the Gypsies of southern England, are, or were
Lees) was camping hard by, and that one of them
was terribly ill — indeed, his folk, of whom there
were two, had been told by the doctor from
St. Columb that he was dying. "Hard liver"
206
Gypsies at Mawgan
was the name of his sickness — which would mean,
I suppose, that, whatever his virtues, sobriety had
not been among them. But he was in great pain,
and was dying hard : nor could he be released
from pain by death unless and until he was
" read " over — and there was not man, woman, or
child in the camp who knew how. So these two
kinsfolk of the sufferer had been on the look-out
for some sufficiently learned passer-by.
Of course I went with them to the camp. It
was pitched on sward, between a copse and a
stream, and was on an unusually large scale.
Every generation seemed crowded together, from
the crone who looked as if she had seen her
hundredth birthday many years ago to the baby
in arms, with every age of both sexes between.
In solemn silence they squatted round a central
caravan : in solemn silence they rose for an
instant and curtseyed or bowed as I was brought
upon the scene. Without a word my younger
guide conducted me to the steps of the caravan,
and then left me to enter it alone. It seemed to
be taken for granted that I, who could read, would
know what to do.
Not the boudoir of the most fastidious of
princesses could be more ideally clean and neat
than the interior of that vagrant caravan. The
face of the sick man I could not see, for it was
207
Mid- Victorian Memories
turned to the wall : I could only hear his heavily
and I fear painfully drawn breathing as he lay in
his clean white shirt under a clean white sheet
among clean white pillows. He did not seem
aware of my presence. What was I to do, to
satisfy the affectionate sorrow of the expectant
crowd outside ?
I believe I did what was right. Very solemnly
and slowly, and aloud, so that all might hear,
I said the Lord's Prayer.
I suppose I might plausibly be charged with
having perverted the prayer of prayers to the
support of pagan superstition. To that charge
I plead neither "guilty" nor "not guilty" — I
decline to plead at all. After many hand-shakes,
in one case accompanied by a sob from the folds
of a scarlet shawl, I went on my way. It
was dark when, returning to my quarters at
St. Columb, I came again to the point of the road
where I had been first accosted, and naturally
turned aside to make a visit of inquiry. The
camp, now fire-lighted, had not shifted, but it was
no longer silent. Women's voices would have
served for guidance to it had there been no fires,
and when I reached it, the cause of the clatter
was plain ; but not a man was to be seen. Grief
is notoriously thirsty — is not " Thirsty grief"
classically authorised by Lovelace's prison-song ?
208
Charles Godfrey Leland
—and there would be beer at Mawgan : sorrow
must not interfere with business, and there might
be snares to visit in the fields. Well — I did not
lack for voluble information that scarcely had
I left the caravan that afternoon when the sick
man died. To try to explain that he was pro-
bably at the last gasp when I saw him, and that
there was thus no necessary connection between
prayer and its purpose, would have been useless ;
against their power or will to understand. Be-
sides, what did I know ? — except that they, in
their hearts, had prayed for a brother's release
from the pain of living ; that I had given their
wordless wish a vocal form ; and that the release
had come. Coldly to explain that away ! I
could not if I would : I would not if I could.
Probably the belief that the soul cannot achieve
a difficult death without magic, that is to say
scholarship, to help it, has itself died out by now.
But I cannot but suspect myself of some com-
plicity in making it die somewhat harder than it
ought — at least among the Lees.
Once only was it my good fortune to discuss
Romany with one of its most eminent students,
Charles Godfrey Leland, not as yet forgotten as
" Hans Breitmann," nor as yet fully recognised
as the light-bearer of folk-lore into so many pre-
P 209
Mid- Victorian Memories
viously neglected corners of unwritten history.
But the once was a whole evening long, and had
some controversial zest : for he was a thorough
adherent, I as thorough an opponent, of the view
that refers the Gypsies to an Indian origin. Our
conversation took place in the drawing-room of
Lady Hardy, wife of Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy,
the Deputy Keeper of Records, where she, with
her daughter Isa — both successful novel-writers —
held a literary court of the same open sort as the
Marstons, until the death of Sir Thomas brought
that, also, to an end. The memory of one friend-
ship that I made there I especially prize : that of
John Cordy Jeaffreson, antiquary and all-round
man of letters, whose bristles of prejudice and
paradox entirely failed to hide from those who
knew him the sweetness and warmth of the heart
that he seemed ashamed to show. Cincinnatus —
by substitution " Joaquin " — H. Miller, called the
" Poet of the Sierras," was, during his visits to
this country during the earlier half of the seven-
ties, a conspicuous member of the Hardys' circle,
where notable Americans were especially wel-
come, and, there and elsewhere, a privileged
exponent of what were supposed to be wild
Western ways. He was expected to be startlingly
unconventional ; and he was not so churlish as to
disappoint expectation.
210
Agnes Mary Frances Robinson
A more comprehensive circle, even than the
Marstons*, was that which had for its focus
No 84, Gower Street, while the abode of
Mr. and Mrs. George Robinson — I remember
the precise address of their house, because my
father-in-law was its immediately preceding
tenant ; because I had first seen my future wife
there ; and because it had been our own dwelling
for the first months of our marriage. George
Robinson was an expert art-collector : a con-
noisseur who understood both artistic merits and
artistic values. But his whole collection con-
tained nothing so attractive as his eldest daughter,
Agnes Mary Frances, who has made a name, or
rather three names, in two nations : first as Mary
Robinson ; secondly as Madame James Dar-
mesteter ; thirdly — which she still retains — as
Madame Duclaux. It is many, many years since
I saw her : the distance of Paris, meaning by
Paris not its railway stations but itself, is not
a matter of mere miles or hours. So my whole
memory of her is of a beautiful girl of eighteen
who — age not being a matter of mere months and
years — never seemed to grow older ; who, from
her birth, had breathed only poetic air ; and
knew nothing of life but its graceful and gracious
sides. Fortunately her gift was too genuine and
her taste too sound to be seriously or permanently
211
Mid- Victorian Memories
injured! in the way that was to be feared — that
of the so-called "aesthetic" influence which was
beginning to infect her atmosphere with its
affectations at just about the time when her first
volume, " A Handful of Honeysuckle," celebrated
her coming of age.
The " aesthetic movement " is, and always was,
the vaguest of terms, and its place and office in
literary history have yet to be defined before
these can be settled and assigned ; but, like every
" movement," it had its grotesqueries and ab-
surdities, which were by no means mere inventions
of Du Maurier, as the present generation of
students o{ PuncJts Mid- Victorian numbers might
naturally take them to be. I have seen at the
Robinsons' a youth (whose name was neither
Postlethwaite nor Mawdle, though it might well
have been either) carrying throughout a whole
evening, in melancholy silence, a tall white lily,
with whose droop he was evidently doing his best
to bring his own figure into imitation. At the
same house, a young woman, dressed, as it seemed
to me, in nothing but an old-fashioned bathing
gown and an amber necklace, whom I was asked
to take to the supper-room, returned, to my
inquiry of what I could get for her, the lugubri-
ously toned answer, " I seldom eat." And these
three words were all I could win from her then
212
" Speranza "
or thereafter. Whether it was here that I first
met Oscar Wilde, I am not sure. Wherever it
was, the acquaintanceship failed to ripen, beyond
occasional invitations to his mother's receptions,
held in a depressing half-light, arranged to her
liking, though in the day-time, by lowered lamps
and drawn blinds. Lady Wilde, "Speranza" of
the paper, the Nation, in which her patriotic
verses originally appeared, was a delightfully
quaint person. The twilight in which she chose
to be seen seemed to be that of a dream, she
being the dreamer and we the shadows, so that
no oddity could come as a surprise, whether to us
or to her. She once introduced my wife and
myself to each other as " two clever people who
ought to be acquainted." She knew us both,
especially my wife, quite well, and I do not
suppose that she took either of us for anybody
else. We were no doubt for the moment just
dream objects, without substance or name. I
could find nothing better to say than " I think I
have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Francillon
before."
It was at the Robinsons' that I especially
remember an exceedingly interesting talk — that
is to say on his side of it — with Professor William
Minto, then editing the Examiner, who did such
admirably efficient pioneer work in literary history
213
Mid- Victorian Memories
and criticism on scientific lines in prae-scientific
times. Justin M'Carthy, novelist, politician,
historian, and journalist, with his wife — she
magnificently crowned with a wealth of snow-
white hair — his daughter, and the son who has
continued the literary dynasty as Justin the
Second, were also among the most frequent of
the visitors at 84, Gower Street, and were pre-
sumably in part accountable for a sentimental
sympathy with Irish Nationalism that made itself
felt in the domestic air. Mary Robinson's younger
sister Mabel was especially attracted by the
romance of Irish history, though it was as a
novelist of wider range that she won immediate
distinction at a notably early age. Theirs was
altogether a singularly interesting household —
permanently interesting in itself, and gathering all
manner of varied interest from outside. While
one might safely predict the friends of one's own
whom one would meet there, it was impossible to
hazard a guess as to the strangers whom one
might encounter ; from members of the Chinese
Legation (two of them once sang a most feline
duet) to Monsignor Capel — also in full costume.
214
CHAPTER XVI
The GentleinarCs — Richard Gowing — David Christie
Murray — Robert Buchanan — Welsh humour — Gustave
Dore — Camille Barere — Karl and Mathilde Blind
The death of Zelda— whom I had reluctantly had
to poison, as the only possible solution of the tangle
in which she and her fellow-characters had be-
come involved, not by me, but by their own
independence of control — was made the more
memorable to myself by a call in person from
Richard Gowing, the newly appointed editor of
the Gentlemans Magazine, then published by
Grant & Co., for the purpose of getting a novel
to run through the twelve months of 1874. I had
no previous acquaintance with him, but this purely
business interview resulted in a close and constant
literary connection fourteen years long, and in a
personal intimacy that lasted without break or
cloud until his death after many years more. Of
all the friendships that I have made in all my life,
there is none that I can look back upon with more
flawless satisfaction. Do you, who are reading
this, know what it is to receive a letter which you
215
Mid- Victorian Memories
not merely hope or expect, but know, from the
handwriting on the envelope, will make you the
happier for reading ? I do, thanks to Richard
Gowing, and never once was my experience at
fault during an ample correspondence of quite
thirty years. No doubt I must have sometimes
tried his patience — what mortal author can fail to
try the patience of any mortal editor now and
again ? But I never knew him to appear put out
or worried, while on the other hand he never lost
an opportunity of showing himself pleased. And
for getting the best possible work out of any man
who is not exceptionally ill-conditioned, I am
convinced that there is no way that works so well.
The certain approbation of effort, even should
the effort fail, is far more likely to result
in success than is any anxiety to escape blame.
The excellence of my relations with Gowing was
certainly not due to sympathy in matters of
opinion, or even to community of interest in the
same things. No two friends ever more com-
pletely agreed so completely to differ. His politics
were Radical — of a rather old-fashioned type,
perhaps, but therefore all the more consistently
thorough ; mine, during our intercourse, tended
more and more to a historic Toryism, not neces-
sarily false in principle merely because practical
party politics have obscured it for a time. He
2l6
Richard Gowing
was not only, as Secretary of the Cobden Club,
an official Free Trader, but a zealous and active
propagandist of a cause the right and wrong
whereof I, baffled by mutually contradictory
statistics, conflicting authorities, and equally pro-
bable arguments on both sides, understood as
little as I do now — which is just as much as the
average voter : which is nothing at all. He was
a Positivist : I a born Mystic, running wild until
I recognised in Authority the ultimate logic of a
natural need. In short, he and I together formed
a signal example of the harmony of extremes.
This time I took good care not to trust my
characters with the plot and conduct of my novel.
I drew out a complete plan of the story, chapter
by chapter, with the result that " Olympia," as
the finished novel was called, was scarcely to be
identified with its preliminary scheme. Those
perversely wilful creatures, one's dramatis personcB ,
took themselves into their own hands after all.
But I had this important amount of control
over them — that they had a predetermined and
irrevocable plot to work out, however im-
possible it was to prevent them from working
it out in their own way. In any case they
are a troublesome folk to keep in order. I
quite recently had the interesting pleasure
oi discussing their management with a novelist
217
Mid-Victorian Memories
of to-day, and presumably of to-morrow also,
Miss Marion Mole. Her principle, as I gather,
is to study a person, or group of persons, whose
character or characters would inevitably dictate
his, her, or their story. That seems an ideally
admirable method, for a novelist who can trust
herself to know, with dramatic sympathy, how a
man or woman of given character would the
most certainly act or feel under given conditions.
Mine, since " Olympia," has been just the reverse
— to start from a single situation ; then to evolve
a story capable of bringing it about ; and finally
to invent the characters necessary for the action.
That also is not a bad way of getting and keeping
a grip over one's actors ; but it has the fault of
exacting a cold-blooded ingenuity which, even
when most successful, is apt, in a much more
important matter, to fail. Sympathy with cha-
racters originally made to order, though, as they
develop, not out of the question, cannot by any
amount of ingenuity be ensured. The latter
method throws the main interest of a novel upon
what its characters do ; but the former upon what
they are. I have let myself run into this digres-
sion because I believe that it recognises the
existence of two essentially distinct kinds of
fiction, and that much critical confusion results
from condemning a novel of one kind for not
2i8
The Gentlema?t's Magazine
being of the other. Of course the two separate
interests, the narrative and the dramatic, have, in
some rare cases, been chemically combined. But,
when that happens, the only proper function of a
critic is to bow to the ground.
Towards the end of the year through which
" Olympia " ran her course, 1874, appeared the
first of the series of one-volume novels that
constituted the Christmas number of The Gentle-
mans Magazine for fifteen successive years. Of
twelve of these I was the sole author : of the
other three I devised the plot and wrote the
greater portion. In " Like a Snowball," the
earliest on the list, I had for collaborateurs David
Christie Murray, "Frank Percival " (the pen-
name of a lady whom I never met, and whose
real name I can neither recall nor recover), and
" Redspinner " — who, no angler need be told,
was, in private life, William Senior, sometime
editor of the Field. Was — and is, for only the
other day I met him, very much alive, and
evidently without the least intention of turning
into anybody's mere memory, dear to his family
and friends (I cannot answer for the fishes) as so
genial and manly a memory will be. Each of
these contributed one of the seven chapters : I
the other four. Of David Christie Murray, the
author of "Joseph's Coat" and several other
219
Mid- Victorian Memories
popularly successful novels, I came to see a great
deal. The first visit I had from him began at
ten o'clock at night, and lasted till past three in
the morning. Nobody else was present : I was
the entire audience of a monologue the whole of
those five full hours long — and not once was I
bored, though I confess to a gathering fear that
mere physical fatigue must sooner or later extort
an inhospitable yawn. At last he rose to go.
There was no apparent reason why a man who
had talked without a pause for five hours should
not go on talking for ten ; but go he did. And
" What a delightful conversation we have been
having ! " said he at the front-door. But it takes
two, at the least, for conversation, and I know
that beyond an occasional " Yes " or " Oh," or
some such note of attention, I had not uttered a
word.
His was certainly an unforgettable personality :
and yet I scarcely know in what terms to re-
member him. I sometimes used to doubt if he
had any character at all of his very own ;
whether it was not a psychological necessity for
him to imagine himself somebody else, and to
think and talk in accordance with his adopted
role. He had been a fervent disciple of George
Dawson, of Birmingham, and I got to know,
from a certain tone of voice and other mannerisms,
220
David Christie Murray
when he happened to be George Dawson. On
his return from service as war-correspondent at
the siege of Plevna he carried some information
concerning the Atrocities to Hawarden ; and
thenceforth certain other mannerisms and tones
were obviously symptomatic of Gladstone. He
was never, I am convinced, just David Christie
Murray, though who he was at the moment, in
less eminent instances, one could not always tell ;
and his talent for assimilating and reproducing
tricks of speech aided this curious form of self-
deception. He was, to the very life, Scotsman,
Irishman, or Cockney, at will. That his novels
reflected the personality of Dickens is evident
beyond question. His experiences, partly set
out in his own volume of reminiscences, were
almost as versatile as his impersonations. Com-
positor ; reporter both on country papers and in
the " Gallery " ; dragoon ; tramp ; now with a
chateau in the Riviera, now hard put to it for a
lodging in London ; war-correspondent ; novel-
ist ; actor — •' everything by turns, and nothing
long," he had three superlative talents. One was
for " picturesque " journalism ; another was for
throwing away every consequent opportunity ;
a third for alienating his friends. No— he had
two more. One was for never being without
a fresh opportunity to throw away ; the other,
221
Mid- Victorian Memories
that which Goldsmith ascribes to Garrick,
who —
Cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back.
I should summarise him as a medley of moods
and impulses, none of which he ever con-
trolled, not exactly out of weakness, but because
it honestly never occurred to him to control
them. Nor was his often eloquent sentimentality,
however inconsistent with ensuing conduct, to
be termed hypocrisy. It was that he was one
person when sentimentalising — Dawson, or
Gladstone, or Dickens, or whoever else it might
be : another in action. I could not like, much
less admire, him. But I liked his company, and
that I keenly admired that picturesque journalism
of his I became able to prove in a practical way.
In the Annual for 1875 I was given the
collaboration of Senior for one of the seven
chapters, and of Robert Buchanan for a poem
to be written in such wise as to harmonise with
my plot ; indeed to be one of its essential portions.
That part of the plan did not strike me as
promising. I had never met the poet, and I
was considerably prejudiced against him per-
sonally by my association with the circle of
Swinburne and Rossetti. I recalled certain advice
222
Robert Buchanan
that had once been given me : "If you are ever
introduced to Buchanan, knock him down then
and there. You'll have to do it sooner or later ;
so it'll be best to get it over as soon as you can."
Well, there was nothing for it but to send him
the subject of my story, with a deferential sug-
gestion (one does not dictate to poets) that, as
the scene was to be laid in Merionethshire, he
might find inspiration in the legend of the Fairy
city at the bottom of the Lake of Bala. That
would have suited me very well indeed. His
answer is among a few letters that have contrived
to escape loss or destruction ; and I give it here,
partly out of vanity, partly because it is so unlike
any that my mental portrait of the writer had
allowed me to look for : —
" Mv DEAR Sir, — I am obliged to you for your
kind letter concerning the ' Legend.' I see
no difficulty just now — if any occurs to me
afterwards you shall know — of incorporating in
it the elements you suggest ; and the Bala Lake
Tradition, too, might be utilised. But, in truth,
I have hardly yet had leisure to shape the plan
definitely. When I do so I will follow your views
as far as I can.
" I presume Mr. Gowing has told you that the
authorship is to be, and to continue, anonymous,
so far as I am concerned. I have undertaken it
223
Mid- Victorian Memories
chiefly with a wish to oblige him and the pro-
prietors of the magazine.
" May I take this opportunity of saying how
much I enjoyed your ' Olympia ' — nearly all of
which I read in the magazine ? Your article on
* Physiology of Authorship ' entertained me
greatly ; but in the story I found a charm and
freshness very unusual in modern fiction. I hope
the ' Legend ' will be worthy of its * setting ' by
you ; and, believe me, I am
" Very truly yours,
" Robert Buchanan."
Now how on earth could the recipient of such
a letter dream of knocking its writer down ?
Especially as there were certain physical obstacles
to the process, for Buchanan was then living in
a remote part of Connaught, whence the letter
was dated ; and, when I afterwards met him in
person, it needed no second look to show me
that, should it ever come to blows between us,
it was I, not he, who would come to the floor.
Meanwhile, with an easy mind, I betook myself
to Dolgelly to lay in a stock of local colour ; put
myself there under the tuition of a mining agent,
so as to be accurate in the details of gold-ex-
traction, on which the story was to turn ; climbed
down, for both purposes, into the depths of the
Clogau Mine, then being worked for gold ; and
224
Welsh Humoiif
failed to find any traces of fairies in or about
Bala. But I succeeded in losing myself on Cader
Idris so well that I think there must be fairies
there — and of a kindly sort too, for without some
such invisible guidance I must inevitably have
spent a hungry night in the mazes of the mountain
instead of the comfortable quarters of the Golden
Lion. By the way, it was here I made the passing
acquaintance of a young Englishman, a dropper-in
on most days, who, in the course of a casual chat
on the Welsh character generally, undertook to
prove, beyond all possible question, that its most
distinguishing peculiarity is the total and universal
absence of even a rudimentary sense of humour.