Continuing his account of the meeting between the two novelists, Major Dwyer tells us that plans were discussed about sight-seeing. It was suggested that Thackeray should take a peep at a grand review which was to be held the following day in the Phoenix Park. Thackeray, Lever, and Major Dwyer drove to the Chief Secretary’s Lodge, and then walked to the review-ground. During the course of a cavalry charge Lever was separated from his friends, and Thackeray grew very uneasy when he beheld horsemen tearing wildly down towards him. The Major endeavoured to reassure the English novelist, but after listening to a brief lecture on military tactics, Thackeray said he preferred to review the ladies. The two men strolled homewards after the field-day, Thackeray waxing enthusiastic over Irish scenery. Then the conversation drifted to Waterloo, and Thackeray told his companion that the after-dinner conversation of the previous evening had caused him to think seriously of utilising in a work of fiction some of the incidents of the famous battle. Lever’s treatment of it in ‘O’Malley’ was much too imaginative—in fact, much too audacious, according to Michael Angelo Titmarsh.
This visit of Thackeray to Templeogue had a disturbing effect upon Lever. The former professed not to be able to understand why the latter should prefer Dublin to London as a place of residence. The Irish capital had been drained of its literary life-blood, he argued. No Irishman of ability remained at home except those who looked for advancement in the learned professions or those who were patronised by the Viceregal Court. Thackeray suggested that Lever should carry his Magazine across the water and establish it in London, where he would be in touch with numerous Irishmen of genuine ability. He would find that nineteen shillings out of every pound which he received came from Great Britain, and that his fame would travel faster and his purse would be more readily replenished if he was in the thick of the scramble in London rather than on the fringe of it in Dublin. Lever insisted that duty as well as his inclination bound him to his country, and that he would remain faithful to her as long as she would allow him to remain faithful. But though he spoke bravely he was shaken by the arguments of the author of ‘The Irish Sketch-Book.’
‘Tom Burke of Ours’ was now in hand. In the previous year Lever had an idea of writing an exhaustive Life of Napoleon, and he had crammed himself with information from various sources about the Napoleonic wars. Major Dwyer recounts a dialogue between the author of ‘Tom Burke’ and himself, as the pair walked along the eastern pier at Kingstown. Lever asked the Major if he would write military tales, long or short, for his Magazine. Dwyer declared that he should not know how to set about such a task; and the other asserted that, to begin with, nothing was easier than to depict a field of battle. A military man, or one who had been associated with military people, could easily conjure up a vision of a battlefield. “Then create a few actors and set them in motion—and the remainder is easy enough,” suggested Lever naïvely. He added a postscript to this recipe for the concoction of a novel of military life: “You would want a woman or two.” Major Dwyer declared that it was only a man who knew nothing at all about military operations who could describe a whole battle in the heroic:sensational style. He then asked Lever where he had obtained the material for his soldier stories. “For what is in ‘O’Malley,’” replied his companion, “I am mainly indebted to Napier; for the rest, to ‘Les Victoires et Conquêtes de l’Armée Français.’”
Writing many years afterwards about ‘Tom Burke,’ its author mentions that he was engaged upon it when Thackeray visited him at Templeogue, intent upon gathering material for his ‘Sketch-Book.’ “And I believe,” says Lever, “that though we discussed every other book and book-writer, neither of us ever, even by chance, alluded to what the other was doing.”
Though 1842 was a very busy year with him, the master of Templeogue did not deny himself ample jollification. His house became a resort for pleasant people. Brilliant men came to talk, to jest, to listen, or to play cards. The host was an inveterate gambler. Whist was one of his passions, but he could find enjoyment in any form of gambling, from roulette to “push-pin.” There is an illuminating anecdote told of a Templeogue whist-party which included Lord Muskerry. The vehicles belonging to the visitors somehow got interlocked during the night, and could not be disentangled until five o’clock in the morning, when a local blacksmith operated upon them. Two of the guests accompanied Lord Muskerry to his house in Merrion Square, and the door was opened for them by Lady Muskerry attired in her night-gown. She is said to have “pitched in” pretty heavily to his lordship.
Naturally enough, between the pressure of his literary work and his editorial labours, and the filching of hours from the night,—in order to lengthen the days,—Lever paid the penalty. He complained that he had gone sadly to seed. He feared that the opening of ‘Tom Burke’ was flat. It was fortunate that he had in Mortimer O’Sullivan a friend who was able to stimulate him. O’Sullivan told him that ‘Tom Burke’ was anything but flat, and that it promised to be his best book. Another of his encouragers was Canon Hayman, who paid Templeogue an early visit, and who has placed it on record that when Lever was not entertaining distinguished visitors he led a quiet and healthy life, and that when he was entertaining company his only desire was to make his guests “happy—innocently happy.” Riding was his favourite out-of-door exercise; and “never was he in better spirits than when far away on the Wicklow hills, with a friend by his side and his children around him on their ponies.”
‘Jack Hinton’ concluded its serial course in December, and it was arranged that ‘Arthur O’Leary’ should follow it in the Magazine. Lever submitted to Canon Hayman some of the manuscript of ‘Arthur O’Leary,’ declaring, in one of his petulant moods, that he “detested this stuff,”—that it was easy to write it, but a labour to read it.
But the Canon insisted that ‘O’Leary’ was excellent, and Lever retired to his “snuggery”—an apartment of which he gives an amusing glimpse in his Magazine*—prepared to work until the pen dropped from his tired fingers. The smallest charge of tiresomeness could always sink him deep in gloom; and, fortunately for himself the faintest echo of praise, coming from the lips of any one whose opinion he valued, could elevate him to the seventh heaven. He admits that “an impertinent paragraph or some malicious sneer” would cause him to toss his manuscript aside and to scribble caricatures on the sheets intended for the recording of fictional adventures.
* “The Sub-editor’s Snuggery,” in the ‘D. U. Magazine’ for
July 1842.
Lever loved politics almost as ardently as he loved whist. He had an idea that in Ireland he might be enabled to cut a considerable figure in political life, but the party at whose side he was willing to serve—the Tory party—was fearful of him,—not because of any suspicion of his faithfulness or of any doubt about his ability, but because of his reputation as a humourist of the devil-may-care order. He attended occasional functions at the Viceregal Court, but he did not seem to make much headway in this direction. It is said that he resented bitterly the cold-shouldering to which the Viceroy, Lord de Grey, treated him.