The Project Gutenberg EBook of Literary Celebrities of the English Lake-District, by Frederick Sessions This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Literary Celebrities of the English Lake-District Author: Frederick Sessions Release Date: April 7, 2013 [EBook #42476] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY CELEBRITIES *** Produced by Eric Skeet, sp1nd and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Photo by Green Bros., Grasmere. Dove Cottage DOVE COTTAGE, GRASMERE. As it was when the Home of the Wordsworths (1799-1808) and De Quincey (1808-1830). Frontispiece.] Enlarge image (to return, click browser's "previous page") LITERARY CELEBRITIES OF THE ENGLISH LAKE-DISTRICT T BY FREDERICK SESSIONS, F.R.G.S. AUTHOR OF 'ISAIAH, POET-PROPHET AND REFORMER' WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 'There is scarcely anything so interesting to man as his brother man; because there is nothing else which so acts on his sympathies; and sympathy is perhaps the most powerful of forces. We may feel much interest in a Thing, more in a Truth, but most of all only in a Man.' Myers' 'Lectures on Great Men' LONDON ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1905 PREFACE HIS is neither a handbook nor a guide to the haunts of our Lake Celebrities. Yet it may, perhaps, serve in some sort the purposes of both. It is not the result of any fresh or original research. I claim only to have condensed many biographies, and to have provided an index to the literary status of the men and women of whom I treat, some of whose works are scarce, and some too voluminous for ordinary readers. These essays were written during leisure hours towards the close of a busy life. They were published first in two different newspapers. This will account for their form, and for the absence of either alphabetical or chronological sequence. The earlier ones were written for friends in my old home in the South; the later ones for my new friends in the North. In bringing them together into book form I have remembered the increasing number of tourists who require food for the mind as well as for the body, and I have remembered my own want, in years past, of some concise account of those whose names were perpetually before me while moving from place to place in these attractive regions. To such tourists especially I respectfully dedicate my biographic sketches, though not without a hope that they may reach, and be of use to, a still wider circle of readers. FREDERICK SESSIONS. The Brant, Kendal. CONTENTS PAGE Author's Preface I. The English Opium Eater: Thomas de Quincey: 1.—The Man 3 2.—His Books 11 II. A Pioneer of Political Reform: Harriet Martineau 21 III. A Lover of Beauty: Gerald Massey 29 IV. A Poet Engraver: William James Linton: 1.—The Man 37 2.—His Books And His Art 43 V. A Successful Novelist: Eliza Lynn Linton: 1.—The Woman 51 2.—Her Books 57 VI. The Philosopher of Brantwood: John Ruskin: 1.—The Man 65 2.—His Art-Teaching and His Books 75 VII. A Great Life Marred: Samuel Taylor Coleridge 85 VIII. A Life to Pity: Hartley Coleridge 95 IX. George the Fourth's Laureate: Robert Southey 103 X. Victoria's First Laureate: William Wordsworth 113 XI. A Friend of Great Poets: Charles Lloyd 123 XII. 'Christopher North': John Wilson 131 XIII. The Champion of Lord Bacon: James Spedding 141 XIV. Two Beautiful Lives: William and Lucy 149 XV. Two Broad Thinkers: Frederic and F. W. H. Meyer (Father and Son) 157 XVI. A Religious Medievalist: Frederick William Faber: 1.—The Man 167 2.—His Books 177 XVII. John Ruskin's Friends: The Sisters of the Thwaite, and their Brother 187 XVIII. A Learned Young Lady: Elizabeth Smith 195 XIX. A Country Doctor and his Stories (Folk-Speech): Dr. Alexander Craig Gibson 203 XX. Two Pioneer Educationists: Thomas and Matthew Arnold 213 XXI. 'Drunken Barnaby': Richard Braithwaite 223 XXII. Last Words about our Celebrities 233 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Dove Cottage, Grasmere (Frontispiece) i Thomas De Quincey 2 The Knoll, Ambleside 20 Brantwood, Coniston Lake 28 John Ruskin in Old Age 64 The House at Herne Hill in which Ruskin was Born in 1819 74 Medallion on the Ruskin Memorial, Derwentwater 83 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 84 Nab Cottage, Rydal 94 Wine Street, Bristol 102 Southey's Monument in Crosthwaite Church, Keswick 112 Joseph Cottle, of Bristol 112 Old Brathay 122 Charles Lloyd and his Wife 129 Elleray, Windermere 130 View of Windermere 166 Yewdale 187 Hawkeshead, from Esthwaite Water 203 Fox How, Ambleside 212 Burneside Hall, near Kendal 222 Swarthmore Hall, Ulverstone 233 GRASMERE AND DOVE COTTAGE 'ONCE I ABSOLUTELY WENT FORWARDS FROM CONISTON TO THE VERY VERGE OF HAMMERSCAR, FROM WHICH THE WHOLE VALE OF GRASMERE SUDDENLY BREAKS UPON THE VIEW IN A STYLE OF ALMOST THEATRICAL SURPRISE, WITH ITS LOVELY VALLEY STRETCHING BEFORE THE EYE IN THE DISTANCE, THE LAKE LYING IMMEDIATELY BELOW, WITH ITS SOLEMN ARK-LIKE ISLAND OF FOUR and a half acres in size seemingly floating on its surface, and its EXQUISITE OUTLINE ON THE OPPOSITE SHORE, REVEALING ALL ITS LITTLE BAYS AND WILD SYLVAN MARGINS, FEATHERED TO THE EDGE WITH WILD FLOWERS AND FERNS. IN ONE QUARTER, A LITTLE WOOD, STRETCHING FOR ABOUT HALF A MILE TOWARDS THE OUTLET OF THE LAKE; MORE DIRECTLY IN OPPOSITION TO THE SPECTATOR, A FEW GREEN FIELDS; AND BEYOND THEM, JUST TWO BOWSHOTS FROM THE WATER, A LITTLE WHITE COTTAGE gleaming from the midst of trees, with a vast and seemingly never-ending SERIES OF ASCENTS, RISING ABOVE IT TO THE [1] H HEIGHT OF MORE THAN THREE THOUSAND FEET. THAT LITTLE COTTAGE WAS WORDSWORTH'S FROM THE TIME OF HIS MARRIAGE, AND EARLIER; IN FACT, FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY TO THE YEAR 1808. AFTERWARDS, FOR MANY A YEAR IT WAS mine.'—THOMAS DE QUINCEY: Autobiographic Sketches THOMAS DE QUINCEY By A. C. Lucchesi. Enlarge image I THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER THOMAS DE QUINCEY I.—THE MAN 'Oh! Mr. de Quinshy—sir, but you're a pleasant cretur—and were I ask't to gie a notion o' your mainners to them that had never seen you, I should just use twa words, Urbanity and Amenity.'—The ETTRICK SHEPHERD in Noctes Ambrosianæ. AD you been in Edinburgh on a certain day of the early spring in the year 1850, you might have met a little, undersized, slight-framed man, with a somewhat stealthy tread, and shy, furtive glances—like one who dreads being watched and overtaken—stepping quickly along the streets. He is dressed in an overcoat, buttoned close to the chin, beneath which is no other coat. At first sight you think him a youth. On a nearer approach you notice his hair is turning gray, and that his fair-complexioned face and massive brow are mapped all over with the finest of fine wrinkles, denoting his age, which is actually almost sixty-five. Let us see where he goes. Presently he reaches the publishing office of Hogg's Instructor, and the weird little man is shown into the editor's office, and as he seems tired out with the ten miles' walk he says he has taken from his village home, he is kindly told to seat himself. No sooner has he done so, than he produces from one of his pockets a packet of manuscript sheets and a small handbrush from another. He tells the astonished editor that he is Thomas De Quincey, whose name by that time was known all over the English-speaking world, and that he wishes to contribute to the new periodical. As he talks, he unfolds each separate sheet, and, carefully wiping it with his brush, lays it on the desk. Editor Hogg goes to his safe and places a sufficient sum in the hands of the shy stranger, and thus begins a fast friendship and a literary connection which results in the publication of some fourteen volumes of scattered essays—essays the like of which are not to be found elsewhere in our mother tongue either for learning or for inimitable force and elegance of style. The friendship only ended with the death of De Quincey nine years later. Now let us follow him to his home. His wife has been dead some years. On her death the eldest daughter, still a mere girl, took upon herself the care of the other children and their loving and famous, but most eccentric, father. She removed the household to the village of Lasswade, and their cottage made for them and all their visitors a bright and happy centre of attraction. It is night ere he reaches his home, but that is no matter, for he is in the habit of taking long and lonely rambles far into the night and early morning, flitting about so silently as to startle benighted travellers as if they had seen a ghost. This night he has walked enough, and retires to his own room—a room crowded with a confused mass of books, which leave only a narrow passage along which he can just screw himself into his chair by the fire. A wineglassful of laudanum is poured out by him from a decanter close at hand, and he drinks it off, though it is of strength sufficient to kill two or three ordinary people. Now, for a while, is his season of recuperation and brilliant writing, till, as daylight approaches, he turns into his simple bedroom and sleeps. Next day, probably, and for many days thereafter we should seek him in vain at these his headquarters, for he has other lodgings, two or three of them, in the City, each simply running over with books. Into one of these hiding-places we are introduced by one of his own essays, wherein he amusingly describes his efforts, aided by his daughters, to discover a manuscript which he desired to publish, and which was found at last at the bottom of a metal bath crammed with papers, receipts, letters, and folios of his own neat handwriting. He has left some other bundles of valuable books and essays at some booksellers, whose very name and address he has forgotten, for he has literally no memory at all for such mundane things, and no kind of idea of the value of money. He would sue for the loan of a few shillings in forma pauperis when scores of pounds were due to him from publishers who would have been only too glad to settle with him promptly. A bank bill or a large note would lie inside some book till its hiding-place was forgotten, simply because he had not the remotest idea how to turn it into cash. On the other hand, when it was cashed he was lavishly generous to every beggar and impostor whom he came across, being one of the most genuinely sympathetic of men, ready to talk with the unfortunates of the pavements, with no thought of sin or shame in his heart, and to do them a good turn; and so fond of little children that one of his greatest griefs—the death of Wordsworth's infant daughter—was undoubtedly amongst the acutest pains of his life. Earning money, after his early struggles were over, more freely than most literary men of the day, so careless and so simple- minded was he that he had to fly for sanctuary from his creditors within the precincts of Holyrood, from whence he was only free to come forth on Sundays, and if perchance he was decoyed into some friend's house, and stayed late unwittingly, entrancing the company with his torrents of living eloquence and unexampled knowledge, there he had to lie [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] perdu till Sunday came round again. Loving, and beloved of all who knew him, unsophisticated and child-like as he was in middle and later manhood, he had had as rough an experience of the dark and troublous side of the world as any man of his century. He was born in Manchester, where his father, who died early of consumption, was a well-to-do manufacturer. His mother, who was of a socially higher grade, and of a rigid Puritan character, never understood her sensitive son, and never took him to her heart or entered his. Very touching are the autobiographic accounts he gives of his sensations on the death of a little sister; how he stole into the silent chamber and kissed the cold lips, and fell apparently into a kind of trance, which, young as he was, made his eyes fill 'with the golden fulness of life'; 'a vault,' he says, 'seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up for ever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft for ever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ran before us and fled away for ever,' and so he goes on, 'till,' says he, 'I slept ... and when I awoke I found myself standing, as before, close to my sister's bed.' Later, too, in church, the organ music awoke within him the deep mysticism of his nature, and he beheld with inner vision, as the solemn notes pealed and sobbed, dreams and visions, and heard oracles, and had with God, as he supposed, 'communion undisturbed.' These dream-echoes haunted him more or less all his life. And it was this delicate, refined nature which was terrorized and domineered over by a rough, fighting elder brother, who forced him into conflict with town boys and victimized him incessantly at home. It was this quick-learning, preternaturally intelligent boy—who could beat all his schoolmates at Greek and other book-knowledge—who was sent to dull and cruel masters, who misused him and drove him in the end to run away and hide himself in Wales, and afterwards in London. In the great Metropolis, in a desolate old house at the corner of Greek Street and Soho Square, with only a little waif of a girl to share his misery and solitude, he spent many months, his only other acquaintances a hard old lawyer, who made him a tool, and a girl of the streets, whom he calls 'Poor Ann of Oxford Street,' who had rescued him from death when he lay famishing on a doorstep. How he was discovered by his family; how he was sent to Oxford, and how when there his sensitiveness led him to shirk the examinations for his degree; how he went to the lakes of Westmorland to live, edited a Kendal newspaper, associated with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Professor Wilson, and many another celebrity of the day; how he married a farmer's daughter, who made him an exemplary wife; how he had contracted the terrific opium habit, and how he fought it, conquered it, and fell again before it; how he filled, even in the days of his poverty and struggling life, one cottage after another with precious volumes of ancient and modern lore; and how he migrated northward, and lived in and near Edinburgh, as he was doing when we first met him—all these things you must read for yourselves in his 'English Opium Eater,' and in his entrancing 'Autobiographic Sketches,' or else in a Life of him by Dr. Japp or by Professor Masson. His death came not unawares to terminate a period of helpless weariness with some delirium, the after-effects of opium doses. But even in delirium his dreams, though they greatly tried him, revealed the gentle spirit of the man. Telling his daughter one of them, he said: 'You know I and the children were invited to the Great Supper—the Great Supper of Jesus Christ. So, wishing the children to have suitable dresses for such an occasion, I had them all dressed in white. They were dressed from head to foot in white. But some rough men in the streets of Edinburgh, as we passed on our way to the Supper, seeing the little things in complete white, laughed and jeered at us, and made the children much ashamed.' His daughter records: 'As the waves of death rolled faster and faster over him, suddenly out of the abyss we saw him throw up his arms, which to the last retained their strength, and he said distinctly, and as if in great surprise, "Sister, sister, sister!"' So he fell on sleep. OF BOOKS AND CONVERSATION 'A GREAT SCHOLAR, IN THE HIGHEST SENSE OF THE TERM, IS NOT ONE WHO DEPENDS SIMPLY ON AN INFINITE MEMORY, BUT ALSO ON AN INFINITE AND ELECTRICAL POWER OF COMBINATION, BRINGING TOGETHER FROM THE FOUR WINDS, LIKE THE ANGEL OF THE Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. 'AND OF THIS LET EVERYONE BE ASSURED—THAT HE OWES TO THE IMPASSIONED BOOKS WHICH HE HAS READ, MANY A THOUSAND MORE OF EMOTIONS THAN HE CAN CONSCIOUSLY TRACE BACK TO THEM. DIM BY THEIR ORIGINATION, THESE emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through life like the forgotten incidents of childhood. 'BOOKS TEACH BY ONE MACHINERY, CONVERSATION BY ANOTHER; AND IF THESE RESOURCES WERE TRAINED INTO CORRESPONDENCE TO THEIR OWN SEPARATE IDEALS, THEY MIGHT BECOME RECIPROCALLY THE COMPLEMENTS OF EACH other.'—THOMAS DE QUINCEY: Essay on Pope. THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER THOMAS DE QUINCEY II.—HIS BOOKS 'DE QUINCEY! FAREWELL! MANY PLEASING HOURS HAVE WE SPENT IN THE PERUSAL OF THY ELOQUENT PAGE, AND NOT A FEW IN [7] [8] [10] [11] W LISTENING TO THY PIERCING WORDS. NOT A FEW TEARS HAVE WE GIVEN TO THY EARLY SORROWS. WITH NO LITTLE EMOTION HAVE we followed the current of thy romantic narrative.'—GILFILLAN'S Literary Portraits. E have already seen that De Quincey's collected essays filled, in the edition prepared by himself, as many as fourteen volumes. How many there are in the more recent edition by Professor Masson I do not at the moment remember, but they are in most public libraries, and can be heartily commended both for their careful annotation and the excellence of their typography. This latter point is a great one for the book-lover, who believes that everything he reads should be pleasant to handle and a delight to the eyes, provided always that its price is within reach of a moderately-filled purse. Of the quality of the contents of the fourteen volumes there are diverse critical opinions. Let me appraise a few of them before offering my own. Dr. Traill ('Social England'), while speaking highly of our author's remarkable powers of literary expression, his wit, pathos, and humour, considers him 'unequal' in merit, and is almost absurdly wrong when he talks of De Quincey dividing a certain portion of his life 'between Bohemianizing in London and lion-hunting in the Lake District.' Two more utterly unsuitable words could hardly have been found with which to describe the early experiences of our quaint, little, oversensitive 'Thomas Paperverius,' as Hill Burton calls him in 'The Book Hunter,' than 'Bohemianizing' and 'lion-hunting.' We will, however, forgive Dr. Traill, since one who was by nature an unsympathetic critic could not possibly rise above his own customary level, and also because he gives De Quincey a place of honour as the originator of the modern school of 'prose poets,' represented by Professor Wilson, his contemporary, and in later years by John Ruskin. The Professor Wilson here named is, of course, he who is still known by his nom de plume of 'Christopher North.' Close friends were these two great walkers, great talkers, and great writers. At first sight an ill-assorted pair must they have seemed to anyone who met them together on the hills above Windermere, the Celtic giant striding along, like one of Ossian's heroes, with 'his yellow hair streaming upon the wind,' and his undersized comrade half running by his side. As they climbed the mountain they were fain to discourse of all things in heaven and on earth, for they were both eclectics of a high order, both deeply versed in German literature and metaphysics, both keenly observant of Nature and of current events, and both excellent classical and English scholars. The more Wilson knew of De Quincey the better he liked and appreciated him, even though an occasional little breeze ruffled the calmness of their intercourse. The latter owed to 'Kit' his introduction to Blackwood's Magazine, of which he was then editor-in-chief. You will also remember—you, at any rate, who are familiar with the charming 'Noctes Ambrosianæ' (though, I fear, you are in a sad minority in these days of scrappy periodicals and flimsy popular fiction)—but you of the elect few will remember the genial fun which Wilson pokes at 'The Opium Eater,' and how cleverly he imitates his all but inimitable style, and banters him on his out-of-the way bits of Attic or Teutonic lore, as well as on his habits of tagging on one idea to another till he bids fair to lay the whole universe under contribution to his analytical and illuminative conversation. You will remember, further, that he puts into the mouth of 'The Ettrick Shepherd' many such passages as the following, professing to tease pleasantly the subject of them: 'As for "The Opium Eater," he lives in a world o' his ain, where there are nae magazines o' ony sort, but o' hail and sleet, and thunder, and lichtnin', and pyramids, and Babylonian terraces, covering wi' their fallen gardens, that are now naething but roots and trunks o' trees, and bricks o' pleasure houses, the unknown tombs o' them that belonged once to the Beasts o' the Revelation,' and much more of the same sort of chaff, running into a paragraph three times the length of this quotation. Crabbe Robinson, in his 'Diary,' that wonderful repertoire of chit-chat about the celebrities of his day, says 'all that De Quincey wrote is curious if not valuable; commencing with his best-known "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," and ending with his scandalous but painfully-interesting autobiography in Tait's Magazine.' Scandalous quotha! This most 'valuable' production has passed into our choicest literature, while Mr. Robinson's own memoranda are barely known, if at all, beyond a small circle of bookworms. The 'Diary' has become a mere quarry in which historians and biographers dig for their building materials, while De Quincey's life is a more enduring monument to his fame than if it had been of marble. George Gilfillan has far more nearly hit the mark when he pens this critique: 'In all his writings we find a lavish display of learning. You see it bursting out, whether he will or no; never dragged in as by cart-ropes; and his allusions, glancing in all directions, show even more than his direct quotations that his learning is encyclopædic. His book of reference is the brain. Nor must we forget his style. It is massive, masculine, and energetic; ponderous in its construction, slow in its motion, thoroughly English, yet thickly sprinkled with archaisms and big words, peppered to just the proper degree with the condiments of simile, metaphor, and poetic quotation; select, without being fastidious; strong, without being harsh; elaborate, without being starched into formal and false precision.' We will pass now from these critical estimates to our own mere likings and preferences among De Quincey's very voluminous 'Selections Grave and Gay.' I give the first place—the place of vantage and of honour—to the autobiography already alluded to above, for it burns and scintillates with the fire of genius, kindled by the action of unique experiences upon a unique temperament. Next must come, of course, the 'Confessions,' which made him famous in the first instance. This is a volume from which, in my limited space, I can make no typical extracts, meandering as the pages do among golden visions and uncanny dreams begotten by the hideous narcotic drug, and lingering lovingly among picturesque sketches of the men and maidens of the villages and country towns he strayed to during his flight from school and home, giving us glimpses now of 'elaborate and pompous sunsets hanging over the mountains of Wales,' and anon plunging us into the profoundest depths of German philosophy and theology. Sometimes he makes us [12] [13] [14] [15] smile at a curious and unexpected phrase, or some simile that is apt, and yet at first sight seems incongruous, with a spice of exaggeration, such as the statement that the shoulders of the porter who carried away his trunk were 'broad as Salisbury Plain.' One of the most characteristic of his tales is that of 'The Spanish Military Nun,' a true narrative, unearthed by him from the authentic lore of Spain, of an episode in the conquest of South America, and relating to a certain Catarina (prettily called by him 'our dear Kate') who escaped from a convent in the mother country, donned armour, fought battles and duels, was beloved by marriageable girls, forced a passage across the Andes, and finally was drowned in the Western Atlantic. The story is told with humour and much feeling, and has no counterpart, except in the narrative similarly discovered and freely translated by Southey, called 'The Expedition of Orsua, and the Crimes of Aguirre.' Perhaps the most celebrated of his essays, though, I fancy, better known by its title than actually read, is that 'On Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts.' It is an elaborate jeu d'esprit, of which the grave introduction, brimming over with fun, not a muscle of the author's face moving in the telling, commences thus: 'Most of us who read books have probably heard of a Society for the Promotion of Vice, of the Hell-fire Club, founded in the last century by Sir Francis Dashwood. At Brighton, I think it was, that a society was formed for the suppression of virtue. That society was itself suppressed; but I am sorry to say that another exists in London of a character still more atrocious. In tendency it may be denominated a Society for the Encouragement of Murder, but according to their own delicate euphemismos is styled "The Society of Connoisseurs in Murder." They profess to be curious in homicide; amateurs and dilettante in the various modes of carnage, and, in short, murder-fanciers.' Probably to the majority of his readers his 'English Mail-Coach,' with its sub-chapters on 'The Glory of Motion,' 'The Vision of Sudden Death,' and 'Dream Fugue,' will be the most attractive of all his pieces. We who are old enough to remember 'The Arrow,' 'The Rival,' 'The Tally-Ho,' and other four-horse mail-coaches, on which we rode seventy miles to and from boarding-school, or to visit far-off country relatives, can enter into the spirit of these sketches con amore. The young folk, who have ridden only in hansom-cabs and excursion trains, have little idea of the perils and pains, and the pleasures, of old coaching days, on the old coaching roads, or at the old coaching inns, in weary winter rides, or glorious sunny jaunts in summer time. They should certainly read these essays, and learn how their parents and grandparents travelled in days antecedent to steam and electricity. If sterner qualities are needed by more laborious readers, let me commend to their attention that marvel of historic picture-writing, 'The Revolt of the Tartars'; or 'The Essenes' may suit them, if they be biblical students, even though they may not agree with De Quincey's conclusions; or there is that painstaking, minutely-descriptive chapter on 'The Toilet of a Hebrew Lady.' If they inquire for political knowledge—and, indeed, this is sadly lacking, not only among working men, but even more by professional men, who live outside the contact and struggle with the hardships and necessities of business life—where will you find anything more convincing, anywhere any severer logic, than that in the dissertations on Political Economy? I say nothing of his other historical, philosophical, and theological writings—his theories, speculations, and researches—for I would advise none to begin the systematic study of De Quincey with these. I would recommend beginners to taste first his sketches of contemporary writers and his lighter papers, and then, if they find they acquire a liking for these, to pass on to the more recondite. I confess that, however fascinating his literary style may be, it requires some little culture to appreciate it at the outset. If a first attempt prove no success, let the 'Miscellanies' be laid aside for a while, till the man himself has become well known and companionable. Then a second attempt can hardly be a failure. Let me finish this article by inviting my readers' perusal of that masterpiece of Jean Paul Richter's, so ably translated by our 'old man eloquent,' and forming the appendix to his essay on the system of the heavens. It begins, 'And God called up from dreams a man into the vestibule of heaven, saying, "Come thou hither, and see the glory of My house." And to His angels He said, "Take him and undress him from his robes of flesh, and put a new breath into his nostrils, and arm him with sail-broad wings for flight. Only touch not with any change his human heart—the heart that weeps and trembles." It was done, and with a mighty angel for his guide, the man stood ready for his infinite voyage, and from the terraces of heaven, without sound or farewell, at once they wheeled away into endless space.' THE BRATHAY VALLEY, AMBLESIDE 'IT IS THE PLACE FOR THE EARLIEST FLOWERS OF THE SPRING, AND DISTINGUISHED BY THE BROOM GROWING THICKLY ON THE BANK OF THE RIVER, AND YELLOW GLOBE-RANUNCULUS FLOURISHING ON THE ROCKS AT THE BRINK, OR IN THE MIDST OF THE STREAM. IN THE AUTUMN, THE SIDE OF LOUGHRIGG, WHICH OVERHANGS THE VALLEY, IS SPLENDID WITH FLOWERING HEATHER. THE OPPOSITE CHARACTER OF THIS AND THE SISTER VALLEY IS STRIKING, AND LED TO THE REMARK OF A RESIDENT OF AMBLESIDE THAT IF ONE WANTS A MEDITATIVE WALK IN WINTER, ONE GOES ROUND THE BRATHAY VALLEY—SURE TO MEET NOBODY BUT THE POSTMAN, WHEREAS, IF ONE NEEDS RECREATION AFTER A MORNING OF STUDY, THE WALK SHOULD BE ROUND THE ROTHAY VALLEY, WHERE ONE IS SURE TO MEET ALL ONE'S ACQUAINTANCES. THE FINEST VIEW IN THIS VALLEY, ONE OF THE FINEST IN THE WHOLE DISTRICT, IS FROM SKELWITH FOLD.... THE STRANGER WILL HARDLY AVER THAT HE EVER SAW A MORE PERFECT PICTURE THAN THIS, WITH THE FALL (SKELWITH FORCE) IN THE CENTRE, CLOSED IN BY ROCK AND WOOD ON EITHER HAND, AND BY LANGDALE PIKES behind.'— HARRIET MARTINEAU: Guide to the Lakes. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] P Photo by Herbert Bell, Ambleside. THE KNOLL, AMBLESIDE The Home of Harriet Martineau (1855-1876). Enlarge image II A PIONEER OF POLITICAL REFORM HARRIET MARTINEAU 'SHE WAS BORN TO BE A DESTROYER OF SLAVERY, IN WHATEVER FORM, IN WHATEVER PLACE, ALL OVER THE WORLD, WHEREVER SHE SAW OR THOUGHT OF IT ... IN THE DEGRADED OFFSPRING OF FORMER ENGLISH POOR-LAW ... IN ENGLISH SERFDOM FORTY YEARS AGO ... IN THE FRUITS OF ANY ABUSE—SOCIAL, LEGISLATIVE, OR ADMINISTRATIVE—OR IN ACTUAL SLAVERY.'— FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. ERHAPS the most instructive and reliable book ever written about the actual condition of England, and about her people's struggles for light, liberty, and better conditions of life during the first half of the nineteenth century is Miss Martineau's 'History of the Thirty Years' Peace.' It is emphatically a citizen's history as distinguished from a partizan politician's, and it ought to be read, together with her 'Introduction' to it, by every young man who desires to possess an intelligent acquaintance with the social problems of his age and country. The ignorance of the present generation of youthful electors, when compared with the knowledge of their parents at a similar time of life, often astounds me. It is probably due to two causes—first, to the fact that their fathers were, forty or fifty years ago, only just emerging from the dust and smoke of hard-fought political battles, and so had the causes of them well engrained into their minds, while they of this generation have not yet so much as 'smelt powder' in the struggle against still-existing grievances; and, secondly, that the present-day education in elementary schools practically ignores the teaching of history, while ordinary secondary schools teach English history only in 'samples,' and those seldom of the most modern periods. No other of Harriet Martineau's works will take rank with her 'Thirty Years' Peace,' yet they all had a great reputation when she was reckoned the greatest living English woman, and they nearly all had a wide sale, though, having been written for passing purposes, they naturally died out of the popular memory when their purposes were accomplished, and fresh interests had come into view. They were mostly stories—novelettes—written to illustrate such questions as the then burning ones of free trade, colonization by emigration of the pauper and the criminal, the incidence and amendment of the Poor Laws, the repression and punishment of crime, actual and ideal systems of taxation, the relationships of capital and labour, and the like. In addition to these, she wrote a few volumes of pure fiction, some reminiscences of travel in the East—through Egypt, across the Sinaitic desert, and northwards past Jerusalem to Damascus—and some others respecting her stay in the United States of America in the troublous anti-slavery times preceding the Civil War. In her earlier days she also wrote some religious and theological essays and sketches for Unitarian magazines. Of her fictions, two may be mentioned—'Deerbrook,' which she considered her masterpiece, and 'Feats on the Fjord.' The latter was favourite reading of my own boyhood. I took it to Norway with me in later days, and found it in every way a most accurate description of Scandinavian farm life, as well as of coast and mountain scenery—in fact, quite as much so as the stories of Björnstjerne Björnson himself. The extraordinary thing about this is that the authoress had never been in Norway, and took all the settings of her hero's adventures from narratives of other people's travels. Her autobiography—written when, in advancing age, heart-disease had marked her for its victim at no distant date— with the appendix thereto, compiled by her devoted friend, Mrs. Chapman—furnishes us with all the available materials for a sketch of her life; and, indeed, it is the most valuable of all her multitudinous productions, with the exception already noted. It is the story of a noble and unceasing struggle, successfully carried through, against internal difficulties, both mental and physical of no ordinary character, and against external ones that would have beaten any commonplace person. It is, however, also a revelation of spiritual processes and of gradual abandonment of once-cherished beliefs that does not fascinate us, and leaves us with grave doubts as to the acuteness of her philosophical insight, and of her grasp of real Christian teaching. Perhaps, too, it was natural that her independence of character, and her constant overwork and overstrain, should lead her into impatience of the frailties of others, and quicken her contempt for many of the celebrities she knew personally. Born in 1802 of Unitarian parents, in Norwich, she grew to be a shy, sensitive, but quietly-observant and clever girl. Her upbringing was on the repressive lines of a conscientious but narrow-minded mother, who was without sympathy for, or knowledge of, her 'ugly duckling's' yearnings or capacity. The last thing the mother dreamed of was that the 'ugly duckling' was in truth a cygnet, whose swan-plumage the world would one day recognise. The daughter longed inexpressibly for words and deeds of parental love which never came to her, and so she grew silent, introspective, and morbid. In mature age she became morbidly ashamed of her childhood's, perhaps inevitable, morbidness. When her literary instincts were bound to find a vent, her first venture in magazine articles had to be made in secret, and, when they were discovered, efforts were made to repress any continuation of them, and she was sternly told to stick to her [21] [22] [23] [24] sewing-needle. She was fortunate in being sent to a good day-school, which counteracted by its learned and genial atmosphere the influences of home. It was, too, a blessing in disguise when, her never robust health failing, her parents sent her to relatives in Bristol, whose joyous spirits and cultured tastes were an inspiration to her. A tendency to deafness, which became chronic, and at last compelled the habitual use of an ear-trumpet, did not, till she conquered the disadvantage by her brave fortitude, make her desirous of company or help her to make much way in it. The one trusted friend of her youth was her beloved younger brother James, afterwards the eminent Unitarian minister and theologian. To him she confided her secret aspirations, and he encouraged her finally to proceed to London and try and find a publisher for the series of political economy stories she projected writing. Her heroic efforts to find someone who would risk putting them on the market is one of the romances of literary biography. Her father was dead. The manufacturing firm in which her mother's monies were invested had failed. She was alone in London, and without knowledge or influence. How she 'trudged many miles through the clay of the streets, and the fog of the gloomiest December,' only to be rejected, sometimes politely, and sometimes rudely, by everyone to whom she showed her MSS. and explained her scheme; and how at last she despairingly accepted what seemed almost impossible, and certainly were unreasonable, terms, offered by a young bookseller without business connections; how a wealthy relative unexpectedly stepped in to guarantee a portion of her personal risk; and how she suddenly sprang into fame—are not all these things faithfully set forth in her autobiographical chapter headed 'Aged Twenty-nine'? From depths of discouragement that would have effectually damped most aspiring authors she at once became a 'society lion,' or rather, to retain our former metaphor, she was hailed as one of the swans of literature, and, as was said of the royal bird in Andersen's parable, 'the most beautiful of them all.' She endured a long and terrible strain, while for several years producing a story a month, which broke down her health seriously, yet she attended nearly every evening some social function, which brought her into intimacy with the most celebrated men and women of her generation. It is in her records of this period that the most unpleasant traits in her disposition become apparent. Almost every page betokens a spirit of captious criticism of her acquaintances, and almost every one is belittled by her. About this time, too, Unitarianism lost altogether its slackening hold of her. She saw that its dogmas were entirely contrary to Scripture revelation and teaching, but instead of rectifying her faith to the Christian standard, she abandoned the standard itself, and became an avowed Positivist. She writes herself down as a convinced 'Necessitarian,' though if anyone's life and conduct effectually belied such a creed it was hers. No one ever gave stronger proofs of a self- determined will, free from all external or internal compulsion, than she. Money as well as fame became now her well-earned portion, and she found herself able to purchase an annuity, spend some time abroad, and buy land and build a house thereon at Ambleside, by the shores of beautiful Winander. In this charming home she spent her declining years, following her favourite pursuits, advocating mesmerism, which she considered had raised her up from a long-endured nervous prostration, and playing with success the part of the Lady Bountiful to the neighbourhood. It was whilst at this place that she translated the works of Comte, and lost thereby, what she valued most in the world—the intimacy of her beloved brother James, who, like herself, a model of conscientiousness, publicly reviewed her introductions and comments with some severity. Both brother and sister had opinions, held them tenaciously, and expressed them fearlessly. On her side no sign of change from Positivism was ever given. The same dauntless spirit which bore her through the anti-slavery campaign, when in America she was threatened by the slave-owners with personal violence, upheld her now in her championship of the philosophy of altruism without a Divine Fatherhood. We believe her mistaken, but admire her unflinching adhesion to what she deemed the truth. It was in her beautiful house, The Knoll, that she passed behind the veil, and entered into the clear seeing of eternity. She died, says her closest friend and biographer, 'in the summer sunset of her home amid the Westmorland mountains, on June 27, 1876, after twenty-one years of diligent, devoted, suffering, joyful years there, attended by the family friends she most loved, and in possession of all her mental powers up till the last expiring day, aged seventy-four years.' She lies among her kindred, descendants of French refugees, in the old cemetery at Birmingham. In her maidenhood she had once loved, and been beloved by one of the other sex, but events occurred to prevent the consummation of her love by marriage, and it proved a happy escape. Thenceforward she lived only to endure 'Many a lofty struggle for the sake Of duties, sternly, faithfully fulfilled, For which the anxious mind must watch and wake, And the strong feelings of the heart be stilled.' THE TRUE POET 'Who wears a singing-robe is richly dight; The Poet, he is richer than a King. He plucks the veil from hidden loveliness; His gusts of music stir the shadowing boughs, To let in glory on the darkened soul. Upon the hills of light he plants his feet [25] [26] [27] [28] H To lure the people up with heart and voice; At humblest human hearths drops dews divine To feed the violet virtues nestling there. His hands adorn the poorest house of life With rare abiding shapes of loveliness. All things obey his soul's creative eye; For him earth ripens fruit-like in the light; Green April comes to him with smiling tears, Like some sweet maiden who transfigured stands In dewy light of first love's rosy dawn, And yields all secret preciousness, his Bride. He reaps the Autumn without scythe or sickle; And in the sweet low singing of the corn Hears Plenty hush the pining Poor.' GERALD MASSEY. BRANTWOOD, CONISTON LAKE The Home of Harriet Martineau (1855-1876). Enlarge image III A LOVER OF BEAUTY GERALD MASSEY 'Like the Norseman of whom he sings, he is everywhere true, brave, generous, and free. He is before all things a PATRIOT. HE HAS AN INTENSE BELIEF IN THE GENIUS OF ENGLAND AS THE CHAMPION OF LIBERTY, AND THE PIONEER OF freedom.'—The Poets and the Poetry of the Century. E is still living, some seventy-five years of age, and it is difficult to write anything of the nature of a biography of one still amongst us. There are a few facts, however, patent to all the world, which may be fitly reproduced. Perhaps the most striking of these is that, like 'Festus Bailey,' he did his best poetical work in his young manhood, and the early promise of ripening in power and of richer fruit-bearing has not been fulfilled. Massey, writing some sweet and inspiring lyrics, and giving evidence of acute appreciation of the masters of literature in his once well- known lectures, seems to have lost himself in a maze of Egyptian and anti-Christian pseudo-philosophies even less edifying than the science evolved from the 'inner consciousness' of such holy men as Jacob Behmen, Peter Sterry, or Swedenborg, and as incomprehensible to the ordinary mind as the strange mysticism of William Blake. He has, as a poet, which was his true function in life, committed intellectual suicide, and his resurrection into mythical regions and pamphleteering on 'Luniolatry,' 'The Seven Souls of Man,' 'The Coming Religion,' and other such subjects, will not only fail to add to his fame, but in the future will be remembered merely by curiosity-hunters as the vagaries of a capable but erratic genius. Like his own Atle the Fur-Hunter in chasing the squirrel, he has lost his sledge-load of treasures. I know that he does not personally think so, and that some, at least, of his friends agree with him. He found verse-making insufficient for subsistence—as, indeed, might have been expected—and it has been written of him that in turning to his final career he began to 'Dredge the old sea-bottoms of the Past, Lover of Beauty who gave up all for Truth.' Still, we shall ever regret the change. Some of his best life-work was done by Massey at Brantwood, on the shores of Coniston Water, including 'The Ballad of Babe Christabel,' 'Craig-crook Castle,' and 'War-Waits.' He had come here after a period of stress necessitated by his outward circumstances, which had been of the poorest. His father was a canal-boatman of Tring, in Hertfordshire, and for him, as for all of the wage-earners of those evil days of the Corn Laws and other oppressions, there was virtually no education. He was sent to work in a mill when eight years of age, for twelve hours a day, at 9d. to 1s. 6d. per week. It was the sorrows and sufferings of such little ones as he which inspired Mrs. Browning's never-to-be- forgotten 'Cry of the Children.' Possessed of a resolute will and an inquiring spirit, he taught himself all he could from the very few books accessible to him. While passing through years of poverty and hardship, engaged in straw-plaiting, he associated himself with like-minded youths of his own and a somewhat better social class, threw himself ardently into the progressive movements of the day, and soon found his way into print in some of the restricted and Government- worried local newspapers. When but twenty-one years old he was actually editing a serial called The Spirit of the Age. A year later he became one of the secretaries of the Christian Democratic movement headed by Maurice and Kingsley, wrote verses for various publications, and by-and-by mustered courage to issue his 'Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love.' This little book and his next brought him into contact or correspondence with Hepworth Dixon, W. Savage Landor, 'George Eliot,' and Tennyson. Tennyson writes him respecting the 'fine lyrical impulse, and the rich, half- Oriental imagination' he found in his poems. 'George Eliot' is said to have taken him for her model of 'Felix Holt the [29] [30] [31] Radical.' She describes her hero as a somewhat eccentric-mannered young man, shaggy-headed, large-eyed, and strong-limbed, wearing neither waistcoat nor cravat, and in abrupt sentences denouncing unreality and humbug, though amenable to softening social and intellectual influences. This, at any rate, is her introduction of him to her readers. Massey's first love-story (he was happily married) was, at least, as much an idyll, it would appear, as that of Holt, and the deep home love, the consecrated affection of the wedded life, were the inspirations of some of his sweetest lyrics, just as his intense yearnings for the betterment of the common people were that of his patriotic ones. Later in life, after he had left Coniston, we find him an accepted essayist in some leading literary magazines, and a lecturer on literary subjects, living in Edinburgh. Another volume or two, with war songs and ballads among them, evoked by what England has long ago become ashamed of—the Crimean War—completed the first stage of his career, and the only one that concerns us here. He has collected into a volume—adopting a description of himself as 'the most unpublished of authors'—a few of his best poems, which one critic thinks contains everything of his worth preserving. I do not agree with this dictum. Some of his best are omitted, though we have to thank this self-same critic for preserving them for us. Now comes for me the ungrateful task of selecting from his garden of delights, not posies, but a few blossoms and a few typical petals that may serve to show the form and hue of the blossoms. In doing so, many of the best must of necessity be passed over. Do you know 'Babe Christabel'? Is it not pathetically true to experience? Has it not set many a chord of many a mother's riven heart vibrating as she reads of 'A merry May morn, All in the prime of that sweet time When daisies whiten, woodbines climb, When the dear Babe Christabel was born'? and how, coming through the 'golden gates of morn' to what seemed a glorious destiny, and touching the earth with a fresh romance for the happy parents, she grew in loveliness only to be caught away, ere reaching womanhood, by angels who gathered her 'delighted as the children do the primrose that is first in spring.' And do you know 'Cousin Winnie'? It is almost as pathetic, and quite as true, only in a different way. It narrates a lad's love for a cousin, married, when she reached maturity, to a friend of his, who brought trouble upon her, and for whom he suffered as she suffered, unable to help, and never telling out his affection for fear of causing division and dissension. His songs are far from being all sad. They are mostly redolent of bright fancy. 'Pleasant it is, wee wife of mine, As by my side thou art, To sit and see thy dear eyes shine With bonfires of the heart! And Young Love smiles so sweet and shy From warm and balmy deeps, As under-leaf the fruit may try To hide, yet archly peeps; Gliding along in our fairy boat, With prospering skies above, Over the sea of time we float To another New World of Love.' This lake-poet is not the Laureate of the love of courtship, but of wedded bliss. 'Oh, lay thy hand in mine, dear! We're growing old, we're growing old! But time hath brought no sign, dear! That hearts grow cold, that hearts grow cold!' begins another of what may be called the 'Darby and Joan' type. Of the liberty songs, many are familiar to progressive politicians, or were till we got our terrible set-back at the late 'Khaki' election. They need reissuing in a popular form. Most people who read anything of this nature will remember the stanzas with the refrain: 'This world is full of...