The Life of John Sterling

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The _Onyx Ring_, a curious Tale, with wild improbable basis, but with
a noble glow of coloring and with other high merits in it, a Tale
still worth reading, in which, among the imaginary characters, various
friends of Sterling's are shadowed forth, not always in the truest
manner, came out in _Blackwood_ in the winter of this year. Surely a
very high talent for painting, both of scenery and persons, is visible
in this Fiction; the promise of a Novel such as we have few. But
there wants maturing, wants purifying of clear from unclear;--properly
there want patience and steady depth. The basis, as we said, is wild
and loose; and in the details, lucent often with fine color, and dipt
in beautiful sunshine, there are several things mis_seen_, untrue,
which is the worst species of mispainting. Witness, as Sterling
himself would have by and by admitted, the "empty clockcase" (so we
called it) which he has labelled Goethe,--which puts all other
untruths in the Piece to silence.

One of the great alleviations of his exile at Madeira he has already
celebrated to us: the pleasant circle of society he fell into there.
Great luck, thinks Sterling in this voyage; as indeed there was: but
he himself, moreover, was readier than most men to fall into pleasant
circles everywhere, being singularly prompt to make the most of any
circle. Some of his Madeira acquaintanceships were really good; and
one of them, if not more, ripened into comradeship and friendship for
him. He says, as we saw, "The chances are, Calvert and I will come
home together."

Among the English in pursuit of health, or in flight from fatal
disease, that winter, was this Dr. Calvert; an excellent ingenious
cheery Cumberland gentleman, about Sterling's age, and in a deeper
stage of ailment, this not being his first visit to Madeira: he,
warmly joining himself to Sterling, as we have seen, was warmly
received by him; so that there soon grew a close and free intimacy
between them; which for the next three years, till poor Calvert ended
his course, was a leading element in the history of both.
Companionship in incurable malady, a touching bond of union, was by no
means purely or chiefly a companionship in misery in their case. The
sunniest inextinguishable cheerfulness shone, through all manner of
clouds, in both. Calvert had been travelling physician in some family
of rank, who had rewarded him with a pension, shielding his own
ill-health from one sad evil. Being hopelessly gone in pulmonary
disorder, he now moved about among friendly climates and places,
seeking what alleviation there might be; often spending his summers in
the house of a sister in the environs of London; an insatiable rider
on his little brown pony; always, wherever you might meet him, one of
the cheeriest of men. He had plenty of speculation too, clear glances
of all kinds into religious, social, moral concerns; and pleasantly
incited Sterling's outpourings on such subjects. He could report of
fashionable persons and manners, in a fine human Cumberland manner;
loved art, a great collector of drawings; he had endless help and
ingenuity; and was in short every way a very human, lovable, good and
nimble man,--the laughing blue eyes of him, the clear cheery soul of
him, still redolent of the fresh Northern breezes and transparent
Mountain streams. With this Calvert, Sterling formed a natural
intimacy; and they were to each other a great possession, mutually
enlivening many a dark day during the next three years. They did come
home together this spring; and subsequently made several of these
health-journeys in partnership.

CHAPTER VI.
LITERATURE: THE STERLING CLUB.

In spite of these wanderings, Sterling's course in life, so far as his
poor life could have any course or aim beyond that of screening itself
from swift death, was getting more and more clear to him; and he
pursued it diligently, in the only way permitted him, by hasty
snatches, in the intervals of continual fluctuation, change of place
and other interruption.

Such, once for all, were the conditions appointed him. And it must be
owned he had, with a most kindly temper, adjusted himself to these;
nay you would have said, he loved them; it was almost as if he would
have chosen them as the suitablest. Such an adaptation was there in
him of volition to necessity:--for indeed they both, if well seen
into, proceeded from one source. Sterling's bodily disease was the
expression, under physical conditions, of the too vehement life which,
under the moral, the intellectual and other aspects, incessantly
struggled within him. Too vehement;--which would have required a
frame of oak and iron to contain it: in a thin though most wiry body
of flesh and bone, it incessantly "wore holes," and so found outlet
for itself. He could take no rest, he had never learned that art; he
was, as we often reproached him, fatally incapable of sitting still.
Rapidity, as of pulsing auroras, as of dancing lightnings: rapidity
in all forms characterized him. This, which was his bane, in many
senses, being the real origin of his disorder, and of such continual
necessity to move and change,--was also his antidote, so far as
antidote there might be; enabling him to love change, and to snatch,
as few others could have done, from the waste chaotic years, all
tumbled into ruin by incessant change, what hours and minutes of
available turned up. He had an incredible facility of labor. He
flashed with most piercing glance into a subject; gathered it up into
organic utterability, with truly wonderful despatch, considering the
success and truth attained; and threw it on paper with a swift
felicity, ingenuity, brilliancy and general excellence, of which,
under such conditions of swiftness, I have never seen a parallel.
Essentially an _improviser_ genius; as his Father too was, and of
admirable completeness he too, though under a very different form.

If Sterling has done little in Literature, we may ask, What other man
than he, in such circumstances, could have done anything? In virtue
of these rapid faculties, which otherwise cost him so dear, he has
built together, out of those wavering boiling quicksands of his few
later years, a result which may justly surprise us. There is actually
some result in those poor Two Volumes gathered from him, such as they
are; he that reads there will not wholly lose his time, nor rise with
a malison instead of a blessing on the writer. Here actually is a
real seer-glance, of some compass, into the world of our day; blessed
glance, once more, of an eye that is human; truer than one of a
thousand, and beautifully capable of making others see with it. I
have known considerable temporary reputations gained, considerable
piles of temporary guineas, with loud reviewing and the like to match,
on a far less basis than lies in those two volumes. Those also, I
expect, will be held in memory by the world, one way or other, till
the world has extracted all its benefit from them. Graceful,
ingenious and illuminative reading, of their sort, for all manner of
inquiring souls. A little verdant flowery island of poetic intellect,
of melodious human verity; sunlit island founded on the rocks;--which
the enormous circumambient continents of mown reed-grass and floating
lumber, with _their_ mountain-ranges of ejected stable-litter however
alpine, cannot by any means or chance submerge: nay, I expect, they
will not even quite hide it, this modest little island, from the
well-discerning; but will float past it towards the place appointed
for them, and leave said island standing. _Allah kereem_, say the
Arabs! And of the English also some still know that there is a,
difference in the material of mountains!--

As it is this last little result, the amount of his poor and
ever-interrupted literary labor, that henceforth forms the essential
history of Sterling, we need not dwell at too much length on the
foreign journeys, disanchorings, and nomadic vicissitudes of
household, which occupy his few remaining years, and which are only
the disastrous and accidental arena of this. He had now, excluding
his early and more deliberate residence in the West Indies, made two
flights abroad, once with his family, once without, in search of
health. He had two more, in rapid succession, to make, and many more
to meditate; and in the whole from Bayswater to the end, his family
made no fewer than five complete changes of abode, for his sake. But
these cannot be accepted as in any sense epochs in his life: the one
last epoch of his life was that of his internal change towards
Literature as his work in the world; and we need not linger much on
these, which are the mere outer accidents of that, and had no
distinguished influence in modifying that.

Friends still hoped the unrest of that brilliant too rapid soul would
abate with years. Nay the doctors sometimes promised, on the physical
side, a like result; prophesying that, at forty-five or some mature
age, the stress of disease might quit the lungs, and direct itself to
other quarters of the system. But no such result was appointed for
us; neither forty-five itself, nor the ameliorations promised then,
were ever to be reached. Four voyages abroad, three of them without
his family, in flight from death; and at home, for a like reason, five
complete shiftings of abode: in such wandering manner, and not
otherwise, had Sterling to continue his pilgrimage till it ended.

Once more I must say, his cheerfulness throughout was wonderful. A
certain grimmer shade, coming gradually over him, might perhaps be
noticed in the concluding years; not impatience properly, yet the
consciousness how much he needed patience; something more caustic in
his tone of wit, more trenchant and indignant occasionally in his tone
of speech: but at no moment was his activity bewildered or abated,
nor did his composure ever give way. No; both his activity and his
composure he bore with him, through all weathers, to the final close;
and on the whole, right manfully he walked his wild stern way towards
the goal, and like a Roman wrapt his mantle round him when he
fell.--Let us glance, with brevity, at what he saw and suffered in his
remaining pilgrimings and chargings; and count up what fractions of
spiritual fruit he realized to us from them.

Calvert and he returned from Madeira in the spring of 1838. Mrs.
Sterling and the family had lived in Knightsbridge with his Father's
people through the winter: they now changed to Blackheath, or
ultimately Hastings, and he with them, coming up to London pretty
often; uncertain what was to be done for next winter. Literature went
on briskly here: _Blackwood_ had from him, besides the _Onyx Ring_
which soon came out with due honor, assiduous almost monthly
contributions in prose and verse. The series called _Hymns of a
Hermit_ was now going on; eloquent melodies, tainted to me with
something of the same disease as the _Sexton's Daughter_, though
perhaps in a less degree, considering that the strain was in a so much
higher pitch. Still better, in clear eloquent prose, the series of
detached thoughts, entitled _Crystals from a Cavern_; of which the set
of fragments, generally a little larger in compass, called _Thoughts
and Images_, and again those called _Sayings and Essayings_,[17] are
properly continuations. Add to which, his friend John Mill had now
charge of a Review, _The London and Westminster_ its name; wherein
Sterling's assistance, ardently desired, was freely afforded, with
satisfaction to both parties, in this and the following years. An
Essay on _Montaigne_, with the notes and reminiscences already spoken
of, was Sterling's first contribution here; then one on
_Simonides_:[18] both of the present season.

On these and other businesses, slight or important, he was often
running up to London; and gave us almost the feeling of his being
resident among us. In order to meet the most or a good many of his
friends at once on such occasions, he now furthermore contrived the
scheme of a little Club, where monthly over a frugal dinner some
reunion might take place; that is, where friends of his, and withal
such friends of theirs as suited,--and in fine, where a small select
company definable as persons to whom it was pleasant to talk
together,--might have a little opportunity of talking. The scheme was
approved by the persons concerned: I have a copy of the Original
Regulations, probably drawn up by Sterling, a very solid lucid piece
of economics; and the List of the proposed Members, signed "James
Spedding, Secretary," and dated "8th August, 1838."[19] The Club grew;
was at first called the _Anonymous Club_; then, after some months of
success, in compliment to the founder who had now left us again, the
_Sterling Club_;--under which latter name, it once lately, for a time,
owing to the Religious Newspapers, became rather famous in the world!
In which strange circumstances the name was again altered, to suit
weak brethren; and the Club still subsists, in a sufficiently
flourishing though happily once more a private condition. That is the
origin and genesis of poor Sterling's Club; which, having honestly
paid the shot for itself at Will's Coffee-house or elsewhere, rashly
fancied its bits of affairs were quite settled; and once little
thought of getting into Books of History with them!--

But now, Autumn approaching, Sterling had to quit Clubs, for matters
of sadder consideration. A new removal, what we call "his third
peregrinity," had to be decided on; and it was resolved that Rome
should be the goal of it, the journey to be done in company with
Calvert, whom also the Italian climate might be made to serve instead
of Madeira. One of the liveliest recollections I have, connected with
the _Anonymous Club_, is that of once escorting Sterling, after a
certain meeting there, which I had seen only towards the end, and now
remember nothing of,--except that, on breaking up, he proved to be
encumbered with a carpet-bag, and could not at once find a cab for
Knightsbridge. Some small bantering hereupon, during the instants of
embargo. But we carried his carpet-bag, slinging it on my stick, two
or three of us alternately, through dusty vacant streets, under the
gaslights and the stars, towards the surest cab-stand; still jesting,
or pretending to jest, he and we, not in the mirthfulest manner; and
had (I suppose) our own feelings about the poor Pilgrim, who was to go
on the morrow, and had hurried to meet us in this way, as the last
thing before leaving England.

CHAPTER VII.
ITALY.

The journey to Italy was undertaken by advice of Sir James Clark,
reckoned the chief authority in pulmonary therapeutics; who prophesied
important improvements from it, and perhaps even the possibility
henceforth of living all the year in some English home. Mrs. Sterling
and the children continued in a house avowedly temporary, a furnished
house at Hastings, through the winter. The two friends had set off
for Belgium, while the due warmth was still in the air. They
traversed Belgium, looking well at pictures and such objects; ascended
the Rhine; rapidly traversed Switzerland and the Alps; issuing upon
Italy and Milan, with immense appetite for pictures, and time still to
gratify themselves in that pursuit, and be deliberate in their
approach to Rome. We will take this free-flowing sketch of their
passage over the Alps; written amid "the rocks of Arona,"--Santo
Borromeo's country, and poor little Mignon's! The "elder Perdonnets"
are opulent Lausanne people, to whose late son Sterling had been very
kind in Madeira the year before:--

"_To Mrs. Sterling, Knightsbridge, London_.
"ARONA on the LAGO MAGGIORE, 8th Oct., 1838.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I bring down the story of my proceedings to the
present time since the 29th of September. I think it must have been
after that day that I was at a great breakfast at the elder
Perdonnets', with whom I had declined to dine, not choosing to go out
at night.... I was taken by my hostess to see several pretty
pleasure-grounds and points of view in the neighborhood; and latterly
Calvert was better, and able to go with us. He was in force again,
and our passports were all settled so as to enable us to start on the
morning of the 2d, after taking leave of our kind entertainer with
thanks for her infinite kindness.

"We reached St. Maurice early that evening; having had the Dent du
Midi close to us for several hours; glittering like the top of a
silver teapot, far up in the sky. Our course lay along the Valley of
the Rhone; which is considered one of the least beautiful parts of
Switzerland, and perhaps for this reason pleased us, as we had not
been prepared to expect much. We saw, before reaching the foot of the
Alpine pass at Brieg, two rather celebrated Waterfalls; the one the
Pissevache, which has no more beauty than any waterfall one hundred or
two hundred feet high must necessarily have: the other, near
Tourtemagne, is much more pleasing, having foliage round it, and being
in a secluded dell. If you buy a Swiss Waterfall, choose this one.

"Our second day took us through Martigny to Sion, celebrated for its
picturesque towers upon detached hills, for its strong Romanism and
its population of _cretins_,--that is, maimed idiots having the
_goitre_. It looked to us a more thriving place than we expected.
They are building a great deal; among other things, a new Bishop's
Palace and a new Nunnery,--to inhabit either of which _ex officio_ I
feel myself very unsuitable. From Sion we came to Brieg; a little
village in a nook, close under an enormous mountain and glacier, where
it lies like a molehill, or something smaller, at the foot of a
haystack. Here also we slept; and the next day our voiturier, who had
brought us from Lausanne, started with us up the Simplon Pass; helped
on by two extra horses.

"The beginning of the road was rather cheerful; having a good deal of
green pasturage, and some mountain villages; but it soon becomes
dreary and savage in aspect, and but for our bright sky and warm air,
would have been truly dismal. However, we gained gradually a distinct
and near view of several large glaciers; and reached at last the high
and melancholy valleys of the Upper Alps; where even the pines become
scanty, and no sound is heard but the wheels of one's carriage, except
when there happens to be a storm or an avalanche, neither of which
entertained us. There is, here and there, a small stream of water
pouring from the snow; but this is rather a monotonous accompaniment
to the general desolation than an interruption of it. The road itself
is certainly very good, and impresses one with a strong notion of
human power. But the common descriptions are much exaggerated; and
many of what the Guide-Books call 'galleries' are merely parts of the
road supported by a wall built against the rock, and have nothing like
a roof above them. The 'stupendous bridges,' as they are called,
might be packed, a dozen together, into one arch of London Bridge; and
they are seldom even very striking from the depth below. The roadway
is excellent, and kept in the best order. On the whole, I am very
glad to have travelled the most famous road in Europe, and to have had
delightful weather for doing so, as indeed we have had ever since we
left Lausanne. The Italian descent is greatly more remarkable than
the other side.

"We slept near the top, at the Village of Simplon, in a very fair and
well-warmed inn, close to a mountain stream, which is one of the great
ornaments of this side of the road. We have here passed into a region
of granite, from that of limestone, and what is called gneiss. The
valleys are sharper and closer,--like cracks in a hard and solid
mass;--and there is much more of the startling contrast of light and
shade, as well as more angular boldness of outline; to all which the
more abundant waters add a fresh and vivacious interest. Looking back
through one of these abysmal gorges, one sees two torrents dashing
together, the precipice and ridge on one side, pitch-black with shade;
and that on the other all flaming gold; while behind rises, in a huge
cone, one of the glacier summits of the chain. The stream at one's
feet rushes at a leap some two hundred feet down, and is bordered with
pines and beeches, struggling through a ruined world of clefts and
boulders. I never saw anything so much resembling some of the
_Circles_ described by Dante. From Simplon we made for Duomo
d'Ossola; having broken out, as through the mouth of a mine, into
green and fertile valleys full of vines and chestnuts, and white
villages,--in short, into sunshine and Italy.

"At this place we dismissed our Swiss voiturier, and took an Italian
one; who conveyed us to Omegna on the Lake of Orta; a place little
visited by English travellers, but which fully repaid us the trouble
of going there. We were lodged in a simple and even rude Italian inn;
where they cannot speak a word of French; where we occupied a
barn-like room, with a huge chimney fit to lodge a hundred ghosts,
whom we expelled by dint of a hot woodfire. There were two beds, and
as it happened good ones, in this strange old apartment; which was
adorned by pictures of Architecture, and by Heads of Saints, better
than many at the Royal Academy Exhibition, and which one paid nothing
for looking at. The thorough Italian character of the whole scene
amused us, much more than Meurice's at Paris would have done; for we
had voluble, commonplace good-humor, with the aspect and accessories
of a den of banditti.

"To-day we have seen the Lake of Orta, have walked for some miles
among its vineyards and chestnuts; and thence have come, by Baveno, to
this place;--having seen by the way, I believe, the most beautiful
part of the Lago Maggiore, and certainly the most cheerful, complete
and extended example of fine scenery I have ever fallen in with. Here
we are, much to my wonder,--for it seems too good to be true,--fairly
in Italy; and as yet my journey has been a pleasanter and more
instructive, and in point of health a more successful one, than I at
all imagined possible. Calvert and I go on as well as can be. I let
him have his way about natural science, and he only laughs benignly
when he thinks me absurd in my moral speculations. My only regrets
are caused by my separation from my family and friends, and by the
hurry I have been living in, which has prevented me doing any
work,--and compelled me to write to you at a good deal faster rate
than the _vapore_ moves on the Lago Maggiore. It will take me
to-morrow to Sesto Calende, whence we go to Varese. We shall not be
at Milan for some days. Write thither, if you are kind enough to
write at all, till I give you another address. Love to my Father.

"Your affectionate son,
"JOHN STERLING."

Omitting Milan, Florence nearly all, and much about "Art," Michael
Angelo, and other aerial matters, here are some select terrestrial
glimpses, the fittest I can find, of his progress towards Rome:--

_To his Mother_.

"_Lucca, Nov. 27th_, 1838.--I had dreams, like other people, before I
came here, of what the Lombard Lakes must be; and the week I spent
among them has left me an image, not only more distinct, but far more
warm, shining and various, and more deeply attractive in innumerable
respects, than all I had before conceived of them. And so also it has
been with Florence; where I spent three weeks: enough for the first
hazy radiant dawn of sympathy to pass away; yet constantly adding an
increase of knowledge and of love, while I examined, and tried to
understand, the wonderful minds that have left behind them there such
abundant traces of their presence.... On Sunday, the day before I
left Florence, I went to the highest part of the Grand Duke's Garden
of Boboli, which commands a view of most of the City, and of the vale
of the Arno to the westward; where, as we had been visited by several
rainy days, and now at last had a very fine one, the whole prospect
was in its highest beauty. The mass of buildings, chiefly on the
other side of the River, is sufficient to fill the eye, without
perplexing the mind by vastness like that of London; and its name and
history, its outline and large and picturesque buildings, give it
grandeur of a higher order than that of mere multitudinous extent.
The Hills that border the Valley of the Arno are also very pleasing
and striking to look upon; and the view of the rich Plain, glimmering
away into blue distance, covered with an endless web of villages and
country-houses, is one of the most delightful images of human
well-being I have ever seen....

"Very shortly before leaving Florence, I went through the house of
Michael Angelo; which is still possessed by persons of the same
family, descendants, I believe, of his Nephew. There is in it his
'first work in marble,' as it is called; and a few drawings,--all with
the stamp of his enginery upon them, which was more powerful than all
the steam in London.... On the whole, though I have done no work in
Florence that can be of any use or pleasure to others, except my
Letters to my Wife,--I leave it with the certainty of much valuable
knowledge gained there, and with a most pleasant remembrance of the
busy and thoughtful days I owe to it.

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