The Life of John Sterling

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For, alas, the world, as we said, already stands convicted to this
young soul of being an untrue, unblessed world; its high dignitaries
many of them phantasms and players'-masks; its worthships and worships
unworshipful: from Dan to Beersheba, a mad world, my masters. And
surely we may say, and none will now gainsay, this his idea of the
world at that epoch was nearer to the fact than at most other epochs
it has been. Truly, in all times and places, the young ardent soul
that enters on this world with heroic purpose, with veracious insight,
and the yet unclouded "inspiration of the Almighty" which has given us
our intelligence, will find this world a very mad one: why else is
he, with his little outfit of heroisms and inspirations, come hither
into it, except to make it diligently a little saner? Of him there
would have been no need, had it been quite sane. This is true; this
will, in all centuries and countries, be true.

And yet perhaps of no time or country, for the last two thousand
years, was it _so_ true as here in this waste-weltering epoch of
Sterling's and ours. A world all rocking and plunging, like that old
Roman one when the measure of its iniquities was full; the abysses,
and subterranean and supernal deluges, plainly broken loose; in the
wild dim-lighted chaos all stars of Heaven gone out. No star of
Heaven visible, hardly now to any man; the pestiferous fogs, and foul
exhalations grown continual, have, except on the highest mountaintops,
blotted out all stars: will-o'-wisps, of various course and color,
take the place of stars. Over the wild-surging chaos, in the leaden
air, are only sudden glares of revolutionary lightning; then mere
darkness, with philanthropistic phosphorescences, empty meteoric
lights; here and there an ecclesiastical luminary still hovering,
hanging on to its old quaking fixtures, pretending still to be a Moon
or Sun,--though visibly it is but a Chinese lantern made of _paper_
mainly, with candle-end foully dying in the heart of it. Surely as
mad a world as you could wish!

If you want to make sudden fortunes in it, and achieve the temporary
hallelujah of flunkies for yourself, renouncing the perennial esteem
of wise men; if you can believe that the chief end of man is to
collect about him a bigger heap of gold than ever before, in a shorter
time than ever before, you will find it a most handy and every way
furthersome, blessed and felicitous world. But for any other human
aim, I think you will find it not furthersome. If you in any way ask
practically, How a noble life is to be led in it? you will be luckier
than Sterling or I if you get any credible answer, or find any made
road whatever. Alas, it is even so. Your heart's question, if it be
of that sort, most things and persons will answer with a "Nonsense!
Noble life is in Drury Lane, and wears yellow boots. You fool,
compose yourself to your pudding!"--Surely, in these times, if ever in
any, the young heroic soul entering on life, so opulent, full of sunny
hope, of noble valor and divine intention, is tragical as well as
beautiful to us.

Of the three learned Professions none offered any likelihood for
Sterling. From the Church his notions of the "black dragoon," had
there been no other obstacle, were sufficient to exclude him. Law he
had just renounced, his own Radical philosophies disheartening him, in
face of the ponderous impediments, continual up-hill struggles and
formidable toils inherent in such a pursuit: with Medicine he had
never been in any contiguity, that he should dream of it as a course
for him. Clearly enough the professions were unsuitable; they to him,
he to them. Professions, built so largely on speciosity instead of
performance; clogged, in this bad epoch, and defaced under such
suspicions of fatal imposture, were hateful not lovable to the young
radical soul, scornful of gross profit, and intent on ideals and human
noblenesses. Again, the professions, were they never so perfect and
veracious, will require slow steady pulling, to which this individual
young radical, with his swift, far-darting brilliancies, and nomadic
desultory ways, is of all men the most averse and unfitted. No
profession could, in any case, have well gained the early love of
Sterling. And perhaps withal the most tragic element of his life is
even this, That there now was none to which he could fitly, by those
wiser than himself, have been bound and constrained, that he might
learn to love it. So swift, light-limbed and fiery an Arab courser
ought, for all manner of reasons, to have been trained to saddle and
harness. Roaming at full gallop over the heaths,--especially when
your heath was London, and English and European life, in the
nineteenth century,--he suffered much, and did comparatively little.
I have known few creatures whom it was more wasteful to send forth
with the bridle thrown up, and to set to steeple-hunting instead of
running on highways! But it is the lot of many such, in this
dislocated time,--Heaven mend it! In a better time there will be
other "professions" than those three extremely cramp, confused and
indeed almost obsolete ones: professions, if possible, that are true,
and do _not_ require you at the threshold to constitute yourself an
impostor. Human association,--which will mean discipline, vigorous
wise subordination and co-ordination,--is so unspeakably important.
Professions, "regimented human pursuits," how many of honorable and
manful might be possible for men; and which should _not_, in their
results to society, need to stumble along, in such an unwieldy futile
manner, with legs swollen into such enormous elephantiasis and no go
at all in them! Men will one day think of the force they squander in
every generation, and the fatal damage they encounter, by this
neglect.

The career likeliest for Sterling, in his and the world's
circumstances, would have been what is called public life: some
secretarial, diplomatic or other official training, to issue if
possible in Parliament as the true field for him. And here, beyond
question, had the gross material conditions been allowed, his
spiritual capabilities were first-rate. In any arena where eloquence
and argument was the point, this man was calculated to have borne the
bell from all competitors. In lucid ingenious talk and logic, in all
manner of brilliant utterance and tongue-fence, I have hardly known
his fellow. So ready lay his store of knowledge round him, so perfect
was his ready utterance of the same,--in coruscating wit, in jocund
drollery, in compact articulated clearness or high poignant emphasis,
as the case required,--he was a match for any man in argument before a
crowd of men. One of the most supple-wristed, dexterous, graceful and
successful fencers in that kind. A man, as Mr. Hare has said, "able
to argue with four or five at once;" could do the parrying all round,
in a succession swift as light, and plant his hits wherever a chance
offered. In Parliament, such a soul put into a body of the due
toughness might have carried it far. If ours is to be called, as I
hear some call it, the Talking Era, Sterling of all men had the talent
to excel in it.

Probably it was with some vague view towards chances in this direction
that Sterling's first engagement was entered upon; a brief connection
as Secretary to some Club or Association into which certain public
men, of the reforming sort, Mr. Crawford (the Oriental Diplomatist and
Writer), Mr. Kirkman Finlay (then Member for Glasgow), and other
political notabilities had now formed themselves,--with what specific
objects I do not know, nor with what result if any. I have heard
vaguely, it was "to open the trade to India." Of course they intended
to stir up the public mind into co-operation, whatever their goal or
object was: Mr. Crawford, an intimate in the Sterling household,
recognized the fine literary gift of John; and might think it a lucky
hit that he had caught such a Secretary for three hundred pounds a
year. That was the salary agreed upon; and for some months actually
worked for and paid; Sterling becoming for the time an intimate and
almost an inmate in Mr. Crawford's circle, doubtless not without
results to himself beyond the secretarial work and pounds sterling:
so much is certain. But neither the Secretaryship nor the Association
itself had any continuance; nor can I now learn accurately more of it
than what is here stated;--in which vague state it must vanish from
Sterling's history again, as it in great measure did from his life.
From himself in after-years I never heard mention of it; nor were his
pursuits connected afterwards with those of Mr. Crawford, though the
mutual good-will continued unbroken.

In fact, however splendid and indubitable Sterling's qualifications
for a parliamentary life, there was that in him withal which flatly
put a negative on any such project. He had not the slow
steady-pulling diligence which is indispensable in that, as in all
important pursuits and strenuous human competitions whatsoever. In
every sense, his momentum depended on velocity of stroke, rather than
on weight of metal; "beautifulest sheet-lightning," as I often said,
"not to be condensed into thunder-bolts." Add to this,--what indeed
is perhaps but the same phenomenon in another form,--his bodily frame
was thin, excitable, already manifesting pulmonary symptoms; a body
which the tear and wear of Parliament would infallibly in few months
have wrecked and ended. By this path there was clearly no mounting.
The far-darting, restlessly coruscating soul, equips beyond all others
to shine in the Talking Era, and lead National Palavers with their
_spolia opima_ captive, is imprisoned in a fragile hectic body which
quite forbids the adventure. "_Es ist dafur gesorgt_," says Goethe,
"Provision has been made that the trees do not grow into the
sky;"--means are always there to stop them short of the sky.

CHAPTER VI.
LITERATURE: THE ATHENAEUM.

Of all forms of public life, in the Talking Era, it was clear that
only one completely suited Sterling,--the anarchic, nomadic, entirely
aerial and unconditional one, called Literature. To this all his
tendencies, and fine gifts positive and negative, were evidently
pointing; and here, after such brief attempting or thoughts to attempt
at other posts, he already in this same year arrives. As many do, and
ever more must do, in these our years and times. This is the chaotic
haven of so many frustrate activities; where all manner of good gifts
go up in far-seen smoke or conflagration; and whole fleets, that might
have been war-fleets to conquer kingdoms, are _consumed_ (too truly,
often), amid "fame" enough, and the admiring shouts of the vulgar,
which is always fond to see fire going on. The true Canaan and Mount
Zion of a Talking Era must ever be Literature: the extraneous,
miscellaneous, self-elected, indescribable _Parliamentum_, or Talking
Apparatus, which talks by books and printed papers.

A literary Newspaper called _The Athenaeum_, the same which still
subsists, had been founded in those years by Mr. Buckingham; James
Silk Buckingham, who has since continued notable under various
figures. Mr. Buckingham's _Athenaeum_ had not as yet got into a
flourishing condition; and he was willing to sell the copyright of it
for a consideration. Perhaps Sterling and old Cambridge friends of
his had been already writing for it. At all events, Sterling, who had
already privately begun writing a Novel, and was clearly looking
towards Literature, perceived that his gifted Cambridge friend,
Frederic Maurice, was now also at large in a somewhat similar
situation; and that here was an opening for both of them, and for
other gifted friends. The copyright was purchased for I know not what
sum, nor with whose money, but guess it may have been Sterling's, and
no great sum;--and so, under free auspices, themselves their own
captains, Maurice and he spread sail for this new voyage of adventure
into all the world. It was about the end of 1828 that readers of
periodical literature, and quidnuncs in those departments, began to
report the appearance, in a Paper called the _Athenaeum, of_ writings
showing a superior brilliancy, and height of aim; one or perhaps two
slight specimens of which came into my own hands, in my remote corner,
about that time, and were duly recognized by me, while the authors
were still far off and hidden behind deep veils.

Some of Sterling's best Papers from the _Athenaeum_ have been
published by Archdeacon Hare: first-fruits by a young man of
twenty-two; crude, imperfect, yet singularly beautiful and attractive;
which will still testify what high literary promise lay in him. The
ruddiest glow of young enthusiasm, of noble incipient spiritual
manhood reigns over them; once more a divine Universe unveiling itself
in gloom and splendor, in auroral firelight and many-tinted shadow,
full of hope and full of awe, to a young melodious pious heart just
arrived upon it. Often enough the delineation has a certain flowing
completeness, not to be expected from so young an artist; here and
there is a decided felicity of insight; everywhere the point of view
adopted is a high and noble one, and the result worked out a result to
be sympathized with, and accepted so far as it will go. Good reading
still, those Papers, for the less-furnished mind,--thrice-excellent
reading compared with what is usually going. For the rest, a grand
melancholy is the prevailing impression they leave;--partly as if,
while the surface was so blooming and opulent, the heart of them was
still vacant, sad and cold. Here is a beautiful mirage, in the dry
wilderness; but you cannot quench your thirst there! The writer's
heart is indeed still too vacant, except of beautiful shadows and
reflexes and resonances; and is far from joyful, though it wears
commonly a smile.

In some of the Greek delineations (_The Lycian Painter_, for example),
we have already noticed a strange opulence of splendor,
characterizable as half-legitimate, half-meretricious,--a splendor
hovering between the raffaelesque and the japannish. What other
things Sterling wrote there, I never knew; nor would he in any mood,
in those later days, have told you, had you asked. This period of his
life he always rather accounted, as the Arabs do the idolatrous times
before Mahomet's advent, the "period of darkness."

CHAPTER VII.
REGENT STREET.

0n the commercial side the _Athenaeum_ still lacked success; nor was
like to find it under the highly uncommercial management it had now
got into. This, by and by, began to be a serious consideration. For
money is the sinews of Periodical Literature almost as much as of war
itself; without money, and under a constant drain of loss, Periodical
Literature is one of the things that cannot be carried on. In no long
time Sterling began to be practically sensible of this truth, and that
an unpleasant resolution in accordance with it would be necessary. By
him also, after a while, the _Athenaeum_ was transferred to other
hands, better fitted in that respect; and under these it did take
vigorous root, and still bears fruit according to its kind.

For the present, it brought him into the thick of London Literature,
especially of young London Literature and speculation; in which turbid
exciting element he swam and revelled, nothing loath, for certain
months longer,--a period short of two years in all. He had lodgings
in Regent Street: his Father's house, now a flourishing and stirring
establishment, in South Place, Knightsbridge, where, under the warmth
of increasing revenue and success, miscellaneous cheerful socialities
and abundant speculations, chiefly political (and not John's kind, but
that of the _Times_ Newspaper and the Clubs), were rife, he could
visit daily, and yet be master of his own studies and pursuits.
Maurice, Trench, John Mill, Charles Buller: these, and some few
others, among a wide circle of a transitory phantasmal character, whom
he speedily forgot and cared not to remember, were much about him;
with these he in all ways employed and disported himself: a first
favorite with them all.

No pleasanter companion, I suppose, had any of them. So frank, open,
guileless, fearless, a brother to all worthy souls whatsoever. Come
when you might, here is he open-hearted, rich in cheerful fancies, in
grave logic, in all kinds of bright activity. If perceptibly or
imperceptibly there is a touch of ostentation in him, blame it not; it
is so innocent, so good and childlike. He is still fonder of jingling
publicly, and spreading on the table, your big purse of opulences than
his own. Abrupt too he is, cares little for big-wigs and garnitures;
perhaps laughs more than the real fun he has would order; but of
arrogance there is no vestige, of insincerity or of ill-nature none.
These must have been pleasant evenings in Regent Street, when the
circle chanced to be well adjusted there. At other times, Philistines
would enter, what we call bores, dullards, Children of Darkness; and
then,--except in a hunt of dullards, and a _bore-baiting_, which might
be permissible,--the evening was dark. Sterling, of course, had
innumerable cares withal; and was toiling like a slave; his very
recreations almost a kind of work. An enormous activity was in the
man;--sufficient, in a body that could have held it without breaking,
to have gone far, even under the unstable guidance it was like to
have!

Thus, too, an extensive, very variegated circle of connections was
forming round him. Besides his _Athenaeum_ work, and evenings in
Regent Street and elsewhere, he makes visits to country-houses, the
Bullers' and others; converses with established gentlemen, with
honorable women not a few; is gay and welcome with the young of his
own age; knows also religious, witty, and other distinguished ladies,
and is admiringly known by them. On the whole, he is already
locomotive; visits hither and thither in a very rapid flying manner.
Thus I find he had made one flying visit to the Cumberland Lake-region
in 1828, and got sight of Wordsworth; and in the same year another
flying one to Paris, and seen with no undue enthusiasm the
Saint-Simonian Portent just beginning to preach for itself, and France
in general simmering under a scum of impieties, levities,
Saint-Simonisms, and frothy fantasticalities of all kinds, towards the
boiling-over which soon made the Three Days of July famous. But by
far the most important foreign home he visited was that of Coleridge
on the Hill of Highgate,--if it were not rather a foreign shrine and
Dodona-Oracle, as he then reckoned,--to which (onwards from 1828, as
would appear) he was already an assiduous pilgrim. Concerning whom,
and Sterling's all-important connection with him, there will be much
to say anon.

Here, from this period, is a Letter of Sterling's, which the glimpses
it affords of bright scenes and figures now sunk, so many of them,
sorrowfully to the realm of shadows, will render interesting to some
of my readers. To me on the mere Letter, not on its contents alone,
there is accidentally a kind of fateful stamp. A few months after
Charles Buller's death, while his loss was mourned by many hearts, and
to his poor Mother all light except what hung upon his memory had gone
out in the world, a certain delicate and friendly hand, hoping to give
the poor bereaved lady a good moment, sought out this Letter of
Sterling's, one morning, and called, with intent to read it to
her:--alas, the poor lady had herself fallen suddenly into the
languors of death, help of another grander sort now close at hand; and
to her this Letter was never read!

On "Fanny Kemble," it appears, there is an Essay by Sterling in the
_Athenaeum_ of this year: "16th December, 1829." Very laudatory, I
conclude. He much admired her genius, nay was thought at one time to
be vaguely on the edge of still more chivalrous feelings. As the
Letter itself may perhaps indicate.

"_To Anthony Sterling, Esq., 24th Regiment, Dublin_.
"KNIGHTSBRIDGE, 10th Nov., 1829.

"MY DEAR ANTHONY,--Here in the Capital of England and of Europe, there
is less, so far as I hear, of movement and variety than in your
provincial Dublin, or among the Wicklow Mountains. We have the old
prospect of bricks and smoke, the old crowd of busy stupid faces, the
old occupations, the old sleepy amusements; and the latest news that
reaches us daily has an air of tiresome, doting antiquity. The world
has nothing for it but to exclaim with Faust, "Give me my youth
again." And as for me, my month of Cornish amusement is over; and I
must tie myself to my old employments. I have not much to tell you
about these; but perhaps you may like to hear of my expedition to the
West.

"I wrote to Polvellan (Mr. Buller's) to announce the day on which I
intended to be there, so shortly before setting out, that there was no
time to receive an answer; and when I reached Devonport, which is
fifteen or sixteen miles from my place of destination, I found a
letter from Mrs. Buller, saying that she was coming in two days to a
Ball at Plymouth, and if I chose to stay in the mean while and look
about me, she would take me back with her. She added an introduction
to a relation of her husband's, a certain Captain Buller of the
Rifles, who was with the Depot there,--a pleasant person, who I
believe had been acquainted with Charlotte,[7] or at least had seen
her. Under his superintendence--...

"On leaving Devonport with Mrs. Buller, I went some of the way by
water, up the harbor and river; and the prospects are certainly very
beautiful; to say nothing of the large ships, which I admire almost as
much as you, though without knowing so much about them. There is a
great deal of fine scenery all along the road to Looe; and the House
itself, a very unpretending Gothic cottage, stands beautifully among
trees, hills and water, with the sea at the distance of a quarter of a
mile.

"And here, among pleasant, good-natured, well-informed and clever
people, I spent an idle month. I dined at one or two Corporation
dinners; spent a few days at the old Mansion of Mr. Buller of Morval,
the patron of West Looe; and during the rest of the time, read, wrote,
played chess, lounged, and ate red mullet (he who has not done this
has not begun to live); talked of cookery to the philosophers, and of
metaphysics to Mrs. Buller; and altogether cultivated indolence, and
developed the faculty of nonsense with considerable pleasure and
unexampled success. Charles Buller you know: he has just come to
town, but I have not yet seen him. Arthur, his younger brother, I
take to be one of the handsomest men in England; and he too has
considerable talent. Mr. Buller the father is rather a clever man of
sense, and particularly good-natured and gentlemanly; and his wife,
who was a renowned beauty and queen of Calcutta, has still many
striking and delicate traces of what she was. Her conversation is
more brilliant and pleasant than that of any one I know; and, at all
events, I am bound to admire her for the kindness with which she
patronizes me. I hope that, some day or other, you may be acquainted
with her.

"I believe I have seen no one in London about whom you would care to
hear,--unless the fame of Fanny Kemble has passed the Channel, and
astonished the Irish Barbarians in the midst of their bloody-minded
politics. Young Kemble, whom you have seen, is in Germany: but I
have the happiness of being also acquainted with his sister, the
divine Fanny; and I have seen her twice on the stage, and three or
four times in private, since my return from Cornwall. I had seen some
beautiful verses of hers, long before she was an actress; and her
conversation is full of spirit and talent. She never was taught to
act at all; and though there are many faults in her performance of
Juliet, there is more power than in any female playing I ever saw,
except Pasta's Medea. She is not handsome, rather short, and by no
means delicately formed; but her face is marked, and the eyes are
brilliant, dark, and full of character. She has far more ability than
she ever can display on the stage; but I have no doubt that, by
practice and self-culture, she will be a far finer actress at least
than any one since Mrs. Siddons. I was at Charles Kemble's a few
evenings ago, when a drawing of Miss Kemble, by Sir Thomas Lawrence,
was brought in; and I have no doubt that you will shortly see, even in
Dublin, an engraving of her from it, very unlike the caricatures that
have hitherto appeared. I hate the stage; and but for her, should very
likely never have gone to a theatre again. Even as it is, the
annoyance is much more than the pleasure; but I suppose I must go to
see her in every character in which she acts. If Charlotte cares for
plays, let me know, and I will write in more detail about this new
Melpomene. I fear there are very few subjects on which I can say
anything that will in the least interest her.

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