The Purcell Papers, Volume 1

J >> Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu >> The Purcell Papers, Volume 1

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

The 'Memoir' is nearly all in italics,
it was typed in by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska.
Otherwise:
Scanned by Charles Keller with
OmniPage Professional OCR software
donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226.
Contact Mike Lough

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, the Le
Fanus of Caen, were, upon the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, deprived of their ancestral estates
of Mandeville, Sequeville, and Cresseron; but,
owing to their possessing influential relatives at
the court of Louis the Fourteenth, were allowed
to quit their country for England, unmolested,
with their personal property. We meet with
John Le Fanu de Sequeville and Charles Le Fanu
de Cresseron, as cavalry officers in William the
Third's army; Charles being so distinguished a
member of the King's staff that he was presented
with William's portrait from his master's own
hand. He afterwards served as a major of
dragoons under Marlborough.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century,
William Le Fanu was the sole survivor of his
family. He married Henrietta Raboteau de
Puggibaut, the last of another great and noble
Huguenot family, whose escape from France, as
a child, by the aid of a Roman Catholic uncle in
high position at the French court, was effected
after adventures of the most romantic 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 the second
time Alicia, daughter of Thomas Sheridan and
sister of Richard Brinsley 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 by his wife Emma,
daughter of Dr. Dobbin, F.T.C.D., the father of
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the subject of this
memoir, whose name is so familiar to English
and American readers as one of the greatest
masters of the weird and the terrible amongst
our modern novelists.

Born in Dublin on the 28th of August, 1814,
he did not begin to speak until 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 using them correctly.

The first evidence of literary taste which he
gave was in his sixth year, when he made
several little sketches with explanatory remarks
written beneath them, after the manner of Du
Maurier's, or Charles Keene's humorous illustrations
in 'Punch.'

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

As a mere child, he was a remarkably good
actor, both in tragic and comic pieces, and was
hardly twelve years old when he began to write
verses of singular spirit for one so young. At
fourteen, he produced a long Irish poem, which
he never permitted anyone but his mother and
brother to read. To that brother, Mr. William
Le Fanu, Commissioner of Public Works,
Ireland, to whom, as the suggester of
Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Phaudrig Croohore' and
'Shamus O'Brien,' Irish ballad literature owes a
delightful debt, and whose richly humorous and
passionately pathetic powers as a raconteur of
these poems have only doubled that obligation in
the hearts of those who have been happy enough
to be his hearers--to Mr. William Le Fanu
we are indebted for the following extracts from
the first 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 accompanying specimens of his
brother's serious and humorous powers in verse,
written when 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, or I mistake myself foully,
A very excellent imitation of the poet Cowley,
Containing three very fair stanzas,
Which number Longinus, a very critical man, says,
And Aristotle, who was a critic ten times more caustic,
To a nicety fits a valentine or an acrostic.
And yet for all my pains to this moving epistle,
I have got no answer, so I suppose I may go whistle.
Perhaps you'd have preferred that like an old monk I had pattered
on
In the style and after the manner of the unfortunate Chatterton;
Or that, unlike my reverend daddy's son,
I had attempted the classicalities 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 common with the great Brinsley,
Lady Dufferin, and the Hon. Mrs. Norton,
young Sheridan Le Fanu also possessed an
irresistible humour and oratorical gift that,
as a student of Old Trinity, made him a
formidable rival of the 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 Irish Bar, after having long
enlivened and charmed St. Stephen's by their
wit and oratory.

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

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

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

These stories his brother William Le Fanu
was in the habit of repeating for his friends'
amusement, and about the year 1837, when he
was about twenty-three years of age, Joseph
Le Fanu said to him that he thought an
Irish story in verse would tell well, and
that if he would choose him a subject suitable
for recitation, he would write him one.
'Write me an Irish "Young Lochinvar," '
said his brother; and in a few days he
handed him '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 by
it; and yet, although wanting in the rare and
graceful finish of the original, the Irish copy
has, we feel, so much fire and feeling that it at
least tempts us to regret that Scott's poem was
not written in that heart-stirring Northern
dialect without which the noblest of our British
ballads would lose half their spirit. Indeed, we
may safely say that some of Le Fanu's lines
are finer than any in 'Young Lochinvar,'
simply because they seem to speak straight from
a people's heart, not to be the mere echoes of
medieval romance.

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

To return to the year 1837. Mr. William Le
Fanu, the suggester of this ballad, who was from
home at the time, now received daily instalments
of the second and more remarkable of his brother's
Irish poems--'Shamus O'Brien' (James O'Brien)
--learning them by heart as they reached him,
and, fortunately, never forgetting them, for his
brother Joseph kept no copy of the ballad, and he
had himself to write it out from memory ten
years after, when the poem appeared in the
'University Magazine.'

Few will deny that this poem contains passages
most faithfully, if fearfully, picturesque,
and that it is characterised throughout by a
profound pathos, and an abundant though at
times a too grotesquely incongruous humour.
Can we wonder, then, at the immense popularity
with which Samuel Lover recited it in the United
States? For to Lover's admiration of the poem,
and his addition of it to his entertainment,
'Shamus O'Brien' owes its introduction into
America, where it is now so popular. Lover
added some lines of his own to the poem, made
Shamus emigrate to the States, and set up
a public-house. These added lines appeared
in most of the published versions of the
poem. But they are indifferent as verse, and
certainly injure the dramatic effect of the
poem.

'Shamus O'Brien' is so generally attributed to
Lover (indeed we remember seeing it advertised
for recitation on the occasion of a benefit at a
leading London theatre as 'by Samuel Lover')
that it is a satisfaction to be able to reproduce
the following letter upon the subject from Lover
to 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 dramatic
effect--so much so that I determined to
test its effect in public, and have 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 people will 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, I should be glad to
give your brother's name as the author, should
he not object to have it known; but as his
writings are often of so different a tone, I would
not speak without permission to do so. It is
true that in my programme my name is attached
to other pieces, and no name appended to the
recitation; so far, you will see, I have done all
I could to avoid "appropriating," the spirit of
which I might have caught here, with Irish
aptitude; but I would like to have the means
of telling all whom it may concern the name of
the author, to whose head and heart it does so
much honour. Pray, my dear Le Fanu, inquire,
and answer me here by next packet, or as soon
as convenient. My success here has been quite
triumphant.
'Yours very truly,
'SAMUEL LOVER.'

We have heard it said (though without having
inquired into the truth of the tradition) that
'Shamus O'Brien' was the result of a match at
pseudo-national ballad writing made between Le
Fanu and several of the most brilliant of his
young literary confreres at T. C. D. But
however this may be, Le Fanu undoubtedly was no
young Irelander; indeed he did the stoutest
service as a press writer in the Conservative
interest, and was no doubt provoked as well as
amused at the unexpected popularity to which
his poem attained amongst the Irish Nationalists.
And here it should be remembered that the ballad
was written some eleven years before the outbreak
of '48, and at a time when a '98 subject might
fairly have been regarded as legitimate literary
property amongst the most 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 the owner and editor
of the 'Dublin University Magazine,' in which
his later as well as earlier Irish Stories
appeared. He sold it about a year before his death
in 1873, having previously parted with the
'Warder' and his share in the 'Evening
Mail.'

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

The following poem, undoubtedly his, should
make general our regret at being 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 Irish
ballad, song, and story writer, his first published
story being the 'Adventures of Sir Robert
Ardagh,' which appeared in the 'Dublin University
Magazine' of 1838.

In 1844 he was united to Miss Susan Bennett,
the beautiful daughter of the 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 and Anchor,' a chronicle of old Dublin
city, his first and, in the opinion of competent
critics, one of the best of his novels, seeing the
light about 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 immediate
successor. The comparative want of success
of these novels seems to have deterred Le Fanu
from using his pen, except as a press writer,
until 1863, when the 'House by the Churchyard'
was published, and was soon followed by 'Uncle
Silas' and his five other well-known novels.

We have considered Le Fanu as a ballad
writer and poet. As a press writer he is still
most honourably remembered for his learning
and brilliancy, 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 a novelist, and in
particular as the author of 'Uncle Silas.'

There are evidences in 'Shamus O'Brien,' and
even in 'Phaudrig Croohore,' of a power over
the mysterious, the grotesque, and the horrible,
which so singularly distinguish him as a writer
of prose fiction.

'Uncle Silas,' the fairest as well as most
familiar instance of this enthralling spell over
his readers, is too well known a story to tell in
detail. But how intensely and painfully distinct
is the opening description of the silent, inflexible
Austin Ruthyn of Knowl, and his shy, sweet
daughter Maude, the one so resolutely confident
in his brother's honour, the other so romantically
and yet anxiously interested in her uncle--the
sudden arrival of Dr. Bryerly, the strange
Swedenborgian, followed by the equally unexpected
apparition of Madame de la Rougiere,
Austin Ruthyn's painful death, and the reading of his strange
will consigning poor Maude to
the protection of her unknown Uncle Silas--her
cousin, good, bright devoted Monica Knollys, and
her dreadful distrust of Silas--Bartram Haugh
and its uncanny occupants, and foremost 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 grew upon me as I looked; for his
eyebrows were still black, though his hair
descended from his temples in long locks of the
purest silver and fine as silk, nearly to his
shoulders.

'He rose, tall and slight, a little stooped, all
in black, with an ample black 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 it seemed, in black
and white, venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with
its singular look of power, and an expression so
bewildering--was it derision, or anguish, or
cruelty, or patience?

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

Old Dicken and his daughter Beauty, old
L'Amour and Dudley Ruthyn, now enter upon
the scene, each a fresh shadow to deepen its
already sombre hue, while the gloom gathers in
spite of the glimpse of sunshine shot through it
by the visit to Elverston. Dudley's brutal
encounter with Captain Oakley, and vile persecution
of poor Maude till his love marriage comes to
light, lead us on to the ghastly catastrophe, the
hideous conspiracy of Silas and his son against
the life of the innocent girl.

It is interesting to know that the germ of
Uncle Silas first appeared in 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 finally developed into the
three-volume novel we have just noticed.

There are about Le Fanu's narratives touches
of nature which reconcile us to their always
remarkable and often supernatural incidents.
His characters are well conceived and distinctly
drawn, and strong soliloquy and easy dialogue
spring unaffectedly from their lips. He is a close
observer of Nature, and reproduces her wilder
effects of storm and gloom with singular
vividness; while he is equally at home in his
descriptions of still life, some of which remind
us of the faithfully minute detail of old Dutch
pictures.

Mr. Wilkie Collins, amongst our living
novelists, best compares with Le Fanu. Both of
these writers are remarkable for the ingenious
mystery with which they develop their plots, and
for the absorbing, if often over-sensational, nature
of their incidents; but whilst Mr. Collins excites
and fascinates our attention by an intense power
of realism which carries us with unreasoning
haste from cover to cover of his works, Le
Fanu is an idealist, full of high imagination,
and an artist who devotes deep attention to the
most delicate detail in his portraiture of men
and women, and his descriptions of the outdoor
and indoor worlds--a writer, therefore,
through whose pages it would be often an
indignity to hasten. And this more leisurely,
and certainly more classical, conduct of his
stories makes us remember them more fully and
faithfully than those of the author of the
'Woman in White.' Mr. Collins is generally
dramatic, and sometimes stagy, in his effects.
Le Fanu, while less careful to arrange his plots,
so as to admit of their being readily adapted
for the stage, often surprises us by scenes of so
much greater tragic intensity that we cannot
but lament that he did not, as Mr. Collins has
done, attempt the drama, and so furnish another
ground of comparison with his fellow-countryman,
Maturin (also, if we mistake not, of French
origin), whom, in his writings, Le Fanu far
more closely resembles than Mr. Collins, as a
master of the darker and stronger emotions of
human character. But, to institute a broader
ground of comparison between Le Fanu and
Mr. Collins, whilst the idiosyncrasies of the
former's characters, however immaterial those
characters may be, seem always to suggest the
minutest detail of his story, the latter would
appear to consider plot as the prime, character
as a subsidiary element in the art of novel
writing.

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

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

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9