CHARLES READE

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21180, 2 June 1934, Page 17

CHARLES READE

♦— — A GREAT VICTORIAN (smuLi.Y WK ;ITM for in* rjess.) |r ,, SIMON Ml IR.| Fittv years ago. in April, 1884, Charles Reade died at the age of 70, • i ; ' 'of the great Victorians, if not >'• iC 0 £ the greatest. He had for his contemporaries such masters in the •>vt of fiction as Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope; -nd if there cannot be claimed for him equality with the first three, th m-c can the authorship of one book (/which any of them would have been proud. "The Cloister and the Hearth" is a work which the world yill not let die. It was a very unhappy old man vho left the fret and fever of life. Rcade had gloried in boundless vital it v and had found delight in countless exhibitions of his pugnacious character; '-hen for five years he knew the sorrow of decline. It began with the death ol: Mrs Laura Seymour, who had been his friend nnd companion for 25 years. With her death the mainspring of his life seemed to break. His Academic Career Reade was born at Ipsden, Oxfordshire, in 1814. the son of an English squire, typical of his class. He always ascribed his intellectual qualities to his mother. "I owe the larger half of what I am to my mother," he wrote? 'when he had attained success in the world. He had a hard time in his early years in private schools, whose golden rule appeared to he "Spare the rod. and spoil the child." They took great care not to spoil the child. From the age of 15 to 17 he stayed at home with his father and divided his time between athletics and reading. Then he entered Oxford and read with Robert Lowe, who later became a great figure in English politics and was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Sherbrooke. Reade was not outstanding as a student; but he graduated B.A. in 1333, and a month later was elected a fellow of his college, Magdalen. He proceeded M.A. in 1835, and the degree of D.C.L. was conferred on him in 1547. In the interval he was elected to different offices in the university, such as Dean of Arts in 1845, when he scandalised the reverend dons by appearing proudly in a green coat with brass buttons. In 1851 he was eketed vice-president of his college aad duly wrote in Latin the record of his year of office. He retained his fellowship till his death, but spent the greater part of his time in London. Stage-struck His connexion with lav,' was so f'ight nnd fleeting that it requires Jtltlo attention and might be ignored but for the probability that it fostered m him, if it did not breed, that 1 ore of litigation which made him rotovious among litigants. His first instructor in law was Samuel Warren, the author of that dull story which somehow caught the popular fancy, "Ten Thousand a Year." Reade was called to the Bar in 1843, but never practised. Music and literature made a I.'ar more powerful appeal, to him. He loved his violin, played well, and was something of an expert judge of the instrument. His first entry to literature was by way of the stage. In 1851, when he was 87, his three-act comedy. "The Ladies' Battle," was played in London. It was an adaptation from the French arid was followed the same year by a four-act tragedy, "Angelo." Next year he produced "A Village Tale" and "The Lost Husband": but none of these made any notable stir in literary or theatrical circles. His first undoubted success was the five-act drama, "Gold," in 1853, in which life on the Australian gold diggings was powerfully presented. The greatest of his stage successes was "Masks and Faces," a comedy written in collaboration with Tom Taylor. It was while rehearsing this play that he met Laura Seymour, an actress of merit, destined to play a great part in his life. Later on, Reade set up a somewhat strange household in which Mrs Seymour and her husband were installed. The influence over him was wholly good. He thought her a greater actress than she was; but English readers will always owe her a kindly thought for the fact that she persuaded Reade, who was stage-struck if ever a man was. to take up novel writing. But for her. "The Cloister ;md the Hearth" might never have been written and Reade might today be unknown and forgotten, like most of his contemporary writers for the stage. Early Novels His (irst novel, "Peg WofTington." \vEis published in 1853. and the same year appeared "Christie Johnstone," ? charming picture of Scottish fisher hie. Though full of the faults of immaturity, both novels are delightful and can to-day, as when they Were written, hold the reader's interest. How much of "Christie Johnstone'' j.-; autobiographical is difficult to determine. It deals with the fisher folk of Newhaven, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, where Reade had lived for some time and where it in behoved ho had found romance ''i the love of a young fisher lass, fne mav think of the story as somewhat .similar to "Lavengro," with Christie Johnstone ; s a parallel to Sorrow's Isopel Berners. But the stage would not let him •10. In 1854 j le produced his celebrated play, "The Lyons Mail," in which Irving olten appeared. It not till 185G that he turned seriously to novel -writing and wrote his lu'st ambitious story, "It's Never Too Late too Mend." Perhaps he quite consciously followed Dickens, whom he always regarded as his master, in giving himself to the Novel with a purpose. The book was ft close and moving study of the prison and transportation system of PSland and of life on the gold dig*ings in Australia. There are many Purple patches: and middle-aged people can still recall with something of a thrill Iteade's description ®t daybreak in Australia, or the story of the English skylark singing »o the band of rough gold-diggers T". 0 Gathered from far and near hear again the song heard in past jcars from English skies. The passionate philanthropy of the

writer and his vehement wrath at injustice and oppression and cruelty now through the pages and draw the heart towards him. The Masterpiece In the following three years he produced five novels, all of them readable, but all of them, also, might be called pot-boilers. Then in 1861 came his great work, the first part of which appeared as a serial in Once a Week," under the name of A Good Fight," increasing that weekly's circulation by 20,000. As the author describes it on the title page, it is a tale of the Middle Ages, and such a tale as was never told before nor since, at least in English literature. It gives Reade a place apart. Sir Walter Besant, no mean judge, called it the greatest historical novel in the language: There [Besant wrote! is portrayed j so vigorous, lifelike and truthful a picture of a time long gone by, and differing in almost every particular j from our own, that the world has never seen its like .... A fine pic-1 turesque time; witn plenty of robberies and murders in it; vast quantities of injustices in it; with lords among the peasants, like locusts among corn, devouring the substance; with tierce punishments for the wicked, but not as fierce as those which certainly await people in the next world; with gibbets, racks - , red-hot pincers, wheels, processions of penitents, heavy wax candles, cutting off of hands and every possible stimulus to virtue: yet a world in which virtue was singularly rare. All this life—-and more—is in "The Cloister and the Hearth," not described but acted. The reader who knows the literature of his time says to himself as he goes on. "Here is Erasmus, here is Froissart. here is Deschamps, here is Coquillart, here is Gringoire, here is Villon, here is Luther." .... There runs through it the sweetest, saddest and most tender love story ever devised by wit of man. That may sound extravagant, but not to one who rises from a reading or re-reading of the book. Reformer and Fighter ! in 1863 appeared "Hard Cash," another novel with a purpose, in which the abuses of the asylum or mental hospital system of that time were exposed. It is a thrilling story, had a great sale, and undoubtedly helped in a reform long overdue. In "Foul Play" lie exposed abuses in the seafaring trade, and jirged in anticipation many of the reforms which later were carried into effect by Plimsoll. In this novel he gave graphic pictures of life among the Australian convicts. "Put Yourself In His Place" was an indictment of trade unionism. Perhaps, next, to "The Cloister and the Hearth," "Griffith Gaunt" is the most powerful of Reade's novels. It was attacked fiercely by the critics as demoralising; but Reade, encouraged by its great success with the people, turned on them and denounced their prudishness. His best work was now finished. He was a most painstaking worker. "I studied the great art of fiction for 15 years before I presumed to write a line of it," he wrote. He had huge collections of cuttings from newspapers and books, carefully indexed in huge ledgers. This laborious exactitude brought its due reward; for his pictures of lands and times seen only in imagination have a verisimilitude which onlv genius, or the servant of genius, the art of taking pains, could achieve. His law suits were innumerable, usually to vindicate the author's right to the rewards of his labour and genius. He was an early battler for international copyright. One amusing and illuminating instance of his combative methods was given when some public authority in London wanted to acquire his house and grounds. He defied the demand and won, but while the dispute was in process he had painted in great vivid characters on his gateway, "Naboth's Vineyard." A Near View of the Man He was ' pugnacious, yes, but lovable and great-hearted. In his grounds he had a menagerie of all kinds of stray animals—dogs, hares, gazelles. He responded generously to appeals from everybody in distress. Sir William Howard Russell, the famous war correspondent, gives a very vivid impression of Reade, in his Reminiscences. Russell writes: I remember that when I met him fi-st I was introduced by Thackeray in one of the dressing rooms [of the Garrick Club'j. Thackeray described me as one of the Lord Chamberlains of Jupiter Tonans. Reade, who was brushing his hair, even then rather scanty, dropped his brush and hela out his hand saying: "A political, legal, or critical thunderbolt? If the latter, I hope Mr Russell will knock that infernal T off his perch and send him to Tartarus." I soon found he had many antipathies .... Reade a«ked me: "Are you a great friend of Thackeray's?" "I suppose so, 1 said. . . . "You have not known him very long?" he asked. It is impossible to give an idea of the delicacy of the insinuation, and yet Reade was not in the least ill-natured. But he was jealous, may it not be said envious? He had an unappeasable appetite for praise. Every fragment of praise that was not offered him he regarded as a lost quantity; offered to another it was a robbery. He had a cheerful, robust, and simple confidence in his supremacy as master novelist of the age . . . His meals were extraordinary. I have seen him at the Club eating a cauliflower flanked by a jug of cream as first course, and a great salad to follow, washed down by curious drinks of the shandygaff order He would drink coffee associated with sweets, black puddings, and toasted cheese, to the wonder of any spectators. His dress was peculiai. He affected large loose vestments and cravatting of the piratical ordei - knots and loose ends —and his 1 rousei were balloons of cloth of the most exuberant proportions. Charles Synge called him "the ruthless rufhan of the boundless breeks" and spread the report that his clothes were made out of wholccloth by a sailmaker of his vacht. But nevertheless he always, looked like a gentleman who had a strange turn in tailoring . . . Latterly his eccentricity in dress was accentuated: he wore large flabby, floppy bandit hats and curious cloaks or capes, even in hot weather; and he allowed hi: beard to grow and to fall in a whitish mass over his coat. He indulged in enormous quaintly-cut shoes and portentous clubs of wood as walking sticks ... He was an intense realist . . . As a playwright he was more careful of finish than he was as a novelist. There is no harm in saying that the experience of the lady to whom he attributed so much of ■ his happiness and whose death plunged ( him in a depth of sorrow from which he never emerged, war, exceedingly valuable in producing the strong dramatic situations which gained the eyes and car of the public in his best - moments. A portrait with the warts painted in; but it reveals much about a ? great writer who cast upon our { grandparents a spell of a potency i still deep and wide. , r