Mayne Reid : a Memoir of his Life. By Elizabeth
Reid, his Widow. (Ward and Downey.)—All that was beat worth recording in his career, and much else besides, Mayne Reid has related with the proper embellishments in one or other of his books, and there was no need at all for such a memoir as the present. No doubt he had an adventurous life enough, from the time he left the North of Ireland as a boy, until he settled down to the busi- ness of authorship in 1850. In the States he tried successively the vocations of storekeeper, nigger-driver, tutor, schoolmaster, actor, and journalist, before taking to the prairies and backwoods, where he gathered the experiences he afterwards used with such effect. But about all this portion of his life the memoir tells us nothing at all, while several chapters are given up to his part in the forgotten Mexican War. An American journalist was inspired to describe him at this time as "a mixture of Adonis and the Apollo Belvidere, with a dash of the Centaur." In 1849 he returned to England, to aid the revolutionary movements then disturbing the Continent, but found no field for his boisterous activity, and had to content himself with writing bombastic letters to the Times, accusing that journal of arming its facile scribes with "plumes plucked from the fetid wing of the Austrian eagle." There was no real call to reprint the whole of this absurd correspondence, which brings out the strong vein of swagger and braggadocio in his character. "The Rifle-Rangers" appeared in 1850, and "The Scalp-Hunters" in 1851, and thenceforward he devoted himself to producing those adventurous stories which enjoyed such &boundless popularity in their day, but have now lost their vogue. Shortly afterwards he married the "child-wife" who has lived to write the present memoir, and settled down for some years at Gerrard's Cross, in Buckinghamshire, where he attended church, "more for the purpose of studying the bonnets than anything else," and drew down upon himself the following singular epistle :—" A friend who is deeply interested in Captain Mayne Reid's spiritual wel- fare, forwards a prayer-book with the sincere wish that it may induce him to behave more reverently in church; and in reminding him that there is such a colour as lavender, hopes that the ever- lasting lemon kids may be varied." This was accompanied by an infinitesimal prayer-book, and a pair of lavender cotton gloves.
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