A bookman's letters

Front matter

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FROM THE INCOME OF THE

FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND

Preface

This volume is, in the main, a selection from some hundreds of similar letters contributed to the British Weekly under the general title ' The Correspondence of Claudius Clear,' and addressed to a large popular audience interested in books and authors. I am deeply indebted to my colleague in the editorship of the Bookman, Mr. A. St. John Adcock, and other friends, for their kindness in helping me to choose from such a mass of material. Some pages are included from contributions to the North American Review, Blackwood's Magazine, and the Contemporary Review.

Hampsteab, Nov. 1913.

Contents

CHAT. PAQB

I. MEMORIES OF MEREDITH (i) . . .1

II. MEMORIES OF MEREDITH (ii) ... 9

II MEMORIES OF MEREDITH (ii)

On Jvly 19, 1900, the members of the Whitefriars Club, with many of their friends, had the rare pleasure and honour of being the guests of George Meredith at Box Hill. We lunched together in the hotel, and afterwards walked to the little cottage up through the smooth gravel path, and straight through the further garden, where the poet sat waiting for us. Admirable was the easy tact with which he managed to greet all the large and varied company of ladies and gentlemen. His quick eyes immediately singled out any one who was in danger of being left out. I think the visitors were impressed by his lofty and gracious bearing. Equally were we struck by his conversation. Every single sentence was pointed and scintillating and characteristic. There was some little trouble in providing enough cups for all the invading party ; we had been discussing some trouble then brewing in the East, and Mr. Meredith exclaimed, with a bright look : ' I was just telling you there were troubles in China.' I especially admired the deep and courteous interest he took in the different people who were presented to him. He showed that he knew well even the fugitive and journalistic literature of his time. I remember he discussed with the author a poem that had just appeared in one of the weekly papers.

He seemed quite familiar with names and books which might have seemed not important enough for him to notice. A shy girl, overcome by the honour of actually beholding the author of the wonderful books in their dark blue covers, was beckoned by his imperious hand and told to sit next to him. He graciously gave permission for the party to visit the little summer-house where he wrote so many of his books. The literary pilgrims were made to feel that they were conferring an honour upon him by their presence. The simple dignity of his life amidst some of the most beautiful scenery in England, the magnificent way in which he carried off his infirmity, his bright, glancing talk, and the unwearied keenness of his mind left an ineffaceable impression on all who came near him. Mr. Swinburne at his own table and in his own house was a model of courtesy, but he did not seem to show any special knowledge of his guests. He took them as guests, and therefore entitled to the best that he could give them. Meredith had all Swinburne's courtesy, but he had the graceful and lovable art of making the humblest author feel that he knew him in his works, and was individually interested in him. Swinburne was a great reader of the newspapers, and was aware even of little things in contemporary literature, but I fancy Meredith far surpassed him in this, and he had also the art of recalling his knowledge, and the kindness to use it.

My opportunities of direct conversation with the illustrious writer were few, and I was indebted for them to the kindness of friends. Mr. H. M. Hyndman has written an account of Meredith which is in some respects the best I have seen. There he says that when Meredith talked with his intimate friends, nothing could exceed the simplicity, charm, and depth of his conversation. ' It was perfect. Not a monologue, but a giving forth in easy, flowing language of brilliant ideas, and beautiful conceptions in response to those who were talking around him. But let even one man or woman he did not know well come in, and he immediately enwrapped himself in his garb of artificiality, and you heard at once the clank of the machinery in the background. I have known this occur with him time after time.' I have heard that he would sometimes let his bright and glancing wit play round one of his guests in a fashion so dazzling and bewildering as to make that guest feel almost as if he were a butt. The habit and the uniform intention of his life, however, were of extreme courtesy. It seemed as if he talked what might be printed without the alteration of a word. So felicitous was his expression that one, while trying to recollect a phrase, was apt to miss the next sentence. A shorthand writer behind the screen in Meredith's company would have accumulated a treasury of beautiful, wonderful, immortal things. But no memory could have been equal to the task, and therefore it is with much hesitation and with full acknowledgment that only his thought is rendered that I venture to put down a few things.

Once I heard him talk much about criticism. He laid great stress on the fact that he had never replied to a critic. Of this he seemed to be very proud. He owned that he had felt the temptation strongly on more occasions than one. He spoke of the sick feeling with which he read Hutton's review of Modern Love in the Spectator. There was compensation, however, in Swinburne's noble reply. He was distinctly hurt by some remarks made about One of Our Conquerors, and he defended a much-criticised phrase as being the exact expression of the truth — ^as impossible to express rightly in any other way. But if I am not much mistaken, he afterwards altered the phrase. Meredith was too great and too generous to resent adverse criticism, provided it was honest. WiUiam Watson, the poet, wrote an article in the National Review, in which, from the classical standpoint, he severely criticised the eccentricities of Meredith's style. But Meredith admired Watson's work, and when Grant Allen lived at Dorking and Watson was his guest, he invited the poet to dine with him and showed him special favour. In fact, he often alluded to the excellence of William Watson's poetry. Of course, I need not say that Watson, in criticising Meredith, had written like a gentleman. I fear, however, that there have been some of our great men who have been known to act less nobly in similar circumstances.

The most important thing I ever heard from him was a panegyric of Tennyson. It was quite long, and full of heart and enthusiasm. Tennyson sought Meredith out after ' Love in the Valley ' was printed in the Critic. If I remember well, Meredith was then living at Esher. George Gilfillan had printed in the Critic, under his signature of ' ApoUodorus,' an attack on Tennyson which moved the poet greatly. In reply to Meredith's praises, as they trampled the heather together, Tennyson said, time after time, ' But " ApoUodorus " says I am not a poet.' This story Meredith was fond of telling, for I have had it given to me by two of his friends, and I heard it in a shorter version myself.

It will be of interest if I mention the passages which Meredith chose from Tennyson as his favourites. He repeated them in his rich, deep voice with much intensity of feeling. First he placed 'CEnone,' as we now have it :

' There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen. Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley topmost Gargarus Stands up and takes the morning ; but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel.

The crown of Troas.

O mother, hear me yet before I die.

They came, they cut away my tallest pines. My tall dark pines, that plumed the craggy ledge High over the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Foster'd the callow eaglet — from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther's roar came muffled, while I sat Low in the valley. Never, never more Shall lone CEnone see the morning mist Sweep thro' them ; never see them overlaid With narrow moonlit slips of silver cloud. Between the loud stream and the trembling stars.'

The other passage he quoted was from ' In Memoriam,' and I shall never forget the vehement emphasis he laid on the lines which I have italicised :

' Be near me when my light is low,

When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle ; and the heart is sick.

And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust ; And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry, And men the flies of latter spring.

That lay their eggs, and sting and. sing

And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away.

To point the terra of human strife,

And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day.'

The last quotation led him to talk about personal immortality. ' You believe in it ? ' he said. ' But for my part I cannot conceive it. Which personality is it which endures ? I was one man in youth and another man in middle age.' He then moved his stick in the ground and said, ' I have been this and this and this. Which is it that is immortal ? ' I ventured to remind him of what John Stuart Mill said about the persistence of the ego. He said, with some vehemence, ' I do not feel it. I have never felt it. I have never felt the unity of personality running through my life. I have been ' — ^this with a smile — ' I have been six different men : six at least. No,' he said, ' I cannot conceive personal immortality.' This is the teaching of his writings, though I think there are hints in them of ' a morn beyond mornings,' of something that awaits us better than any of our reasonings — ^better even than any of our dreams.

He was led to talk of Swinburne once, and smiled in a deprecating way at some extravagances of denunciation into which the poet had been betrayed. He had told us that Swinburne was not to be judged by such things ; that his nature was essentially kind and generous, and that he had been misconceived. He spoke a few strong words, which I cannot recall as he gave them, about Swinburne's genius as a poet and his place among the immortals.

Here there is no harm in mentioning that on one occasion, when Swinburne was in an unusually expansive and comm\micative mood, I heard him speak freely of Meredith. While affectionate and admiring in his reference, he was also critical. He said, ' I defended him in 1862, but I would not defend the style of his later books. Browning was bom with a stammer, but I fear Meredith has cultivated his stammer.' He went on to say that he had read the first draft of Meredith's Emilia in England, and that it was written in pure, sweet, Thackerayan English. But when it was published it became apparent that Meredith had translated it into his own peculiar language, and this Swinburne emphatically deprecated. He summed up smilingly at length with the words : ' The style is not of God, and it cannot last.' In fact, he spoke precisely to the same effect as Mr. Hyndman has written : ' He deliberately enshrouded himself in such an atmosphere of artificiality in his writings that it is difficult even for his admirers to feel the full effect of the powerful, and, at bottom, sympathetic intelligence which lay behind the cloud of enigma. He would not talk plainly to the world at large. His defects in this respect grew with his growth and became stronger with his age. . . . Refusing positively from first to last to write for the public, taking as much pains to cover up his real greatness of mind as most writers do to express clearly all the lesser ability that is in them, he nevertheless succeeded in making a deep mark on his day and generation.' On the general question raised I express no opinion, but much might be said of that philosophy of the comical which runs through all Meredith's works, and which is best expressed in his own phrase, ' thoughtful laughter,' Much also might be said of the vesture of his thoughts, of his extraordinary power of expressing the most subtle and elusive emotions. Mr. Barrie put it in a homely but effective way when he said that Meredith ' turned gas upon everything.' His poetry has been mainly of the joy of earth, and to some of us the most haunting and delicious strain in all his music is ' The Woods of Westermain.'

It is time to bring these scattered notes to a close. I shall not attempt to reproduce what I have heard Meredith say about politics and politicians, and indeed I am not able to reproduce his expression in almost any respect, though I am sure I have given the substance of his views. I heard him deliver one of his whole-souled eulogies of Charles Dickens. He knew Dickens, and there was some little misunderstanding between them when he contributed Evan Harrington to Once a Week — Once a Week being a rival to Dickens' All the Year Round. But here again no thought of such things interfered with Meredith's admiration. It seemed to me that Dickens and Tennyson were his favourites among the Victorian writers. Mr, Massingham, who saw Meredith much oftener than I did, confirms me in the impression that the poet's thoughts in later years and his talk turned very much upon death. He was not afraid, but the problem seemed to be with him. He met it in his gallant way, and when the end came the watchers saw ' dead lips smiling at life as in life they had smiled at death,'

Ill

Biography is my favourite form of reading, and I have beside me in the room where I am writing at least four thousand biographical works. Was it not Keble's father who said, ' All sermons are good ' ? In the same manner I might say all biographies are good. Never yet have I seen a biography which did not contain something. But great biographies are few from the nature of the case. Let us clear the groimd by specifying the necessary attributes of a great biography.

(1) In the first place, the biography must deal with a great man. A great man must be great in character as well as in achievement. It is better — ^much better — ^that he should be a good man, but it is not necessary. Napoleon was not a good man, but he was certainly a great man. Turner was a great artist, but in no sense great as a man. He was a poor, sordid creature, and it is quite impossible that under any circumstances a great biography could be written about him.

(2) For a great biography there must be materials of a special kind and value. It is impossible to write a great biography of Homer or of Shakespeare. We loiow too little. Materials there must be, in the form of letters or diaries or records or recollections, before the great biography can be written.

(3) In the third place, a great biography must be the work of a man with the biographical faculty. I have carefully abstained from saying that the writer of a great biography must himself be great. It may be doubted whether any really great writer has ever written a great biography. But the biographical talent is special. The true biographer must be able to handle his materials. He must have the power of passing them through his mind and transmuting them into a unity. He must know how to complete the portrait, touch by touch. He must avoid all that is irrelevant, and omit nothing that is relevant. He must have an eye for the critical moments in life. He must know the people who enter into the heart and the thought and the action of his subject, and be able to describe and discriminate their influence. He must also be in possession of a good narrative style, and this means that he must write with zest. The connecting passages must be very carefully and skilfully done, even when the material is of surpassing interest.

I

If these tests are adopted, certain conclusions will follow. A good many years ago that indefatigable and learned reader. Professor Saintsbury, gave a list of the great biographies. He included the following books :

1. Lockhart's Scott.

2. Boswell's Johnson.

3. Moore's Byron.

4. Carlyle's Sterling.

5. Sir George Trevelyan's Macaulay.

I venture to think that two of these must be rejected. Moore's Life of Byron is one. It is undoubtedly an entertaining book, and, when the immense difficulties of the task are considered, it must be admitted that Moore displayed considerable tact and skill. Dr. Richard Gamett used to maintain that Moore was a great man of letters who had never been sufficiently recognised. Professor Saintsbury is of the same opinion, and it cannot be questioned that Moore was ready and clever. But time has judged him. Most of his verse is forgotten, and his prose, with the exception of the Life of Byron, is dead. Dr. Saintsbury and a few others may know his contributions to the Edinburgh Review, and his Epicurean, his Life of Sheridan, and conceivably his translation (in part) of Sallust. But this knowledge is confined to a few lonely students. I could wish that Moore had written the Life of Sydney Smith, as he naeant to do ; but this purpose was frustrated by death. Besides, Byron was not a great man. Macaulay's judgment will never be reversed. He was ' a bad fellow, and horribly affected.' No doubt he was an excellent letter-writer, but his letters have never found their way to the general heart.

Nor should I admit the claims of Carlyle's Life of Sterling. It is a wonderful book, the most pleasing of all Carlyle's works. No praise could be too high for the general management of the memoir, and the felicity of many passages. But it deals with a hopelessly second-rate man. Those who have read Julius Hare's Memoir and the writings which follow it cannot but be amazed at the impression Sterling produced. The banality of his verses can hardly be imagined by those who have not examined them. He was a tolerable critic, and a man of undeniable personal charm. But when we have said this we have said all. Carlyle could take some praising, but I think he would have smiled if any one had called his Life of Sterling a great biographical classic. It is, however, infinitely superior to his Life of Schiller, a piece of journeyman's work, and I read with amazement in a recent book by a critic of authority a pronouncement in which Carlyle's Lives of Schiller and Sterling were put on the same level.

These tests would also exclude some special favourites of mine. One of the most delightful biographies I possess is the Life of George Crabbe, by his son. Artless in appearance, it shows real artistry. It is full of that simplicity which, according to Bailey, is ' nature's first step and the last of art.' It was nature's first attempt probably in this instance. Another biography which has never received justice is Andrew Lang's Life of Lockhart. It ought to be reprinted in an accessible form. Lang understood Lockhart, and has written of him worthily and nobly.

Among religious biographies there is Stanley's Life of Arnold, and I should mention the Life of Principal Cairns, by Professor MacEwen, and the Life of M^Cheyne, by Andrew Bonar. A very high place is due to Dora Greenwell's Life of Lacordaire, and to the biography of Cardinal Vaughan by Mr. J. Snead-Cox. The Lives of John Foster, of David Brainerd, and of Henry Martyn are also of an impressive and enduring quality. Many other names might be added, but they are obviously ruled out by the canons. There is, however, one exception at least. Professor Saintsbury has done noble justice to Robert Southey, and I am with him entirely when he praises the Lives of Nelson, of Wesley, and of Cowper* Southey had all the equipment for writing great biographies, but, fortunately or unfortunately, the books are comparatively brief, and for this reason they cannot be placed with the most splendid achievements of the biographical art. Few events in the history of English literature were more unfortunate than Southey's early engrossment with Portugal. If he had written on English subjects he could hardly have failed to achieve an abiding masterpiece. Mrs. Oliphant might have given us an enduring biography if it were not for the intolerable diffuseness of her style. In Mr, P. G. Hamerton's Modern Frenchmen, and in Dean Burgon's Twelve Good Men, we have masterpieces in their kind.

II It is time I should give my own list, and here it is. I have attempted to place the books in order of merit :

1. Boswell's JoAnson.

2. Lockhart's Life of Scott.

3. Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte.

4. Trevelyan's Macaulay.

5. Froude's Carlyle.

6. Morley's Life of Gladstone.

A few words must be added in explanation of the choice. Professor Saintsbury, almost alone among critics, so far as I know, puts Lockhart above Boswell. ' I do not myself pretend to rank in the most ardent section of Boswellians. Full of delightful matter as the book is, it seems to me a book rather for perpetual dips — dips which should leave no part of it unexplored, but interrupted and comparatively short — ^than for the long, steady swim which the very greatest literary streams invite, sustain, and make delightful.' He thinks that Lockhart is the prince of all biographers, past, present, and to come, and he has read him often on successive evenings from beginning to end. ' He has never succeeded in reading Boswell through on the same plan.

There is no doubt something to be said for Dr. Saintsbury's view. It is obvious that Boswell's book lacks proportion. He knew Johnson only for part of his life. For the rest, he collected laboriously and very successfully. But it would be idle to pretend that his collections are of equal value with his recollections. Nevertheless, each man speaks for himself. I have read Boswell through on successive days at least twenty times. I think I must have read Lockhart's Scott in the same way at least half a dozen times. While yielding to none in admiration of Lockhart and of Scott, I have had much more pleasure and more profit from my reading of Boswell's Johnson. The characters of Johnson and Scott are priceless possessions of the human race. They stand out as heroes among men of letters. But there is something — I do not know how to describe it — ^in Boswell that is not in Lockhart. Perhaps we come nearest defining it when we say that Boswell has unending gusto. Also, though in this case comparisons are odious, the nature that shines out from Boswell's pages is grander and nobler even than Scott's. Macaulay, in his famous letter to Macvey Napier, and still more Carlyle, in his essay on Scott, have said true words, although I confess I can never read them without irritation. Nor is there in Scott's life the same richness and depth of wisdom as that which abounds in Johnson. When I open Boswell I feel as Aladdin did when he raised the stone without any trouble and laid it by the side of him :

' The trees of this garden were all full of the most extraordinary fruit. Each tree bore a sort of a different colour. Some were white, others sparkling and transparent, like crystal ; some were red, and of different shades ; others green, blue, violet ; some of a yellowish hue, in short, of almost every colour. The white were pearls ; the sparkling and transparent were diamonds ; the deep red were rubies, the paler, a particular sort of ruby, called balass ; the green, emeralds ; the blue, turquoises ; the violet, amethysts ; those tinged with yellow, sapphires ; in the same way, all the other coloured fruits were varieties of precious stones ; and the whole of them were of the largest size, and more perfect than were ever seen in the world.'

But I have no quarrel with anyone who prefers Lockhart to Boswell. When the pathetic origins of Lockhart's book are considered we can never sufficiently honour the nobility of the author. He wrote the biography largely to satisfy the demands of Scott's creditors. His heart must have bled as he wrote down the details of the heroic and tragic story. It is as if Scott had charged him, in the words of the dying Hamlet :

' If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart. Absent thee from felicity awhile.

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain To tell my story.'

Lockhart could not refuse, but when his task was accomplished his achievement was practically at an end.

Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte BrontB is in many ways the model for biographers. Only those who have handled her materials — and I have done so — can appreciate the exquisite skill of her choice, of her ordering, and the insight, deep and true, with which she has interpreted that eventful inner history which made so little outward show.

Nor is it necessary to vindicate the place of Trevelyan's Macaulay. It may be in parts somewhat stilted, but, as the record of a joyous and shining pilgrimage, we have hardly any book like it. Macaulay always wrote characteristically. He was at his best in unstudied and hasty letters to his sister. Every line from his pen ought to be put in print. His affectionate, brilliant, varied, steadfast, earnest life has found a chronicler who can appreciate its freshness, its exuberance, its picturesque and dramatic forms. The biography will ever be the delight of all true bookmen. They will read it to the end of time, and be ' awed and touched by Macaulay's wonderful devotion to literature.' I have found it a biography that bears a yearly reading.

The last two books on my list are more doubtful. In the controversy between Froude and Carlyle's representatives my sympathies are entirely with the latter. Carlyle said that it is th6 duty of every biographer ' to abstain from and leave in oblivion much that is true.' Froude set himself to the discrowning of the old king. ' I for myself,' he wrote, 'conclude, though not till after long hesitation, that there should be no reserve, and therefore I have practised none.'

' But thou, O thou that killest, hadst thou known, O thou that stonest, hadst thou understood The things belonging to thy peace and ours ! '

But whatever may be said of Froude, Carlyle's own letters remain, and I venture to predict that it is by his letters and not by his books that Carlyle will ultimately be remembered. When the letters are read apart from Froude's editing and interpretations, Carlyle will be more fairly judged, and the true temper of his spirit, his cardinal virtues, his genuine and important notes, will be acknowledged.

Lord Morley's lAfe of Gladstone I have chosen as a political biography. It is the life of a great man of affairs. It is, so far as I remember, the only good political biography in the English language. It is almost the only book written about our own times -ftrhich has any literary importance, and we may be allowed to think that, on some points at least, it records the verdict of the historian of the future. Written with gravity, dignity, distinction, and even with solemnity, it must be pronounced a great book.

IV The Centenary Of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1903)

It is a hundred years since Emerson was bom, and more than twenty years sinde he died ; but, even now, the time has not come for an estimate of his just place among the Uterary and spiritual forces of the world. What we may say is, that he gave the first distinctively American impulse in literature, that he exercised an extraordinary influence in stimulating without maddening, and that the force he exerted has so far proved abiding. When Emerson died about the same time as Darwin, it was recognised everywhere that America and England had lost their most potent intellectual forces and their most shining intellectual glories. Emerson, however, was more than an intellectual leader. He was, and is, the spiritual guide of many thousands. It was recorded lately that the most reactionary and powerful of Russian statesmen kept always on the table beside him the Essays of Emerson, and referred to them as an oracle. I can testify to the mighty force with which he acted on the minds of young men in Scotland early in the sixties. The absence of a copyright convention between America and Great Britain had some good effects. Many in the old country who could not afford to buy the new books of Carlyle and Tennyson, were able to purchase the innumerable cheap reprints of Lowell,