| R. PLUMER WARD. | 117 |
We now arrive at what must be considered as the most interesting era of Mr. Ward’s literary life—that, namely, which included the composition and publication of “De Clifford; or, the Constant Man.”
I do not believe the history of modern literature offers any parallel to
the case of a writer who, after achieving a reputation second to none of his day, in the
highest and most difficult department of the literature of that day (for such, surely, the
department must be deemed which claims almost exclusively such names as Scott, Bulwer, Dickens, D’Israeli, and Thackeray),
conceives and executes, between the ages of seventy-five and seventy-six years, a work of
similar length and character to his previous works, and, at the very least, equal to any
one of those in all the various and rare quali-
| 118 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
* “De Clifford” occupies four thickly printed volumes, and contains an amount of reading equal to considerably more than two ordinary three volume novels. |
| R. PLUMER WARD. | 119 |
I will here refer to a passage on this subject which occurs in one of
Mr. Ward’s subsequent letters. On seeing
(before its publication) his touching dedication of “De Clifford” to Lady Frederick Bentinck, I ventured to suggest the policy of his omitting
from it any formal mention of his age;
| 120 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
“My dear Patmore,—Be so good as to tell me what has become of you, and whether you are still the principal feature of that little closet in which I last saw you, like a little German sovereign of his little domain, on the Elbe, Weser, or Rhine, as the case may be?
| R. PLUMER WARD. | 121 |
“For me, I have not stirred since February, except, now and then, by way of excursion to Matlock, Dovedale, and Johnson’s ‘happy valley’ of Ham—all very beautiful; not to mention Rousseau’s cave, at Wooton. With more or less health, I have been leading a life of happiness,—thanks to Him who gave it; and not the less because, at seventy-five, I feel my summons approaches nearer and nearer, every day and every hour.
“However, I did not mean to sermonise when I began, but to tell you that I have at length finished the work I have been so long employed upon—‘Bardolfe; or, the Decayed Gentleman,’—at your service.
“By this you will perhaps think, after what I have just
said of the summons and seventy-five, that I mean myself. No such thing. The
decay is of his family, from being old Norman peers to the lot of a gentleman
farmer. On the other hand, after many vicissitudes and adventures, in which
there are many pictures of life, he restores it. There is, as usual, a great
deal of the didactic, having, in fact, three notable instructors: one an
enlightened college
| 122 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
“Well, what do you think of it?
“Perhaps, after all these elucidatory particulars, you
may not be in town. In truth, though to my loss, I hope you are not; for your
health (precious to more than your mere self) will suffer from your too intense
exertions. This I have long thought, and I do hope you have corrected that most
suicidal custom of sitting up all night. I shall be therefore glad if you have
fled from Marylebone, and if to your lady-love, Mrs. G—,
at Paris, so much the better, whatever
| R. PLUMER WARD. | 123 |
“P.S.—The season for fresh legs of pork and turkeys is not yet come. When it does, some of them shall call at your door. I have three fine hogs, five cows, fifty-two turkeys, forty ducks, a hundred chickens, ten guinea fowls, and my wife handsomer and kinder than ever. Beatus ille qui procul!”
“Dear Patmore,—Welcome
back to England, for back you are come, if there is faith in the greatest of
publishers, though a little man. But if you liked Wiesbaden as well as I did,
you will soon wish yourself back again. Could I have got that pretty house on
the hill called the Palais, which the duchess, I am told, has bought, I believe
I should be there still. The owner asked 2400 florins a-year for it, only a
fourth part
| 124 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
“I wish I was in town to have a gossip with you about this pretty town and patriarchal government. I suppose you walked, as I did, to Sonenberg every day. But if I go on about Wiesbaden I shall have no room for Mr. De Clifford, who leaves this for London next Tuesday, and whom I beg to introduce to your best civilities in Colburn’s name and mine.
“I am quite glad to have agreed with that modern Lintot, for I should have been sorry to have gone to anybody else. In truth, I think him friendly, fair, and straightforward. He gives me —— for 1250 copies, and —— more for a second edition.
“You see I have taken your advice about Bardolfe, as to which name I had as many scruples as
you, and for the same reason, the hell-fire nose, and the flea frying on it,
the only thing which ever put Falstaff in
mind
| R. PLUMER WARD. | 125 |
“What you will say to it I know not. Judging from your too kind partiality displayed in your letter, I ought not to be afraid, and there are things in it which I am myself much pleased with (the whole work no doubt, you will say); but I can be no judge.
“I have submitted my refined lady to another lady of quality, Lady ——, who has been passing a fortnight with us, and she has set her seal to it, particularly an interesting discussion upon the real nature of fashion and vulgarity, introduced by way of instructing the hero, while in his novitiate, on that difficult and puzzling question.
| 126 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
“There are some situations which I am not without the hope will interest you. The didactics, however, are most interesting to myself, though I shall be very glad if you do not think them too long.
“I am willing to hope, on the other hand, that the story is rather original, certainly not common place.
“There is one part for which I will beg your particular attention. It is a dissertation (far from compromising) upon the jobbing of the modern system of reviewing— what I call the criticism of the shop. Pray do you know anything of a Mr. Reid, who attacked it boldly and cleverly in a short tract, called ‘Reviewers Reviewed’?
“I fear to bore you, or rather rob you of your
valuable time, or I could say many things; but this I feel to be more than
quantum suff. I will only
therefore revert a little to your letter, which was very agreeable both to
Mrs. P. W. and me, particularly for
liking Wiesbaden so well. We wondered, by the way, whether you ever met with
some friends we were very fond of—Comtesse Mathilde
Dumontz, dame d’honneur to Princess
| R. PLUMER WARD. | 127 |
“I am afraid you will think, if you don’t say, what a coxcomb! Yet it is not surely mere vanity that makes me take pleasure in having pleased persons I so very much liked and respected.
“Well,—pour revenir à nos moutons,—though now an old stager, I shall be tremblingly alive to what you will say of me; so have mercy upon my youthful sensibility!
“I will only add my hope that your pleasant excursion
has had the effect which all your friends must wish upon your health, which
must be valuable to them and your family, whatever it may be to yourself. For I
must again scold you for your way of life, which you seem to consider, as Mr.
| 128 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
“Pray copy me, who think the world still worth living for, and who, not very far from seventy-six, feel freer from illness than ever I did in my life; and so no more at present from your loving friend,
“I am particularly desirous of your thoughts on the parts [of De Clifford] to which that name [Sourkrout] as you will see, belongs. I really had no particular person in view, as to him, or Paragraph, or Spleenwort; but put them generally for the tribe of self-sufficient, malignant critics, wherever found.
“But I forget all this is in the third volume.
Au reste, I hope Bertha, and Lady
Hungerford will please you, and Fothergill, and
| R. PLUMER WARD. | 129 |
“There! I have unburthened myself, and, as I know how valuable your time is, I will just sign my name and farewell.
“Well, and so you have received all my packets safe, viands and all. As you like the latter so well, I think they ought to be repeated.
“But now to the more refined, viz., the critical parts
of your letter. Be assured, in goading you as I did, I did not expect or
| 130 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
“And now I will wait upon my oars till to-day’s post arrives, glad if I do not receive a scold from you in return for mine. It may, however, diversify a lonely day; for my wife, whose society, when she leaves me, I more and more miss, is gone with her father, Sir George, to leave all our duties with the Queen Dowager—a piece of etiquette which we find all our neighbouring families have pursued.
| R. PLUMER WARD. | 131 |
“Thank heaven, I myself have done with etiquette, and have reached that happy time when I have a legitimate right (which you have only usurped), to sit all the morning, and even pace my garden, en robe de chambre. In short (except that I am far happier in a wife, with whom I am absolutely every hour more and more in love, in even the admiring sense of the word), there is a certain Mr. Manners in the MS. between whom and myself I request and desire you will discover, a considerable affinity. This I tell you for your comfort, against the time when you will be near seventy-six. It is really certain, that much as I expended myself in my youth, I am, I believe I may say, happier than ever I was in my life; and as this place, though it may not be the cause, is certainly the scene of my happiness, you must not be surprised if your anticipations as to Mr. De Clifford are not realised, and that the winter will probably not see me among you.
“Though not so splendid, I love this abode,
particularly the exterior, and I also love my society better than in
Hertfordshire. I have not so fine a park, but I have Dove-
| 132 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
“On the other hand, I am here not one of a band of cockneys, whose hearts are all day in the city, though their bodies affect groves and fields—sprung up, too, like mushrooms; but for a time at least, feel the representative (though ‘jure uxoris et vitrici’) of a family of nine hundred years, flourishing and fructifying all that time on the same spot.
“Prejudice and illusion, you will say, and say truly; to which I reply, how much happier in a thousand instances than reality! In short, ever since I could read, I felt that I would rather be Sir Roger de Coverley than Cæsar; and here, at least, I am more like him than at Gilston.
“Adieu. The post is come in, and no letter from you. So thanking you again for yours of yesterday, I am,
| R. PLUMER WARD. | 133 |
“Dear Patmore,—I cannot let your letter, so kind and so gratifying, remain another day unanswered, especially as it relieved my anxiety lest you should think the interest in the first volume of ‘De Clifford’ in danger.
“I wish I could as fully relieve myself from another anxiety, almost as great, to know how far, that is, what proportion, I deserve of the honouring (I might almost say), the pathetic things you say of my lucubrations. Gladly would I compound for a sixth, nay, a tenth part of them, which would have satisfied even my earlier vanities. What must they be now, when vanity itself is fast wearing out with the rest of my frailties, like rats abandoning a falling old body? How I have deserved the partiality you so eloquently indulge, unaffectedly I cannot tell. Yet I cannot believe but that you are an honest man, and too proud to flatter, even were I anything more than a worn-out old Tory, totally without power, and whose interests are almost reduced to the flock of hens and turkeys he beholds from his windows.
“Well, I at least feel sure of your sin-
| 134 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
‘Mittit et optat amans quo mittitur ire,
salutem,
Æmonis, Æmonio, Laodamia viro;’ |
“I wish I could administer better than I do to the delicate appetite of the lady wife. My step-son’s trustees are rather stingy as to the manors here, confining their supply to my own actual table. I cannot blame them, however, as it is to restore the game, which has been during the minority much wasted. I shall be glad, however, to do my possible.
“For the present I will only repeat my thanks, and remain your much obliged
The passage in the following letter, alluding to his exploits in the long
gallery of Okeover Hall, is very characteristic, and will have a peculiar interest for
those who remember the
| R. PLUMER WARD. | 135 |
“Dear Patmore,—I write
chiefly to say I send you, per coach, a cargo of Christmas merry-makings,
winch, for the honour of the seat of the Okeovers, I hope
will prove good. Imprimis, a haunch of venison, doe, but delicate; item, a
hare, killed yesterday; a turkey, ditto the day before; a chine, just out of
salt. I wish I could add a barrel of excellent stingo, which makes the rustics
smack their lips at it whenever they come into its neighbourhood. Still more, I
wish I could send you our coal-pit, which makes such blazers as never were seen
in London.
| 136 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
“It is dangerous to ask a critic’s opinion, even though a friendly one; but I do hope you like Lady Hungerford.
“P.S.—I am quite glad that I did not send off the inclosed before to-day’s letters came in, as it gives me an opportunity of adding my thanks (how due!) for all the kind and certainly gratifying things you say about points and persons, as to which I had some little anxiety. That you should speak of Manners and Lady Hungerford as you do is, I assure you, not only most pleasant but most encouraging, where, from my own doubts of the execution, I wanted encouragement. Lady A—— (an excellent judge, being herself one of the most sensible and best bred women in England, and of great experience as to others) allayed much of my fear, but you have converted it into confidence; and I own I grow so fond of Manners myself, that, setting all author feelings aside, I am fonder of you for seeming fond of him.
“In short, your letter has made me feel six inches taller than I was in the morning.
“I am also sincerely grateful to you for all you so warmly and delicately express on the progress of our intimacy, though I am distressed not a little at being the author of the passage which gave rise to it.”
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