Martin Farquhar Tupper - My Life as an Author

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But more, and more wondrous, was to follow. All at once Mr. Home flung
himself back in his chair, looking wild and white; and then rising
slowly and solemnly, went to the still bright fire, into which he
thrust his unprotected hands, and taking out a double handful of live
coals, placed them--as a fire offering--upon Mr. Hall's snow-white head,
combing the hair over them with his fingers, all which our host appeared
to receive more than patiently--religiously. Thereafter Mr. Home placed
them in the Countess's blonde-lace cap, and carried them, as a favour
vouchsafed by the spirits, to each of us, to hold in our hands. When he
came to me, Mr. Hall said: "My friend, have faith." "Yes," I answered,
"and courage, too;" whereupon I was blest with a good handful of those
wonderful coals, still hot enough to burn any skin; but, somehow or
other, I felt no pain and had no mark. Here was another law of nature
put to shame, in the miraculous fact that fire was seemingly deprived of
the power of burning. How this could be, I cannot guess; but I record
manfully the fact as witnessed. After this, an accordion held under the
table by Mr. Home with one hand, the other being upon the table,
positively played a tune of itself--"Ye banks and braes o' bonnie
Doon"--requested by Dr. Chambers, "that being the tune his dead child
loved so." I was requested to look under the table to see the
"spirit-hand" operating near the carpet; but I saw nothing except the
vitalised accordion expanding and contracting of itself, being held
tightly at the upper handle by Mr. Home. Some of the company, however,
claimed to see and to shake hands with the child, and Mr. Home requested
me to ask for a similar favour by placing my hand open under the table;
this, accordingly, I ventured to do, with the result of feeling my thumb
sensibly touched and thrilled, which I was told was a good sign of
favour from the spirits--albeit in my own mind I remembered what our
omniscient Shakespeare sings at the mouth of one of the Macbeth
witches,

"By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes"--

and failed to feel quite comfortable. Soon, however, Mr. Home said: "The
accordion is leaving my hand;" and I saw the mysterious thing crawling
on the floor like a lame dog till it got into a corner. Of course, I
suspected a secret string; but all at once it moved out and came back,
moaning AEolianly as it went, and stood up beside the chair of Mrs.
Colonel N.S., who patted it lovingly; thence passing behind me it went
and stood beside the Countess, who also caressed it; and then Mr. Home
said: "Now ask the spirit to come to you;" whereto I acceded, and the
accordion crept near me, as if unwillingly, and stood up; but when I
touched it the thing shrank from my unsympathetic hand, and fell down
flop.

After this, I noticed that my naval friend was staring with all his eyes
at something over our military widow's head, and that his hair (it is
red, which colour is very spiritualistic) stood on end as with fear.
"What's the matter, P.?" I asked. "Don't you see it?" responded he.
"What?" "The grey figure behind Mrs. N.S., bearded like an Egyptian
Sphinx." "That's the Colonel!" exclaimed Mr. Hall, and the widow bowed
religiously, with a "Dear! is it you?" On this, as my friend was
terribly frightened, we soon took leave; and when we went home, I found
that he was so pursued by "spirits" rapping all about him, that he
actually vacated his own room and slept in mine, for protection against
the invisible, on two chairs till morning broke; when he feared the
spirits no longer. I may mention that this insight into an immaterial
world (he having been inclined before to pyrrhonism) quite altered his
career, and that soon after he took holy orders. In this connection I
may state, that according to a printed account I have seen, both Mr. and
Mrs. Hall were converted from avowed materialism by spirit
manifestation, and that when the question of "_Cui bono?_" is raised,
his experience and that of divers others (the aforesaid Dr. Chambers in
particular) will avouch for the practical usefulness of these
inexplicable marvels.

But I must have done, with only one other reminiscence soon after that
at Ashley Place. This time the venue is Fitzroy Square, and the company
(to omit needless detail) was a polyglot one, consisting chiefly of a
German merchant, a Hebrew financier, a French governess, my naval friend
aforesaid, who was quick at Latin, and I, who more or less remembered my
Greek. Of course English was represented in the two only other guests;
and it will be seen how strangely philology enters into this my next and
concluding anecdote. After plenty of other rappings and noises (I
noticed by the way that all the metal things in the room, as castors and
cruets--it was a dining-room--and wine coolers and bronze chandelier,
were clicked and clanged), and after the usual stupid alphabet questions
and answers had been exhibited; after also the heavy mahogany table on
five substantial pillars had been miraculously moved about the room and
tilted, as we failed to effect at the _finale_ when we tried; all at
once a thundering knock quite shook the table and startled us, on which
Dr. Connell, our (unprofessional) medium for the nonce, as he had seen
more of spiritualistics than we had, called for the alphabetical test
to ascertain who it could be that knocked so furiously, for the blows
were often repeated. So then, by the slow method of letter by letter, he
made out the name "Jamblic," and then gave it up in despair, as he said
it was a mischievous imp that was sporting with us; but the knocks still
continued, and some one suggested that perhaps this strange name was
foreign, and that his own language would please the incensed spirit
better than English. Accordingly, he was addressed by the assembled
circle severally in French, German, Hebrew, and Latin, all in vain; when
I bethought me of Greek and the Pythagoreans and spoke out "_Ei su
Iamblicos_" (Art thou Iamblicus?)--on which, as if with joy at having
been discovered, there was a rush of noises and knocks all round the
room (my perfervid imagination fancied the flapping of wings), and
immediately after there ensued a dead silence! So we soon broke up and
went home. Opening my classical dictionary at Iamblicus, I read what I
certainly had not seen or thought of for more than thirty years, that he
was an author on "the mysteries of the Egyptians," and was bracketed
with Porphyry as a professor of the black art. Was then this unpleasant
visitor to Fitzroy Square no other than that magician redivivus? An
awkward possibility.

And now to bring these scattered reminiscences to a practical
conclusion. What can I, what can my readers decide, on a rational
consideration of the whole matter? It is, no doubt, very baffling to
judge how rightly to think about it. I have stated a few facts that have
come under my own personal knowledge; but there are thousands of others
similar and even more extraordinary, which numerous persons quite as
credible as I am can vouch for in like manner to be true facts while
remaining unexplained miracles. For myself, I must suspend judgment;
waiting to see what in these wonderful times--some further development
of electricity, for example, may haply produce for us. After recent
marvels of the telephone, microphone, photophone, and I know not what
others, why should not some Edison or Lane Fox stumble upon a form of
psychic force emanating from our personal nervous organisation, and
capable of operating physically on all things round us, the immaterial
conquering the material it pervades? Some such vague theory as to
spiritualistic manifestations may be a far more rational as well as
pleasing explanation of these modern marvels than to suppose that our
dead friends come at any medium's summons to move tables, talk bad
grammar, and play accordions; or that angels, good and evil, are allowed
to be employed in mystifying or terrifying the frivolous assisters at a
_seance_.

Beyond and after this, I might add, but for its too great length, the
indisputable testimony of certain friends of mine as to inexplicable
writings on locked slates and paper, the revelation of secrets, nay
visible apparitions, and both records of the secret past and revelations
of the still more secret future afterwards fulfilled,--to all which I
cannot, as an honest man and a believer in human evidence, refuse to
give a distinct testimony, even though conjurors perpetually baffle our
confused judgment.

In this connection I will extract from one of my Archive-books the
curious story of a mysterious key in which my family are still
interested: for the secret is not yet solved. In the fourteenth volume,
then, of my Archives occurs this long note, accompanied by the drawing
which I made years ago of the weird-looking key: with a loose ring
handle, a threefold staircase body, and a strangely ringed column.

"My father died in his sleep, December 8, 1844, at Southwick House, in
Windsor Park, on the same night after its owner, Lord Limerick, had also
died there in his arms, my father having been his medical friend for
thirty years. My father used to carry in his pocket a strange key,
whereof the figure was very unusual, as it folded up, and though large
he carried it in his pocket habitually: and he used to say in his
quietly humorous and reserved manner, 'under that key lies a fortune;'
my mother and I and others remember this well. When I came to be
executor, there was nearly nothing to guide me as to the amount of my
father's property,--and I certainly did not succeed in realising all
that he was supposed to have acquired. It was wonderful that with his
large income he left so little. So, we all thought that some hoard
locked by this key contained the missing treasure; my father's habitual
taciturnity, and secretiveness favouring this idea. But, nowhere could
the lock to fit it be found; nowhere either at banks or lawyers or
anywhere about our old house in Burlington Street or at Albury, appeared
the chest or cupboard containing the fancied accumulations; and to this
hour, June 12, 1873, nearly thirty years after my father's sudden death,
has the mystery not been cleared up. Once, on an occasion of a
spiritualistic _seance_ at Mr. Carter Hall's, I handed the said key to
Mr. Home when entranced, and he shuddered at it, and uttered the name
'Elizabeth Henderson,'--which I thought at the time a bad guess, as one
utterly unknown to me: but oddly enough it proved to be the name of the
Queen's housekeeper at Windsor. However, on inquiry nothing further came
of this, for she was not in office when my father died at the Park.
To-day I have taken the key to a Miss Hudson, a clairvoyante, who never
saw me before, nor was told my name, nor my errand, except that I laid
that key silently before her. She can tell me very little, except that
the mystery is soon to be cleared up, and that certain spirits (from
description possibly my mother and brother William) much wish it. I gave
no sort of clues, but the medium guessed at my father's character, and
at the long lapse of time since the loss of the chest, and at the hiding
of it in some 'bank,'--whether underground or at a banker's did not
appear. The medium's 'attendant spirit'--one 'Daisy, an Indian
papoose'--says it is 'in a dark place, like a vault, and mouldy.' I am
urged to inquire further. Miss Hudson, a common-looking but respectable
woman of about thirty,--living in a lodging near Bloomsbury
Square,--utterly ignorant who I was and all about me,--said (in her
spirit voice) that I was a writer of books, and did great good, and was
inspired by two spirits, one of the fair and lively sort all in white,
and the other an old philosopher--a strange guess at my mixed medley of
writings. Miss Hudson promised me that I should soon know the secret of
the key, because the spirits wished it, and because there was a blue
magnetic circle round the key."

* * * * *

_P.S._--It is only proper to state that up to this present writing,
January 13, 1886, I have heard nothing at all from the spirits
aforesaid, and that the family key is as mysterious as ever. My own
reasonable explanation of the medium's half true guesses is that she
might have read my own dim thoughts about the matter: naturally I would
think of my dead mother and brother and myself; and thought-reading is a
form of animal magnetism which some people possess more than others.

Of late, as we all know, Mr. Cumberland and others have exhibited their
mysterious powers of perceiving and expounding the secret thoughts of
those who chose to be thus mentally vivisected: and I myself have this
small experience to record. Asked in a drawing-room to think of
something, the hostess answered my thought by "I don't know what it
means, but there's a great deal of green with a white star going round
and round in it." "Quite true," was my reply, "I was thinking of Ewhurst
windmill."

In my anonymous prophetic ode, "Things to Come" (Bosworth, 1852, long
out of print), at its eleventh section, thought-reading and other like
metaphysicals are strangely anticipated, ending with--

"Into some other wicked man's mind
His foolish brother is peeping to find,
Caught in foul excitement's snare,
The Lying Future there!"

CHAPTER XLV.

FICKLE FORTUNE.

Ever since Schiller wrote his famous song about a poet's heritage (ay,
and long before that, as it will be long years hence), authorship has
been noted for anything rather than wealth; albeit, nowadays, we have
had such fortunate scribes as Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope, who
severally have left piles of well-earned money behind them; though they
all had encountered previous mischances before. Accordingly, in this
true record of my life, I must not omit its reverses, for, though born
with a silver spoon in my mouth (perhaps a bismuth one, such as in my
chemical days I melted in hot tea), and always having had plentiful
surroundings, there has been often much also of financial embarrassment,
though not always nor usually from the author's fault. I am not going to
accuse others any more than myself, only hinting that it has been costly
to be a sleeping-partner, especially when the chief fails; that it is
discouraging to economic thrift when the investments wherein you place
your savings come to an untimely end; that in particular the Albert Life
Insurance was a notorious swindle, wherein more than twenty years' of
banked-up prudent earnings, besides the original policy, vanished in an
hour; that my early efforts to win fortune were stumped from impediment
of speech; and that some of those on whom I depended, as well as others
dependent on me, met with misfortunes, deserved or undeserved. Anyhow, I
have just now no reason to complain of bursting barns or inflated
money-bags. Everybody knows (so I need not blink it) that some time ago
a few friends kindly got up a so-called testimonial for my benefit; but
that sort of thing had been overdone in other instances; and it is small
wonder that (although certainly not quite such a fiasco as with Ginx's
Baby) the trouble and care and humiliation are scarcely compensated
where the costs and defaults are considerable: however, I desire
heartily to thank its promoters and contributors, one and all; even
those who promised but never paid.

With reference to other efforts, my two Transatlantic visits, and divers
reading tours at home, show that self-help never was neglected, as,
indeed, former pages will have proved. Accordingly, as Providence helps
those who help themselves, or at all events endeavour to do so, I still
lean on the heraldic motto, given to General Volkmar von Tophere by
Henri Quatre, "L'espoir est ma force." I will here add two American
anecdotes whereby it might seem that heretofore I have unwittingly
jilted Fortune when she would have blest me with her favour.

I had just landed in New York after a stormy fortnight in the _Asia_ (it
was A.D. 1851) and taken up my quarters at the Astor House, to
rest before friends found me out. But my arrival had been published, and
before, in private, I had taken my first refreshment, the host, a
colonel of course, came and asked if I would allow a few of my admirers
to greet me. Doubtless, natural vanity was willing, and through my
room, having doors right and left, forthwith came a stream of
well-wishers all shaking hands and saying kind words for an hour and
more; at last they departed, all but one, who had come first and boldly
had taken a chair beside me: when the crowd were gone, he bluntly (or
let it be frankly) said, "I'm one of the richest men in New York, sir,
and I know authors must be poor; I like your books, and have told my
bankers (naming them) to honour any cheques on me you may like to draw."
"My dear sir," I replied, "you are most considerate, and all I can say
is, if I have the misfortune to lose this packet (it was a roll of
Herries's circular notes) I shall gladly accept your offer; but just now
I have more than I want--L300." "Well then, sir, come and stay at my
house, Fifth Avenue." "This is very kind, but several friends here have
specially invited me, so I am compelled to decline." "Then, sir, my
yacht in the harbour is at your service." "Pardon me, but I would rather
forget all memories of the sea at present,--with due thanks." "Then,
sir, my carriage has been waiting at the hotel all this time, let me
have the honour of taking you to see Mrs. So-and-so, who is anxious to
meet you." Of course I could not refuse this, nor the occasional loan of
his handsome turn-out whenever other friends let me go. Who knows how
nearly I then missed smiles from the blind goddess, by my sturdy refusal
of her favours, for I heard afterwards that the wealthy Mr.---- was
childless! Again, at Baltimore, after my Historical dinner (see a former
page), comes up to me a very shabby-looking man, as I thought to beg. He
sidled up and whispered that he wanted me to go home with him. I'm
afraid I rather snubbed him; but was sorry for it afterwards, when told
that he was the rich old miser So-and-so, who had never taken a fancy to
any one before. What a dolt I must have been to snub away the possible
codicil of a millionaire!

* * * * *

On page 3 of this book I proposed no mention of private domesticities or
of personal religious experiences--the one being of interest merely to
my family, the other a matter between God and the soul. However, the
recent sudden death of one for fifty years my faithful friend and
companion in marriage, urges me to record here simply her many excellent
qualities, which must not be passed by without a regretful word as if I
were a Stoic, or as if my dear good wife of half a century could be
silently forgotten by her bereaved husband and children. I began this
biography when she was in her usual health and spirits, but soon after
its commencement a fit of apoplexy took her unconsciously from our happy
circle,--and we are made to feel by this affliction, as also by another
over leaf, how truly "in the midst of life we are in death." Her body
awaits the Resurrection in Albury Churchyard, and her spirit lives with
us in affectionate remembrance.

CHAPTER XLVI.

DE BEAUVOIR CHANCERY SUIT: AND BELGRAVIA.

My lamented son, Henry de Beauvoir, active and athletic, was killed in
South Africa by the most unlikely accident of being jolted off the front
seat in a rutty road and crushed to death under the wheel of an
ox-waggon creeping at two miles an hour! This sad event occurred on May
31, 1871: and the newspapers at the time, both British and South
African, fully recorded not only the accident but the heroism of the
brave youth, the kind but unavailing assiduities of friends, and the
municipal honours accorded to him at his funeral, when the mayor and
council, the volunteers and chief inhabitants of King William's Town
(every window shuttered) followed him to the grave, where Archdeacon
Kitton read the solemn service; and some months after, a marble
headstone was placed over his remains. His two brothers have written
some touching stanzas to his memory: but they are private.

I mention all this sadness now by way of publicly acknowledging the
kindness of Archdeacon Kitton and, other friends at King William's Town,
not forgetting a most friendly officer of the American navy, from whom
we have received many excellent letters and presents from all round the
world, ever since he was among the first to break to us the death of my
son, now fifteen years ago: I desire, then, cordially to thank T.G. for
these kindnesses: as also Mr. Robertson, of Brechin, N.B., whose son
was Henry's African comrade, with him at the time of the catastrophe,
and following him to the grave.

Henry having been for good ancestral reasons christened de Beauvoir,
reminds me of a memorable matter of our family history which, as it is
on record, I will here relate. In the days of King James I. (to quote
with pedantic omissions from a pedigree), one Peter de Beauvoir,
descended from a younger branch of the ducal house of Rutland, had an
eldest son, James, whose daughter Rachel married Pierre Martin (my
spiritual sponsor after Martin Luther), and her daughter married a Carey
of Guernsey, whose descendant married my grandfather. Peter's second
son, Richard, married a Priaulx, also related to us, and her daughter
married a Benyon, in Charles II.'s time, whose descendant is now the
millionaire, Sir Richard Benyon de Beauvoir of Reading, &c. &c. Now,
this is the strange fact which has always puzzled me as well as others.
The old De Beauvoir was a very thrifty miser, and died two hundred years
ago possessed of great wealth, which has increased enormously up to our
day, seeing he had landed property in the north of London, now including
De Beauvoir Town.

In the second generation, his grand-daughters Rachel Martin of the elder
branch and Marie Priaulx of the younger, contended at law for the
inheritance after some intestacy: and a terrible lawsuit raged in
Chancery for 150 years, between the Tuppers and the Benyons,--and was
carried even to the House of Lords, being finally decided in my memory
for the Benyons. I remember my uncle saying he would not take thirty
thousand pounds for his individual chance,--but my less sanguine father
cared not to join in the lawsuit,--saying he would not "throw good
money after bad." For my own judgment, and I can speak as an old
conveyancing barrister (though without business or experience) of nearly
fifty years' standing, our side as the elder had the best right, though
the two sisters might well and wisely have shared in a compromise. But
somehow it came to be decided that the younger claimant of that vast
property must have _all_,--and the elder be strangely left out in the
cold. After the conclusion of the Lords, further litigation was
hopeless: so those whom I now represent (as almost the "last of the
Abruzzi") must acquiesce in getting nothing, while the opponent side has
the good luck to possess, as Dr. Johnson has it, "wealth beyond the
dreams of avarice." Such is life,--and law: the most obstinate and the
richest win: the less pertinacious and the poorer are allowed to fail:
it is a process of Darwin's survival of the fittest. All this is now
"too late to mend:" but I do hope that if ever I go to Engelfield
Castle, Sir Richard will be kindly and genial to his far-off cousin, who
(but for some legal quibble unknown) might have dispossessed him.

My father numbered among his patients the Duke of Rutland, and I have
heard him say that they half-humorously called each other cousins.

A Lost Chance in Belgravia.

In this connection of possible good luck that never happened, let me
record this.

Another of my father's patients was the long deceased Earl Grosvenor,
grandfather of the present Duke of Westminster; and about him I have a
tale to tell, which shows how nearly we might have been possessed of
another vast property--but we missed it. One day in my boyhood, I
remember my father coming home after his round and telling my mother
that he had a great mind to buy "the five fields" of Lord Grosvenor's,
because he thought London might extend that way. Those five fields are
now covered with the palatial streets of Belgravia,--but were then a
dismal marshy flat intersected by black ditches, and notorious for
highway robbery, as a district dimly lit with an oil lamp here and
there, and protected by nothing but the useless old watchman in his box:
it is the tract of land between Grosvenor Place and Sloane Street. His
lordship had a reputation for parsimony, and he fancied it a bargain if
he could sell to my father those squalid fields for L2000,--so he
offered them to him at that price. When my mother heard of this, she was
dead against so extravagant an outlay for that desolate region; so much
dreaded by her whenever her aunt's black horses in the old family coach
ploughed their way through the slush (MacAdam had not then arisen to
give us granite roads) to call on an ancient relative, Mr. Hall, who
possessed a priceless cupboard of old Chelsea china, and lived near the
hospital. A tradition existed that the said family waggon had once been
"stopped" thereabouts by some vizored knight of the road, and this
memory confirmed my mother's disapproval of the purchase. So my father
was dissuaded, and declined the Earl's offer. I don't suppose that if he
had accepted it the property would long have been his, but must have
changed hands directly he had doubled his investment: otherwise, imagine
what a bargain was there!--However, nobody can foresee anything beyond
an inch or a minute, and so this other chance of "wealth beyond the
dreams of avarice" long ago faded away.

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