Yet I have a very pretty turn for idleness too. It is as pleasant to me “to smoke my canaster and tipple my ale in the shade,” as Thackeray says, as to any man. Anthony had no such turn. Work to him was a necessity and a satisfaction. He used often to say that he envied me the capacity for being idle. Had he possessed it, poor fellow, I might not now be speaking of him in the past tense. And still less than of me could it be said of him that he was ever driven to literary work deficiente crumenâ. But he laboured during the whole of his manhood life with an insatiable ardour that (taking into consideration his very efficient discharge of his duties as Post Office surveyor) puts my industry into the shade.
Certainly we both of us ought to have inherited, and I suppose did inherit, an aptitude for industry. My father was, as I have said, a remarkably laborious, though an unsuccessful man, and my mother left a hundred and fifteen volumes, written between her fiftieth year and that of her death.
Shortly after my final return from Birmingham my mother had a bad illness. It could not have been a very long one; the record of her published work shows no cessation of literary activity. Whether this illness had anything to do with the resolution she came to much about the same time to change her residence, I do not remember, but about this time we established ourselves at No. 20, York Street.
Here, as everywhere else where my mother found or made a home, the house forthwith became the resort of pleasant people; and my time in York Street was a very agreeable one. Among other frequenters of it, my diary makes frequent mention of Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia, better known to the world as Sam Slick, the Clockmaker. He was, as I remember him, a delightful companion—for a limited time. He was in this respect exactly like his books—extremely amusing reading if taken in rather small doses, but calculated to seem tiresomely monotonous if indulged in at too great length. He was a thoroughly good fellow, kindly, cheery, hearty, and sympathetic always; and so far always a welcome companion. But his funning was always pitched in the same key, and always more or less directed to the same objects. His social and political ideas and views all coincided with my own, which, of course, tended to make us better friends. In appearance he looked entirely like an Englishman, but not at all like a Londoner. Without being at all too fat, he was large and burly in person, with grey hair, a large ruddy face, a humorous mouth, and bright blue eyes always full of mirth. He was an inveterate chewer of tobacco, and in the fulness of comrade-like kindness strove to indoctrinate me with that habit. But I was already an old smoker, and preferred to content myself with that mode of availing myself of the blessing of tobacco.
“Highways and Byeways” Grattan we saw also occasionally when anything brought him to London. He also was, as will be readily believed, what is generally called very good company. He, too, was full of fun, and certainly it could not be said that his fiddle had but one string to it! His fault lay in the opposite direction. His funning muse “made increment of” everything. He was intensely Irish, in manner, accent, and mind. He had a broken, or naturally bridgeless nose, and possessed as small a share of good looks or personal advantages as most men. He first urged me to try my hand at a novel. He had seen some of my early scribblings, but repeated that “Fiction, me boy, fiction and passion are what readers want!” But I did not at that time, or for many a long year afterwards, feel within myself any capacity for supplying such want.
CHAPTER XIX.
On the 17th of August, in 1838, as I find by my diary, “I went with Henrietta Skerret to see the Baron Dupotet magnetise his patients.” This was my first introduction to a subject, and to a special little world of its own, of which subsequently I saw a great deal, and which shortly began to attract an increasing amount of attention from the greater world around it. The Miss Skerret mentioned was the younger of two sisters, the nieces of Mathias, the author of the once well known, but now forgotten, Pursuits of Literature. Mr. Mathias and his sister, Mrs. Skerret, had been old acquaintances of my mother from earlier days than those to which any reminiscences of mine run back. And Maryanne and Henrietta Skerret were life-long friends of my mother’s and of mine. They were left at the death of their parents very slenderly provided for, and Maryanne, the elder, became by the interest of some influential person among their numerous friends, received into the service of the Queen in some properly menial capacity. But of all those in the immediate service of Her Majesty, it is probable that there was not one, whether menial or other, equal to Miss Skerret in native power of intellect, extent of reading, and linguistic accomplishment. And this the Queen very speedily discovered, the result of which was that to her particular service, which I believe consisted in taking charge of the jewellery which the Queen had in daily use, was added that of marking in the volumes which Her Majesty wished to make some acquaintance with, those passages which she deemed worth the Queen’s attention. She remained with the Queen many years, till advancing age was thought to have entitled her to a retiring pension, which she was still enjoying when I saw her, a very old woman, two or three years ago. I know that she found her position in the household, as may be readily understood, an irksome and materially uncomfortable one. But of her royal mistress, and of every member of the royal family she came into contact with, she never ceased to speak with the utmost affection and gratitude.
The younger sister, Henrietta, died some years before her. I had of late years seen much more of her than of her sister; for of course the position of the latter cut her off very much from all association with her friends. Henrietta was as remarkably clever a woman as her sister, but very different from her. She was as good a linguist, but her natural bent was to mathematics and its kindred subjects rather than to general literature. And whereas Maryanne was marked by an exquisite sense of humour, and was always full of fun, Henrietta was, I think, the most judicial-minded woman I have ever known. I have never met the man or woman whom I should have preferred to consult on a matter of weighing and estimating the value of evidence. She was for many years, as was my mother also, an intimate friend of Captain Kater, who was in those days well known in the scientific world as “Pendulum Kater,” from some application, I fancy, of the properties of the pendulum to the business of mapping, in which he had been engaged in India. Young, Woolaston, De Morgan, and others ejusdem farinæ, were all Miss Skerret’s friends, especially the last named. And I was brought into contact with some of them by her means.
This was the lady who, in 1838, invited me to accompany her to a séance at the house of Baron Dupotet, a Frenchman, whose magnetising theories and practice were at that time exciting some attention.
Here is an extract from my diary written the same evening.