Biographical sketches

Preface

It has been suggested to me that these Sketches should be reproduced in a convenient form for readers who may wish that they were more accessible than when hidden in the files of a newspaper. Such a proposal, made by a judgment which I respect, is gratifying to me ; and I can have no hesitation in accepting it. I have therefore collected all the Memoirs I have written for the Daily News, from my first connection with the paper in 1852. It is from one of the gentlemen connectpd with that Journal, Mr. J. R. Bobinson, that the suggestion has proceeded ; and it was accompanied by a generous consideration which obviates all difficulty in complying with it. Aware that my state of health renders all literary exertion impossible, Mr. Robinson desired to charge' ■ himself with all the trouble and responsibility, while leaving me all the advantages, of the publication. I have therefore had nothing to do but to put the material into his hands, duly arranged ; and it has been carried through the press, and presented to the public, under his care and judgment.

As for my own share in the business, it was evident to me at the first glance over my material that the Sketches must be presented unaltered. In the few which relate to persons then living, there may be sentences or expressions which would have been different if the Memoirs were to be written now ; but to alter these

VI

PREFACE .

now would be to tamper with the truth of the sketch, and to produce something more misleading than the forecasts of a time which has gone by.

There is no such question in regard to the nine-tenths of the Memoirs which relate to the dead. Slight as they are, they convey the impression which the completed life left in each case upon my own mind, and, as I believe, on that of the society of its time. As the impression was final, the first record of it should remain untouched in order to remain faithful. I there¬ fore simply reproduce the Sketches, making no other change than in the headings announcing the death, in each case. For convenience of reference, and for the sake of something like order in the presentment of materials so various, the personages are classified. In each group, however, there is no other precedence than the date of departure.

These few words of explanation being given, I have only to leave the Sketches to produce their own impres¬ sion, whether on the minds of those who from peculiar knowledge carry a corresponding picture in their own breasts, or of those to whom the personages were historical while they lived. The records are true to my own impressions ; and, secure in this main particular, I have no misgiving in offering them to readers whose curiosity and interest about the distinguished dead of their time claim such satisfaction as any survivor may be able to give.

The Knoll, Ambleside, December , 1868.

H. M,

Contents

I. LITERARY.

PAGE

I. AMELIA OPIE . 13

I . Literary

I.

AMELIA OPIE.

Died December 2d, 1853.

*

Another of that curious class of English people — the provincial literary lion — has left us. Mrs. Opie is dead.

The young, and most of the middle-aged, of our day will say, “What of that?” — or “Who was Mrs. Opie?”

—or will think of her only as a beneficent Quaker lady, whose conversion to muslin caps and silent meetings made a noise some good many years ago. But the elderly generation are aware that a good deal more than that is connected with the name and fame of Amelia Opie.

The long wars of George III. 's time largely influenced One effect of the fate of this lady, as they did, indeed, that of most lonS warspeople in England. One effect of those wars in an in¬ sular kingdom like ours was to shut up our towns with their peculiarities, and to preserve a state of manners which has disappeared from the world, unless it be in some remote German districts, or in some primitive communities in New England. Lichfield is still renowned for its departed literary coterie, and their conceits and pedantries : and Norwich was very like Lichfield — only with less sentimentality, and with some additional peculiarities of its own. It had its cathedral ; but

H

AMELIA OPIE.

Norwich in the time of the war.

neither the proverbial dulness nor the all-conquering High-Churchism of most cathedral towns. The liberality of good Bishop Bathurst prevented the latter during the long course of his episcopate : and the manufactures of Norwich preserved it from stagnation. It is true that when invasion was expected, the Church and Tory gentry set a watch upon the cathedral, lest the Dissenters should burn it for a beacon to “ Boney and the manu¬ facturers who were of Liberal opinions were not accepted as volunteers, but were simply intrusted with the business of providing for the conveyance of the women and children into the interior whenever the French should land at Yarmouth or Cromer. But still, while Bishop Bathurst touched his hat to the leading Dissenters of the place, and Norwich goods were in demand for the Spanish and Portuguese markets, the old city could not stagnate, like some other cathedral towns. The weavers, descended from the Flemish and French im¬ migrants who had sought refuge in our Protestant country, were growing more and more peculiar, narrow, and obstinate — smaller in mind and body with each generation, and sure to ruin the trade of the city by their pedantry about their work, and obstinacy about wages, whenever the time should come for the world to be thrown open by a peace. The French taught in schools was such as was found to be unintelligible when the peace at length arrived — taught as it was by an aged powdered Monsieur and an elderly flowered Madame, driven from France long before, and rather catching their pupils’ Norfolk pronunciation of French than con¬ veying the Parisian to them. But it was beginning to be known that there was such a language as German, out of the counting-houses, and that Germany was

AMELIA OPIE.

beginning to have a literature : and in due time there was a young man there who had actually been in Germany, and was translating “Nathan the Wise.” When William Taylor became eminent as almost the only German scholar in England, old Norwich was very proud, and grew, to say the truth, excessively conceited. She was (and she might be) proud of her Sayers ; and Dr. Sayers was a scholar. She boasted of having produced several men who had produced books of one sort or another (and to produce a book of any sort was a title to reverence in those days). She boasted of her intellectual supperparties, where, amidst a pedantry which would now make Laughter hold both his sides, there was much that was pleasant and salutary : and finally, she called herself the Athens of England. If Mr. Windham’s family could be induced to publish all of his papers, there would, we believe, be found some curious lights thrown on the social condition of old Norwich in the time of the war. And some lawyers and politicians — Sir James Mackintosh for one — who went that circuit in their early professional days, used to talk of the city and its illustrious citizens in a strain of compliment which had much amusement, if not satire in it. They kindly brought fresh ideas to Norwich, and in return were duly venerated, and ex¬ tremely amused by so perfect a specimen of a provincial city up in a corner, which called itself Athens.

Amidst these influences, Amelia Alderson grew up, to be formed by them, and to renovate them, as far as it was in the power of a clever woman to do so. She was the only child of Dr. James Alderson, a physician of no great mark professionally, but of liberal tastes, and fond of literary society. Amelia lost her mother in infancy ; and her childhood and youth were superintended by a

Norwich and her literary men.

The child¬ hood of Mrs. Opie.

i6

AMELIA OPIE.

Her

marriage , and her assistance to kerhusband.

Her first •works.

lady of considerable ability and book-knowledge. While she was thus training for literary ambition, John Opie, the painter, was among the tin mines in Cornwall, sketching with ochre on barn-doors, like Lawrence, and manifesting the ability which made Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar) bring him up to London, and prophesy his turning out one of the greatest painters the world ever saw. It takes more, however, to make a great painter than Dr. Wolcot supposed, or than the generality of persons could imagine before the continental world of Art was opened to us; and before that happened Opie was dead. After the few first of his pictures, painted in London, there appears in almost all of them a remark¬ able female face — singular in profile, and, as a front face, so waggish that when used for tragic purposes it moves more mirth than sympathy in the observer — a face with merry twinkling eyes, and a mouth either saucily laugh¬ ing or obstinately resolute against a laugh. This is Amelia Alderson, presently become Mrs. Opie. During their few years of union, she was at her husband’s elbow at his easel, or sitting for some of his historical person¬ ages, or, no doubt, obviating by her own knowledge some of the mischief arising from his defective education. We see, by some of his pictures, how much this was wanted; as, for instance, in the “Jephthah’s Daughter,” where the sacrifice is actually supposed to be performed by the High Priest, who stands there in full official array, as if human sacrifices were permitted by the Jewish law !

And now came the time when Amelia Opie was herself to achieve fame by her tale of the “Father and Daughter.” The edition on our table (the second) bears date 1801, and is illustrated by a most woeful frontis¬ piece, designed by her husband. Her Poems appeared

AMELIA OPIE.

1 7 the next year, adorned in like manner. The most [I] celebrated of them — and it was very celebrated at the time — is “The Felon’s Address to his Child;” one cannot but wonder why, in regard to the poems and the tale alike ; and especially when we see that the motto in the title-page is taken from Mrs. Barbauld, whose fame would have been, we imagine, considered at the time inferior to that of her young friend Amelia. Time has long rectified the judgment — determining that Mrs. Opie was a jejune Mrs. Inchbald, while Mrs. Barbauld wrote the little she did write out of a full and glowing mind, trained to a noble mode of expression by a sound classical education. Mrs. Opie had other accomplish¬ ments, however, than any manifested by her pen. She sang finely — ballads sung with heartfelt impulse and Her vocal pathos, and without accompaniment. Those who, as M‘ychildren, heard her sing “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” will never forget it. They cannot now read the “Come back” of that ballad, without feeling again the anguish conveyed in those heart-rending tones. The Prince Regent heard them. He went to a supper somewhere to hear Mrs. Opie sing — not long before the change which stopped her singing everywhere but beside her old father’s chair. When she began to grow elderly, Amelia Opie became devote. Her life had been one of strong excitements ; and dearly she loved excitement ; and there was a promise of a long course of stimulation in becoming a Quaker, which probably impelled her uncon¬ sciously to take the decided step which astonished all her world. During Mr. Opie’s life, excitements abounded.

After his death, and when her mourning was over, she wrote little novels, read them to admiring friends in Norwich, who cried their eyes out at the pathetic scenes, i8

AMELIA OPIE.

Joins the Friends.

Her benef¬ icent

disposition.

read in her dramatic manner, and then she carried them to London, got considerable sums by them, enjoyed the homage they brought to her feet, sang at supper-tables, dressed splendidly, did not scruple being present at Lady Cork's and others’ Sunday concerts, and was very nearly marrying a younger brother of Lord Bute. Lord Herbert Stewart’s carriage appeared, and made a great clatter in the narrow streets of Norwich ; and the old gentleman was watched into Dr. Alderson’s house ; and the hours were counted which he spent, it was supposed, at Mrs. Opie’s feet. But it came to nothing. For a while she continued her London visits ; and her proud father went about reading her letters about her honors. But she suddenly discovered that all is vanity : she took to gray silks and muslin, and the “thee” and “thou,” quoted Habakkuk and Micah with gusto, and set her heart upon preaching. That, however, was not allowed. Her Quaker friends could never be sufficiently sure how much was “imagination,” and how much the instigation of ‘ ‘ the inward witness and the privileged gallery in the chapel was closed against her, and her utterance was confined to loud sighs in the body of the Meeting. She tended her father unremittingly in his decline ; she im¬ proved greatly in balance of mind and evenness of spirits during her long and close intimacy with the Gurneys ; and there never was any doubt about her beneficent disposition, shown by her family devotedness, no less than by her bounty to the poor. Her majestic form moved through the narrowest streets of the ancient city ; and her bright face was seen lighting up the most wretched abodes. The face never lost its brightness, nor the heart its youthfulness and gayety. She was a merry laugher in her old age ; and even, if the truth be

AMELIA OPIE.

spoken, still a bit of a romp — ready for bo-peep and hide-and-seek, in the midst of a morning call, or at the end of a grave conversation. She enjoyed showing prim young Quaker girls her ornaments, plumes, and satins, and telling when she wore them : and, when in Paris, she ingenuously exhibited in her letters to her Quaker friends the conflict in her feelings when Louis Philippe, attended by his staff, stopped to converse with her in the streets of Paris, and when the Queen of the French requested her to appoint an evening for a party at the Tuileries. She made a pleasant joke of the staring of then Parisias at her little gray bonnet ; and sighed and prayed that she might not be puffed up by all the rest. She was not really spoilable ; and her later years were full of grace and kindliness. She suffered much from rheumatic lameness ; but with great cheerfulness, on the whole — almost merrily. She was cordially respected, and will be vividly remembered for life by many who have long forgotten her early fame, or perhaps had scarcely heard of it. She was a striking picture in the childhood of some who are now elderly, when her stately form was seen, half a century ago, among the old elms in her father’s garden ; and she will ever be a picture in the minds of such young people as saw her seated, as upright as ever, but with her crutches behind her, at her sofa-table in her cheerful room in the Castle Meadow, any time within the last few years. The Taylors, the Sayerses, the Smiths, the Enfields — the old glories of the provincial Athens — have long been gone ; and now, with Amelia Opie, dies the last claim of the humbled city to the literary prominence which was so dear to it in the last century. The period of such provincial glory seems itself to be passing away. A lady, yet more aged than

Her

cheerfulness.

The last of the Norwich celebrities.

AMELIA OPIE.

Mrs. Opie, one who had for nearly a century scarcely left the old city, was of opinion that the depravity of the age was owing to gaslights and macadamisation. It does not require her years to show some of us that railways, free trade, and cheap publications have much to do with the extinction of the celebrity of ancient Norwich, in regard both to its material and intellectual productions. Its bombazine manufacture has gone to Yorkshire, and its literary fame to the four winds.

II. PROFESSOR WILSON “Christopher North”)

Died April 3D, 1854.

On Monday morning died Professor Wilson, the “Chris-* topher North” whom probably none of his readers ever thought of as dead or dying, or losing any of the intense vitality which distinguishes the ideal “ Christopher North” from all other men. The “Christopher North” and John Wilson are separated now, and forever. The one will live very long, if not always, and without losing an atom of his vigor; but the other, after long sinking, after grievous depression, and gradual extinction by paral¬ ysis, is gone ; and none of the many who loved and worshipped him could wish that he had lived another day in the condition of his latter years.

Yet he was not very old. He was born at Paisley, in Born in 1788, his father being a wealthy manufacturer there. I788* He entered Glasgow University at the age of thirteen, and in four years more went to Magdalen College,

Oxford, where his extraordinary quality was recognized at once. He was the leader in all sports, from his great bodily strength, as well as his enthusiasm for pleasure of that kind ; and he gained the Newdegate prize for an English poem of sixty lines. On leaving College he

PROFESSOR WILSON.

[II]

Kindness of Sir Walter Scott.

bought the Elleray estate, on Windermere, which will ever be haunted by his memory ; for there is not a point of interest about it or the neighborhood which he has not immortalized. So early as the beginning of 1812, we find Scott writing to Joanna Baillie of the extra¬ ordinary young man, John Wilson, who had written an elegy upon “poor Grahame,,, and was then engaged in a poem called the “Isle of Palms/' — “something," added Scott, curiously enough, 1 * in the style of Southey. ” “ He seems an excellent, warm-hearted, and enthusiastic young man ; something too much, perhaps, of the latter quality places him among the list of originals." A short time after this, and in consequence of loss of property, he studied Law, and was called to the Scotch bar. So early as that date, before any of the Waverley novels appeared, the grateful young poet, who deeply felt Scott's kindness in encouraging his muse, gave him the title of the Great Magician, by which he was soon to be recognized by all the world. This was in some stanzas, called the “ Magic Mirror,” which appeared in the Edinburgh Annual Regis¬ ter. When John Kemble took leave of the stage at Edinburgh, and was entertained at a very remarkable dinner, where all the company believed they were taking leave of dramatic pleasure forever, Jeffrey was in the chair, and John Wilson shared the vice-presidentship with Scott. Scott’s kindness to his young friend was earnest and vigilant. We find him inviting Wilson and Lockhart from Elleray to Abbotsford, the next year, fixing the precise day when ‘he wished them to arrive ; and the reason turned out to be, that Lord Melville was to be there ; and it was possible that something good might turn up in the Parliament House for the young men in consequence of the interview.

PROFESSOR WILSON.

For Wilson this sort of aid was soon unnecessary. He became Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh in 1820, and had already done more than any one man toward raising the character of periodical literature by his marvellous contributions to Blackwood's Magazme , and the stimulus his genius imparted to a whole gener¬ ation of writers of that class. We all know his selection from those papers — the three volumes of “Recreations of Christopher North. ” There is nothing in our literature exactly like them ; and we may venture to say there never will be. They are not only the most effective transcription of the moods of thought and feeling of a deeply thinking and feeling mind — a complete arresting and presentment of those moods as they pass — but an absolute realizing of the influence of Nature in a book. The scents and breezes of the moorland are carried fairly into even the sick-chamber by that book ; and through it the writer practised the benevolence of the ancient rich man, and was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. Mr. Hallam, the calmest of critics, has declared Wilson’s eloquence to be as the rushing of mighty waters ; and it was no less the bracing of the mountain winds. His fame will rest on his prose writings, and not on his two chief poems, the “Isle of Palms” and the “City of the Plague and of his prose writings, his “Recreations” will, we imagine, outlive his three novels, “Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,” the “Trials of Margaret Lyndsay,” and “The Foresters.” If the marvel of his eloquence is not lessened, it is at least accounted for to those who have seen him, — or even his portrait. Such a presence is rarely seen ; and more than one person has said that he reminded them of the first man, Adam ; so full was that large frame of vitality, force, and sentience.

[II]

The

u Rccrea tions of Christopher NorthR

Poems and novels.

PROFESSOR WILSON.

His tem¬ perament and faults.

His tread seemed almost to shake the streets, his eye almost saw through stone walls ; and as for his voice, there was no heart that could stand before it. He swept away all hearts, whithersoever he would. No less striking was it to see him in a mood of repose, as when he steered the old packet-boat that used to pass between Bowness and Ambleside, before the steamers were put upon the Lake. Sitting motionless, with his hand upon the rudder, in the presence of journeymen and market-women, with his eye apparently looking beyond everything into noth¬ ing, and his mouth closed under his beard, as if he meant never to speak again, he was quite as impressive and immortal an image as he could have been to the students of his class or the comrades of his jovial hours. The tendencies of such a temperament are obvious enough; and his faults arose from the indulgence of those tendencies. A few words from a friendly letter of Scott’s, written when Wilson was a candidate for his professorship, will sufficiently indicate the nature of his weaknesses, and may stand for all the censure we are disposed to offer. “You must, of course,” writes Scott to Mr. Lockhart, “recommend to Wilson great temper in his canvass ; for wrath will do no good. After all, he must leave off sack, purge, and live cleanly as a gentle¬ man ought to do, otherwise people will compare his present ambition to that of Sir Terry O’Fag when he wished to become a judge. ‘ Our pleasant vices are made the whips to scourge us, ' as Lear says ; for other¬ wise what could possibly stand in the way of his nomi¬ nation? I trust it will take place, and give him the consistence and steadiness which are all he wants to make him the first man of the age.” He did get his election ; and it was not very long after that he and

PROFESSOR WILSON.

Campbell, the poet, were seen one morning leaving a tavern in Edinburgh, haggard and red-eyed, hoarse and exhausted — not only the feeble Campbell, but the mighty Wilson — they having sat Ute-d-Ute for twenty-four hours, discussing poetry and wine to the top of their bent : a remarkable spectacle in connection with the Moral Phi¬ losophy Chair in any University. But, if the constituents of such an office crave a John Wilson to flll it, they must take him with all his liabilities about him.

His moods were as various as those of the Mother Na¬ ture he adored. In 1815, when all the rest of the world was in the dark about the Scotch novels, he was in ex¬ cessive delight at receiving from William Laidlaw the evidence that Colonel Mannering was Scott himself ; and deep in proportion was his grief when he saw that ge¬ nial mind going out. The trembling of his mighty voice when he paid his tribute to Scott’s genius at the public meeting after his death moved every heart present. He could enter into the spirit of Lake scenery deeply with Wordsworth when floating on Windermere at sunset ; and he could, as we see by Moore’s Diary, imitate Words¬ worth’s monologues to admiration under the lamp at a jovial Edinburgh supper-table. He could collect as strange a set of oddities about him there as ever Johnson or Fielding did in their City lodgings ; and he could wander alone for a week along the trout streams, and by the mountain tarns of Westmoreland. He could proudly lead the regatta from Mr. Bolton’s, at Storr’s, as “Admiral of the Lake,” with Canning, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and others, and shed an intellectual sunshine as radiant as that which glittered upon Windermere ; and he could forbid the felling of any trees at Elleray, and shroud him¬ self in its damp gloom, when its mistress was gone, leav-

[II]

Wilson and Campbell : a scene.

His various moods.

PROFESSOR WILSON.

Wilson in the Lake District.

His last years.

ing a bequest of melancholy which he never surmounted. The “grace and gentle goodness” of his wife were bound about his heartstrings ; and the thought of her was known and felt to underlie all his moods from the time of her death. She loved Elleray, and the trees about it ; and he allowed not a twig of them to be touched till the place grew too mossy and mournful ; and then he parted with it. He was much beloved in that neighborhood, where he met with kindness whatever was genuine, while he repulsed and shamed all flatteries and affectations. Every old boatman and young angler, every hoary shep¬ herd and primitive dame among the hills of the District, knew him and enjoyed his presence. He was a steady and genial friend to poor Hartley Coleridge for a long course of years. He made others happy by being so in¬ tensely happy himself, when his brighter moods were on him. He felt, and enjoyed too, intensely, and paid the penalty in the deep melancholy of the close of his life. He could not chasten the exuberance of his love of Na¬ ture and of genial human intercourse ; and he was cut off from both, long before his death. The sad specta¬ cle was witnessed with respectful sorrow ; for all who had ever known him felt deeply in debt to him. He under¬ went an attack of pressure on the brain some years before his death ; and an access of paralysis closed the scene.

It is curious that, whereas it is universally agreed that it is by his prose that he won his immortality, he argued with Moore that the inferiority of prose to poetry was proved by the fact that there is no such thing as a school of prose, while literary history consists of a succession of schools of poetry. It may be that his prose is some¬ thing new in the world. At this moment, under the emotion of parting from him, we are disposed to think

PR'OFESSOR WILSON .

2 7 it is. Nowhere can we look for such a combination of music, emotion, speculation, comment, wit, and imagi¬ nation, as in some of his “Noctes Ambrosianae,” and in hundreds of the pages of “Christopher’s Recreations.” In them we rejoice to think the subdued spirit is revived that we have seen fail, and the dumb voice reawakened for the delight of many a future generation.

in]

III. A man of note

Visit to Germany.

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART.

Died at Abbotsford, Nov. 25TH, 1854.

He was a man of note on various grounds. He was an author of no mean qualifications ; he was the son-inlaw of Scott ; and he was the editor of the Quarterly Review after Gifford. Without being a man of genius, a great scholar, or politically or morally eminent, he had sufficient ability and accomplishment to insure con¬ siderable distinction in his own person, and his interest¬ ing connections did the rest. He was a man of con¬ siderable mark.

The younger son of a Glasgow clergyman, he was destined for the Law — more as a matter of course than from any inclination of his own ; for he never liked his profession. He went to school, and aftenvard to the University at Glasgow, whence he was enabled to proceed to Balliol College, Oxford, by obtaining an exhibition in the gift of the Senatus Academicus. He was subse¬ quently called to the Scotch Bar ; but from the first his dependence was on literary effort ; for his professional fees never amounted to 50/. a year. After the Peace he went to Germany — a not very common undertaking at that time — and saw Gothe ; and his account of this incident seems to have struck Scott, when they who

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART.

were to become so closely related met for the first time in private society, in May, 1818. A few days after the dinner-party at which this happened, the Messrs. Ballantyne sent to Lockhart, to propose that he should under¬ take a task which Scott had delayed, and wished to surrender : the writing the historical portion of the “ Edinburgh Annual Register” for 1816. When he called on Scott to talk it over, the great novelist, who was then receiving 10,000/. a year from the new vein he had opened, assigned a characteristic reason for giving up the Register. He said that if the war had gone on, he should have enjoyed writing the history of each year as it passed ; but that he would not be the recorder of Radical riots, Corn Bills, Poor Bills, and the like. These things, he said, sickened him ; and he thought it fair to devolve such work upon his juniors. Mr. Lockhart first saw Abbotsford the next October, when he was sent for from Elleray, with his friend John Wilson, to meet Lord Melville, and take the chance of some professional benefit arising from the interview with the First Lord of the Admiralty, if their sins in Blackwood could be over¬ looked by him. This shows that Blackwood's Magazine was already rising under the re-enforcement of Wilson’s strength. The strength which raised it was not Lock¬ hart’s. His satire had, then and always, a quality of malice in it, where Wilson’s had only fun ; and he never had Wilson’s geniality of spirit. Wilson’s satire in¬ structed the humble, and amused the proud who were the objects of it ; but Lockhart’s caused anguish in the one case, and excited mere wrath or contempt in the other. Scott confessed that it might be from com¬ placency at Lockhart’s account of this visit to Abbots¬ ford that he judged so favorably of “Peter’s Letters to