The Purcell Papers — Volume 1 Read online

  Produced by Judith Boss and Charles Keller

  THE PURCELL PAPERS.

  BY THE LATE

  JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU,

  AUTHOR OF 'UNCLE SILAS.'

  With a Memoir by

  ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES

  IN THREE VOLUMES.

  VOL. I.

  CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

  MEMOIR OF JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU THE GHOST AND THE BONE-SETTER THE FORTUNES OF SIR ROBERT ARDAGH THE LAST HEIR OF CASTLE CONNOR THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM

  MEMOIR OF JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU.

  A noble Huguenot family, owning considerable property in Normandy, theLe Fanus of Caen, were, upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,deprived of their ancestral estates of Mandeville, Sequeville, andCresseron; but, owing to their possessing influential relatives at thecourt of Louis the Fourteenth, were allowed to quit their country forEngland, unmolested, with their personal property. We meet with John LeFanu de Sequeville and Charles Le Fanu de Cresseron, as cavalry officersin William the Third's army; Charles being so distinguished a member ofthe King's staff that he was presented with William's portrait from hismaster's own hand. He afterwards served as a major of dragoons underMarlborough.

  At the beginning of the eighteenth century, William Le Fanu was the solesurvivor of his family. He married Henrietta Raboteau de Puggibaut,the last of another great and noble Huguenot family, whose escapefrom France, as a child, by the aid of a Roman Catholic uncle in highposition at the French court, was effected after adventures of the mostromantic danger.

  Joseph Le Fanu, the eldest of the sons of this marriage who left issue,held the office of Clerk of the Coast in Ireland. He married for thesecond time Alicia, daughter of Thomas Sheridan and sister of RichardBrinsley Sheridan; his brother, Captain Henry Le Fanu, of Leamington,being united to the only other sister of the great wit and orator.

  Dean Thomas Philip Le Fanu, the eldest son of Joseph Le Fanu, became byhis wife Emma, daughter of Dr. Dobbin, F.T.C.D., the father of JosephSheridan Le Fanu, the subject of this memoir, whose name is so familiarto English and American readers as one of the greatest masters of theweird and the terrible amongst our modern novelists.

  Born in Dublin on the 28th of August, 1814, he did not begin to speakuntil he was more than two years of age; but when he had once started,the boy showed an unusual aptitude in acquiring fresh words, and usingthem correctly.

  The first evidence of literary taste which he gave was in his sixthyear, when he made several little sketches with explanatory remarkswritten beneath them, after the manner of Du Maurier's, or CharlesKeene's humorous illustrations in 'Punch.'

  One of these, preserved long afterwards by his mother, represented aballoon in mid-air, and two aeronauts, who had occupied it, fallingheadlong to earth, the disaster being explained by these words: 'See theeffects of trying to go to Heaven.'

  As a mere child, he was a remarkably good actor, both in tragic andcomic pieces, and was hardly twelve years old when he began to writeverses of singular spirit for one so young. At fourteen, he produceda long Irish poem, which he never permitted anyone but his mother andbrother to read. To that brother, Mr. William Le Fanu, Commissioner ofPublic Works, Ireland, to whom, as the suggester of Sheridan Le Fanu's'Phaudrig Croohore' and 'Shamus O'Brien,' Irish ballad literature owesa delightful debt, and whose richly humorous and passionately patheticpowers as a raconteur of these poems have only doubled that obligationin the hearts of those who have been happy enough to be his hearers--toMr. William Le Fanu we are indebted for the following extracts from thefirst of his works, which the boy-author seems to have set any store by:

  'Muse of Green Erin, break thine icy slumbers! Strike once again thy wreathed lyre! Burst forth once more and wake thy tuneful numbers! Kindle again thy long-extinguished fire!

  'Why should I bid thee, Muse of Erin, waken? Why should I bid thee strike thy harp once more? Better to leave thee silent and forsaken Than wake thee but thy glories to deplore.

  'How could I bid thee tell of Tara's Towers, Where once thy sceptred Princes sate in state-- Where rose thy music, at the festive hours, Through the proud halls where listening thousands sate?

  'Fallen are thy fair palaces, thy country's glory, Thy tuneful bards were banished or were slain, Some rest in glory on their deathbeds gory, And some have lived to feel a foeman's chain.

  'Yet for the sake of thy unhappy nation, Yet for the sake of Freedom's spirit fled, Let thy wild harpstrings, thrilled with indignation, Peal a deep requiem o'er thy sons that bled.

  'O yes! like the last breath of evening sighing, Sweep thy cold hand the silent strings along, Flash like the lamp beside the hero dying, Then hushed for ever be thy plaintive song.'

  To Mr. William Le Fanu we are further indebted for the accompanyingspecimens of his brother's serious and humorous powers in verse, writtenwhen he was quite a lad, as valentines to a Miss G. K.:

  'Life were too long for me to bear If banished from thy view; Life were too short, a thousand year, If life were passed with you.

  'Wise men have said "Man's lot on earth Is grief and melancholy," But where thou art, there joyous mirth Proves all their wisdom folly.

  'If fate withhold thy love from me, All else in vain were given; Heaven were imperfect wanting thee, And with thee earth were heaven.'

  A few days after, he sent the following sequel:

  'My dear good Madam, You can't think how very sad I'm. I sent you, orI mistake myself foully, A very excellent imitation of the poet Cowley,Containing three very fair stanzas, Which number Longinus, a verycritical man, says, And Aristotle, who was a critic ten times morecaustic, To a nicety fits a valentine or an acrostic. And yet for all mypains to this moving epistle, I have got no answer, so I suppose I maygo whistle. Perhaps you'd have preferred that like an old monk Ihad pattered on In the style and after the manner of the unfortunateChatterton; Or that, unlike my reverend daddy's son, I had attempted theclassicalities of the dull, though immortal Addison.

  I can't endure this silence another week; What shall I do in order to make you speak? Shall I give you a trope In the manner of Pope, Or hammer my brains like an old smith To get out something like Goldsmith? Or shall I aspire on To tune my poetic lyre on The same key touched by Byron, And laying my hand its wire on, With its music your soul set fire on By themes you ne'er could tire on? Or say, I pray, Would a lay Like Gay Be more in your way? I leave it to you, Which am I to do? It plain on the surface is That any metamorphosis, To affect your study You may work on my soul or body. Your frown or your smile makes me Savage or Gay In action, as well as in song; And if 'tis decreed I at length become Gray, Express but the word and I'm Young; And if in the Church I should ever aspire With friars and abbots to cope, By a nod, if you please, you can make me a Prior-- By a word you render me Pope. If you'd eat, I'm a Crab; if you'd cut, I'm your Steel, As sharp as you'd get from the cutler; I'm your Cotton whene'er you're in want of a reel, And your livery carry, as Butler. I'll ever rest your debtor If you'll answer my first letter; Or must, alas, eternity Witness your taciturnity? Speak--and oh! speak quickly Or else I shall grow sickly, And pine,
And whine, And grow yellow and brown As e'er was mahogany, And lie me down And die in agony.

  P.S.--You'll allow I have the gift To write like the immortal Swift.'

  But besides the poetical powers with which he was endowed, in commonwith the great Brinsley, Lady Dufferin, and the Hon. Mrs. Norton, youngSheridan Le Fanu also possessed an irresistible humour and oratoricalgift that, as a student of Old Trinity, made him a formidable rival ofthe best of the young debaters of his time at the 'College Historical,'not a few of whom have since reached the highest eminence at the IrishBar, after having long enlivened and charmed St. Stephen's by their witand oratory.

  Amongst his compeers he was remarkable for his sudden fiery eloquence ofattack, and ready and rapid powers of repartee when on his defence.But Le Fanu, whose understanding was elevated by a deep love of theclassics, in which he took university honours, and further heightened byan admirable knowledge of our own great authors, was not to be temptedaway by oratory from literature, his first and, as it proved, his lastlove.

  Very soon after leaving college, and just when he was called to theBar, about the year 1838, he bought the 'Warder,' a Dublin newspaper,of which he was editor, and took what many of his best friends andadmirers, looking to his high prospects as a barrister, regarded at thetime as a fatal step in his career to fame.

  Just before this period, Le Fanu had taken to writing humorous Irishstories, afterwards published in the 'Dublin University Magazine,' suchas the 'Quare Gander,' 'Jim Sulivan's Adventure,' 'The Ghost and theBone-setter,' etc.

  These stories his brother William Le Fanu was in the habit of repeatingfor his friends' amusement, and about the year 1837, when he was abouttwenty-three years of age, Joseph Le Fanu said to him that he thought anIrish story in verse would tell well, and that if he would choose hima subject suitable for recitation, he would write him one. 'Write me anIrish "Young Lochinvar,"' said his brother; and in a few days he handedhim 'Phaudrig Croohore'--Anglice, 'Patrick Crohore.'

  Of course this poem has the disadvantage not only of being written after'Young Lochinvar,' but also that of having been directly inspired byit; and yet, although wanting in the rare and graceful finish of theoriginal, the Irish copy has, we feel, so much fire and feeling that itat least tempts us to regret that Scott's poem was not written in thatheart-stirring Northern dialect without which the noblest of our Britishballads would lose half their spirit. Indeed, we may safely say thatsome of Le Fanu's lines are finer than any in 'Young Lochinvar,' simplybecause they seem to speak straight from a people's heart, not to be themere echoes of medieval romance.

  'Phaudrig Croohore' did not appear in print in the 'Dublin UniversityMagazine' till 1844, twelve years after its composition, when it wasincluded amongst the Purcell Papers.

  To return to the year 1837. Mr. William Le Fanu, the suggester of thisballad, who was from home at the time, now received daily instalmentsof the second and more remarkable of his brother's Irish poems--'ShamusO'Brien' (James O'Brien)--learning them by heart as they reached him,and, fortunately, never forgetting them, for his brother Joseph kept nocopy of the ballad, and he had himself to write it out from memory tenyears after, when the poem appeared in the 'University Magazine.'

  Few will deny that this poem contains passages most faithfully, iffearfully, picturesque, and that it is characterised throughout bya profound pathos, and an abundant though at times a too grotesquelyincongruous humour. Can we wonder, then, at the immense popularitywith which Samuel Lover recited it in the United States? For to Lover'sadmiration of the poem, and his addition of it to his entertainment,'Shamus O'Brien' owes its introduction into America, where it is nowso popular. Lover added some lines of his own to the poem, made Shamusemigrate to the States, and set up a public-house. These added linesappeared in most of the published versions of the poem. But they areindifferent as verse, and certainly injure the dramatic effect of thepoem.

  'Shamus O'Brien' is so generally attributed to Lover (indeed we rememberseeing it advertised for recitation on the occasion of a benefit at aleading London theatre as 'by Samuel Lover') that it is a satisfactionto be able to reproduce the following letter upon the subject from Loverto William le Fanu:

  'Astor House, 'New York, U.S. America. 'Sept. 30, 1846.

  'My dear Le Fanu,

  'In reading over your brother's poem while I crossed the Atlantic,I became more and more impressed with its great beauty and dramaticeffect--so much so that I determined to test its effect in public, andhave done so here, on my first appearance, with the greatest success.Now I have no doubt there will be great praises of the poem, and peoplewill suppose, most likely, that the composition is mine, and as you know(I take for granted) that I would not wish to wear a borrowed feather, Ishould be glad to give your brother's name as the author, should he notobject to have it known; but as his writings are often of so different atone, I would not speak without permission to do so. It is true that inmy programme my name is attached to other pieces, and no name appendedto the recitation; so far, you will see, I have done all I could toavoid "appropriating," the spirit of which I might have caught here,with Irish aptitude; but I would like to have the means of telling allwhom it may concern the name of the author, to whose head and heart itdoes so much honour. Pray, my dear Le Fanu, inquire, and answer me hereby next packet, or as soon as convenient. My success here has been quitetriumphant.

  'Yours very truly,

  'SAMUEL LOVER.'

  We have heard it said (though without having inquired into the truthof the tradition) that 'Shamus O'Brien' was the result of a match atpseudo-national ballad writing made between Le Fanu and several of themost brilliant of his young literary confreres at T. C. D. But howeverthis may be, Le Fanu undoubtedly was no young Irelander; indeed he didthe stoutest service as a press writer in the Conservative interest, andwas no doubt provoked as well as amused at the unexpected popularityto which his poem attained amongst the Irish Nationalists. And hereit should be remembered that the ballad was written some eleven yearsbefore the outbreak of '48, and at a time when a '98 subject mightfairly have been regarded as legitimate literary property amongst themost loyal.

  We left Le Fanu as editor of the 'Warder.' He afterwards purchased the'Dublin Evening Packet,' and much later the half-proprietorship of the'Dublin Evening Mail.' Eleven or twelve years ago he also became theowner and editor of the 'Dublin University Magazine,' in which hislater as well as earlier Irish Stories appeared. He sold it about a yearbefore his death in 1873, having previously parted with the 'Warder' andhis share in the 'Evening Mail.'

  He had previously published in the 'Dublin University Magazine' a numberof charming lyrics, generally anonymously, and it is to be feared thatall clue to the identification of most of these is lost, except that ofinternal evidence.

  The following poem, undoubtedly his, should make general our regret atbeing unable to fix with certainty upon its fellows:

  'One wild and distant bugle sound Breathed o'er Killarney's magic shore Will shed sweet floating echoes round When that which made them is no more.

  'So slumber in the human heart Wild echoes, that will sweetly thrill The words of kindness when the voice That uttered them for aye is still.

  'Oh! memory, though thy records tell Full many a tale of grief and sorrow, Of mad excess, of hope decayed, Of dark and cheerless melancholy;

  'Still, memory, to me thou art The dearest of the gifts of mind, For all the joys that touch my heart Are joys that I have left behind.

  Le Fanu's literary life may be divided into three distinct periods.During the first of these, and till his thirtieth year, he was an Irishballad, song, and story writer, his first published story being the'Adventures of Sir Robert Ardagh,' which appeared in the 'DublinUniversity Magazine' of 1838.

  In 1844 he was united t
o Miss Susan Bennett, the beautiful daughter ofthe late George Bennett, Q.C. From this time until her decease, in 1858,he devoted his energies almost entirely to press work, making, however,his first essays in novel writing during that period. The 'Cock andAnchor,' a chronicle of old Dublin city, his first and, in the opinionof competent critics, one of the best of his novels, seeing the lightabout the year 1850. This work, it is to be feared, is out of print,though there is now a cheap edition of 'Torlogh O'Brien,' its immediatesuccessor. The comparative want of success of these novels seems to havedeterred Le Fanu from using his pen, except as a press writer, until1863, when the 'House by the Churchyard' was published, and was soonfollowed by 'Uncle Silas' and his five other well-known novels.

  We have considered Le Fanu as a ballad writer and poet. As a presswriter he is still most honourably remembered for his learning andbrilliancy, and the power and point of his sarcasm, which long made the'Dublin Evening Mail' one of the most formidable of Irish press critics;but let us now pass to the consideration of him in the capacity of anovelist, and in particular as the author of 'Uncle Silas.'

  There are evidences in 'Shamus O'Brien,' and even in 'PhaudrigCroohore,' of a power over the mysterious, the grotesque, and thehorrible, which so singularly distinguish him as a writer of prosefiction.

  'Uncle Silas,' the fairest as well as most familiar instance of thisenthralling spell over his readers, is too well known a story to tellin detail. But how intensely and painfully distinct is the openingdescription of the silent, inflexible Austin Ruthyn of Knowl, andhis shy, sweet daughter Maude, the one so resolutely confident in hisbrother's honour, the other so romantically and yet anxiouslyinterested in her uncle--the sudden arrival of Dr. Bryerly, the strangeSwedenborgian, followed by the equally unexpected apparition of Madamede la Rougiere, Austin Ruthyn's painful death, and the reading of hisstrange will consigning poor Maude to the protection of her unknownUncle Silas--her cousin, good, bright devoted Monica Knollys, and herdreadful distrust of Silas--Bartram Haugh and its uncanny occupants, andforemost amongst them Uncle Silas.

  This is his portrait:

  'A face like marble, with a fearful monumental look, and for an old man,singularly vivid, strange eyes, the singularity of which rather grewupon me as I looked; for his eyebrows were still black, though his hairdescended from his temples in long locks of the purest silver and fineas silk, nearly to his shoulders.

  'He rose, tall and slight, a little stooped, all in black, with an ampleblack velvet tunic, which was rather a gown than a coat....

  'I know I can't convey in words an idea of this apparition, drawn, as itseemed, in black and white, venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, withits singular look of power, and an expression so bewildering--was itderision, or anguish, or cruelty, or patience?

  'The wild eyes of this strange old man were fixed on me as he rose; anhabitual contraction, which in certain lights took the character ofa scowl, did not relax as he advanced towards me with a thin-lippedsmile.'

  Old Dicken and his daughter Beauty, old L'Amour and Dudley Ruthyn, nowenter upon the scene, each a fresh shadow to deepen its already sombrehue, while the gloom gathers in spite of the glimpse of sunshine shotthrough it by the visit to Elverston. Dudley's brutal encounter withCaptain Oakley, and vile persecution of poor Maude till his lovemarriage comes to light, lead us on to the ghastly catastrophe, thehideous conspiracy of Silas and his son against the life of the innocentgirl.

  It is interesting to know that the germ of Uncle Silas first appearedin the 'Dublin University Magazine' of 1837 or 1838, as the short tale,entitled, 'A Passage from the Secret History of an Irish Countess,'which is printed in this collection of Stories. It next was published as'The Murdered Cousin' in a collection of Christmas stories, and finallydeveloped into the three-volume novel we have just noticed.

  There are about Le Fanu's narratives touches of nature which reconcileus to their always remarkable and often supernatural incidents. Hischaracters are well conceived and distinctly drawn, and strong soliloquyand easy dialogue spring unaffectedly from their lips. He is a closeobserver of Nature, and reproduces her wilder effects of storm and gloomwith singular vividness; while he is equally at home in his descriptionsof still life, some of which remind us of the faithfully minute detailof old Dutch pictures.

  Mr. Wilkie Collins, amongst our living novelists, best compares withLe Fanu. Both of these writers are remarkable for the ingenious mysterywith which they develop their plots, and for the absorbing, if oftenover-sensational, nature of their incidents; but whilst Mr. Collinsexcites and fascinates our attention by an intense power of realismwhich carries us with unreasoning haste from cover to cover of hisworks, Le Fanu is an idealist, full of high imagination, and anartist who devotes deep attention to the most delicate detail in hisportraiture of men and women, and his descriptions of the outdoor andindoor worlds--a writer, therefore, through whose pages it would beoften an indignity to hasten. And this more leisurely, and certainlymore classical, conduct of his stories makes us remember them more fullyand faithfully than those of the author of the 'Woman in White.' Mr.Collins is generally dramatic, and sometimes stagy, in his effects. LeFanu, while less careful to arrange his plots, so as to admit of theirbeing readily adapted for the stage, often surprises us by scenes of somuch greater tragic intensity that we cannot but lament that he didnot, as Mr. Collins has done, attempt the drama, and so furnish anotherground of comparison with his fellow-countryman, Maturin (also, if wemistake not, of French origin), whom, in his writings, Le Fanu farmore closely resembles than Mr. Collins, as a master of the darker andstronger emotions of human character. But, to institute a broader groundof comparison between Le Fanu and Mr. Collins, whilst the idiosyncrasiesof the former's characters, however immaterial those characters maybe, seem always to suggest the minutest detail of his story, the latterwould appear to consider plot as the prime, character as a subsidiaryelement in the art of novel writing.

  Those who possessed the rare privilege of Le Fanu's friendship, and onlythey, can form any idea of the true character of the man; for after thedeath of his wife, to whom he was most deeply devoted, he quite forsookgeneral society, in which his fine features, distinguished bearing, andcharm of conversation marked him out as the beau-ideal of an Irish witand scholar of the old school.

  From this society he vanished so entirely that Dublin, always ready witha nickname, dubbed him 'The Invisible Prince;' and indeed he was forlong almost invisible, except to his family and most familiar friends,unless at odd hours of the evening, when he might occasionally be seenstealing, like the ghost of his former self, between his newspaperoffice and his home in Merrion Square; sometimes, too, he was to beencountered in an old out-of-the-way bookshop poring over some rareblack letter Astrology or Demonology.

  To one of these old bookshops he was at one time a pretty frequentvisitor, and the bookseller relates how he used to come in and ask withhis peculiarly pleasant voice and smile, 'Any more ghost stories for me,Mr. -----?' and how, on a fresh one being handed to him, he wouldseldom leave the shop until he had looked it through. This taste for thesupernatural seems to have grown upon him after his wife's death, andinfluenced him so deeply that, had he not been possessed of a deal ofshrewd common sense, there might have been danger of his embracing someof the visionary doctrines in which he was so learned. But no! evenSpiritualism, to which not a few of his brother novelists succumbed,whilst affording congenial material for our artist of the superhuman towork upon, did not escape his severest satire.

  Shortly after completing his last novel, strange to say, bearing thetitle 'Willing to Die,' Le Fanu breathed his last at his home No. 18,Merrion Square South, at the age of fifty-nine.

  'He was a man,' writes the author of a brief memoir of him in the'Dublin University Magazine,' 'who thought deeply, especially onreligious subjects. To those who knew him he was very dear; they admiredhim for his learning, his sparkling wit, and pleasant conversation, andloved him for his manly virtues, for his noble and generous qualities,his gen
tleness, and his loving, affectionate nature.' And all who knewthe man must feel how deeply deserved are these simple words of sincereregard for Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

  Le Fanu's novels are accessible to all; but his Purcell Papers are nowfor the first time collected and published, by the permission of hiseldest son (the late Mr. Philip Le Fanu), and very much owing to thefriendly and active assistance of his brother, Mr. William Le Fanu.