No. XII. THE LATE Ma. OLLIER. Hu birth and family,
occupations, pursuits, 4-c.—His tales of "Inesilla" and "Altham and his Wife"—His intellectual and domestic character, and last moments,
As I knew the late Mr. Oilier during the greater part of his life, and he deserved to be better known to the public than he was, and in all probability will yet be so, the readers of this paper will not grudge me the melancholy pleasure of doing what I can to further their acquaint- ance with him, and show my respect for his memory.
Mr. Charles Oilier, who was born in Somersetahire seventy years ago, was descended from a respectable French family of Protestants, who came into this country at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The family were connected by blood with that of Locke the philosopher ; and there is reason to believe that it was similarly connected with that of Sidney Smith, whose mother was an Oilier, though she spelt the name with a single instead of double 1. The name, very uncommon in Eng- land, does not appear to have been widely spread in France; but it is met with in good company in the Letters of Madame de Sevigne, one of whose friends was a Madame Oilier ; and there was an Abbe Oilier, who is still mentioned with honour as the founder of a distinguished institu- tion in Paris.
Mr. Oilier began life in the banking-house of Messrs. Coutts, where he was much respected; but having inherited a love of literature from his father, who, though in trade, had received a classical education, he became, while still young, a publisher and an author ; professions which, however well they may accord otherwise, are seldom found to unite profitably in one and the same person ; and Mr. Oilier, after repeated ventures and failures as a publisher, (which, however, asso- ciated his name memorably with the geniuses of Shelley and lleats,) did his best, or rather his modestest, (for he had powers with which he might have done better,) to settle himself down as an adviser and assistant of publishers, and a contributor of articles to the magazines. He also occasionally gave lectures (in the country) on celebrated writers. He was an admirable reader, particularly of Shakespeare, understanding to a nicety the difference, so often confounded, between reading and acting; though, when he chose, he could bespeak a sort of leave from his audience on that point, and " perform " a passage or so to perfection. Furthermore, he was so excellent a player on the flute, which, I believe, he sometimes taught, that Nicholson, the most popular flutist of his day, once prevailed upon him, in spite of his modesty, to take his place for him in the orchestra.
Mr. Oilier should have written more of his own, and should also have taken more pains to keep what he did write before the eyes of the public. His novel of Ferrers, being of the three-volume size which is most in demand at circulating libraries, is the production, perhaps, with which his name is chiefly associated; but though full of passages indicative of greater potters than are brought to bear upon it, the subject which is that of a well-known story of mental aberration, is not a happy one, be- longing rather to the pen of the physiologist than the novelist ; and a sense of this objection, whether consciously or not, presses upon the read- er's mind, and gives him a strange feeling of dissatisfaction with a writer who otherwise pleases him. Mr. 011ier's earlier and smaller productions, and probably it would be found his latest also, if all the tales he wrote were collected, are by far his best. Two of them in particular, each con- sisting of a single small volume, namely, "Altham and his Wife," and "Inesilla, or the Tempter," the former a truly domestic story of a new- married couple, and the latter the best bit of diablerie in the language, possess a vein of their own, showing that they emanate from the writer's own nature, and, so to speak, that he could not help writing them. Of " Inesilla" so high an opinion was entertained by no less a judge than the authoress of " Frankenstein," that a publisher having pro- posed to piece out the requisite size of a volume of stories from her pen by one worthy of its companionship, she said she should prefer of all others,—indeed, should be content with no other,—than this production of Mr. Oilier. And the writer who is accounted, not unnaturally, the arbiter of all arbiters on the subject of prose fiction,—Sir Walter Scott,—
in a critique which he wrote in the "Quarterly Review" on the novel of " Haggi Baba in England," refers to the story of "Altham and his Wife," as furnishing pleasant authority for the telling of love-tales under umbrellas during a shower.
How comes it that such admirers did not cause the instant reappear- ance of both these little books in further and frequent editions ? The principal reason, unfortunately, was to be found in Mr. Oilier's own modesty, which was too slow to avail itself of such opportunities; in- deed, always too great for his deserts. The passion of fear, the subtel- ties of which form the groundwork of most of his writings (though he was personally a courageous man, with quick Somersetshire blood in him) seemed to have turned upon its master in this respect out of re- sentment at his knowledge of it, and to have rendered him too ingenious in presenting to his imagination all the possibilities of the chance of failure ; and what is more provoking, it could hardly have done so, had it not been assisted by the very loving and admiring nature of a disposi- tion, which rendered him enthusiastic in his valuation of others; nay, of everything which excited in his mind the smallest portion of the pleasure of gratitude. He admired Shakespeare to such a degree, and held him- self under such a loyal weight of obligation to him, that although, or rather because, he (Oilier) was one of the least assuming or presumptuous of men in his ordinary manners, I have known him involuntarily measure persons, whom he otherwise respected, from head to foot, if they ventured to maintain the least objection to the great poet ; as though' in default of some possible intellectual cause for it, he was trying to discover some cause physical. Next to Shakespeare, and as if in relief for the straining of his faculties in that direction, he delighted to repose on the classic elegancies of Ben Janson, or the fairy and amatory fancies of Herrick, and above all, on the head as well as heart discoverable in the metaphysical pastimes, or what are called (said he) the " conceits " of Cow- ley, the denouncers of which he persisted in treating with an intolerance as hearty as their own, and not without a charming kind of warrant, owing to the unquestionable intellect as well as amiable nature of that certainly undervalued poet. "The phcenix Pindar," said Cowley, is himself "a vast species alone." This is the way in which Mr. Oilier used to talk of the objects of his own admiration; and to hear him thus talking of them, on a summer's evening, over a temperate glass, with open windows be- fore him, looking on trees and flowers, and in a voice as deep as a bee's, and talking of as sweet and sequestered things, was a treat which I have missed for the first time these many years in his favourite month of June, and the memory of which has now been filling its weeks with sadness.
In what remains for me to say, I must endeavour to be brief. My friend was a devoted husband and father, and was rewarded by possessing a wife and children worthy of him, who blessed him from first to last with every kind of attention, and who were qualified to do honour to his memory, some by acquiring names of their own, and all by their good- ness. His only daughter is an accomplished musician ; and of his sons, one (a second Charles Oilier) is already not without repute as a novelist, and the other (Edmund—they must pardon me this mention of their names), has long been admired, though anonymously, and well appreciated by its illustrious conductor, not only as a contributor of ar- ticles in prose, but as a writer of rare and veritable poetry, chiefly narra- tive, in the pages of "Household Words," his' only rival, I believe, therein, though in another direction, being that right poet's daughter, Adelaide Procter.
My friend's religious opinions may be guessed from the books and pursuits in which he delighted. They were equally removed from athe- istic hopelessness on the one hand, and every cruelty of superstition on' the other. As such they consoled, and deservedly consoled him to the last moment of a long and painful illness (an atrophy afflicted with asthma) ; and this to such a degree, that for the encouragement and joy of all those who entertain worthy opinions of the Creator and his works, I cannot forbear taking the liberty of inserting the following emphatic words from a letter written me on occasion of his decease by the son who is last mentioned.
" My belief in a happy immortality was always strong, and is now doubly so. The transfigured, beatified look on any father's face, as he glanced at us all, literally from over the abyss, will remain by me for ever, as an answer to all dull, earthly materialism. His medical man says he never saw a face after death so beautiful. I never saw a living face so seraphical as his was at the moment of departure."
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