Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and letters

by J. Comyns Carr

But hurry and scurry as we would, this terrible task was scarcely ever finished till within a few minutes of the time for post, and even then it often happened that one of us had to come to Purnell’s rescue and try as best we could to adjust the scattered arguments which he had been vainly endeavouring to set in logical sequence.

His delight on these occasions was unbounded. The weekly price for these essays was three guineas, and I think he received it with all the greater zest from the consciousness that he had not rightly earned it.

Purnell’s social ambitions were few, and all social obligations he boldly repudiated. It was one of his most deeply seated convictions that no man was compelled to reply to any letter of invitation, whatever the source from which it might have come, and he defended this position with great show of legal force.

“If,” he said, “a lady had asked me whether in the event of her writing me an invitation I would reply to it, and I had answered in the affirmative, then, my dear Carribus, the agreement would be complete. But I never said anything of the kind, never would; and therefore, my dear boy, there’s no privity of contract.”

But there was one invitation he took care to answer, an invitation to pass a week-end with a certain noble lord in the country. I do not think that he was in any grave sense a “snob,” but he was deeply impressed with the sense of his powers of fascination over women, and his handsome picturesque face, I think, entitled him to the belief that it was not mere idle boasting.

At this particular party he happened to know that several charming ladies of the family would be present, and it was this fact, I think, which made him very eager, if he could, to accept the invitation. But the question of a fitting wardrobe raised a difficulty, and here again he threw himself in all candour upon Francillon and myself.

The rare letter of acceptance had been sent, and the day for his departure had arrived, but in this question of dress he was still lamentably unprepared. We met in hasty consultation in a little eating-house called the Coal Hole, which lay down a narrow court at the south side of the Strand.

It was Saturday. The shops would soon be closing, and there was no time to lose. He had money enough for his railway ticket, but none for such idle luxuries as clothes. His only proffered contribution to the necessities of the occasion was a tarnished disreputable bag which he had brought down empty to the office in view of the projected excursion. He had no great faith in it himself, and it was discarded with scorn by those whom he had pressed into his service. And so in the end Francillon and I had to provide a modest valise and stock it with a wardrobe that would suffice for the three days’ stay, and I can recall now the air of triumph with which he started upon his journey, robed in a new pilot-jacket which we had added as the final feature of his outfit.

Our little circle on the staff of the Globe was later joined by Churton Collins, now the Professor of English Literature at the University at Birmingham, then only a boy fresh from Oxford, but a boy whose mind was already stored with a knowledge of English literature such as I suppose few men of his generation can boast. His prodigious memory both in prose and poetry I certainly have never encountered in another; and through many an evening, when he dined quietly with us in our rooms in Great Russell Street, did we wonder and delight to listen to him as he passed from author to author, not always reciting things of his own choice, but responding with equal readiness to any call that might be made upon him when the choice was made by others.

But this wondrous memory sometimes played him tricks in his first essays as a journalist. For as there was no time and no opportunity in the Globe office to verify any quotation, his literary articles, which were always packed with quotations from the poets, were generally subject to correction in some small particular, and for this reason evoked a shower of correspondence which irritated and annoyed our worthy editor.