A LITERARY LIFE

Press, Volume L, Issue 8676, 28 December 1893, Page 3

A LITERARY LIFE

It is to be feared that the present generation o£ readers has in great part forKOlten the name of Camilla Toalmln, for literary f ishions change, and the demand in ever for something fresh and new. Camilla Toalmin, however, or to speak of her by her less familiar marrtec name, Mrs Nevrton Cropland, wae a popular writer half a century ago, and is still among us, retaining, at the advanced age of 81 —as her volume of Reminiscences just published by Messrs Sampson Jbow abundantly testifies—her old bower to entertain the public Mrs Croelaog's * " Landmarks of a Literary Life," 1820-92. By Mrs Newton Croslend (Camilla ToulmioJ. liondon: Sampjon, Low and Co.

childish recollections even extend back Iα a dim way to that Tuesday evening, seventy-eight years ago, when -as she has many times heard the scene vividly described—& whist party in Beroers street, at which her parents were uresent, was startled by the newsmen':! horns in the street, with cries of "A greac victory 1" and " Buouaparty defeated !" Cards were instantly thrown down, and the gentlemen rushed into the streets to bay the Courier evening paper at any price the news vendors demanded. The battle had been fought on the previous Sunday, and these were the first tidings that had reached London. Waterloo Is imprinted on the writer's mind in auother way, as will be seen by the following striking anecdote:—" I once met at a dinner party the.widow of an officer who fought at Waterloo, and the lady narrated her experience of the 'after battle , scene. For some reason she had to cros* the field while it was still strewn with the dead, and for this purpose aha was blindfolded and placed on horseback, the steed being led by a trooper. She held a handkerchief to her nose—steeped, I think she said, 'with vinegar—and not until she had reached an acclivity nearly a mile from the scene of carnage was the bandage removed from ber eyes. Then she looked back, when the field of Waterloo appeared like a field of tombstones, for the bodies were all stripped of outer clothing and »hone white in the sunshine like stone*. The camp following ghouls had done their work effectually." But what will perhaps give a stronger impression of the remoteness of those times to the author's description of what, In spite of Mr Dendy Saddler and Mr Sydney Grundy's new piece at tne Comedy Theatre, she calls the hideous style of dress in England "when this century was still in its teens:" —*• The waists were so short that the buttons on men's coats and the termination of a woman's bodice were literally between the shoulder-blades. Frock coats were unknowu, and the universal swallow tails were often of brlghtblue, vtith brass buttons. Women's* Skirts-were absurdly scanty and Bhort— too tight, I fancy, for a pocket to be conveniently used; hence, I suppose, the introduction of the reticule — often a very handsome little bag, carried Oα the arm or suspended on the corner of the chair in use. I think the UDeasy chairs of those days always had Corners. But the bad taste of the dress was a small affair compared to the fact that few women wore sufficiently warm winter clothing. Multitudes of people never wore any wool near the skin; and even when snow was on the ground little girls shivered in low frocks and short sleeves. I remember my little black frock made for mourning for the Princess Charlotte, with its edging of white round the short sleeves; nnl I know, lv the winter, I was always sorry when the after dinner time came that my pinafore must be removed, because, thin as it wan, it afforded some little warmth. I was a 'delicate child, kept very much in warm rooms, and accustomed to a bedroom fire ; but every tender care must, I think, have beerf somewhat neutralised by the unseasonable dress."

A more paiuful reminiscence is that of I the' prevalence of small-pox Iα those days. ' Mrs Crosland thinks that the modern opponents of vaccination might change their opinions if they "could only behold the countenances, marred almost out of resemblance to the human face divine, which were common everywhere seventy: years $go, surely they would hide their own faces iv shame. I really think that of the men and women born before 1780, fully half were more or less marked by the ravages of smallpox. From that date inoculation became more general; but sometinies the disease wa* malignant even titter Inoculation, and, if it did not kill, left disfiguring traces behind. Besides, it served to propagate the disease. I can call to; mind several elderly people so seamed and scarred that they almost frightened the when a child. Certainly for sixty years I have seen nothing comparable to the cicatrised faces so common in my childhood. Ladies co afflicted habitually wore the thickest of veils out of doors, and probably chose the darkest corner* when in society." Letitia Elizabeth Landon, better known as "L.E.L.," the petted poetess of the Annuals of that time, figures in these pages, though not always in romantic circumstances. It is not easy to think of that gifted and ethereal personage save as the original of steel engraved portraits in "Amulets" and "Books of Beauty," but Mrs Crosland tells how the lite Mr Chorley, calling on her one morning—most probably at her house in Hane-place—was inexpressibly pained, to find her at the street door. r ' taking in the milk." Mr Chorley was a musical critic, a person of thin voice and delicate nerves. ' I don't admire that sort of thing," he exclaimed, with a shrug of the shoulders expressive of " annotate disgust," which, in the opinion of the relater of-this anecdote, seemed intensified by the face that Miss Landon did not look at all discomposed by the circumstance—merely ! observing that her servant had gone out oit an errand. Mr Chorley, we mty add, recovered and lived some years after this i severe shock to his nervous system. Mrs Crosland was Intimate with the Chambers family, by whom her ready pen was -frequently employed. Of William Chambers, the elder of the two brothers, she observes that although he could write well It'must always be on matters of fact, aa he had neither humour nor the faculty of understanding poetry. He was known to confess that he "could not see what there was in Shakespeare to make such a fuss about," and that he thought Longfellow's Evangeline " prose run mad," She tells also a story of how that long-kept secret, the authorship of the " Vestiges of tbe Natural History of Creation, was placed momentarily in peril at a dinner oarty t at the house of Mrs Robert Chambers in Edinburgh, many years before it was known that he was the author, and that his wife had acted as his amanuensis ;— "At the dinner party to which I allude, amonsr the guests were D. M. Moir —the "Delta" of "Blackwood'e Magazine"-— and hie wife, and Mrs Crowe, tbe author of "Susan Hopley" and the "Night Side of Nature/ , I forget what other guests were present, but I think it intent be called a literary party. Just when the lish was removed, the lime when tongues I were loosened, the '* Vestiges" came under discussion. A quarter of lamb was get before the master of the house—for dinners a Iα Russe had not yet been introduced—and he was in the act of separating the shoulder from the ribs with tbe skilful dexterity of an accomplished carver, when some lady at the upper end of the table, with singular impropriety, exclaimed— 'Do you know, Mr Chambers, some people say you wrote that book. . Though sitting next niy boat, I happened to be looking towards Mrs Chambers, and I saw that she started in her cUalr and that a frown, was on her face. She looked at ber husband, bat his eyes were beat on the lamb, on which he continued operating in an imperturbable manner, observlnt;— :' 1 wonder how people can suppose that I ever'had time to write such a book.' There was silence for a minute, and then I think the subject dropped." Here is a glimpse of Rosa Bonheur at the house of a friend in London, soon after her picture of the Horee Fair had made her famous:— "Ouly about the middle height, she yet looked so robust that one could fancy her curbing the fiery horses she co forcibly depicts. Very hand some, with fine dark eyes, and the short crisp curls which were not then the feminine fashion, her head looked somewhat like that of a man, especially as she wore a high black dress. It watt evident she was a' woman who dared and determined to despise the troublesome fripperies of ordinary women's dress. I -*a* eeated very near the great French painter, when Mrs Hall brought up Sir Edwin Landecer to introduce him to her. I could not but be interested in tbe meeting of ttagse two famous animal painters. The conversation was Iα French, and there seemed to be on both sides genuine gratification in seeing cac.'i other, with mutual felicitations on iheir achievements. I never heard if the acquaintance grew into intimacy and friendship, but I am sure they must have felt much sympathy, and were both too great for jealousy to mar it. Both were supreme in showing the mentality of; the animals they depicted and must have loved «o well." - I

" The name oC Douglas Jerrold will naturally be looked for ia these recollections. Mm Cropland indeed knew him "very intimately:—"l never knew enyone who had more completely two side* to his nature than Douglas Jerrold. The outside world considered him mainly as a caustic wit, a dramatist, the chief contributor to Punch, a man as familiar with theatrical green rooms and newspaper offices as with his own house, and with a great deal of what is called 'Bohemian' u» hi* nature: bat also he had the tenderest heart in the world, compassionating every sorb of suffering, though with wrath alwaye at white heat against selfish jacreed and tyranny that brought woe upon the innocent. To mc he was ever a kind friend, putting literary work of various sorts in my way. He had considerable faith in woman* capacity for intellectual pursuits, while fully recognising the difficulties under which they laboured when straggling In the battle of life. Speaking of his magazine, he once said that he did

not earn how much 'dimity , there was in It provided the • dimity' did not show. And to the little book called " Punch's Snnp dragons," published at the Christmas of 1814 and consisting of anonymous articles and Rtories, there was at least one lady contributor—Mrs White—besides myself. It was while the Caudle Lectures were ap* peering in Punch that one summer day my mother and I were invited to a friendly midday dinner at the Jerrolds', who woro then residing in a pleasant country bouse at Putney. Towards the close of the meal a packet arrived—proofs, I fancy—at any rate Douglas Jerrold opened a letter which visibly disturbed him. ' Hark at this, , he said, after a little while, and then he proceeded to read a really pathetic, chough not very well expressed, letter from an aggrieved matron, who appealed to him to discontinue or modify the Caudle Lectures. She declared they were bringiujj discord into families, and making, a multitude of women miserable."

Jerrold's habit of punning was then In full foren :—"On inquiring in society, about the year 1854, who a certain gentleman was, he was told, 'Mr Mill*, from Manchester.' * Indeed, he promptly replied, ' why I thought ail the mills had stopped there.'" It will, no doubt, be news to many that the truly "grand old lad?," Mrs Cowden* Clarke, compiler of the Shakespeare Concordance, who in her eighty-flftn year, in her retirement in Italy, still lives, a prosperous gentlewoman, was in other days a distinguished lunnteur actress :— "J. remember seeing * The Rivals' acted In the Porchester-terraco dtawingroom, a portion of which had boon curtained off for a stage, in which I am pretty sure Agnes London represented liydia Languish ; but the circumstance Is chiefly noteworthy that I may bear my testimony to the splendid acting of Mrs Cowden* Clarke aa Mrs Mnlaprop. This wan a character in which tho famous Mrs Glovor was considered greatly to excel, and 1 recollect her Impersonation of It well. Mrs Cowden-Ctarkc, however, gave in my opinion, a subtler and finer interpretation of the character. Mm Glovei emphasised the absurdities she had *o utter, and seemed to share in the mirth she provoked ; Mrs Cowden-Clarke had that great histrionic gift, perfect command of her countenance, and seemed quite unconscious of her solecisms."