Martin Farquhar Tupper - My Life as an Author

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"We are each a brief note in that wonderful hymn,
And to us its Oneness is hazy and dim;
We hear the few sounds from the viol we play,
But all the full chorus floats far and away:
Our poor little pipe of an instant is drown'd
In the glorious rush of that ocean of sound;
The player hears nothing beyond his own bars,
Whilst all that grand symphony reaches the stars:
Yet, though our piping seems but little worth
It adds to the Anthem Creation pours forth,
And, whether we know it or not, we can give
Not a note more or less in the life that we live.

"Ah me! we are nothing--or little at best--
But duty with greatness the least can invest:
One note on the flute or the trumpet may seem
A poor petty work for ambition's fond dream,--
But what if that note be a need-be to blend
And quicken the score from beginning to end?
To show forth the mind of the Master, who guides
With baton unerring Time's mixture of tides,
The good with the evil, the blessing and bane,
The Amazon rushing far into the main,
Until, from this skill'd combination of notes,
Bound earth to the heavens His overture floats!"

CHAPTER XXVII.

F.R.S.

A page or two about my connection with the Royal Society may have some
small interest. When my father (who had long been a Fellow) died in
1844, I wished to give to the Society his marble bust by Behnes as a
memorial of honour to him; but my mother preferred to keep it, as was
natural. Meanwhile, however, some of my father's friends, and in
particular his old patron, Lord Melbourne, then recently elected, put me
up as a candidate, and as I find recorded in my Archive-book, vol. ii.,
my certificate "was signed by Argyll, Bristol, Henry Hallam, Thomas
Brande, Dr. Paris, P.B.C.S., Sir C.M. Clarke, and Sir Benjamin Brodie:
in due time I was elected, and on the 8th of May 1845 was admitted by
Lord Northampton." At my election occurred this very strange and
characteristic incident. There was only one ball against me among
twenty-seven for me in the ballot-box; the meetings were then held at
Somerset House, the Society on a less numerous scale than at present,
and the elections easier and more frequent. When the President announced
the result, up jumped Lord Melbourne, begging pardon for his mistake in
having dropped his ball into the wrong hole!--an amusing instance of the
_laissez-faire_ carelessness habitual to that good-humoured Minister.

As I have now been more than forty years a Fellow, I ought to be ashamed
to confess that I never contributed a Paper to its learned Proceedings;
all of which as they come to me I give appropriately enough to the
famous Wotton Library, belonging to my excellent friend Evelyn, heir and
successor to the celebrated John Evelyn of the Sylva, one of the
Society's founders. That I have seldom even read them is also a pitiful
truth; for the mysterious nomenclature of modern chemistry, the
incomprehensibility (to my ignorance) of the higher mathematics, the
hopeless profundity of treatises on the tides, dynamics, electricity,
and microscopic anatomicals, are, I am free to avow, worse to me than
"heathen Greek," nay (for I _can_ in some sort tackle that), more
difficult than the clay tablets of Assyria or a papyrus of Rameses II.
So I must confess to being an idle drone among the working bees.

Only thrice have I ventured to ask questions of consequence, scarcely
yet answered by the pundits. One regards Spectrum Analysis: How can we
be sure that the lines indicative of gases and other elements are not
mainly due to the emanations from our own globe, swathed as it is by
more than forty miles of an atmosphere impregnated by its own salts and
acids in aerial solution? May we not be deducing false conclusions as to
the varying lights of stars and nebulae, if all the while to our vision
they are as it were clouded by our own smoke? Telescopes have to pierce
so thick a stratum of earth's aura and ether that it is expectable they,
would show us only our own composites in those of other worlds. The
spectra are varied, I know, but so may be our wrappings of atmosphere
from one night to another. Let this ignorant query suffice about Dr.
Huggins' great discovery.

Again, I certainly (after some knowledge of strange facts) could have
wished that Mr. Crookes's philosophical spiritualism had met with a more
patient hearing than Dr. Carpenter or Mr. Huxley offered at the time;
and that Faraday's clumsy mechanical refutation of table-turning had not
been considered so conclusive. For there really are "more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio," &c., than even your omniscience is aware of;
and without pinning faith on Madame Blavatsky, or Mr. Hume, or any other
wonder-worker from America or Thibet, there doubtless are petty miracles
in what is called spiritualism (possibly some form of electricity) that
demand more scrutiny than our materialists will have the patience to
vouchsafe: I for one believe in human testimony even as to the
miraculous.

For a third and last inquiry: justly indignant at the horrors of
Continental vivisection, and especially in our own humane England at Dr.
Ferrier's red-hot wires thrust into live monkeys' brains, I have often
vainly asked _cui bono_ such terrible cruelty? The highest authorities
are at variance with each other as to the practical utility in human
therapeutics of experiments upon agonised brutes; but all must be agreed
that, so far as morals are concerned, vivisection only hardens the heart
and sears the feelings and conscience of doctors who may surround the
dying-bed of our dearest, and very possibly make capital of peculiar
symptoms in their patient, by experiments transferred from dogs and
rabbits to himself! Single votes are useless against the annual list of
selected candidates, or I for one would have at all inconvenience
testified both at Oxford and in the Royal Society against the election
of a certain Professor whose glory lies in vivisection.

For an appropriate end to these discursive sentences, let me add this
poetic morsel in my own vein. Mr. Butler of Philadelphia was quite right
in his judgment of my _indoles_: I "write by impulse on occasion." Here
is a very recent instance in point. I had lately visited Mr. Barraud's
painted-window works near Seven Dials, and when I told Mr. Herbert Rix,
our Assistant-Secretary, of what you may read below, he exhorted me to
put it into verse, which I did impromptu, and sent it to him: now thus
first printed:--

"I saw the artist in a colour-shop
Staining some bits of glass variously shaped
To map the painted window of a church,
And marvelled that the tintings all seemed wrong;
Red, green, and brown should have been interchanged
To show the colours right. Why did he use
His brush so carelessly, my folly asked.
'Wait for the fire,--the fire will make all right,
The reds and greens and browns will change again,
Fusing harmoniously,' so Knowledge spake;
And thus a thought of wisdom came to me
Touching the truth, how kindly curative
Must be the pains and cares and griefs of life,
For that the furnace of adversity,
Melts to its proper good each seeming ill.
Again, I noticed how the artist chose
Not clear good glass, whether of plate or crown,
But common-looking stuff, bubbled and flawed,
As if selected for its blemishes
Rather than for transparent purity.
'Why not choose better glass to paint upon?'
To this he answered, 'Wouldn't do at all.
My faces mustn't look lifeless and dull,
But, as instinct with motion, light and life,
Not in enamelled uniformity:
The sunshine cannot sparkle where all's smooth;
I choose the most imperfect panes to make
A perfect, vigorous picture.'--Then I learnt
How wonderfully Providence is pleased
To cause all evil things to help the good;
Nay, deeper, to ordain that good itself
Can scarcely be discerned without the harm
Of some companion-ill; even as gold
Is useless unalloyed; and Very Light
Unshadowed kills, as unapproachable;
And absolute unmitigated good
Alone is Godhead. Every creature here
(In this our human trial-world at least)
Is full of faults and spots and blemishes,
If only to set off his better self,
His talents, graces, excellent good gifts,
Burnt in the fire to brighter excellence
And fused harmonious into perfect man."

I have often thought that our Great Teacher's parables were true
pictures of things around Him; He painted from living models,
"impulsively and on occasion." The prodigal son, the unjust judge, the
rich fool, the camel unladen to pass the narrow tunnel of the needle's
eye, the lost sheep, the found piece of money and the like,--all were
real incidents made use of by His wisdom, who spake as never man spake,
and did all things well.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

PERSONATION.

It has several times happened to me, as doubtless to others of my
brethren, to find that I have been personated, certainly to my
considerable discredit. Take these instances. When at Brighton, a fellow
had the effrontery to collect money in my name, and I suppose he
somewhat resembled me, as I heard more than once that I had been seen
here and there, where I undoubtedly was not, and proved an _alibi_. At
Bignor, where I went to see some Roman pavements on the property of a
Sussex yeoman of my name (very possibly a German cousin) the owner
received me with more than suspicion when I said who I was,--because
"the true Martin Tupper had been his guest for a week, and brought him a
book he had written," and one of mine then was lying on the table! But I
soon made it clear that he had been deceived, and that the real Simon
Pure was now before him. Divers other cases might be mentioned; however,
perhaps the most curious is this, and I extract the whole statement from
one of my scrap-books now before me. It is headed "An anecdote to
account for certain slanders," the date being August 1865:--

"I have heard it seriously asserted of me that I am a great pugilist!
and very far in conduct and manners from what one might expect, and so
forth. Now it has just come to my knowledge that a sporting publican
and dog-fancier, who called his public-house in the Waterloo Road 'The
Greyhound' (my crest), and has my name over the lintel, has claimed to
be the author, and is supposed to be myself! Mr. Payne (my publisher)
told me about the 'pugilist,' and said he had heard it in the clubs that
I was a match for Sayers,--as I conclude my sporting namesake is." In
America, too, I found that my double lived at Hardwick, Worcester Co.,
N.Y., and that another Martin hailed from Buffalo. So, like poor Edgar
Poe, who had to suffer from the machinations of a profligate brother,
who gave Edgar's name whenever he got into a scrape, I may have
sometimes been credited with the sins of strangers. No one is free from
this sort of calumny. We all have heard of Sheridan's wicked witticism,
in that when taken up in Pall Mall for drunkenness, he gave his name
Wilberforce; and it is said that he got drunk on purpose to say so! My
venerable friend, Thomas Cooper, the pious and eloquent old Chartist,
has been similarly confused with Robert Cooper, the atheist, lecturer;
not but that Thomas had once been an atheist too. In this connection,
here is a curiously complicated case of _alibi_, which I abstract
_verbatim_ from one of my Archive-books.

"On Sunday, the 17th of September 1848, I was all the afternoon and
evening at my house on Furze Hill, Brighton, quietly reading and
teaching my children, &c. Next day the 'Rev. J.C. Richmond (an American
friend) called with me on the Rev. Mr. Vaughan, and in the course of
conversation the latter said to me in a good-natured tone of rebuke:
'Some of my congregation tell me they saw you yesterday afternoon
smoking a cigar in a fly on the Marine Parade.' I had hardly time to
deny the soft impeachment, which I might well have done with emphasis,
as a loather of cigars, and as little as possible a traveller on
Sundays, when Richmond broke out with 'That's impossible; for I saw him
myself in Shoreham Church (five miles distant), and noticed that he went
away in the middle of the sermon, as I supposed, to get home to Mrs.
Tupper.' Mr. Richmond says he could have made oath that I had been
there, and that he told several persons after church that I 'had heard
part of the sermon in the afternoon.' So, upon human and trustworthy
evidence, I could have been proved to have been in three places at
once."

My fetch similarly once rescued a young lady from death on Snowdon: at
least a stranger in company once came up to me, to thank me for my
prowess in having stopped his daughter's pony, which had run away down,
the mountain!--in vain I denied it:--and he addressed me by my name,
too! Somebody must have given him my card by accident.

And let me here allude (if I can without indelicacy) to another sort of
personation of more financial importance to myself. Lately, I have seen
some not very refined nor considerate paragraphs in American papers (Mr.
Bok, a Brooklyn editor, has told me that more than four hundred repeated
them) to the effect that in the battle of life I had--truly
enough--suffered reverses, and needed material help from my many
professing friends. Moreover I have heard it stated that some sort of
collection was volunteered for me. Well, this may have been the case or
not; but anyhow the fact is (and it should be announced to those who may
have given--and wonder at no acknowledgment of their kindness having
come from me) that to this hour I have received nothing from America
(except a few dollars sent by one lady, and some more from a
Transatlantic relative), either on account of my so-called testimonial,
or these more recent paragraphs. The annoyance in my own mind, and in
the suspicion of some others round me, is the awkward fancy that sundry
small collections may have been intercepted. Possibly some other Martin
Tupper has the spoil.

Another sort of dishonest personation whereto we are all liable, whether
authors or not, is the having imputed to us divers forged or garbled
sentiments, even in the immutability of print, I have now before me a
Boston copy of my first Proverbial published by one Joseph Dowe in 1840,
which, though stated to be "from the London edition," designedly omits
all allusion to the Trinity, even my whole essay thereon, for Mr. Dowe
as a Unitarian chose to make me one! Also, I have seen my name attached
to verses I never wrote, and have been claimed both by Swedenborgians
and Freemasons as a brother, while Jesuitry has otherwise traduced me.
Artists also as well as authors are similarly misrepresented; my
son-in-law, Clayton Adams, for instance, tells me that his name has been
added to landscapes he never painted, and that they sold by auction at
high prices. Modern society should punish such cheateries severely.

CHAPTER XXIX.

HOSPITALITIES--FARNHAM, ETC.

Amongst other memorabilia in no particular order, let me set down a few
visits, longer than a mere call, to sundry persons and places of note.
As these, for instance. Annually during many years I used to be a guest
from Thursday to Monday at Farnham Castle, when the good Bishop's
venison was in season. Of course, at such a table I constantly met
celebrities, but a mere list of their names would be tedious, and any
public record of private hospitalities I hold to be improper. No doubt
the kindly and courtly Bishop Sumner held high festival like an ancient
Baron, at such a rate (for those were golden times from renewed leases
for the see) as no successor with a less unlimited income could well
afford. The grandeur of Farnham Castle died with him: and my good friend
from boyhood, Bishop Harold Browne, must not be blamed if with less than
half his means he cannot compete with him.

I was enabled to gratify Bishop Sumner in a way that touched his heart,
as thus. A cousin of mine, De Lara Tupper of Rio Janeiro, a rich
merchant prince there, sent me, as a present for my Albury greenhouse,
two large bales of orchids, which, however, were practically useless to
me, as I had not that expensive luxury, a regular orchid-house. But I
knew that the dear Bishop had, and that orchid-growing was his special
hobby: accordingly all were transferred to Farnham, and I need not say
how gratefully accepted, as many roots proved to be most rare, and some
specimens quite unique. The good man gave me, _en revanche_, a splendid
Horace, in white vellum beautifully illustrated, and inscribed by him
"Gratiarum actio," now near me in a bookcase. The same South American
cousin sent me also a box of pines, oranges, and shaddocks just when
Garibaldi was our visitor at Princes Gate,--and I had the gratification
of giving many to him, not only because he mainly lived upon fruit, but
also because some of the said fruit came from the farm he and his first
wife, the well-beloved Anita, had once owned in South America. Later on,
Gladstone invited me to meet the hero at a reception in Carlton Gardens,
where I took note of Garibaldi, with his hostess on his arm, as he
walked in his simple red shirt, through a bowing lane of feathered
fashionables, whom he greeted right and left as if he had been always
used to such London high life. On that occasion I had the honour of
standing between Palmerston and Lord John Russell, who kindly conversed
with me, as also did the chief guest, specially thanking me for those
pines and oranges.

Parham.

Another notable visit of some days, was one to Parham, the ancient--and
haunted--seat of my old friend both at Charterhouse and at Christ
Church, Robert Curzon, afterwards Lord de la Zouche, the great collector
of Armenian and other missals and manuscripts. With him (alas! no more
amongst us, and his son has dropped the "de la") I spent a joyful and
instructive time: out of doors we fished in the lake and rode about the
park among the antlered deer,--three heads and horns whereof are now in
our glass-porch entrance at Albury; indoors, there was the splendid
gallery of family armour from feudal days,--several suits of which
Curzon told me he had tried to wear on some occasion, but couldn't; most
were too small for him, though by no means a tall man; and those which
he could struggle into were too heavy. Then there was the interminable
companion gallery of full-length portraits, some of whom, probably the
wicked ancestors, _walked_! and I'm sure that when I slept in a
tapestried chamber under that gallery, I did hear footsteps--could it
be, horrible fancy! in procession? When I told Curzon this, he answered
that he had often heard them himself, from boyhood, but that familiarity
bred contempt: he said also, with a twinkle in his eye, that there _was_
a room which was usually set apart for new-married couples, as such
would probably not be so much startled as lonely maids and bachelors
might be, at the whispered conversations across the bed! Moreover, evil
wings (possibly owls or bats, looking after glow-worm candles)
occasionally flapped at the casements. But Curzon was a humorist as well
as inventive. Perhaps one secret as to ghosts at Parham lay in the fact
that in the old thick walls were concealed staircases and "priests'
chambers," which possibly might be of use, even now, to vagrant lovers
(like Mr. Pickwick at Ipswich), or perhaps sleep-walkers,--or
burglarious, thieves. Anyhow, I liked to lock my bedroom door there,--as
indeed I do generally elsewhere, if lock and key are in good agreement;
for once I couldn't get out without the surgical operation of a
carpenter, having too securely locked myself in. This shall not happen
twice, if I can help it. Curzon's great glory, however, was his library,
full of rarities: he showed me, amongst other MSS., his unique purple
parchments, with gold letter types, being (if I remember rightly)
Constantine's own copy of the New Testament; and, to pass by other
curios, some tiny Elzevirs uncut: imagine his horror when I volunteered
to cut these open for him!--their chief and priceless wonder being that
no eye has ever seen, nor ever can see, the insides of those virgin
pages! I know there is such a rabies as bibliomania,--and I have myself,
at Albury, a "breeches" Bible, which belonged to a maternal ancestor, a
Faulkner, of course valued beyond its worth as a readable volume; and I
might name many other instances; but to esteem a book chiefly because it
has never been cut open, did strike my ignorance as an abnormal fatuity.
Curzon was one of our Aristotelians, as before mentioned.

Other Visits.

I am also mindful of a very pleasant week spent long ago at Shenstone's
Leasowes, a beautiful estate near Birmingham, now being dug up for coal
even as Hamilton is, where in those days some good friends of mine
resided, of whom (now departed like so many others) I have most kindly
recollections. The hostess, a charming and intelligent lady of the old
school, wearing her own white ringlets, used to have many talks with me
about Emanuel Swedenborg, a half-inspired genius whom she much favoured;
the host, a genial county magnate, did his best to enable me to catch
trout where Shenstone used to sing about them, and tried to interest me
in farm improvements: but my chief memory of those days is this. Whilst
I was there, a splendid testimonial in silver arrived in a fly from
Birmingham, well guarded by a couple of police against possible roughs,
the result of a zealous gathering from his political supporters; and
that Testimonial, "little Testy" as I called it, was a source of care
and dilemma to everybody; for care, it was immediately locked away for
fear of burglars; and as to dilemma, the white elephant was too tall for
the centre of a table, and too short to stand upon the floor. It seemed
closely to illustrate to my mind that wise text about a man's life and
his possessions. The cheerful spirit of the mansion and its inmates
seemed quite subdued by this unwelcome acquisition. When at the
Leasowes, I produced some suitable poems which were very kindly
received: here is one of them, hitherto unprinted.

_An Impromptu Sonnet._

_Ticked of at the Leasowes, Aug. 24, 1857, as per order._

"And so you claim a verse of me, good friend,
As from the inspiration of the place;
Well then,--from pastoral trash may taste defend
Your pleasant Leasowes, and the human race!
The Gentle Shepherd's day has had an end,
Nor even could melodious Shenstone here
(False and inflated, we must all allow),
Excite one glowing thought or pensive tear
Unless indeed of wrath or pity now:
Yet dearly can I love these tumbling hills
With roughly wooded winding glens between,
Set with clear trout pools link'd by gurgling rills
And all so natural and calm and green,
That served to enervate your Poetaster
But only strengthen now their Iron Master."

I will also record a hospitable sojourn in old days at Northwood Park,
the splendid abode of Isle-of-Wight Ward (grandfather to my school and
college friend Ward of the Aristotle class and Oxonian persecution),
where I once spent a week in my father's time: and similarly a visit at
Lord Spencer's perfect villa near Ryde: and at other pleasant homes,
made to me frequently welcome, the chief being Wotton, the classic
mansion of one of my oldest friends.

Also long ago,--see a former page,--I purposely dismissed with only a
word our lengthened visits in my father's day at Inveraray Castle with
the old Duke of Argyll, and Holkar Hall with Lord George Cavendish, as
private domesticities,--whilst a casual other few as at Ardgowan,
Rozelle, Herriard, Losely, and the like, gratefully on my memory, shall
be thus briefly recorded here: Ardgowan is the magnificent abode of my
friend Sir Michael Shaw-Stewart, after whose grandmother as my sponsor I
am named Farquhar; Rozelle, the hospitable mansion of Captain Hamilton,
where I sojourned many days, meeting the _elite_ of Ayr, and among them
the aged niece of Burns in the poet's own country; Herriard House, my
old school-friend Frank Ellis's heritage under his name of Jervoise, and
Losely--"of the manuscripts," where I have often visited my late
excellent friend James More Molyneux.

Of course, like everybody else who may be lifted a trifle above the
crowd, I have experienced, almost annually, the splendid hospitalities
of the Mansion House and most of the City Companies: may they long
continue, and not be spunged away by Radical meanness! all classes are
united and gratified thereby, for the poorest get the luxurious
leavings, and the feasts are paid for by benefactors long departed from
the scenes of their successful merchandise. All that seeming prodigality
and luxury have good uses. But I will mention (of course without the
hint of a name or place) one only instance of excessive splendour, quite
needless and to my mind vulgar. A great magnate (not a royalty, I need
hardly say) invited four guests to dine with his home party; the four
were my father and mother, my brother Dan and myself, humble guests
enough; and yet behind each of twelve chairs stood a gorgeous flunkey in
powder and bright livery, with my lord's gentleman superadded in
undertaker's evening trim, while the Earl himself wore his star and
garter! Of course too the buffet and the table were loaded, with
resplendent plate. That, scene of ostentation has been on the gray
matter of my brain ever since young manhood, and I relieve myself now of
the reminiscence for the first and last time. In another page I speak of
Prince Astor's pure gold service when I dined with him at New. York; and
I have grateful memory of the almost palatial splendour wherewith a rich
publisher entertained his guest at his castle under Arthur's Seat; but
in every case (and I might name others) my heart's aspiration has been,
"Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for
me." Mr. Vanderbilt was not happy with his millions; neither probably is
poor Jack without a shot in his locker.

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