* ‘The Irish Builder’ published in 1891 a long letter from a
correspondent who professed to have been a companion of
Charles Lever. It is mentioned here only to point to the
peculiar mistiness which obscures many important facts in
the early life of a man whose father was a popular and
prosperous citizen of Dublin, and who was himself one of the
best known of the men who nourished in the Irish capital
about half a century ago.—E. D.
In this letter it is asserted that the author of ‘Harry Lorrequer’ was born in Mulberry Lodge, Philipsburgh Lane, but the communication, while chronicling some undoubted facts, is so full of obvious and absurd blunders that it cannot be considered seriously.
* It has been suggested that Lever was named after Charles
James Fox, who died in September 1806, but it is more likely
that his Christian names were those of his uncle and his
father.—E. D.
In addition to the perplexity about the birth-date of the author of ‘Harry Lorrequer,’ and to the absence of any official record, it is not easy to arrive at satisfactory conclusions concerning his ancestry. A pedigree furnished by a relative of Charles Lever traces the family to one Livingus de Leaver, who flourished in the twelfth century, but some difficulties seem to arise when the eighteenth century is reached. In the Leaver (or Lever) line there are many men of distinction. In 1535 Adam de Leaver’s only daughter married Ralph Ashton (or Assheton), second son of Sir Ralph Ashton of Middleton, Kent, endowing her husband with an agnomen as well as with an estate, the Ashtons thenceforward styling themselves Ashton-Levers. Another member of the Lever family—the name was altered to Lever in the reign of Henry VI.—was Robert, who was an Adventurer in Ireland during the Cromwellian era. Perhaps the most interesting personage in the line was Sir Assheton (or Ashton) Lever, who flourished in the eighteenth century. This worthy knight was born in 1729. He was the eldest son of Sir James Darcy Lever, and when he succeeded to his estate he achieved notoriety as a collector of “curios.” He founded the Leverian Museum, an institution devoted chiefly to exhibits o£ shells, fossils, and birds, to which at a later period was added a collection of savage costumes and weapons. In 1774 Sir Ashton brought his famous collection to London, and housed it in a mansion in Leicester Square. He styled it the Holophusikon, and advertised that his museum was open to the public daily, the fee for admission being five shillings and threepence. In a short time Sir Ashton discovered that his exhibition was not a financial success, and that he himself had outrun the constable. He offered the contents of Holophusikon to the British Museum in 1783, valuing his collection at £53,000. The British Museum authorities declined the offer, and some five years later the Holophusikon was advertised for sale by lottery. Out of 36,000 tickets, price one guinea each, offered to the public, only 8000 were sold. Eventually the museum—or what remained of it—was bought by a Mr James Parkinson, who placed the curiosities in a building called the Rotunda, situated at the south side of Blackfriars Bridge, and in 1806—the year of Charles Lever’s birth—the collection was sold by public auction, the sale lasting for sixty-five days, and the lots numbering 7879.
Charles Lever claimed Sir Ashton* as a grand-uncle, and described him as an “old hermit who squandered a fortune in stuffed birds, founded a museum, and beggared his family.”
* Sir Ashton died in Manchester, eighteen years before the
final disposal of his old cariosity shop.—E. D.
The Levers seem to have fallen into narrow ways in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The novelist’s father, James Lever, came to Ireland in 1787. He was then about twenty-seven years of age. In his youth he had been apprenticed to the joinery business, and he had drifted from his native Lancashire to London. Judging him by some letters of his which are now in the possession of Mr James Lever of Swinton,* he was a shrewd steady young man, possessed of an affectionate disposition and of a sub-acid humour. In Dublin he entered the business of a Mr Lowe, a Staffordshire man, who was engaged in building operations, and in the course of seven or eight years he was in business on his own account, styling himself “architect and builder.” In 1795 he married Miss Julia Candler, a member of an Irish Protestant family who dwelt in the Co. Kilkenny, where they held land granted to their ancestors for services rendered during the Cromwellian wars. John, the eldest son of this marriage, was born in 1796.
* These letters were written to his brother Charles, who
resided at Clifton, near Manchester.—E. D.
In the same year James Lever was occupied in a very considerable undertaking—the building of the Roman Catholic College at Maynooth. His Dublin address was now Marlborough Green. The “green” was a piece of waste ground: the existing railway terminus at Amiens Street is built upon its site. Lever’s house faced the Green, and hard by was the famous “riding-school” of John Claudius Beresford. Here it was that Beresford used to exercise his yeomanry, and also, as Sir John Barrington tells us, where he used to whip persons suspected of disloyalty in order “to make them discover what in all probability they never knew.”
James Lever was soon in a fair way to success. He made money and saved some of it; and, better still, prosperity did not spoil him. A few years before the birth of his son Charles he speaks of “building two churches, besides a vast quantity of barrack-work.” In addition to the building of churches, colleges, and barracks, he was engaged in making alterations in the Custom-House and in the old Parliament House when it was handed over to the Bank of Ireland. These operations brought him into close relationship with a variety of interesting people. He had a clear head, a ready tongue, and a pleasant manner. The first of these gifts enriched him; the last conduced to popularity. It is told of him that his reputation as a clever and upright man of business and as a genial companion caused him to be selected as an arbitrator in commercial disputes. He held his court usually in a tavern in Capel Street, and here after supper he heard the evidence and delivered the verdict. He demanded no fee for his services, and his method of apportioning costs was truly Leverian. The victor was mulcted for the price of the supper. The man who lost his cause could eat and drink himself into contentment at the cost of his successful adversary.