Tape-recorder to the Victorians
Harold Acton
AUGUSTUS HARE: VICTORIAN GENTLEMAN by Malcolm Barnes
Allen & Unwin, £20
Augustus Hare's copious Victorian guidebooks are still useful and readable, if only for their quotations from forgotten authors like Ouida, for Hare was a dedi- cated sightseer from adolescence. After boiling down the six discursive tomes of his Story of My Life to two digestible volumes, Mr Malcolm Barnes has now produced a very entertaining biography of this indust- rious super-snob.
The unwanted fifth child of a genteel itinerant couple of modest means, at the age of 14 months Augustus was sent like a Christmas parcel to the childless widow of a clerical uncle, also named Augustus. This step-aunt Maria replaced his real mother, and it is amazing that he became morbidly attached to her after the misery of his childhood, for which she was largely re- sponsible. Always referred to as 'Mother', Maria sent for her neighbouring brother- in-law, the Rev Julius Hare, rector of Herstmonceux, to thrash the little boy with a riding-whip for any trifling offence. Mrs Julius devised other torments and ordered his pet cat to be hanged because he was too fond of it. Persecuted by evangelical clergy and their wives, and utterly dependent on Maria, who kept him short of cash, Augus- tus developed into a ubiquitous social lion, adored by the dowagers.
Born in Rome in 1834, he was thrilled to return there in 1857. Here he finally met his real mother, known as `Italima', for whom he had no filial affection, and he was charmed to meet his 25-year-old sister Esmeralda, who 'saw life through a prism and imparted its rays to others'. Maria was quite jealous of the two evenings a week he spent with them and alarmed by his private audience with Pope Pius IX, dreading Catholic influence on Augustus, whose real mother had already been converted. Perversely Augustus found happiness in the Eternal City and his Walks in Rome is one of his liveliest books, admired by Henry James.
Perhaps surfeited with his subject, Mr Barnes is a little hard on the three volumes of Hare's Memorials of a Quiet Life, which gave such comfort to the Queen of Sweden, who told him that she never went_ anywherewithout them, and led to his appointment as companion and guide to her son, the Crown Prince, when he visited Rome in 1879. The Memorials were even more popular in the United States than in Britain. They form an enduring treasury of Victoriana, more remote from us than the 18th century. Indeed they spoke another language, interspersed with absurd ex- clamations and terms of endearment. Their unctuous platitudes were padded with piety. Du Maurier delineated them in Punch; Oscar Wilde parodied them in his plays; but Augustus Hare was their tape- recorder, especially in his Memorials.
Until Maria died Augustus was her submissive slave and, eventually, her sick- nurse. Though she recovered from a broken leg Maria 'lapsed into a condition suspiciously like hypochondria that per- sisted at intervals until her death 18 years later.' Fortunately she decided that she needed 'foreign air', which entailed fre- quent trips to the Continent for months together. These gave Augustus opportuni- ties to describe in detail the places visited and produce the sketches to illustrate his books in steel engravings, samples of which embellish Mr Barnes's biography. He travelled on foot with a minimum of cash whenever he could leave his 'angel tyrant', for he had been toughened by his sadistic education.
A scrupulous diarist, he recorded his impressions with more gush than discri- mination. His anecdotes of Tennyson and Browning are few but comical. For inst- ance:
Dined at Lady Lyveden's. Sat by Lady S. who was very pleasant. She talked of Tenny-
son, who had been to stay with her. He desired his sons to let her know that he should like to be asked to read some of his poems in the evening. Nevertheless, when she asked him, he made a piece of work about it, and said to the other guests, 'I do it, but I only do it because Lady S absolutely insists upon it.' He read badly and with too much emotion: over 'Maud' he sobbed pas- sionately.
Hare's own repertoire of after-dinner ghost stories were related with melodrama- tic gusto. Henry Irving is said to have relished them, but as written in The Story of My Life they are, as Nancy Mitford observed, both dull and improbable.
Mr Malcolm Barnes has sifted through a prodigious mass of material with a tact and patience worthy of his extraordinary hero, and the Victorian Society owes him a debt of gratitude. Towards the end of his life Augustus Hare wrote complacently:
I am indeed glad that my visiting-lines are cast in such pleasant places, that I so seldom have to consort with the drearier part of human nature. In these houses, where the conversation is perfectly charming, yet where no evil is spoken of any one or by any one, one sees truly how a christian spirit will christianise everything it touches.
The unwanted child had achieved unex- pected fame as guest and guide of the highly privileged, and we may share his joie de vivre in this refreshing biography.
Previous page
