Acadiensis/Volume 1/Number 3/Notes and Queries
Notes and Queries.
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HAT did Professor H. S. Peck, writing in the Cosmopolitan Magazine a couple of years ago, refer to when he spoke of three things as being well known to readers, but never told in print: (1) The reasons for the separation of Charles Dickens and his wife; (2) The true story of Thackeray's death; (3) Why Mr. Cross tried to commit suicide shortly after marrying George Eliot.
George Augustus Sola said, in his Reminiscences, that he knew why the Dickenses could not live happily together, but failed to state what the reason was. Incompatability of temper is the generally received version of the cause of the break-up of the home of the man who, in the Victorian era, probably did more than any other writer for the idealization and refinement of home life. A few years ago someone circulated a slanderous account of Dickens' infatuation for a French actress in a troupe which visited London. John Forster's biography of the great novelist was expected to throw some light on the subject, but, as in other respects, these pompous memoirs were unsatisfactory. Now, in the revival of interest in Dickens' writings, and to a generation which knew him not, this question may be propounded.
As regards the death of Thackeray, the record ably stated by Dickens in his well-known paper, "In Memoriam," is simple and pathetic. On the morning before Christmas, 1863, Thackeray arose as usual early and was sitting in what would have been a very uncomfortable position for most persons, with his desk on his knees, working on Denis Duval, his great sea-novel of the time of Nelson. When found by his mother some time later, he was lying on his bed with his arms thrown up over his head, as he was accustomed to do when tired, with a
Dickens, His Wife, and His Wife's Sister.
From "Yesterdays with Authors".
By James T. Fields.
By Permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
peaceful expression on his features, stark dead. On that Christmas eve, "God grant," said Dickens, "that when he laid his head back on his pillow, and threw up his arms, as he had been wont to do when very weary, some consciousness of duty done, and Christian hope throughout life humbly cherished, may have caused his heart to throb with an exquisite bliss when he passed away to his Redeemer's rest."
If there is any other account of the death of that great writer I, for one, should like to hear it.
George Eliot's fame has undergone the most extraordinary mutations since about the year 1860, when the immense vogue of Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss raised her to the highest rank of English novelists. Later than this again, or about the seventh decade of the nineteenth century in the seventies the appearances of Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda was heralded and received something like a new evangel. Here was something like a new religion of which a retired scholarly sort of person, the mistress of an eccentric man of letters about London, was prophet and apostle. Their relations were of the queerest, one might almost think they were the originals of Trilby and Soeagali. Whilst undeniably learned, if not profound, before Lewes got possession of her, George Eliot was dull, after his death she was stupid. But during the period when she was under his management she displayed many gifts, wrote at times with comparative lightness, and generally enriched her observations with a racy though sombre humour. Enthusiasts were at a loss to imagine how she could endure a separation from him, but she promptly settled the matter by espousing Cross. They continued together the readings which Lewes had suggested to her in the first instance, and she wrote a most tiresome series of papers entitled Impressions of Theophrastus Such. Shortly after the appearance of the latter, she died. Her fame, unsupported by the arts of Lewes and a certain following of materialistic thinkers and writers, underwent a speedy decline. Later critics acknowledge her claims as a novelist very grudgingly or deny them altogether. She will always be a puzzle to moralists. Gifted with an ability to stir her readers' moral nature to the depths by a searching analytic method, in her own life she was not so much immoral as unmoral. For such morals as married people are concerned with, she had simply no use at all. She could not legally marry Lewes, and so contented herself with assuming, as far as possible, the duties and responsibilities of a wife; but when he died she married Cross, thus at once making her peace with the upholders of conventuality and breaking with her worshippers, who would have held their idol to be absolved from all marital restraint. What kind of mind and constitution could have been possessed by this ultra Methodist will probably remain a mystery. As a problem for students of intellect and morals in their application to conduct, she will always possess a fascination.
The book-agents have been canvassing during the past year for various editions of the novels of Balzac in more or less tasteful bindings and quality of paper, some of them quite expensive. They may be purchased on the instalment plan. Prices range all the way from sixteen to fifty dollars for sets. The finest is printed on rice paper, with deckled edges, and is embellished with etched illustrations. If there is a considerable demand for these novels, as I suppose there is, it is some evidence that the race of people who read elaborate works of fiction has not died out. The best edition has introductions by Mr. George Saintsbury. In the prospectus, Prof. Peck's sweeping assertion, that Balzac was a greater writer than Shakespeare, is quoted. Balzac's writings are distinctly closet productions, and, however carefully put together, have the smell of the lamps about them. He wrote in an attic, drawing his chief inspiration from books. There is nothing of the freshness and joyousness characteristic of the work of most of our great novelists in them. At most, they are valuable as affording a voluminous survey of certain sections of French society during the first half of the nineteenth century. Students will turn to them for light on the manners, tastes and ways of thought prevailing in Paris when Louis Philippe was on the throne.
Why was there no Macaulay centenary? It seems strange that in an age when everybody, whoever was anybody, is duly remembered by the public on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, so great a man as Lord Macaulay was should not have been thus honored. Among his contemporaries there was hardly a man—statesman, historian, or litérateur—who filled a larger space in the public eye. And yet, save for a short article in the Sunday edition of a New York paper in December, I noticed no appreciation of him. If the dead take note of what is being done in the world after they have abandoned this lower sphere of activity, this neglect or oversight must have been peculiarly galling to such a man as Macaulay. There was, perhaps, never a thinker and writer who, comparatively careless of contemporaneous recognition, which was, however, in his case very ample and generous, yet kept his eyes so constantly fixed on a renown which he fondly hoped would grow with succeeding generations. Macaulay worked and strove for posterity. In his Life and Letters, which his nephew, Sir Otto Trevelyan, brought out, one is rather amused at the hope expressed in entries in his journals of parts, at least, of his history surviving to the year 3,000, or even 4,000. It was one of his chief weaknesses that he believed in it thoroughly. And now a comparatively early posterity has arrived and knows him not.
His works, like those of Virgil, enjoyed in his own lifetime, the position of classics. He has been applauded, criticized, imitated and abused without stint during the forty years or so which have elapsed since his death; and now no statue is erected of him, no club commemorates his fame, no voice is lifted in his praise. Perhaps the world thinks he enjoyed enough of such things in his own time, and busies itself with honouring other less lucky geniuses. It is the Chatterbons, Burnses, Shelleys and Edgar Allan Poes that appeal to posterity; those whose lives have been wrecked or characters pitilessly assailed on their upward flight. The pathos of a career has more attraction in it than the most envied success and prosperity.