In Mr. Axon’s memoir, he says that an engraving by W. C. Edwards of a portrait of Ainsworth by Maclise appeared on the frontispiece of Laman Blanchard’s biographical sketch in the first number of “Ainsworth’s Magazine”. A second portrait by the same artist, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844, was the frontispiece of the fifth volume of the magazine. A portrait by Count D’Orsay dated November 21, 1844, appeared in the seventh volume. To this period belong the full-length portrait by the elder Pickersgill, the property of Chetham’s Hospital, but now in the Manchester Reference Library, and a portrait by R. J. Lane. The good looks of Ainsworth have been referred to several times; they were the good looks of the days of William IV, but the Maclise and Pickersgill portraits as well as the later Fry photograph have a dandified appearance which in our modern eyes detracts from true dignity. The sketch in the Maclise Gallery shows him at his best, in his Fraser days, a fine and gallant figure, without the hideous whiskers of the type beloved by Tittlebat Titmouse. “This delicately drawn portrait of the novelist” comments Mr. Bates, “just at the time that he had achieved his reputation,’—hair curled and oiled as that of an Assyrian bull, the gothic arch coat-collar, the high neckcloth, and the tightly strapped trousers—exhibits as fine an example as we could wish for, of the dandy of the D’Orsay type and pre-Victorian epoch.”
He lived at one time at the “Elms” at Kilburn, and later at Kensal Manor House on the Harrow Road. Afterwards he lived at Brighton and at Tunbridge Wells. When he grew old he resided with his oldest daughter, Fannie, at Hurstpierpoint. He had also a residence at St. Mary’s Road, Reigate, Surrey, and there he died, on Sunday, January 3d, 1882. On January 9th, he was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, with a quiet and simple ceremonial as he wished. His widow and three daughters by his first marriage survived him.
Ainsworth had no power to portray character or to analyze motives; his genius was purely descriptive. He had a strong literary bent, and he was a man of letters in the true sense. He did not possess the spark which gives immortality, but he toiled faithfully and his work was well done even if he did not reach the standard of the greatest of his contemporaries.
Perhaps his merits were characterized rather too ornately in the Sun of August 2, 1852, where a reviewer said:
“His romances yield evidence, in a thousand particulars, that his temperament is exquisitely sensitive, not less of the horrible than of the beautiful. We have it in those landscapes variously coloured with the glow of Claude and the gloom of Salvator Rosa—in those lyrics grave as the songs of the Tyrol, or ghastly as the incantations of the Brocken; but still more in those creations, peopling the one and chaunting the other, namely, some of them as the models of Ostade, and others wild as the wildest dreams of Fuseli. Everywhere, however, in these romances a preference for the grimlier moods of imagination renders itself apparent. The author’s purpose, so to speak, gravitates towards the preternatural. Had he been a painter instead of a romancist, he could have portrayed the agonies of Ugolino, as Da Vinci portrayed the ‘rotello del fico,’ in lines the most haggard and lines the most cadaverous. As a writer of fiction, his place among his contemporaries may, we conceive, be very readily indicated. He occupies the same position in the present that Radcliffe occupied in a former generation.”
Mr. Axon’s estimate is less gorgeous but more convincing. “The essence of his power was that same faculty by which the Eastern story-teller holds spellbound a crowd of hearers in the street of Cairo. It is this fascination which enables Ainsworth, at his best, to compel the reader’s attention, and hurries him forward from the first page to the last of some tale of ‘daring-do’, of crime, adventure, sorrow and love. The reader who has listened to the beginning does not willingly turn aside until the story is completed and he has seen all the puppets play their part with that skilful semblance of truth that seems more real than reality itself.”
It is to be hoped that the forthcoming biography will do ample justice to the memory of this charming literary personage, and may revive the fading interest in him and in his works.
GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES
In a vainglorious mood I said not long ago to a well-dressed and apparently intelligent gentleman whom I met in the house of an accomplished lawyer in Washington City, that I had just had the privilege of conversing with the extremely modern novelist, Mr. Henry James. He smiled amiably and remarked airily, “Oh, the two horsemen fellow”.
The remark was not without significance, because it betrayed the fact that my casual acquaintance, who might well be presumed to represent what is called “the average citizen” of this enlightened country; who was fairly well educated; who had read enough to know of the famous horsemen and of their habitual appearance in the opening chapter; who assuredly had skimmed the book-notices in our wonderful newspapers; was, after all, more distinctly impressed by the writer of sixty years ago than by the contemporaneous author whose volumes bid fair to rival in number those of his namesake—an author whose style defies definition and bewilders the simple-minded searcher after a good story.