But wait a week and you shall hear it all orally.”
Spencer evidently came promptly to the aid of the traveller, for the same month of March found him once more in his native land.
It is stated by Dr Fitzpatrick in the later editions of his ‘Life of Charles Lever’ that the novelist obtained in 1824 an appointment as medical officer in charge of an emigrant ship bound from New Boss to Quebec. In 1824 Lever would have been only in his eighteenth year, and he would not have been in possession of any medical degree, nor would his brief experience as a student of the healing art have entitled him to undertake the medical charge of a passenger ship. Moreover, in a letter quoted by Dr Fitzpatrick, Lever speaks of spending the summer of 1829 in Canada, and there is no suggestion that he made two voyages to America. It may be safely asserted that the date of the American voyage was not 1824; and in all probability 1829 was the year of the Hegira.*
* I discussed these points with Dr Fitzpatrick during his
last visit to London, shortly before his death, and he stuck
to his theory that 1824 was the date. He declared (as he
declares in his book) that in the early years of the last
century there was no Board of Emigration or other authority
to interfere with the engagement of an unqualified or
inexperienced man as ship’s doctor, and that 1824 fitted in
with his own opinions about Lever’s various movements more
easily than 1829; and that Lever speaks in his Log-Book of
having heard the sound of Niagara. But the Log-Book was not
completed until 1830. Subsequently I found in one of James
Lever’s letters, dated 1824, a statement that his son
Charles was then studying medicine and surgery, and was
“still in college.” In 1901 the novelist’s only surviving
daughther, Mrs Bowes-Watson, writes: “Yes; my father went
to the United States and Canada when he was a very young
man. It must have been in 1829 or 1830.”—E. D.
Lever appears to have embarked from New Ross in a vessel belonging to Messrs Pope of Waterford. A cousin of Lever, Mr Harry Innes, declares that it was through his good offices the young medical student succeeded in obtaining “the appointment, such as it was.” Lever abandoned the ship upon her arrival in the St Lawrence. He does not speak of this voyage in any of his autobiographical writings, except that he tells us in a preface to ‘Con Cregan’—a novel in which certain quarters of Quebec are intimately and graphically described—that once upon a time he “endured a small shipwreck” on the island of Anticosti. To his friend Canon Hayman he wrote (in June 1843) that the Canadian incidents in ‘Arthur O’Leary’ were largely personal experiences. He narrated to the canon an account of his landing in the New World, and of his rapid passage from civilised districts to the haunts of the red man. He was eager to taste the wild freedom of life with an Indian tribe. Lever, according to himself, found no difficulty in being admitted to Red-Indian fellowship, and for a time the unrestrained life of the prairie was a delightful and exhilarating experience. The nights in the open air, the days spent in the pine-forests or on the banks of some majestic river, were transcendently happy. He was endowed by the sachem with “tribal privileges,” and he identified himself as far as possible with his newly-made friends. Ere long, however, he grew weary of the latitudinarianism and of the ingloriousness of barbaric life, and he began to sigh for the flesh-pots of the city. He contrived to hide his feelings from the noble red man, but a noble red woman shrewdly guessed that the pale-face was weary, discontented, home-sick. This woman warned the young “medicine man” that if he made any overt attempt to seek his own people he would be followed, and one of his tribal privileges would be to suffer death by the tomahawk. Lever dissembled, and (somewhat after the manner of the as yet uncreated Mrs Micawber) he asseverated that he would never desert the clan.
But his moodiness grew apace and his health gave way. The perspicacious squaw, knowing the origin of his malady, feared that the pale-face would die from natural causes. Moved by compassion, she planned, at the risk of her own life and reputation, the escape of the interesting young stranger. An Indian named Tahata—a kind of half-savage commercial traveller—visited the tribe at long intervals, bearing with him supplies of such necessaries as rum and tobacco. Swayed by the promise of a good round sum, Tahata agreed to do his best to smuggle Charles Lever back to the paths of civilisation. The pair, after many vicissitudes, reached Quebec one bright frosty morning in December. “I walked through the streets,” said Harry Lorrequer to Canon Hayman, “in moccasins and with head-feathers.” In Quebec he found a timber merchant with whom his father had business transactions, and this hospitable man recompensed the trusty Tahata, and made Lever his guest; and when the ex-Indian was newly “rigged out” the merchant paid his passage back to the old country.
Lever averred that his description in ‘Arthur O’Leary’ of the escape of Con O’Kelly was a faithful account of his own adventures “deep in Canadian woods.”
IV. DUBLIN—CLAKE—PORT STEWART. 1830-1837
During the year 1830 Lever busied himself in Dublin with the cult of medicine. Possibly his rough experiences in America had chastened him and had induced him to settle down to work. He attended diligently the Medico-Chirurgical—a school now extinct—and Sir Patrick Dunn’s Hospital. He was also the life and soul of a medical debating society which met in a house in Grafton Street. One of his fellow-students describes him as being in the habit of speaking with such extraordinary volubility and energy, that it was suspected he was indulging in exhilarating drugs. Walking home one night with a friend from a supper-party, at which he had displayed astonishing merriment, Lever fell into a taciturn condition. On being rallied by his friend he apologised for his stupidity, or moroseness, by stating that, in order to tune himself up to concert pitch, he had that evening taken sixty grains of opium, and now that the excitement was over he was drowned in depression.