THE SIXTIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2604, 10 February 1904, Page 65

THE SIXTIES.

(T.P.'s Weekly.)

I. Why is it there is such a fascination about the sixties? It is not, aftei all, a period to -which reionneis, at least, or stern moralists can look back with any particular respect. It was the days of the £10 householder in politics, and the £10 householder, with all his virtues, had little enthusiasm, wag a frigid, selfish, narrow creature. If you want to realise how far we have advanced in breadth of spirit and of sympathy from the days when the £10 ruled the land, read the extraordinary outburst of hoiror and repudiation — I remember it well to this day myself — which pursued Mr Gladstone when lie ventured to say, in discussing his Reform Bill of 1866, that the classes of which such fears. were entertained were, after all, our own flesh and blood. Any politician using that expression now of his fellow citizens would be making a statement ■which, instead of shocking anybody, would appear mere commonplace. Similarly the moralist cannot look back with much regret to the sixties — especially to the London of the sixties. For the London of that time ■was an up-all-night, roystering, flaring, Bacchanalian city, with false gods, and even more questionable goddesses. The Haymarket and many other streets never went to bed ; the man about town was still sufficiently popular to give Samuel Warren material for one of the stories in which the villain was at once wicked as a demon and fascina-ting as a deaii-god*. It was a time of hiccoughs, short and fast lives, of daik caverns, where msn ate chops and mashed potatoes, and drank whisky hot and steaming in oceans, and, in short, it ■was a squalid, vicious, reckless London, ■with life held nasty and cheap, and the spirit of the vile eighteenth century, with its drunken politicians, and its gambling rooms, and its looseness, not yet wholly laid. And yet there it is. You cannot take tip a book about the sixties without feeling drawn towards it, and without undergoing a cert-am sense oE fascination and of romance, as though it was an epoch that ■was still bathed in something of the light that never was on land or sea. I have been trying to find out the origin of this carious * feeling, and I have come to the conclusion that in my case, at least, it comes from the fact that the sixties to imany people represent their youth and their first impressions. They read into that epoch much of themselves. And above all, the sixties are fascinating because they are the epoch of Dickens and Thackeray, and, to a certain extent, of the young glory of Tennyson and George ELot, and such marvels of literary genius do not come twice in a generation of men.

n. These are the thoughts that are passing through my mind as I read tAe delightful volume in which my old friend JMr Justin •M'Carthy tells what he knows of the sixties and. of their chief figures. He himself is, to a certain extent, a man of the sixties. Like many of the men of letters of that period, he is an excellent classical scholar, and he has that easy, pleasant style which represents the literary spirit of a time that loved the easy now of beautiful English, and was still shocked by the rebellious novelties of Carlyle's tortured style. Perhaps also Mr M'Carthy is a man of" the sixties in his kindliness of spirit and his optimism. For though the sixties were not the epoch of optimism and enthusiasm in English politics, they had not yet heard even the word pessimism, much less known the hateful thing ; and their criticisms of life and of men, though they might strike us as sometimes frigid, are not defaced lay that loathsome desire to sec- evil in everything which a certain type of French ■writer has made the fashion in some forms of modern literature. Let me add at once that this kindliness of spirit belongs to Mr M'Carthy himself so entirely that he would have been an optimist in an age of pessimists, and would have judged tenderly of men in a lan-d that was Inhabited Dy cynics.

The first figure which one will naturally Betk in these portraits of the sixties is that of Thackeray. Mr M'Carthy wsas a young journalist in Liverpool when first he saw close at hand the man who had been for years one of h : s literary idols. Curiously, he saw Thackeray when viiat great novelist was passing through a phase utterly unlike the image Mr M'Carthy and all the rest of us have always had in our inner ininds. This is how Mr M'C^irtiiy saw Thackeray :

"The first time I ever saw Thackeray, except as the solitary figure on a lecturer's platform, he wore a thick moustache, and the moustache was of a dark colour, contrasting oddly with his white locks. That first sight of him thus unusually adorned vas on the platform of the Lime Street Station, Liverpool, when he came down from London to go on board fhe Cunasd steamer on his way to deliver his course of lectures in the United States. There were a few small groups of people gathered on the platform to get a glimpse of the great author as he passed out, and I well remember that one enthusiastic young lady, ytho was personally quite unknown to him, went boldly up and pressed a bunch of roses into his hand. Nothing could be more graceful and genial than the manner in •which Thackeray accepted this unexpected tribute, and took off his hat with a benignant smile in acknowledgment of the

One of the most interesting things m jfche book of Mr M'Carthy is his very vivid 'descriptions of the different styles of speaking of the two great novelists. Thackeray ■had nothing of the extraordinary power of Dickens as a speaker and as an actor. Dickens, indeed, might huve been as great on the stage, or perhaps id the House of

* "Portraits of the Sixties.-"'- By Justin TJ'Cartliy. (Fisher Unwirul

Commons, as he was in his study. "Dickens' s reading." v.r'teh Mr M'Oniiy, "were as original, p'ecufifir in their style, as were Dickens's writings."

"I have never heard any public reader ■who could d splay a dramatic vividness, variety, and power such as Dickens could show 'at all times, and without any apparent effort, when he read to a great audience. It really was not, mere leading — ifc ■was the impersonation of, or, rather, the calling into life of. each character whose words' he spcke. It ran through all th-9 moods of human feeling, was high tragedy or broad comedy, pathetic appeal or exalted contemplation, according as the subject gave opportunity, and yet it was never in any sense mere stage play. Dickens had a voice of marvellous compass, depth, and variety of tone ; some of its chords were perfect music, and although, he had often to pass in a moment from the extreme of one mood to the extreme of another, there was not the slightest strain of effort or straggle after effect ; all seemed to come with perfect ease from the instinct and inspiration of the man." And Mr M'Carthy's judgment of Dickens as a speaker puts him equally high. "He was," says Mr M'Oarthv. ''superb as an after-dinner speaker. " and he was "a great master also of the eloquence which belongs to the public platform." IV. Thackeray had none of these estrooidinary gifts. Indeed, there arc stones of Thackeiay's break-down as a speaker which make one very sorry for him. I have a vague recollection of a dinner party at which Thackeray got up, and, having stood on his legs for several minutes, had in the end to sit down without uttering one word. This story is not in Mr M'Carthy's book, but one can quite believe the possibility of such a misadventure from what Mr "M'Carthy does say about Thackeray as a speaker. "Thackeray," says Mr M'Carthy, '"was a poor speaker whenever he attempted to go outside the range of his prepared lectures." And for this reason Mr M'Carthy. rejoices that Thackeray's ambition for a seat in Parliament was not gratified. '"His manner," says Mr M'Carthy, "was ineffective ; he had no aptitude for public" debate ; he would have been regarded in the House as merely a curiosity, and I cannot bear to think of the author of 'Vanity Fair' submitting himself to be regarded by any assembly as a mere curiosity and out of place." Which reminds me of a little incident in which figured Mr M'Curthy himself and another brilliant man of letters who happened to be in the House at the same time. It was in the heat and agony of tli9 Irish struggle, when scenes not very unlike some of those in the Fiench Revolution were being enacted in Ireland, and one day, Mr M'Carthy meeting Sir George Irevolyan. who was, in the thankless, terrible, and perilous office of Chief Secret aiy, ar-ked the nephew of Macaulay what induced a brilliant man of letters like him to waste himself in the House of Commons. "Do you know," replied Sir George quite sweetly, "that i& a question I am constantly asking mysolf about you !" To return to Thackeray, he was a fine reader, though in qu-te a different manner from Dickens.

"His voice was clear and penetrating, and his articulation allowed no word to be lost upon his listeners ; but he never seemed to be making any direct appeal to the emotion? of his audience. Xo accompaniment of gesture set off his quiet intonation, and he seemed, in fact, to be talking rather at than to the crowd which hung upon his every word. Even when his audience broke into irrepressible applause at some passage of especial beauty and power, the lecturer did not seem to gain any fresh impulse from, the plaudits which broke forth, but went on to his next sentence with the same self-absorbed composure- as though he were only thinking aloud and were unconsciour of the presence of listener?."

And yet Thackeray did manage to enormously influence his aud'cnces. Sometimes they seemed '"possessed." All my readers know that wonderful passage ir which Thackeray tells the story of the last days of George 111, when he wvs old ar.-d demented and had lost the daughter he Toyed so well. This passage always Ind a great effect when read by Thackeray. "Everyone appealed to hold" his "breath in fear ihat even a sound of admiration might distuib for an instant the calm flow of the thrilling discourse."

Tennyson was a familiar figure to Mr M'Carthy. He saw the great poet for the first time during the historic vis:t which Garibaldi made to England. Tennyson then "was. tall and stately, and wore a great mass of thick, long hair — long hplr was then still worn even by men who did not affect originality ; his frame was slightly bent, as if "with the weight of thought ; there was something entirely out of the common and very commanding in his whole presence." Tennyson once occupied a seat "under the gallery"' in the House of Commons one evening. Nobody paid any attention to the debate while he was there.

With Tennyson. Mr M'Carthy's acquaintance was slight, but. he knew Bright and Cobden intimately, and. indeed, was brought into close contact with both of them at the great moments of their career. Mr M'Carthy first came to London as a reporter, and ultimately became editor of the Morning Star, the organ of Bright and Cobden in the press. The two great Fieetrade leaders used to come to the office of the newspaper, and there the editor would see them. Mr M'Carthy gfves a picture of both the men which is delightful, and leaves behind that pleasant impression which one always gets when one feels that one has been in the comppny of truly good and exalted characters. One of the curious things about Bright was thctt his strong hatred of certain things affected even his literary judgments. That was, perhaps, the reason why he preferred Milton to Shakespeare. "He was quite willing." says Mr M'Carthy, "to admit Shdkeyjc-are"*

suincms place among En^tr-h poc-ts. liul his intense love ot purity f-hi.ink from iii<> Cl-opitras- ird tao lagos a r.d the 1 aV^lh-. as much as from the Ancient Pistol^ and tha Dolly Teirsheet--. He had an abhorrence of ser c utility and coarseness, even when these formed essential parts of the character which lvid to be described. 'Why describe such characters at all ? ' he asked, and this was a great pait of his critical theory." Mr M'Carthy docs not mention a particular suggestion of Bright." which brought out this peculiar view of literature very well. He once arked Mr M'Carthy why a novel could rot be written in which there would be only gcod people ! Mr M'Carthy maintains that Mr Bright w;is singularly free from personal vanity. He had ; at least, no vanity where his own speeches were concerned. "I had Bright's own assurance more than once that he never would have mode a speech if he had thought it consistent with his sense of duty to remain silent.'' Towards the close of his life Bright ceased almost entirely to speak in the Rous" of Commons. This was due to the iLte"iSe nervousness from which he suffered. He used to tell his friends that he sometimes felt that if he stood up he would fall down the moment he began to speak. His silence was also doubtless due in part to his loss of voice. I heard Bright make his last speech ir> the House, and it was really a poor performance. The reason, I thought, of itb ■want of hold on the House was tint the once beautiful voice had become husky and weak. VI. There are plenty of artistic figures as well as political in Mr M'Carthy's picture gallery. I have space, however, for only one — the once celebrated actor, Fechter. He is forgotten, I dare say, by the pres-ent generation, but he is an ineffaceable memory to those who saw him, as I did, in the zenith of his fame. Read the description in Mr M'Carthy's pages of one of the changes Feohter made in the performance of "Hamlet, '* and it will give you a good idea- of how conventional the stage must have been when those changes were considered revolutionary. "Fechter . . . seemed as if he were endeavouring to embody Goethe's ideas in a living form. This seemed especially evident in the immortal scene with the gravediggers before the newly-opened grave. Other actors were accustomed to stand in picturesque attitude at the very front of the stage, and to deliver Shakespeare's words with the m?nner of a popular preacher addressing a hushed and reverent congregation on some of the great lessons of morality. Fechter sat for the most part on an old and decaying tombstone, had one of his legs carelessly crossed ov-er the other, and talked to the gravediggers in a tone of easy levity, which sometimes gave the idea that he was amusing himself by drawing them oat, and chaffing them for the benefit of the listening

Horatio. . . . Boon we began to see that this manner of ease and assumed levity only added in reality a new depth of meaning to the whole tragic import of the scene. Here was a Hamlet drawn from nature, and not from stage tradition — a Hamlet of varied mood, a man of genius and of fate, whose humour it was to clothe his profoundest thoughts sometimes in a disguise of careJtss indifference, utterly impenetrable to such dull and commonplace observers a's the homely gravedigger and his men."

I must stop. I have given enough to make my readers go to Mr M'Carthy's own delightful pages for other and equally delightful portraits of the sixties. — T.P.