Chapter VII: Part 7

I trust that the Editor of the Athenæum got a copy of _Mary of
Burgundy_ independent of that sent to you for I wish it clearly to be
understood that I send you my leather and prunella, as a man for whom
I have a high admiration and esteem, and not at all as a critic. When
you get them, review them yourself, let others review, praise, abuse
them, or let others abuse them as you find need; but still receive
them as a mark of regard from me; and be sure that nothing you can say
of them will diminish that regard. Whenever I have any one of them for
which I wish a little lenity I will write you a note with it and tax
your friendship upon the occasion; but still exculpate me in your own
generous mind and plead my exculpation to others, of all intriguing to
gain undue celebrity for my works or of dabbling with literary
coteries. I give in to my bookseller a list of my friends—amongst whom
your name stands high and I leave all the rest to him. For the _String
of Pearls_ I _was_ anxious both because it was given to a charity and
because I was afraid the Publisher might lose by it; but this as far
as I can remember is the only book for which I ever asked a review.

Thanks however, many thanks, for your critique in the Athenæum which
is calculated to do my book much good and is much more favorable than
it deserves. Of your light censure I will speak to you when we meet
which I am happy to say will be soon—at least I trust soon. On the
twenty-eighth we leave this place for London on our way to Germany and
Italy. My liver and stomach have become so deranged of late that I
find it necessary to put myself under the hands of a physician whose
prescription is an agreeable one. “Take the waters of Ems for two
seasons and spend the intermediate time in traveling through Italy.”
This plan I am about to pursue, and in our way we shall spend a month
in London when I will find you out.

The country round us is lovely at present. After a cold lingering
spring, summer has set in, in all its radiance and the world has burst
at once into green beauty. You cannot fancy how lovely the Cheviots
looked yesterday evening, as Mrs. James and I rode over the shoulder
of the Eildons. The sky was full of the broken fragments of a past
thunder storm and the lights and shadows were soft, superb and
dreamlike. I know I may rave about beautiful scenery to you without
fear or compunction for the Maid of Elnar made me know that you love
it as well as

My Dear Allan,
Ever yours truly,
G. P. R. JAMES.

P. S.—I have not yet got your last volume but if it be as good as its
predecessors you will have no occasion to whip your Genius.

He writes again to Cunningham:

10 JULY, 1835.
1 LLOYDS PLACE, BLACKHEATH.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

A thousand thanks for your kind letter and all the kind things it
contains. I am glad that you like my friend the Gipsey, because your
approval is worth much and though I think it tolerable myself, yet I
have attributed a great part of its success to the name. In answer to
the question you put, I do not think he was drowned; but I do not know
with certainty. I have told all I do know and farther this deponent
sayeth not. I have long been thinking of writing to you to tell you
that the name of Chaucer appears in the Scroop and Grosvenor roll in
the year 1386 but all that I dare say you know. The best sketch of the
real events of Chaucer’s life is certainly that in Sir H. Nicholas’
comments on that roll, Vol. II., page 404, wherein he probably states
all that can be learned with certainty of his life and proceedings. I
tell you all this, although I dare say you are already acquainted with
it because you asked me if I found any thing concerning our poet to
let you know. The _Black Prince_ comes on but slowly. So much
examination and research is necessary that it is a most laborious and
very expensive work. It has already cost me in journeys,
transcriptions, books, MSS., &c., many hundred pounds without at all
calculating my individual labour and do you know, my dear Allan, what
I expect as my reward. Clear loss; and two or three reviews written by
ignorant blockheads upon a subject they do not understand, for the
purpose of damning a work which throws some new light upon English
History. I am very much out of spirits in regard to historical
literature and though I would willingly devote my time and even my
money to elucidate the dark points of our own history yet
encouragement from the public is small and from the Government does
not exist, so that I lay down the pen in despair of ever seeing
English history any thing but what it is—a farrago of falsehoods and
hypotheses covered over with the tinsel of specious reasoning from
wrong data. And so you tell Lord Melbourne when you see him. But to
speak of a personage, you are more likely to see namely Mr. Chantry.
There is a bust which I wish him very much to see and wish you would
take a look at it first as I have not seen the original myself. I have
a cast of it given me by my Banker at Florence, to whom the original
belongs, and if the head be equal to the cast it is the most beautiful
antique I have ever seen. It is to be seen at Mr. Brown’s in
University Street, Gower Street _marble works_. Ask to see the antique
head belonging to Mr. Johnstone and write me but three lines to tell
me what you think of it. He paid, I believe, two hundred pounds for it
and would take I believe three or four. If it be as I think, it
(pedestal and all) is worth double.

Yours ever with best Compliments to your family

G. P. R. JAMES

Excuse a scrawl but I am not very well.

1 LLOYDS PLACE, BLACKHEATH
5th Decr 1835

MY DEAR ALLAN,—I have sent you a book and have ten times the pleasure
in sending you one now that ever I had, because I hear you have
detached yourself from all reviews. Heaven be praised therefor; for
now you can sit down quietly by your own ingle nook and pick out all
that is good—if there be any—in my One in a Thousand and palate it
all, without the prospect, the damning prospect, of a broad sheet and
small print before your eyes, and without wracking your honest brain
to find out any small glimmerings of wit and wisdom in your friend’s
book in order to set it forth as fairly as may be to the carping
world.

By the way, I thought you were honest and true; and yet you have
deceived me wofully. You promised to come down to Blackheath and you
have not appeared. I have been writing night and day or I should have
presented myself to call you to account. Will you come down even yet,
and take a family dinner with me? Any Sunday at five you will be sure
to find me but if you come on another day, let me have a day’s notice
by post, lest I be engaged, which would be a great disappointment to

Yours ever truly,
G. P. R. JAMES

He always wrote frankly and freely to Cunningham. This letter deals with _Attila_.

THE COTTAGE, GREAT MARLOW, BUCKS,
15th April 1837

MY DEAR ALLAN,

Many thanks for your letter and kind words upon _Attila_. I do believe
that he is a good fellow, at all events he is very successful in
society and though there are not as you well know twenty people in
London who know who Attila was, he is as well received, I understand,
as if he had the entrée. Conjectures as to who Attila was are various
in the well _informed circles_ of the Metropolis, and ever since the
book was advertised two principal opinions have prevailed, some people
maintaining that He, Attila, was Platoff; others asserting that he was
a Lady, first cousin to Boru the Backswoodsman, and the heroine of a
romance by Chateaubriand. This may look like a joke, but I can assure
you, it is a fact and that out of one hundred people of the highest
rank in Europe you will not find five who know who Attila was; setting
aside the groveling animals who, as the Duke of Somerset says,
_addict_ themselves to Literature.

I am very sorry to hear you say that these well informed and
enlightened times have not done justice to your romances. I’ll tell
you one great fault they have, which is probably that which prevents
the world from liking them as much as it should do: they have too much
poetry in them, Allan, one and all from _Michael Scott to Lord
Roldan_. But you must not expect to succeed in all walks of art. You
are a lyric poet and a biographer; how can you expect that the critics
would ever let you come near romances. No, no; they feel it their
bounden duty to smother all such efforts of your genius and they
fulfil that duty with laudable zeal. Did you see how the Athenæum
attempted to dribble its small beer venom upon _Attila_. If you have
not, read that sweet and gramatical (_sic_) article, when you will
find that because a man has succeeded in one style of writing he
cannot succeed in another, and apply the critics dictum to yourself.
One half of this world is made up of idiocy, insanity, humbug, and
peculation, and the other half (very nearly) of envy, hatred, malice,
and all uncharitableness.

Yours ever truly
G. P. R. JAMES

This letter is directed to “Charles Ollier, Esq., Richard Bentley, Esq., New Burlington street, London.”

FAIR OAK LODGE, PETERSFIELD,
HANTS, 25th December, 1837.

MY DEAR OLLIER:

Mr. Bentley I think usually gives me six copies of a work such as
Louis XIV. I have already had one copy of the two first volumes for
the Duke of Sussex, and you will very much oblige me by having the
copies sent to the following persons with my compliments written in
the front leaf and dated Fair Oak Lodge, Petersfield. Lord John
Russell, Wilton Crescent; S. M. Phillipps, Esq., Home Office; The
Marquis Conyngham, Dudley House, Park Lane; The Lady Polwarth, 9 John
Street, Berkeley Square; and also one to G. P. R. James, Fair Oak
Lodge, which will make the six copies. I must also have another copy
sent to my friend Seymour as soon as you can, addressed as follows:
“Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, G. C. H. Brussels, In the care of the Under
Secretary of State F. O. Downing Street.” For this last I will pay as
soon as you let me know what is the price. Mr. Bentley charges me for
the copy; I should like it to be accompanied by a copy of _Henry
Masterton_, the small edition of which by the [way] I have not
received any copies and should like some. Pray let me know what Mr. B.
charges _me_ for Louis per copy as there are several other friends to
whom I should like to give it, but as Sancho would say I must not
stretch my feet beyond the length of my sheet.

Yours ever,
G. P. R. JAMES.

P. S. I am anxious to get on with the two last volumes, but I suppose
it is the merry season which prevents my having any proofs as yet.

A letter to Alaric Watts refers to the Boundary Question pamphlet:

FAIR OAK LODGE, PETERSFIELD, HANTS,
9th April, 1839.

MY DEAR WATTS,

I write you ten lines in the greatest bustle that ever man was in to
tell you that the death of poor Sir Charles Paget turns me out of my
house. This is not of necessity indeed, for I have a lease of it for
some time yet unexpired, but Lady Paget sent to ask if I would let her
come in again and I felt not in my heart to refuse the widow under
such circumstances. I go before the first of May, but I do sincerely
wish that between this and then I may have the pleasure of seeing you
here. I think that you will believe me to be a sincere man; a
tolerably bitter enemy as long as I think there is cause for enmity, a
very pertinacious friend when I do like. From this place we go to
London, or rather to Brompton, Mrs. James’s sister who is in town for
the winter, having lent her her house there, for a short time. It is
called the Hermitage and is nearly opposite Trevor Square, which
perhaps you may know. Do not suffer yourself or Mrs. Watts to fancy
that it will put us to any inconvenience to receive you here if you
can manage it, as I assure you it will not. I sell all my horses by
auction on the 25th and you could help to bid them up. After we quit
the Hermitage, we have not the slightest idea where we shall go but
there at least I trust to see you if you cannot leave your weighty
employments ere then. I was delighted with your parthian shots, which
were exquisitely truly aimed and though the arrows were not poisoned
by your hand, the corruption of the flesh in which they have stuck,
depend upon it, will produce gangrene. You were made for a reviewer:
only you are honest. How was it else that I escaped even when we did
not fully understand each other?

I have told the booksellers to send you a little pamphlet on the
American Boundary question. It is merely a brief and unpretending
summary of the early history of that bone of contention, only worth
your looking into as a saving of time.

Pray let me hear from you a few words and believe me with Mrs. James’s
and my own best Compliments to Mrs. Watts.

Yours ever
G. P. R. JAMES

P. S. I am making a little collection of my works in their new edition
for Mrs. Watts’s book-case and I send _Richelieu_ with this. It is odd
Bulwer should have just published a play under the same title when the
third edition of mine had been announced for months. I have not seen
his, but I should like to compare the two.

ALARIC A. WATTS ESQRE
Crane Court
Fleet Street

2 VERULAM PLACE HASTINGS
10th January 1840

MY DEAR ALLAN,

It is very grievous to me to hear that you have been suffering and it
would be as grievous to hear _the how_ if I were not quite sure that
at your age and with temperance in all things such as yours, the
enemy—if so we can venture to call him—will pass away and leave you,
perhaps more useful, but not less comfortable for many a long year.
Within my own recollection this has happened to many that I still know
in health and vigor but while any vestige remains of the disease it
always leaves a despondency as its footprint which makes us look upon
the attack as worse than it really has been. Though a successful man,
I know—I am sure,—you have been an anxious man; and there is nothing
has so great a tendency to produce all kind of nervous affections as
anxiety. I trust however that you have now no cause for any kind of
anxiety but _that_ regarding your health, and that it will soon regain
its tone. Pray my good friend take exercise, not of a violent or
fatiguing nature, but frequent and tranquilly, and remember that
anything which hurries the circulation is very detrimental. You will
also find everything that sits heavy or cold upon the stomach also bad
for you; I know, for I have seen much mischief done by even a small
quantity of the cold sorts of fruit. It gives me great pleasure to
hear you like my books. You are one of those who can understand and
appreciate the plan which I have laid down for myself in writing them.
If I chose to hazard thoughts and speculations that might do evil, to
run a tilt at virtue and honor, to sport with good feelings and to
arouse bad ones, the field being far wider, the materials more ample,
I might perhaps be more brilliant and witty, but I would rather build
a greek temple or a gothic church than the palace of Versailles with
all its frog’s statues and marbles. If the books give you
entertainment, you are soon likely to have another for there is one
now in the press called the “_King’s Highway_” but which is not quite
so Jack Sheppardish as the name implies. With our best regards to all
yours believe me ever

Yours truly
G. P. R. JAMES

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM ESQRE
Belgrave Place
Pimlico

I do not know to whom this letter was written.

HOTEL DE L’EUROPE, BRUSSELS,
30th July, ’40.

MY DEAR SIR,

The grief and anxiety I have suffered have brought upon me an
intermittent fever and various concomitant evils amongst which has
been an affection of the face and eyes. Had this not been the case I
should have written to you ere I left England, although it has cost me
a great effort to write to any one. I am now a good deal better and
will immediately correct the proofs I have received; but for the
future will you tell Mr. Shaw to send the proofs in as large a mass as
possible, addressed as follows and given in to the French diligence
office, à Monsieur G. P. James _chez_ M: C. A. Fries, Heidelberg en
Basle, _aux soins de_ Messrs. Eschenauer Cie, Strasburg, Via Paris,
_Pressé_.

This is a somewhat long address, but if it be not followed and the
proofs be sent by Rotterdam I shall never get one half of them till
two or three years after, for such was the case with many proofs of
_Edwd. the Black Prince_.

Any letter for me you had better direct at once to me “_aux soins de_
Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, G. C. H. Brussels.” When I am a little better
I will write you a longer letter telling you all our movements and
also what progress I have made in my plan for stopping continental
piracy; in which if you will give me your assistance and influence I
do not despair of succeeding although the Government will do nothing.
I have already made some way for I can talk without using my eyes.

Yours ever faithfully
G. P. R. JAMES.

This letter was written to McGlashan, in Lever’s care, at Brussels:

THE SHRUBBERY, WALMER,
2nd August, 41.

MY DEAR SIR,—

I did not write to you as I had full occupation for every minute and
of a kind that could not be neglected. The same will be the case for
the next three weeks, as I am just concluding a new work which I can
of course lay aside for no other undertaking till it is finished. It
will give me very great pleasure to see you here on your way back from
Brussels and we can talk over the whole of my plan but as to having
even one number completed that is quite out of the question as in
order to accomplish it I should be obliged to lay aside a work which
had reached the beginning of the last volume before you made up your
mind and to do so would be highly disadvantageous to both books. I can
tell you quite sufficient however regarding the first two numbers to
answer your views as to illustrations.

Pray give my best wishes to Dr. Lever and tell him that we are all
going on well; though for the last fortnight I have had no small
anxiety upon my shoulders regarding Mrs. James and the baby.

Believe me to be
Dear Sir
Yours faithfully
G. P. R. JAMES.

On May 17, 1842, he wrote to Mr. Bretton:

“*** I am very glad you were pleased with what I said at the Literary
Fund dinner. I could have said a great deal more upon the same subject
and opened my views for the benefit of the arts in this country,
including literature of course, as one of the noblest branches of
art—but the hour was so late that I made my speech as short as
possible and yet perhaps it was too long.*** I think if I can bring
the great body of literary men to act with me, especially the much
neglected and highly deserving writers for the daily and weekly press,
I shall be enabled to open a new prospect for literature. Should you
have any oportunity (_sic_) of hinting that such are my wishes and
hopes, pray do: for this is no transient idea, but a fixed and long
meditated purpose which, however inadequate may be my own powers to
carry it out, may produce great things by the aid of more powerful
minds than that of

Yours very faithfully G. P. R. JAMES.

The name of the person to whom the following letter was written is not given:

THE OAKS NR. WALMER KENT
22ND AUGT. 1844

SIR:

I have been either absent from home or unwell since your letter
arrived or I should have answered it sooner. I do not exactly
understand the sort of use you desire to make of the _Life of Edward
the Black Prince_ written by myself. Of course I can have no possible
objection to your making as long quotations from it as you like, or to
your grounding your own statements upon those which it contains which
I think you may rely upon with full confidence; but if it was your
purpose to make the projected Work a mere sort of Abridgement of mine,
I am sorry to say I cannot give you the permission you desire, however
much I might personally wish to do so, as Messrs. Longman published a
Second Edition of it not long ago, a part of which remains unsold and
I could not venture, of course to interfere with their sale. They
could not of course object to any quotations you might think fit to
make or any reasonable use of the facts stated, as I cannot but think
that each historian has a full right to employ the information
collected by all his predecessors.

I have the honor to be,
Sir
Your most obedt. Servant
G. P. R. JAMES

THE SHRUBBERY WALMER KENT

1ST JUNE 1847

MY DEAR WORTHINGTON,

I received your letter yesterday and would have answered it
immediately; but we are in the midst of an election business here. I
am not a candidate; and, disgusted with public men, had resolved not
to take any part on behalf of others; but I have been led on and when
once in the business go on, as you know, heart and hand.

Let me hear a little more about the Ecclesiastical History Society. I
am a churchman you know, but far from Puseyitical and I should not
like to be mixed up with any legends except such as Ehrenstein or any
Saints except St. Mary le bonne.

I am glad to hear that you have moved your dwelling; for Pancras was
so completely out of my beat that it was impossible for me to get
there when in town. Indeed during my visits to that famed city of
London I always put myself in mind of an American orator’s description
of himself when he said “I am a right down regler Steam Engine, I go
slick off right ahead and never stop till I get to the tarnation back
of nothing at all.”

I shall be delighted to see you and Mr. Christmas here any time you
can come and will with a great deal of pleasure board and educate you
but as to lodging you I am unable for what with babies, nurses, and
one thing or another I can hardly lodge myself. I do not propose to be
in London for some days or I should rather say weeks, as I was there
very lately.

As to Marylebone, any body may propose me for any where and I will be
the representative of any body of men always provided nevertheless
that I do not spend a penny and maintain my own principles to the end
of the chapter. I am not yet inscribable in the _dictionnaire des
Girouettes_; but I trust soon to be for it seems to me that the Jim
Crow system is the only one that succeeds in England.

Believe me with best regards to all your household

Yours truly
G. P. R. JAMES

In a letter dated April 1, 1849, and addressed to Mr. Davison, he says:

“I understand you have got a potato. Can you spare half of it, for we
have not that. But to speak seriously, which is not my wont, Mrs.
James has heard from Mrs. H. that on your farm there are some capital
praties, and as we have been languishing for some of the jewels for
the last month without being able to get anything edible or
digestible, if this rumor of your _riches_ is correct, will you spare
a sack or two to a poor man in want, and what will be the cost of the
same, delivered in Farnham safe, sound and in good condition—wind and
weather permitting. The truth is I have no horse to send for them; and
neither cow nor calf have learned to draw yet. I have had no time to
teach them, or to buy a horse either. I wish any one else had half my
work and I half of theirs—I’d take it and give a premium.”

How busy he was after his arrival in America may be seen from a letter dated October 27, 1850:

“I fear that it would be quite impossible for me to rewrite the first
four numbers of the tale you speak of. Applications for lectures have
come in so rapidly that I have not one single evening vacant and the
evening would be the only time which I could devote to such a purpose
as all my mornings must be given up to the fulfilment of my
engagements with England and to traveling from place to place. You may
easily imagine how much I am occupied when I tell you that during the
whole month I am about to stay in Boston, there is not one night which
has not its lecture fixed there or at some place in the neighborhood.
The delay in London however, of which I had not heard till I received
your letters is favorable, as it will enable me to get the proofs over
in good time. The four parts are in type, I understand, and I have
written over two thumping letters to the printers scolding them for
not sending the proof as they are bound by contract to do. One of
these letters was posted three weeks ago, so that we may expect the
proofs in a week or ten days. In regard to the name, it is certainly
curious that one name should have been taken three times but I do not
see how it is possible for me to alter it now when it is announced in
London. I was not at all aware that any work had before appeared under
a similar title, but you could head it _James’s_ story without a name
in the Magazine, but if any other title is given it must be by
yourselves and not by

“Yours faithfully,
“G. P. R. JAMES.”

Soon after his arrival in America he appears to have become involved in some trouble with publishers. He writes from New York on October 24, 1850, to Ollier:

*** “Send no more sheets to Mr. Law till you hear from me again. My
eyes have been opened since my arrival here. Four times the sum now
paid can be obtained from Messrs. Harper, and negotiations are going
on with them in which they must not have the advantage of having the
sheets. You shall not lose by any new arrangement—of that you may
trust to the word of one who has I think never failed you.”

He adds, in a postscript: “Tell him [Mr. Newby] I have been shamefully imposed upon by false statements of the sale here and if I had taken his advice I should have been some hundreds of pounds richer.”

On October 5, 1851, he writes from Stockbridge to Ollier:

“I have not written to you earlier because I wanted to find the treaty
with Russia in regard to Copyright, and also to see the head of a
great German house here in America so as to put you in the way of
negotiating for the sale of my next book in Germany. But I have been
too lame to leave my own house for anything but a morning drive. I am
so far better that I can now walk out for a mile or two, but my right
hand and arm remain very painful. However, I think I shall be able to
go to New York in ten days and will write to you from that place.*** I
am anxious to dedicate the first book I write to my own satisfaction,
to Lord Charles Clinton. He is one of the noblest-minded men I ever
met with—all truth and honor and straightforwardness. If you see him
will you ask him for me whether he has any objection. The Fate is
highly popular here—considered the best book I ever wrote—by the
critics at least. The whole of the first chapter was read in the
Supreme Court the other day before Chief Justice SHAW to prove what
was the state of England in the reign of James II. So says the ‘N. Y.
Evening Post’ and I suppose it is true. I wish I had you here with me
to see the splendor of an American autumn in the most lovely scene.
The landscape is all on fire with the coloring of the foliage and yet
so harmoniously blended are the tints, from the brightest crimson to
the deep green of the pines that the effect is that of a continuous
sunset. Mountains, forests, lakes, streams are all in a glow round.”

A letter to Ollier, written at Stockbridge on March 22, 1852, deals with some financial matters and then proceeds:

“I am glad to hear what you say of _Revenge_—though the title is not
one I would myself have chosen, there being a tale of that name in the
book of the Passions. I think it is a good book, better in conception
than in execution perhaps. Your comparison of Richardson and Johnson
with myself and you will not hold. You are scantily remunerated for
much trouble. Johnson had done nothing that I can remember for
Richardson. As to Richardson’s parsimony towards the great, good man,
you explain it all in one word. The former was rich. Do you remember
the fine poem of Gaffer Grey—Holcrofft’s I believe—

‘The poor man alone,
To the poor man’s moan,
Of his morsel a morsel will give Gaffer Grey.’

“But this rule is not without splendid exceptions, of which I will one
day give you an instance, which I think will touch you much. At
present I am writing in great haste in the grey of the morning with
snow all around me, the thermometer at 18, and my hand nearly frozen.
Verily, we have here to pay for the hot summer and gorgeous autumn in
the cold silver coinage of winter.”

Another letter of his written from Winchester, Virginia, November 6, 1853, to Ollier, has some interest. He writes thus:

“MY DEAR OLLIER: Long before the arrival of your kind letter, which
reached me only two days ago, I had directed Messrs. Harper to send me
a revise of the first page of _Ticonderoga_, in order to transmit it
to you for the correction of errors which had crept into the Ms.
through the stupidity of the drunken beast who wrote it under my
dictation. Harpers have never sent the revise, but I think it better
to write at once in order to have one correction and one alteration
made, which must be effected even at the cost of a cancel of the
page—which of course I will pay for. The very first sentence should
have inverted commas before it. These have been omitted in the copy
left here, as well as the words ‘so he wrote’ or something tantamount,
inserted at the end of the first clause of that sentence.***

I cannot feel that an appointment of any small value, to the dearest
and most unhealthy city in the United States (with the exception of
New Orleans) is altogether what I had a right to hope for or expect.
You must recollect that I never asked for the consulate of Virginia,
where there is neither society for my family, resources or
companionship for myself, nor education to be procured for my little
boy—where I am surrounded by swamps and marsh miasma, eaten up by
mosquitoes and black flies, and baked under an atmosphere of molten
brass, with the thermometer in the shade at 103—where every article of
first necessity, with the exception of meat, is sixty per cent. dearer
than in London—where the only literature is the ledger, and the arts
only illustrated in the slave market.

I hesitated for weeks ere I accepted; and only did so at length upon
the assurances given that this was to be a step to something better,
and upon the conviction that I was killing myself by excessive
literary labors. Forgive me for speaking somewhat bitterly; but I feel
I have not been well used. You have known me more than thirty years,
and during that time I do not think you ever before heard a complaint
issue from my lips. I am not a habitual grumbler; but ‘the galled jade
will wince.’

I am very grateful to Scott for his kind efforts, and perhaps they may
be successful; for Lord Clarendon, who is I believe a perfect
gentleman himself, when he comes to consider the society in which I
have been accustomed to move, my character, my habits of thought, and
the sort of place which Norfolk is—if he knows anything about it—must
see that I am not in my proper position there. He has no cause of
enmity or ill will towards me, and my worst enemy could not wish me a
more unpleasant position. If I thought that I was serving my country
there better than I could elsewhere, I would remain without asking for
a change; but the exact reverse is the case. The slave dealers have
got up a sort of outcry against me—I believe because under Lord
Clarendon’s own orders I have successfully prosecuted several cases of
kidnapping negroes from the West Indies—and the consequence is that
not a fortnight passes but an attempt is made to burn my house down.
The respectable inhabitants of Norfolk are indignant at this treatment
of a stranger, and the authorities have offered a reward of three
hundred dollars for the apprehension of the offenders; but nothing has
proved successful. This outcry is altogether unjust and unreasonable;
for I have been perfectly silent upon the question of slavery since I
have been here, judging that I had no business to meddle with the
institutions of a foreign country in any way. But I will not suffer
any men, when I can prevent or punish it, to reduce to slavery British
subjects without chastisement.

You will be sorry to hear that this last year in Norfolk has been very
injurious to my health; and I am just now recovering from a sharp
attack of the fever and ague peculiar to this climate. It seized me
just as I set out for the West—the great, the extraordinary West.
Quinine had no effect upon it, but I learned a remedy in Wisconsin
which has cured the disease entirely though I am still very weak.***

He seems to have been tormented by ill health during all his period of residence at Norfolk. He writes to Ollier:

BRITISH CONSULATE, NORFOLK, VIRGINIA,
7th April, 1855.

MY DEAR OLLIER:—It has been impossible for me to write to you and it
is now only possible for me to write a few lines as I have already had
to do more than my tormented and feeble hands could well accomplish.
For 10 weeks I was nailed to my chair with rheumatic gout in knees,
feet, hips, hands, shoulder. For some time I could only sign my
dispatches with my left hand and to some letters put my mark. Happily
my feet, knees, &c., are well, but I cannot get the enemy out of my
hands and arms. My shoulder is Sebastapol and will not yield.

Another letter, also in my possession, I have caused to be printed elsewhere. It is addressed to Ollier, and was written from Farnham, Surrey, on July 26, 1848.

My dear Ollier: I do not suppose that I shall be in town for a few
days, and I think in the meantime it would be better to send me down
the sheets with any observations you may have to make. I shall be very
happy to cut, carve, alter and amend to the best of my ability. The
‘sum’ can only be described as ‘Heaven, Hell and Earth’, or if you
like it better, ‘upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber.’ But I
suppose neither of these descriptions would be very attractive and
therefore perhaps you had better put ‘The Sky, the hall of Eblis,
South Asia’. When it maketh its appearance you had better for your own
sake take care of the reviewing; for I cannot help thinking that with
the critics at least, my name attached to it is likely to do it more
harm than good, unless friendly hands undertake the reviewing. The
literary world always puts me in mind of the account which naturalists
give of the birds called Puffs and Rees which alight in great bodies
upon high downs and then each bird forms a little circle in which he
runs round and round. As long as each continues this healthful
exercise on the spot he has first chosen, all goes on quietly; but the
moment any one ventures out of his own circle, all the rest fall upon
him and very often a general battle ensues. I wish you could do
anything for my book _Gowrie or the King’s Plot_. I had a good deal of
money embarked in it.

Yours faithfully,
G. P. R. JAMES.

My letter of latest date indicates the time when he was transferred to Richmond.

BRITISH CONSULATE, NORFOLK, VA.
3 May, 1856.

MY DEAR MR. KENNEDY: *** Lord Clarendon has ordered me to make every
preparation for moving the Consulate of Virginia up to Richmond but
not to do so until he has nominated a Vice Consul for Norfolk. He also
wishes me to send him a detailed report regarding the late epidemic
here and what between house hunting, office hunting, and trying to run
down those foxes called rumors into their holes and to draw truth up
from the bottom of her well in a place where people are as fanatical
upon contagion and non-contagion as if they were articles of faith, I
have had no peace of my life. My book I would have sent you but I
could not get a copy worth sending. It has found favor in the South
and is powerfully abused in the North, both which circumstances tend
to increase the sale so that it has been wonderfully well read.***

I am sorry I did not think of taking notes of all the winning
conversations at Berkeley. We might have made out together some few
from the Noctes Berkelianae.

Yours ever,
G. P. R. JAMES.

I was interested not long ago in a remark of the accomplished literary reviewer of the _Providence Journal_ about reading for boys. He said: “As a matter of fact, there is plenty of good, healthy reading for boys if parents and teachers would do more to bring it to their attention. To say nothing of Scott—whom some degenerate youngsters in these days profess to find stupid—there are Ainsworth, G. P. R. James, Mayne Reid and hosts of others who can tell stories of adventure that any healthy minded boy will enjoy.” I know well the sound and refined judgments of my Providence friend,—who castigated me once for my opinion that Cowper was not much read in these times—but I do not understand how he can imagine a boy of the twentieth century condescending to read Ainsworth or James. First and foremost, the novels are too long. The conventional three volumes demanded by the English public are revolting to the minds of the modern boys who want their fiction condensed and flavored with tabasco sauce. The Providence critic and I know—or think we know—what they ought to read, what would be good for their intellectual digestion; but we might as well offer them pre-digested tablets in lieu of chocolate creams. The young person will not now subsist on a diet of Ainsworth or of James. The long-spun dialogue would bore him. He calls for something more piquant; revels in slang; wants “sensation” and plenty of it, compressed in a small compass. As for the parents, they do not know much better themselves. The man of Providence well says: “The trouble is, as was pointed out in these columns recently in discussing the reading of girls, that the home atmosphere is all against any intelligent selection of books.” The prevalent antagonism to all that is called “old-fashioned” is not limited to the young people, and the novels of James are, in comparison with the novels of to-day as old-fashioned as are the plays of Massinger in comparison with those of Bernard Shaw.

James has been compared to Dumas, and there are many things in common between the two authors—their voluminous publications, their bent towards the historical, and their use of an amanuensis. A critic, not very well disposed towards James, says in regard to this comparison, “both had a certain gift of separating from the picturesque parts of history what could without difficulty be worked up into picturesque fiction, and both were possessed of a ready pen. Here, however, the likeness ends. Of purely literary talent, James had little. His plots are poor, his descriptions weak, his dialogue often below even a fair average, and he was deplorably prone to repeat himself.”[68] This harsh judgment appears to me to be far too severe. His descriptions are not weak, and he surely had an advantage over Dumas in the matter of decency and morality.

But the most ardent admirers of this hard-working and conscientious toiler in the fields of literature must own that in all his multitudinous pages he has not given to the world a single character which has endured in the popular mind, and the Podsnap virtue of having written no word which could bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, cannot remedy this flaw in his title. Writers who rival him in productiveness but who are in respects inferior to him, have nevertheless secured a more permanent place in the hall of fame, because they have been able to give to some of their personages a real and distinctive life. Leather-Stocking and Long Tom Coffin shine forth from the many wearisome chapters of Fenimore Cooper, Count Fosco and Captain Wragge from the ephemeral volumes of Wilkie Collins, and Mrs. Proudie from the placid chronicles of Anthony Trollope, but they have no kinsmen in the works of James. Even in the historical stories no individual stands forth like Louis XI. in _Quentin Durward_ or Rienzi in Bulwer’s stirring tale. Nor has he left to posterity any brilliant _tour de force_ like the “Dick Turpin’s Ride” of Harrison Ainsworth.

Whatever may be said of the diffuseness and sameness of the stories, of their want of definite plan, their lack of strength in the development of the characters who throng their pages, and the evidence they afford of hasty composition, it must be admitted that they are clean and dignified in tone and that they display a wonderful acquaintance with history as well as a faithful and conscientious use of materials gathered with infinite pains and laborious research. These qualities, however, are not those which ensure literary immortality; and while it is possible that the best of the books may find from time to time readers incited to peruse them by a certain curiosity, and while the lovers of good stories may enjoy them, it is not likely that they will ever rank with the novels of Scott, of Thackeray, of Dickens, or even of Marryat and Lever, although they may occupy a place on the shelves of our libraries by the side of the old romances of the period of _Amadis de Gaul_ or the forgotten tales of the younger Crébillon.

APPENDIX
A LIST OF THE WORKS OF G. P. R. JAMES

It is difficult to give an accurate list of James’s books with the dates of their publication. The one given by Allibone is the most complete, but it is not always correct. The catalogue of the British Museum enumerates sixty-seven novels. The following does not include merely edited works or those prepared in collaboration with others, with a few exceptions. Those marked with an asterisk are reprinted in the collected edition of 1844–1849. I was much helped not only in correcting the Allibone list, but in the preparation of the sketch of James, by the late G. H. Sass of Charleston, S. C., who was probably better informed about the subject than any one else in this country.

Life of Edward the Black Prince: 2 vols.: 1822. [Some accounts give 1836: See _ante_, page 136.]

The Ruined City: a poem.

Richelieu: 3 vols.: 1829.

*Darnley: 3 vols.: 1830.

*Del’Orme: 3 vols.: 1830.

*Philip Augustus: 3 vols.: 1831.

Memoirs of Great Commanders: 3 vols.: 1832.

*Henry Masterton: 3 vols.: 1832.

History of Charlemagne. 1832.

*Mary of Burgundy: 3 vols.: 1833.

*Delaware: 3 vols.: 1833: (reprinted under title of “Thirty Years Since,” 1848).

*John Marston Hall: 3 vols.: 1834: (reprinted under title of “The Little Ball o’ Fire,” 1847).

*One in a Thousand: 3 vols.: 1835.

*The Gipsey: 3 vols.: 1835.

Educational Institutions of Germany: 1836.

Lives of the Most Eminent Foreign Statesman: 5 vols.: 4 by James, 1836, [1832?] 1838.

Attila: 3 vols.: 1837.

Memoirs of Celebrated Women: 3 vols. (?) 1837.

*The Robber: 3 vols.: 1838.

Book of the Passions: 1838.

History of Louis XIV. 4 vols.: 1838.

*The Huguenot: 3 vols.: 1838.

Blanche of Navarre: a play: 1839.

Charles Tyrrell: 2 vols.: 1839.

*The Gentleman of the Old School: 3 vols.: 1839.

*Henry of Guise: 3 vols.: 1839.

History of the United States Boundary Question: 1839.

*The King’s Highway: 3 vols.: 1840.

The Man at Arms: 3 vols.: 1840.

Rose d’Albret: 3 vols.: 1840.

The Jacquerie: 3 vols.: 1841.

The Vernon Letters: 3 vols.: (edited). 1841.

*Castleneau; or the Ancient Régime: 3 vols.: 1841.

*The Brigand; or Corse de Léon: 3 vols.: 1841.

Corn Laws.

History of Richard Cœur de Lion: 4 vols.: 1841–42.

Commissioner; or De Lunatico Inquirendo: 1842.

*Morley Ernstein: 3 vols.: 1842.

Eva St. Clair, and Other Tales: 2 vols.: 1843.

The False Heir: 3 vols.: 1843.

*Forest Days: 3 vols.: 1843.

History of Chivalry: 1843.

*Arabella Stuart: 3 vols.: 1843.

*Agincourt: 3 vols.: 1844.

Arrah Neil: 3 vols.: 1845.

The Smuggler: 3 vols.: 1845.

Heidelberg: 3 vols.: 1846.

The Stepmother: 3 vols.: 1846.

Whim and its Consequences: 3 vols.: 1847.

Margaret Graham: 2 vols.: 1847.

The Last of the Fairies: 1847.

The Castle of Ehrenstein: 3 vols.: 1847.

The Woodman: 3 vols.: 1847.

The Convict: 3 vols.: 1847.

Life of Henry IV. of France: 3 vols.: 1847.

Russell: 3 vols.: 1847.

Sir Theodore Broughton: 3 vols.: 1847.

Beauchamp: 3 vols.: 1848.

Carmazalaman; a Fairy Drama: 1848.

The Fight of the Fiddlers: 1848.

Forgery; or Best Intentions: 3 vols.: 1848.

*Gowrie; or the King’s Plot: 1848.

Dark Scenes of History: 3 vols.: 1849.

John Jones’ Tales from English History: 2 vols.: 1849.

A String of Pearls: 2 vols.: 1849. [His first written book; published 1833 (?); Allibone assigns its publication to 1849].

Ireland’s “David Rizzio”: 1849: (edited).

Heathfield’s “Means of Relief from Taxation”: 1849: (edited).

Henry Smeaton: 3 vols.: 1850.

The Fate: 3 vols.: 1851.

Revenge: (sometimes called A Story Without a Name): 3 vols.: 1851.

Pequinillo: 3 vols.: 1852.

Adrian; or the Clouds of the Mind: (jointly with M. B. Field): 2 vols.: 1852.

Agnes Sorel: 3 vols.: 1853.

Ticonderoga; or the Black Eagle: 3 vols.: 1854.

Prince Life: 1855.

The Old Dominion; or the Southampton Massacre: 3 vols.: 1856.

Lord Montagu’s Page: 1858.

The Cavalier: (Bernard March?): 1859.

Adra; or the Peruvians: a poem: (_circa_, 1829).

The City of the Silent: a poem.

The Desultory Man: 3 vols.

Life of Vicissitudes.

My Aunt Pontypool: 3 vols.

The Old Oak Chest: 3 vols.

-----

Footnote 1:

Trevelyan’s Life of Macaulay, I, 93.

Footnote 2:

Tennyson: E. L. Cary, 19.

Footnote 3:

A Great Punch Editor, London, 1907.

Footnote 4:

My Study Windows, 337.

Footnote 5:

See a review in _The Literary Collector_, September, 1905.

Footnote 6:

See Temple Bar Edition, iii, 51–52.

Footnote 7:

Blackwood, April, 1827.

Footnote 8:

Sala’s Life and Adventures (1896), 83.

Footnote 9:

Axon’s Memoir, xxiii: _The World_, March 28, 1878.

Footnote 10:

Forster’s Dickens, i. 141.

Footnote 11:

Life of Lady Blessington, iii. 226, 227.

Footnote 12:

_Idem._, iii. 224.

Footnote 13:

January 3, 1840: Letters, Am. Edition, 1870, ii. p. 218.

Footnote 14:

Forster’s _Life of Dickens_, I, 118.

Footnote 15:

Life of Cruikshank (1882), i, 48–49.

Footnote 16:

Dictionary of National Biography, _Cruikshank_.

Footnote 17:

Vol. I, 211.

Footnote 18:

See introduction to Biographical Edition of Thackeray, IV. 19.

Footnote 19:

British Artists from Hogarth to Turner, ii, 59.

Footnote 20:

Vol. ii, 321–322.

Footnote 21:

Dict. Nat. Biog., i, 198.

Footnote 22:

Autobiography, iv, 390–393.

Footnote 23:

As a matter of curiosity, I examined the twenty-one novels composing
the “Revised Edition” of 1844–1849 to ascertain just how many
introduced the horseman or horsemen in the first chapter. Seven
disclose them; in eight they are absent; in four, the horsemen are “a
party”; in two, they appear in the second chapter, the first being
merely introductory.

Footnote 24:

Brander Matthews: Aspects of Fiction, 153.

Footnote 25:

They are said to have caused the death of Oliver Goldsmith, and
pamphlets were published on the subject. Foster’s _Oliver Goldsmith_,
II. 461–463.

Footnote 26:

Boswell (Geo. Birkbeck Hill’s Edition), I. 183.

Footnote 27:

_Id._, III. 442.

Footnote 28:

Memories: by M. B. Field p. 188—Harper’s, 1874.

Footnote 29:

Allibone gives the date of publication as 1849; but it must have been
published in some form prior to May 17, 1833. See _post_, page 184.

Footnote 30:

Works Vol. I. “The Gipsey,” vii.

Footnote 31:

Dictionary of National Biography, xxix, 209–210.

Footnote 32:

Fitzpatrick’s Life of Lever, II. 21.

Footnote 33:

This is all according to Field, and may be taken for what it is worth.

Footnote 34:

Memoirs, 191–195.

Footnote 35:

It is said, but on rather dubious authority, that he was sometimes
called “George Prince Regent James,” and that many believed it to be
his real name.

Footnote 36:

See Appendix.

Footnote 37:

Works, Vol. I. xiv.

Footnote 38:

Letter to Cunningham, _post_, page—.

Footnote 39:

Letter of C. L. James.

Footnote 40:

English Lands, Letters and Kings, 284.

Footnote 41:

Life of Lever, II. 21.

Footnote 42:

Fitzpatrick’s Life of Lever II. 418.

Footnote 43:

Noctes Ambrosianæ, II. 370—Blackwood Edition, 1887.

Footnote 44:

Marginalia, Black’s Edition—III. 393.

Footnote 45:

Hall’s Book of Memories, 263.

Footnote 46:

Jerdan’s Autobiography, iv 210.

Footnote 47:

It was R. H. Horne. A New Spirit of the Age (1844) p. 136.

Footnote 48:

London Athenæum, April 11, 1846.

Footnote 49:

Dublin University Magazine, March, 1842.

Footnote 50:

Essays and Reviews, ii, 116, 137.

Footnote 51:

Derby’s Fifty Years Among Authors, etc. 405.

Footnote 52:

My Confidences, 161.

Footnote 53:

My Confidences, 533, 534.

Footnote 54:

Mr. Gladstone succeeded Lord Ripon as President of the Board of Trade
and took his seat in the Cabinet on May 19, 1843.

Footnote 55:

American Lands and Letters, II. 252.

Footnote 56:

Life of Cooper, 268.

Footnote 57:

Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, I, 203.

Footnote 58:

Hawthorne and his Circle, 33, 34.

Footnote 59:

Vol. I, 422–423.

Footnote 60:

Hawthorne and his Wife, I. 415.

Footnote 61:

_Id._ 397, 398.

Footnote 62:

A little bit snobbish for a Hawthorne, is it not?

Footnote 63:

Observe how Mr. Julian Hawthorne wholly omits the point of the
observation about the pleasure excursion.

Footnote 64:

Life of Hawthorne and his Wife, I. 422–424.

Footnote 65:

Life of H. W. Longfellow, by Stephen Longfellow, II. 177.

Footnote 66:

_Id._, 182.

Footnote 67: