Elwin had, perhaps, a colder temperament, or did not express his devotion. But his regard would seem to have been as deep-seated; as indeed was shown in the finely drawn tribute he paid him after his death, and which is indeed the work of an accomplished writer and master of expression. "He was two distinct men," wrote Elwin to John Murray the elder, in 1876, "and the one man quite dissimilar from the other. To see him in company I should not have recognised him for the friend with whom I was intimate in private. Then he was quiet, natural, unpretending, and most agreeable, and in the warmth and generosity of his friendship he had no superior. Sensitive as he was in some ways, there was no man to whom it was easier so speak with perfect frankness. He always bore it with gentle good nature."[2]
[2] To Elwin Forster left £2,000 and his gold watch, no doubt the one bequeathed by Dickens. Forster appointed him, without consulting him, one of his executors, but knowing well that he could rely on his good will, and the legacy no doubt was intended as a solatium for the labour thus enforced. Lord Lytton and Justice Chitty were the other executors. As Lord Lytton was in India the whole burden fell on the other two, and mostly on Elwin. As his son tells, the literary part of the business was most considerable; there was an edition of Landor to be "seen through" the press; there was a vast number of papers and letters to be examined, preserved or destroyed. "His own inclination and Forster's instructions were in the direction of destroying all personal letters, however eminent the writer might be."
At another time he wrote with warmth, "Most welcome was your letter this morning, as your letters always are to me. They come fraught with some new proof of the true, warm-hearted, generous friend who has made life worth something more to me than it was a year ago," 1857.[3]
[3] Memoirs by Warwick Elwin.
When Forster married, in 1856, he was eager that Elwin should officiate, and proposed going down to Norfolk. But legal formalities were in the way, and Elwin came to London instead. "He never," says Warwick Elwin, "wavered in his attachment to him. Sometimes he would be momentarily vexed at some fancied neglect, but the instant they met again it was all forgotten." Elwin was, in fact, subject to moods and "nerves," and there were times when he shrank sensitively from the world and its associations—he would answer no letters, particularly after the period of his many sore trials. The last time I saw him was at that great fiasco, the production of the first Lord Lytton's posthumous play on the subject of Brutus, produced by Wilson Barrett, with extraordinary richness and pomp: a failure that led to an unpleasant dispute between Lytton's son and the lessee.
When the Life of Dickens appeared, Elwin, as in duty bound, proceeded to review it in the Quarterly. I confess that on reading over this article there seems to be a curious reserve and rather measured stint of praise. One would have expected from the generous Elwin one enthusiastic and sustained burst of praise of his friend's great work. But it seems as though he felt so trifling a matter was scarcely worthy of solemn treatment. The paper is only twenty pages long, and, after a few lines of praise at the beginning and a line or two at the end, proceeds to give a summary of the facts. The truth was Elwin was too scrupulously conscientious a critic to stretch a point in such a matter. I could fancy that for one of his nice feeling it became an almost disagreeable duty. Were he tempted to expand in praises, it would be set down to partiality, while he was hardly free to censure. No wonder he wrote of his performance: "Forster will think it too lukewarm; others the reverse." As it happened, the amiable Forster was enchanted.
"For upwards of three-and-thirty years," says Mr. Elwin in this review (Q. R., vol. 132, p. 125), "Mr. Forster was the incessant companion and confidential adviser of Dickens; the friend to whom he had recourse in every difficulty, personal and literary; and before whom he spread, without reserve, every fold of his mind. No man's life has ever been better known to a biographer.... To us it appears that a more faithful biography could not be written. Dickens is seen in his pages precisely as he is showed in his ordinary intercourse."
Both Elwin and his friend had that inflexibility of principle in criticism and literary utterance which they adhered to as though it were a matter of high morals. This feeling contrasts with the easy adaptability of our day, when the critic so often has to shape his views according to interested aims. He indeed will hold in his views, but may not deem it necessary to produce them. I could recall instances in both men of this sternness of opinion. Forster knew no compromise in such matters; though I fancy in the case of people of title, for whom, as already mentioned, he had a weakness, or of pretty women, he may have occasionally given way. I remember when Elwin was writing his fine estimate of his deceased friend, Mrs. Forster in deep distress came to tell me that he insisted on describing her husband as "the son of a butcher." In vain had she entreated him to leave this matter aside. Even granting its correctness, what need or compulsion to mention it? It was infinitely painful to her. But it was not true: Forster's father was a large "grazier" or dealer in cattle. Elwin, however, was inflexible: some Newcastle alderman had hunted up entries in old books, and he thought the evidence convincing.
Another incident connected with the memory of her much-loved husband, that gave this amiable woman much poignant distress, was a statement made by Mr. Furnival, the Shakesperian, that Browning had been employed by Forster to write the account of Strafford, in the collection of Lives. He had been told this by Browning himself. Nevertheless, she set all her friends to work; had papers, letters, etc., ransacked for evidence, but with poor result. The probability was that Forster would have disdained such aid; on the other hand, the Poet had written a tragedy on the subject, and was, therefore, capable of dealing with it. Letters of vindication were sent to the papers, but no one was much interested in the point one way or the other; save, of course, the good Mrs. Forster, to whom it was vital. I am afraid, however, there was truth in the statement; for it is completely supported by a stray passage in one of the Poet's letters to his future wife, recently published.