FORTY YEARS' RECOLLECTIONS.*
THE reader of Mr. Mackay's. Forty Years' Recollections will notice in them one blemish,—an egotism, which is none the less notable that it is essentially unconscious ; a tendency to quote old newspaper articles, as if to say, " I said so in such and such a year, and 1 see no reason to change my opinion now ; " a kind of subdued refrain after the relation of certain events,— quorum magna pars fui. Such things, however, are perhaps un- avoidable when one has got to the stage of writing and publishing " Recollections ; " and at least it can be heartily said of the bulk of the particular "Recollections " before us,—that they are eminently readable. Even in the first portion of the first volume, in which we are introduced to the Clan Mackay and its present re- presentative's early career on the Continent, before he resolved to take to literature as a profession, we have pleasant glimpses of * Forty Years' Recollections of Life, Literature, and Public Affairs, from 1830 la 1870. By Charles Mackay, LL.D., author of "Eger*" Sc. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Ball. 1577. Belgium in the days when it was struggling for independence. But it is after Mr. Mackay comes to London that his "Recollec- tions " become especially interesting. He has•the wonderful faculty of talking newspaper "shop " without being offensive, and among the beat personal sketches he gives us are these of "honest John Black," of the Morning Chronicle, who if he did not make the fortune of Charles Dickens, by Dickens's own confession was ready to give him a hearty welcome when he returned from a reporting expedition, and " threw the shoe after him " when he got married to literature proper ; as also of Angus, Bethune Reach, one of the nu'merous " might-have-beens," who never realised the hopes of themselves or the predictions of their friends. Black, to whom Mr. Mackay acted for a time as an assistant, was a shrewd, kindly Scotsman, fond of his work and fond of his pleasure, which seems to have consisted of nothing less innocent than a long walk in the company of a friend, or of hisbig dog, " Cato ;" cultured after his fashion,—for who amongst the- sons of the mighty in these latter days could turn, as Black did, when he had nothing better in hand, some of his contributions. into Greek ?—independent, again, and so proud of his profession as not only to decline toadying Lord Melbourne for a post in the gift of the then all-powerful Premier, but to tell him that he would mot exchange places with him ; and yet so little anxious to make money for its own sake, that but for the sale of his library, his latter days would probably have been spent in comparative poverty. One story of Black and of MacGillivray, a proprietor in the Chronicle, is worth reviving, if only for the sake of one, the surviving, actor in it :— "An early incident of my connection with the Morning Chronicle was the sudden and mysterious disappearance of John Black from his editorial chair ; and the equally sudden and mysterious disappearance of Mr. Simon MacGillivray from the daily meetings of the editors and proprietors. There were many nods and whispers about it, and various unsuccessful attempts to curb the curiosity of those who were not in the secret. But it soon oozed out that John Black had gone to fight a. duel with Mr. John Arthur Roebuck, Member for Bath ; and that Mr. MacGillivray was to act as his second. Mr. Black was the challenger„ and the cause of offence was an attack by Mr. Roebuck in a series of pamphlets entitled 'Pamphlets for the People,' then in course of publication, on the whole body of editors, contributors, and reporters of the London Press, especially those of the Morning Chronicle. In this attack he singled out Mr. Black by name ; and Black's impetuous friend MacGillivray decided that nothing was left for the honour of London journalism but that Black should be its champion, and chal- lenge Mr. Roebuck. The duel took place on the 10th of November, 1835, near Christchurch, in Hampshire. Two shots were exchanged ; neither combatant was injured, honour was declared to be satisfied., and Black and MacGillivray returned to London to MacGillivray'a rooms in Salisbury Street, Strand, where they were reported to have celebrated the event in copious libations of mountain dew, of the merits of which both of them were excellent judges."
The death of poor Angus Reach, an energetic journalist from the- Highlands (whose name, it may be mentioned, for the sake of the uninitiated, does not rhyme with " peach "), is chiefly notable as a proof that not only worry, but work may kill a man. Reach came to the Chronicle much as Dickens did, proved himself a competent and reliable reporter, invented, according to Mr. Mackay, the art of picturesque reporting—for which, however, it is quite possible that many of us may not be particularly grateful—and then ex- panded his wings as a writer of novels, of anything, indeed, that turned up, made his days draw upon his nights, and his nights upon his days ; till the hour came when "something snapped in his head." He refused to take the warning nature offered,. and although Shirley Brooks—to his honour the fact should be stated—took the work of his brother-journalist on his shoulders, Angus Reach died before he had reached middle- age, of softening of the brain. This portion of the work is perhaps chiefly worthy of notice as not altogether consistent with a subsequent chapter, in which is related a curious conver- sation between the author and Wordsworth, who persistently took Mr. Mackay for Mr. Leman Blanchard. Mr. Mackay, according to his own account, asked Wordsworth if Southey died of over-work, to which Wordsworth gave a rambling, scrambling reply. Of this, the following sentences give the substance :- " Southey was a calm and methodical worker, and calm, steady work never kills. It is only worry and hurry that kill. Scott died of pecuniary trouble, not of work. Southey died of grief for the loss of his wife." Reach does not appear to have died of grief or pecuniary trouble ; he paid his way, said his wife survived him ; he simply strained his brain, and it is difficult to see that he died of anything but over-work. In short, the ques- tion is not so much one of work versus worry, as of what the brain can under any circumstances accomplish. It is due to Mr. Mackay, in spite of the egotism to which we have already referred, to say, that he seems to have had a sensible view of the duty and dignity attaching to his profession. In Glasgow he edited a newspaper called the Argus, and in London the Illustrated London News, and from both positions he retired because he was not -allowed the free expression of his opinions.
Mr. Mackay has weighted his volumes with a great deal of un- 'necessary matter. The bulk of what refers to the leading public questions of the period between 1830 and 1870, such as "The Irish Exodus," "First and Second Visits to America," "The Coup d'Etat," "Deer Forests," "Poor Laws," and "Popular Education," might have been omitted, for in essence these chap- ters are a reprint of Mr. Mackay's own professional work, and have not the interest either of dispassionate history or of personal reminiscence. The chapters on the Sunday question and the Chartist movement are relieved by ana and letters. Not the least interesting thing in the book is an autobiographical sketch of poor Ernest Jones, the Chartist, in the form of a letter to Mr. Mackay. How Mr. Jones was treated for the part he played in the excitement of 1848 is not generally. known. This is what he said of it himself :—
" About that time I became involved in the political excitement of a848, and for a speech delivered in June of that year was arrested, and imprisoned in Westminster prison for two years and one week, in solitary confinement, on the silent system. I was without books, pen, ink, or paper, for the first nineteen months ; and was locked for fourteen days in a dark cell, on bread and water, during the height of the • cholera, in 1849. I was not allowed during that terrible time to hear whether my wife and children were alive or dead; allowed to exchange a letter with my wife only four times per year, and to see her only four times per year for twenty minutes each time, in presence of a turnkey. When I once wrote to Sir George Grey, I was not allowed to write to my wife ; when I once saw Sir J. Walmesley, George Thompson, and O'Connor, I was not allowed that quarter to see my wife; when I heard that she was dangerously ill, I was not allowed to hear how she pro- gressed; and I was myself reduced to such a state of weakness, that I was obliged at one time to drag myself across the cell, if I wanted to move across it. My day-cell had unglazed windows all the winter through; my night-cell a grating opening at once on the air, of 14 feet *Rum. All this was proved in Parliament when Lord Dudley Stuart brought my case forward, and my petition and the evidence were printed by the order of the House. In prison, I wrote (by stealth, on smuggled Taper) The New World,' The Painter of Florence,' Beldagon +Church,' and a number of minor pieces. The Painter of Florence' is the poem now published under the name of 'The Cost of Glory.' Having aro ink, I chiefly wrote with my blood."
A very different person from Ernest Jones is also brought into Mr. Mackay's Recollections of Public Ajairs,—Louis Napoleon, when he was an exile in London, and when the Second Empire lived only in his dreams. Mr. Mackay met the Prince about the beginning of 1848, at the breakfast-table of Mr. MacGregor, Member for Glasgow. He seemed a reserved man, with lack- lustre grey eyes, that never seemed to look any one in the face, and the only remark he made of any consequence was this, with reference to Louis Philippe,—" He is a cunning man, but cunning has a tendency to over-reach itself ; and he does not understand the character of the French nation. If he did, he never would have sought to popularise himself by bringing home les cendres de Napoleon from St. Helena, to re .enter them under the dome of the Invalides." This is thoroughly in accordance with what we know of the character of the Third Napoleon, it was quite in his manner to state a half-truth with what would have been smartness but for the introduction of a common-place sentiment such as that, 4' cunning has a tendency to over-reach itself."
Mr. Mackay is at his best when he is giving details of his per- sonal communications with some of the more notable men of his .earlier time, such as Beranger, Wordsworth, Rogers, Campbell, Hawthorne, Thackeray, Jerrold, and Leech. His account of a conversation he had with Beranger and Lamennais is perhaps the best written of the " Recollections." This, for example, is worthy of quotation for the sake of itself, as well as for the facts which it recalls to remembrance :— " Bbranger had a broad, capacious forehead, a very bald head, and a good-natured, benign, but somewhat slovenly appearance. He looked like a man who would not encourage trouble to come to his door, much less to take up its abode in his house. He was encased in Buena smooth, well-soldered, and well-fitting armour of Epicurean content, as to defy the stings and arrows of Fate to pierce it, or even to annoy him ; a good, easy man, who took things as they came, was satisfied with little, fond -of the sunshine and of small enjoyments, a Diogenes in his contempt of outward show, and in independence of character; but with a real, un- affected good-nature to which Diogenes had no pretensions. Wronger was in fact a bonhomme in the French sense of the phrase,—kindly, without guile, or thought of evil ; fond of his pleasures, but never dreaming of doing harm to any one else in order to obtain them; very child in his simplicity, and yet a very wise man in his knowldge of the world. Such religion as he had savoured of paganism, and his political faith was ultra-Republican. He and Lamennais were to each other as Damon and Pythias—dearest of friends—notwithstanding their ' diversity of belief on religious topics, and most constant companions. Lamennais was a little, thin man, with an appearance of ill-health but
of all on whom their gaze was earnestly fixed, as if they would burn out the most hidden secrets ; and his conversation was earnest and eloquent, without being pretentious. B4ranger impressed me with the idea that he was the most Parisian of all the Parisians I had ever met, the most unmitigated badaud, living in Paris for the sake of Paris, and with no thoughts but such as Paris inspired. He had evidently no love for natural scenery, and confessed as much. He had never seen a mountain in his life ; and worse than all, did not remember to have seen the ocean, or heard the solemn music of the shore. In short, he had seldom been fifty miles beyond the octroi of Paris, and was, he said, always unhappy when away from the rumble of the streets. He loved flowers, he said, and a little garden; but he could not distinguish one tree from another by its name, and thought the trees of the Tuileries gardens, the Champs Elysdes, or the Bois de Boulogne, superior to the groves of Tempe, Arcadia, Dodona, or Valombrosa. He was so unaffected, so genial, so honest, so modest, and so kind, that it was im- possible to be long in his company without feeling affection for him ; and he was, over and above all, so shrewd and sagacious—or as the Scotch would say, so canny,'—that it was equally impossible to avoid feeling respect."
In connection with this, the following remark of Lamennais re- garding the future Napoleon III. is notable :—" France has done with the Bonapartes for ever, except as private citizens, in which capacity I think they ought to be allowed to return. Their presence will be quite innocuous. There is no room for an Empire. The France of the future—when we have shaken off the last of the stupid and intractable Bourbons—will exalt no other family, new or old, but will establish a democratic and social republic." So much for the foresight of even this most
liberal and democratic of French Clerics, in spite of the "quick, restless," heart-piercing eyes of which Mr. Mackay would almost seem to have stood a little in awe. The information which we have given us of Wordsworth, Rogers, and Campbell is not of especial value, although the kindly side of the authors of the " Pleasures of Hope " and the " Pleasures of Memory " is well brought out. The only other literary contemporary of Words-
worth with whom Mr. Mackay would appear to have specially come in contact was De Quincey, and of him we receive no particularly agreeable reminiscences, for his chief busi- ness with Mr. Mackay, then in Glasgow, was to give him hours of prolix and dreamy talk, and then to borrow sixpences to buy laudanum, to which be had resorted as a milder form of opium in his later years. As for the younger men, more his contemporaries, or to speak more accurately, his coevals, than Campbell or Wordsworth, Mr. Mackay has little to tell us of Thackeray, and even that little is disappointing Thus one regrets to believe of that sweet-tempered "gentle- man of genius" that (Vol. II., p. 297) he actually contem- plated raising an action for a thousand pounds damages against a provincial newspaper, because it had printed an article by a foolish. and furious country rector, beginning, "An elderly, infidel buffoon, of the name of Thackeray, has been lecturing in town on the subject of the Four Georges." Can it be possible that, after all, Professor Aytoun's hint to Thackeray was right— although not in the sense Aytoun intended it—" Let the Georges alone, and stick to the Jeameses?" Nathaniel Hawthorne and Douglas Jerrold figure " considerably "—the Americanism is tempting and appropriate—in Mr. Mackay's pages, chiefly because a dinner-party, composed of Hawthorne, Jerrold, and the author, finds a place in the well-known " Diary" of Hawthorne, and because the description by Hawthorne of Jerrold's manner of looking at men and things as " acrid " caused much offence to the most genial of humourists, who justified Hawthorne's manner only by saying, "He means well, as all clumsy people do." Of Jerrold, this may be quoted, although we doubt if it is entirely new (the joke regarding " unremitting kindness " certainly is not) :—
" He was particularly attached to the kind-hearted and venerable Charles Knight, who seldom failed to make his appearance at 'Our Club,' and the 'Hooks and Eyes,' and who, though he seldom made a joke himself, had a keen appreciation of all the jokes that volleyed around when Jerrold was present. 'Jerrold,' he said one evening,'I am growing very old, and I wish you would write my epitaph.'—' It is done, my dear fellow. Here it is ! Good Night l'---Notbing could have been happier. As quick and as free from the slightest tint of ill-nature was his remark about the affectionate letters written from America, by an actor who had left his wife in London, without money, and who never sent her any. ' What kindness !' he said. with strong emphasis, when one of the letters was read aloud in the Green room of the Haymarket. 'Kindness!' ejaculated one of the actresses, indignantly, 'when he never sends the poor woman a penny.'—' Yes,' said Jerrold, unre- mitting kindness I' Jerrold, Mr. Herbert Ingram, Mr. Peter Cunning- ham, and myself were out for a day's ramble, and happened to stroll into the little village of Chenies, and the church or chapel where many members of the ducal family of Bedford are buried. 'If I were one of the Russells,' said Peter Cunningham, 'I should not wish to come here often. I should not like to know the exact spot where I was to be buried.'—' My feeling exactly,' said Jerrold ; 'and for that reason I never enter Westminster Abbey !' Of a different character was his jest
the fact that he had dined three times at the Duke of Devonshire's, and that on neither occasion had there been any fish at table. ' I cannot account for it,' he added.—'I can,' said Jerrold : ' they ate it all up- stairs.' The author of an epic poem asked Jerrold if he had seen his 'Descent into No,' replied Jerrold, with a chuckle of delight, 'but I should like."
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