Whipple’s critiques are far more obsolete than James’s novels; and a good deal of what he says of James is fairly applicable to his own essays. Even Whipple concedes the excellence of Richelieu, notwithstanding the fact that it did not emanate from New England.
Back in the forties, there was a magazine, published in Philadelphia, known as Graham’s American Monthly Magazine, in which the chief American writers of the day, including Poe, Bryant, Cooper, Longfellow, Willis, and Lowell occasionally figured as contributors. It had its page of reviews and in the number of November, 1848, it enlightened its readers with a disquisition on “Vanity Fair”; by W. M. Thackerway (sic), beginning “This is one of the most striking novels of the season.” If Lamb could only have met that reviewer, he surely would have danced about, as on a memorable occasion, singing “diddle, diddle dumpling, my son John” and endeavored to examine the reviewer’s bumps. Graham (November, 1844) was very severe with poor James, in a notice of Arrah Neil. The reviewer says: “In our opinion, there is hardly an instance on record of an author who has contrived to earn an extensive reputation as a writer of works of imagination, with such slender intellectual materials as Mr. James. No one has ever written so many books, purporting to be novels, with so small a stock of heart, brain, and invention. He is continually infringing his own copyright, by reproducing his own novels. Far from being surprised that he has written so much, we are astonished that he has not written more. From his first novel, all the rest can be logically deduced; and the reason that they have not appeared faster, may be found in the fact that he has been economical in the employment of amanuenses.” More of this kind of talk is indulged in without a single word about the book itself or its merits; which proves quite clearly that the reviewer was merely following the path marked out by some other critic, and there is no evidence whatever that he had ever read the work he was reviewing. Thus it is to-day; a parrot-cry of “diffuseness, dilution, re-copying, repetition,”—so easy to proclaim, so difficult to answer, all born of the disposition of newspaper and magazine critics to accept the view which needs no exercise of brains to approve and to announce. It is not without significance that when James was in America, he was a contributor to this same magazine, which had scored him so unmercifully; for example, in the volume for 1851 I find two stories by him—Christian Lacy, a Tale of the Salem Witchcraft, and Justinian and Theodora,—as well as a rather graceful sonnet to Jenny Lind.
James C. Derby mentions the fact that James was a friend of Philip Pendleton Cooke, the Virginian poet, and relates that Thackeray visited James when in the South, but that James “resented the latter’s [Thackeray’s] flings at him as a ‘solitary horseman’, the meaning of which those who have read James’s novels will understand. James once told Cooke of his intention to write his own memoirs—a purpose never fulfilled. Incidentally, he told Cooke a story of Washington Irving, his early adviser, who amiably approved of his earliest essays in literature. It seems that James was in Bordeaux, and after strolling all day, returned to his inn. On his way through a long, dark passage he saw some one in front carrying a candle, a man in black slowly ascending the old-fashioned staircase. On the landing the man stopped, and holding up his candle looked at a cat lying on the window-sill, regarding the gazer with a surprised and frightened expression. The stranger in black looked at the cat for some time mutely and then muttered sadly, ‘Ah, pussy! pussy! If you had seen as much trouble as I have, you would not be surprised at anything.’ After which he went on up the stairs,’ said James, ‘and as I heard that Irving was in Bordeaux, I said to myself: ‘That can be nobody in the world but Irving’, which turned out to be a fact.[[51]]
Frederick Locker-Lampson visited Walter Savage Landor at Fiesole in the early sixties, and found him reading a Waverly novel. Lampson congratulated the old poet on having so pleasant a companion in his retirement, and Landor, with a winning dignity, replied: “Yes, and there is another novelist whom I equally admire, my old friend [G. P. R.] James.”[[52]] Locker-Lampson does not seem to have shared Landor’s appreciation of James. He says, later in his memoirs: “It is a law of literature that every generation should be industrious in burying its own, especially novels. What has become of Smollett and Mackenzie—the cockpit of the ‘Thunder’ or the sentimental Harley? Where is the shadowy Mr. G. P. R. James and where is that witty old ghost of the Silver Fork school, Mrs. Gore?*** Yet they all had vogue.”[[53]] It is odd that almost every one, in speaking of James, recites his numerous initials and bestows upon him the title of “Mr.” which carries with it the suggestion of a sneer.
In my small collection of Gladstone letters I find one addressed to James which shows not only that the statesman liked the books but that he and the author were on terms of some intimacy.
“Whitehall, May 17, ’43.
My dear Sir: I thank you very much for your renewed kindness. The perusal of your last work gave me very great pleasure, most of all (though that is but a very slender testimony in their favour) Evesham and Simon de Montfort, of whom I never had before an adequate conception. It is true I am adopted into the Cabinet, & will I fear be alleged as a proof of its poverty. In point of form I cannot succeed Lord Ripon until the Queen holds a Council.[[54]] The true and whole secret of the difficulty about Canada corn (and I do not mean that we can wonder at it) is, as I believe, that wheat, without great abundance, is at 46 / a quarter.
I remain, my dear sir,
Yours faithfully & obliged,
W. E. Gladstone.