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The following letters refer to a topic to which Blanchard used to recur from time to time, with feelings of mingled fondness and pain that were very interesting to witness, for those who alone did witness them—the friends to whom he could show the inmost places of his heart.
All the world know that, next to their inventor, Macworth Praed, Blanchard was the
most fertile and felicitous writer we have had, of those light, easy, and smiling verses
which are one of the very few original features of the literature of our own day. But many
even of his (Blanchard’s) own admirers and associates did not
know until after his death that he had published, at the outset of his literary career, a
volume of serious poetry; still less that this volume was the only one among the numerous
progeny of
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There was something very touching about the timid and deprecating modesty with which Blanchard sometimes recurred to this “first love” of his literary life, and to which he remained true to the last, through twenty years of forced separation and divorce.
The first conversation I had with Blanchard on this topic was brought about by my asking him to look at some
verses by my son, then a youth of eighteen. This led him to speak of his own youthful volume, and of a criticism on it by Sir Edward Bulwer, in the New Monthly Magazine! This criticism, which is no more than bare justice
(administered in a kind and admiring spirit) fully warrants, had called forth in
Blanchard an amount of gratitude to its author which he seemed to
think his life could not be long enough to testify; and he was evidently so pleased with
the fair pretext which now occurred for sending it to me (namely, that it contained
“a good scrap of advice to young poets”) that I had not the
| 214 | LAMAN BLANCHARD. |
Here are the three letters: the first appointing a meeting to hear some of my boy’s verses; the second written the morning after having heard them, and enclosing Bulwer’s paper from the New Monthly; and the third (without date) a few days after.
“My dear Patmore,—Influenza has visited us here, and prevented my writing yesterday. Moreover, I have been seeking for that article on ‘Young Poets and the Public,’ and cannot find it; but I must,—it was in N. M. M., June, 1832. Thursday is rather a bespoken night. May I look in about seven or so on Friday? You will see me, unless you be engaged then, in which case one line will do.
“Dear Patmore,—I have
to-day recovered the notice I alluded to. It contains a good
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“My strong and clear conviction of the extreme beauty and finish of what I heard and read last night remains this morning undiminished. They will bear thinking over, and the impression they made is a lasting one, I am sure. Nothing Tennyson has done need be despaired of.
“Preserve my paper for me.”
“My dear Patmore,—I was just
going to write, as your note arrived, to put off the Kensingtonian excursion
for a couple of Sundays, as I find I must be at home
tomorrow (and the Count, I just happen to hear, dines out). Your suggestion
increases my wishes, without diminishing my inability. But I think I can drop
in on Monday, between eight and nine. If by chance
| 216 | LAMAN BLANCHARD. |
“I shall esteem it an honour and a pleasure to be allowed to see anything that may be producible, then and at all times; for so strong is the feeling fixed in my mind, that I do not calculate on disappointment. As for you, your course is clear; there can be no mistake.
Blanchard gave me an amusing account afterwards of
the half-serious, half-comic alarm he had felt on my first asking him to look at and give
me his “honest” opinion of my son’s verses, and his fears as to the shifts he should be put to in
escaping the dilemma in which (“of course,” as he said) he should find himself,
of either compromising his own honesty or wounding that parental partiality with which he
so well knew how to sympathise. The occasion of the following note was probably an
unconsciously wilful escape for the moment from his comic difficulty; at
| LAMAN BLANCHARD. | 217 |
“My dear Patmore,—I fear I may have kept you at home, and inconvenienced you; but I am beset with work. I had arranged all my ‘Examiner’ matters, so that six o’clock was to have seen me released, but ——’s absence has put me out, and I cannot possibly stir from the paper. I have now, at five o’clock, very much to do. On Monday, at half-past seven, without fail, expect me, unless forbidden by your own hand in the interim. Any night but Wednesday will suit me; only I name the first of the week.
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