Aubrey de Vere : a memoir, based on his unpublished diaries and correspondence

Front matter

Wee Ss

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

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Preface

WHEN, as Mr. de Vere’s literary executor under his will, I examined his papers with a view to publishing some of his prose remains, I found that practically nothing was written of the second volume of Recollections which he had planned. The letters and diaries, however, which he was revising with a view to their possible posthumous publication, at once struck me as in many cases suitable for this. purpose, for they deal with matters of general interest, and include some graphic contemporary descriptions of great men. Contemporary letters convey a sense of actuality which Recollections do not always carry. The account (for example) given in 1845, of Alfred Tennyson smoking his pipe and ‘crooning his magnificent Elegies’ to intimate friends until one in the morning, will be to many more actual, than a retrospect, through glasses coloured by later events, and made when the ‘In Memoriam’ had long been written, and its author famous. Some of the letters and diaries give, moreover, a picture of daily intercourse with Wordsworth, of whom little was said in the Recollections.

But while such features of interest were probably what led Mr. de Vere himself to contemplate the publication of his letters, the present writer was yet more impressed by the picture they conveyed of their author himself—of a vill AUBREY DE VERE personality which for spiritual beauty, both of mind and of character, and for the completeness in it of the poetic temperament, must, I think, be allowed to be one of very rare interest.

The horror of self-advertisement and the shrinking from publicity which marked Mr. de Vere’s character and formed part of its charm, led him deliberately to avoid making his published Recollections in any sense an Autobiography ; and they are, so far, as Mr. Gosse says in the letter quoted by me in Chapter X., the play of ‘Hamlet, with ‘the character of the Prince of Denmark omitted.’

Yet his personality was one which made a deep impression on those who were intimate with him. ‘I have lived among poets a great deal, and have known greater poets than he is, but a more entire poet, one more a poet in his whole mind and temperament, I never knew or met with.” Thus wrote Sara Coleridge, the daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the intimate friend of Wordsworth and of the Southeys. Cardinal Newman once expressed to a friend an estimate of Aubrey de Vere very similar to Sara Coleridge’s, and added that the power of self-expression displayed in his poetry (of parts of which the Cardinal was a great admirer) was not fully adequate to representing the beauty of the poet’s mind.

The letters and diaries seem to me largely to supply these deficiencies in the Poems and the Recollections—adding much of self-expression, and throwing fresh light on some of the poems themselves. The present work is, then, in the first place an attempt at the exhibition of a very remarkable mind and character, as displayed in his intercourse and his correspondence with his friends. I have in my incidental selections

PREFACE ix from Aubrey de Vere’s poetry had the same object in view ; and while poems acknowledged to be among his happiest are included among them, my principal aim has been to choose those which best help to depict the poet himself.

The book is not, however, in the fullest sense a Biography. The limit of time prescribed by Mr. de Vere for its publication has made a full biography impossible. And I have not attempted to collect all his letters. I have drawn mainly on those which he had already collected himself, and was preparing for publication when he died. These supply, however, as I hope, sufficient material for a true picture of the man.

It will be to some readers an attraction, to others the reverse, that, as in the case of his beloved Dante, the poetry and philosophy of Christianity were the most absorbing subject of de Vere’s imaginative meditation. The spirit breathed in the pictures of Giotto and Fra Angelico breathes in the letters and poems! of Aubrey de Vere. And_ to minimise this element would be to fail in depicting the central object of his life and thought. Yet, as in the case of his great hero and friend Cardinal Newman, the play of human nature was very graceful and varied in him; and I have endeavoured in my selection of material to do justice to both sides of his temperament.

I must acknowledge in conclusion the kindness of many who have helped me—first and foremost of Mr. de Vere’s niece, Mrs. Vere O’Brien, whose aid has been unfailing, and whose literary judgment, and keen appreciation of her uncle’s work, have very greatly assisted me in my task of selection. To others of his relations who have supplied information or

1 A selection of his religious poems, made by Lady Margaret Domvile, is being prepared for publication by the Catholic Truth Society.

reminiscences I must also express my indebtedness—to Mr. Vere O’Brien, Mrs. Monsell, Miss Agnes Spring Rice, Mrs. de Vere, Miss Ida Taylor, and to Miss Elinor Monsell, whose excellent picture of her great-uncle is reproduced. in my book. To Mr. Edmund Gosse, and Miss Smith of Philadelphia, I owe valuable recollections of Aubrey de Vere. To Professor Eliot Norton, Mr. and Mrs. Wilfrid Meynell, Mrs. Coventry Patmore, Mr. Ellis Yarnall, Mr. Walter George Smith, Miss Arnold Forster, Mrs. Navarro, Baron von Higel, and Mr. Ernest Coleridge, I am indebted for letters. To Mr. Alexander Carlyle, Father Neville, and other representatives of writers whose letters I have been allowed to print, I must also express my thanks, as also to M. l’Abbé L’Héritier, who has kindly allowed me to reproduce his two photographs of Curragh Chase.

I should add that all the extracts from Mr. de Vere’s diary, and nearly all his letters here published, are now printed for the first time. I have, however, ina few instances, where my narrative required it, included letters which have already appeared in the Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, or in the Correspondence of Sir Henry Taylor. W. W.

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CO Ni EN] >

CHAPTER PAGE I. EARLY YOUTH. (1814-1837) : ; : : : : : I

Ii. OXFORD, CAMBRIDGE, AND ROME, (1838-1840) . a cane EF, Ill. RYDAL AND LONDON. (1841-1846) ; ; : : Oz IV. THE IRISH FAMINE. (1846-1848) ; 5 5 ; O77, Vv. AUBREY DE VERE AND HIS FRIENDS. (1848-1850) 2 44 VI ‘NACH ROM.’ (eptors8es) 5 , ; : : : kya Vil. THE NEOPHYTE. (1852-1856) . ; ; , j ; ers

“VIII. LITERARY AND POLITICAL CORRESPONDENCE. (1856- 1873) . 5 . 3 2 : ; c f ° < oT oe eas

IX. ENGLISH AGNOSTICISM AND IRISH JACOBINISM,

INDEX . : : . : ; ; j : : ea Ly, ine Te a ny =a a A a ‘ne peas ‘wet

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LIS OF IELUSTRATIONS

PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES PORTRAIT, @éaé. 20 . E : : : ; : : . . Frontispiece Front a coloured drawing

PORTRAIT, e@éat. 87 . 3 : ; ; é : : ; . to face p. 357

Front an oil painting by EL1noR M. Monsey

OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS to face

CURRAGH CHASE, ADARE—THE HOUSE FROM THE ae 2-97

VIEW FROM A BALCONY AT CURRAGH CHASE, ADARE

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