This curious fluctuation of spirits was a marked characteristic: even when he had abandoned the use of opium, he was to be found in the same hour overflowing with gaiety and sunk in the deepest dejection.
Though he worked hard and steadily at his studies in 1830, he did not fail to find sources of amusement. He railed against the sameness and the dulness of social life in Dublin. He complained of stupid dinner-parties where men of law and men of physic talked an unintelligible and irritating jargon. Dublin, he declared, was too professedly sociable to patronise the theatre; too sociable to form clubs,—too sociable, in fact, to go into society. He sighed for Gottingen and Heidelberg and for the more spacious life of German cities. Then a happy thought occurred to him. Why should he not establish in the Irish capital a Burschenschaft? He consulted Samuel Lover,—painter, song-writer, musician, novelist,—and joining forces with him, a club on the most approved German model was formed. Lever was elected “Grand Llama,” and was entitled to be addressed as “Most Noble Grand.” This club bore a strong resemblance to Curran’s “Monks of the Screw,” * but it was a less aristocratic, and probably a less bibacious, society. The members wore scarlet vests with gilt buttons, and a red skull-cap adorned with white tassels. They met in a room in Commercial Buildings, afterwards used as the Stock Exchange. Suppers, songs, and conversational jousts formed the staple of the entertainment. Lever, as president, occupied a chair placed upon a dais covered with baize, with a representation, in brass-headed nails, of a sword and tobacco-pipe crossed. Writing thirty-five years later about the club and its functions, he described it as “very fine fooling,” and he goes on to say that no wittier, no pleasanter, and no more spirituel set of fellows ever sat around a punch-bowl.
* “The Order of St Patrick,” to give this club its proper
title, was founded by Barry Yelverton, afterwards Lord
Avonmore. Curran was its leading spirit: he wrote its
charter song, the famous “Monks of the Screw,” quoted by
Lever in ‘Jack Hinton.’ The Convent of “The Order of St
Patrick” was in Kevin’s Street, Dublin, and the club had
another meeting-place in the country, at Curran’a residence,
“The Priory,” in Rathfarnam. Amongst the distinguished
brothers of the order were the Marquis of Townshend (the
Viceroy), Lord Mornington, Grattan, Flood, Lord Kilwarden,
and the Earl of Arran. The club ceased to exist in 1795, but
Lever, scorning anachronisms, introduced ‘Jack Hinton’ to
the “Monks” at a later date.—E. D.
Lever’s fellow-student, Francis Dwyer (who afterwards rose to rank in the service of Austria), provides a pleasant description of the Dublin Burschenschaft. He avers that it gave its members a relish for intellectual enjoyment. “The most noble grand” conducted the proceedings with tact and delicacy, never permitting any lapse into indecorousness.
“That he himself was a gainer,” Dwyer insists. “He learned how to lead, and he also acquired a juster estimate of his own powers, and greater confidence in himself. No one, indeed, suspected what was really in the man, and some even shook their heads as to what good could ever come out of his unprofessional pre-eminence.” He was learning in joyousness what he expounded in story.
Lever made his first appearance in print in ‘Bolster’s Cork Quarterly Magazine.’ to which he contributed a paper entitled “Recollections of Dreamland.” This essay concerned itself mainly with the writer’s real or imaginary experiences of opium-eating and opium visions. In ‘Bolster’s’ also appeared his first crude attempt at a story, “A Tale of Old Trinity.” These were anonymous contributions, and their author never acknowledged them, and did not care to have any reference made to them. In January 1830 “a weekly chronicle of criticism, belles lettres, and fine arts” was started in Dublin under the title of ‘The Dublin Literary Gazette.’ In the third number of the ‘Gazette’ Lever commenced “The Log-Book of a Rambler.” There are some other contributions of his, not of much value, to be found in the ‘Gazette.’ The periodical lived for only six months, and from its ashes arose ‘The National Magazine,’ a monthly publication which started in July 1831 and died during the following year. To ‘The National’ Lever contributed some papers—of no higher value than his miscellaneous contributions to the ‘Gazette.’
In 1831 he would seem to have abandoned, temporarily, literary work, and to have toiled at his medical studies. In the summer of this year he obtained, at Trinity College, the degree of Bachelor of Medicine.* His father’s town address was now 74 Talbot Street, and here Lever set up a practice; but business did not flow into Talbot Street, and the young physician soon began to display symptoms of restiveness.
* Dr Fitzpatrick states that he received at the same period
a diploma as M.D. of Louvain in absentia, but Lever did
not obtain the Louvain degree until he was established as a
physician at Brussels.—E. D.
Ireland was smitten by a terrible scourge in the year 1832—a sudden visitation of Asiatic cholera. A Board of Health engaged a number of medical men and despatched them to cholera-stricken districts. Lever applied to the Board for an appointment, and in the month of May he was established at Kilrush, County Clare.
Notwithstanding the gloom which pervaded the district, the young doctor contrived somehow to infect it with a little of his own high spirits. Physicians who worked with him through the awful time declared that wherever Lever went he won all hearts by his kindness, and kept up the spirits of the inhabitants by his cheerfulness. Some of his associates were driven to account for his wondrous exuberance, even after he had been sitting up night after night, by supposing that he was “excited in some unknown and unnatural manner.” Most likely opium was accountable for the phenomenon.