No More Learning

It was believed for a long time--in fact, until their separation--that
Dickens and his wife were extremely happy in their home life. His
writings glorified all that was domestic, and paid many tender tributes
to the joys of family affection. When the separation came the whole
world was shocked. And yet rather early in Dickens's married life there
was more or less infelicity. In his Retrospections of an Active Life,
Mr. John Bigelow writes a few sentences which are interesting for their
frankness, and which give us certain hints:

Mrs. Dickens was not a handsome woman, though stout, hearty, and
matronly; there was something a little doubtful about her eye, and
I thought her endowed with a temper that might be very violent when
roused, though not easily rousable. Mrs. Caulfield told me that a
Miss Teman--I think that is the name--was the source of the difficulty
between Mrs. Dickens and her husband. She played in private theatricals
with Dickens, and he sent her a portrait in a brooch, which met with
an accident requiring it to be sent to the jeweler's to be mended. The
jeweler, noticing Mr. Dickens's initials, sent it to his house. Mrs.
Dickens's sister, who had always been in love with him and was jealous
of Miss Teman, told Mrs. Dickens of the brooch, and she mounted her
husband with comb and brush. This, no doubt, was Mrs. Dickens's version,
in the main.

A few evenings later I saw Miss Teman at the Haymarket Theatre, playing
with Buckstone and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews. She seemed rather a
small cause for such a serious result--passably pretty, and not much of
an actress.

Here in one passage we have an intimation that Mrs. Dickens had a
temper that was easily roused, that Dickens himself was interested in
an actress, and that Miss Hogarth "had always been in love with him, and
was jealous of Miss Teman. "

Some years before this time, however, there had been growing in the mind
of Dickens a certain formless discontent--something to which he could
not give a name, yet which, cast over him the shadow of disappointment.
He expressed the same feeling in David Copperfield, when he spoke of
David's life with Dora. It seemed to come from the fact that he had
grown to be a man, while his wife had still remained a child.

A passage or two may be quoted from the novel, so that we may set them
beside passages in Dickens's own life, which we know to have referred to
his own wife, and not to any such nebulous person as Mrs. Winter.

The shadow I have mentioned that was not to be between us any more,
but was to rest wholly on my heart--how did that fall? The old unhappy
feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were changed at all;
but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like a strain of
sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife dearly; but
the happiness I had vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I
enjoyed, AND THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING WANTING.

What I missed I still regarded as something that had been a dream of
my youthful fancy; that was incapable of realization; that I was now
discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men did. But that
it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more,
and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner, and that this
might have been I knew.

What I am describing slumbered and half awoke and slept again in the
innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence of it to me; I knew
of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I bore the weight of
all our little cares and all my projects.

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and
purpose. " These words I remembered. I had endeavored to adapt Dora to
myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt myself
to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear on my own
shoulders what I must, and be still happy.

Thus wrote Dickens in his fictitious character, and of his fictitious
wife. Let us see how he wrote and how he acted in his own person, and of
his real wife.

As early as 1856, he showed a curious and restless activity, as of one
who was trying to rid himself of unpleasant thoughts. Mr. Forster
says that he began to feel a strain upon his invention, a certain
disquietude, and a necessity for jotting down memoranda in note-books,
so as to assist his memory and his imagination. He began to long
for solitude. He would take long, aimless rambles into the country,
returning at no particular time or season. He once wrote to Forster:

I have had dreadful thoughts of getting away somewhere altogether by
myself. If I could have managed it, I think I might have gone to the
Pyrenees for six months. I have visions of living for half a year or so
in all sorts of inaccessible places, and of opening a new book therein.
A floating idea of going up above the snow-line, and living in some
astonishing convent, hovers over me.

What do these cryptic utterances mean? At first, both in his novel and
in his letters, they are obscure; but before long, in each, they become
very definite. In 1856, we find these sentences among his letters:

The old days--the old days! Shall I ever, I wonder, get the frame of
mind back as it used to be then? Something of it, perhaps, but never
quite as it used to be.

I find that the skeleton in my domestic closet is becoming a pretty big
one.

His next letter draws the veil and shows plainly what he means:

Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no help
for it. It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that
I make her so, too--and much more so. We are strangely ill-assorted for
the bond that exists between us.

Then he goes on to say that she would have been a thousand times happier
if she had been married to another man. He speaks of "incompatibility,"
and a "difference of temperaments. " In fact, it is the same old story
with which we have become so familiar, and which is both as old as the
hills and as new as this morning's newspaper.

Naturally, also, things grow worse, rather than better. Dickens comes to
speak half jocularly of "the plunge," and calculates as to what effect
it will have on his public readings. He kept back the announcement of
"the plunge" until after he had given several readings; then, on April
29, 1858, Mrs. Dickens left his home. His eldest son went to live with
the mother, but the rest of the children remained with their father,
while his daughter Mary nominally presided over the house. In the
background, however, Georgina Hogarth, who seemed all through her life
to have cared for Dickens more than for her sister, remained as a sort
of guide and guardian for his children.

This arrangement was a private matter, and should not have been brought
to public attention; but it was impossible to suppress all gossip about
so prominent a man. Much of the gossip was exaggerated; and when it came
to the notice of Dickens it stung him so severely as to lead him into
issuing a public justification of his course. He published a
statement in Household Words, which led to many other letters in other
periodicals, and finally a long one from him, which was printed in the
New York Tribune, addressed to his friend Mr. Arthur Smith.

Dickens afterward declared that he had written this letter as a strictly
personal and private one, in order to correct false rumors and scandals.
Mr. Smith naturally thought that the statement was intended for
publication, but Dickens always spoke of it as "the violated letter. "

By his allusions to a difference of temperament and to incompatibility,
Dickens no doubt meant that his wife had ceased to be to him the same
companion that she had been in days gone by. As in so many cases, she
had not changed, while he had. He had grown out of the sphere in which
he had been born, "associated with blacking-boys and quilt-printers,"
and had become one of the great men of his time, whose genius was
universally admired.

Mr. Bigelow saw Mrs. Dickens as she really was--a commonplace woman
endowed with the temper of a vixen, and disposed to outbursts of actual
violence when her jealousy was roused.

It was impossible that the two could have remained together, when in
intellect and sympathy they were so far apart. There is nothing strange
about their separation, except the exceedingly bad taste with which
Dickens made it a public affair. It is safe to assume that he felt the
need of a different mate; and that he found one is evident enough from
the hints and bits of innuendo that are found in the writings of his
contemporaries.

He became a pleasure-lover; but more than that, he needed one who could
understand his moods and match them, one who could please his tastes,
and one who could give him that admiration which he felt to be his due;
for he was always anxious to be praised, and his letters are full of
anecdotes relating to his love of praise.

One does not wish to follow out these clues too closely. It is certain
that neither Miss Beadnell as a girl nor Mrs. Winter as a matron made
any serious appeal to him. The actresses who have been often mentioned
in connection with his name were, for the most part, mere passing
favorites. The woman who in life was Dora made him feel the same
incompleteness that he has described in his best-known book. The
companion to whom he clung in his later years was neither a light-minded
creature like Miss Beadnell, nor an undeveloped, high-tempered woman
like the one he married, nor a mere domestic, friendly creature like
Georgina Hogarth.

Ought we to venture upon a quest which shall solve this mystery in the
life of Charles Dickens! In his last will and testament, drawn up and
signed by him about a year before his death, the first paragraph reads
as follows:

I, Charles Dickens, of Gadshill Place, Higham, in the county of Kent,
hereby revoke all my former wills and codicils and declare this to be my
last will and testament. I give the sum of one thousand pounds, free
of legacy duty, to Miss Ellen Lawless Ternan, late of Houghton Place,
Ampthill Square, in the county of Middlesex.

In connection with this, read Mr. John Bigelow's careless jottings made
some fifteen years before. Remember the Miss "Teman," about whose name
he was not quite certain; the Hogarth sisters' dislike of her; and the
mysterious figure in the background of the novelist's later life. Then
consider the first bequest in his will, which leaves a substantial
sum to one who was neither a relative nor a subordinate, but--may we
assume--more than an ordinary friend?





HONORE DE BALZAC AND EVELINA HANSKA


I remember once, when editing an elaborate work on literature, that the
publisher called me into his private office. After the door was closed,
he spoke in tones of suppressed emotion.

"Why is it," said he, "that you have such a lack of proportion? In the
selection you have made I find that only two pages are given to George
P. Morris, while you haven't given E. P. Roe any space at all! Yet, look
here--you've blocked out fifty pages for Balzac, who was nothing but an
immoral Frenchman! "

I adjusted this difficulty, somehow or other--I do not just remember
how--and began to think that, after all, this publisher's view of things
was probably that of the English and American public. It is strange that
so many biographies and so many appreciations of the greatest novelist
who ever lived should still have left him, in the eyes of the reading
public, little more than "an immoral Frenchman. "

"In Balzac," said Taine, "there was a money-broker, an archeologist, an
architect, an upholsterer, a tailor, an old-clothes dealer, a journeyman
apprentice, a physician, and a notary. " Balzac was also a mystic, a
supernaturalist, and, above all, a consummate artist. No one who is all
these things in high measure, and who has raised himself by his genius
above his countrymen, deserves the censure of my former publisher.

Still less is Balzac to be dismissed as "immoral," for his life was one
of singular self-sacrifice in spite of much temptation. His face was
strongly sensual, his look and bearing denoted almost savage power; he
led a free life in a country which allowed much freedom; and yet
his story is almost mystic in its fineness of thought, and in its
detachment, which was often that of another world.

Balzac was born in 1799, at Tours, with all the traits of the people
of his native province--fond of eating and drinking, and with plenty of
humor. His father was fairly well off. Of four children, our Balzac was
the eldest. The third was his sister Laure, who throughout his life was
the most intimate friend he had, and to whom we owe his rescue from much
scandalous and untrue gossip. From her we learn that their father was a
combination of Montaigne, Rabelais, and "Uncle Toby. "

Young Balzac went to a clerical school at seven, and stayed there for
seven years. Then he was brought home, apparently much prostrated,
although the good fathers could find nothing physically amiss with him,
and nothing in his studies to account for his agitation. No one ever did
discover just what was the matter, for he seemed well enough in the
next few years, basking on the riverside, watching the activities of
his native town, and thoroughly studying the rustic types that he was
afterward to make familiar to the world. In fact, in Louis Lambert he
has set before us a picture of his own boyish life, very much as Dickens
did of his in David Copperfield.

For some reason, when these years were over, the boy began to have what
is so often known as "a call"--a sort of instinct that he was to attain
renown. Unfortunately it happened that about this time (1814) he and his
parents removed to Paris, which was his home by choice, until his death
in 1850. He studied here under famous teachers, and gave three years
to the pursuit of law, of which he was very fond as literary material,
though he refused to practise.

This was the more grievous, since a great part of the family property
had been lost. The Balzacs were afflicted by actual poverty, and Honore
endeavored, with his pen, to beat the wolf back from the door. He earned
a little money with pamphlets and occasional stories, but his thirst
for fame was far from satisfied. He was sure that he was called to
literature, and yet he was not sure that he had the power to succeed. In
one of his letters to his sister, he wrote:

I am young and hungry, and there is nothing on my plate. Oh, Laure,
Laure, my two boundless desires, my only ones--to be famous, and to be
loved--they ever be satisfied?

For the next ten years he was learning his trade, and the artistic use
of the fiction writer's tools. What is more to the point, is the fact
that he began to dream of a series of great novels, which should give
a true and panoramic picture of the whole of human life. This was the
first intimation of his "Human Comedy," which was so daringly undertaken
and so nearly completed in his after years. In his early days of
obscurity, he said to his readers:

Note well the characters that I introduce, since you will have to follow
their fortunes through thirty novels that are to come.

Here we see how little he had been daunted by ill success, and how his
prodigious imagination had not been overcome by sorrow and evil fortune.
Meantime, writing almost savagely, and with a feeling combined of
ambition and despair, he had begun, very slowly indeed, to create a
public. These ten years, however, had loaded him with debts; and his
struggle to keep himself afloat only plunged him deeper in the mire.
His thirty unsigned novels began to pay him a few hundred francs, not
in cash, but in promissory notes; so that he had to go still deeper into
debt.

In 1827 he was toiling on his first successful novel, and indeed one of
the best historic novels in French literature--The Chouans. He speaks of
his labor as "done with a tired brain and an anxious mind," and of the
eight or ten business letters that he had to write each day before he
could begin his literary work.

"Postage and an omnibus are extravagances that I cannot allow myself,"
he writes. "I stay at home so as not to wear out my clothes. Is that
clear to you? "

At the end of the next year, though he was already popular as a
novelist, and much sought out by people of distinction, he was at the
very climax of his poverty. He had written thirty-five books, and was in
debt to the amount of a hundred and twenty-four thousand francs. He was
saved from bankruptcy only by the aid of Mme. de Berny, a woman of high
character, and one whose moral influence was very strong with Balzac
until her early death.

The relation between these two has a sweetness and a purity which are
seldom found. Mme. de Berny gave Balzac money as she would have given it
to a son, and thereby she saved a great soul for literature. But there
was no sickly sentiment between them, and Balzac regarded her with a
noble love which he has expressed in the character of Mme. Firmiani.

It was immediately after she had lightened his burdens that the real
Balzac comes before us in certain stories which have no equal, and
which are among the most famous that he ever wrote. What could be more
wonderful than his El Verdugo, which gives us a brief horror while
compelling our admiration? What, outside of Balzac himself, could be
more terrible than Gobseck, a frightful study of avarice, containing
a deathbed scene which surpasses in dreadfulness almost anything in
literature? Add to these A Passion in the Desert, The Girl with the
Golden Eyes, The Droll Stories, The Red Inn, and The Magic Skin, and you
have a cluster of masterpieces not to be surpassed.

In the year 1829, when he was just beginning to attain a slight success,
Balzac received a long letter written in a woman's hand. As he read
it, there came to him something very like an inspiration, so full of
understanding were the written words, so full of appreciation and of
sympathy with the best that he had done. This anonymous note pointed out
here and there such defects as are apt to become chronic with a
young author. Balzac was greatly stirred by its keen and sympathetic
criticism. No one before had read his soul so clearly. No one--not even
his devoted sister, Laure de Surville--had judged his work so wisely,
had come so closely to his deepest feeling.

He read the letter over and over, and presently another came, full of
critical appreciation, and of wholesome, tonic, frank, friendly words
of cheer. It was very largely the effect of these letters that roused
Balzac's full powers and made him sure of winning the two great objects
of his first ambition--love and fame--the ideals of the chivalrous,
romantic Frenchman from Caesar's time down to the present day.

Other letters followed, and after a while their authorship was made
known to Balzac. He learned that they had been written by a young Polish
lady, Mme. Evelina Hanska, the wife of a Polish count, whose health was
feeble, and who spent much time in Switzerland because the climate there
agreed with him.

He met her first at Neuchatel, and found her all that he had imagined.
It is said that she had no sooner raised her face, and looked him
fully in the eyes, than she fell fainting to the floor, overcome by
her emotion. Balzac himself was deeply moved. From that day until their
final meeting he wrote to her daily.

The woman who had become his second soul was not beautiful.
Nevertheless, her face was intensely spiritual, and there was a mystic
quality about it which made a strong appeal to Balzac's innermost
nature. Those who saw him in Paris knocking about the streets at night
with his boon companions, hobnobbing with the elder Dumas, or rejecting
the frank advances of George Sand, would never have dreamed of this
mysticism.

Balzac was heavy and broad of figure. His face was suggestive only of
what was sensuous and sensual. At the same time, those few who looked
into his heart and mind found there many a sign of the fine inner strain
which purified the grosser elements of his nature. He who wrote the
roaring Rabelaisian Contes Drolatiques was likewise the author of
Seraphita.

This mysticism showed itself in many things that Balzac did. One little
incident will perhaps be sufficiently characteristic of many others. He
had a belief that names had a sort of esoteric appropriateness. So, in
selecting them for his novels, he gathered them with infinite pains from
many sources, and then weighed them anxiously in the balance. A writer
on the subject of names and their significance has given the following
account of this trait:

The great novelist once spent an entire day tramping about in the
remotest quarters of Paris in search of a fitting name for a character
just conceived by him. Every sign-board, every door-plate, every affiche
upon the walls, was scrutinized. Thousands of names were considered
and rejected, and it was only after his companion, utterly worn out by
fatigue, had flatly refused to drag his weary limbs through more than
one additional street, that Balzac suddenly saw upon a sign the name
"Marcas," and gave a shout of joy at having finally secured what he was
seeking.

Marcas it was, from that moment; and Balzac gradually evolved a
Christian name for him. First he considered what initial was most
appropriate; and then, having decided upon Z, he went on to expand this
into Zepherin, explaining minutely just why the whole name Zepherin
Marcas, was the only possible one for the character in the novel.

In many ways Balzac and Evelina Hanska were mated by nature. Whether
they were fully mated the facts of their lives must demonstrate. For the
present, the novelist plunged into a whirl of literary labor, toiling as
few ever toiled--constructing several novels at the same time, visiting
all the haunts of the French capital, so that he might observe and
understand every type of human being, and then hurling himself like a
giant at his work.

He had a curious practise of reading proofs. These would come to him in
enormous sheets, printed on special paper, and with wide margins for his
corrections. An immense table stood in the midst of his study, and upon
the top he would spread out the proofs as if they were vast maps. Then,
removing most of his outer garments, he would lie, face down, upon the
proof-sheets, with a gigantic pencil, such as Bismarck subsequently used
to wield. Thus disposed, he would go over the proofs.

Hardly anything that he had written seemed to suit him when he saw it
in print.
He changed and kept changing, obliterating what he disliked,
writing in new sentences, revising others, and adding whole pages in the
margins, until perhaps he had practically made a new book. This process
was repeated several times; and how expensive it was may be judged from
the fact that his bill for "author's proof corrections" was sometimes
more than the publishers had agreed to pay him for the completed volume.

Sometimes, again, he would begin writing in the afternoon, and continue
until dawn. Then, weary, aching in every bone, and with throbbing head,
he would rise and turn to fall upon his couch after his eighteen hours
of steady toil. But the memory of Evelina Hanska always came to him;
and with half-numbed fingers he would seize his pen, and forget his
weariness in the pleasure of writing to the dark-eyed woman who drew him
to her like a magnet.

These are very curious letters that Balzac wrote to Mme. Hanska. He
literally told her everything about himself. Not only were there long
passages instinct with tenderness, and with his love for her; but he
also gave her the most minute account of everything that occurred, and
that might interest her. Thus he detailed at length his mode of living,
the clothes he wore, the people whom he met, his trouble with his
creditors, the accounts of his income and outgo. One might think that
this was egotism on his part; but it was more than that. It was a strong
belief that everything which concerned him must concern her; and he
begged her in turn to write as freely and as fully.

Mme. Hanska was not the only woman who became his friend and comrade,
and to whom he often wrote. He made many acquaintances in the
fashionable world through the good offices of the Duchesse de Castries.
By her favor, he studied with his microscopic gaze the beau monde of
Louis Philippe's rather unimpressive court.

In a dozen books he scourged the court of the citizen king--its
pretensions, its commonness, and its assemblage of nouveaux riches. Yet
in it he found many friends--Victor Hugo, the Girardins--and among them
women who were of the world. George Sand he knew very well, and she made
ardent love to him; but he laughed her off very much as the elder Dumas
did.

Then there was the pretty, dainty Mme. Carraud, who read and revised his
manuscripts, and who perhaps took a more intimate interest in him than
did the other ladies whom he came to know so well. Besides Mme. Hanska,
he had another correspondent who signed herself "Louise," but who never
let him know her name, though she wrote him many piquant, sunny letters,
which he so sadly needed.

For though Honore de Balzac was now one of the most famous writers of
his time, his home was still a den of suffering. His debts kept pressing
on him, loading him down, and almost quenching hope. He acted toward his
creditors like a man of honor, and his physical strength was still
that of a giant. To Mme. Carraud he once wrote the half pathetic, half
humorous plaint:

Poor pen! It must be diamond, not because one would wish to wear it, but
because it has had so much use!

And again:

Here I am, owing a hundred thousand francs. And I am forty!

Balzac and Mme. Hanska met many times after that first eventful episode
at Neuchatel. It was at this time that he gave utterance to the poignant
cry:

Love for me is life, and to-day I feel it more than ever!

In like manner he wrote, on leaving her, that famous epigram:

It is only the last love of a woman that can satisfy the first love of a
man.

In 1842 Mme. Hanska's husband died. Balzac naturally expected that an
immediate marriage with the countess would take place; but the woman
who had loved him mystically for twelve years, and with a touch of the
physical for nine, suddenly draws back. She will not promise anything.
She talks of delays, owing to the legal arrangements for her children.
She seems almost a prude. An American critic has contrasted her attitude
with his:

Every one knows how utterly and absolutely Balzac devoted to this one
woman all his genius, his aspiration, the thought of his every moment;
how every day, after he had labored like a slave for eighteen hours, he
would take his pen and pour out to her the most intimate details of his
daily life; how at her call he would leave everything and rush across
the continent to Poland or to Italy, being radiantly happy if he could
but see her face and be for a few days by her side. The very thought of
meeting her thrilled him to the very depths of his nature, and made him,
for weeks and even months beforehand, restless, uneasy, and agitated,
with an almost painful happiness.

It is the most startling proof of his immense vitality, both physical
and mental, that so tremendous an emotional strain could be endured
by him for years without exhausting his fecundity or blighting his
creativeness.

With Balzac, however, it was the period of his most brilliant work;
and this was true in spite of the anguish of long separations, and the
complaints excited by what appears to be caprice or boldness or a faint
indifference. Even in Balzac one notices toward the last a certain sense
of strain underlying what he wrote, a certain lack of elasticity and
facility, if of nothing more; yet on the whole it is likely that without
this friendship Balzac would have been less great than he actually
became, as it is certain that had it been broken off he would have
ceased to write or to care for anything whatever in the world.

And yet, when they were free to marry, Mme. Hanska shrank away. Not
until 1846, four years after her husband's death, did she finally give
her promise to the eager Balzac. Then, in the overflow of his happiness,
his creative genius blazed up into a most wonderful flame; but he soon
discovered that the promise was not to be at once fulfilled. The shock
impaired that marvelous vitality which had carried him through debt, and
want, and endless labor.

It was at this moment, by the irony of fate, that his country hailed him
as one of the greatest of its men of genius. A golden stream poured
into his lap. His debts were not all extinguished, but his income was so
large that they burdened him no longer.

But his one long dream was the only thing for which he cared; and though
in an exoteric sense this dream came true, its truth was but a mockery.
Evelina Hanska summoned him to Poland, and Balzac went to her at once.
There was another long delay, and for more than a year he lived as a
guest in the countess's mansion at Wierzchownia; but finally, in March,
1850, the two were married. A few weeks later they came back to France
together, and occupied the little country house, Les Jardies, in which,
some decades later, occurred Gambetta's mysterious death.

What is the secret of this strange love, which in the woman seems to be
not precisely love, but something else? Balzac was always eager for her
presence. She, on the other hand, seems to have been mentally more at
ease when he was absent. Perhaps the explanation, if we may venture upon
one, is based upon a well-known physiological fact.

Love in its completeness is made up of two great elements--first, the
element that is wholly spiritual, that is capable of sympathy, and
tenderness, and deep emotion. The other element is the physical,
the source of passion, of creative energy, and of the truly virile
qualities, whether it be in man or woman. Now, let either of these
elements be lacking, and love itself cannot fully and utterly exist.
The spiritual nature in one may find its mate in the spiritual nature
of another; and the physical nature of one may find its mate in the
physical nature of another. But into unions such as these, love does not
enter in its completeness. If there is any element lacking in either
of those who think that they can mate, their mating will be a sad and
pitiful failure.

It is evident enough that Mme. Hanska was almost wholly spiritual, and
her long years of waiting had made her understand the difference between
Balzac and herself. Therefore, she shrank from his proximity, and from
his physical contact, and it was perhaps better for them both that their
union was so quickly broken off by death; for the great novelist died of
heart disease only five months after the marriage.

If we wish to understand the mystery of Balzac's life--or, more truly,
the mystery of the life of the woman whom he married--take up and read
once more the pages of Seraphita, one of his poorest novels and yet a
singularly illuminating story, shedding light upon a secret of the soul.





CHARLES READE AND LAURA SEYMOUR


The instances of distinguished men, or of notable women, who have broken
through convention in order to find a fitting mate, are very numerous. A
few of these instances may, perhaps, represent what is usually called
a Platonic union. But the evidence is always doubtful. The world is not
possessed of abundant charity, nor does human experience lead one to
believe that intimate relations between a man and a woman are compatible
with Platonic friendship.

Perhaps no case is more puzzling than that which is found in the
life-history of Charles Reade and Laura Seymour.

Charles Reade belongs to that brilliant group of English writers and
artists which included Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins, Tom
Taylor, George Eliot, Swinburne, Sir Walter Besant, Maclise, and Goldwin
Smith. In my opinion, he ranks next to Dickens in originality and power.
His books are little read to-day; yet he gave to the English stage the
comedy "Masks and Faces," which is now as much a classic as Goldsmith's
"She Stoops to Conquer" or Sheridan's "School for Scandal. " His power as
a novelist was marvelous. Who can forget the madhouse episodes in Hard
Cash, or the great trial scene in Griffith Gaunt, or that wonderful
picture, in The Cloister and the Hearth, of Germany and Rome at the end
of the Middle Ages? Here genius has touched the dead past and made it
glow again with an intense reality.

He was the son of a country gentleman, the lord of a manor which had
been held by his family before the Wars of the Boses. His ancestors had
been noted for their services in warfare, in Parliament, and upon the
bench. Reade, therefore, was in feeling very much of an aristocrat.
Sometimes he pushed his ancestral pride to a whimsical excess, very much
as did his own creation, Squire Raby, in Put Yourself in His Place.

At the same time he might very well have been called a Tory democrat.
His grandfather had married the daughter of a village blacksmith, and
Reade was quite as proud of this as he was of the fact that another
ancestor had been lord chief justice of England. From the sturdy
strain which came to him from the blacksmith he, perhaps, derived
that sledge-hammer power with which he wrote many of his most famous
chapters, and which he used in newspaper controversies with his
critics. From his legal ancestors there may have come to him the love
of litigation, which kept him often in hot water. From those who had
figured in the life of royal courts, he inherited a romantic nature,
a love of art, and a very delicate perception of the niceties of
cultivated usage. Such was Charles Reade--keen observer, scholar,
Bohemian--a man who could be both rough and tender, and whose boisterous
ways never concealed his warm heart.

Reade's school-days were Spartan in their severity. A teacher with
the appropriate name of Slatter set him hard tasks and caned him
unmercifully for every shortcoming. A weaker nature would have been
crushed. Reade's was toughened, and he learned to resist pain and to
resent wrong, so that hatred of injustice has been called his dominating
trait.

In preparing himself for college he was singularly fortunate in his
tutors. One of them was Samuel Wilberforce, afterward Bishop of Oxford,
nicknamed, from his suavity of manner, "Soapy Sam"; and afterward, when
Reade was studying law, his instructor was Samuel Warren, the author
of that once famous novel, Ten Thousand a Year, and the creator of
"Tittlebat Titmouse. "

For his college at Oxford, Reade selected one of the most beautiful
and ancient--Magdalen--which he entered, securing what is known as a
demyship. Reade won his demyship by an extraordinary accident. Always an
original youth, his reading was varied and valuable; but in his studies
he had never tried to be minutely accurate in small matters. At that
time every candidate was supposed to be able to repeat, by heart, the
"Thirty-Nine Articles. " Reade had no taste for memorizing; and out of
the whole thirty-nine he had learned but three. His general examination
was good, though not brilliant. When he came to be questioned orally,
the examiner, by a chance that would not occur once in a million times,
asked the candidate to repeat these very articles. Reade rattled them
off with the greatest glibness, and produced so favorable an impression
that he was let go without any further questioning.

It must be added that his English essay was original, and this also
helped him; but had it not been for the other great piece of luck he
would, in Oxford phrase, have been "completely gulfed. " As it was,
however, he was placed as highly as the young men who were afterward
known as Cardinal Newman and Sir Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke).

At the age of twenty-one, Reade obtained a fellowship, which entitled
him to an income so long as he remained unmarried. It is necessary to
consider the significance of this when we look at his subsequent career.
The fellowship at Magdalen was worth, at the outset, about twelve
hundred dollars annually, and it gave him possession of a suite of rooms
free of any charge. He likewise secured a Vinerian fellowship in law, to
which was attached an income of four hundred dollars. As time went
on, the value of the first fellowship increased until it was worth
twenty-five hundred dollars. Therefore, as with many Oxford men of
his time, Charles Reade, who had no other fortune, was placed in this
position--if he refrained from marrying, he had a home and a moderate
income for life, without any duties whatsoever. If he married, he must
give up his income and his comfortable apartments, and go out into the
world and struggle for existence.

There was the further temptation that the possession of his fellowship
did not even necessitate his living at Oxford. He might spend his time
in London, or even outside of England, knowing that his chambers at
Magdalen were kept in order for him, as a resting-place to which he
might return whenever he chose.

Reade remained a while at Oxford, studying books and men--especially the
latter. He was a great favorite with the undergraduates, though less so
with the dons. He loved the boat-races on the river; he was a prodigious
cricket-player, and one of the best bowlers of his time. He utterly
refused to put on any of the academic dignity which his associates
affected. He wore loud clothes. His flaring scarfs were viewed as being
almost scandalous, very much as Longfellow's parti-colored waistcoats
were regarded when he first came to Harvard as a professor.

Charles Reade pushed originality to eccentricity. He had a passion for
violins, and ran himself into debt because he bought so many and such
good ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shocked
the punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to the
accompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing,
indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that he
was a fellow of Magdalen and a D. C. L. of Oxford, he was always ready to
caper and to display the new steps.

In the course of time, he went up to London; and at once plunged into
the seething tide of the metropolis. He made friends far and wide, and
in every class and station--among authors and politicians, bishops and
bargees, artists and musicians. Charles Reade learned much from all of
them, and all of them were fond of him.

But it was the theater that interested him most. Nothing else seemed to
him quite so fine as to be a successful writer for the stage. He viewed
the drama with all the reverence of an ancient Greek. On his tombstone
he caused himself to be described as "Dramatist, novelist, journalist. "

"Dramatist" he put first of all, even after long experience had shown
him that his greatest power lay in writing novels. But in this early
period he still hoped for fame upon the stage.

It was not a fortunate moment for dramatic writers. Plays were bought
outright by the managers, who were afraid to risk any considerable sum,
and were very shy about risking anything at all. The system had not yet
been established according to which an author receives a share of the
money taken at the box-office. Consequently, Reade had little or no
financial success. He adapted several pieces from the French, for which
he was paid a few bank-notes. "Masks and Faces" got a hearing, and drew
large audiences, but Reade had sold it for a paltry sum; and he shared
the honors of its authorship with Tom Taylor, who was then much better
known.

Such was the situation. Reade was personally liked, but his plays were
almost all rejected. He lived somewhat extravagantly and ran into debt,
though not very deeply. He had a play entitled "Christie Johnstone,"
which he believed to be a great one, though no manager would venture
to produce it. Reade, brooding, grew thin and melancholy. Finally, he
decided that he would go to a leading actress at one of the principal
theaters and try to interest her in his rejected play. The actress he
had in mind was Laura Seymour, then appearing at the Haymarket under the
management of Buckstone; and this visit proved to be the turning-point
in Reade's whole life.

Laura Seymour was the daughter of a surgeon at Bath--a man in large
practise and with a good income, every penny of which he spent. His
family lived in lavish style; but one morning, after he had sat up all
night playing cards, his little daughter found him in the dining-room,
stone dead. After his funeral it appeared that he had left no provision
for his family. A friend of his--a Jewish gentleman of Portuguese
extraction--showed much kindness to the children, settling their affairs
and leaving them with some money in the bank; but, of course, something
must be done.

The two daughters removed to London, and at a very early age Laura had
made for herself a place in the dramatic world, taking small parts at
first, but rising so rapidly that in her fifteenth year she was cast
for the part of Juliet. As an actress she led a life of strange
vicissitudes. At one time she would be pinched by poverty, and at
another time she would be well supplied with money, which slipped
through her fingers like water. She was a true Bohemian, a
happy-go-lucky type of the actors of her time.

From all accounts, she was never very beautiful; but she had an instinct
for strange, yet effective, costumes, which attracted much attention.
She has been described as "a fluttering, buoyant, gorgeous little
butterfly. " Many were drawn to her. She was careless of what she did,
and her name was not untouched with scandal. But she lived through it
all, and emerged a clever, sympathetic woman of wide experience, both on
the stage and off it.

One of her admirers--an elderly gentleman named Seymour--came to her one
day when she was in much need of money, and told her that he had just
deposited a thousand pounds to her credit at the bank. Having said
this, he left the room precipitately. It was the beginning of a sort of
courtship; and after a while she married him. Her feeling toward him was
one of gratitude. There was no sentiment about it; but she made him a
good wife, and gave no further cause for gossip.

Such was the woman whom Charles Reade now approached with the request
that she would let him read to her a portion of his play. He had seen
her act, and he honestly believed her to be a dramatic genius of the
first order. Few others shared this belief; but she was generally
thought of as a competent, though by no means brilliant, actress. Reade
admired her extremely, so that at the very thought of speaking with her
his emotions almost choked him.

In answer to a note, she sent word that he might call at her house. He
was at this time (1849) in his thirty-eighth year. The lady was a little
older, and had lost something of her youthful charm; yet, when Reade was
ushered into her drawing-room, she seemed to him the most graceful and
accomplished woman whom he had ever met.

She took his measure, or she thought she took it, at a glance. Here was
one of those would-be playwrights who live only to torment managers
and actresses. His face was thin, from which she inferred that he was
probably half starved. His bashfulness led her to suppose that he was
an inexperienced youth. Little did she imagine that he was the son of a
landed proprietor, a fellow of one of Oxford's noblest colleges, and one
with friends far higher in the world than herself. Though she thought so
little of him, and quite expected to be bored, she settled herself in a
soft armchair to listen. The unsuccessful playwright read to her a scene
or two from his still unfinished drama. She heard him patiently, noting
the cultivated accent of his voice, which proved to her that he was at
least a gentleman. When he had finished, she said:

"Yes, that's good! The plot is excellent. " Then she laughed a sort of
stage laugh, and remarked lightly: "Why don't you turn it into a novel? "

Reade was stung to the quick. Nothing that she could have said would
have hurt him more. Novels he despised; and here was this woman, the
queen of the English stage, as he regarded her, laughing at his drama
and telling him to make a novel of it. He rose and bowed.

"I am trespassing on your time," he said; and, after barely touching the
fingers of her outstretched hand, he left the room abruptly.

The woman knew men very well, though she scarcely knew Charles Reade.
Something in his melancholy and something in his manner stirred her
heart. It was not a heart that responded to emotions readily, but it was
a very good-natured heart. Her explanation of Reade's appearance led
her to think that he was very poor. If she had not much tact, she had
an abundant store of sympathy; and so she sat down and wrote a very
blundering but kindly letter, in which she enclosed a five-pound note.

Reade subsequently described his feelings on receiving this letter with
its bank-note. He said:

"I, who had been vice-president of Magdalen--I, who flattered myself I
was coming to the fore as a dramatist--to have a five-pound note flung
at my head, like a ticket for soup to a pauper, or a bone to a dog, and
by an actress, too!