Martin Farquhar Tupper - My Life as an Author

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I need not say what a riot that honest bit of verse raised among the
enthusiasts on both sides. I spoke from what I saw, and soon had reason
to corroborate my judgment: for I next paid a visit on my old Brook
Green school-friend, Middleton, at his burnt and ruined mansion near
Summerville: once a wealthy and benevolent patriarch, surrounded by a
negro population who adored him, all being children of the soil, and not
one slave having been sold by him or his ancestors for 200 years.
According to him, that violent emancipation was ruin all round: in his
own case a great farm of happy dependants was destroyed, the inhabitants
all dead through disease and starvation, a vast estate once well tilled
reverted to marsh and jungle, and himself and his reduced to utter
poverty,--all mainly because Mrs. Beecher Stowe had exaggerated isolated
facts as if they were general, and because North and South quarrelled
about politics and protection. Mrs. Stowe, I hear, has learnt wisdom, as
I did,--and now like me does justice to both sides. There is no end to
extracts from my journals, if I choose to make them; but I think I will
transcribe four stanzas which I gave to Williams Middleton in February
1877, on my departure, as they bring together past and present:--

"Ancient schoolmate at Brook Green
Half a century ago
(Nay, the years that roll between
Count some fifty-eight or so),--
Oh, the scenes 'twixt Now and Then,
Life in all its grief and joys,--
Meeting Now as aged men
Since the Then that saw us boys!

"There's a charm, a magic strange,
Thus to recognise once more,
Changeless in the midst of change
Mind and spirit as of yore;
Even face and form discerned
Easily and greeted well,
While our hearts together burned
At school-tales we had to tell.

"Mostly dead, forgotten, gone,--
Few old Railtonites of fame
(Here and there we noted one),
Yet we find ourselves the same!
Sons of either hemisphere
We can never stand apart,
With to me Columbia dear
And my England in your heart.

"You, of good old English stock,--
I--some kindred of mine own
Pound themselves on Plymouth Rock,
Five times fifty years agone;
So, I come at sixty-six,
All across the Atlantic main,
With my kith and kin to mix,
And to greet you once again!"

I may here record that, accompanied by Middleton, I watched at an
alligator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps
luckily for me, if I missed a stomach shot; that I was prevented from
bringing down a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful
scavengers; that I caught some dear little green tree frogs; that I
noted how the rice-fields had become a poisonous marsh; that I noticed
the extensive strata of guano and fossil bone pits, securing some large
dragon's teeth, and with them sundry flint arrow-heads, suggestive of
man's antiquity; that I lamented over the desolation of my friend's
mansion and estate, and in particular to have seen how outrageously the
Federals had destroyed his family-mausoleum, scattering the sacred
relics of his ancestors all round and about. This was simply because he
had been a Confederate magnate, and had owned patriarchally a multitude
of slaves, born on the spot through two centuries. He and his kind
brother, the Admiral,--my friendly host at Washington,--have joined the
majority elsewhere; but I heard from him and others down South the truth
about American slavery.

For remainder rapid notice. Paul Hayne the poet is remembered well; and
the fine old great-grandmother with eighty-six descendants of my name;
and thereafter came the inauguration of President Hayes, an account
whereof I wrote to the English papers; and hospitalities at the White
House, and records of plenty more Readings and receptions; and all about
Edgar Poe at Baltimore, and my acquaintance with Henry Ward Beecher, and
my final New York hospitalities, and my pamphlet "America Revisited,"
written on board the return steamer the _Batavia_,--and so an end
hurriedly.

This was my last farewell to my million friends, published in Bryant's
paper;--

_Valete!_

"A last Farewell--O many friends!
I leave your love with saddened heart;
And so my grateful spirit sends
This answering love before we part:
I thank you tenderly each one,
I praise your goodness, dear to tell,
And, well-remembered when I'm gone,
Alike will yearn on you as well.

"A last Farewell--O my few foes!
I fear'd you not, by mouth or pen,
But to the battle bravely rose,
A man to fight his fight with men:
And though the gauntlet I have run
You shall not say he fail'd or fell,
Truly recording when I'm gone,
He fought and won his victories well.

"My last Farewell--O brothers both!
No foes at all, but friends all round;
Albeit now homeward, little loth,
To dear old England I am bound--
Accept this short and simple prayer
(A cheerful verse, no parting knell),
To every one and everywhere
My thankful blessing, and Farewell!"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

ENGLISH AND SCOTCH READINGS.

I have another vast volume before me, recounting my English and Scotch
Reading Tours, with full details of innumerable home kindnesses and
hospitalities, from Ventnor in the South to Peterhead in the North,
which I need not particularise. I gave twenty-one "Readings from my own
Works" southward, in a dozen towns with a regular _entrepreneur_, who
was my _avant courier_ everywhere, making all arrangements, placarding,
advertising, hiring halls, engaging reporters, and the like; when all
was ready, I used to come forward, as the General does at a review,--and
then succeeded the sham-fight and division of the spoils of war--if any;
for, to say truth, our partnership did not prove lucrative, so we parted
with mutual esteem, and I resolved to accomplish all the rest of my
projected tour alone; a great effort and a successful one, for I
"orated" all through Scotland, from Ayr to Peterhead (far north of
Aberdeen), often to very large audiences (as at Glasgow, where the
number was said to be three thousand) and always to fair ones, the
Scotch being much more given to literature than the West of England. I
could give innumerable anecdotes of the splendid as well as kindly
welcome I received from great and small,--for as I now had no attending
agent I was all the more eagerly treated as a solitary guest,--and I
found myself handed on from one rich host to another all through the
land, with numerous book friends everywhere ready and willing to make
all arrangements freely at each town and city. So the tour paid better
every way, albeit the toil and excitement of being always to the front,
either on platforms or at dinner-parties, was excessive though not
exhausting. It is astonishing what one can do if one tries, and if the
sympathy of friends and a really good success are at hand to cheer one.
I wish there was space here to say more about all this; but the great
book before me would print up into several volumes. I will only, add, as
below, an interesting extract from this diary, just before I had parted
with my worthy agent aforesaid:--"He has told me some curious anecdotes
about eminent _artistes_ whom he has chaperoned, _e.g._ Thackeray came
to Clifton to give four readings on the Georges; the first reading had
only three auditors, the second not one; so Thackeray went away. Bellew
is uncertain; sometimes having empty benches, sometimes overflowing
ones, according to the programme, whether serious or laughable. Tom Hood
gave a lecture on Humour, which was so dull that the audience left him.
Miss Glyn Dallas often reads 'Cleopatra,' magnificently too, to empty
benches. Sims Reeves draws a vast audience, but sometimes at the last
moment refuses to sing (probably paying forfeit) because he is always
afraid of something giving way in his throat. Dickens, though with
crowded audiences, was not liked, nor nearly so good as Mr.----
expected: he carried about with him a sort of show-box, set round with
lights and covered with purple cloth, in the midst of which he appeared
in full evening costume with bouquet in button-hole, and, as Mr.----
said, 'very stiff.' Mr.---- has just engaged Madame Lemmens Sherrington
and six others for sixty-three concerts at a cost of L4000, for he says
that good music--after low humour--is the best thing to pay. May his
spirited speculation prosper!" Thus much for my quotation of Mr.---- 's
experiences.

It may interest a reader if I give, quite at haphazard, a list of one of
my readings: "Welcome; Adventure; Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow;
All's for the Best; Energy; Success; Warmth; Be True; Of Love; The Lost
Arctic; The Way of the World; Cheerfulness." All these may be found in
my Miscellaneous Poems and "Proverbial Philosophy." I varied the
programme--of about an hour and a half each (sometimes two)--frequently
through my fifty readings on this side of the Atlantic, as well as
through my hundred over there. How strange that the stammerer should
have so become the orator!--I thank God for this.

Before a final end to this brief record of my home-readings, I will add
another page of short extracts from this diary: "Though I continually
read for nearly two hours at a stretch (and that sometimes twice a day
too) I take no intervals, and hardly anything but a sip of water. Energy
and electrical effort are stimulants enough." "I always exert myself
quite as much for few as for many; perhaps more so." "No one ever can
read well or hold his audience if he doesn't feel what he reads." "Some
of the clergy are no great friends of mine; one told me to-day that
'perpetual dearly beloved brethren had spoilt him for eloquence, and he
didn't care to hear mine.'" This was at Salisbury, in a coffee-room.
"Cathedral towns are always dullest and least sympathetic with
lecturing laymen; for example, at Bristol, Salisbury, Worcester,
Gloster, and the like. Are the clerics jealous of lay spouters?
Dissenting ministers and Presbyterians seem far more genial." "I
travelled about fifteen hundred miles by rail, besides coaches and
carriages. My aggregate of paying hearers was about sixteen thousand,
the bulk being old book-likers. The gain was nearly four times as much
as the cost, good hospitality having been the rule." "I read publicly
(private readings additional, as often asked after dinners, &c.)
twenty-nine proverbial essays and thirty-eight poems; repeated according
to popularity by request to two hundred." I only do not name some of my
generous Scotch and English hosts for fear of seeming to have forgotten
others by omission; and the list is too lengthy for full insertion; as
also is the long story of my adventures and experiences in the
hospitable North.

Miscellaneous Poems.

Before dismissing thus curtly, my great Scottish exploit (which, by the
way, anticipated by three years my second American visit, but I would
not disjoin that from my first) I ought to give some account of the
publication of my Miscellaneous Poems by Gall & Inglis at Edinburgh, and
of some few of the hospitalities connected therewith, though not
revealing domesticities, as against my wholesome rule.

An odd thing happened to me at Mr. Inglis's dinner-table, where I met
several literary celebrities. I had just read, and was loud in my
praises of a then anonymous work, "Primeval Man Unveiled," and I asked
my neighbour, an aged man, if he knew that extraordinary book?
Whereupon the whole table saluted the questioner with a loud guffaw; for
I was speaking to its author, whom I had innocently so bepraised.
However, my mistake was easily forgiven, as may be imagined. I found
that the said author was Mr. Inglis's near relative, Mr. Gall,--so my
new publisher and I were immediately _en rapport_.

There are two simultaneous editions of this book of my poetry--one
called the Redlined and the other the Landscape; the first on thick
paper, and with eight steel engravings, the latter having every page
decorated in colours with beautiful borderings of scenery. The volume
contains about one-half or less of all the mass of lyrics I have
written, some of the pieces having been in earlier books of my poetry,
as Ballads and Poems, Cithara, Lyrics of the Heart and Mind, Hactenus, A
Thousand Lines, &c. &c.; and they date, though not printed in systematic
order, from my fifteenth year to beyond my sixtieth. Fly-leaf lyrics
have been continually growing ever since now to my seventy-sixth.

Here are a few further random, extracts from my Scotch
diary:--"Arbroath, _Sunday, Nov. 2, 1873_.--What a comfort it
is for once to feel utterly unknown; for even my luggage has only a
monogram, and here at the White Hart I am No. 15, and a commercial gent
to all appearance: really, it is quite a relief to be some one else than
Martin Tupper."

"Read J.S. Mill's autobiography; poor wretch! from his cradle brought up
as an atheist by a renegade father, he can have been hardly more
responsible for his no faith than a born idiot. However, in these
infidel last times, and with our very broad-church and no-church
teachings, a man has only to be utterly godless (so he be moral) to
make himself a name for pure reason. I'd sooner be the most
unenlightened Christian than such a false philosopher. Let a Goldsmith
say of me, 'No very great wit, he believed in a God,' for I refuse to
deny one, like the Psalmist's fool." "I throw myself so into my
readings, that I almost forget my audience, till their cheering, as it
were, wakes me up,--and I feel every word I say: if I didn't, that word
would fall dead. There is a magnetism in earnestness,--an electric
power; I am in a way full of it when reciting, and I am aware of it
flowing through the mass of my audience." "It was a touching thing to me
to hear the aged Mr. B---- conduct his family worship, singing like an
old Covenanter the harmonious Puritan dirgy hymn, reading the Bible most
devoutly, and praying (as only Presbyterians can pray) from the heart
and not from a formal liturgy, earnestly and eloquently; he prayed also
for me and mine, and I thank God and him for it." "My host at Ayr drove
me in his waggonette to see the mausoleum at Hamilton Palace, with its
wonderful bronze doors after Ghiberti, and its inlaid marble floor, much
of which is of real verd antique in small pieces. Then we went down
among the dead men, and inspected the coffins of nearly all the Dukes of
Hamilton. It is an outrage to have expended so much (L100,000) on this
senseless mausoleum, and to have left close by and within sight of the
great Grecian palace those filthy crowded streets of poverty and
disease--the wretched town of Hamilton--as a contrast to profuse
extravagance. The last Duke, the very Lord Douglas who was in the same
class with me at Christ Church, and is supposed to have personated me in
Tom Quad, has a very graceful temple of Vesta all to himself, with his
bust in the middle: his father lies, of all heathenish absurdities, in a
real antique Egyptian sarcophagus, into which it is said he was fitted
by internal scoopings, the Duke being taller than its former tenant, the
Pharaoh. All this done, we drove through some rugged parts of the High
Park, to see magnificent oaks, much like some at Albury, in hopes of
coming upon the famous wild cattle, grey, with black feet, ears, tail,
and nose, and stated to be untameable. To our great satisfaction we did
see a herd of thirty-four feeding quietly enough; had we been walking
instead of driving we might have fared poorly as hunted ones: though I
confess I saw at first no fierceness in the lot of them; but when the
herd sighted us, and began ominously to commence encircling our gig,
under the guidance of a terrible bull, we turned and fled, as the
discreeter part of wisdom; Captain Hamilton, my host, telling me that if
they charged us we must jump out and swarm up a tree! I was glad to be
out of such a fearful escapade as that." "As to diversities in the
Scotch Church, after seeing many clerical specimens of each kind, I
judge that (generally) the Established Scotch gives itself the superior
airs of the Established English; the Frees are the most intellectual;
the U.P.s most pious; the Scottish Episcopal getting excessively high;
and some other varieties growing far too broad and pantheistic. I don't
wonder to hear Papists say that Protestantism is breaking up; no two
parsons are agreed on all points, some on none."

As for social hospitalities, I found them either splendid or kindly--or
both--everywhere; and will only name Captain Hamilton of Rozelle, Sir
Michael Shaw Stewart of Ardgowan, Mr. Boyd of Glasgow, Mr. Gall and Mr.
Nelson of Edinburgh, Mr. Arthur of Paisley, and such other millionaire
hosts as James Baird, William Dickson, and the like, as among my
wealthiest and kindest welcomers.

Of course, when a guest for a week at Rozelle, I paid due homage to
Burns in his own territory; visiting his natal cottage, his funeral
cenotaph, Alloway Kirk, the Auld Brig, &c. &c.--all these in company
with the millionaire iron-master and most enthusiastic admirer of
Tam-o'-Shanter, Mr. James Baird. When he took me to his magnificent
castle hard by, he said to me "Ye're vera welcome to ma hoose,"--and I
entered to inspect his gallery of pictures: among them I noticed, with
surprise at such an incongruous subject for a painting, an ugly red
factory in course of building, and a man on a ladder leaning against it,
with a hod on his shoulder. To my inquiry about this, he replied, "Yon's
mysel',--I'm proud to say; that's what I was, and this is what I am." He
had made, while yet a workman, some discovery about cold blast or hot
blast (I don't know which) and gained enormous wealth thereby. He is the
man who gave half a million of money to the Scotch Established Church.

CHAPTER XXXV.

ELECTRICS.

I have something of interest to say about the first laying of the
electric telegraph across the Atlantic. Sir Culling Eardley invited a
number of savants, among them Wheatstone and Morse, and others, both
English and American, to a great feast inaugurating the completion of
the cable: and I, amongst other outsiders, had the honour of being
asked. I had written, and after dinner I read, the verses following,
which had the good and great effect of originating the first message
(see the seventh stanza) which was adopted by acclamation and sent off
at once; being only preceded, for courtesy-sake, by a short friendly
greeting from Queen to President, and President to Queen. The heading
runs in my book as "The Atlantic Telegraph."

"World! what a wonder is this,
Grandly and simply sublime,--
All the Atlantic abyss
Leapt in a nothing of time!
Even the steeds of the sun
Half a day panting behind,
In the flat race that is run,
Won by a flash of the mind!

"Lo! on this sensitive, link--
It is one link, not a chain--
Man with his brother can think
Spanning the breadth of the main,--
Man to his brother can speak
Swift as the bolt from a cloud,
And where its thunders were weak
There his least whisper is loud!

"Yea; for as Providence wills,
Now doth intelligent man
Conquer material ills,
Wrestling them down as he can,--
And lay one weak little coil
Under the width of the waves,
Distance and Time are his spoil,
Fetter'd as Caliban slaves!

"Ariel?--right through the sea
We can fly swift as in air;
Puck?--forty minutes shall be
Sloth to the bow that we bear:
Here is Earth's girdle indeed,
Just a thought-circlet of fire,--
Delicate Ariel freed
Sings, as she flies, on a wire!

"Courage, O servants of light,
For you are safe to succeed;
Lo! you are helping the Right,
And shall be blest in your deed.
Lo! you shall bind in one band,
Joining the nations as one,
Brethren of every land,
Blessing them under the sun!

"This is Earth's pulse of high health
Thrilling with vigour and heat,
Brotherhood, wisdom and wealth,
Throbbing in every beat;
But you must watch in good sooth
Lest to false fever it swerve,--
Touch it with tenderest truth
As the world's exquisite nerve!

"Let the first message across--
High-hearted Commerce, give heed--
Not be of profit or loss,
But one electric indeed:
Praise to the Giver be given,
For that He giveth man skill,
Glory to God in the Heaven!
'Peace upon earth, and goodwill!'"

Another Electric poem of mine called "The First Message," also in Gall's
edition, was sent over by telegraph to America. What a miserable muddle,
by the way, those meddlesome revisers have made of The Angel's
Message;--preferring a dubious sigma to a comma, they have utterly
spoilt that sublime trilogy by making "Peace upon earth, goodwill
towards men," read "Peace upon earth among men in whom he is well
pleased." How clumsy and how ungrammatical, _in_ whom! The whole dear
Bible has been terribly damaged by their 36,000 needless alterations in
the New Testament (not 100 having been really necessary), and I know not
how many more myriads in the Old, but happily their Version falls dead,
and will soon be as forgotten as Dr. Conquest's "Bible with 20,000
emendations," whereof I now possess a somewhat scarce copy in the
library at Albury. I have less than no patience with those principally
clerical revisers; albeit for their chairman, Dr. Ellicott, I retain a
pleasant memory from Orkney recollections in old days.

* * * * *

But this is a digression, wrung from me by my righteous wrath against
those who have done their worst to spoil for us The Angel's Message, the
first word uttered by the telegraphic wire under the sea.

Returning to the subject of Electrics I have something of interest to
say which will be news to my readers. One day when casually dipping into
Addison's _Spectator_ at Albury, I made the following discovery which I
recorded in the newspapers at the time, and give the extract now fully
as thus:--

In the 241st No. of Addison's _Spectator_, bearing date Thursday,
December 6th, 1711, and as signed "C." (one of the letters of the mystic
Clio), by the great Joseph Addison himself, occurs the following
remarkable anticipation of our presumably most modern discovery. Those
who have access to the London edition of the _Spectator_ of 1841,
published by J.J. Chidley, 123 Aldersgate Street, can verify the
verbatim faithfulness of the following extract from page 274:--

"Strada, in one of his Prolusions (Lib. II. prol. 6), gives an account
of a chimerical correspondence between two friends by the help of a
certain loadstone, which had such virtue in it, that if it touched two
several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to move, the
other, though at never so great a distance, moved at the same time, and
in the same manner. He tells us that the two friends, being each of them
possessed of one of those needles, made a kind of dial-plate, inscribing
it with four-and-twenty letters, in the same manner as the hours of the
day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. They then fixed one of the
needles on each of these plates in such a manner that it could move
round without impediment, so as to touch any of the four-and-twenty
letters.

"Upon their separating from one another into distant countries, they
agreed to withdraw themselves punctually into their closets at a certain
hour of the day, and to converse with one another by means of this
their invention.

"Accordingly, when they were some hundred miles asunder, each of them
shut himself up in his closet at the time appointed, and immediately
cast his eye upon his dial-plate. If he had a mind to write anything to
his friend, he directed his needle to every letter that formed the words
which he had occasion for, making a little pause at the end of every
word or sentence, to avoid confusion.

"The friend in the meanwhile saw his own sympathetic needle moving of
itself to every letter which that of his correspondent pointed at. By
this means they talked together across a whole continent, and conveyed
their thoughts to one another in an instant over cities or mountains,
seas or deserts.

"If Monsieur Scudery, or any other writer of romance, had introduced a
necromancer, who is generally in the train of a knight-errant, making a
present to two lovers of a couple of these above-mentioned needles, the
reader would not have been a little pleased to have seen them
corresponding with one another when they were guarded by spies and
watchers, or separated by castles and adventures.

"In the meanwhile, if ever this invention should be revived or put in
practice, I would propose that upon the lover's dial-plate there should
be written not only the four-and-twenty letters, but several entire
words which have always a place in passionate epistles, as flames,
darts, die, language, absence, Cupid, heart, eyes, hang, drown, and the
like. This would very much abridge the lover's pains in this way of
writing a letter, as it would enable him to express the most useful and
significant words with a single touch of the needle.--C."

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