strange to say, was not a lunatic asylum. 
 
 It is fair to add that such communications 
 are very exceptional ; but correspondents who 
 concern themselves with the spiritual condition 
 of persons we have in our mind — old men who 
 are known to have withdrawn from work, no 
 matter what, so that they have made more 
 or less mark in it — are numerous. Of the man 
 himself, his habits, his beliefs, they know 
 absolutely nothing, but hearing that he is with- 
 drawn from the world, they write to express 
 their hope that he has his thoughts fixed on 
 the next one. These persons are by no means 
 
 c
 
 34 ON OLD AGE 
 
 of one creed, and as each one is certain of his 
 own being the right one, their expostulations 
 and adjurations put those who wish to please 
 them in an embarrassing position. 
 
 If the correspondence concerning this matter 
 addressed to people who have but very modest 
 claims to public recognition was to be published, 
 it would be pronounced incredible; what it 
 must be in the case of the more distinguished 
 individuals who have retired from business is 
 beyond the imagination to picture. 
 
 The majority of these good soul-Samaritans, 
 as they may be termed, are alarmed for the 
 future of their unknown friend. Their view of 
 it is not rose-coloured for the majority of their 
 acquaintances, but for him it is flame-coloured. 
 The fate which they apparently expect for 
 nine-tenths of their fellow-creatures is similar 
 to that which the late King of Benin was wont 
 to inflict upon any one who chanced to displease 
 him, save that his victim had not to endure 
 it for all eternity. These apprehensions are 
 usually expressed by ladies, and evidently kind 
 ones. One can fancy their light-blue eyes 
 growing tender over drowning flics, but they
 
 ON OLD AGE 35 
 
 regard the horrible fate of which they write 
 with the most extraordinary equanimity, not, 
 to do them justice, because it is only going to 
 happen to other people, but because, they say, 
 it has been so decreed. That being the case, 
 they have calmly adopted it, under the amaz- 
 ing impression that it is a branch — and the 
 most important branch — of Christianity; they 
 would be amazed and surprised if you informed 
 them that it belonged to a much older religion, 
 known as devil-worship. If the poor gentle- 
 man on whom they fasten — or let us say alight, 
 for they wish to do him nothing but good — is 
 so ill-advised as to question these pronounce- 
 ments, he is lost indeed. I knew one who 
 mildly replied that he feared his disposition 
 was too hopeful — that cheerfulness would 
 break in and dispel these gloomy anticipations. 
 ' But, luy dear friend,' replied his correspondent, 
 'we are cheerful; lue have our jokes, and enjoy 
 ourselves as much as anybody.' Then my 
 friend lost his temper. ' Tn that case,' he 
 rejoined, 'you ought to be ashamed of your- 
 selves. How can you smile — much less laugh 
 — when you believe that half the people with
 
 36 ON OLD AGE 
 
 whom you mingle are doomed to everlasting 
 fire ? If you felt they were sentenced to be 
 hanged it would make you serious enough, yet 
 you eat and drink with them, under these far 
 more deplorable circumstances, without any 
 check on appetite. The simple explanation of 
 the matter is that you do not believe what you 
 affirm, but imagine you are conciliating your 
 Benin deity by pretending to believe it.' 
 
 This correspondent's next (and last) com- 
 munication was of a very unfriendly character. 
 It reminded one of the letter written by the 
 Ettrick Shepherd after his quarrel with Walter 
 Scott, beginning ' D d Sir.' 
 
 To one who has the experience of a lifetime 
 to look back upon, in which he cannot but 
 have observed how much less important is 
 belief in this and that particular dogma than 
 behaviour, these denunciations seem strange 
 indeed, and what is very remarkable about 
 them is that the vehemence of these good 
 people generally varies inversely with the size 
 of their sect. The fewer, that is, are the pro- 
 fessors of a creed, the more positively certain 
 they are of having solved the secrets of the
 
 ON OLD AGE 37 
 
 future; however well instructed they may be 
 m Doctrine, it is obviously not 'the Doctrine 
 of Chances.' 
 
 There seems nothing more desirable to 
 persons in the vale of years than that pure 
 unquestioning faith which is occasionally found 
 in men, and often in women ; but 
 
 Who would rush at a benighted man, 
 
 And give hiui two black eyes for being blind 1 
 
 It is surely no sin that, with all the will in the 
 world to believe certain statements, we find 
 great difficulty in accepting them ; when with- 
 drawn from ' the dust of creeds,' it seems 
 amazing to us that belief should be considered 
 a voluntary act, within the power of every one 
 who wishes to possess it. Does not He to 
 Whom the sick boy's father cried, 'Lord, I 
 believe ; help Thou mine unbelief,' understand 
 how we need help in this matter? To some, 
 indeed, belief may be easy; but why should 
 they plume themselves on this fact ; to suppose 
 that there is merit in it is in their case to set a 
 premium on mere credulity. Let them leave 
 these retired veterans who entertain the ' larger
 
 38 ON OLD AGE 
 
 hope ' alone, and not seek to flatter the God of 
 mercy by attributing to Him atrocities, and 
 saying, ' Nevertheless, since it is Thy will, they 
 are justifiable,' as though He were an Eastern 
 despot. 
 
 It is not generally known how often those 
 who have made ever so small a mark in the 
 world from which circumstances have with- 
 drawn them are the objects of this unsought 
 solicitude. As to persons of a wider fame, I 
 have known few indeed who have not suffered 
 from it. It has become, in fact, in their case 
 one of the consequences of old age, and there- 
 fore in this brief review of it deserves mention. 
 
 It is fair to say that it is not distasteful to 
 everybody. I have even been acquainted with 
 some who welcomed it as a proof of the 
 sympathetic interest they have excited in their 
 fellow-creatures; but the majority dislike it; to 
 some of them it renders their very fame a 
 matter of regret — 
 
 And makes it seem more sweet to be 
 The little life of bank and brier, 
 The bird that pipes his lone de.sire, 
 
 And dies unheard within his tree.
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 WHEN I was a boy, one of tlie many things 
 that puzzle boys, and which they are 
 Loo proud to ask to be explained to them, was 
 what was the meaning of ' muffled drums.' 
 Now I know, for I am growing very deaf. At 
 first I thought it was one of the warnings which 
 are given us before the last notice to quit this 
 life; but when I consulted a great physician 
 upon the matter, and stated that suspicion, he 
 answered with no little warmth, ' Stuff and 
 nonsense, sir ! I am your elder by ten years, 
 and don't intend to be either deaf or blind for 
 many a da}-. What has happened to you is 
 through what I will call, for want of a better 
 term, " nervous exhaustion." ' Then he gave 
 mc a prescription, and bade me call upon him 
 again a month later (as it is the hospitable 
 nature of physicians to do) and report myself. 
 1 had not gone to him in the first instance 
 
 41
 
 42 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 without being very sure that something was 
 wrong with my hearing; the conviction of 
 which, however, had grown upon me by degrees 
 too slow to detect. At the beginning I heard 
 much too well, sounds that not even Fine Ear 
 himself could have heard, unless suffering from 
 the same disorder. First a buzzing, as though 
 a hive of bees had swarmed, not on my head 
 but in it ; then a roaring, as if (though I Uved 
 inland) my window had looked out on the 
 ocean; then, particularly at night, sudden 
 explosions, as though a powder magazine had 
 burst in my brain. Like the old lady of Ban- 
 bury Cross, I had music wherever I went, only 
 not of the same harmonious kind. It was 
 more like what villagers term 'rough music,' 
 as though some good people with marrow- 
 bones and cleavers were trying to persuade 
 the bees in my head to swarm elsewhere, and 
 miserably failed in their endeavours. The 
 real noises which I did hear were made the 
 most of, and reverberated as though I had 
 been the nymph Echo before she fell in love 
 with Narcissus. When a railway train went 
 by, for example, its coming and going lasted for
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOOES 43 
 
 me about the same time that a band consumes 
 in playing the whole of the Turkish Patrol, and 
 ' accompanied ' with a ' movement ' the reverse 
 of ' voluntary ' of every nerve in my body. 
 
 With this fine volume of sound — quite an 
 edition de luxe of it — within, it nevertheless 
 dawned upon me, very gradually, that noises 
 without, unless of the railway train dimensions, 
 were growing dull. It was very curious, but 
 doubtless from some caprice of fashion (perhaps 
 the imitation of talk at Court, which is always 
 carried on in whispers) that the people about 
 me had got into a foolish habit of mumbling. 
 I am naturally rather irritable, and I found 
 myself saying ' What ? ' with great frequency, 
 and with a sharpness which I could very 
 distinctly hear. Of course I laid this defect 
 upon every cause but the right one, especially 
 the weather, though it was as variable as usual ; 
 but at last something occurred which put the 
 matter beyond question. A person with a low, 
 soft voice (one of the gifts of the habitual 
 borrower) asked to see me ' for half a moment 
 on business,' and when in answer to his appeal 
 for five pounds (as 1 thought it) 1 buttoned
 
 44 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 up my pocket and said, 'Not a farthing,' he 
 replied, ' Oh, thank you,' in loud and cheerful 
 tones, and walked off very quickly, I felt that I 
 must have somehow misunderstood the man; 
 but it was not till afterward that I discovered 
 that he had come to jpay me the five pounds, 
 and that I had most generously declined to 
 accept it. It was then that I felt it high time 
 to consult the doctor. His prescription made 
 me no better, and when at the month's end 
 I went to tell him so, he observed, with all the 
 satisfaction derived from a correct diasfnosis, 
 that he had not much expected it would. 
 ' Doctors, in fact, can do nothing for you, my 
 friend,' he continued cheerily. He was of the 
 old Abercrombie school, and a very honest 
 fellow. ' Yours is one of the ailments of which 
 there is little to be said, but " we must grin and 
 bear it." ' I thought for the moment of saying, 
 'But it is you who are grinning, and it is I 
 who am bearing it,' but put the temptation 
 from me. 'Is it any good my going to an 
 aurist ? ' I inquired instead. ' Oh yes,' he said ; 
 then added, with his dry smile, ' to the aurist.' 
 There are perhaps more stories told against
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOOES 45 
 
 aurists than against tlie members of any other 
 profession — and very unfairly. The hearing is 
 a thing very difficult to get at (as I am in a 
 position to corroborate), and cannot be laid on 
 like gas or water, because you can't get the 
 street up to do it. Through the very nature of 
 things aurists must very often fail in effecting 
 a cure, and those they do not benefit are of 
 course dissatisfied with them ; moreover it is 
 whispered (and there was a time when I could 
 hear whispers) that deaf people are generally 
 ill-tempered. When I told my friends I was 
 going to consult an aurist, they made them- 
 selves very merry about it, and, doubtless that 
 I might join in the joke, roared out to me 
 some capital anecdotes about them, culled from 
 old sources, but new to me. One of them, as 
 a very young man, had gone to an aurist, and 
 this was his experience: The gentleman had 
 held a watch like a golden turnip within a 
 yard or two oi' his ear. ' Can you hear it tick, 
 my boy ? ' he inquired loudly. ' No, sir.' ' Can 
 you hear it now ? ' bringing it nearer. ' No, sir.' 
 ' Can you hear it now ? ' bringing it still nearer. 
 ' Yes, sir.' ' Very good ' ; then added very
 
 46 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 loudly indeed, ' My fee is a guinea.' Another 
 had taken his nephew to another auricular 
 professor. He had looked at the lad's ears 
 and said, ' Call again on Tuesday* — and taken 
 his guinea. On Tuesday he made another 
 examination and said, ' Let me see him on 
 Thursday ' — and taken it again. On Thursday 
 he blew into the boy's ears and said, ' I think 
 that will do.' When the uncle brought out 
 his guinea as before, the aurist said, ' No, sir, a 
 guinea for a consultation, but for an operation 
 two guineas.' 
 
 This was not encouraging, but I went to my 
 aurist nevertheless, and have never repented 
 of it. He examined me very carefully, made 
 certain experiments, and then told me there 
 was nothing amiss with my ears whatever. 
 ' What is the matter with you is nervous deaf- 
 ness. Something has occurred to shock or 
 depress you.' He was quite right. ' I will give 
 you a prescription, but it can do you little good. 
 What you want is fresh air and a constant 
 supply of good news.' He told me honestly 
 what I was to expect, and also what I was still 
 to hope for.
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 47 
 
 Since then I have been getting gradually 
 worse — so gradually that (as Byron sings of the 
 first day of death) I have sometimes fancied 
 there was a doubt about it ; but alas ! there is 
 no doubt. In the beginning it made me very 
 irritable ; when I could hear only half of what 
 my friends said, [l used to say to myself, ' I 
 think it must be the worst half It is always 
 understood that the deaf are more impatient 
 of their calamity, and less agreeable to their 
 fellow-creatures, than the blind. My aurist, 
 Avho has studied the subject, explains to me the 
 reason of this. The world sees the deaf man 
 at his worst, slow to understand and struggling 
 with his infirmity; and the blind man at his 
 best, partaking of one of the principal pleasures 
 left to him — conversation. 
 
 And this brings me to the topic which was 
 what I chiefly had in my mind when I began 
 this little paper. For it is that very pleasure 
 of conversation (to be called such, for all talk 
 that is not ' give and take,' whatever Dr. 
 Johnson may have thought to the contrary, 
 is unworthy of tlu; nmiif) tliat. 1 liavc lost for 
 ever ; which being so, 1 can write of it, as few
 
 48 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 others can, without passion or prejudice, as the 
 true biographer writes of a dead man. For the 
 rest of my life all that I shall get of it is scraps, 
 such as kindly guests at table are moved to 
 throw to the dog whose importunity is dis- 
 agreeable to the rest of the company. If I 
 could get even them whole, as they leave 
 charitable persons' lips, it would be something ; 
 but as often as not I catch only a portion of 
 them, make a frantic guess at the remainder, 
 and generally guess wrong. I had many times 
 seen others do the like, and not, I think, with- 
 out pity for them ; it is some comfort to me now 
 to reflect that I have never seen the hollowed 
 hand raised to the ear, and the eager yet help- 
 less look upon the face of the deaf, without 
 being touched by their calamity. Yet some 
 of the ' bad shots ' that are made by these poor 
 fellows who have lost their arms of precision 
 are vastly entertaining, too. I remember it 
 being unanimously agreed in a company that 
 a certain person's nature was lymphatic, save 
 by one member of it who Avas hard of hearing ; 
 nor was it any wonder that he contested the 
 point, since he thought the man had been called
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOOES 49 
 
 ' emphatic' Again, a young lady more remark- 
 able for her airs than her graces, was described 
 as treating everybody ' with hauteur J ' I am 
 astonished at her doing that,' said a deaf man ; 
 and well he might have been, for he thought 
 she had been described as ' treating them to 
 porter.' My own first experience of this 
 jumping at conclusions was amusing enough. 
 I was in the hands of my hair-cutter, and 
 asked him in my affable way where he had 
 spent his holiday. ' I have been abroad, sir,' 
 he replied. ' I never go there,' I answered, 
 * because I speak no language but my own.' 
 ' Oh, but the people all speak English, sir.' 
 ' You mean the waiters,' I scornfully remarked, 
 ' but I like to speak to everybody.' He said 
 nothing, but stared at me, as though I was 
 going mad as well as bald ; nor was it sur- 
 prising, for where he had told me he had spent 
 his holiday was on the Norfolk Jiroads. 
 
 A man who through his infirmity could 
 make such a mistake as that has surely done 
 with conversation, the very cream and essence 
 of which is to take the meaning as it Hies, and 
 'track suggestion to her inmost coll.' in my 
 
 D
 
 50 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 time (and this is some consolation to me even 
 now, just as to have once seen the sunshine 
 upon the wave of the wheat must be to those 
 who have become bhnd) I have met many good 
 talkers, and the best of them have always 
 seemed to be those who had the most alert- 
 ness for the subject in hand. Though nothing 
 can be less like preaching than this kind of 
 talk, it has in this respect the same relation 
 to other kinds as a good extempore discourse 
 has to an equally good read one. An empty 
 head, unlike a dry well, can often pour forth a 
 'weak, washy, everlasting flow' of speech on 
 any subject at a moment's notice; but to be 
 able to say the right thing, or the good thing, 
 at the right moment, quickly and brightly, and 
 appositely to the matter in hand, is a rare gift 
 indeed. I knew one that had it, who has long 
 'joined the majority,' the recollection of whom 
 always recurs to me with a certain sense of 
 splendour. He wears to my eyes, not indeed 
 the halo of the saint (though he was far from 
 a sinner, and indeed a divine), but a sort of 
 aureole of brightness. I find myself once more 
 in an atmosphere of wit and graciousness ; it
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOOES 51 
 
 is like sitting next to a beautiful woman, with 
 the unusual addition of never getting tired of 
 her. It so happened that the man I am 
 thinking of made some mark in the world, 
 but that was no addition to his attractions ; 
 one never thought of who he was, but of what 
 he said. When he was our companion we did 
 not seem to want for anything; life's cup of 
 pleasure was filled to the brim. Of course he 
 had ' the desu-e to please,' without Avhich a 
 man may have all the wit and wisdom in the 
 world, but can never possess the charm of the 
 true conversationalist. He was also perfectly 
 natural (another attribute absolutely essential), 
 but had a sententious way with him, which in 
 another would have been set down to affecta- 
 tion. I never see a fountain without thinking 
 of him. We had been talking of the choice 
 of a profession, and what a sad spectacle 
 it was to see so many men in callings 
 that were distasteful to them. ' Happy foun- 
 tains,' he murmured as avc passed some, ' when 
 they work, they only play.' 
 
 It is not unusual to find persons dis- 
 tuiguished in olhcr paths of life — nay, even
 
 52 THE CLOSma OF THE DOORS 
 
 those who are justly recognised as men of 
 genius — very poor talkers. They hive up 
 their sweet thoughts to put them in their 
 books, and have no honey to spare for their 
 companions ; or ' touching the stars with their 
 heads,' they are inconvenienced by stooping to 
 us, and like a tall man walking with his little 
 boy, abstain from conversation for that reason. 
 Some of them, on the other hand, talk a good 
 deal, but not well, though I have always 
 thought that description of Goldsmith, ' He 
 wrote like an angel, but talked like Poor Poll,' 
 must have been an exaggerated one ; he could 
 never have been so very dull, for even in the 
 deserts of talk in those of whom I am speaking, 
 there is generally an oasis or two which betrays 
 the real greatness within them. It is only that 
 talk is not their forte, just as among whist- 
 players it is rarely the ablest in general intelli- 
 gence who plays the best rubber. There are, 
 of course, exceptions — men who run through 
 every mode of the lyre and are masters of all. 
 Charles Dickens, for example, was not only one 
 of the best readers, letter-writers, speakers, and 
 actors of his time, but also a charming con-
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 53 
 
 versationalist. Considering how accustomed 
 he was to take the public into his confidence, 
 and the immense temptations to which he 
 must have been exposed to address himself 
 to the ' gallery,' his talk was singularly natural, 
 and when on the theme of human life, un- 
 rivalled in its interest. It is possible, however 
 that he would not have made a favourable 
 impression at a five-o'clock tea-party. 
 
 Women, indeed, although they have a great 
 reputation for ' lifting ' conversation, are terribly 
 handicaped at it. I have known only three 
 of the gentler sex who could honestly be placed 
 in the first rank of talkers; nor is this to be 
 wondered at. I was once commissioned by a 
 very liberal and honourable firm to write a 
 boy's story. It was not, at that time, in my 
 line, as I confessed to them, but certain 
 persuasive arguments were used, to which I 
 yielded. Unhappily, after I had consented 
 they wrote me a precautionary letter to warn 
 me that love, crime, the stage, reflections upon 
 things in general, the supernatural, and a long 
 category of all the' properties ' which had hither- 
 to formed my poor stock-in-trade must bo care-
 
 54 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 fully avoided. Never since the Israelite was 
 requested to make his bricks without straw 
 by his Egyptian master was employee so put 
 to it. I am bound to say that, though amply 
 remunerated, that story did not turn out a 
 literary success. It was a dance — and indeed 
 a ' break-down ' — in fetters. I have always felt 
 a great remorse as regards my relations with 
 that admirable firm, but I also dropped a tear 
 or two for myself. Think of Hamlet with 
 not only the Prince left out of it, but the ghost ! 
 My position on that unhappy occasion seems to 
 me similar to that of woman in conversation. 
 Almost everything that is really interesting is 
 tabooed to her. In the 'best circles' (which, 
 thank Heaven, I rarely enter) she is said to 
 talk politics. I shall now go to my grave with- 
 out hearing her discourse upon that topic, 
 but it will add no terror to death. Yet, except 
 politics, how limited, as compared with man's 
 view, are the topics of talk open to her. ' Hear 
 the ladies how they walk, pittle pattle, pittle 
 pattle ; hear the ladies how they talk, tittle 
 tattle, tittle tattle,' writes a poet, who treated 
 them as infamously in real life as in his verses ;
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 55 
 
 but how are they to help it ? Suppose three- 
 fourths of the subjects on which that savage 
 cynic discoursed to his trembling audience in 
 the coffee-house had been denied to hivi, what 
 reputation as a talker would have survived 
 him ? I am no such boor, I hope, as not to 
 have felt the charm of woman's wit and gentle- 
 ness and refinement ; but from the very nature 
 of things woman is unable to speak with man 
 with the openness that men use with one 
 another. The most interesting subject in the 
 world, that of human nature, is to a great extent 
 debarred from them, and religion is a matter 
 their reverent natures shrink from discussing. 
 There is a cynical saying that women are 
 not worth looking at after forty, or worth 
 talking to before ; but as regards freedom of 
 conversation (a phrase I am not using, I need 
 not say, in its coarser sense), a woman is 
 generally much older than that before she 
 uses it with mankind. Indeed, the most 
 delightful female talkers I have ever known 
 have been old women, who have mixed much 
 with the world, and whose sympathetic nature 
 has attracted the confidence of both sexes. A
 
 56 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 young man who has the intelligence to under- 
 stand them and the grace to perceive the com- 
 pliment they pay him, will prize such talk, and 
 justly, above all others. 
 
 The raconteur is often described as a con- 
 versationalist, which, however, he either may 
 be or may not be. The man who is always 
 saying, ' That reminds me of an anecdote,' and 
 proceeds to tell it, is generally one to be 
 avoided. But a story that is short and well 
 told and d propos is always welcome ; and 
 though not the salt of conversation, seasons 
 it very agreeably. I have known excellent 
 talkers of this kind, and when they have 
 been good listeners, they were, to use an old- 
 fashioned term, the best of ' company ' ; but it 
 is a drawback to many of these story-tellers 
 that they are inclined to monologue. Excited 
 by applause, they endeavour to cap their own 
 anecdote (a most unnatural proceeding) by 
 another, perhaps a very inferior one. Indeed, 
 it is quite amazing how often even a well- 
 practised raconteur is destitute of the sense 
 of proportion, and does not understand the 
 difference between what is moderately and
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 57 
 
 what is very good. The true conversationalist 
 possesses this sense in perfection. He is as 
 dehcate and sagacious in the manner he 
 handles those with whom he is brought into 
 contact, as in his o^vn behaviour. He per- 
 suades the diffident, if they are worth hearing, 
 to speak of their own subjects ; he dexterously 
 stops the bore; he imperceptibly steers the 
 bark of conversation from the shallow and the 
 rapid, from the froth of small talk, and from 
 the breakers of argument. Yet no one knows 
 that he is the pilot. The gift, no doubt, is 
 born with him, and, like most other natural 
 gifts, can be improved by practice far more 
 than is generally imagined. On the other 
 hand, it can be almost utterly lost through 
 disuse. An Ariel can never, of course, become 
 a Caliban ; but I have known more than one 
 bright spirit through dull surroundings, to lower 
 to the common level, till at last it has seemed 
 to ' sympathise with clay.' So far as I am con- 
 cerned, alas ! they might all be clay — or dust. 
 
 To some people it may seem a small thing to 
 know that thoy shall never again hear a bird 
 sing, or even a cuckoo-clock strike : or to lose
 
 58 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 the conversation of their friends. But to me 
 the reflection is a very sad one. People who, 
 like the old Marquis of Anglesea after Waterloo, 
 have 'one leg in the grave,' can get on very 
 well with a cork or even a wooden one ; but it 
 is not so when one's ears are there. I am 
 thankful to say I never was a great playgoer, 
 or I should feel another of the few pleasures 
 left to those of my time of life cut off. If 
 I want to see a play now (and how appropriate, 
 alas, is that word see !), I must have a seat next 
 the orchestra, so that my companion is made 
 almost as deaf as myself. Even then, in five 
 cases out of six, when the house is ' convulsed ' 
 I cannot for the life of me understand what it 
 is laughing about. People seem to be made to 
 laugh much more easily than they used to be. 
 Some in the same unhappy position as myself 
 insist upon it that it is ' mere buffoonery ' that 
 tickles them so, but I am not so sure of that. 
 Heaven knows I do not grudge them their 
 mirth. But it is sad to have to ask my patient, 
 sweet companion what has been said, and while 
 she is telling me, to the great discontent of my 
 neighbour, we lose the next speech and perhaps
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 59 
 
 the thread of the play. A deaf man is always 
 one speech at least behind the rest of the 
 world; and to me, at least, it makes a great 
 difference. Let us hope we get our hearing 
 back, with all other good things we miss, in 
 heaven. By the by, I wonder who has got 
 my hearing ? Force of any kind, men of 
 science tell us, is never lost, but must needs 
 go somewhere or other. I hope whosoever has 
 my hearing will have the same opportunities 
 and make as good use of it as I did. What 
 bright and genial utterances, what assurances 
 of love and friendship, what wit and wisdom 
 have entered at those once open doors ! I 
 have stored and garnered much of the treasure 
 of talk that has been lavished upon me. I have 
 listened to speech that has been better than 
 'silver,' and compared with which the silence 
 that has befallen inc is far indeed from ' golden '; 
 and now that 1 shall never hear it more, how 
 inestimable it seems ! As the man who has 
 lost his sight pictures with the Jiicntal eyes 
 that are still left to hiin ' the pleasant fields 
 and farms,' the sea with its ' innumerable smile,' 
 and the well-remembered faces of his dear ones.
 
 60 THE CLOSING OF THE DOORS 
 
 so I conjure up with the same tender sense 
 of loss and melancholy joy the conversation 
 of my friends. 
 
 Though depressed myself, however, I have 
 no wish to depress others ; I have always been 
 for the smile against the sigh, and do not 
 grudge the world what they may find jocose in 
 my calamity. Unlike the blind, the deaf have 
 ever been a subject of mirth to their fellow- 
 creatures, just as the gout (to those who 
 haven't got it) is a matter of never-failing jest. 
 The latest humorous anecdotes connected with 
 my little drawback have been kindly written out 
 for me by a friend. In a company conversing 
 of the Indian Mutiny, some one said of a rebel 
 who fell into the hands of the British, ' He had 
 me a short shrift.' 'What did that matter,' 
 observed a deaf gentleman contemptuously, ' in 
 so warm a climate ? ' A gentleman averse to 
 lavishness, and hard of hearing, but not quite 
 so hard, it was whispered, as he sometimes 
 pretended to be, was applied to by a friend for 
 a loan. ' Will you lend me half a sovereign ? ' 
 ' What ? ' ' Will you lend me a sovereign ? ' 
 ' You said just now half a sovereign.'
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 
 
 WHEN Scott wrote Waverley he took for its 
 second title 'Tis Sixty Years Since, 
 having in liis mind, no doubt, the immense 
 changes that had taken place in social life 
 during that period. Almost the same interval 
 of time has passed since the accession of our 
 gracious Queen, and it has been marked by 
 changes infinitely greater in science, history, 
 and politics, and almost as great in domestic 
 life. Half a century ago, long before agri- 
 cultural depression had cast its shadow on ' the 
 Land,' families in the country belonging to the 
 upper middle classes had a very good time of 
 it, much better than those of the same rank 
 in the towns. All the men, and some of the 
 women, were centaurs ; even the boys had 
 ponies, often chosen from the droves from 
 Wales, which at that time visited our southern 
 
 counties. To ride well was not then an accom- 
 
 ev
 
 64 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 
 
 plishment, it was supposed to be a natural 
 gift, and not to like it argued something amiss 
 in the moral sense; if, therefore, intelligent 
 youths preferred literature to hunting, they 
 dissembled their love, which was my own case. 
 I could stick on a horse with the tenacity of 
 a monkey, but liked it about as little ; my one 
 rule of horsemanship was not to be thrown. 
 This was not, unhappily, discovered early, and 
 my friends, who were all equine, used often to 
 give me a mount, and imagine they placed 
 me under an obligation. The mistake almost 
 cost the life of an M.F.H. Somebody had 
 lent me a young horse, for which I thanked 
 him with alien lips, to hunt one day in 
 Wiltshire; as the beast fretted and curveted 
 I heard the lender, riding behind me with a 
 friend, expatiating upon its merits. He would 
 not have lent it to everybody, but that lad 
 (myself) knew what he was about. I did not 
 know, however, what the horse was about, and 
 ' gave him his head,' which I had been warned 
 to do, simply because he took it. In an early 
 part of the run we came to a hedge with a fall 
 on the other side ; there was a gap, which of
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 65 
 
 course I took, and got over safely enough, but 
 within one inch or so of the head of the Master 
 of the Hounds, whom I had followed too quickly, 
 and whose horse had fallen with him. The fuss 
 that was made about that business — though 
 surely a pure accident — destroyed, thank 
 Heaven, my reputation as a horseman, and I 
 was much too sagacious to attempt to recover 
 it. From that moment I was looked upon in 
 the domestic circle as one from whom no good 
 was to be expected. 
 
 There are much fewer equine families now, 
 from want of money and the introduction of 
 the two- wheeled steed, but years ago horses 
 became less necessary from the facilities for 
 locomotion afforded by the railways. These 
 have begotten more changes, moral, material, 
 and social, than all other causes put together. 
 Tn my youth every household in the country of 
 the least pretension had some wheeled convey- 
 ance; though many of them were of an un- 
 ambitious character. I remember one owned 
 by a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant of his 
 county, which, from its vmparallolcd and in- 
 definite nature, was called ' The Thing.' It was 
 
 E
 
 66 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 
 
 like a postchaise (then going out of fashion), 
 with curtains instead of a window, which did 
 not afford much protection in the storms and 
 breezes of the Berkshire downs. Moreover, it 
 must have been ill put together, for the coach- 
 man drove home one day with only half the 
 vehicle, leaving his master and mistress on the 
 Roman Ridgeway, exposed to the elements. 
 
 Those were years of plenty, but not as yet 
 of luxury. Girls did not disdain to ride in 
 'skirts'; smoking in most country houses was 
 not allowed, and young gentlemen of birth and 
 position had to take their pipes to the saddle- 
 room. Champagne was rarely seen even at the 
 best tables ; the story of the chaplain who, 
 when he saw the tall glasses, used to change 
 his ordinary grace for a more florid one, was, 
 perhaps, founded on fact, for the treat was ex- 
 ceptional; and the wine very likely was not 
 iced. Folks were contented with simple amuse- 
 ments, but pursued them with great zeal and 
 an utter disregard for comfort. They would 
 drive ten miles to a dinner-party and fifteen to 
 a county ball ; at home they would play round 
 games for ' fish at sixpence a dozen,' and yet
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 67 
 
 manage to quarrel over them ; their highest 
 form of diversion was private theatricals. 
 When these occurred, guests would go through 
 fire and water — indeed often did go through 
 water — in order to be present. The village my 
 people lived in was in a valley high up among 
 the downs, and in winter we were generally 
 imprisoned for a week or two, the deep roads 
 running down to us on all sides being choked 
 with snow, which lay in deep and dangerous 
 drifts. The treeless fields could not be discerned 
 from one another, but this did not stop us from 
 venturing over them when a play was to be 
 seen. I remember a party of a dozen, half of 
 them ladies, packing into a wagon drawn by 
 six dray horses, and traversing that wintry 
 waste, like the exiles of Siberia, but in much 
 better spirits. Every now and then one of the 
 drivers — there were three of them, off and on — 
 woiikl express his fear that we were ' getting 
 nigh a road,' when there would be discussion 
 and digression. We arrived somehow at our 
 journey's end, and what was more wonderful, 
 got home again, and nobody thought anything 
 of the adventure.
 
 68 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 
 
 The country gentry drank much more than 
 they do now, port and sherry rather than claret. 
 The after-dinner coffee and cigars, which have 
 done more to put an end to drunkenness among 
 the upper classes than all our teachers and 
 preachers, were unknown; yet the habit of 
 heavy drinking was already dying away. There 
 was more rheumatism (from exposure and care- 
 lessness about health) than at present, and 
 notwithstanding the out-of-door life, more 
 gout ; but that ingenious combination of those 
 diseases of which ' kindly nature ' now gives us 
 so many examples, and the doctors — ' giving a 
 name to what they cannot cure ' — call rheuma- 
 toid arthritis, was much more rare. Many 
 more 'gentlemen sportsmen' were brought 
 home on hurdles with broken necks; but, on 
 the whole, paterfamilias lived quite as long as 
 he does now without the slightest attention to 
 sanitation. When he expired, it was with no 
 assistance from any specialist from London; 
 if one had been sent for, indeed, he could hardly 
 have arrived in time, unless, like Charles ii., 
 the patient took an unconscionable time in 
 dying.
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 69 
 
 The profession that has prospered most 
 (though, of course, it is terribly overstocked) in 
 these days is that of the physician. Not only 
 do paterfamilias and his wife, when anything 
 serious is amiss with them, come up to town for 
 ' an opinion,' but also their children ; notwith- 
 standing the hard times, the doubling of the 
 guinea for a first visit — a financial revolution 
 accomplished with such suddenness and secrecy 
 that one hardly heard of it till it was a success 
 — does not seem to have deterred them in the 
 least. A vast deal more money is now spent 
 in the pursuit of health than of old. Eare is 
 the family of which some member or branch of 
 it has not been recommended to leave England 
 for Davos Platz or the Riviera, for Colorado or 
 Algiers, for cold countries or hot ones, and all 
 for the same complaint. The foreign God's- 
 acres are more crowded in consequence, but 
 our doctors thus relieve themselves from grave 
 responsibilities. Separations between parents 
 and children, which when the former are far 
 gone in years is a sort of premature death, arc 
 uuich more common. The want of occupation 
 at home, and the necessity for providing for
 
 70 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 
 
 themselves, causes our sons to migrate to 
 distant lands far more than of old ; while, on 
 the other hand, improved postal communica- 
 tion and the telegraphs keep them within touch 
 of one another. Among the poor, the fate of 
 their sons on service is no longer a matter 
 ignored by the military authorities ; the parents 
 are not left in doubt as to whether Tom or Dick 
 is alive or dead. In old times the widow who 
 inquired at the ' office ' after her soldier boy 
 was treated with scant tenderness. 'Tom 
 Atkins, do you say ? Dead. Our fee is a 
 shilling. You mustn't cry here; cry in the 
 yard.' Now his end is recorded by the wire, 
 and transmitted to her, as though he had a 
 commission. 
 
 Our juveniles have become of much more 
 consequence every way; novels are written to 
 show their immense influence in the world ; it 
 seems quite strange that their admittance to 
 Parliament, like that of women, has not been 
 made a ' platform.' They are now the dominant 
 race, but I can remember when it was quite 
 otherwise. They were pitchforked into schools 
 (and sometimes out of them) without much
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 71 
 
 care or scruple; tlieir complaints were not 
 listened to, though they had often good cause 
 to make them ; and authority over them of a 
 despotic kind was often delegated to unfit 
 persons. I remember one striking instance of 
 this. Our house in the country had been let 
 to a family, the head of which was on service 
 in India, and I was asked to stay there for a 
 week ; the two boys who were to be my play- 
 mates were older than myself, indeed almost 
 grown up, fourteen or fifteen ; their mother was 
 a lady of some fashion, who took little interest 
 in her children, and everything, even in the 
 way of punishment, was deputed to a virago of 
 a nurse, very bony and strong, whose appear- 
 ance reminded me of Mother Brownrigg, just 
 then very popular in wax exhibitions. On the 
 first evening, at tea-time, some difference of 
 opinion arose between this person and the boys, 
 whereupon she opened a cupboard, produced 
 from it a stick, much thicker than any cane, 
 and proceeded to beat both her young masters 
 with passionate energy. It was quite a humilia- 
 tion to see those wrctclicd boys flying about 
 the room, and receiving, without a word of re-
 
 72 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 
 
 monstrance or attempt at resistance, her pitiless 
 blows. What heightened the shame of it was 
 that they were by no means cowed or spiritless 
 in their ordinary behaviour, but submitted to 
 this ignominious chastisement as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 Such Spartan discipline as this was no doubt 
 exceptional, but children were kept in strict 
 subjection. We hear mothers nowadays say of 
 some enfant terrible, * The dear boy is never 
 spoilt, but only indulged ' ; but in those times 
 there was very little even of indulgence. 
 Strange to say, this harshness did not weaken 
 the feeling of kinship; indeed, the bond of 
 blood was much stronger than it is now. Our 
 circle of acquaintance has vastly increased with 
 the facilities of locomotion ; we are no longer 
 dependent on our relatives for society, and often 
 meet with other people who are more to our 
 taste. This is seen in the gradual falling off of 
 family gatherings on domestic anniversaries or 
 at Christmas-time. Through the influence of 
 Dickens's works there was a temporary resusci- 
 tation of them, but it is now well understood 
 that the best chance of the preservation of
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 73 
 
 John's brotherly affection for Harriet, and for 
 Henrietta's love for dear Tom, is that they 
 should meet as seldom as possible. 
 
 The difficulty of 'placing' our boys in any 
 position where they can maintain themselves 
 is far worse than it used to be, but they have 
 a greater independence of manner. In this 
 respect our girls are not behind them. They 
 are not, perhaps, less modest than their grand- 
 mothers, who never ventured to speak of their 
 male acquaintances as ' men,' but always as 
 'gentlemen,' but their behaviour with them 
 is certainly more familiar, a habit, I observe, 
 which is not, however, permanently attractive 
 even with the objects of their favour. 
 
 We are much more gregarious than we used 
 to be, but prefer to choose our own company. 
 A man of distinction, by no means a 'diner- 
 out,' in a fashionable sense, once assured me 
 that he had never dined alone (except when he 
 was ill) for the last thirty years ; a curious fact 
 enough when one thinks of the many old 
 fellows who dine at our clubs every day with 
 no companion opposite to thein but a book or 
 a newspaper. Among the upper classes it is
 
 74 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 
 
 the clubs which have done most to destroy 
 the family bond, and not only in the way of 
 marriage. Club friends and family friends are 
 kept quite distinct, and we often see more of 
 the former than the latter. Sixty years since 
 only a few men, even of good position, belonged 
 to a club. It is now the first ambition of our 
 sons, when they have attained what are 
 humorously termed 'years of discretion,' to 
 join one of these establishments. 
 
 Though in almost every respect we have 
 become more luxurious, there is much less 
 pretence than there used to be. Young men 
 and women of the upper classes did not of old 
 frequent the theatres as they do now, but when 
 they did go they sat in the stalls ; it is true 
 these were then only half the price they have 
 reached of late years, but it was not the 
 comparative cheapness that caused them to 
 be patronised ; the differences of social position 
 were more insisted upon. Nowadays the same 
 classes go to the dress circle, or upper hoxes, 
 though not to the pit, which half a century ago 
 had lost its once proud position in the eyes of 
 playgoers. Girls of good family now affect the
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 75 
 
 ' bike ' and the ' 'bus/ and to travel in a first- 
 class railway carriage has become quite a dis- 
 tinction in circles which were wont to use no 
 other. In the club smoking-room the humble 
 briar-root is as much patronised as the Havana 
 cigar ; there is hardly any dandyism in the way 
 of apparel; 'ducks,' once such popular wear, 
 are as extinct as the dodo, but 'flannels' are 
 fast taking their place. 
 
 These improvements do not, one regrets to 
 say, arise from any admiration of economy in 
 our young people, but rather from the wish to 
 get as much pleasure out of life with the means 
 at their disposal as possible, but, on the whole, 
 they are dictated by common-sense. In com- 
 paring our domestic life with that of our fore- 
 fathers, I am inclined to think, notwithstanding 
 the anti- every thingarians and faddists who 
 infest modern society, that this is the virtue on 
 which wo have most right to plume ourselves. 
 Nowhere has it made itself more felt than in 
 religious matters. I can rciiieniber when the 
 heads of famiHes, as a general rule, thought it 
 their duty to lay a burthen on the con.science 
 of their offspring heavier than they could bear.
 
 76 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 
 
 ill teaching them that the Creator had doomed 
 a large proportion of His creatures to suffer in 
 the next world eternal tortures in a lake of 
 fire. It was nothing less than the worship of 
 the devil, against which, of course, every instinct 
 of humanity in the children, as they grew up, 
 revolted in dismay. This was the cause of 
 many sharp opinions and bitter conflicts, which 
 sometimes ended in the exile of the youthful 
 martyr, and the dear-bought victory of his mis- 
 guided parents. If such a hateful creed still 
 here and there exists, it can no longer be en- 
 forced by its possessor ; ' the common-sense of 
 most ' is too strong for him ; so far as its powers 
 for evil are concerned, it is ' an extinct Satan ' ; 
 but for years it ' shook the pillars of domestic 
 peace.' 
 
 An error of another kind which flourished 
 sixty years since among the upper classes, but 
 is now everywhere discouraged, was the con- 
 tempt they had for commerce. Except in the 
 case of bankers (whom they dared not despise) 
 they looked down on everybody who derived 
 his income from this source. The young gentle- 
 men were quite as great fools as their fathers
 
 NOW AND THEN IN HOME LIFE 77 
 
 in this respect, and thought themselves heroic 
 in preferring a profession with probable penury 
 to an assured competence with their hands 
 soiled by trade. This absurd prejudice is now 
 as much ridiculed by our gilt youth as by 
 any other class. One of them lately became 
 engaged to the ward of a gentleman of the old 
 school, who thought it necessary to apologise 
 for a certain blot on her scutcheon. ' I have to 
 confess, my dear sir, that her family have been 
 quite recently connected with trade.' ' I am 
 
 sorry ' began the young man gravely. ' So 
 
 am I,' put in the old fellow, a little testily, for 
 it did not please him that his prejudice should 
 be reciprocated, 'but it can't be helped.' 'I 
 was about to say,' continued the young man, 
 ' I am sorry that you should have thought me 
 such a stupendous ass as to care twopence 
 about it.'
 
 ON CONVERSATION
 
 ON CONVERSATION 
 
 THE art of conversation has suffered in 
 England from the example of its most 
 famous professor. Dr. Johnson understood it 
 theoretically, but even so only to a limited 
 extent. He was supposed to form his view of 
 it in accordance with the rule of Bacon. 
 
 In all kinds of speech, whether pleasant^ grave, severe, 
 or ordinary, it is convenient to speak leisurely, and rather 
 drawlingly than hastily, because hasty speech confounds 
 the memory, and oftentimes, besides the unseemliness, 
 drives a man either to stammering, or nonplus, or harping 
 on that which should follow ; whereas a slow speech 
 conformcth the memory, addeth a conceit of wisdom to the 
 hearers, besides a seemiiness of speech and countenance. 
 
 This does not strike one as a model for him 
 who would I)c cither brilliant or agreeable, and 
 excludes naturalness, which is one of the 
 greatest charms of conversation. 
 
 That Johnson did not slavishly follow 15acon's 
 
 F
 
 82 ON CONVERSATION 
 
 precept is very certain. So far from being 
 'leisurely/ he jumped down the throats of all 
 Avho disagreed with him. ' You may be good- 
 natured, sir,' said Boswell, with unusual spirit, 
 'but you are not good-humoured' (which the 
 Doctor had just plumed himself on being). ' I 
 believe you would pardon your opponents if 
 they had time to deprecate your vengeance; 
 but punishment follows so quick after sentence 
 that they cannot escape.' The idea of his ever 
 being at a nonplus is ridiculous indeed, though 
 he was sometimes at a loss for a repartee from 
 sheer indignation. The rights of his little 
 passage-of-arms with Adam Smith are much 
 disputed. That he remarked : ' You are a liar,' 
 seems tolerably certain, but whether the other 
 philosopher did retort in the quite unprintable 
 and by no means pertinent words that are 
 attributed to him is doubtful. At all events, 
 the whole affair was not a good example of 
 polite conversation. Johnson's great mistake 
 was in confounding it with monologue. 'We 
 had good talk this evening,' he said on one 
 occasion, when returning from a party where 
 scarcely any one had been able to get a word
 
 ON CONVERSATION 83 
 
 in edgeways except himself. If he had said: 
 ' / had good talk,' the observation would have 
 been faultless, but of conversation such as he 
 sincerely believed had taken place there had 
 been none. He could define it of course as he 
 could everything else, and sometimes affected 
 to despise it. When Boswell asked him, in his 
 importunate fashion, what was the use of 
 meeting people at dinner, Avhcre no one ever 
 said anything worth remembering, 'Why, to 
 eat and drink together,' replied the Doctor, 
 ' and to promote kindness ; and, sir, this is 
 better done when there is no solid conversation; 
 for when there is, people differ in opinion and 
 get into bad humour, or some of the company 
 are left out and feel themselves uneasy ; it was 
 for this reason that Sir Robert Walpole said ho 
 always talked indecencies at his own table, 
 liccause in them all could join.' It is certain 
 that this was the kind of conversation most in 
 vogue with our ancestors, and in ' the good old 
 times,' such as the days of chivalry, there was 
 probably little else. 
 
 Later on, and even to some extent to-day, the 
 essence of good conversation was thought to bo
 
 84 ON CONVERSATION 
 
 contest. Even that graceful-minded and sweet- 
 tempered writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, falls 
 into the error when discoursing on this subject. 
 With Johnson, opposition was the very salt of 
 life, and his best sayings were evoked by it. 
 When ill one day and unable to exert him- 
 self, on Burke's name being mentioned, he 
 suddenly exclaimed : ' That fellow calls forth all 
 my powers. Were I to see Burke now it would 
 kill me.' 
 
 Antagonism of all kinds is, however, inimical 
 to social enjoyment, and even argument should 
 be employed but sparingly. The object of good 
 conversation is not to convince — we are not 
 pleading at the Bar, or preaching in the Pulpit 
 — but to exchange ideas, expressed in the most 
 attractive form, to ameliorate, to interest, or to 
 amuse. It is a mistake to suppose that a 
 change of society is necessary for its enjoyment. 
 When friends are found to our mind, we do 
 not tiro of their talk. It is not likely, though 
 it is quite possible, that a stranger may be 
 an acquisition, and a company of intelligent 
 persons who meet one another are independent 
 of recruits.
 
 ON CONVERSATION 85 
 
 Goldsmith, who never wrote a foolish thing 
 and seldom said a wise one, thought differently; 
 he expressed a wish for some additional 
 members to be added to the Literary Club. 
 ' For there can be now,' he said, ' nothing new 
 among us ; we have travelled over one another's 
 minds ' ; to which Johnson calmly but con- 
 fidently observed : ' Sir, you have not travelled 
 over Ttiy mind, I promise you.' The Doctor, of 
 course, was so exceptionally gifted that it was 
 a treat to listen to him, if a man were content 
 to deprive himself of the right of reply ; but he 
 had no notion of the ' give and take,' without 
 which there is no social intercourse. 
 
 A good talker should be a good listener, 
 though also capable of cutting short a bore ; he 
 should be appreciative of the remarks of others, 
 and never influenced by that vulgar rivalry 
 that causes some men to strive for the mastery 
 in anecdote — the 'capping' of stories, as old 
 writers term it. Anecdotes, however apt and 
 witty, arc, after all, a form of monologue, and 
 should bo used with discretion. Even the best 
 raconteurs are tempted to draw too largely 
 upon their deposit accounts ; a certain intoxica-
 
 8G ON CONVERSATION 
 
 tion seems to seize those not in the very first 
 rank when they have made a success or two in 
 this line, and I have known one with a great 
 reputation who could never be trusted after a 
 capital story not to wipe out the remembrance 
 of it by a dull one. He really did not seem to 
 know what was good and what was indifferent ; 
 he had a large quantity of the commodity 
 (anecdote) on his hands, and must needs get 
 rid of it at any cost to his reputation. A high- 
 class but still detestable talk-stopper is the 
 man of rounded periods. Everybody knows 
 how he is going to finish his sentences, but he 
 will do it his own way, and it is a long way 
 round. One is inclined to say to him what 
 Scrooge so pathetically observed to his partner's 
 ghost, 'Don't be flowery, my friend, don't be 
 flowery.' 
 
 These are by no means the greatest obstruc- 
 tionists in the way of conversation. Some 
 persons might almost bo called professional 
 talk-stoppers. They delight in questioning 
 the truth of a good story, or in picking some 
 hole in it, to prove that it had a better recep- 
 tion than it deserved. They lay their finger on
 
 ON CONVERSATION 87 
 
 some trivial inaccuracy in a date or a name; 
 they bring no provender to the intellectual 
 picnic ; their sole contribution to it is a senseless 
 depreciation, which they conscientiously believe 
 adds to the agreeableness of the evening. I 
 •wish no fellow -creature dead, but I do think 
 this class of person should be relegated to some 
 other sphere of usefulness, where (like Miss 
 Snevellicci's papa) he would be appreciated. It 
 is all very well to say, ' Let us have no cliques,' 
 but some precaution must be taken to keep 
 persons of this sort out of any society which 
 has a claim to consider itself agreeable. 
 
 In old days a very innocent but still very 
 eifectual talk-stopper was the Child. Parents 
 used to bring their terrible infants into grown- 
 up company, even of an intelligent kind. It 
 was an outrage of that description which caused 
 Charles Lamb to propose the health of Herod, 
 King of the Jews. In scarcely a less degree 
 (though one hesitates to acknowledge it) the 
 presence of the Young Person of cither sex is 
 to bo deprecated. 
 
 Some persons have the rudeness to go further, 
 and assert that in the presence of the gentler
 
 88 ON CONVERSATION 
 
 sex conversation, not so much of an intellectual 
 but of a natural or dramatic, and especially of 
 a humorous kind, can seldom be carried on. 
 It has been said, indeed, that a bright and 
 clever Avoman ' lifts the conversation ' at dinner- 
 parties, but what sort of conversation do we 
 generally find at dinner-parties ? And what 
 must the conversation be that requires 'lifting'? 
 It is quite true that the talk of a pohshed and 
 educated woman, of mature years and a liberal 
 mind, is one of the most delightful of intellectual 
 pleasures — it has well been called a liberal 
 education ; but how rare such women are ! 
 And how terribly even they are handicaped ! 
 They can talk of literature, of politics, and even 
 of religion, though in the last case seldom with 
 any freedom; but speculations on 'fate, free 
 will, foreknowledge absolute,' the subjects of 
 the best kind of conversation, are not to their 
 taste, while from the discussion of some of the 
 most interesting topics connected with human 
 nature they are of necessity debarred. A better 
 and wiser adviser of a young man in social 
 matters is not to bo found than in some ancient 
 lady of wealth and position, whose very voice
 
 ON CONVERSATION 89 
 
 has persuasion in it, and who speaks from the 
 fukiess of her own knowledge. ' I am an old 
 woman, you know. Tell me your trouble.' But 
 that is only a duet, though one of exquisite 
 sympathy ; the talk of two. As a rule women's 
 talk, like that of the aristocracy, is almost 
 always personal. 
 
 The flippancies and cynicism of the smoking- 
 room are very naturally in ill odour; yet the 
 brightest conversations within my own some- 
 what extensive experience have been held under 
 the beniern influence of tobacco. It nourishes 
 quiet thought and does away with ill-humour ; 
 smokers do not talk unless they have some- 
 thing to say, and are careful to say it not at too 
 great length, or their pipe would go out. Thus 
 anecdote is restrained within proper limits, and 
 monologue is rendered impossible. 
 
 It is rather invidious to pronounce which 
 profession produces the best conversationalists, 
 and such a judgment must be open to many 
 exceptions ; it can bo at most but a general 
 impression ; but on the whole — there is nothing 
 like leather — I think men of letters arc the 
 best talkers. It is true they are sometimes the
 
 90 ON CONVERSATION 
 
 worst from a negative point of view, since some 
 of them cannot talk at all. The sole channel 
 of their intelligence is their pen. But the 
 higher class of literary men have generally 
 something interesting to say, because they are 
 students of human nature, and adapt their 
 experiences of it to their company. They 
 never talk of their own books, nor very much 
 even of literature. One of the many gifts of 
 Charles Dickens was that of public speaking; 
 but his conversation with his intimates was 
 still more delightful ; not at all witty, but 
 intensely humorous, though combined with 
 great earnestness, however slight might be the 
 subject. He disliked general society, chiefly, 
 I think, from the fear that some foolish person 
 would compliment him to his face, a stroke of 
 vulgarity that requires a master of fence indeed 
 to parry. 
 
 Lever was a raconteur of the first sparkle, 
 but after an hour or two one had enough of 
 him. The best conversationaKst I ever knew 
 (that is, among the departed) was a man of 
 letters, W. G. Clark ; he was one of the editors 
 of the Cambridge Shakespeare, and the author
 
 ON CONVEESATION 91 
 
 of Summer Months in Spain, but had a higher 
 reputation as a classical scholar. He ' wore his 
 weight of learning like a flower,' which is by no 
 means usually the case with learned persons: 
 they have no ' buttonhole ' themselves, but they 
 buttonhole other people, and their perception 
 of humour is generally confined to a false 
 quantity. I can never understand why this 
 error should be so mirth-provoking in a dead 
 language, and so devoid of amusement in a 
 living one. 
 
 Small literary folks arc seldom good company, 
 they talk literature too much ; and though it is 
 the best ' shop ' to talk about, ' shop ' is always 
 better left alone. Observe how a soldier with 
 a record of distinguished service avoids it; 
 from a certain fine sense of modesty no less 
 than good taste. He is as difficult to draw as 
 a badger, but when draAvn gives excellent sport. 
 I am not one of those literary persons who 
 seem to take a pleasure (for it is always 
 affected) in contrasting to his disparagement 
 Captain Pen with Cajjtain Sword (for it is 
 something, as now happens, 'to havo at one's 
 back a million luen'); but 1 must admit that
 
 92 ON CONVEESATION 
 
 there arc few kinds of talk so attractive as 
 that of the unAvilling warrior making light of 
 experiences which, if they had happened to me, 
 I feel Avith a secret blush, would have formed a 
 more constant topic of conversation. 
 
 The talk of barristers is often very clever, 
 but too inclined to be shoppy; they remind 
 one of public school men, who, after they have 
 ceased to be boys for half a century, will still 
 retail the reminiscences of that far-back time 
 to one another, without much consideration for 
 that portion of the company who have neither 
 been at Eton nor Harrow. The men of the 
 gown are bright enough, but even when good- 
 natured are too apt to affect cynicism, which 
 destroys at one blow both geniality and natural- 
 ness. 
 
 'The lower branch of the profession' are 
 generally silent and severe (wherefore, I know 
 not, and Heaven forbid that I should draw the 
 secret from its 'dread abode'), but now and 
 then we get an admirable specimen from this 
 collection. There is nothing like your ' family 
 lawyer' as a receptacle of secrets, matters of 
 real human interest, and sometimes he will
 
 ON CONVERSATION 93 
 
 open a closet without divulging its wliereabouts, 
 and show you a skeleton. 
 
 I had once a friend who had no rival as an 
 exhibitor of this description — the happiest mix- 
 ture of grave and gay conceivable, and who 
 possessed quite an anatomical museum. Some 
 of the heads of families he had to deal with 
 deserved a fuller portraiture at the hands of 
 the dramatist or the novelist, but as sketches 
 they were faultless. I remember one of them, 
 and wish I could reproduce the touches which 
 gave to the original picture its life and like- 
 ness. The man was a wealthy and still young 
 north-country squire, selfish and self-indulgent ; 
 childless, which was fortunate, for he was very 
 unfit to play a father's part ; and suddenly 
 widowed. It was to the funeral of the wife that 
 my friend was professionally invited. It had 
 not been a happy marriage. The man was 
 gloomy, not because of bis bereavement, but 
 because of the solemnity and seriousness it 
 entailed. He would have gone away, if he had 
 dared, and left her relations to bury her ; he 
 did iKiL like them, and swore he would not be 
 shut u{) ill a carriage with any one of tliem —
 
 94 ON CONVERSATION 
 
 he would ride alone. ' No,' said my friend, who 
 had great influence over him (as indeed he had 
 over most people which whom he was brought 
 into contact), 'you must not do that.' There 
 were good reasons why he should not have 
 gone alone. 'If you will not go with your 
 relatives you must go with the clergyman.' 
 ' The clergyman ! Well, if I must, I must, but 
 it will quite spoil my day.' 
 
 Another funeral story, but against himself, 
 he told with inimitable humour. I say ' told,' 
 not ' used to tell,' for I never heard him repeat 
 the same experience. The measures he took 
 with his clients were represented as so success- 
 ful that I requested him on one occasion to tell 
 me one of his failures. For one instant he 
 looked confused, but immediately resumed his 
 serenity. 
 
 Well, I have been young like everybody eke. When 
 junior partner in my firm, I went down to the funeral of a 
 client, very rich but not resjoected. He had no relatives 
 and no friends, but there were a great many mourning- 
 coaches. It was winter, and the burial-place was five 
 miles from the Hall. I was in the last coach with the 
 doctor, a young man like myself. We went at a good 
 pace over the snow, and the whole proceeding was tedious
 
 ox CONVERSATION 95 
 
 and disagreeable. ' Do you think,' said the doctor, ' there 
 would be any harm in our having a cigar?' Of course 
 it was wrong, and very unprofessional in both of us, 
 but we lit up. It was a great relief, and, as we flattered 
 ourselves, unaccompanied by danger. Presently, however, 
 the whole line — about five-and-twenty carriages — came to 
 a dead stop. The undertaker and one of his men ran 
 wildly to our window. 'Gentlemen, your carriage is on 
 fire ! ' It cost us a couple of sovereigns, but we escaped 
 detection. 
 
 Taking them all round, I had rather talk 
 with a strange doctor than a stranger of any 
 other profession. They have generally seen a 
 great deal of human nature, and if they have 
 only seen a little of it, it is worth hearing 
 about. They never talk about Art, at all 
 events. I confess I am rather afraid of tra- 
 vellers, unless they are commercial travellers. 
 They are too full of information, and are too 
 often anxious to impart it. Sometimes it is 
 not even true. Frederic Locker used to tell of 
 how an unscrupulous traveller narrating his 
 adventures among the Red Indians was cleverly 
 stopped by Lord Barrymore. ' Hid you ever 
 see anything of the Chick-Chows ? ' ' Oh ! a 
 good deal,' aid Sir Arthur, ' a very cruel tribe,
 
 96 ON CONVERSATION 
 
 the Chick-Chows.' 'And the Cherry-Chows, 
 eh?' 'Oh, very much among the Cherry- 
 Chows,' continued Sir Arthur; 'the Cherry- 
 Chows were singularly kind to my fellows.' 
 ' And pray, Sir Arthur, did you see much of the 
 Tol-de-roddy-bow-wows ? ' 
 
 This was too much for even Sir Arthur. He 
 was rather put out, but the company was re- 
 lieved. Nevertheless, there are modest travellers. 
 I had once a great friend who had travelled all 
 round the world. When almost on his death- 
 bed, he spoke to me on the subject for the first 
 time, with humorous pathos. ' My dear fellow, 
 you will do me the justice, when I am gone, to 
 say that I never told you one word about it.' 
 But he was an noble exception. 
 
 As to the clergy, they are a good deal weighted 
 as regards conversation. Coleridge once observed 
 that Nature was the Devil in a strait- waistcoat. 
 Clergymen are Angels similarly attired. There 
 are, and have been, however, great exceptions : 
 Sydney Smith, for example, whom no layman, 
 except perhaps Douglas Jerrold, has ever ex- 
 celled for brightness, and none have equalled 
 for geniality. How much conversation has to
 
 ON CONVEESATION 97 
 
 do with manners may be gathered from the 
 biographies of witty persons. How dull they 
 are! 
 
 Folks talk of ' the art of conversation/ and 
 of course there are some rules which need to be 
 observed by all who would excel in it: to be 
 brief, without curtness ; to avoid any ' talking 
 to the gallery' (but indeed in the sort of 
 company I have in my mind there is no 
 gallery) ; to give and take. But the fact is, 
 conversation is a gift of nature ; when artificial, 
 it is never really good. The disposition must 
 be genial, the wit ready and keen, but of the 
 kind that ' never carries a heart-stain away on 
 its blade'; the humour abundant, but always 
 arising from the situation; not pumped up, 
 but a natural flow ; there must be a quick 
 sympathy, and, above all, the desire to please. 
 
 \j
 
 ON TAKING OFFENCE
 
 ON TAKING OFFENCE 
 
 IN a social point of view, when you have said 
 that a man is an offensive fellow, you have 
 said the worst of him, or that can be said. He 
 may be in his private capacity a forger or, as is 
 much more likely, a murderer ; but, so far as 
 his attitude to society is concerned, the revela- 
 tion of that circumstance would put him in 
 no worse position : on the contrar}^, while his 
 character would in nowise be deteriorated, 
 it would invest him with a certain dramatic 
 interest, and, even if the worst came to the 
 worst, it would be very pleasant to see him 
 hanged. 
 
 Every one knows an offensive fellow at the 
 first glance : he can no more conceal his dis- 
 position than the skunk can deodorise himself; 
 in nine cases out of ten indeed it is evident in 
 his face, the expression of which, like a tavern- 
 sign, unfortunately frank, informs us that sour 
 
 101
 
 102 ON TAKING OFFENCE 
 
 wine is sold within ; but if not, he has only to 
 open his mouth and out flies the truth about 
 him; for this hateful creature always prefers 
 to say a disagreeable thing to you instead of an 
 agreeable one, and cannot hold his tongue. 
 
 To this class belong bullies and backbiters, 
 in whose favour no one has a word to say, and 
 at whose decease the very ingrates move their 
 tardy lips in thankfulness. Under these cir- 
 cumstances it seems strange that the adjec- 
 tive ' inoffensive ' should not carry more praise 
 with it ; whereas when applied to one's fellow- 
 creatures it has rather a contemptuous signifi- 
 cance. The term 'good-natured' is not very 
 eulogistic; as the poet most familiar to my 
 boyhood rather abruptly observes. 
 
 Oh ! what is mere Good-nature but a Fool ? 
 
 but ' Inoffensiveness,' if personified and de- 
 scribed in song, would probably come off even 
 worse. The explanation of this is, no doubt, 
 that every one, it is felt, should have what is 
 called 'a kick in him'; the capability, not 
 indeed of giving offence, but, if it is offered to 
 us, of giving it back again. There are degrees
 
 ON TAKING OFFENCE 103 
 
 between the hornet and the humble-bee, and 
 every one should have a stmg in his tail, ready 
 for use on occasion. 
 
 I cannot help thinking, however, that there 
 is another reason for the depreciation of in- 
 offensive folk. They have such a want of 
 self-assertion that they never give the least 
 ground for quarrel. And though it is only the 
 morose and evil-disposed who like a grudge, 
 there are a good many of us who like a 
 grievance. To take offence where no offence 
 is meant, and where they know none is meant, 
 is also a great joy to some natures ; and these 
 naturally resent a state of things wherein, even 
 by the utmost ingenuity, the intention of hurt- 
 ing their feelings cannot be imputed. 
 
 To the grievance-monger there is nothing so 
 objectionable as an explanation. It is putting 
 out the fire beside which he nurses his wrath 
 and keeps it warm. In the atmosphere of his 
 discontent, his wrong has assumed gigantic 
 proportions, and it is very disagreeable to sec 
 it melt away in the wholesome air of common- 
 sense. When we see a play on the stage built 
 up on sotik; misunderstanding which tlirco
 
 104 ON TAKING OFFENCE 
 
 words would dissipate, we exclaim 'How 
 absurd ! Ho"v^ unnatural ! ' but these people 
 weave a life-drania for themselves out of these 
 very materials, and take their pleasure in a 
 ^ maze of feelinGcs warranted of their own manu- 
 facture. They are always on the look-out for 
 slights; a depreciatory observation, a glance 
 which can be construed to imply contempt, is 
 at once furnished with a personal application, 
 and provides them with their desideratum; 
 even silence has been known to furnish it. 
 The ' Hurt ' family, to which they belong, has 
 many branches, but the type is the same 
 throughout. If fortune, so far from being 
 'outrageous,' has neither strings nor arrows, 
 there are at least nettles to be found, and they 
 proceed to divest themselves of their last 
 garment and roll in them. Nothing is more 
 amusing than to see these people unexpectedly 
 confronted with a real grievance: some ele- 
 phantine person who is accustomed to put 
 his foot down, and is not particular where he 
 puts it. They are like boys who, ' ranging the 
 woods to start a hare,' come on a sudden upon 
 a fierce old bear, who 'lies amid bones and
 
 ON TAKING OFFENCE 105 
 
 blood.' The homoeopatliic remedy which the 
 schoolmaster applies to whining children — the 
 'giving them something to cry for' — is most 
 efficacious. It must be said, however, for this 
 class of persons, that they are ready enough to 
 accept an apology ; which indeed does them no 
 harm, since they can discover a new cause of 
 offence within the next five minutes. 
 
 A much more contemptible variety is to be 
 found in those who refuse to be conciliated ; 
 who will not take those words, alike gentle 
 and simple, ' I am sorry,' in the sense in which 
 they are uttered. This generally arises from 
 petty egotism ; the sense of quarrel seems to 
 invest them with a certain importance, which 
 they have no other means of attaining; they 
 prefer to be unreasonable, and therefore to 
 some extent extraordinary, rather than to 
 return to their original position of insignifi- 
 cance. 
 
 There is still a worse class, who seek in 
 discord a channel for their evil temper, which 
 is always at the flood. They have a bad word 
 for everybody, but a particularly l)ad one 
 (which i.s also generally a falsehood) for the
 
 106 ON TAKING OFFENCE 
 
 object of their private rancour. The Corsican, 
 ignorant, idle, and venomous, is the head of 
 this charming family. The art of taking 
 offence in his case is not only carried to the 
 most delicate perfection, but is hereditary. 
 
 Nevertheless, a certain King of Scotland 
 must needs be placed at the head of this pro- 
 fession, inasmuch as ho took offence by proxy. 
 Perceiving one of his courtiers to have lost 
 an eye, he inquired the reason. ' It was put 
 out by accident by a fencing-master,' was the 
 reply. 
 
 ' And is that man alive?' inquired his majesty 
 significantly. 
 
 Whereupon the courtier, recalled to a sense 
 of what was due to himself as a nobleman and 
 a Christian, at once went and murdered the 
 innocent offender. 
 
 It must be remembered in charity that ac- 
 cidents of birth and blood, or even family mis- 
 fortunes, make people quick to take offence. 
 When one's father has been hanged, an allusion 
 to a rope, even by one who has never heard of 
 the deplorable occurrence, is apt to grate on 
 the ear. A personal blemish or deformity will.
 
 ON TAKING OFFENCE 107 
 
 in a sensitive nature, have the same unfor- 
 tunate effect. One of the kindest men I ever 
 knew, and certainly the very last to give 
 offence to any human being, was once a victim 
 to this circumstance. When a boy, he was on 
 the Chain Pier at Brighton with his mother, 
 a lady also of exceptionally gentle nature, 
 when an umbrella blown inside out chanced to 
 excite their mirth. A woman sitting next to 
 them at once arose and favoured them with 
 this amazing speech, ' An ill-bred woman, and 
 a worse taught child ! ' They then perceived 
 for the first time that she had what is called a 
 port-wine stain on her cheek, to Avhich, 1 sup- 
 pose, as in the case of Byron and his club foot, 
 this poor lady imagined that every one was 
 directing their attention. An apology was 
 out of the question ; but 1 am very sure that 
 the child and his parent suffered far more than 
 the injured party. 
 
 Misunderstandings which might easily be 
 rectified arc often followed, in the mean time, 
 by actions which admit of no remedy. In a 
 country town, where \ once lived as a boy, the 
 virulence with which two men hated one
 
 108 ON TAKING OFFENCE 
 
 another was quite a proverb. Mr. A. and Dr. 
 B. had once been intimate friends, and though 
 one was a Tory and the other a Radical, had 
 agreed to difter : they could even afford to rally 
 one another upon the vehemence of their 
 respective opinions. 
 
 ' For all your high and dry principles,' said 
 B., when the news came of Queen Caroline's 
 acquittal, ' you will have to illuminate your 
 house to-night.' 
 
 ' There shall not be a candle,' returned A. 
 defiantly. 
 
 The next morning Dr. B. met his friend, and 
 congratulated him, since the violence of the 
 mob had been very great, that he had thought 
 better of his resolution, and taken the prudent 
 course of lighting up his house. 
 
 ' I did nothing of the kind,' said A. 
 
 ' Then I don't know what you call lighting 
 up ; it was so well done, however, that I hear 
 the mob gave you three cheers.' 
 
 ' That is false,' replied A. excitedly, and — not 
 to go into painful details — a blow was given 
 and returned. 
 
 The fact was that A. had gone out to dinner.
 
 ON TAKING OFFENCE 109 
 
 and his wife, in spite of his injunctions, and 
 preferring unbroken windows to principles 
 intact, had lit up the house, without his know- 
 ledge. A. and B. went to their graves without 
 exchanging another word with each other. 
 
 After all, those who speak with the deliber- 
 ate intention of giving ofi'ence — the ' Roughs ' 
 of polite society — are not numerous. Some 
 women will, however, ' say things ' to persons 
 of their own sex Avhich to our ears sound out- 
 rageous, and would not be tolerated for a 
 moment by men from a man. The reason of 
 this is that, though women have a reputation 
 for badinage (as they have, less deservedly, for 
 ■ tact '), they shrink from all retort, save ' the 
 retort courteous.' They cannot reply when a 
 disagreeable thing is said, ' Well, upon my 
 word, you 're a nice, agreeable, ladylike person, 
 you are ' ; or even, ' Do you really think that 
 remark of yours exhibits the desire, so insisted 
 on by moralists, to increase the happiness of 
 the human family ? ' There are many ways of 
 stopping the mouth of a disagreeable male, 
 besides putting your fist in it, which arc denied 
 to the gentler sex.
 
 110 ON TAKING OFFENCE 
 
 The consciousness of this — of there being no 
 remedy in case of the thing going too far — is 
 perhaps the reason why women do not rally one 
 another, as men do ; with the latter a certain 
 good-humoured chaff, among old friends, is as 
 the bread of life to social intercourse : women 
 chaff the other sex, but not their own. They 
 say ' our tempers will not stand it ; we are less 
 good-natured to one another than you are ' ; 
 but the real cause is, I believe, as I have 
 stated it. 
 
 He who has the wish to please need never 
 fear giving offence; those who take it under 
 such circumstances mistake egotism for self- 
 respect, moroseness for dignity, and are among 
 the chief obstructives to human enjoyment.
 
 TAKING THE WATERS
 
 TAKING THE WATERS 
 
 AUTUMN is the season in which your 
 chronic invalids, the victims chiefly of 
 rhewniatoid arthritis, that new and euphonious 
 term for the old rheumatic gout of our fore- 
 fathers, proceed to take the waters either 
 abroad or at home, and very diverse accounts 
 they give of them. One swears by them, and 
 another swears at them. In this country they 
 are mostly situated in the North, and Scotch- 
 men protest that there is no place like 
 Glenhoulakin (as nearly as I can spell it), 
 where the waters bubble up at exactly the 
 right temperature to make toddy. To the 
 Southerners these places seem ' a little cold for 
 the time of year,' and the water is by no means 
 all suljtcrranean, but comes down from the 
 grey cloufls in sheets. Still, what docs that 
 signify if you arrive like a corkscrew (from the 
 rheumatoul arthritis) and go away like a ram- 
 rod, cured ? This beneficent change, however, 
 
 II
 
 114 TAKING THE WATERS 
 
 even when it does take place, is not immediate. 
 There is first a distinct alteration for the worse, 
 which, unless he has been previously instructed 
 in the matter, considerably alarms the nervous 
 patient. At the Baths of Leuk there is a 
 disfiguring but favourable eruption, called, if I 
 remember right, La Pouss4e, and every one 
 asks you, Avez-vous la Poussde ? which, since 
 it is not necessarily exhibited in the face, is 
 to the modest stranger embarrassing. At our 
 English Baths there is no such indelicate 
 inquiry, because their effect is obvious. The 
 visitor arrives, perhaps without the use of his 
 hands, and after a day or two of bathing and 
 imbibing finds he has also lost the use of his 
 legs : this, he is told, is a very healthy sign, and 
 one on which he is universally congratulated. 
 ' Our waters,' say the inhabitants of these 
 sanatoria, with conscious pride, ' find out what- 
 ever is wrong in the system, and develop it.' 
 
 Some people come to them for pleasure, or to 
 accompany their sick friends, and try a bath or 
 two ' for fun.' Then they are laid up at once 
 with diseases which they had no idea were in 
 their systems, and are told that they ought to
 
 TAKING THE WATERS 115 
 
 be truly thankful for the discovery. What 
 
 they know to be amiss with them is, on the 
 
 other hand, for the time greatly aggravated. 
 
 One of the completest (eventual) cures is said 
 
 to be that of a gentleman whose neck was 
 
 turned half round with the rheumatism, and 
 
 such were the magical powers of the waters 
 
 that in a few days it ' came round ' entirely, but 
 
 the wrong way, and he took a back view of the 
 
 universe. 
 
 His head was turned, and so he chewed 
 His pigtail till he died, 
 
 sang Hood of the sailor, but this gentleman, far 
 from dying, lived to see straight before him and 
 to bless the waters. Some people, however, 
 have not the patience to wait for the cure to 
 take effect, but on the appearance of some 
 unexpected and alarming symptom, and in 
 spite of the confident assurances of the local 
 doctors, secretly take the train for the South, 
 more dead than alive, and telegraph to their 
 wives (who are all for philosophy and per- 
 severance) to follow them at leisure with their 
 luggage. 
 
 The spectacle of the early bather returning
 
 116 TAKING THE WATERS 
 
 up the hotel garden from his abkitions is 
 attractive to those who have only breakfast in 
 view. At 7.30 ho thought himself decently, if 
 not picturesquely, attired in an ulster, a blazer, 
 and a pair of flannels; but that is not his 
 opinion as he meets the gay and glittering 
 throng on their way to the coffee-room. In vain 
 he affects an air of nonchalance, and such speed 
 as his malady admits of; a rash, or something 
 like it, which for once is not a development of 
 the local cure, pervades his features. Other 
 and less energetic invalids are drinking the 
 waters out of soda-water bottles, which, it being 
 a wet morning, they have sent down to the 
 magic well to be filled. This is, however, a 
 practice frowned upon by the faculty, while the 
 early bather who, it is needless to say, goes in 
 person for his drink wins their approving smile. 
 Moreover, as with the case of the healing powers 
 of a still more famous pool, precedence is a 
 question of importance, for in the season there 
 is a great demand for baths. First come is first 
 served, and the midday dipper has oftentimes 
 to wait, a process much resented by all victims 
 of the prevailing complaint, and even others.
 
 TAKING THE WATERS 117 
 
 It is a question whether it is better that the 
 sick and the hale at these health-resorts should 
 dwell together or apart. At present each 
 monster hotel contains its share of both. It 
 is, no doubt, a hindrance to recovery and an 
 additional weight to depression to have none 
 but one's fellow-invalids about one ; but, on the 
 other hand, it arouses envy in the sick man's 
 breast to see his neighbours taking sparkling 
 wines at the table d'hute while his doctor 
 restricts him to whisky and soda. It must be 
 confessed, however, that considerable delicacy 
 is exhibited. At the whist- table, which is 
 common to both parties, a player is said on one 
 occasion to have apologised to his rheumatic 
 companions for being able to deal — an operation 
 performed in their case by deputy in the person 
 of one of the hotel pages. Some of the worst 
 cases are the most cheerful. ' As for markers,' 
 says the jolly old colonel, who is justly the 
 favourite of our establishment, when the whist 
 party were waiting for them, 'except for the 
 look of the thing, we can do without them, for 
 we have all got our chalk-stones.' 
 
 What is touching at these health-resorts is
 
 118 TAKING THE WATERS 
 
 to see round the smooth bowling-greens the 
 ranks of Bath chairs with their occupants 
 evidently mindful of their own past exploits 
 with the 'wood,' and wondering whether the 
 waters will ever enable them to stoop to con- 
 quer again. That, and to feed the pigeons, is 
 all that most of us are good for, but, as our 
 cheerful colonel observes, ' feeding the pigeons 
 is at all events better than feeding the worms.' 
 This philosophy we all admire, but it is a very 
 dift"erent matter when a visitor who has nothing 
 the matter with him ventures to joke about 
 our little ailments. Like the Greenwich pen- 
 sioners of old as regarded the Hospital, we 
 may abuse our health-resort ourselves, but 
 exceedingly resent any criticism of it by out- 
 siders. Some of our weaker or more impatient 
 brethren may lack faith, but that only renders 
 the intrusion of the avowed sceptic more 
 intolerable. Would it be credited that, on 
 one tempestuous morning, when we had all 
 sent down our soda-water bottles to the life- 
 giving spring, and were waiting for them in the 
 great hall, a would-be facetious person had the 
 ill-taste to quote aloud the famous Cheltenham
 
 TAKING THE WATERS 119 
 
 epitaph, with the name of our health-resort 
 substituted for that of the Gloucestershire 
 Spa: — 
 
 Here lies I and my two daughters, 
 
 All through drinking of these blessed waters ; 
 
 If we had stuck to Epsom salts 
 
 We 'd not have been lying in these here vaults ! 
 
 I need not point out the extreme vulgarity 
 ol the last three words, but it Avas the applica- 
 tion of the thing that offended us so. Anything 
 more improper and inappropriate it is difficult to 
 conceive. There may have been cases where the 
 waters may not have 'carried off' everything, 
 as the guide-book assures us they do, but the 
 idea of their being capable of carrying off a 
 visitor was, we felt, most offensive. Jokers of 
 this kind should not be admitted to hotels, or 
 at all events be charged for at an increased 
 tariff ; but when we expressed an opinion to this 
 effect, this facetious person declared that in his 
 case it would have made no difference, since he 
 was not at all a joker at home, but supposed the 
 complaint had been dormant in his system, and 
 that the drinking of the waters had brought it 
 out. Our old soldier protested that it was
 
 120 TAKING THE WATERS 
 
 impossible to be angry with an individual 
 capable of thus excusing himself, but as a 
 matter of fact we were angry. 
 
 The hotel legends illustrative of the cure are 
 various. The most agreeable is perhaps the 
 story of the Wreck. The Wreck was a young 
 fellow who arrived at the watering-place a 
 cripple and a skeleton. His youth and melan- 
 choly condition (for, of course, he got worse 
 and worse) attracted all feminine hearts from 
 the fourth floor to the first ; they hung about 
 his couch and helped to wheel his Bath chair ; 
 some of them read novels and some of them 
 read sermons to him, according to their 
 dispositions. It was understood that he was 
 bound for an early grave, so that there could be 
 no harm, though pity is said to be akin to love, 
 in pitying him. In due time, however, the 
 waters made him well, and then there were 
 dreadful scenes. He was an honourable young 
 man, however, and married — one at a time, of 
 course — as many of his admirers as he could, 
 beginning (to give the rest as good a chance as 
 possible) with the eldest. 
 
 On the other hand, another young fellow,
 
 TAKING THE WATERS 121 
 
 apparently in the best of health, arrived at the 
 hotel with his beloved object and her family, 
 intending to spend a fortnight with them before 
 his marriage. He took a glass or two of the 
 waters, doubtless in her honour, for she was by 
 all accounts a lass who would have been 'an 
 excuse for a glass ' of almost anything, and in 
 ten days he was a cripple. After a season or 
 two he not only became completely cured, but 
 more healthy than ever, only in the mean- 
 time the lady got tired of waiting for him, 
 and married somebody else. 
 
 They have a theory at these health-resorts 
 that though the waters may do you no good 
 while you are dipping and drinking, they 
 improve you wonderfully when you get home. 
 This is somewhat akin to the assurance of those 
 high-flying educationalists who tell us that 
 though we may have learnt nothing particular 
 when at college, it has taught us to educate our- 
 selves after we have left it. If a patient can 
 thus be got out of the place in a hopeful frame 
 of mind, it is almost as good — for the health- 
 resort — as making him well, which completes 
 the parallel.
 
 GETTING INTO PRINT
 
 GETTING INTO PRINT 
 
 SOLOMON tells us tliat there is nothing 
 new under the sun; but he spoke from 
 insufficient data. When he enumerates the 
 various vanities to which human nature is 
 subject, he omits to mention the desire of 
 seeing oneself in print, because that desire 
 was born a good many years after his time. 
 The exact date is not known, but it was 
 probably not very much after 1252, in which 
 year printing was invented. That there should 
 be nothing said about this natural yearning 
 in any ancient publication is not to the point, 
 because each writer obviously must have ob- 
 tained his wish, and no doubt forgot all about 
 it as soon as it was gratified. It is difficult 
 to imagine any one yearning to have his 
 thoughts appear in black-letter; but Leigh 
 Hunt, in his charitable, delightful way, con- 
 tends that even the habit of cutting one's 
 
 125
 
 126 GETTING INTO PRINT 
 
 initials on historical memorials and on trees 
 is not only natural but even commendable, 
 since it arises from the desire for fame on the 
 part of those who have no other means of 
 obtaining it. Only a few people read black- 
 letter and initials on trees, and in neither case 
 was there any honorariwni for the author. 
 Indeed, to do it justice, the desire of seeing 
 oneself in print has no association with the 
 lust of gain; in its first bloom, at least, it is 
 as far removed from all considerations of lucre 
 as is the desire of the youthful savage for his 
 first scalp. And yet one cannot say that the 
 motive is solely honour and glory. There is 
 a good deal of egotism, and perhaps not a 
 little vanity, in the matter. As the young 
 warrior is admired by the squaws for being 
 ' decorated ' with that proof of his prowess, so 
 the young writer with his first 'proof receives 
 the congratulations of his female friends. He 
 has emerged from the ruck of mankind, and 
 become an author. 
 
 Upon this it may justly be observed that 
 in nine cases out of ten he had much better 
 not have emerged ; but then, unless this had
 
 GETTING INTO PRINT 127 
 
 happened in the tenth case, even the man of 
 genius would never have become an author at 
 all. There are similar objections to marriage ; 
 but the world must be peopled, and though 
 the great majority of us are not worth much, 
 a few are valuable members of society, and it 
 would be a pity to nip them in the bud. At 
 all events here we are, and that being so, those 
 that have brought us into the world are bound 
 to do the best for us. The same reasoning 
 appUes to the desire of seeing oneself in 
 print; it may be a morbid ambition, but the 
 thing exists, and those who harbour it increase 
 and multiply. Under these circumstances, it 
 is perhaps only reasonable that one who has 
 been the literary godfather of a good many 
 beginners should offer aspirants a few words 
 of advice. 
 
 I take it for granted that the aspiration of 
 the would-be man of letters is of modest 
 dimensions — that he wishes to contribute 
 something to a periodical, and not to publish 
 a book. Indeed, if he be a rich man, he will 
 not, in the latter case, need any help. Any 
 fool can bring out a book if lie is aljle to pay
 
 128 GETTING INTO PRINT 
 
 for its publication. People with literary pro- 
 clivities are, however, generally poor; and 
 moreover, it must be remembered that the 
 author of a volume need not obtain even a 
 single reader, whereas the contributor of an 
 article to a magazine has at least a good chance 
 of finding some among its many subscribers. 
 The mere seeing oneself in print, though no 
 doubt a delightful experience, is not very 
 satisfactory unless we can get other people to 
 look at us. 
 
 I do not pretend, of course, to suggest the 
 character of the composition; if that — with 
 one exception, however — does not suggest itself 
 to the writer, his chance is small indeed. The 
 exception is poetry. Almost all persons who 
 have made their mark in the world of letters 
 have begun as poets ; they echo more or less 
 harmoniously the songs of their favourite bards ; 
 they think they are going to die young (though 
 not before they have made themselves immortal 
 by their touching verses), and take melancholy 
 leave of a world with which they have not yet 
 made acquaintance. It is very difficult to 
 persuade these ' one-foot-in-the-grave-young-
 
 GETTING INTO PRINT 129 
 
 men,' as Mr. Gilbert calls them, to take any 
 counsel from anybody. Their genius knows 
 no law and needs no teaching. Still, I would 
 venture to suggest to them that if they want 
 to appear in print, they had better not, just 
 at first, write epics, hundreds of lines of blank 
 verse, nor indeed blank verse at all ; an editor's 
 face is apt to reflect the blank. I need hardl}- 
 say that they should not write five-act plays. 
 Translations of the Odes of Horace, also, 
 perhaps they will permit me to suggest, are 
 not recommendations in themselves on the 
 score of novelty. 
 
 I suppose a poet would hardly think of 
 sending his lucubrations to the Mechanic's 
 Magazine or the Political Economist, but the 
 prose writer in embryo knows nothing of 
 anomaly and inappropriateness. It is quite 
 amazing how he leaves out of the question 
 the suitability of his contribution to the pub- 
 lication which he proposes to patronise; he 
 thinks only of the harmony of his own com- 
 position, and not at all of its adaptability to 
 the ' organ ' to which he sends it. Yet this is 
 a most important consideration. First iin- 
 
 I
 
 130 GETTING INTO PRINT 
 
 prcssions arc almost as valuable in literature 
 as in art ; and what sort of an opinion must 
 an editor form of a contributor who has not 
 taken the trouble to study the character of 
 his magazine, and has perhaps even addressed 
 it under a wrong title ? To send along with 
 his contribution a letter of several pages, con- 
 taining a little biography of himself, with a 
 passing reference to his ancestors, and conclud- 
 ing with his literary aspirations, is a form of 
 self-introduction often used by the young 
 author, but one which I do not recommend. 
 The contribution should speak for itself. 
 There is even a worse plan than this, namely, 
 the calling with it in person and demanding 
 an interview, with the object of explaining it 
 viva voce. This is indeed what Artemus Ward 
 used to call ' a high-handed outrage in Utica ' 
 to all editorial feeling. It is not to be denied 
 that in the case of a young and pretty female 
 contributor this scheme may have its advan- 
 tages; but I protest even against that as 
 manifestly unfair. By all means send a letter 
 with your article, but let it be a very short 
 one; write your name and address on your
 
 GETTING INTO PPJNT 131 
 
 manuscript ; enclose stamps, but not a stamped 
 envelope (that is really too tempting for human 
 nature) ; and, in a word, give your editor as 
 little trouble as possible. 
 
 The question of private introductions is a 
 difficult one. It is right to hold as a literary 
 dogma that ' an editor has no friends ' — though 
 it seems rather hard upon him, since he makes 
 so many enemies, — but this must be taken with 
 a grain of salt. Of course he has friends, and 
 unfortunately some very injudicious ones. 
 They not only worry him often with very 
 sad stuff" of their own, but encourage their 
 friends to shoot their rubbish at him. It is 
 hardly to be expected that those who are 
 consumed by such a passionate desire as that 
 of appearing in print will be so chivalrous as 
 Adelaide Procter, who, though well known to 
 Dickens, always sent her contributions to 
 Household Words anonymously and written 
 by an amanuensis ; but they should not abuse 
 their friendship with an editor, however much 
 they may privately abuse him. In nine cases 
 out of ten he is not the jiroprictor of the 
 periodical he conducts, and they should re-
 
 132 GETTING INTO PEINT 
 
 member, in requesting him to stretch a point 
 in their favour, that he must do it at another 
 person's expense. One cannot expect them, 
 being human, not to take advantage of their 
 'pull'; but I would counsel them to pull 
 gently, and if the bell is not answered, not to 
 pull more than half a dozen times. 
 
 While we are on these delicate matters, I 
 would also respectfully suggest that a letter 
 sent as an avant-courier by a total stranger, 
 requesting to know how much the editor pays 
 a page, is not as a rule an epistle of recom- 
 mendation as regards the promised manuscript. 
 To send a story ' by the author of ' a great 
 many other stories, which, ten to one, the 
 editor never heard of, or to add to the writer's 
 name ' contributor to ' the Sunday S'py, the 
 Saturday Sledge-hammer, or some other 
 periodical little known to fame, is also a bad 
 plan. It is something like putting A. S. S. 
 after one's name, which, in default of the 
 initials of some really learned or well thought 
 of society, had better be omitted. 
 
 Unless he has really nothing else to write 
 about, let the man who has a passion to appear
 
 GETTING INTO PEINT 133 
 
 in print avoid 'recollections of travel.' All 
 the world travels nowadays, and a writer of 
 exceptional talent is required to invest the 
 subject with interest. To describe in detail 
 what a bad breakfast you got at some place 
 in Asia Minor, or how you had to wait for 
 dinner among the Crim Tartars, is very little 
 more interesting than the same incident in 
 New York or London. If the writer has had 
 an exceptional experience — was driven, for 
 example, to cat a Crim Tartar — this observation 
 of course does not apply; but your ordinary 
 traveller, though he often bores you to death, 
 is rarely a cannibal. Another subject to be 
 avoided is translations. It is quite remarkable 
 how, at a time when there is nothing extra- 
 ordinary in the possession of half a dozen 
 languages, people continue to plume them- 
 selves upon their knowledge of French and 
 German. To make a translation interesting 
 requires not only a good subject, but one that 
 recommends itself to the taste of English 
 readers, and an intelligent as well as accom- 
 plished adaptor, who can free himself from 
 trammels (the style of progression of most
 
 134 GETTING INTO PRINT 
 
 translations being that of jumping in sacks). 
 But even when all is done, and done well, a 
 translation is generally but a poor thing. 
 
 It may not unnaturally be remarked that 
 this advice to would-be authors is mostly of 
 the negative kind ; but that is from the 
 necessity of the case. I cannot picture to 
 myself, though I have very often been asked 
 to do so, the particular line that a young 
 writer's genius may happen to take. His turn 
 of mind may be humorous, in which case let 
 him avoid flippancy; or dramatic, when he 
 must steer clear of too much ' sensation,' or he 
 will be humorous without intending it; he 
 may be theological, artistic, or Heaven knows 
 what. But whatever he writes about, let him 
 write legibly. Editors are not so nmch in 
 want of contributions that they will waste 
 their eyesight over manuscripts which, twenty 
 chances to one, will never repay their pains. 
 Moreover, in these typewriting times there is 
 no sort of excuse for it. For a few shillings 
 anything can now be copied so clearly that 
 it is almost as good as print, while a duplicate 
 of the article is at the same time retained. If
 
 GETTING INTO PRINT 135 
 
 the writer loses his would-be contribution in 
 the post, it at once becomes ' invaluable,' just 
 as when a trout gets off" one's hook we im- 
 mediately persuade ourselves that it was the 
 biggest fish in the river. 
 
 As a general rule, the best thing to which 
 a young writer can apply his wits is a descrip- 
 tion of some personal experience of his own. 
 The more remarkable it is, of course, the better, 
 since the less he will have to rely upon ex- 
 cellence of treatment to make it interesting. 
 It is far easier to describe than to imagine, to 
 recall an incident to memory than to invent 
 one. Some persons, like Single-speech Hamilton 
 in another line, have acquitted themselves 
 admirably in this way just once, and never 
 entered the lists of literature again — an example 
 not encouraging to quote, but their desire to 
 see themselves in print at least is gratified. 
 
 The neophyte in letters should give as little 
 introductory matter as possible; there is 
 nothing like a preface for putting an editor 
 out of temper. He exclaims to himself, with 
 Hamlet, 'Why does not this fellow leave off' 
 making his (lamnablc faces and begin V Only
 
 136 GETTING INTO PIUNT 
 
 a very few people can perform in literature 
 what is called in military drill ' marking time ' ; 
 the writer should make haste to get on with 
 his story. If he can open with a striking 
 scene, so much the better ; but this necessitates 
 a somewhat high level of interest throughout. 
 It must not be his only dramatic situation; 
 and he must be very careful to keep what the 
 postboys call ' a gallop for the avenue ' — some- 
 thing good to finish with. It disappoints an 
 editor very much to find a narrative which 
 had at first favourably impressed him 'fizzle 
 out' like a spent firework. The true story- 
 teller always keeps his ' finis ' in mind, and 
 leads up to it from the first. 
 
 I would impress also another thing upon the 
 neophyte in story-telling — that he must have 
 a story to tell. It is no use for him to write 
 aimlessly and trust to 'inspiration,' as he 
 wildly calls it, to provide him with interesting 
 material. The mistake of the young fictionist 
 is to narrate a series of adventures, at the end 
 of each of which all interest ceases, and he has 
 to begin to weave his web again, when perhaps 
 his flies escape and never give him another
 
 GETTING INTO PEINT 137 
 
 chance of catching them. He makes very hard 
 work for the reader, who has no momentum to 
 carry him up the next hill. 
 
 The personal introduction of the writer into 
 his story is also much to bo deprecated ; it will 
 take all he knows to give vraisemblance to his 
 little drama, and he should be careful not to 
 endanger it by showing his head before the 
 curtain. True, Thackeray did it, but we are 
 not so curious to see every writer as we were 
 to see Thackeray. 
 
 The placing the scene of a story in a foreign 
 land is always disadvantageous. It may be 
 mere ignorance which causes untravelled readers 
 to prefer stories of their own land, but such is 
 the fact. They feel the same want of reality 
 in stories of foreign countries as in a fairy tale. 
 All editors know this, and look askance at 
 such productions. This is still more true of 
 the historical story. Mr. Blackmore, it is true, 
 has delighted us all with his Lorna Doone, and 
 Mr. Besant with his Chcqdain of the Fleet, but 
 the gentleman whose desire is to appear in print 
 is not likely to be cither a Blackmore or a 
 Besant at starting. At one time, thanks to
 
 138 GETTING INTO PKINT 
 
 Walter Scott, there was a rage for stories of the 
 middle ages, but that has utterly died out. 
 Even genius such as dwelt in George Eliot was 
 unable to contend against the two drawbacks 
 of a distant scene and a distant age, as in 
 Romola, which, notwithstanding its great 
 merits, never obtained the popularity of her 
 home novels. ' This may be a faithful picture 
 of life and manners as they once existed,' says 
 the reader to himself, 'but I have only the 
 author's word for it ; I prefer something of the 
 truth of which I can judge for myself.' A very 
 uncultured view of matters, no doubt, but not 
 an unnatural one, and for my own part I con- 
 fess I sympathise with it. Many a famous 
 writer, such as the authors of Hereward and 
 The Last of the Barons, for example, has broken 
 his strong teeth over this file. For similar 
 reasons, but also because it smacks of affecta- 
 tion and shows poverty of expression, a writer 
 should never interlard his dialogue with French 
 phrases ; it is quite as offensive to use them in 
 writing as in conversation. A still worse 
 vulgarity is the frequent use of italics. It 
 evinces a want of sense of proportion — a thing
 
 GETTING INTO PPJNT 139 
 
 of great importance in composition — and sets 
 an editor who knows his business almost as 
 much against a manuscript as bad speUing. 
 
 A very common practice with young writers 
 is to indicate the names of their locahties, and 
 sometimes even of their characters, by an 
 initial letter. Their imagination must indeed 
 be at a low ebb to be reduced to such a strait 
 as this. It is difficult to interest an editor in 
 
 what goes on ' at W , in 18 — ,' and still more 
 
 so in the amatory passages between ' Mr. A ' 
 
 and ' Miss B .' This method of expression 
 
 may arise from extreme delicacy of mind ; but 
 I am afraid, as in physical matters, the delicacy 
 involves a certain weakness. Again, it may be 
 due to modesty that some young writers never 
 express themselves Avith certainty, but always 
 put in an ' almost ' or a * perhaps ' in their state- 
 ments, which has the same undesirable effect 
 as adding water to skimmed milk. These arc 
 trifles, but it is possible that the whole con- 
 tribution may bo a trifle, and only preserved 
 from rejection by its freedom from these irritat- 
 ing drawbacks. ' The service of the Creator,' 
 once observed a certain divine to a younger
 
 140 GETTING INTO PRINT 
 
 member of the same profession, of whose 
 acquirements he was somewhat jealous, ' stands 
 in no need of our wisdom ' ; to which the other 
 not unreasonably rejoined, 'But it still less 
 stands in need of our folly ' ; and even in less 
 important matters, such as literature, it is 
 worth v/hile to avoid affectation, carelessness, 
 and insolence. 
 
 Genius has been described as 'an infinite 
 capacity for taking pains,' and even without 
 genius an aspirant to literary honours is likely to 
 be successful precisely in proportion to the care 
 and attention he gives to every portion of the 
 work he has set himself to do. The best motto, 
 indeed, for the disciple of literature is, ' Take 
 pains,' and not the more frequently inculcated 
 maxim, 'Try again.' Perseverance is in most 
 cases a necessity; but all the perseverance in 
 the world, and even all the taking pains, are 
 useless unless the aspirant has some natural 
 gift. His case is not that of Bruce's spider, 
 who had only to try often enough to obtain his 
 object ; it is more often that of the moth in the 
 candle, which consumes itself 'in fruitless 
 flame.' In almost all other things the old
 
 GETTING INTO PRINT 141 
 
 provincial proverb, ' It is dogged as does it/ 
 holds good; but it is not so in letters. The 
 conclusion of the undergraduate, plucked in 
 many examinations, who, 'at last disgusted, 
 took and cussed it, and didn't try again,' is one 
 which he who has a desire to see himself in 
 print is very loath to come to. He prefers to 
 think that there is a universal conspiracy to 
 suppress his genius. Yet if what he writes is 
 really good, is it reasonable to suppose that a 
 dozen editors, one after another, would reject 
 it, when the very thing they are looking for, 
 for their own sakes, is a good contribution. 
 The want of this, in fact, is almost the sole 
 reason why so many bad ones find their way 
 into print. The editor does not care one penny 
 whether his would-be contributor is old or 
 young, rich or poor, saint or sinner, but only 
 about his article being acceptable. Nay, as 
 one who ' knows the ropes ' has well expressed 
 it, he is ' apt to overvalue the merely readable 
 work of an unknown hand, because even 
 mediocrity shines out against the general 
 average of volunteered contributions.' More- 
 over, there arc ' dead seasons,' when good work
 
 142 GETTING INTO PRINT 
 
 comes sparely in, and he is obliged to provide 
 against thorn by occasionally accepting what 
 is not quite up to the mark. 
 
 Nevertheless, the inveterate persistence of 
 the 'rejected' has to mc, who have known 
 hundreds of such cases, something very pathetic 
 about it. They cannot understand why this 
 passionate desire of theirs to appear in print 
 can never be gratified ; and when at last they 
 recognise that all is over, so far as one editor 
 is concerned, who may have rejected them with 
 unusual tenderness, they naively ask him to 
 recommend them by letter to another: 'This 
 gentleman is not good enough for my periodical, 
 but is admirably adapted for yours.' 
 
 There is no more unpleasant, and, too often, 
 no more unthankful task, than, in answer to 
 some last appeal of one who has mistaken his 
 profession, to tell him the honest truth ; it is a 
 pill that is very difficult to silver. Yet editors 
 have sometimes even more painful duties. A 
 great author once found his editor looking very 
 grave and embarrassed. ' I have got to write 
 to a man,' he explained, ' to tell him his stories 
 will not suit us.' ' Well, I suppose it is not the
 
 GETTING INTO PEINT 143 
 
 first time you have had to do that.' ' Of course 
 
 not, but this is S ,' naming a writer of great 
 
 eminence. The author stood aghast. 'Yes,' 
 continued the editor, 'he has broken down; 
 there is no more meat on his bones, and it is 
 rather difficult to tell him so.' Terrible news 
 indeed ; and yet unless Death — a chambermaid 
 who sometimes oversleeps herself — raps at our 
 door in good time, news that must one day be 
 brought to every one of us.
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 K
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 I HAVE for years been subject to inquiries 
 from persons utterly unlvnown to me 
 (except that their name is Legion) as to how 
 fame and fortune (but especially the latter) 
 are to be won by writing novels. The college 
 where the art of ' How to write fiction ' is to be 
 taught, though well ventilated, is not yet, it 
 appears, built. There are professors, but they 
 have not regularly set to work ; they resemble 
 Ministers without portfolios, a class of states- 
 men the nature of whom is a puzzle to many 
 persons ; there are even books — handbooks, 
 primers — published on this subject, but they 
 do not seem to have fullillcd their mission as 
 guides to the Temple of Fame. Modesty and 
 probability alike suggest that no advice of mine 
 will be more successful. The service demanded 
 of me is, in fact, rather a large order. The idea 
 seems to bu that the profcssiun of a novelist 
 
 117
 
 148 THE COMrLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 (though, Heaven knows, we are no conjurers) is 
 similar to that of those prestidigitateurs who, 
 after a performance, are prepared for a con- 
 sideration to inform the curious how it is done. 
 Still, as the inquirers are so numerous, and as 
 that section of the public (though fast diminish- 
 ing) which does not write novels seems also to 
 take an interest in the subject, I propose to 
 give a hint or two on it which may probably 
 prove serviceable. The theme itself is by no 
 means dull, and has features in it which are 
 even amusing. I need not say that the cor- 
 respondents who ask, 'How to write fiction,' 
 though they have probably written reams of it, 
 have published nothing. When a man — and 
 especially a woman — has done that, he wants 
 advice from nobody, and exceedingly resents it 
 being offered. These, however, are all Peris 
 (most of them female ones) standing more or 
 less ' disconsolate ' at the gate of Eden (situated 
 in Paternoster Row), whose 'crystal bar' has 
 proved immovable even to their tears. 
 
 'How shall I sit down to write a novel?' 
 inquires one pathetically, who obviously desires 
 instruction from the very beginning. There is
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 149 
 
 a greater choice about this than she probabl}^ 
 imagines. I knew one novelist who, while 
 pursuing his trade, never sat down at all, but 
 stood at a desk — which is how, not his legs, but 
 his shoulders ' got bowed.' Another walks ' to 
 and fro ' (like the Devil) seeking for ideas. A 
 bishop, the other day, revealed to us the fact 
 that he always wrote on his knees; but the 
 work, we conclude, was a devotional one, and 
 not a novel. One popular story-teller, to my 
 personal knowledge, used to write upon his 
 stomach (i.e. lying upon it), with his reference 
 books around him, like a sea beast among rocks. 
 This preliminary settled, however, my fair 
 inquisitress asks me how to begin. This is an 
 inquiry the importance of which is apt to be 
 underrated, and, though an initial one, should 
 not be the first. The first should be : ' What 
 shall I Avritc about ? ' It is amazing how many 
 of our story-tellers, and especially of the female 
 ones, begin story-telling without having a story 
 to tell. They start off, often at great speed, 
 and sometimes too fast, but in no particular 
 direction. ' Where are you going to, my pretty 
 maid?' is a question which, in their turn,
 
 150 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 might be asked of them. They are certainly 
 not ' going a-milking,' if their milch cow is the 
 public. It is fair to say, however, that almost 
 all beginners, whether male or female, fall into 
 this error. Yet it is only geniuses who can 
 write brilliantly about nothing. ' There is no 
 preparation, there is no mechanique,' is a state- 
 ment only applicable to great magicians. Think 
 how the greatest novelists have, sooner or later, 
 had to give their attention to plot ! There have 
 been, of course, some very fine character-novels, 
 but these have not been written by beginners ; 
 to delineate character requires above all things 
 experience and observation. As a general rule 
 the advice that should be given to all budding 
 novelists is : ' Don't be in a hurry to blow. If 
 you have no story to tell, wait till you get one.' 
 The necessity indeed of having the plot of 
 one's novel — or at all events the skeleton of it 
 — arranged beforehand, is surely as obvious, 
 when one comes to think of it, as that of 
 knowing the lines of a ship, or the plan of a 
 building, before commencing their construction. 
 Few of us, having determined to build our own 
 houses without the aid of an architect, have
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 151 
 
 not come to grief; I know one enterprising 
 person who forgot the stairs. If you only want 
 a bungalow — a cottage on the ground floor — 
 of course, this doesn't so much matter ; and 
 similarly, the smaller the story the less there 
 need be of plot ; but some sort of plan to work 
 upon — subject to alteration, and with plenty 
 of room for additions — you must have. The 
 question, of course, arises: How to get it? 
 But this must be answered by the inquirer 
 himself It must depend upon some incident 
 or circumstance more or less dramatic, which 
 has made a deep impression on the writer's 
 mind ; it may have originated there (which is 
 the better way), or it may have been communi- 
 cated to it, but the impression must be deep. 
 Moreover, it should not be recent ; the longer 
 he reflects upon it, as the cow chews the cud, 
 the more likely he is to succeed with it. Half 
 a dozen lines suffice in the first instance for the 
 germ of the story. They look bald enough, but 
 there are potentialities in them for those who 
 can use them, just as music, the poet tells us, 
 lies in the eggs of the nightingale. As the born 
 story-teller dwells on them, they expand page
 
 152 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 after page. New incidents, new situations, new 
 characters gradually present themselves as in 
 some magic mirror. The two former may bo 
 the oifspring of the imagination, but the latter 
 should owe their being to memory : they should 
 be studies from real life. Great care must, 
 however, be taken to prevent recognition. The 
 appearance, the neighbourhood, the profession 
 of those portrayed should altogether differ from 
 what they are in reality. Great distress of 
 mind as respects this matter has been caused 
 by many an undesigned coincidence, and all 
 traces of personal resemblance should be con- 
 cealed as carefully as an Indian hides his 
 trail. 
 
 Whatever may be the merits of novels of 
 character, it is certain that they do not appeal 
 to the great world of readers as those do which 
 deal with dramatic situations and incidents. 
 As the life of the body is the blood, so the life 
 of the novel is its ' story.' My correspondents 
 seem to treat this as easy to procure ; but they 
 are mistaken. There are many people indeed 
 who protest they have any amount of plots 
 to give away; 'just the very thing to write
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 153 
 
 about ' ; but as John Leech used to say when 
 a poor joke was suggested to him for Punch : 
 ' Admirable indeed, my dear fellow, but it does 
 not lend itself to illustration.' Not one-tenth 
 of the stories suggested by our friends are 
 suitable materials for a novel. 
 
 Singular as it may appear, before the begin- 
 ning of a story is attempted, the writer who 
 wishes to do the best for himself, and is not 
 afraid of taking pains, should fix upon the end 
 of it. However long may be the journey, and 
 tired may be the horses, the post-boy who has 
 any self-respect will always ' keep a gallop for 
 the avenue.' He is well aware of the advantage, 
 as regards remuneration, of leaving a good 
 impression at the last. While as for the post- 
 boy who doesn't know his way, nor even the 
 place for which he is bound, it is obvious that 
 ho doesn't understand his business. I am con- 
 vinced that the best novels, not ' sensational ' 
 ones only, but those of sustained interest, have 
 been composed, so to speak, backwards. The 
 having the denouement, perhaps the catas- 
 trophe, well on one's mind from the first, is a 
 precaution similar to that which is taken by a
 
 154 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 public speaker who, whatever he forgets, is care- 
 ful not to lose sight of his peroration. He well 
 knows that is what he has to lead up to, and 
 that upon the nature of it will chiefly depend 
 his success. However well he may have got on 
 up to that point, if his conclusion is lame and 
 impotent, his speech will be a failure. More- 
 over, the foreknowledge of the end suggests 
 much of the proper course of events in a story. 
 This is hardly to be understood by one who is 
 not a novelist. Perhaps I may be forgiven the 
 apparent egotism of an allusion to Lost Sir 
 Massingherd — a small thing, but mine own — 
 to which I venture to allude only as an 
 illustration. 
 
 An ancient tree, which though perfect to the 
 eye was hollow, suggested a novel method of 
 disappearance. A man might climb into it and 
 fall through, hands over head, without possi- 
 bility of extrication. Only his muffled cries for 
 help might be heard in the wood for hours 
 without recognition. This was obviously not a 
 position in which to leave one's hero, but a very 
 good way of disposing of one's villain. The 
 wicked baronet of the story was drawn from
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 155 
 
 life ; but he never would have been drawn at 
 all except for the tree. He was buried — not 
 in elm, if I remember right, but in oak — before 
 he was born. In thinking the story out before 
 putting pen to paper, the other characters 
 introduced themselves quite naturally. 
 
 If the conclusion of a story occurs to one 
 as striking and dramatic, it must not be put 
 aside, of course, on the ground of its being 
 melancholy; but as a general rule I would 
 warn young novelists against ' bad endings ' ; 
 it is their weakness to indulge in them just 
 as it is that of young poets to rhyme about 
 premature death. Youth has the ' trick of 
 melancholy.' A few readers may sympathise 
 with this feeling, but the majority exceedingly 
 resent an unhappy termination to a story in 
 which they have been interested. Some persons 
 wiU not open a novel suspected of this draw- 
 back, and I have known even books like the 
 Bride of Lammermoor to remain unread in 
 consequence. What right has a man to pen 
 a story like Turganicff's On ilic Eve to make 
 generations of his fcllow-crcaturcs miserable ? 
 What lesson is there to be learned from it save
 
 156 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 the inscrutable cruelty of Fate ? Who is the 
 better — or even the wiser — for it ? 
 
 Trollope was, on the whole, a kindly writer, 
 but who does not resent the absurd scruples he 
 puts into the mouth of Lily Dale which make 
 the lifelong fidelity of Johmiy Eames futile ? 
 Take, on the other hand, Mrs. Oliphant's equally 
 simple story of A Rose in June. There is 
 sadness enough in it, but how much more 
 naturally and satisfactorily is the course of true 
 love brought to its close. 
 
 At all events, whether the ending is good or 
 bad, it ought to be concealed. There are some 
 readers, indeed, who arc so unprincipled as to 
 look at (what used to be) the third volume first, 
 just as children cannot keep their hands from 
 the dessert when the soup is on the table ; but 
 this conduct is contemptible. Wilkie Collins 
 thought it criminal. I shall never forget his 
 distress of mind when, in the vanity of youth, 
 I boasted to him of how I guessed the secret of 
 The Moonstone at an earlier date than ho had 
 intended. 
 
 The plot of the story having been decided 
 upon, it is advisable to make a skeleton plan of
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 157 
 
 it on large cardboard, with plenty of room for 
 the filling in of such dramatis jJersonoi as are 
 deemed appropriate to it, and any incidents 
 which may occur to the mind as likely to be 
 suitable and attractive. The fictitious names 
 of the characters should be placed side by side 
 with the real ones, that their connection should 
 not be lost sight of, while their idiosyncrasies 
 and other recognisable qualities should be 
 carefully avoided. It may, I hope, not be 
 necessary, but it is still advisable, to warn the 
 neophyte against making use of the unfair 
 advantage which publication gives him to 
 satirise persons who may be obnoxious to him ; 
 this is too often done, in ignorance, perhaps, of 
 the serious consequences that may flow from 
 it ; but it is a most cowardly proceeding, like 
 that of striking with a deadly weapon an 
 unarmed enemy. When a satire becomes 
 personal it is a lampoon. Even when no harm 
 is intended, and recognition takes place, much 
 distress of mind may be caused not only to the 
 person satirised but to the satirist. There 
 was little in Cliarles Dickens's writings to bo 
 repented of, hut it, is well known that he
 
 158 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 grievously regretted his delineation of Leigh 
 Hunt as Harold Skimpole, Hunt's peculiarities 
 were recognised at once, and the vices of 
 Skimpole, which were not Hunt's at all, only 
 too readily attributed to him. Apology in 
 such cases is useless. Litera scripta manet; 
 the mischief is done. 
 
 I may here say, though it is anticipating 
 matters, that no man who wishes to be happy 
 in his vocation should become a novelist who 
 is so thin-skinned or impatient of censure as 
 to take unfavourable criticisms as a personal 
 affront, or seek to be ' even ' with the man who 
 writes it. I have known some very unpleasant 
 consequences arise from this foolish indigna- 
 tion, especially where, as often happens, it has 
 been misplaced, and the outrage has been 
 attributed to the wrong man. By him who 
 aspires to be a man of letters all personalities 
 should be avoided, and especially by the writer 
 of fiction. If he wants to be uncivil, let him 
 write an historical novel, and pitch into some- 
 body who has been dead for a century or two. 
 Matters will become much too personal with 
 him, whether he will or no, before he
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 159 
 
 has done with novel writing: it necessitates 
 a study of his fellow-creatures that will compel 
 him to see faults where he would far rather be 
 blind, and thinijs distasteful in those he loves. 
 
 As for the scene of his story, I would recom- 
 mend Scott, junior (if he will allow me to call 
 him so), not to select foreign ones, however 
 conversant he may be Avith them ; the taste of 
 the British novel-reader is as insular as his 
 dwelling-place, and he prefers to read of places 
 he has visited, and of customs with which he is 
 familiar. There have been some exceptions, but, 
 as a rule, even our most popular noveHsts have 
 lost something of their circulation when they 
 have ventured on alien soil. With readers who 
 have passed much of their time abroad, there 
 is of course no objection to this ; they may even 
 prefer it, as awakening pleasant memories ; but 
 they are but a small minority ; the others best 
 like to read of what they arc familiar with, and 
 arc in a position to pass judgment on. The 
 case is somewhat similar to that of foreign 
 novels: those who can read thcni in the 
 language they arc written in take pleasure in 
 them ; but translations of thciii are not pufjular
 
 160 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 with the less accomplished. Wherever the 
 scene of the novel is placed, however, it is 
 absolutely necessary for the writer to become 
 thoroughly acquainted with it. No time, or 
 trouble, should be grudged in this matter. It 
 is by no means, however, necessary to stay 
 long in the chosen locality; on the contrary, 
 the salient points which strike one on a first 
 acquaintance are apt to be lost through famili- 
 arity with them, and it is these which strike 
 the reader. 
 
 To pass from 'place' to 'period' I would 
 observe that, though of late years there has 
 been a great resuscitation of the historical 
 novel, it is generally a mistake for writers who 
 would be popular to place their story in a far 
 back time. One or two have recently made a 
 great success in so doing, but it is given to 
 very few to clothe dry bones with flesh. It is 
 of course necessary to study the period, and to 
 read much literature concerning it; and the 
 too general result of this is to give to the 
 composition the impression of ' cram,' of its 
 having been 'got up' for the occasion. The 
 story that finds most readers is almost always
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 161 
 
 a tale of to-day. They like to be in a position 
 to criticise ; to say this and that is contrary or 
 in accordance with their own experience ; that 
 they have met, or not met, the characters 
 described ; whereas for the vraisemhlance of 
 folks in armour who moved in society upon 
 horseback, they are obliged to accept the 
 author's -ipse dixit. 
 
 Almost all young writers cast their fiction in 
 the autobiographical form, for indeed they are 
 generally their own heroes. This has been 
 done a few times only with success (as in the 
 case of David Copperfield), even by great 
 authors; with small ones it is a fatal error. 
 There is always a great deal too much about 
 the author's boyhood, which, except to his 
 mother, is absolutely uninteresting. ' Boys will 
 be boys,' it is said by way of apology, and they 
 need it. Some adults may want to have their 
 schooldays over again, which only shows they 
 have forgotten them — but they don't want to 
 read of other people's schooldays. There is 
 nothing duller than the reminiscences of boy- 
 hood, except those of girlhood. Women writers 
 scarcely over allow their readers to escape from 
 
 L
 
 162 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 these narratives. They will begin with their 
 heroine in short frocks, and sometimes in long 
 clothes. She has her skipping-rope, with 
 which we wish she would hang herself, and 
 her girl friends, who are as unentertaining 
 as herself, and her 'yearnings.' She yearns 
 through a dozen chapters, while the reader 
 yawns. It would be such a relief if she would 
 do something, even if it were to run away with 
 the page. Children are charming (and so are 
 dogs) when they leaven a story, but they 
 should not be allowed, any more than in real 
 life, to occupy too much of the attention. And 
 whether in youth, or at any other period, there 
 should be no ego in a novel. The introduction 
 of self into it is fatal. Thackeray, it may be 
 said, did it ; but it was a mistake even in his 
 case, and it is probable that Scott, junior, is 
 not a Thackeray. Does he suppose that his 
 puppets are so lifelike that it is necessary (like 
 Bottom the weaver) to put his head outside 
 the puppet-show to assure us that they are not 
 really alive ? Does he imagine that his tale 
 has such a sustained interest that it can bear 
 this solution of continuity ? If he does, he
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 163 
 
 possesses at least one quality which some 
 people think is necessary to literary success — 
 ' a guicl conceit of himself.' 
 
 On the other hand, he should not be afraid 
 of expressing his opinions ; while young at the 
 trade, it is better to do so through the mouths 
 of his characters ; but if this cannot appropri- 
 ately be done, let him state them, though 
 always in an impersonal way. To students of 
 fiction it is interesting to mark how, as authors 
 gather strength, and gain their places in the 
 world, they deliver their obiter dicta upon 
 things in general. 
 
 I may here tell a secret, or at all events 
 something not generally known, concerning 
 popular, and presumably good, novelists. 
 Sometimes, of course, their circulation wanes 
 with their wits ; old age has its natural effect 
 upon their powers of imagination; but much 
 more commonly their reputation decays 
 through another attribute of old age, which 
 is by no means unavoidable, namely, indolence. 
 They flatter themselves they are sure of their 
 public, which, indeed, is always faithful to 
 thcni as long as can be reasonably expected,
 
 164 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 and even beyond it ; and they no longer take 
 the same pains to please as they used to do ; 
 they substitute recollection for observation, 
 and trust to memory where they formerly drew 
 from experience. It is irksome to them to 
 take trouble. Now, though no definition of 
 genius is so idiotic, and absolutely contrary to 
 the fact, as that which describes it as 'an 
 infinite capacity for taking pains,' if pains are 
 not taken, even genius cannot in the end suc- 
 ceed, however fortunate it may be in the be- 
 ginning ; while if Scott, junior, is only a 
 young person of talent and not a genius (as is 
 possible), he may just as well hope to be a 
 great engineer, if he takes no pains, as to be a 
 novelist. It seems so easy to those who have 
 never done it to succeed in fiction; story- 
 telling appears such a holiday task to the out- 
 sider; but as a matter of fact it requires a 
 great deal of application, observation, study, 
 and, above all things, patience and perse- 
 verance. Only a few writers 'awake to find 
 themselves famous,' and even these have 
 generally had rather a long night. 
 
 The greatest bugbear in the eyes of the
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 165 
 
 young novelist is the critic. This wicked 
 creature is credited with an irreconcilable 
 enmity to imaginative literature, and with a 
 disposition to dance upon the bodies of all 
 who follow it, but especially upon the young. 
 The exaersrerated fear in which he is held is in 
 reality caused by his victims' exaggerated ideas 
 of their own importance. If they knew what 
 very little displacement was caused by their 
 plunge into fiction, they would know how 
 brief is the effect of any comments that may 
 be made upon it. As a matter of fact, very 
 few people read reviews, and the impression 
 they create seldom endures beyond the week 
 in which they appear; one review pushes the 
 next out of recollection, as one pellet drives 
 out another in a pop-gun. The harm wrought 
 by an ill-natured, or what is called a ' nasty,' 
 review — for, of course, we are not considering 
 a just one, to which no objection should be 
 made — depends chiefly ujjon whether the 
 author vituperated is fool enough to read it. 
 It is quite amazing how otherwise sensible 
 persons are tempted to do this throughout 
 their lives. I knew one very successful author
 
 166 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 who could never withstand the temptation to 
 read what he had ah-eady heard was an ' attack 
 upon him,' wherever it was. He used to buy 
 the review or newspaper — thus actually in- 
 creasing the resources of his enemy, — and after 
 having made himself thoroughly miserable 
 with reading it, tear it into fragments. The 
 other unpleasantness about unfavourable criti- 
 cism is that one's friends always get hold of it, 
 and perhaps send one a copy of it, explaining 
 in a sympathetic letter how they ' deplore it.' 
 This is scarcely what is called ' backing ' on the 
 part of one's friends. The ' Compleat Novelist ' 
 would be a misnomer indeed for a gentleman 
 who embraces that profession with the fear of 
 the critic before his eyes. Let him lay to 
 heart the admirable saying, ' No man was ever 
 written down except by himself.' 
 
 When the skeleton of his story is finished, 
 he must be careful to avoid plumping it out by 
 padding. He should be always marching on 
 with his story, and never ' marking time,' like a 
 recruit at drill. Dissertations and disquisitions 
 should be avoided. Where his characters in- 
 dulge in reflection, they should be as brief as
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 167 
 
 epigrams, and, if possible, as pointed. There is 
 nothing so tedious in fiction as a Hamlet hero. 
 
 As to the nature of the novel, that must, of 
 course, depend upon the nature of the author, 
 but it is certain that popularity most attends 
 the writer who can attach Cupid to his chariot 
 wheels. By far the majority of novel readers 
 are the ladies, and they prefer, above all others, 
 the love-story. It is true that some of our 
 greatest writers, Thackeray especially, and in a 
 less degree Dickens, have not been very suc- 
 cessful in their treatment of this matter; but 
 genius has no laws. I have already apologised 
 to Scott, junior, for taking it for granted that 
 his gift is short of genius ; if it were otherwise, 
 he needs no teaching. But it is quite curious 
 how independent is a writer who has a speci- 
 ality for describing courtship of any other 
 attractions. Trollopc, who, of course, had many 
 other f'ifts, could turn out whole volumes 
 descriptive of the tender passion. The too 
 faithful Johnny Eames is exhibited at the feet 
 of his inamorata, not only in one novel, but 
 several ; his courtship has continuations ; yet 
 the ladies never tired of it. In these days,
 
 1G8 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 popularity has been sometimes obtained upon 
 these lines after a fashion to which it is not 
 necessary to allude ; I will not suppose Scott, 
 junior, to be capable of seeking the bubble 
 reputation in dirty waters, as a mudlark dives 
 for pence. There are plenty of honest women 
 and honourable men in the world, if he have 
 the eyes to see them and the hand to draw 
 them. 
 
 Still I would warn him against the diffuse 
 descriptions of the young people whose course 
 of true love he has set himself to narrate. It 
 will astonish him perhaps to learn that no 
 novelist has as yet described the appearance 
 of a heroine so as to be recognisable by his 
 readers ; the picture of her they make in their 
 own minds will not be the one he would fain 
 have suggested to them. At the very best it 
 will be only such a likeness as may be gathered 
 from a passport. Women writers will fill a 
 dozen pages with their heroine's exquisite 
 features (not forgetting the lobe of her ear), 
 and a dozen more with her dress. This I do 
 not recommend ; and as for that latter matter, 
 though I understand it is attractive to female
 
 THE COxMPLEAT NOVELIST 169 
 
 readers, Scott, junior, being a male, is certain 
 to make a mess of it. Nor do I think it is 
 advisable that he should ' pan out ' too much 
 on the scenery; as a matter of fact, this is 
 mostly skipped, but I may add concerning it, 
 as of the portrait-painting, unless there arc 
 very salient points about it, it fails to give the 
 impression desired. Any one who visits the 
 places described by even such a master of the 
 pen as Walter Scott, must acknowledge that 
 that is his first introduction to them; he has 
 gained no familiarity with them through the 
 printed page. 
 
 The chief point of a novelist's endeavours 
 should be to give his story sustained interest. 
 h is of course, necessary, in a long one, to 
 break the thread when he introduces new 
 scenes and characters, but it should be picked 
 up as soon as possible, and both old and new 
 combined in it. There are many admirable 
 works that can be taken up and laid down at 
 any time, but this should not bo the case with 
 a novel. The aspiration of one of our greatest 
 writers was ' to cheat a schoolboy of his hour of 
 play ' (a much more diOicult task, by the bye,
 
 170 THE COMrLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 than to cheat him of an hour of work, which 
 he will cheerfully give up for almost any other 
 occupation), and the ambition of a novelist, 
 unless he is one of those who write 'with a 
 purpose,' should be to — what some excellent 
 people would call — ' waste the time ' of his 
 readers ; that is to say, to so fascinate them 
 that they cannot lay his story down, or go to 
 bed, until they have finished it ; and no matter 
 what may be his wit or wisdom, he will never 
 accomplish this unless he has a story to tell 
 them. And thus we come round to the point 
 from which we started, the paramount neces- 
 sity of a good plot. ' A good plot,' as Hotspur 
 says, 'and full of expectation, an excellent 
 plot.' 
 
 Lastly, neither time nor pains should be 
 spared in the choice of title. This is very 
 important, especially with a new writer. The 
 same foolish persons who tell us that all the 
 plots have been exhausted, will doubtless say 
 that the titles also have already been appro- 
 priated. A great many of them have been so, 
 as is evidenced by the number of novels that 
 have had to change their names between their
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 171 
 
 serial publication aud their book form in con- 
 sequence. They are names, of course, of un- 
 known novels, for no one would be so impudent 
 as to take that of a well-known one — which 
 their authors have not even thousfht it worth 
 while to spend five shillings in registering. It 
 is pretty certain that no court of law would 
 award damasres for doini? what could not be 
 helped, and what could not but result, if it had 
 any result, in the advantage of the person 
 (supposed to be) injured. Still, it is advisable 
 to take every precaution possible to avoid this 
 duplication. The title should indicate the 
 nature of the story without revealing its secret, 
 and should not be a proper name, which can 
 attract nobody. David Copperjiekl and Martin 
 Chuzzlewit are attractive to us, because we arc 
 all acquainted with their contents, but they 
 arc, as titles, colourless, and excite no curiosity. 
 When Scott, junior, has attained fame, he can 
 call his novel what he pleases. 
 
 Some care should lie also taken with the 
 names of the characters of a novel. Matters 
 arc improving in this respect, and we seldom 
 read such obvious titles as were at one time
 
 172 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 
 
 common in tiction, reminding us of those in 
 the Pilgrim's Progress. The Faithfuls and 
 Easies, the Gammons, the Quirks and Snaps, 
 the Sir Harkaway Rotgut Wildfires, once so 
 familiar to us, would now be pronounced crude 
 and extravagant. Dickens was almost the first 
 to escape from them ; his names were all taken 
 from real Kfe, either from what he read over 
 shops or in the Post Office Directory. The 
 exception is in Nicholas Nicldeby, where, 
 however, there is an excellent name of the 
 Pilgrim's Progress type — Sir Mulberry Hawke. 
 Scott, junior, should take his names from the 
 Directory, but be careful to put an out-of-the- 
 way Christian name before them, so as to avoid 
 the risk, if not of an action for libel, at least of 
 some personal unpleasantness. People don't 
 like being called ' out of their names,' but still 
 more do they dislike their real ones stuck on 
 to a bad character in a novel, like a lady's head 
 on the body of a comic photograph. 
 
 In all that I have said of him, let Scott, 
 junior, distinctly understand that I pretend to 
 teach no method of making bricks without 
 straw. If he has no natural turn for story-
 
 THE COMPLEAT NOVELIST 173 
 
 telling, no human being can give it to him ; 
 but if he has a bent that way — and not merely 
 a passionate desire to see himself in print, 
 which is a much commoner attribute — I have 
 endeavoured to show him how he can utilise 
 it — what he should give his attention to, and 
 what he should avoid. I cannot promise him 
 success, but I believe I have shown him the 
 way in which he is most likely to attain it.
 
 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS
 
 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 LONG years ago, ' when life and hope were 
 new,' I received a letter from him whom 
 Bret Harte calls ' the Master,' and who is the 
 master still to my contemporaries in literature, 
 praising some contribution that I had written 
 for Household Words, and bidding me be of 
 good courage. It was a kind thing to do, for 
 his written words were literally golden, and 
 his time very precious. Moreover, though a 
 very young beginner, I had met with many 
 rejections as a would-be contributor, and might 
 well have been even despaired of by an 
 impatient judge. 
 
 But the fact is that what made Dickens a 
 model editor was his passionate attaaliirient 
 to the profession he adorned. All men of 
 letters were akin to liiiii, uud the humblest 
 writer, ])rovi(icd he could show himself fitted 
 for the calling lie bad c]ic>scii, was as a ycnmgcr 
 
 M
 
 178 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 brother. Thackeray and Trollope, though both 
 kind-hearted men, had not this feeling, and, 
 as editors, were not to be compared with 
 him. 
 
 The effect of this encouragement upon myself 
 was little short of magical. A squire of old, 
 who had been knighted by some Bayard for 
 small service, might have felt similarly elated, 
 and resolute to do something really meritorious 
 in repayment for his spurs. He would perhaps 
 have made a vow to ' our Ladye ' to perform 
 some pious act ; and I made a vow to myself 
 that, if ever in the years to come I should 
 find myself an editor, I would take example 
 from the one who had, as it seemed, made a 
 man of me. 
 
 Whether that vow was kept it is for others 
 to say ; but I certainly was always in sympathy 
 with those who strove, literally enough, to 
 'make their way through the press,' and win 
 a name for themselves at the pen's point in 
 the lists of literature. To narrate my ex- 
 periences, which extended over forty years, 
 would fill a volume ; but I have set down one 
 or two that occurred in connection with my
 
 AN EDITOE AND SOME CONTRIBUTOES 179 
 
 younger contributors, who naturally always 
 interested me the most. 
 
 In no case have I exaggerated the facts, but 
 as these neophytes have become more or less 
 well known in Uterature, I have so transposed 
 matters as, while apparently making identifica- 
 tion easy, will render it impossible even to the 
 parties themselves. 
 
 Of course most contributors are personally 
 unknown to their editor — though that is never 
 the fault of the rejected ones, who always 
 believe in the virtue of an interview, so that 
 the poor editor is obhged to employ a sort of 
 ' chucker out ' to keep himself private — he has 
 to make a picture of them in his mind, gathered 
 from the nature of their articles. 
 
 On several occasions I had had some very 
 bright sketches of country life from a young 
 sportsman who, though he Avas mostly on 
 horseback, seemed to have eyes about him 
 for other things than horses and hounds. 
 Then he sent me a short story of military life, 
 a little erring, as was to bo expected in a 
 youngster, upon the side of fastness — too much 
 cigar smoking and too many brandy-and-sodas
 
 180 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 — but very graphic and entertaining. As my 
 people were mostly military, it interested me 
 more perhaps than it would have done others, 
 and it interested them — which it was rather 
 difficult for any story-teller to do — and thereby 
 proved its genuine character. 
 
 I was rather pleased when the young fellow, 
 wrote that he was coming up to town to see 
 me, and I made him an appointment for that 
 purpose. 
 
 At the hour arranged for I was annoyed by 
 my confidential clerk bringing me in a card 
 with ' Miss Norman ' on it. I said, ' I do not 
 know the lady, and you are well aware that I 
 do not see people who have not an introduc- 
 tion.' ' She is very ladylike, sir,' he answered, 
 ' and pretty.' It was a wrong remark for him 
 to make, of course, since it almost suggested 
 that good looks were a passport which should 
 be reserved for true merit ; but I said I could 
 give her two minutes. 
 
 Accordingly she was ushered into the hall 
 of audience, an apartment, by the bye, on the 
 third floor, and always in a state of litter. She 
 was comely enough, but I at once explained
 
 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 181 
 
 to her that my time was precious, and that I 
 had made an appointment for that very hour. 
 'You will show Mr. Marchmont up, when he 
 comes, at once,' I added to the clerk, with 
 significance. 
 
 ' But I am Mr, Marchmont,' said the lady. 
 
 You misfht have knocked me down with a 
 
 O 
 
 feather. 
 
 Nothing she had written had given me the 
 least hint of her being of the fair sex. Nay, 
 what would to my mind have done away with 
 all suspicion, had I entertained any, was that 
 she had always taken my alterations in her 
 sketches with the greatest good-nature. As a 
 rule, if you venture to hint that this or that 
 falls short of excellence in a lady's contribution, 
 she is surprised, and by no means pleased; 
 'any other fault she could have imagined in 
 her composition, but you must excuse her 
 remarking that the paragraph in question was 
 written with particular care, and, if excised, 
 the whole article would be spoilt.' Miss 
 Norman had acquiesced in every suggestion, 
 and never remonstrated even at a deletion. 
 
 Her father kept hounds, her brothers were
 
 182 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 in the army, and her writings had taken colour 
 from their red coats. She had felt that if she 
 wrote as one of her own sex, there would be a 
 doubt of her knowing what she wrote about, so 
 she adopted the pseudonym of ' John March- 
 mont.' By that name she afterwards became 
 known to a large public, who is as much de- 
 ceived up to this very day as I was. 
 
 For some time, though intermittently, I had 
 been receiving certain sketches of London life 
 in the East-End, of which I thought very 
 highly. It was long before the days when 
 ' slumming ' became fashionable. The place 
 was a terra incognita to the majority of our 
 readers, and the articles had attracted much 
 attention. They were written by one James 
 Harrison, evidently a man of education and 
 refinement, and yet showed an acquaintance 
 with his subject — how the very poorest live — 
 which spoke volumes either for his philanthropy 
 or his love of adventure. 
 
 I received these articles at long intervals, as 
 if he seldom visited the places in question ; but 
 when he did so, he evidently investigated them 
 with great thoroughness, and described them
 
 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTEIBUTOES 183 
 
 with a realism that in less delicate hands might 
 easily have been offensive. He always wrote, 
 however, with good taste, though not perhaps 
 with that sjrmpathetic pity with which a man, 
 presumably of good position, should regard the 
 privations of his less fortunate fellow-creatures. 
 
 I had a good deal of correspondence with 
 him, and had more than once asked him to 
 call upon me, but he had never done so. His 
 letters, and the cheques they enclosed, were 
 invariably addressed to him at some post-office 
 instead of a private house ; and whenever he 
 was thus communicated with, I noticed there 
 was a long interval before we heard from him 
 again ; this is unusual with young contributors 
 — he had told mo he was young — upon whose 
 imagination cheques have generally a prolific 
 effect: they begin to write at once, on the 
 receipt of them. 
 
 One day my clerk came into the room with a 
 troubled face, as though something unpleasant 
 had happened ; he said that a man had called 
 that morning before my arrival, giving the 
 name of Harrison, and that ho had been sent 
 away, but was now returned.
 
 184 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 ' Why had he been sent away?' I asked, 'since 
 you knew that I wished to see him ? ' 
 
 ' Well, sir, I thought he was an impostor ' — 
 of whom indeed we have many — ' but since he 
 has come again ' 
 
 ' Show him in,' I interrupted, much dis- 
 pleased that discourtesy should have been 
 offered to so valued a contributor; yet when 
 he entered I felt that the clerk had had every 
 excuse for his conduct. I thought for the 
 moment that I was in the presence of a street 
 beggar. 
 
 The man was in threadbare black, without 
 a sign of linen about him ; his buttonless coat 
 was fastened across his chest with a pin, not 
 because it was cold, for it was summer, but 
 obviously to conceal the absence of a shirt ; the 
 collar was turned up, doubtless for the same 
 reason; his shoes were patched, and the sole of 
 one of them was loose, and flapped as he moved. 
 Yet the voice was singularly gentle, though 
 rather hoarse, in which this scarecrow observed 
 with pathetic cynicism : ' You have expressed 
 a wish to see James Harrison ; here he is.' 
 
 From that moment I had no doubt of his
 
 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 185 
 
 identity. I offered him a chair, and he sat down 
 with his hat — such a hat ! — in his hand, and 
 looked at me with earnest eyes. They were not 
 bright eyes, yet they had keen intelligence ; his 
 face, though pale and haggard, had a pleasant 
 expression ; his head had but little hair on 
 it, yet his whole expression was youthful, the 
 remains of a wasted youth. 
 
 ' I have not had the pleasure of a contribu- 
 tion from you for some time,' I said. 
 
 ' No,' he answered, with a smile. ' Your last 
 cheque, you see, was a larger one than usual. 
 So I had to run through it. However,' with a 
 rueful look at his clothes, ' I have done it at 
 last; so thoroughly indeed that I have not a 
 copper to buy ink and paper with, so I had to 
 come to you after all' 
 
 He had evidently put off the evil day, on 
 which he had to exhibit his degradation, as 
 long as possible. 
 
 ' Do you mean to say you have literally not 
 a penny ? ' 
 
 'I have not n farthing,' he replied, with a sort 
 of chuckle that was far more pathetic than a sigh. 
 
 ' And arc the experiences you have written
 
 186 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 for me not only real ones — of which I am well 
 convinced — but your own experiences ? ' 
 
 ' They are. I have plumbed the depths of 
 human misery.' 
 
 His story was distressing, but he had no 
 complaint to make ; he seemed to well under- 
 stand that he owed aU his misfortunes to him- 
 self. He was naturally idle, and would only 
 work when compelled to do so. All his money 
 had been spent on his education, so that for 
 years he lived from hand to mouth. Of late 
 years he had taken to opium-eating, which had 
 destroyed what little remained of energy. Yet 
 he retained his wits. 
 
 A ten-pound note had quite a magical effect 
 on him ; he came to dine with me the next day 
 at a restaurant — I did not venture to ask him 
 to the club — a well-dressed and intelligent 
 young fellow, and a very interesting com- 
 panion. I got him a situation on a newspaper, 
 where he stayed six months. Then he ' went 
 under ' again, emerged fitfully for a few years, 
 and eventually fell a victim to his drug. 
 
 One of the most common faults of literary 
 contributors is bad handwriting ; how can they
 
 AN EDITOR AND SOiME CONTRIBUTORS 187 
 
 expect even the kindest of editors to wade 
 through their hieroglyphics in search of buried 
 merit ? On the other hand, it is true that some 
 editors share this unfortunate drawback, and I 
 have been accused of it myself. 
 
 My enemies called my caligraphy a scrawl, 
 while my friends confined themselves to saying 
 that my telegraph hand was better than my 
 writing hand. Sometimes I have had letters 
 from a contributor saying he had received my 
 obliging communication, but could not gather 
 from it whether his article was accepted or 
 rejected. Of course, these people are very 
 stupid ; ' the clearest hand,' says Goethe, ' can- 
 not be read by twilight,' but when I am 
 writing to lady contributors I always take great 
 care to be distinct, because they always give 
 themselves the benefit of the doubt whenever 
 there is one. 
 
 I had on one occasion received from a young 
 lady in the country a charming set of verses, 
 which I had hastened to acknowledge. Editors 
 get so much poetry, and almost all bad — when 
 people write in verse they seem to think that 
 they are inspired, and therefore above criticism ;
 
 188 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTEIBUTORS 
 
 so that when anything really good comes of 
 this kind, it is very welcome, and we write to 
 say so. Under such circumstances a gushing 
 answer generally comes by return of post, and 
 editor and contributor join themselves into a 
 mutual admiration society. 
 
 But in this case I got no reply. This so 
 amazed me that after a while I wrote again, 
 expressing a hope that my first communica- 
 tion had not miscarried. It had been only a 
 postcard, such as I usually send when accept- 
 ing small poetical contributions, but I had 
 always found it sufficient for its purpose. This 
 young poetess, however, was not, it seemed, so 
 easily satisfied ; she appeared to think a post- 
 card beneath her dignity, for in her reply she 
 enclosed the one I had sent to her. 
 
 ' Sir, the cause of my silence was that I 
 saw no sufficient encouragement in your com- 
 munication, enclosed, to offer another con- 
 tribution.' 
 
 My postcard was as follows : ' I hope to make 
 use of your pretty verses.' Not an elaborate 
 eulogy, it is true, but perfectly polite and 
 appreciatory.
 
 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTEIBUTORS 189 
 
 A friend happened to call upon me while I 
 sat with this inexplicable letter in my hand. 
 
 ' What do you think of this ? ' I said, giving 
 it to him to read. ' Poetesses are kittle cattle 
 to deal with, are they not ? ' 
 
 ' But you were not civil to the lady,' he 
 replied. ' " I cannot make use of your silly 
 verses " was downright rude.' That was what 
 he had made my postcard out to be, and so 
 had the poetess ! I had never had the fact of 
 my handwriting being but indifferent brought 
 home to me before. 
 
 The great happiness and crowning success of 
 an editor's career is, of course, the discovery 
 of genius. Like gold, though it is sure to be 
 found sooner or later, its early recognition 
 depends on its detection by an expert. I do 
 not say that I was a better assaycr than my 
 neighbours, but I was certainly very fortunate 
 in my ' finds.' 
 
 There are some authors who arc to me ' as 
 captain is to subaltern,' whom I had tlic 
 pleasure of raising from the ranks, and who 
 still, like all guuurous minds, exaggerate tlic 
 obliiration. I Wiis their Master of the Cure-
 
 190 AN EDITOR AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 monies, and introduced them to the public a 
 few weeks earher perhaps than they would 
 have introduced themselves ; that is all. 
 
 And there are others, alas ! who gave me the 
 same opportunity, but I did not take advantage 
 of it. 
 
 The best editor is he who makes fewest 
 mistakes. After all, though naturally the suc- 
 cessful contributors excite greater interest, 
 the less successful ones arouse more sym- 
 pathy, if at least they have any merit in them. 
 A dullard is out of place in literature, and 
 should be courteously but firmly discouraged : 
 here and there they make a hit — an ' outer,' 
 never a ' bull's-eye ' — and they think fame and 
 fortune are within measurable distance, but 
 they never see either. 
 
 Their pleadings would move a heart of 
 adamant, but not an editor's. The reason is — 
 and let all would-be contributors lay it to heart 
 — that his magazine is not his own but his 
 proprietor's; he must be just before he is 
 generous, because if otherwise he will be giving 
 away other people's money — a very expensive 
 sort of charity.
 
 AN EDITOR AND SO^IE CONTRIBUTORS 191 
 
 Some contributors will write about a rejected 
 contribution, when it would be so much better 
 to treat it as spilt milk — wipe it up, and say 
 no more about it. One unfortunate young lady 
 wrote to me : ' How could you, could you, return 
 my story by the five-o'clock post ? You must 
 have known I should get it the last thing in 
 the evening, and be kept awake by the thought 
 of it all night.' Whereas the consideration in 
 question had never entered my mind. 
 
 One piece of advice to all literary aspirants I 
 would particularly offer. Do not send a letter 
 to the editor longer, or even so long, as the 
 contribution itself He does not want to hear 
 that your contribution has been written three 
 times over, or that it represents your best 
 thoughts for years, or even that it has been 
 written with your life-blood. He has heard all 
 that and more from fifty other young gentlemen 
 and ladies.
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 N
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 BARON TAUCHNITZ, of Leipzig, has issued 
 a jubilee volume {Funfzig Jahre der 
 VerlagshancUung Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1887) 
 in commemoration of his fifty years' connection 
 with English authors. It seems but yesterday 
 that he published a somewhat similar record 
 on the appearance of his two- thousandth 
 volume, but in the meantime his collection 
 has been increased by five hundred works. A 
 hundred and sixty-five of the whole series have 
 been contributed by American authors, thirty 
 of whom have served under the Baron's banner. 
 His English host numbers no less than two 
 hundred and seventy-six. There is a notion 
 abroad, or rather at home, that English authors 
 deprive no pecuniary advantage from their 
 connection with the great Leipzig firm, but it 
 is due to Baron Tauchnitz to acknowledge that 
 he luis always remunerated them even before
 
 196 A LITEKARY JUBILEE 
 
 the existence of international copyright, and 
 when there was no legal necessity for him to do 
 so. In literary matters it is not necessary to 
 be poor and honest; one may be honest and 
 still successful (American papers, please copy), 
 and the Baron's case is a case in point. The 
 volume is by no means a mere catalogue of 
 names famous in literature ; they are all there, 
 of course, but the series is beinc constantly 
 supplemented by new authors, and upon the 
 whole with a judgment that does credit to the 
 recruiting sergeant. The popularity of a writer 
 in his own country of course ensures his appear- 
 ance in the Tauchnitz edition ; but in not a few 
 cases Leipzig has recognised his merits even 
 before London, and this recognition stamps him 
 with the hall-mark of success. 
 
 It is popularly suj)posed that the Baron's 
 continental series is read only by the travelling 
 English, yet these form but a small portion of 
 its public ; it is exported everywhere, except to 
 England and English colonies. The author 
 himself, upon signing a certain formula to 
 satisfy the custom-house, can procure as many 
 copies as he pleases; but every one else who
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 197 
 
 imports a copy into England breaks the law. 
 He also hurts the English author, but I am 
 sorry to say this does not weigh much with 
 the British traveller, who finds the Tauchnitz 
 edition, he says, 'so handy' — so easy, he also 
 means, to smuggle. We have seen a whole 
 library of Tauchnitz editions — though not, of 
 course, his own books — in a publisher's drawing- 
 room. It is the ladies, however, who are the 
 greatest sinners in this way. A charming 
 young literary smuggler was bringing home 
 with her a Tauchnitz novel from Antwerp the 
 other day, and made acquaintance with an 
 agreeable stranger on the way, to whom she 
 confided her nefarious intention. At London 
 Bridge he reciprocated her frankness by inform- 
 ing her that he was a custom-house officer, and 
 demanding that the volume should be given up. 
 
 ' But I have not finished it yet,' she murmured 
 pleadingly. 
 
 ' Where have you got to ? ' he inquired. 
 
 She pointed with her taper finger. Gently 
 takinj; the book from the fair contrabandist, 
 he tore away what she had read and threw it 
 into the river, returning the |)orti()n that was
 
 198 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 so precious to her with the customary bow. 
 This was a man with some notion of duty ; but 
 I am afraid such crimes are only too often 
 winked at. This carelessness, and the fact that 
 those who buy English books abroad do not 
 buy them at home, complete all that is to be 
 urged against the Continental Series; other- 
 wise the result of his connection with the Baron 
 to the English author is not only gainful, but, 
 as is abundantly evident from the testimony of 
 his own letters, exceedingly agreeable to him. 
 
 It is seldom, indeed, that a book of such 
 modest pretensions has the literary value which 
 this jubilee volume possesses. There are ex- 
 tracts in it from the correspondence of all the 
 famous dead authors, which are in the highest 
 degree interesting. Though confined to one 
 subject, many of them are very characteristic, 
 and certainly go far to disprove the popular 
 notion that the relations betAveen author and 
 publisher must needs be antagonistic. It is 
 well to remember that, though there is now 
 international copyright^ there was none when 
 
 1 As matters now stand, tlie Taiichnitz editions are as 
 fully established by English law as any othei-.
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 199 
 
 Bernhard Tauchnitz first began his under- 
 taking, and that he could have commenced it 
 ' without the authority and sanction of English 
 authors.' He says, indeed, in his original 
 prospectus : ' Allow me to remark that I, as 
 well as any other publisher in Germany, have 
 at present the right to embark in such under- 
 takings without any permission from the 
 authors ; and that my propositions arise solely 
 from a wish thereby to make the jfirst step 
 towards a literary relationship between England 
 and Germany, and towards an extension of the 
 rights of copyright, and to publish my editions 
 in accordance with those rights.' He j^aid for 
 them from the very first ; and that ' honesty 
 is the best policy' can be gathered from all 
 that follows. ^Ir. George Henry Lewes, for 
 example, Avritcs to him in LS47 : 'As to re- 
 muneration, from your having transmitted 
 English authors an }tonorariu7)i at the time 
 when no law of copyright rendered such an 
 action imperative, I have conceived such an 
 idea of your liberality and probity as to leave 
 it to you to send mc whatever sum you consider 
 the success of the work ' (Raiilhurpe) ' may
 
 200 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 justify,' It is plain that this confidence was 
 not misplaced, for in a communication written 
 twenty- seven years afterwards on behalf of 
 George Eliot, he writes : ' Both Mrs. Lewes and 
 myself preserve such agreeable recollections of 
 you, and of our relations with you, that it will 
 be at all times a pleasure to receive any direct 
 communications from you, either on the subject 
 of our books or anything else.' In another 
 note, in speaking of the reprinting of Deronda, 
 he says — which will be read with some surprise 
 — that 'its success in England has greatly 
 exceeded Middleniarcli.' Let us, however, take 
 these literary financial communications in their 
 alphabetical order. The amounts paid are not 
 stated (which we confess is tantalising), but it 
 seems certain that they have given satisfaction 
 to the British author for a long series of years. 
 Harrison Ains worth writes in 1844 (eight years 
 before international copyright was established) : 
 ' I consider your offer of . . . very liberal, and 
 in accepting it I beg to tender you my best 
 thanks, not so much for the amount as for the 
 praiseworthy spirit by which you are actuated.' 
 In the same year he writes — what seems now
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 201 
 
 strange enough — ' The success of my magazine ' 
 (the New Monthly) 'has been decided' (de- 
 cisive ?). ' Its sale is now second only to that 
 of Blackwood. In 1856 he indites a very pretty 
 letter about his Flitch of Bacon, or the Custom 
 of Dunmow, which he inscribes to the Baron 
 and his wife : — 
 
 ' In dedicating my little book to you and 
 Madame Tauchnitz, I selected for that dedica- 
 tion the happiest couple I knew ; they happened 
 at the same time to be amongst my best friends. 
 ... It may amuse you to know that my tale 
 has been the means of reviving the obsolete 
 custom of iJunmow. I have promised to give 
 a flitch of bacon to any couple who can make 
 out their claim to it next June, and if you and 
 Madame Tauchnitz should by accident be in 
 England at the time I shall present it to you.' 
 
 In 1881 we find Ainsworth disposing of his 
 last novel, ^Stanley Brcreton, in the same friendly 
 manner after a business connection of seven- 
 and-thirty years — a fact the more noteworthy 
 since more than one continental scries had 
 been started in opposition to that of the Baron 
 in the meantime.
 
 202 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 Lady Blessington is not the only one of the 
 Baron's authors who is given to draw compari- 
 sons, but in her case it seems more curious to us 
 now than in that of others. ' I hope/ she writes 
 in 1844, ' you will not think me unreasonable 
 in expecting the same remuneration for my 
 work that my friend Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton 
 is to receive.' She is speaking of Strathern. 
 We wonder how many people remember Strath- 
 ern. Bulwer (afterwards Lord Lytton) appears 
 to have been a very prudent romancer. His 
 eye, though sometimes ' in a fine frenzy rolling,' 
 is kept in business matters on the main chance. 
 ' It is possible,' writes this sanguine novelist in 
 1848, ' that the United States of America may 
 grant us a law of copyright, in which case I 
 might be unable to sanction any foreign reprint; 
 and I could not sacrifice my chance of a copy- 
 right there, which would be at least as valuable 
 to me as in my own country. . . . This I cannot 
 forgo.' Matters, however, seem to have been 
 satisfactorily arranged, for in 1872 we find him 
 assuring the Baron, ' I certainly should not 
 think of dealing with any other publisher for 
 the continental edition.' He speaks of the
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 203 
 
 New Timon as having had an immense sale in 
 England — ' larger than any other poem since 
 Byron ' — and of King Arthur as his ' best and 
 most durable work, whether in prose or verse.' 
 
 Carlyle appears to have kept quite a little stock 
 of honey for the great Leipzig bee-master. ' I 
 am not willing to trespass further,' he says, ' on 
 such munificence of procedure.' And again in 
 1869 : ' No transaction could be handsomer on 
 your part, and you may believe me I am very 
 sensible of it. The money account concerns me ; 
 please attend to that as already said. Friend- 
 liness and help cannot be paid, but money can 
 and always should.' In writing to his foreign 
 friend the Chelsea philosopher does not seem 
 to trouble himself much about his Enghsh. 
 
 With Dickens, of course, the Baron had a 
 very extensive connection, and their corre- 
 spondence proves it to have been of a kind 
 agreeable to both parties. It has been said 
 that Dickens was a sharp man of business, but 
 only by those who tried to cheat him. His 
 genial and generous disposition n)adc him 
 apparently an easy prey, and his would-be 
 plunderers, finding that this was not the case,
 
 204 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 resented the failure of their attempts exceed- 
 ingly. When dealing with honest men he was 
 as trustful as a child. ' I cannot consent,' he 
 writes, ' to name the sum you should pay for 
 Great Expectations ; I have too great a regard 
 for you, and too high a sense of your honour- 
 able dealings, to wish to depart from the custom 
 we have always observed. Whatever price you 
 put upon it will satisfy me.' And again: 'The 
 first number of my new story, to be completed 
 in twelve numbers ' (which, alas ! it never was, 
 for it was Edwin Brood), ' will be published on 
 the last day of this month. Your terms shall 
 be mine, and I will most readily accept them if 
 you will kindly state them.' In the same too 
 sanguine spirit he hints of a new series of his 
 Uncommercial Traveller : ' It is finished for 
 the present, but I may very probably write a 
 new series under the same title by and by.' 
 
 The Disraeli letters are among the most 
 characteristic in the collection. 'It is v/ith 
 extreme satisfaction,' he writes concerning 
 Coningshy, ' that I have assented to your wish 
 to prepare an edition for continental circulation, 
 and especially for the German public. The
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 205 
 
 sympathy of a great nation is the most precious 
 reward of authors, and an appreciation that is 
 offered us by a foreign people has something of 
 the character and value which we attribute to 
 the fiat of posterity,' ^ 
 
 Of Contarini Fleming he writes in 1845 : 
 ' This book was published anonymously twelve 
 years ago, has been long out of print, and has 
 been for these last few years in great demand. 
 It is a work highly adapted to the Germans' 
 (one wonders why; the reasons are perhaps 
 judiciously withheld), 'and is adorned by a 
 portrait of the author.' Neither the author 
 nor his little weaknesses are in his case lost in 
 the politician. ' I have been umch on the 
 Continent during the last year' (1856), 'and 
 have found great and frequent complaints of 
 the omission of many of my works in tlic re- 
 prints which you have published of those pro- 
 ductions. I have often intended to write to 
 you on the subject, but the great pressure of 
 
 • Like inoHt of Disriveli'H good things, this remark is im- 
 iiappily not origiu.il. .Inhii Foratcr is presently found iiHiiig 
 the same remark, l>iit attrilmtiiig it to its projur Houree: 
 ' A foreign country in, ax l.nril liaron nays, as another age.'
 
 206 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 afifairs has always prevented me ; probably the 
 fault is mine, as I ought, , perhaps, to have 
 furnished you as heretofore with corrected 
 copies, but the Revolution of 1848 seemed to 
 terminate these literary speculations, and since 
 then I have always been too busy. . . . The 
 works omitted' ( Venetia, Vivian Grey, and Hen- 
 rietta Temple) ' are some of them most eagerly 
 sought at home.' In 1871 he writes : ' I am 
 gratified to hear of the success of Lothair under 
 your auspices. I am glad to say that Messrs. 
 Longman can give you a similar report in 
 England, and our American brethren are not be- 
 hindhand in public appreciation.' In the same 
 year he writes : ' What are called " lives " of me 
 abound. They are generally infamous libels, 
 which I have invariably treated with utter in- 
 difference. Sometimes I ask myself, "What 
 will Grub Street do after my departure ? who 
 will be there [there be ?] to abuse and to cari- 
 cature ? " I am very busy, and rarely write 
 letters, but I would not use the hand of another 
 to an old friend.' On removing to Curzon 
 Street in 1881, he writes : ' I no longer dwell in 
 the house in Park Lane where I once had the
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 207 
 
 pleasure of receiving you, but I am very near 
 the rose and smell of it.' 
 
 Mrs, Gaskell is found complaining of the 
 injury serial publication does to her novels : ' I 
 am writing a good deal in addition to the last 
 quarter of the story ' (North and South) ' which 
 had to be very much compressed and spoiled 
 to suit the purposes of Household Words' On 
 the other hand she expresses her sorrow that 
 another of her stories in its volume form is too 
 short for the Baron's purposes : ' I am very 
 sorry, but alas ! I had no more to say, having 
 at last married Eleanor happily.' 
 
 There are letters from Hawthorne, and 
 Washington Irving, and Longfellow.^ The last- 
 named writes : ' I hope that the Tales of a 
 Wayside Inn may be as successful in Germany 
 as you anticipate. . . . You will, I think, be 
 glad to know that they have had a great sale 
 in this country : the first edition of 15,000 
 copies has been exhausted, and a second of 
 5000 published.' ' Your very generous ad- 
 
 ' In the case of American authors the Haron of course 
 undertakes that their hooks shall not he exported to the 
 .States.
 
 208 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 dition,' he afterwards writes, ' to the original 
 sum agreed upon between us is pleasant to me, 
 less for the sum itself than for the trait of 
 character it reveals in you, and the proof of 
 your liberal way of dealing ' ; and again : ' 1 
 hasten to acknowledge your cheque, and to 
 thank you for this recognition of silent inter- 
 national copyright.' 
 
 Charles Lever's letters are more frank than 
 those of his brother authors. ' I am aware,' he 
 says, ' that the fact cannot in any way aflect 
 your view of the matter, but it is as well I 
 should mention — what, after all, is the only test 
 of an author's actual repute and standing in 
 his own country, viz. the money value of his 
 writings — that for this same story I receive 
 a sum little short of three thousand pounds.' 
 The story was the KnigJd of Gwynne, which, 
 it may be noticed, is an extremely long one. 
 There is nothinsf more fallacious than the 
 comparison made between the sums earned 
 by authors past and present without taking 
 the length of their works into consideration. 
 Dickens, Thackeray, Lever, and George Eliot 
 often wrote novels that would make double
 
 A LITERAEY JUBILEE 209 
 
 those of the ordinary three-volume type. Of 
 the portrait of himself prefixed to Jack Hinton, 
 Lever writes: 'It is not — at least so say my 
 friends — a resemblance, and I can myself assure 
 you that I do not squint, which it does abomin- 
 ably. I believe such things are usually given 
 to the world far less from any desire of the 
 public to perceive the author than from the 
 author's own desire to be seen. I must con- 
 fess I have no longings on this subject, and 
 believe my trash will read just as well without 
 the assistance of my countenance.' He ex- 
 presses a wish to see The Confessions of Con 
 Cregan in the Leipzig edition. ' It was, though 
 unacknowledged by me, one of the most suc- 
 cessful of my novels.' He also refers to Horace 
 Templeton as being his, the paternity of which 
 we believe has not been publicly acknowledged 
 even yet. 
 
 Charles King.sley writes : ' I may say that 
 Hypatia, from what both Jiunscn and his Ex- 
 cellency Von Usedom have told me in stronger 
 terms than I shall repeat, ought to have a good 
 sale in Germany — better than in Knglaiid.' 
 
 Macaulay's correspondence with Lliu Leipzig 
 
 ()
 
 210 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 house is, in comparison with that of his brother 
 authors, quite voluminous. 'I am glad,' ho 
 writes in 1863, ' that the first edition of my 
 essays has gone oft". I wish that I could tell 
 you when my History of William the Third 
 will be published ; but I am almost as ignorant 
 about that matter as you can be. The road 
 seems to lengthen before me as I proceed.' In 
 1856 he writes : ' I am perfectly satisfied with 
 your account of our venture. My success here 
 has been very great, I might also say unpre- 
 cedented. I have already received £20,000 
 from Messrs. Longmans. I am ashamed to 
 think how many better writers have toiled all 
 their lives without making a fifth part of that 
 sum.' 1 
 
 Of the proposal that he should write an 
 account of English literature of the nineteenth 
 century, he says: 'A complete and highly 
 finished account would occupy me many 
 months, a hasty sketch would do me no honour. 
 I should not choose to take upon myself the 
 
 * To Macaulay Baron Tauchuitz paid the largest honoraria 
 for the continental edition of his works ; to Lord Lytton 
 the largest honorarium for aiiy single romance.
 
 A LITEEAEY JUBILEE 211 
 
 business of estimating the merits of my con- 
 temporaries ; it would be quite impossible for 
 me to speak the truth without inflicting pain 
 and making enemies.' So one would think ; 
 and yet there are people to be found who insist 
 upon the advantage — to the general public, I 
 suppose, to whom a quarrel between literary 
 men has all the charm of the old cock-fights — 
 of ' signed criticism.' 
 
 Among the many ' forgotten fights ' must be 
 reckoned Mrs. Norton's letter to the Times, 
 complaining of continental piracy. She seems 
 to have given herself little trouble about the 
 facts of the case, and to have been in a most 
 ladylike state of ignorance about her arrange- 
 ments even with her own publishers. ' I have 
 received your letter last night. That letter con- 
 tained the first information I have ever received 
 concerning the sale of my copyrights. T did 
 not know, what you state, that the international 
 copyright with Germany prevented the possi- 
 bility of piracy. \ did uni know that you had 
 paid i'or antlior's work both before and since 
 such copyriglit. I did not know that my novels 
 had been sold you by publishers. F attacked
 
 212 A LITERARY JUBILEE 
 
 the system as I supposed it to exist ; I regret 
 the discussion.' L.ater on she says : ' I have 
 had much greater success than novel-writing 
 could give me in political writing, and in the 
 discussion of laws that affect women in 
 England.' 
 
 The most curious, and certainly the most 
 characteristic, letters of all are those of Charles 
 Reade. ' Christie Johnson and Peg Woffi,ngton,' 
 he writes, ' belong to that small class of one- 
 volume novels of which England produces not 
 more than six in a century. In the compass 
 of one volume they contain as many characters 
 and ideas as the good three-volume novels, and 
 their fate is as distinct from that of the mere 
 novel as is their reputation in England and 
 America.' 
 
 Again : ' If you prefer to pay me a fixed sum 
 or a share of the profits, I do not care. I know 
 that I am in the hands of a just and liberal 
 dealer : only this I beg — let me be paid accord- 
 ing to my sale. For instance, if you sell fewer 
 copies of me than of Mr. Thackeray, pay me 
 less ; if you sell more, pay me more. . . . Your 
 collection is a noble one; it contains many
 
 A LITERACY JUBILEE 213 
 
 authors who are superior to me in merit and 
 reputation, but it also contains the entire works 
 of many writers who do not come up to my 
 knee.' 
 
 Thackeray's correspondence is also character- 
 istic. He writes in 1856: 'Your letter of the 
 26th March has only just found me on my 
 return from America, where I made a prosper- 
 ous voyage, though I have not quite reached 
 the sum of five hundred thousand dollars, which 
 the Allgemeine Zeitung states to be the present 
 amount of my savings. Don't be afraid of your 
 English ; a letter containing £ is always in a 
 pretty style.' Curiously enough, he is the 
 medium of introducing Reade to the Baron as 
 ' the author of Christie Johnson and other 
 most popular stories.' In 1857 ho writes : ' I 
 shall leave the agreement for a new book ' {'The 
 Virginians) ' to your discretion entirely, pre- 
 mising that my publishers here pay luo twice 
 as much for it as for The Newcomes.' 
 
 The last deceased author whoso letters are 
 quoted in this interesting volume is Trollope. 
 He writes, in 1872, from New York : ' My dour 
 Baron Tauchnitz, — On arriving liere yesterday
 
 214 A LITERAliY JUBILEE 
 
 I find by the New York Morning Herald that 
 I had compromised my long lawsuit with you 
 by accepting from you an enormous sum that 
 made my mouth water. It is odd that they 
 should now for a second time pick me out as 
 the object of litigation, as I never had any con- 
 tention with any pubUsher ; though, either on 
 my own account or that of others, I suppose I 
 have had more dealings with publishers than 
 any man living.' 
 
 There is a general notion that Baron Tauch- 
 nitz only publishes English works; this, how- 
 ever, is only a small portion of his undertaking ; 
 he publishes works in Greek, Latin, German, 
 French, and Hebrew; a collection of German 
 authors, of French classics, of Grecian and 
 Roman classics, of logarithmic handbooks, of 
 jurisprudence and of theology (including the 
 Fathers). Besides these there are dictionaries 
 and miscellaneous works, and excellent Series 
 for the Young in English. In 1869 Baron 
 Tauchnitz dedicated his thousandth volume to 
 ' my English and American authors, as a token 
 of esteem for the living and a tribute to the 
 remembrance of the dead.' In 1881 he cele-
 
 A LITERARY JUBILEE 215 
 
 brated the publication of his two-thousandth 
 volume by a history of English literature in 
 the reign of Victoria, with facsimiles of the sig- 
 natures of all the authors, photographed from 
 their correspondence or agreements; and now 
 he crowns the edifice of his labours with this 
 jubilee volume — a record not only interesting 
 in itself, but illustrative of good feeling be- 
 tween a publisher and his authors apparently 
 unbroken for fifty years.
 
 VALE!
 
 THE saddest word known to our tongue, 
 though it be a blessing in brief, is ' Good- 
 bye'; and we have all to say it. There must 
 be pathos indeed about it, since, in my case 
 at least, it moves that synonym for hardness, 
 the heart of an Editor. For more than half 
 my life I have followed that detested calling, 
 and shall perhaps after all die in my bed. 
 It is superfluous to assassinate a tyrant, how- 
 ever hateful, after his abdication. In the 
 thirteen years, however, that I have been 
 privileged to conduct The CornhiU, there have 
 been many halcyon days when the Rejected 
 Contributor has abstained from menace, and 
 even from complaint. I «>nly wish to slate 
 what will Ixi believed, but on some occasions 
 ho has actually acknowledged I was right to 
 decline his lucubrations. Now that my little 
 
 ' Mr. i'ayn'H o<Uloriiil fiircwuU. 
 
 210
 
 220 FALE ! 
 
 bouts with him arc over, I confess that I have 
 a tenderness for him. What patience (up to 
 a certain point) does he exhibit; what amaz- 
 ing perseverance, what hoping against hope, 
 until despair sets in and he perceives that 
 the return of his mss. from all quarters of 
 the globe indicates a universal editorial con- 
 spiracy ! It is then that he becomes dangerous 
 — a matter, however, which no longer concerns 
 me, but my esteemed successor. I am speak- 
 ing, of course, only of th6 Rejected Contributor 
 whose contributions are never accepted, and 
 never will be. The member of every other 
 profession sooner or later finds that he is un- 
 fitted for it — a square man in a round hole, 
 — and if it be possible he gets out of it; but 
 he who thinks he has ' a calling ' for Literature 
 remains in that delusion for ever. I have 
 known a man, who could get nothing printed 
 in his lifetime, compose the epitaph to be en- 
 graved on his tombstone, and leave the money 
 for that purpose. It might not have been 
 publication, but it was a permanent record 
 of his literary gift. 
 
 The R. C.'s position is a truly pathetic one,
 
 FALE! 221 
 
 and I am thankful to think that, though I 
 have been unable to comply with his requests, 
 I have been as gentle with him, where it was 
 possible, as though I were fanning a sleeping 
 Venus. It was not alwaj's possible. When 
 he demands admittance, for example, on the 
 ground that his wife's sister married our 
 second cousin, one is obliged to tell him that 
 one's literary judgment cannot be interfered 
 with by the ties of blood. Even when he 
 states, as the stage direction says, ' with mean- 
 ing,' that his aunt is a duchess, we can only 
 say we cannot help it, and that she can't help 
 him. He is most irritating when he Hatters 
 himself he is combining modesty with con- 
 ciliation, and tells us that though his contribu- 
 tion may not be of a first-class character, he 
 thinks, without vanity, that 'it is at least 
 superior to most of the productions ho has 
 seen in our respected periodical.' llo may 
 be injudicious, Init ho is seldom cantankerous, 
 and I doubt if at the bottom of his licart ho 
 really believes that his disappoinlincnts arc 
 caused by malignity. I am well aware that 
 I am henceforth of absolutely no account with
 
 222 FALE! 
 
 him; a Lord Mayor after his year of office, 
 or a Bishop's widow, is not more completely 
 off his or her pedestal thands an extinct editor 
 in his eyes, but I shall always wish him well ; 
 there is not a more piteous sight than that 
 of a man struggling with insurmountable ad- 
 versity. 'Tis not in mortals to command 
 success, nor in some, alas ! to deserve it. 
 
 The bright side of an editor's hfe is of course 
 where the Accepted Contributor shines on it. 
 To one who is a true lover of Literature it is 
 a pleasure indeed to see the nugget sparkling 
 in its bed; to be able to tell the worker that 
 he has not toiled in vain, that fame, and 
 perhaps fortune, lie before him. To see the 
 fire of hope kindle in young eyes is a sight 
 to gladden old ones, and it has been my good 
 fortune many times to see it. It is one of 
 the attributes of a generous nature to ex- 
 aggerate a kindness, but the extent to which 
 this is carried by literary folk is wellnigh 
 incredible. In no other calling are such vast 
 returns of gratitude obtained from so small 
 an investment of assistance. It is not possible 
 in these days for genius to be stifled in the
 
 FALE ! 223 
 
 bud, but it is a privilege indeed to encourage 
 it to flower. That is why when ' we ' resign 
 our editorships we are not resigned : our life 
 has lost one of its purest pleasures. There 
 is, however, a noble consolation: the pupils 
 of one generation become our masters in 
 another, but they remain for ever our friends. 
 It is to these, with a sad heart, yet full of 
 pleasant memories, that I bid Farewell. 
 
 One other word, and I have done. There 
 are two things about my departure that may 
 well console even a sick man. The one, that 
 ill health and not ill humours, no weakening 
 of my long bond of friendship — a cable with- 
 out a kink — with the founder of Tlte Cornkill 
 divorces me from my occupation : and the 
 other, that of my successor all men have a 
 good word to say. May health attend him, 
 and especially a fine circulation ! 
 
 Primed by T. and A. CoNSTAri v., i'rimcr% to Her Majesty 
 .it ibr EditiliurKli Univeriiiy i'rct»
 
 WORKS BY JAMES PAYN. 
 
 * A little masterpiece.^ — National Observer. 
 
 Crown Svo. limp red cloth, 2^. 6d. 
 
 THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GEORGE DRIFFELL. 
 
 THE SPEAKER.—' Mr. Payn has never written a more excellent story." 
 
 THE ATHENAEUM.— 'Uncommonly well told. . . . The book is full of those good 
 spirits and thi .se dashes of fun which have lighted up all his writings.' 
 
 THE DAILY NEWS.—' The story evolves through 3 sequence of ingeniously devised 
 and vividly presented scenes, and the dialogue has unfailing point and wit. The interest 
 holds us to the end.' 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN WORLD.— 'A capital story, told in the artistic photographic 
 style in which Mr. Payn is a master.' 
 
 'Replete with good stories.'— Th^ Times. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. Crown Svo. -^s. 6J. 
 
 GLEAMS OF MEMORY; 
 
 WITH SOME REFLECTIONS. 
 
 THE WORLD.— 'Of all the personal books that have appeared of late years, Mr. 
 James Payn's " Gleams of Memory" is the most attractive. ... It is not a book to be 
 analysed or criticised ; it is to be read, liked, and simply believed." 
 
 PUNCH. — ' Within its modest limits of space will be found not only some of the best 
 stories of the dav, but stories th'; best told. Not a superfluous word spoils the gems.' 
 
 THE SATURDAY REVIEW.— 'Mr. Payn's "Gleams" are gleams of sunlight; 
 memories of old laughter echo through his unaUected pages.' 
 
 ' One of the pleasantest books that has appeared for some time.' 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 Fcp. Svo. limp cloth, 2J. td. 
 
 SOME LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 THE ATHEN^UM. ■' To s.-iy that Mr. P..yii is seen at his best in the book is 
 as much as to say that it is remarkably pleas.-»nt re.iding. The stories it contains .ire 
 not all new. . . . liut, old and new, the stories are all well told. . . . And then the s|iirit 
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 like that of Maxime duCamp, if for somewhat different reasons, leave a good tastein the 
 mouth. . . . For that reason, if for no other, it should have readers in iiliinidancc.' 
 
 THE SATURDAY REVIEW. "In a sea-on of hiographics and reminiscences 
 Mr. Payn's " Rcjollections " have several pcculi.nrilies of their own. First, they arc short 
 — we wish they were longer. . . . Again, Mr. Payn's Memories arc all good-natured. . . . 
 Thirdly, Mr. Payn's Memories have nothing to do with politics. . . . Mr. Payn's 
 " Recollections " are quite full of anecdotes of authors, editors, publishers, yea, even of 
 publishers' readers, and are cvcrj'where buoyant and attractive with humour and good 
 humour.' 
 
 Fcp. 8vo. bo.-irds. Pictorial cover, is. : nr limp cloth, -jj. (xt. 
 
 THE HEIR OF THE AGES. 
 
 THE SPECTATOR. '"The llcir of the A>;<;-" i:. ii. pha .nil iiml allr.ii.livc .1 
 story as on'; r.-iii rxii'-ct to come across.' ^ 
 
 "THE ATHEN>EUM.- ' Mr. P.iyn ha.n always taken n cheerful view nf life, but m Tlic 
 Heir of th.: Agrs' he surp.i^scs himself. . . . Throuuh it nil Mr. Payn i-. ai I.ih l>c»l. 
 
 THE SCOTSMAN. -'An excellent tale, with khuc touches in 11, .•« we think, hiuhcr 
 than any Mr. I';iyn h.is yet attempted.' 
 
 THE ACADEMY.-- Ah brli{hi, as clever, and MinlcreMindM any of it«prcdec«»or«. 
 In one rcsj-cct namely, n» rrK.-irtU tlear, nympathetir, and (jrnphic delineation of charac- 
 ter — it is almost »iipcri t to any othcm by the vim; writer." 
 
 London: SMITH, LLDIiU, & CO., IS Waterloo Place, S.W.
 
 SMITH, EIDE R, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 BISMARCK: the Man and the Statesman. Being the Reflections and 
 Reminiscences of Otto, Prince von IJismarck, Written and Dictated by himself 
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 long as the world continues to interest itself in history and its makers.' 
 
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 downwards, in which the chief actors in great affairs have endeavoured to describe their 
 
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 THE MUSICIAN'S PILGRIMAGE : a Study in Artistic Development. 
 By J. A. Fuller Maitland. Small crown 8vo. $s. 
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