13 NOVEMBER 1852, Page 17

MEMOIRS OP DR. BLENKINSOP..

THE attraction of this fiction turns more upon adventures and sketches of actual life than upon its story, which, though continu- ous enough for the autobiographical form, is evidently subordinate, to the pictures for whose introduction it is planned. Medical prac- tice in the provinces some half century ago—the " town " in the time of the Regency and Bean Brummell—military life and ad- ventures in the Peninsula and America, afterwards in Ireland and the Mediterranean—form the staple. From these the author passes per saltum to modern railway schemes, and the art of deci- phering the character by the handwriting; a mode of raising the wind which Dr. Blenkinsop takes to whilst waiting for practice, after he has lost an estate by a nearer heir starting up. The plan of the work is well enough adapted to effect the writ- er's purpose. Blenkinsop is a young man of good family, but all of them with a touch of singularity. His father's second marriage throws him upon the care of an eccentric aunt, who wishes him to study medicine under her own doctor, also a character in his way. When the time comes to walk the hospitals, he is sent to his uncle in London; a Colonel, a man of fashion, and a friend of Brummell, whose peculiarity is a morbid scrupulosity about dress. Young- Blenkinsop's residence with this relation naturally introduces him into one class of town life, as his medical studies bring him ac- quainted with another. The Colonel having military interest, however, and an appointment offering, Blenkinsop goes into the army; embarks for the Peninsula; serves under Wellington in his closing campaigns • is then ordered to America, of whose manners he gives some broad sketches ; again returns to Europe on Napo- leon's escape; and is quartered in France with the army of occu- pation. Thus far his life has been easy or something more, his uncle making him a liberal allowance : but Blenkinsop offends the Colonel by a public escapade which he falls into in consequence of effecting his eccentric aunt's escape from a madhouse, and getting- tried for burglary,—an adventure which approaches broad farce, and is withal as laughable, with touches of deeper interest. After a while Blenkinsop drops into an estate; which he loses; and the book closes summarily, without any true end.

The volumes throughout exhibit knowledge of the world, with

• Memoirs of Dr. Blenkinsop. Written by Himself. Including his Campaigns, Travels, and Adventures ; with Anecdotes of Graphiology, and some of the Letters of his Correspondents. Edited by the Author of " Paddiana." In two volumes. Published by Bentley.

much of that hard, sarcastic, indifferent feeling, which the world is apt to produce, especially for sentimental troubles. There is some of the freedom which might have been expected from the period and manner of life in which the author has picked up his experience, coupled with a shrewd enough perception of social abuses, conventional taut, and evils of a tangible kind. Except in some incidents, where there is the exaggeration of caricature, without its ludicrous-effect, the-whole is real, often set off with a broad fun if it cannot be called humour. At times there is-depth suggesting a good deal more than the writer tells; and in those passages there is no exaggeration. Of art in the conception or management of the story there is little beyond what suffices to ex- hibit his matter : of imagination or-sentiment there is none. The book, however, is of a widely different kind from the mass of no- vels; more real, more lifelike, and more fall of experience.

The better and graver sketches are slight, but sufficient. This is the portrait of Bean .Brammell.

" I met the beau sometimes at my uncle's, and more frequently at parties ; but he passed his eyes across me without the moat distant symptom of re- cognition. Hearing so much of him, I naturally studied his character. It was evident that the grand scheme of his life, and to which all his energies were given; was that of upholding...his own supremacy. He had arrived at the summit of fashion. by- his- own tact and cleverness, aided by his well-- known intimacy with the Prince Regent ; and he held the position against all menthe: He was possessed of great natural shrewdness and si sort of intuitive appreciation of others—he saw through a man at a glanee. His appearance was perfect. Nothing weld equal the impressive steadiness with which he could-invest his features, while there was a latent sarcastic smile in his compressed lips, ever ready to expand into the precursor of a quiet jest that would gibbet a man to the whole town. His sarcasm was not perhaps withering, or deep, and certainly never laboured; but it always told nth a peculiar:stimg from its personality. * 5

" No man, however, could unbend more gracefully than he—he could even indulge in rather boisterous familiarity : but let no one presume upon it to treat him with the like in return. He kept everybody at a certain distance, and no one could more dexterously wither a growing intimacy without giving any hold of offence. He dealt in surprises too : when a man was put for- ward for his ridicule, the chances were rather in favour of its falling on those who trotted him out. He could say, and sometimes do, a civil thing with extraordinary grace."

The warlike part is well managed ; being confined to the actual adventures of the writer and his regiment, instead of lugging in the whole campaign. This sketch of the appearance of soldiers on service is not only truthful, but it intimates volumes of what may happen when men with arms are removed from control, or, as in the French army, not controlled at all.

"Early on the 6th we marched out, a column of about four hundred men, escorting a Ion train of ammunition and stores, and took the road towards the mountains Renterie. We soon fell in with the left of the Allied army. The first was a anisk regiment ; hardy7looking fellows, very ragged, but their arms were "ght, and they were of a square and serviceable build, which argued a vast capacity for work and privation. There was, low- ever, a furtive and felonious look with them which one would not care to recognize in a lonely place with the odds on their side. The English regi- ments were in a sadly dilapidated plight : their clothes were threadbare and patched in every part, while the scarlet was stained to purple with hard service and exposure. The difference of expression in the faces of these old soldiers from that of our own men was very remarkable. With frank hearti- ness and boisterous good-humour, there was a stern and dangerous ferocity, which told of familiarity with scenes of bloodshed, pitiless cruelty, and a re- lentless exercise of the evil passions."

Here is a slight sketch. of " the Duke " as he appeared on service.

"I have as yet said nothing about.our own great chie whom I-daily saw for some months from that morning when_ we were waiting for the signal- rocket from Roncesvalles to commence our' march against the French posi- tion. He was a man whose expression and appearance betokened great ac- tivity, and his manners struck me as remarkably gentlemanlike. This is the only word by which I can express the idea Iformed and still retain of him : audit was a quality by no means universal, or very general, at that time in the army. Officers of high rank would treat those-of an inferior grade with the most unbecoming. rudeness—would damn them in public and.before the men. I' have heard a general officer say to a lieutenant-colonel at the head of his regiment that which no gentleman. ought- to use towards the lowest or the vilest. The colonel would then, as a set-off, dimn arti- cularly his adjutant and quartesenaster ; the officers would then particularly damn the men. All this the Commander-in-ehief.set hilneelf to reform by precept, as his.despatches inform us, and by example, as we all know. I

i never saw him either in a hurry or a ' I have seen him under

zgerstriing circumstances indeed, when orders-have been misstated or raja- ood, and the very reverse of what was intended was being carried on before his face. I.very rarely saw him without a. composed smile on his face, and a quiet intelligence—which, without the appearance of searching, seemed to read every man through and through with whom he.conversed."

The late lord. Bydenham, in. his correspondence, had au amusing illustration of American. " delicacy in language." Dr. Blenkinsop supplies some extreme and. perhaps exaggerated examples of- the same kind, from the place where he was quartered. For instance, the commonname of. Chanticleer is ignored, either simply or com- pounded. It is "rooster"—"rooster-swain"; not—but the reader may peruse the illustrative stories at 1Tol. I. pp. 256-9. .As an example of Dr. Blenkinsop's. mode• of- handling what he thinks abuses, we may take his remark on the sale of corm/miens. "As I ascended towards the top of my rank, I.began to feel less and less the advantages attending the commercial system of purchase in the British army. It is a system which a high authority has declared to produce the happy result of supplying the army- with gentlemen : and it certainly is beneficial inasmuch, as it raises men of property to early rank, and renders them to a great extent independent of patronage. Whether men of fortune are better soldiers than others, it .would be invidious to inquire. The fact of all our great generals being.men of property, I: am. afraid can scarcely be taken as a proof; seeing that without the means of purchasing, even the longevity of Parr or Jenkins could hardly have sufficed to raise them to that rank. If any ever dilexiet; they.retired in disgust, and became village Wel- lingtons in Wales or Normandy. And.while he still held out, his position as a poor man was by, no means an enviable one. To live with others and not be of them—to slink from pleasures which you would fain enjoy—to pre- fer toast-and-water with the popping of champagne round .you—and finally to be passed over, and commanded, not to say baffled, by those you have tom-- mended yourself, and who probably are indebted to you for any real know- ledge of the profession which they may happen to profess—is a state of things which, however beneficial to the service generally, is anything but pleasant to the poorer members of it—unless, indeed, they have an inordinate appetite for humble pie. "But I' really believe that the man who can purchase his promotion and pay nothing more than a regulated price for it, is in a less enviable position than he who cannot purchase it at all. This man is hated—the other is compassionately contemned. He stops the promotion ; nobody can get on. It is not to be supposed that people will, if they can help it, sell cheap what they have bought dear. This, though soon made apparent after a man has entered the service, is quite unsuspected by his friends and himself before ; they weakly suppose that if he has the regulation prices of his commissions forthcoming, he is provided for. An old Scotch lieutenant-colonel in a regiment I once belonged to had a -habit of asking every ensign to breakfast with him the day after he joined; partly with a view, it was supposed, of testing his capability to get on and keep the promotion going. One morning, while he was playing the amiable host, the young stranger let out the fact- that he could lodge the regulation and no more. The colonel re- garded him for a moment with dismal compassion, and then said, 'Putt m yet cup, y' unfortunate beggar ; ye don't know what ye ve got to go through."

The author is undoubtedly an amateur of graphiology, or the art of detecting character by handwriting ; and it is this interest in the subject which causes him to introduce himself as a professor; since the story would properly end before that episode. These re- marks on the handwriting of some great men are from a sort of essay on the. art.

" The leading character in the band df our great modern commander is firmness and businesslike simplicity. There is not an ornamental or unne- cessary line lir his whole correspondence - and the writer has been favoured with a sight of some hundred of his letters- on the most familiar subjects. They offer a singular contrast to the curt stereotyped style of hia Grace as so frequently shown up in the newspapers ; entering largely and with the great- est minuteness into details which a man so occupied would have been sup- posed either to disregard or leave to the discretion of others. The spot-where a guard of honour is to be drawn up is stated to a yard ; and even the dis- position of a mangle or a plate-chest is not beneath the attention of the noble Duke : the one has reference to the calculated distance at which the Queen's horses will not be frightened ; the other has ethoughtful care of the comfort of some inferior servant,—the complete knowledge, by the bye, of whose ways, tastes, and probable likings, form some amusing episodes in the correspondence. There are few public- characters of whom the million have a more false idea. The far-seeing kindness, the anxious consideration for others, and the extensive and never-talked-of charities, prove that the sou- briquet of the ' Iron Duke,' however applicable to -his unflinching sense of duty, is- a complete misnomer as far as relates to his other characteristics.

Napoleon's writing was remarkably indicative of his character; rapid, impetuous, unscrupulous : the intense intellectual power outruns the me- chanical performance ; the jaded lined is spurred beyond its natural paces, i and urged into a swift, aggressive scramble, beyond all conventional or re- cognized observances. Lord Byron partakes. of the same character ; and lord Brougham's also in a remarkable degree betrays more than any I am ac- quainteerwith an unconquerable restlessness of impulse and headlong dash."