Portraits of the sixties

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Contents

CHJkPTER PAGE

I. The Early Sixties 1

II. Charles Dickens 11

Chapter I The Eaely Sixties

The early sixties have left a clear and deep impression on my memory. It was in the earliest of the sixties that I settled in London for a life of journalism and literature, to be much interrupted afterwards by politics. The London of the early sixties had no Thames Embankment and no underground railways and no tram-cars; the Law Courts on the Strand had not yet been dreamed of, and some of the judges still held their tribunals within enclosures opening from what I may call the off-side of Westminster Hall. But the outer aspect of London street life was not very different from that which we can contemplate at the present day. The hansom-cabs and the " growlers," familiar to all eyes now, were familiar to all eyes then. The great, palatial restaurants where fashion now entertains its friends at luncheons, dinners, and suppers were not in existence then, and the smart Londoner of the early sixties would not have thought of inviting his friends to a banquet in the taverns of the time. I may observe that the word " smart " used as I have just used it in the conventional language of the present reign would have conveyed no such meaning to the mind of a Londoner in the sixties.

The Thames tunnel was still the wonder and delight of provincial visitors, there were still some toll-bridges spanning the Thames between Westminster and London Bridge, and Westminster Bridge and London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge were erections of very different shape and structure from those which maintain the names in our present time. The river traffic in the early sixties was carried on by an immense number of incessant steamers, which, indeed, relieved the streets of a large proportion of passengers, and did in their much smaller way something like the work now accomplished by underground lines and " tubes." But I think I am warranted in saying that, even when we take the latest schemes of metropolitan improvement into view, the general appearance of the streets of London has not undergone, since the early sixties, anything like the changes which have been made in ISTew York and in Paris during the same time. Many of the great theatres which were fashionable or popular, or fashionable and popular, in the sixties still hold their position and their repute, but, of course, many new theatres have been added, and in the early sixties the suburban theatres can hardly be said to have had any - existence. When we consider the changes which have taken place in other European countries since the time '; when this book opens, it might almost seem as if the ■ people of England had been living just the same life during the lapse of all these forty years and more.

Let us take the condition of France, for instance. The Emperor I^apoleon the Third was then at the zenith of his power and his fame. He had but lately * defeated the Austrians in the campaign of which SoI-b ferino was the greatest triumph, and he was universally regarded as the most powerful sovereign on the Continent of Europe. Even those in England who most

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strongly condemned his usurpation of power and his despotic rule felt reluctantly compelled to regard him as the founder of a new dynasty and as the force which had finally extinguished in France the republican system brought in by the great Ee volution. On the other hand, almost all Englishmen were agreed in regarding the position of Prussia as one of mere insignificance, and out of all consideration so far as political influence was concerned. Not one of our statesmen or our leading political writers seems to have given any indication, in the early sixties, that Prussia impressed him as a rising power or a power capable of rising in the political affairs of Europe. I do not know of any phenomenon in modern history more curious than the apparent incapacity of English statesmen and political writers, at that time, to make any forecast as to Prussia's political possibilities. The American republic was just then engaged in its great domestic struggle, and the war between l^orth and South created naturally an intense excitement throughout England. It may, indeed, be said to have divided the people of England into two hostile camps — the advocates of the Northern States and the advocates of the Southern Secessionists. It may be said, not unfairly, that the whole of what we describe as " society " in England was in favor of the South, and fully believed that the South was certain to make itself an independent republic, while the advanced Radicals of whatever order in England and all the English working population were on the side of the Northern States, and were confident that the Northern cause must ultimately triumph. Egypt was still under the rule of its Pachas, and the Ottoman power in Turkey was still regarded by many Englishmen as a needful bulwark of British interests against the possible encroachments of Russia. The wildest dreamer had not yet thought of a system of railways extending from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope, or of Russia opening up the resources of Siberia by the pathway of the iron rail.

Palmerston and Lord John Russell were still rivals or colleagues; Brougham and Lyndhurst were still waking up the House of Lords by their curiously contrasted styles of eloquence; Gladstone had already achieved some of his most splendid financial triumphs ; Cobden had accomplished a great commercial treaty with France; Bright was the foremost democratic orator in the House of Commons. Disraeli still held his place without a rival as the brilliant leader of the conservative party in the representative chamber, and Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer was able to convince the audiences in that same chamber that a writer of showy and fascinating novels might, notwithstanding the most serious defects of articulation, prove himself in his later years a successful parliamentary orator. In literature our acknowledged leaders were Tennyson, Dickens, and Thackeray, but Thackeray's life came to a close at a very early period of the sixties. Carlyle was creating a school of thought and of letters all to himself, and John Stuart Mill was teaching us the principles of political economy and of expanded political liberalism. Robert Browning had not yet become the fashion, and only by men and women of intellect was recognized as a great and genuine poet. Macaulay's career as essayist, historian, verse-writer, and parliamentary debater had just come to an end. George Grote had still some years of noble work before him, and although he never could be called a popular historian in the ordinary sense, his influence on the study of history was inestimable. Maclise and Landseer were probably the most universally admired among painters at that

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time. The great singers of the opera-houses — Covent Garden and Her Majesty's — were Grisi, Alboni — Jenny Lind had ceased to sing on the operatic stage — Mario, Tamberlik, and Lablache. In the homes of the regular drama Charles Mathews, Charles Kean, the Keeleys, and Buxton were most popular, and Helen Faucit was recognized as the most successful actress in the Shakespearean drama. Macready had taken his final farewell of the English stage before the time with which our narrative opens, and Frederick Robson had just begun to make himself famous in his short career as the creator of a style which combined in original, fantastic, and unsurpassed fashion the elements of the broadly burlesque and the deeply tragic.

There is one peculiarity belonging to the early sixties which I cannot leave out of notice, although assuredly it has little claim to association with art or science, with literature or politics. The early sixties saw in this and most other civilized countries the reign of crinoline. It is well for the early sixties that they had so many splendid claims to historical recollection, but it may be said of them that if they had bequeathed no other memory to a curious and contemplative posterity, the reign of crinoline would still have secured for them an abiding-place in the records of human eccentricities. I may say, without fear of contradiction, that no one who was not living at the time can form any adequate idea of the grotesque effect produced on the outer aspects of social life by this article of feminine costume. The younger generation may turn over as much as it will the pages of Punch, which illustrate the ways and manners of civilization at that time, but with all the undeniable cleverness and humor of Punch's best caricaturists, the younger generation can never really understand, can never fully realize, what extraordinary exhibitions their polite ancestresses made of themselves during that terrible reign of crinoline.

" Hang up philosophy," says Romeo, " unless philosophy can make a Juliet.'' I should not like to say hang up caricature unless caricature can make a crinoline, because such a sentence, if it could by possibility be carried out, would only speak the doom of the caricaturist's amusing and delightful art. The fashion of crinoline defied caricature, for the actual reality was more full of unpicturesque and burlesque effects than any satirical pencil could realize on a flat, outspread sheet of paper. The fashion of crinoline, too, defied all contemporary ridicule. A whole new school of satirical humor was devoted in vain to the ridicule of crinoline. The boys in the streets sang comic songs to make fun of it, but no street bellowings of contempt could incite the wearers of this most inconvenient and hideous article of dress to condemn themselves to clinging draperies.

Crinoline, too, created a new sort of calamity all its own. Every day's papers gave us fresh accounts of what were called crinoline accidents — cases, that is to say, in which a woman was severely burned or burned to death because of some flame of fire or candle catching her distended drapery at some unexpected moment. There were sacrifices made to the prevailing fashion which would have done the sufferers immortal honor if they had been made for the sake of bearing some religious or political emblem condemned by ruling and ' despotic authorities. Its inconvenience was felt by the male population as well as by the ladies who sported the obnoxious construction. A woman getting into or out of a carriage, an omnibus, or a train, making her' way through a crowded room, or entering into the stalls 'i of a theatre was a positive nuisance to all with whom'

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she had to struggle for her passage. The hoop-petticoats of an earlier generation were moderate in their dimensions and slight in the inconvenience they caused when compared with the rigid and enormous structure in which our ladies endeavored to conform to the fashion set up by the Empress of the French.

I remember well seeing a great tragic queen of opera going through a thrilling part at one of the lyric theatres. Her crinoline was of ultra-expansion, was rigid and unyielding in its structure as the mail corselet of the Maid of Orleans. The skirt of silk or satin spread over it was so symmetrically and rigidly conformed to the outlines of the crinoline that it seemed as if it were pasted to the vast arrangement beneath. The thrill and tragedy of the part were wholly lost on me. I could only see the unpicturesque absurdity of the exhibition. I could feel no sympathy with the dramatic sufferings of the melodious heroine thus enclosed. Every movement and rush of passion, of prayer, of wild despair, or distracted love was lost on me, for each change of posture only brought into more striking display the fact that I was looking at a slight and graceful woman boxed up in some sort of solid barrel of preposterous size over which her skirt was artificially spread. To this day I can only think of that glorious singer as of a woman for some reason compelled to exhibit herself on the stage with a barrel fastened round her waist. A lyrical heroine jumping in a sack would have been graceful and reasonable by comparison. Do what we will, we who lived in those days cannot dissociate our memories of the crinoline from our memories of the woman of the period.

We had not in the early sixties the vast, splendid, and artistically arranged music-halls of a later generation. We had music-halls indeed, but they were comparatively small and darksome enclosures, where comic songs were sung and grotesque buffoonery was enacted, but which women were not expected to visit — at least as part of the audience. We have made distinct improvement in the style of our music-halls since those days, and the ordinary man of the world who belongs to our time would find himself much amazed and not a little abashed if he could by some magical power be carried back to listen to some of the songs at the Caves of Harmony or the Cyder Cellars, or to be present at the Judge-and-Jury performances which we attended unabashed during the passing of the early sixties.

I devote my opening chapter to these few rapid and disconnected illustrations of London life in the early sixties as a general introduction, which I propose to set off by written descriptions. These portraits bring back the likenesses of men and women who were famous, or conspicuous, or peculiar and odd and eccentric in the years which, at the suggestion of Mr. Fisher Unwin, I am endeavoring to illustrate and to bring back to life for the public of the present century. Many of the portraits bring their own fame with them, and must ever be studied with interest. Others are the likenesses of men and women who made themselves, or were made, conspicuous in their own time, and in every instance the likeness is that of one on whom, for some reason, the attention of the world was for a while directed, and each portrait tells a story characteristic of the events and the movements occupying attention just then. After this short and prefatory chapter I shall go on to pass my portraits in review. I may add that I am not relying on contemporary records for any of my descriptions, and that I am telling of men and women whom I have seen and most of whom I have known. I have to make a further explanation.

There are grave authorities upon literature and its

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rules who maintain that nothing should be explained in advance, and that the narrative, whatever it is, should tell its own story as it unfolds itself, on the principle that if it does not thus tell its own story it is the fault of the narrator, and only shows that he is not equal to his work. Despite those edicts, however, I venture to tell my readers that this book does not by any means profess or pretend to be anything like a description or history of the early sixties, or of the figures which have given it a place of mark among the ages. I find ready to my hand a collection of portraits belonging to the period, and I shall merely discourse of these and of the men and women whom they represent without the slightest effort or intention to make of them a complete illustration of their time. Some of the most important events and figures of those days are entirely outside the range of my purpose. I take the figures as they pass before me just as one might describe to a stranger the persons who moved along in some public procession, and have no pretension to do anything more than to tell him something about each of those who come under our momentary observation. Such a description cannot be given without helping the younger generation of readers to become more familiar than before with many of the characteristic figures which distinguished the period, and in this way to bring the early sixties more clearly to their minds. I speak of those whom I have seen and known. I give my own recollections and impressions only and act merely as showman to my friend Fisher Unwin's gallery of portraits. For the convenience of the reader I shall endeavor to arrange these pictures in separate groups, and to describe the representatives of arts and science, of letters and politics, of commerce and of social life as if they were passing in separate processions before our eyes. As my recollections are aided by the portraits, I shall endeavor to make the portraits more lifelike to the minds of my readers by the help of my own recollections. '^ The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them." This is the kindly saying of Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I cannot offer any better apology for my shadowy recollections.

Chapter II Charles Dickers

The portrait of Charles Dickens is the most appropriate illustration with which to open these sketches from memory of men and women who were living in the early sixties. This likeness of Dickens represents him in one of those moods of rather melancholy thoughtfulness with which those who knew him then were familiar. There was a certain depth of melancholy underneath all the joyous activity of Dickens's ordinary moods, and it is profoundly characteristic of even his most humorous and exhilarating stories if only we pause to look a little beneath the surface. It is not thus that he presents himself to our memory if we trust to our recollections of him as he appeared when delivering one of his lectures or making, on some joyous occasion, one of his after-dinner speeches, or talking with cheerful animation in the company of his friends.

Readers of the present generation will find it hard to understand how supreme and universal was the influence of Dickens at the time which this volume endeavors to recall. So far as mere popularity was concerned, he had then absolutely no rival. We have at present no such reigning monarch of fiction. Dickens was read by every one, high and low, the cultured and uncultured, who cared to read a novel. Walter Scolt was the only writer who in modern days could claim a popularity surpassing or even equal to that of Charles

Dickens. Thackeray was admitted by most readers, even then, to stand on a literary level with Dickens and to dispute his absolute supremacy, but Thackeray's readers never approached in numbers to those over whom the novels of Dickens exercised a complete sway. Thackeray himself once said that the readers of his books did not number one in seven of those who devoted themselves to the green-covered monthly numbers which gave forth in serial form such books as Pickwick, Nicholas Nicklehy, and David Copper field, Dickens was a year younger than Thackeray, and he outlived him for seven years. Thackeray has described in some striking sentences how the young man Charles Dickens suddenly moved up from the ranks of the beginners, and took his place as if by right at the very head of the literary class, and kept his leadership as a matter of course. I am not now entering into any comparison between the two great men who represented two such different schools of fiction, and I regard all such comparisons as futile, needless, and thankless. I am merely recording the absolute fact that in popularity Dickens stood without a rival.

When I first came to London, Dickens was at the very zenith of his fame and his influence. To meet him in the Strand or in Piccadilly was an event to be remembered in the life of a young man then passing through the streets of London. Dickens began his literary career as a reporter in the gallery of the House of Commons, and in my early days of journalism I heard from elder men engaged in the same occupation many an interesting and delightful anecdote of his remarkable skill in his work and of his genial and companionable qualities. It was his gift to be able to make himself a master of any craft to which he applied his mind and his energies, and I have often been assured that he was the quickest and most accurate reporter of his time in the House of Commons gallery. We may judge what a capacity he had for success in any path which inspired him with interest, from the opinion which I have often heard given by some of the leading actors of that time, that if the novelist had thought fit to turn his artistic talents to the business of the stage he would have won for himself a place among the highest of the theatrical profession. At one period Dickens felt strongly drawn towards such a career, but his peculiar genius was too commanding to allow of any deflection, and the world has the best reason to be glad that he kept himself steadily to his calling as a writer of novels. Amateur acting was, however, always one of his favorite recreations, and he was universally regarded as the most capable amateur actor in England.

Dickens did not forget his old friends and associates when he had attained his supreme height in the literature of fiction, and it was to that fact that I owed the honor of his personal acquaintance. I was for one session a reporter in the gallery of the House of Commons, and through some elder brothers of the craft I had the honor of being introduced to the great novelist. I may say at once that my acquaintance with Dickens was of the slightest, and I never had the good fortune to be ranked among his friends. But it was a source of unspeakable delight and pride to me to have an opportunity of meeting him now and then in private intercourse, and to have acquired the right of going up to him and inviting his recognition. I need hardly say that I felt as if I had achieved a triumph whenever I happened to meet Dickens and he remembered who I was and addressed me by my name. When a small boy living in an Irish southern city I had written once to Dickens and asked him for his autograph, and to my inexpressible delight I received within a very few days a kindly line from the great novelist with his peculiar and characteristic signature.

I had heard all of Dickens's readings when I was working as a journalist in Liverpool before I ventured to attempt the business of journalism in London, and I certainly believed that I had attained the very pinnacle of self-satisfaction when I found myself, as I have described, within the circle of his personal acquaintances. Our casual meetings in London only brought me to the interchange of a few words each time with Dickens, for I was young and rather shy and totally obscure, and I hardly ever ventured in his presence to offer any observation on my own account. This certainly did not arise from any discouragement in Dickens's manner, for he was always genial and friendly, seemed naturally inclined to welcome and encourage young men, and I had heard many stories from companions in journalism about the generous interest which Dickens took in those who were beginning their work as newspaper reporters or writers. The great novelist seemed to make it a part of his work to discover literary talent in rising young men and to give practical help to its development. When he started Household Words he gathered around him quite a school of men who were then very young, and most of whom became under his fostering care successful and distinguished writers. Most of them have passed away since that time, but the names of such men as George Augustus Sala, Andrew Halliday, Edmund Yates, Wilkie Collins, and many others are still remembered. John Hollingshead, who was one of the cleverest and best writers of that school, and who afterwards turned his attention almost altogether to theatrical management, is still living.

Dickens discovered and brought out the lyrical genius of Adelaide Anne Procter, daughter of Bryan Waller Procter, the poet who disguised his identity for a long time under the assumed name of Barry Cornwall. Adelaide Procter sent some verses to Household Words without giving her real name. Dickens read them and saw at once that they had high poetic promise in them, and he welcomed the young writer to the ranks of his contributors, and gave her ample opportunity of proving her capacity before he came to know of her relationship with his old friend. Of course the prose contributors to Household Words got into the habit, unconsciously it may be, of forming their style upon that of their master, and thus a whole school of writers came into existence who reproduced the Dickens mannerisms in unnumbered magazines and newspapers. I can well remember hearing the editor of a great London daily paper making humorous complaint that he could not keep the imitations of Dickens out of the columns of his journal when his staff of writers had to do the work of description. If, for instance — so he went on to declare— he wanted a preliminary account of the preparations being made for some great London procession or other public ceremonial, he was sure, no matter whom he trusted with the work, to get a long account beginning with " Seats everywhere. Seats outside the Abbey ; seats inside the Abbey; seats in Palace Yard; seats in Piccadilly ; seats in High Holborn " ; and so on through at least the first half-column before the writer condescended to come down to anything like a plain and practical account of the operations which he was called upon to depict in prose. The same editor occasionally spoke in the same mood of the increasing proportion of persons with whom literature meant Dickens. It was, indeed, almost impossible for a young writer at that time to keep himself from falling into an imitation of the Dickens strain, even though he were profoundly conscious of the fact that his best efforts in that direction could be nothing better than a grotesque and pitiful imitation of the great and unique original. There was a sort of Dickens language which people unconsciously spoke and wrote under the spell of the master. The fact itself was but another tribute to the genius of Dickens, and may help us, even, still to understand how wide and deep was the influence then exercised by the spell of the enchanter.

The contributors to Household Words and to All the Year Round, the periodical which Dickens afterwards started in consequence of his quarrel with his publishers, were not all by any means mere imitators and nothing else. Men likeWilkie Collins, Shirley Brooks, John Hollingshead, George Sala, and many others, brought out books entirely their own, and made a mark for themselves, although, of course, no one among them could ever have won for himself anything like such a place in literature as that to which Dickens mounted almost by one step. I should say it was always the desire of Dickens himself to find out the real and individual gifts of his regular contributors, and to encourage each one of them to the development of his own peculiar qualities and to the avoidance of mere imitation.

Dickens's readings were as original and peculiar in their style as Dickens's writings. I have never heard any public reader who could display a dramatic vividness, variety, and power such as Dickens could show at all times and without any apparent effort when he read to some great audience. It really was not mere reading i — it was the impersonation, or rather the calling into life, of each character whose words he spoke. It ran through all the moods of human feeling, was high tragedy or broad comedy, pathetic appeal or exalted contemplation, according as the subject gave opportunity, and yet it was never in any sense mere stageplay. Dickens had a voice of marvellous compass, depth, and variety of tone ; some of its chords were perfect music; and although he had often to pass in a moment from the extreme of one mood to the extreme of another, there was never the slightest strain or effort or struggle after effect ; all seemed to come with perfect ease from the instinct and the inspiration of the man. I remember well that there were some daring critics at the time, even among the most devoted admirers of Dickens, who ventured to challenge the common verdict of absolute approval as to Dickens's manner of illustrating this or that character in his readings. For instance, there were those among us who fearlessly maintained that Dickens had not done full justice to Sam Weller in his manner of rendering the utterances of that remarkable personage. He did not quite bring out, it was contended, all the full significance of this or that remark made by Mr. Weller the younger. But let us think for a moment what a tribute this was in itself to the genius of the author and the powers of the reader. All the disparaging criticism which the audacity of such critics could venture upon only went to argue that Dickens had created for us a living character of such odd and various humor that even Dickens himself was not quite able to read up to the level of his own creation. We used to dispute over the point as if it were some great question of faith or politics, and I remember well that I wondered much at the time whether Dickens himself would not regard the criticism as only a new and splendid tribute to his genius.