| HORACE SMITH. | 215 |
For some years subsequent to the period just referred to,
Horace Smith confined his literary efforts to
light and ephemeral magazine papers, in prose and verse. Having, however, in the meantime
retired from city life, with a competent fortune, and, finding that the only safe and
permanent road to literary fame, and large profits from it, was that which had been
recently opened by Walter Scott, he determined to try
his hand at a prose fiction, under the three volume novel form. And this brings me to the
incident in his literary career which has chiefly induced me to offer the foregoing and
subsequent details to the reader. I must premise, however, that I should not have felt
myself justified in making public the anecdote and correspondence which follows, but that
| 216 | HORACE SMITH. |
Perhaps I cannot better introduce the Correspondence which follows, than by giving the passage above referred to, from the preface to the last edition of “Brambletye House.”
“Having learnt that I had composed a work of fiction, which,
however, no one had then seen, he, Mr. Colburn,
wrote me a flattering letter, offering so liberal a sum for the copyright, that, with a
mingled feeling of surprise and gratification, I acceded to his proposal, and forwarded
him the papers. It is customary with publishers to submit their manuscripts to
competent readers, for the purposes of revision. The gentleman upon whom the task devolved in the present instance, and who
was a perfect stranger to me, sent me a friendly and admirably-written letter,
earnestly dissuading me from printing a work which, as he felt well assured, would
disappoint the expectations of the public,
| HORACE SMITH. | 217 |
| 218 | HORACE SMITH. |
The following is a copy of the letter referred to by Mr. Horace Smith in the foregoing statement. Its insertion seems necessary to a full understanding of that which follows it:—
“Sir,—I fear you will think
me officious in what I am about to say to you; but I hope, and indeed expect,
that you will not think me impertinent; because you will perceive that I can
have but one motive for the step I am taking. You are, of course, aware that
publishers, before they finally arrange for the publication of any considerable
work, are in the habit of consulting some ‘literary friend’ in
whose judgment they think they can confide, as to the character, &c., of
the work in question. In pursuance of this practice, Mr. Colburn has placed in my hands the MS. of
your novel entitled ‘The Gentleman in
Black,’ mentioning to me that it is yours, simply because he
supposed that, as I am in the habit of reading all that you write,
| HORACE SMITH. | 219 |
“I have accordingly perused the work with great care; and I now, after much hesitation, and with unfeigned diffidence and embarrassment, venture to address you, instead of Mr. Colburn, on the subject.
“You will readily believe that I have had some difficulty in making up my mind to do this at all. But I assure you that the mode in which I am to do it is still more perplexing to me. As, however, the shortest mode will doubtless be the one least unpleasant to you, I shall at once adopt that. In a word, then—is your own opinion as to the merits of the MS. I have just read entirely settled? Of course, I mean so far as a writer can feel that he is able to judge of his own work. And if your opinion about it is settled, have you fully made up your mind to give this work to the world?
“As I am not in a position to obtain replies to these
questions, I must go on to say—if you have not fully determined on the
publication of the ‘Gentleman in Black,’
let me entreat you to reconsider of it, and to place
| 220 | HORACE SMITH. |
“I could willingly stop here, but as I have voluntarily ‘tied myself to the stake,’ it would be cowardice not to ‘fight the course.’ I will therefore add, that if, instead of being a stranger to you personally, I were such a friend as I have just fancied, I should earnestly entreat you not to publish the work at all.
“Probably if I were saying this
to you instead of writing it, your first question (if you chose to listen to me
at all on the subject) would be—‘Why?’ And the reply to it would
puzzle me not a little. But as it is, I find the reply still more difficult;
for to go into any detailed remarks on your work,
without being able to judge whether or not you are likely to have perused this
letter even thus far, without throwing it into the fire, would be an impertinence. I must, therefore, content myself with
saying, gene-
| HORACE SMITH. | 221 |
“Perhaps, as I have been tempted to say thus much, I ought to proceed into something like detail, in order to bear out the general opinion I am expressing. But (to say nothing of my fear that I have already said too much) I not only expect, but earnestly hope, that my opinion—the value of which, whatever it may be, you cannot possibly know—will have no further influence on you than to induce you to reconsider the matter yourself, and to procure the opinion of some other person on whom you can depend.
“And now, Sir, I really feel myself called upon to
apologise for addressing the above observations to you, and to suggest—I had
almost said to invent—excuses for so doing. But perhaps the real reason for
doing a thing is always, between honest men, the best after all, both for giver
and receiver. The truth,
| 222 | HORACE SMITH. |
| HORACE SMITH. | 223 |
“In order that what I have now said may not place or leave you in any uncertainty as to your position with Mr. Colburn in this matter, I think it necessary to add that I have not taken this step without letting him know that I intended, or rather that I desired, to do so; for if he had expressed any objection to my offering you the advice I have now ventured to give, I should have felt myself bound not to offer it—for reasons which will be obvious to you.
“It may be proper for me to add further, that, in case
you should still determine on publishing this novel, nothing that I either have
said or need say to Mr. Colburn
respecting it will be calculated to interfere with any arrangements that you
may wish to make with him—my general opinion of the work being that, even
without your name, it is likely to meet with a fair share of success, and that
| 224 | HORACE SMITH. |
“In conclusion, let me say, that if my name would give any additional weight to the opinion I have expressed above, I should feel no hesitation in subscribing it; but it would not. I should therefore only be taking a still further liberty in subscribing it.
To this letter the writer received the following reply:—
“Sir,—Beginning with thanking you most cordially for the
frank, friendly, and delicate manner in which you have executed your unpleasant
commission respecting my attempt, I beg to assure you, that if we had known one
another personally (a pleasure and advantage to myself which I still hope to
enjoy), you would have felt little or none of that difficulty and embarrassment
to which you allude. Always distrustful of my own trifling productions, nobody
has been more
| HORACE SMITH. | 225 |
| 226 | HORACE SMITH. |
“It might look like affectation were I to say that I am not vexed at having misspent my time. But I can from my heart declare, that the sentiments of esteem with which you are pleased to honour my character as a man, more than compensate any little disappointment which I may feel as a scribbler.
“Again begging you to accept my sincere acknowledgments, I am, Sir, your obliged and grateful servant,
It should seem, from Mr. Horace Smith’s statement in the extract I have given from his preface to “Brambletye House,” that the remonstrance which was the chief object of the following letter, as to his intended precipitate sacrifice of his first attempt at novel-writing, either came too late or was disregarded:—
| HORACE SMITH. | 227 |
“Sir,—Mr. Colburn has just given me your letter, the terms of which, I need scarcely say, are very gratifying to me. It tempts me, however, to take the liberty of addressing you a second time—partly with a view to correct an error into which you appear to have fallen in respect to my first letter; but chiefly on another account.
“You speak of the ‘unpleasant
commission’ which I have executed. This makes me fear that you may
have received my letter as the result of an understanding between Mr.
Colburn and myself, that that would be the best mode of making
you acquainted with the opinion which, according to your express wish, he had
obtained respecting your work. I am anxious that you should not suppose this to
have been the case, simply because, in point of fact, it was not the case. If it had been so, I should then indeed have been
executing ‘an unpleasant commission’—or rather it would have
been one that I should have refused to execute at all—because I consider that
my only fair excuse for venturing to address you was (if I may
| 228 | HORACE SMITH. |
“I will say no more on this point. Indeed I am afraid you may already think I am ‘considering too curiously’—especially as I feel that the point in question would not, of itself, have entitled me to trouble you a second time.
“My chief reason for addressing you now is the hasty
determination (you must allow me to call it so) to which you seem to have come,
in consequence of what I said concerning your work. I am not going to affect
any particular modesty in regard to the value of my opinion on a point like the
one in question; and if you yourself had had any opportunity of judging as to
that value, and had then chosen to abide by it, I should have had nothing to
say. Nay—if I had gone somewhat into detail concerning the work, and given any
express reasons for the unfavourable opinion I
entertained of it,
| HORACE SMITH. | 229 |
“You will perhaps say that the affair is one for your consideration alone. But to this I must reply—not
exactly, and for the reason I have just hinted at. In fact, it never for a
moment occurred to me that you would think of doing more than I had urged you
to do. The utmost that I anticipated or hoped from my letter was that you would
pause and consider, and take further means of ascertaining whether my advice
was worth attending to. I assure you that if I had wished my letter to produce
any other result than this, I should have written it in different terms. If,
therefore, its effect was any other, it arose from my
| 230 | HORACE SMITH. |
“Probably your reply will still be—that all this is for your consideration. I cannot deny it—and I have done: for my object in troubling you now is, not to again urge anything upon your consideration, but only to absolve myself from the imputation as well as the responsibility of having presumed to offer you a judgment that could by possibility become a final one on such a point.
“Long as I fear you will find this letter, I cannot
conclude it without alluding to a few words at the beginning of yours, which
seem to point at the possibility of our not remaining unknown to each other. If
I have never sought this pleasure, and cannot persuade myself to seek it even now, it is because I feel with the most
unfeigned humi-
| HORACE SMITH. | 231 |
Whether or not Horace Smith deemed the concluding paragraph of the foregoing letter a cold and ungracious greeting of his advance towards a personal acquaintance, instead of being (as it was) a diffident waiting for a further advance on his part—certain it is that he never made any subsequent advance—nor was I anxious to receive one—believing as I did, and do, that it is not in human nature—at all events, not in literary human nature—to entertain feelings of complacency towards the man who has succeeded in satisfying us that we are not so clever as we had fancied ourselves. And this view of the matter was confirmed by the fact, that, when we several years afterwards become personally acquainted, Horace Smith never alluded to the subject, though, in the interim, he had, as I understood, become acquainted with the name of his volunteer adviser.
| 232 | HORACE SMITH. |
Some years after the date of the above correspondence, but before I was personally acquainted with Horace Smith, the strong feeling I had always entertained as to his literary tact and judgment, and my strong confidence in the frank generosity of his personal character, induced me to “give him his revenge,” by submitting to his judgment a work, to which I attached as much value as I could persuade myself to do to anything of my own production. I had commissioned the mutual friend who handed the work to Horace Smith, to let him know, if he thought proper, that the writer of the comedy and of the disparaging remarks on “The Gentleman in Black” was one and the same person, but had specially stipulated for my name being withheld from him. Thus the case was evidently one of that class contemplated in the well-known wish that “mine enemy would write a book.” Whether the laudatory portions of the result, as given below, are to be attributed to sound judgment and honest approval, or to the generous forbearance of one who holds his too candid critic at his mercy, is more than I shall pretend to decide.
| HORACE SMITH. | 233 |
Here follow Horace Smith’s remarks on the work thus submitted to his critical judgment. It was a regular comedy of the old school.*
“It is many years since I resided in London, or even saw a play there, and such marked changes have latterly occurred in the conduct of our theatres and the dramatic taste of the public, that I feel some hesitation in offering an opinion upon this comedy as adapted to an audience of the present day. But I have no difficulty whatever in declaring that, when measured by the very best works of a similar class that I have either seen or read,† it seems to me to be one of those genuine and legitimate comedies that ought to command a great and undoubted success. Its merits are of a high order—sterling—indisputable; and, if they be not recognised as such, I can only repeat that the public taste must have been changed very much for the worse.
“So much for the general impression pro-
* This comedy has just been published, under the title of “Marriage in May Fair.” † The italics are the writer’s own. |
| 234 | HORACE SMITH. |
“I don’t like the title, which will tempt the wags to turn the play into ridicule, should it not be very favourably received, and which may be avoided by prefixing the word ‘assumed,’ or ‘affected.’
“The first act, I think, would bear a little compression. In these days, when so much bustle is required, I would not make the whole act (however the unities may be preserved) consist of only one scene. Change of scene, even from one room to another, keeps attention awake, and assists an audience, just as a frequent division into chapters enlivens a reader.
“Act ii., p. 2. I agree with Mr. Ward, in thinking that it is rather hazardous to say too
much about Belton’s wit; for it makes it deuced difficult to write up to
your own character. Parts of this act recal ‘The School for Scandal;’ and, in the
next act, I was reminded of ‘The Road to Ruin;’ but in neither case is there anything more
than
| HORACE SMITH. | 235 |
“Act iv., p. 1. Lady Falkland’s talking of a separation, on so very slight a foundation, is too strong. Might she not say,—‘Some wives, if they were thus treated, would insist on a separation,’ &c.
“Act v., last scene. If Belton is to be dismissed without any redeeming traits, or feelings of repentance, I think he gets off too cheaply. Couldn’t he be more completely humiliated and exposed? Nor would I dismiss him with a threat that points to a duel, and leaves a doubt upon the minds of the audience whether the comedy, after all, may not have a tragic conclusion.
“I agree with Mr. Ward in thinking that more might be made of Emma,—particularly in some scenes with her brother, and that she is unnecessarily lowered by being so very easily bestowed upon Wildgoose. I am also of opinion, that the audience ought to be let into Madame Beaumonde’s honest intentions, that they might sympathise with her, as she proceeds to carry them into effect, and enjoy more the defeat of Belton.
“I have now stated every objection that
| 236 | HORACE SMITH. |
It was two or three years after the date last referred to, that I became personally acquainted with Horace Smith, at a literary dinner-party at the house of a mutual friend; and I have never met with a literary man, whose personal bearing was, on this first abord, more entirely and agreeably answerable to the social and intellectual reputation he had enjoyed for so many years: for he was at this time considerably advanced in life.
As Horace Smith had, at the period I
now refer to, retired from London life, and constantly resided at Brighton, my subsequent
personal acquaintance with him remained very slight. It would, therefore, be inconsistent
with the plan and principle of these Recollections, for me to attempt any estimate
| HORACE SMITH. | 237 |
| 238 | HORACE SMITH. |
The following letter will speak for itself.
“Dear Sir,—Many thanks to you
and Mr. Moxon, for the little volume of
poems by your son, which I have just perused with very great
pleasure; and beg leave most sincerely to congratulate you on the true feeling
of poetry which they evince, and the promise they afford of his attaining no
mean station in literature, since he can accomplish so much in the outset of
his career. The times, we are daily told, are not poetical; but I cannot, and
do not, believe, that the simple and natural effusions of the Muse will ever
lose their attraction. The subject of the Woodman’s Daughter is painful,
but it is very
| HORACE SMITH. | 239 |
James Smith was very different from his brother
Horace in all the qualities and attributes of
his mind and intellectual character, with the exception of his lively wit, amiable and
popular manners, and singularly gentlemanly bearing and personal appearance. In this latter
respect James Smith was all his
| 240 | HORACE SMITH. |
My first sight of James Smith, and its result, so strongly and singularly confirm this feeling, that I will venture to relate the odd circumstances attending it. I had repeatedly heard him spoken of generally in the above sense by his friends, but had not heard his personal appearance described, and had certainly not seen any portrait of him, or attempted to form to myself any specific notion whatever of his “complement extern,” when, in passing up Ludgate Hill, I met a person of whom I said to myself as he passed me—“that, I think, must be James Smith.”
The supposition that one could thus fix a man’s identity purely by
instinct, seemed so ridiculous on the face of it, that I never thought of the matter again
till about two years afterwards, when I met, at the house of the late Charles Mathews, at Highgate,
| HORACE SMITH. | 241 |
The reader will perhaps smile incredulously at this little history; but it is simply true nevertheless.
James Smith, though certainly not possessing a
larger amount of wit and humour than his brother Horace, was essentially and emphatically
“a wit”—in the old-fashioned sense of the age of Anne and her immediate successor. Had he lived in those days, he would have
been among the favourite habitués of
Button’s and Wills’s, and would have manfully asserted and maintained his
station among the best of that brilliant day. As it was—though, like his brother,
associating with the highest and most cultivated spirits of the day in which he lived, and
fully qualified to take a distinguished place among them—unlike that gentle and genial
spirit, he preferred those lower and more limited circles in which his intellectual
pretensions were paramount and his supremacy undisputed: he preferred the green-rooms of
Covent Garden and Drury Lane to Holland
| 242 | HORACE SMITH. |
| HORACE SMITH. | 243 |
On Mathews’s neighbour, Mrs. Coutts, afterwards the Duchess of St. Albans, being mentioned, James Smith related the following story, à propos to her early career:—“I was lately present,” said J. S., “when two elderly ladies were discussing, in a stagecoach, the character and doings of Mrs. Coutts. Among other things, after going through a long list of her alleged iniquities, one of the ladies, professing to be very liberal in her estimate of the character they were handling, and not disposed to make out the subject of their discourse as worse than she really was, said that she had just been reading a biographical sketch of her life, in the course of which, in describing the various blandishments she had used to attract and gratify her aged patron, it was stated (in a quoted line of verse) that she had—
“Hopped in his walks, and gambolled in his sight.” |
“Now, ma’am,” said the speaker, “this I
take to be a piece of scandal; and scandal about any woman is
what I never will encourage or circulate. Mrs.
Coutts has plenty of faults, no doubt; but I don’t think she
| 244 | HORACE SMITH. |
On the same day, he told a story in illustration of the blissful ignorance of a certain city millionaire. A friend met him at Brighton, just after he had been shampooed by the celebrated black man, Mahomet; and he was saying that, though he had undergone the operation a great many times, he didn’t find that it had done him any good. “Then,” said his friend, who we may suppose to have been a joker of the James Smith school, “I suppose you consider that he is Mahomet the Impostor.” “Oh no!” said the good-natured Sir William, as if shocked at the idea of saying anything that might hurt the poor man’s reputation—“Oh no! I don’t say that—I don’t say that.”
Now these stories, droll as they are, bear something upon the face of them which more than indicate their origin to have been the brain of the relator; and it was the same with nearly all James Smith’s spoken facetiæ. He was a wit, certainly; but he was more of a wag than a wit, and more of a pleasant, because well-conditioned egotist than either.
| HORACE SMITH. | 245 |
This view of James Smith’s intellectual pretensions, as compared with those of his younger brother, the simple-hearted, kindly, generous, and unpretending Horace, is confirmed by the fact that all, or nearly all, the best parts of the “Rejected Addresses” were written by the latter. This is the case with the Byron, Scott, Moore, Fitzgerald, &c.
Though living to an advanced age, and devoted during the whole of his life to the duties of an absorbing profession;* and though during the last fifteen years of that life he was a martyr to bodily infirmities, and for years before his death could only move about on crutches, James Smith nevertheless preserved to the last that gaiety of heart, that cheerful temperament, and that “spirit of youth,” which, in fact, were the main secrets of his social as well as his literary success.
|
* He was at an early age articled to his father, an eminent legal practitioner, and solicitor to the Ordnance, and succeeded him in the latter appointment. |
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