A Mid-Victorian Spiv
CHARLES AUGUSTUS HOWELL has waited sixty-four years for his grapher. Both Violet Hunt and Ford Madox Ford toyed with the projeol, but abandoned it. Countless amateurs of Pre-Raphaelite history Os: have been fascinated by the bizarre figure and seen him as a subjec` for research: Now at long last the masterful 'hand of Willie° Rossetti's daughter presents us with, alas, not what we hoped fo!' Mrs. Angeli devoted a chapter of her earlier study of her uneie' Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to Charles Augustus Howell. She something to add to it in this full-length biography—a collection letters written in the period of which we are already best informed", and she has experienced a warm qpickening of sympathy tow5n9 her subject, but the Howell presented is still.merely the man NO° played a brief but important part in the lives of the Rossettis, Ruskin, Burne-Jones, Swinburne and Whistler. The times before andaft,er the seventeen years of these associations remain obscure as do til° other multifarious activities of that period. A great part of t,11 citations which abound in Mrs. Angeli's text is already familiar. the new material two letters to D. G. Rossetti from Rosa Carew written in 1876 are the most interesting. They are the letters of ! woman enthralled. Howell, she says, in terms which might Wo° have been appropriated by Ethel M. Dell, "is half mad and half a devil, but always a man and a gentleman." (Swinburne, a better judge of gentility, designated him as a pole-cat.) They are writtel at the time when Rossetti, for very good reasons, was tiring ° Howell's services as agent, and they plead for a renewal of confidence' Howell's professional- services were profitable but compromising' how compromising may be seen from the newly printed correspon' dence—but Rossetti alone of all his illustrious friends preserved kindly feeling towards him to the end. The others dropped him 11°: merely as a nuisance and a bore but with varying degrees of moral revulsion. The quarrel with Burne-Jones was final and bitter' Mrs. Angeli suggests a cause which seems too trivial to account ftn the gravity of the condemnation. Swinburne, in whose WW1 preposterous sexual pleasures Howell seems to have participate"' commemorated his death with the lines: The foulest soul that lived stinks here no more. The stench of Hell is fouler than before.
Certainly most of Howell's respectable acquaintance came tc°, regard him as a very wicked man. There is no evidence that woe] commit him in a court of law. He was certainly an impostor, probably a thief and forger, possibly a pimp, spy and political etni. spirator. Mrs. Angeli has generously taken the part of defending counsel and pleads for a verdict of 'not proven.' She has alreadY expressed the belief that her uncle has been the victim of a campaign of malicious detraction. • She now, rather naively, suggests that tile main reason for the distrust of Howell was his Portuguese origin; She presents schematically a division of liars into 'Sheep and gcT,w and acquits Howell of vice. She even appears to think it plauslo that Howell was entitled to the Order of Christ which he often wore and to the baronetcy of Murray of Stanhope which he sometintos claimed. She accepts the fact that he spoke good Italian as evidelle,es that he served in the Portuguese Embassy in Rome. The reader, respect for this exuberant charity is somewhat clouded by the fan; that her defence involves her in very severe attacks on all witnesse' whose evidence does not suit her theme. She even, perhaps uncoil.: sciously, censures herself. Howell, she writes, "has not suffered to enter life or to depart in peace, the simple facts of 111' birth and death having been turned to ridicule and obloquY • •,; and a pitiful, nnsavoury story invented to account for his demis°-'_ apparently oblivious of the fact that this unsavoury invention -,A that he was picked up in the gutter with his throat cut and a go; coin between his teeth—may be found in her own earlier bo° without any indication of scepticism. W6 Probably the full life of Howell can never now be written. ,6 know a good deal about his dealings with one small set from t"r years 1865-1882. It is unlikely that any more material will aPPen,h in that connection. Patient detective, work should be able to unear' more about his last eight years. We have glimpses of him plaY17, the squire at the seaside. There is a whisper about racehorse" He left some valuable works-of art. His two daughters must ha:4 left sonie traces. Something could no doubt be learned of pedigree. Is he after all worth the trouble of an investigation? not charm has died with him. His gifts were not unique. The Preseve reviewer can think of two men in his small acquaintance, who ha.t invented lofty and romantic origins for themselves and who tw,,, Howell's knack of memorising detail so that they can talk plausibli. with experts on a variety of subjects. (There is also something 01 Coryo and of Maundy Gregory about Howell.) The difficulty for the biographer is that information must be almost complete before characters of this kind become really interesting and there seems no likelihood of our ever learning enough about Howell.
EVELYN WAUGH
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