Читать книгу My Life as an Author - Martin Farquhar Tupper - Страница 9

Of my earliest MS., written soon after my seventh birthday, I have no copy, and only a very confused memory: but I remember that my good mother treasured for years and showed to many friends something in the nature of an elegy which a broken-hearted little brother wrote on the death of an infant sister from his first school: this is only mentioned in case any one of my older readers may possibly supply such a lost MS. in a child's roundhand. At school, chiefly as a young Carthusian, I frequently broke out into verse, where prose translation was more properly required: seeing that it pleased my indolence to be poetical where I was not sure of literal accuracy, and (I may add) it rejoiced me to induce a certain undermaster to suspect and sometimes to accuse this small poetaster of having "cribbed" his metrical version from some unknown collection of poems: however, he had always to be satisfied with my assurance as to authenticity, for he was sure to be baffled in his inquiries elsewhere.

One such instance is extant as thus—for I kept a copy, as the assembled Charterhouse masters seemed to think it too good to be original for a small boy of twelve to thirteen. Here then, as a specimen of one of my early bits of literature, is a genuine and unaltered poem (for any modern improvements would not be honest) in the shape of a translated Greek epigram from the Anthologia:—

"Not Juno's eye of fire divine

Can vie my Melite, with thine

So heavenly pure and bright;

Nor can Minerva's hand excel

That pretty hand I know so well,

So small and lily-white.

"Not Venus can such charms disclose

As those sweet lips of blushing rose

And ivory bosom show;

Not Thetis' nimble foot can tread

More lightly o'er her coral bed

Than thy soft foot of snow.

"What happiness thy face bestows

When smiling on a lover's woes!

Thrice happy then is he

Who hears thy soul-subduing song—

O more than blest, to whom belong

The charms of Melite!"

I was head of the lower school then, and I remember the father of Bernal Osborne patting my curly locks and scolding his whiskered son for letting a small boy be above him.

Much about this time, and until I left Charterhouse at sixteen, there proceeded from my pen numerous other mild rhymed pieces and sundry unsuccessful prize poems; e.g., three on Carthage, the second Temple of Jerusalem, and the Tower of London, whereof I have schoolboy copies not worth notice; besides divers metrical translations of Horace, Æschylus, Virgil; and a few songs and album verses for young lady friends, one being set by a Mr. Sala (perhaps G. A. S. had a musical relative) with an impromptu or two, whereof the following "On a shell sounding like the sea" is a fair specimen for a boy:—

"I remember the voice of the flood

Hoarse breaking upon the rough shore,

As a linnet remembers the wood

And his warblings so joyous before."

Of course, this class of my juvenile lyrics was holiday work, and barely worth a record, except to save a fly in amber, like this.

Whilst I was at Charterhouse, occurred my first Continental journey, when my excellent father took his small party all through France in his private travelling carriage, bought at Calais for the trip (it was long before railways were invented), and I jotted down in verse our daily adventures in the rumble. The whole journal, entitled "Rough Rhymes," in divers metres, grave and gay, was published by the "Literary Chronicle" in 1826, and the editor thereof, Mr. Jerdan, says, after some compliments, "the author is in his sixteenth year,"—which fixes the date. Possibly, a brief specimen or two of this may please: take the livelier first—on French cookery: if trivial, the lines are genuine: I must not doctor anything up even by a word.

"Now Muse, you must versify your very best,

To sing how they ransack the East and the West,

To tell how they plunder the North and the South

For food for the stomach and zest for the mouth!

Such savoury stews, and such odorous dishes,

Such soups, and (at Calais) such capital fishes!

With sauces so strange they disguise the lean meat

That you seldom, or never, know what you're to eat;

Such fricandeaux, fricassees epicurean,

Such vins-ordinaires, and such banquets Circean—

And the nice little nothings which very soon vanish

Before you are able your plate to replenish—

Such exquisite eatables! and for your drink

Not porter or ale, but—what do you think?

'Tis Burgundy, Bourdeaux, real red rosy wine,

Which you quaff at a draught, neat nectar, divine!

Thus they pamper the taste with everything good

And of an old shoe can make savoury food,

But the worst of it is that when you have done

You are nearly as famish'd as when you begun!"

For a more serious morsel, take the closing lines on Rouen:—

"Yes, proud Cathedral, ages pass'd away

While generations lived their little day—

France has been deluged with her patriots' blood

By traitors to their country and their God—

The face of Europe has been changed, but thou

Hast stood sublime in changelessness till now,

Exulting in thy glories of carved stone,

A living monument of ages gone!—

Yet—time hath touch'd thee too; thy prime is o'er—

A few short years, and thou must be no more;

Ev'n thou must bend beneath the common fate,

But in thy very ruins wilt be great!"

More than enough of this brief memory of "Sixty Years Since," which has no other extant record, and is only given as a sample of the rest, equally juvenile. Three years however before, this, my earliest piece printed, I find among my papers a very faded copy of my first MS. in verse, being part of an attempted prize poem at Charterhouse on Carthage, written at the age of thirteen in 1823; for auld langsyne's sake I rescue its conclusion thus curtly from oblivion—though no doubt archæologically faulty:—

"Where sculptured temples once appeared to sight,

Now dismal ruins meet the moon's pale light—

Where regal pomp once shone with gorgeous ray,

And kings successive held their transient sway;—

Where once the priest his sacred victims led

And on the altars their warm lifeblood shed—

Where swollen rivers once had amply flowed

And splendid galleys down the stream had rowed,

A dreary wilderness now meets the view,

And nought but Memory can trace the clue!"

The poor little schoolboy's muse was perhaps quite of the pedestrian order: but so also, the critics said, had been stern old Dr. Johnson's in his "London."

Mere school-exercises (whereof I have some antique copybooks before me), cannot be held to count for much as early literature; though I know not why some of my Greek Iambic translations of the Psalms and Shakespeare, as also sundry very respectable versions of English poems into Latin Sapphics and Alcaics still among my archives, should not have been shrined—as they were offered at the time—in Dr. Haig Brown's Carthusian Anthology. However somehow these have escaped printer's ink—the only true elixir vitæ—and we must therefore suppose them not quite worthy to be bracketed with the classical versification of Buchanan or even of Mr. John Milton—albeit actually superior to sundry of the aforesaid Anthologia Carthusiana; so of these we will say nothing.

Of other sorts of schoolboy literaria whereof from time to time I was guilty let me save here (by way of change) one or two of my trivial humoristics: here is one, not seen in print till now; "Sapphics to my Umbrella—written on a very rainy day," in 1827. N.B. If Canning in his Eton days immortalised sapphically a knifegrinder, why shouldn't a young Carthusian similarly celebrate his gingham?

"Valued companion of my expeditions,

Wanderings, and my street perambulations,

What can be more deserving of my praises

Than my umbrella?

"Under thine ample covering rejoicing,

(All the 'canaille' tumultuously running)

While the rain streams and patters from the housetops,

Slow and majestic,

"I trudge along unwetted, though an ocean

Pours from the clouds, as if some Abernethy

Had given all the nubilary regions

Purges cathartic!

"Others run on in piteous condition,

Black desperation painted in their faces,

While the full flood descends in very pailfuls

Streaming upon them.

"Yea, 'tis as if some cunning necromancer

Had drawn a circle magically round me,

Till like the wretched victim of Kehama,

(Southey's abortion)

"Nothing like liquor ever could approach me!

But it is thou, disinterested comrade,

Bearest the rainy weather uncomplaining,

Oh, my umbrella!

"How many hats, and 'upper Bens,' and new coats,

How many wretched duckings hast thou saved me

Well—I have done—but must be still indebted

To my umbrella!"

Another such trifle may be permissible, as thus: also about an umbrella, a stolen one. On the occasion of my loss I wrote this to rebuke the thief, "The height of honesty:"—

"Three friends once, in the course of conversation,

Touch'd upon honesty: 'No virtue better,'

Says Dick, quite lost in sweet self-admiration,

'I'm sure I'm honest;—ay—beyond the letter:

You know the field I rent; beneath the ground

My plough stuck in the middle of a furrow

And there a pot of golden coins I found!

My landlord has it, without fail, to-morrow.'

Thus modestly his good intents he told:

'But stay,' says Bob,' we soon shall see who's best,

A stranger left with me uncounted gold! But I'll not touch it; which is honestest?' 'Your honest acts I've heard,' says Jack, 'but I Have done much better, would that all folks learn'd it, Mine is the highest pitch of honesty— I borrow'd an umbrella and—return'd it!!'".

N.B.—I remember that Dr. Buckland, whose geological lectures I attended, had the words "Stolen from Dr. Buckland" engraved on the ivory handle of his umbrella: he never lost it again.

In the way of prose, not printed (though much later on I have since published "Paterfamilias's Diary of Everybody's Tour") I have kept journals of holiday travel passim, whereof I now make a brief mention. Six juvenile bits of authorship are before me, ranging through the summers of 1828 to 1835 inclusive; each neatly written in its note-book on the spot and at the time (therefore fresh and true) decorated with untutored sketches, and all full of interest ab least to myself in old memories, faded interests, and departed friends. As very rare survivals of the past (for who cares to keep as I have done his schoolboy journals of half a century ago?) I will give at haphazard from each in its order of time a short quotation by way of sample—a brick to represent the house. My first, a.d. 1828, records how my good father took his sons through the factories of Birmingham and the potteries of Staffordshire, down an iron mine and a salt mine, &c. &c., thus teaching us all we could learn energetically and intelligently; it details also how we were hospitably entertained for a week in each place by the magnate hosts of Holkar Hall and Inveraray Castle; and how we did all touristic devoirs by lake, mountain, ruin, and palace: in fact, a short volume in MS., whereof quite at random here is a specimen page. "Melrose looks at a distance very little ruinous, but more like a perfect cathedral. While the horses were being changed we walked to see this Abbey, a splendid ruin, with two very light and beautiful oriel windows to the east and south, besides many smaller ones; the architecture being florid Gothic. The tracery round the capitals of pillars is in wonderful preservation, looking as fresh and sharp as on the first day of their creation; instead of the Grecian acanthus Scotch kail being a favourite ornament. Some of the images still remain in their niches. In the east aisle is the grave of the famous wizard, Michael Scott, and at the foot of the tombstone a grim-looking figure—query himself? In the ruined cloisters the tracery is of the most delicate description, foliage of trees and vegetables being carved on them. This Abbey was founded by David the First, but repaired by James the Fourth, which accounts for his altered crown appearing in stone on the walls," &c. &c. The Scotch kail is curious, as indicative of national preference: and is the wizard still on guard? Recollect that in those days there were no guide-books—so every observant traveller had to record for himself what he saw.

The next, in 1829, was a second visit to the Continent, my first having been in 1826, with those quotations from "Rough Rhymes" which have already met your view. In this we took the usual tour of those days, viâ Brussels and the Rhine to Switzerland, and I might quote plenty thereof if space and time allowed. Here shall follow a casual page from the 1829 MS. Journal, now before me.

"Heidelberg has a university of seven hundred students, who wear no particular academicals, but are generally seen with a little red or blue cap topping a luxuriant head of hair, a long coat, and moustaches which usually perform the function of a chimney to pipe or cigar. All along our to-day's route extended immense fields of tobacco, turnips, and vegetals of every description. Most of the women seem to be troubled with goitres, and we observed that all who have them wear rows of garnets strung tight on the part affected, whether with the idea of hiding the deformity, or of rendering the beauty of the swelling more conspicuous, or of charming it away, I cannot tell. The roads in these parts are much avenued with walnut trees: Fels, our courier, told me that of all trees they are most subject to be struck by lightning, and that under them is always a current of air. I insert his information, as he is both a sensible man, and has had great opportunities of observing," &c. &c. Here is a gap of three years.

In 1832, my journal about Dorsetshire and the Isle of Wight is chiefly geological: as this extract shows, it was mainly a search after fossil spoils at Charmouth:—"Would you like to see a creature with the head of a lizard, wings of a bat, and tail of a serpent? Such things have been, as these bones testify; they are called Pterodactyls, and are as big as ravens. Thus, you see, a dragon is no chimera, but attested by a science founded on observation, Geology. As their bones (known by their hollowness) often occur in the coprolites or fossil dung of Plesiosauri, mighty monsters of the deep like gigantic swans, it is thought they were their special prey, for which the long and flexible neck of the Plesiosaurus is an à priori argument," &c. &c.

The 1833 journal is Welsh; and, inter alia, I therein drew and I now record that recently destroyed and more recently restored Druidical movement, the Buckstone: "A solid mass of rock, not of living adamant but of dead pudding-stone, seemingly 'by subtle magic poised' on the brow of a steep and high hill, wooded with oaks: the top of this mass of rock is an area of fifty-four feet, its base being four, and the height twelve. It was once a logan stone, but now has no rocking properties; though most perilously poised on the side of a slope, and certainly, if in part a work of nature, it must have been helped by art, seeing the mere action of the atmosphere never could have so exactly chiselled away all but the centre of gravity. The secret of the Druids, in this instance at least, was in leaving a large mass behind, which as a lever counteracted the preponderance of the rock." I drew on the spot two exact views of it, taken to scale—whereof this is one—now of some curious value, since its intentional destruction last year by a snobbish party of mischievous idiots. (However, I see by the papers that, at a cost of £500, it has been replaced.) Let this touch suffice as to my then growing predilection for Druidism, since expanded by me into several essays find pamphlets, touching on that strange topic, the numerous rude stone monuments from Arabia to Mona.

The 1834 journal regards Scotland—a country I have since visited several times, including the Orkneys and Shetlands, and the voyage round from Thurso viâ Cape Wrath to the Hebrides; whereof, perhaps, more anon. For a specimen page of this let me give what follows; the locality is near Inverness and the Caledonian Canal: "We now bent our steps toward Craig Phadrick, two miles north. This is the site of one of the celebrated vitrified forts, concerning the creation of which there has been so much learned discussion. And verily there is room, for there is mystery: I will detail what we saw. On the summit of a steep hill of conglomerate rock we could trace very clearly a double oblong enclosure of eighty yards by twenty, with entrances east and west, a space of five yards being between the two oblongs. The mounds were outwardly of turf, but under a thin skin of this was a thick continuous wall of molten stone, granite, gneiss, and sandstone, bubbling together in a hotchpot! The existence of these forts (occurring frequently on the heights and of various shapes) is attempted to be explained by divers theories. One man tells us they were beacons; but, first, what an enormous one is here, one hundred and twenty-four feet by sixty of blazing wood, timber being scarce too! next, they sometimes occur in low situations from which a flame could scarcely be seen; thirdly, common wood fire will not melt granite. Another pundit says they are volcanic. O wondrous volcano to spout oblong concentric areas of stone walls! Perhaps the best explanation is that the Celts cemented these hilltops of strongholds by means of coarse glass, a sort of red-hot mortar, using sea-sand and seaweed as a flux. This is Professor Whewell's idea, and with him we had some interesting conversation on that and other subjects." Of this Scotch tour, full of interest, thus very curtly. Turn we now to Ireland in 1835. My record of just fifty years ago is much what it might be now, starvation, beggary, and human wretchedness of all sorts in the midst of a rich land, through indolence relapsed into a jungle of thorns and briars, quaking bogs, and sterile mountains; whisky, and the idle uncertain potato, combining with ignorance and priestcraft, to demoralise the excitable unreasoning race of modern Celts. Let us turn from the sad scenes of which my said diary is full, to my day at the spar caverns of Kingston. "At the bottom of a stone quarry, we clad ourselves in sack garments that mud wouldn't spoil, and with lit candles descended into the abyss, hands, knees, and elbows being of as much service as our feet. Now, I am not going to map my way after the manner of guide-books, nor to nickname the gorgeous architecture of nature according to the caprice of a rude peasant on the spot or the fancy of a passing stranger. I might fill a page with accounts of Turks' tents, beehives, judges' wigs, harps, handkerchiefs, and flitches of bacon, but I rather choose to speak of these subterranean palaces with none of such vulgar similarities. No one ever saw such magnificence in stalactites; from the black fissured roofs of antres vast and low-browed caves they are hanging, of all conceivable shapes and sizes and descriptions. Now a tall-fluted column, now a fringed canopy, now like a large white sheet flung over a beetling rock in the elegant folds and easy drapery of a curtain, everywhere are pure white stalactites like icicles straining to meet the sturdier mounds of stalagmite below; whilst in the smaller caves slender tubes extend from top to bottom like congealed rain. One cavern is quite curtained round with dazzling and wavy tapestry; another has gigantic masses of the white spar pouring from its crannied roof like boiled Brobdingnag macaroni; others like heaps of snowy linen lying about or hanging from the ceiling. The extent of the caves is quite unknown: eleven acres (I was told) have been surveyed and mapped, while there are six avenues still unexplored, and you may already wander for twenty-four hours through the discovered provinces of the gnome king." This is not to be compared with Kentucky, perhaps not quite with Derbyshire; but it seemed to me marvellous at the time. Let this much suffice as hinted reference to those early journals, which, if the world were not already more full of books than of their readers, would be as well worth printing in their integrity as many others of their bound and lettered brethren.

In connection with these journals, I have been specially requested to add to the above this record following (dated forty-four years ago) as a specimen of my letter-writing in old days: it has pen-and-ink sketches, here inserted by way of rough and ready illustration. The whole letter is printed in its integrity as desired, and tells its own archæological tale, though rather voluminously; but in the prehistoric era before Rowland Hill arose, to give us cheap stamps for short notes, it was an economy to make a letter as long as possible to pay for its exorbitant postage: for example, my letters to and from Oxford used to cost eightpence—or double if in an envelope, then absurdly surcharged.

My Cornish Expedition.

The Arms of Cornwall

8th and 9th of January 1840.