MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 261 |
THE Literary Union Club has been alluded to. It was among his
numerous idealities as easy of execution, to form a body of individuals who should meet
upon the common foundation of an interest in literature. The shapes of things entered the
poet’s mind in great variety, but he could not work them out. He was the schemer, but
not the practical man. The idea of the Literary Union was put forward at his house in Upper
Seymour Street, in 1829-30. Among those who took a part in its origin were the late
Sir George Ducket, Sir Francis Freeling, Sir Gore
Ousley, Dr. Henderson, W. A. Mackinnon, Jno.
Martin, the artist, and others. Having missed a
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“My dear Sir,—An anonymous member of our committee has sent me the accompanying correction of our memorandum. The wording of such a paper is devilishly difficult and delicate. On reconsidering, I sincerely hope whether you have made the printer throw off copies or not, to have the following for the standing list of our five paragraphs.”
(Here they follow, and are now immaterial. The object which the poet had in view, and which was not carried out, for the club became in the end an ordinary London West End club of seven or eight hundred members—that object was developed, additionally, in the latter part of the letter, and is somewhat novel in idea).
“The members of this society having increased with a
rapidity exceeding the most sanguine expectations of its first proposers, their
committee now think it time to develope certain characteristic objects by which
they conceive that the Literary Union might be advantageously distinguished
from ordinary clubs, but which it might have been premature to have propounded
until it had been ascertained to what numerical strength the society was likely
to attain, and how many individuals of decidedly literary and scientific
acquirements it might have to reckon
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 263 |
“The committee are further of opinion that as such
contributions are to be perfectly spontaneous, and as many literary and
scientific men who might otherwise be competent and willing to afford them,
may, nevertheless, be unable to do so from their occupations, the supply of
such papers cannot be expected to be constant and numerous. The committee
therefore think, as intelligence has been received of many intelligent and
public-spirited individuals in the provincial towns of the empire being
disposed to organise societies in
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“The committee are also of opinion that the London
Literary Union should make an agreement with the other societies, which shall
be thus established, to admit a certain small number—the future
regulations to be subsequently considered—of the members of the branch
clubs to be free of the London Literary Club during their residence in London.
The number of such admissible honorary members (or delegate, if it should seem
proper so to denominate them) the committee think ought not to exceed five per
cent, of each provincial club to which they belong, so that, supposing ten
provincial literary unions to exist over Britain and Ireland, the rooms of the
London club would only be crowded by fifty additional visitants. A power of
rejecting any objectionable individual from coming in this re-
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 265 |
“It is evident that every precaution adopted by the London L. Union for keeping out improper visitants from connected clubs must be left to the adoption of the provincial societies, and that the privileges of every portion of the projected confederation must be made perfectly reciprocal, and as equal as regulations can make them.
“A place for general conference in the centre of
England might be fixed upon for the meeting of delegates from all the L. Unions
if their harmony could not be organised by correspondence. But whether such a
central meeting of delegates from the unions might be necessary or not for
general management, yet still the committee think that the assembly of
representatives from so many literary and scientific bodies in the centre of
the kingdom, and the distribution of prizes for essays of preeminent merit,
would be an inspiring spec-
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There is some wildness in the foregoing scheme, which, being modified, finally formed the groundwork of the club. The committee and members, after several preliminary meetings at the British Coffee House, moved into Waterloo Place, taking possession of the house once occupied by the “Athenæum.” On the 21st of April, 1831, Campbell read a paper on the “Geography of the Ancients,” but no one followed it up.
The club being got into full working, the committee met weekly, the poet
in the chair, and it was curious to observe, after a few meetings had taken place, and the
novelty was worn off, how restless he would become. While business was transacting, he
would talk politics or sport idle jokes. “Come, Mr. Chairman,” a member
of the committee would say, “I have a pressing call elsewhere at another
committee-room; I can only afford an hour—let us stick to business, for I must
walk off.” For a few minutes all would go on well, and then there would be a
fresh outbreak, about something, or in fact anything, but the business in hand. The
poet’s restlessness was incurable, and the business of the hour was gone through in
despite of it, as seven out of twenty members, who yet survive, can bear witness. The
business of such committees is strictly secret, yet there were
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 267 |
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* The following letter was in consequence written by Montgomery to the poet, in which, after the writer had requested Campbell’s acceptance of a copy of one of his works just published, and declared he did not send it for a notice in the magazine, he proceeded—not alluding to the addition to his name on which the matter had turned:— “You will not like me the less for being candid. A few plain words then. I cannot but feel that you have not treated me with that common generosity which ought to be the characteristic of every refined mind. I never courted your favour, nor feared your criticisms; but was it possible for me not to notice the strange fact, that while the most frivolous and ephemeral publications of the day had their quantum of New Monthly comments bestowed upon them, not a word was condescendingly devoted to any |
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 269 |
He expressed apprehensions to his friends of being answerable as a trustee for the Literary
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MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 271 |
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It was precisely in this spirit that the poet put together a short
memoir of Mackintosh, immediately after his decease,
in 1832. In his estimate of the acquirements of Mackintosh, he was
most correct, although he gave him credit for more Greek than he really possessed; but no
man possessed such a range of varied knowledge—so much universality. In this state of
things Campbell wrote the first part of a brief
notice of Mackintosh, which he styled, rather too fully, “The Life and Writings of Sir James Mackintosh.” When I had
read it, I observed the mode in which the temporary apostacy of
Mackintosh had been slurred over, I presumed, as really was the
fact, from the kindly feeling of the poet towards his old friend’s memory. It was
impossible not to
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 273 |
“In his ‘Vindiciæ Gallicæ,’” said Campbell,
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Now, it must seem strange and suspicious enough, that so austere and even virulent an enemy as William Pitt towards his former friends and former principles, should thus gratuitously eulogise so daring and successful an opponent as the author of the “Vindiciæ Gallicæ,” without any apparent cause, and Campbell gave none. He said not one word of Mackintosh’s change of principle which would have accounted for the eulogy, but proceeded:—
“In those lectures on the ‘Law of
Nature and Nations,’ Mackintosh, with the eye of a true philosopher, laid bare the doctrines of
Rousseau, Vattel, and a host of their followers, who borrowed their conceptions
of the Law of Nature
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 275 |
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Now, because some of the more fanatical of the French revolutionary
characters, in the worst times of excess, did support an extravagant opinion upon the Law
of Nature, and that such an opinion was charged upon all who were friendly to human freedom
in England, by the ministry that day, Mackintosh, by
thus touching upon the Law of Nature in a mode adverse to those whom he had just before
upheld in the “Vindiciæ
Gallicæ,” struck at all his old friends a severe sideblow, and highly
gratified the ministerialists. He struck, too, at the end of all human improvement at the
same time. In this way Campbell ought to have put
it. I found, however, in the course of conversation, that, as usual, he wished to cover the
sins of his friend—I verily believe out of pure kindness, and the wholesome, though
hardly, in such a case, justifiable impulses of his own partiality.
Mackintosh gave great promise in the “Vindiciæ Gallicæ,” but Parr
estimated him better than Campbell. He left no work of endurance
behind him, and he had laid himself open to attack whichever side he took as a political or
philosophical controversialist. His universality of knowledge must be admitted. He was one
of the most amiable of men, and the most delightful
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 277 |
Remarking the omission to the poet he said he had passed it over because he did not like to record anything to the disadvantage of one whom he so much esteemed. But though you have passed it over others will not, and then do you not think when it comes out in some other piece of biography, people will not accuse you of error? They will say how could Pitt panegyrize Mackintosh in such a manner after the “Vindiciæ Gallicæ.” The bitter opponent as Mackintosh had thus shown himself to the minister’s measures; will not the whole story of Burke’s conversion of him come out, and the world ask why you omitted it?
“I will not state anything injurious to the memory of an old friend and a great man. Others may if they please. Mackintosh did wrong, but I will not perpetuate the remembrance of his error.”
“But the interest of truth and the necessity of accounting for what else will seem an omission, do you not think it will be remarked?”
“If it is, it must be—I cannot bring myself to
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“But you have alluded to his lectures on moral polity, and yet have not remarked that their bearing was adverse to his previous tenets—to all that had gained him his celebrity. That he had undoubtedly ministered to the enemies of sound principles in these lectures in a mode in which no man who was grounded in the principles he had previously avowed could have done without a positive lowering of his character, both with friends and enemies.”
“There may be truth in what you say, but you know he did not continue that line of conduct—he saw what we all see and know who are acquainted with the events of that day. We know that Pitt’s policy was injurious but for a time, and that all Burke’s eloquent fulminations against what were called ‘French principles,’ written now would be thought ridiculous. Time has proved the falsity of his notions. There is Paine’s ‘Rights of Man,’ not a member on either side in the House of Commons would now censure that work. Indeed Pitt acknowledged that the greater part of it was unanswerable; it was impolitic to permit it to circulate—that was all. Mackintosh came back to the side of sound principle and lived long enough to repent of his aberration.”
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 279 |
“But,” said I, “you have eulogized the lectures upon the portion that attacked the false theories of Rousseau and others in respect to nature, but you have not mentioned his attack upon the principles of reform, his ridicule of human amendment in any shape, his support of every thing existing as the best of what could be under an imperfect system.”
“I have not done so, and passed that over on purpose, his conversion by Burke was but momentary; he came back from India a convert to his first principles.”
“Yes,” I observed, “Dr. Parr said that to me at Hatton, ‘Jemmy was only estranged for a time.’ India brought him back by his separation from the influence of parties at home and years of leisure in unbiassed reflection.”
“I cannot alter what I have said now,” answered the poet, “it is distasteful to cast even slight censure on old friends, especially on those to whom the world in our day shows so few parallels—no, no, we must spare such men for the sake of their paucity.”
Here I saw that if I prolonged the conversation I should annoy him. His
slight memoir of Mackintosh was one
of those evidences of Campbell’s cursory
treatment even of favourite subjects which he desired to do well, but of which he was too
idle to go back, read on, recall and weigh the
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Though no one could go more closely into a subject than Campbell upon paper in his study, yet his naturally
impatient disposition made him, in articles like that of Mackintosh, catch only at salient points of character, and the more
prominent events that presented themselves, and slur over others. His long knowledge of
this eminent man would lead to the expectation that he would have described some traits of
the individual, from his personal knowledge, but the poet was not a nice observer of human
action. He would penetrate sometimes intuitively, into motive and character, but he had no
idea of forming a judgment of men in society by nice observation, and of perpetuating what
he thus observed by committing it to writing. I take it that his abstracted habit unfitted
him for this. His reserve at times was not that of occupation with external things, but
rather with what was foreign to all that surrounded him. In society he often took a lively
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 281 |
Cochrane, a publisher, in Waterloo Place, who had
been once in Colburn’s employment, made an
application to the present narrator, whether he thought Campbell would give his name as editor to a new magazine: he was to send
such contributions as he saw fit, to reside where he liked, and receive three hundred
a-year, as such a work would not bear more; but Cochrane promised to
take off the stock of the poet’s works still in Colburn’s
hands, which he had not money to do as he promised. To this Campbell
assented. He had quitted Middle Scotland Yard, and gone to reside at 31, Upper Eaton
Street, Pimlico. From thence he got rooms for a study in Sussex chambers, Duke Street, St.
James’s, and then ran down to Hastings, where he took lodgings, close to the sea,
between St. Leonards and the old town, on the right hand side of the road, so that
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As on many other occasions the promise of his poetry was sometimes not kept. In one instance, I did not go down to St. Leonards as soon as I intended, and I had the following letter about some verses near the end of December, in place of last days of November. Kindness was a remarkable characteristic of the poet, which his peculiar mode of acting did not lead some persons to imagine from their own observations, to anything like the magnitude to which he was disposed to carry his generous feelings. His absences from London, during the long years of our literary intercourse were numerous, and on one or two occasions considerable in length. It seldom happened that I did not get from him some confidential commission in the way of charity often in a pecuniary form, though he had not money enough to be as extensively generous as his feelings prompted him to be.
“In consequence of what you say, print the verses. I hardly know what title they should have.
Perhaps, after all, the one I have given will
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 283 |
“I am almost at my last pound, for that poor, blustering creature has sent me not a farthing of my arrears, but I have enclosed two pounds which I shall be singularly obliged to you to see given to the object for whom they are meant, for the person who has written to me about her distress is a man unknown to me, so that I do not choose to trust him. The unfortunate creature to whom I crave your kindness to take these two sovereigns, is a Mrs. G——, at No. 5, —— Street. I never had one feeling of interest in that hapless woman, but a perception of something in her nature and character ill-fitted for the wretched life which she leads, from which I have made many endeavours to snatch her, and shall not cease to make them. But I shall be obliged to her to tell me if the child which she has with her be the same about whom I interested M——, in hopes that he might get her into a place at the Opera House.”
The Metropolitan had its
name from the publisher and myself alone, and the first number
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This was a small bill of fare. It was in fact, paying him for his name
alone. He talked at the same time of his labours in the work, just as if they were real. It
was in the spring of 1832
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 285 |
“Dear Sir—I cannot but think the magazine in its present improving state worth the 1000l., more particularly if Mr. Campbell, yourself, and two other satisfactory persons divided the property. If the Monthly Magazine sinks, a considerable rise will take place. The same arguments for the two years would of course remain in force over the assigned work. If Mr. C. desire it, I will retain a share, otherwise only print it, if a new proprietary continue their confidence in me. I shall be at the ballot at the L. U. to-morrow at four p.m.
“I understood that Captain M. and Mr. M. would take shares?”
In this state of things, when about to get the property out of the
publisher’s hands, the matter was put an end to by a singular event. Campbell, still at St. Leonards, on my running down to see
him, told me (it was to be in confidence) that Captain
C——, R.N., had had a share for some time in the Metropolitan, and had kept it a
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The whole now came out. Valpy’s scheme of dividing up the magazine terminated in Captain Marryat buying it altogether of
Valpy, full of the notion that because he could write a good
novel, he was equal to anything in literature. In the meanwhile I was served with a
citation to give evidence in an action at law, brought by the creditors of Cochrane against Captain
C—— as a partner of Cochrane’s. I
could not give evidence regarding what I did not know, and all parole evidence, when I got
into the witnesses’ box, was
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 287 |
Campbell’s nominal editorship was retained until October, 1832, and at Christmas I quitted the concern, just reversing what had happened in the case of the New Monthly, where the poet remained about the same space of time after me. Moore, Montgomery of Sheffield, and Moir, the “Delta” of Blackwood’s Magazine, had joined us before the failure of the publisher. Campbell, who thought because Marryat was an old acquaintance, he could go on as usual, found out his mistake, and resigned the name of editor, which de facto he never had been.
While at St. Leonards, walking out one day, when I had gone down to see him from town, a mutual friend with us asked a gruff-looking farmer the way. The man was grubbing up nettles. The bear bad him “follow his nose.” “He is too busy to answer you,” said the poet; “don’t you see, he is gathering his own laurels.”
The death of Mrs. Siddons, and
the request she made of the poet, that he would be her biogra-
288 | LITERARY REMINISCENCES AND |
“O, my dear friend, you cannot imagine what a burthen I have brought upon myself!”
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 289 |
“It is only because you think it so; you have never been accustomed to that kind of work.”
“I have promised to finish it, and I will; but it will knock me up.”
Then I would strive to turn the conversation, and ask him a question, to which I really wanted a reply. I got only a remark about Mrs. Siddons in return. I remember telling him he was like a pretty girl I once knew in the country, who was deaf.
“How! I am not deaf, though this cursed book will make me deaf, and blind too, before long.”
“Why,” I replied, “because if I ask you about anything else, I get Mrs. Siddons as an answer. That pretty girl I once addressed:—‘Mary, good morning,—how do you do to-day?’ She replied: ‘Gone up the Mediterranean, my dear creature!’ The fact was, she had a sweetheart in the navy, of whom she was always thinking, and she supposed you must be doing the same.”
“Don’t play the philosopher,” continued Campbell. “Mrs. Siddons was a divine creature.”
“A divine actress, but an ordinary woman. You are referring to our old disputes about her, that poor Mrs. Campbell used to hear so patiently.”
290 | LITERARY REMINISCENCES AND |
“It is clear you have not changed your notions about her.”
“Nor my admiration of her as an actress—she was transcendent; but as a woman it is a different affair. She was majestic, certainly, but not very feminine. You are a little man, and little men, they say, are fond of giantesses, and gigantic men of little women. I must have feminine women. Byron said he should as soon think of going to bed with the archbishop of Canterbury as with Mrs. Siddons.”
“You iconoclast!”
I was always a philosopher or an iconoclast with the poet.
“Because I demolish the ‘idols of your mind.’”
“You can’t do that, but you try hard for it.”
In 1832, he lost his cousin, Captain Robert Campbell, whom he had introduced to me some years preceding.
A publication was got out in favour of the Poles, called “Polonia, or Monthly Reports on Polish Affairs.”
The first number was published in August, 1832. I forget who was the editor. My hands were
so full of other business at the time, that though I attended one or two meetings, it was
all the participation I was able, through pressure of different affairs, to take in the
matter. The society was called “The Association of the Friends of Poland.”
Thomas Campbell was pre-
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 291 |
“My dear L.,—I can’t dine with you to-day. The prince* (who, by the way, promised yesterday to be godfather to your bairn) made such important criticisms on the address, and struck out
292 | LITERARY REMINISCENCES AND |
(Here the poet had drawn with a pen a couple of figures, representing himself and his friend B. at work, that which represented the poet crying out “Shame, Mr. Temperance Society!” to his friend).
“This morning B—— sent me word that he could not get the notes finished last night, so I must wait his leisure to-day, and I cannot be certain of being disengaged even at six, so don’t expect me. The address must be ready for the newspapers this night, or else we shall not get them to publish it.
So we dined without him, for I was myself of the party.
A lady whom I have mentioned before, could not get him to dine. She had sent him a gold pen as a present, but she got only the usual reason for a refusal:—
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 293 |
With the beautiful pen in my hand, I thank you, with all my heart, for your Christmas present. I never in my life received a prettier or more welcome one.
“I am, indeed, a downright galley-slave in this biography that I am writing, and obliged to have written by a certain day, and spin it out to two volumes. I literally see none of my friends,—but the first exception shall be your honoured self. “Believe me, your sincere friend,
Had the poet not assumed so singular a style, and one so different from
his usual classical elegance in composition, although little could be said for the biography of Mrs. Siddons, as the work of
so able a man as Campbell, beyond what others, less
gifted, could have produced, it would be difficult to say how any thing more could have
been made of what had no stamina in itself, and no startling matter to work upon, nothing
but “indescribable merit to describe.” It is the most difficult of all
difficult things in authorship, to produce elaborate works out of materials remarkable for
their intellectual poverty, the fleeting recollections of illusive personification. Yet the
great expectation of such a piece of biography must be almost wholly founded upon what can
be
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The poet still kept close at work, and for some time was not seen by any one, though he had got rid to another of Lawrence’s biography. He told me he had promised Mrs. Siddons to write her life, and that, therefore, he could not break his word. He talked to all who had known the great actress about her and her family; he wrote letters of inquiry in all directions, and everything he obtained made but an unsatisfactory mass of material, as far as respected entertaining fact or interesting adventure. The incidents in the life of an actress of the highest class, of staid manners, and plain good sense, could not be expected to abound in incident. All those little points of action, that chit-chat and anecdote recorded of theatrical ladies in general, were, to say nothing of less moral incidents and their attendant circumstances, necessarily wanting in the life of one so lofty in feeling and pure in morals as Mrs. Siddons. Though the greatest actress that ever trod the stage, her real excellencies could not be described, more than half of them depending upon vision.
What was there besides her acting in which she was superior to many
others of her sex? She was not a woman of genius; and she was not a woman of reading beyond
her profession. The
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 295 |
There was another circumstance unfitting Campbell for such a task. He had gone to the theatre as any other spectator
would, a mere spectator; he had never mixed, as a matter of amusement, with the Thespian
corps behind the scenes, as was common in former times for dramatic authors to do. He was
not versed, if it may be so termed, in the patois
of the theatre, a thing in some degree necessary, to write about it with ease, and to be
“at home” upon the subject in treating of a common, much less an epic, actor
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Early in 1833, I went to South Lancing, where I put together my book on
the History of Wine. I returned,
published it, and the first edition was nearly sold before the Life of Mrs. Siddons appeared. I found, too, that Campbell had been lodging at Highgate, and then in Old
Cavendish Street, so restless was he as to domicile, after his wife’s decease. This
was a marked trait in his character. His Life of Mrs.
MEMOIRS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL. | 297 |
The review of the
“Life of Mrs. Siddons,”
not being Murray’s copyright, was roughly
treated in the “Quarterly Review.”
The effect was much less moving upon Campbell than
might be expected. He was prepared for something of the kind, and must have been conscious
his book was not up to the mark. That he repressed his feelings was evident. In referring
to it, I laughed off the review, asking how he could expect anything better when for so
many years Whig and Tory had continually damned each other’s works without any regard
to literary merit. He smiled at the hollow consolation, and turned off the subject. He was
grown more obtuse than in former
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