The vehemence with which he seized hold of this opportunity, and the ardor with which he pursued his new calling as reporter and journalist, show that he felt he had at last discovered a clue that would lead him out of the labyrinth of his difficulties, and his success fully justified the confidence in his own powers which had never forsaken him. Opportunity, so much desired by all young men of ability, which comes to some unsought, and as persistently flies the approach of others, had at length presented itself to Gerald Griffin, and he lost no time in profiting by the occasion. Association with authors whose works he was obliged to examine, criticise, and sometimes revise, naturally led him to compare his own capacity for production with theirs, and to arrive at the conclusion that he also was able to produce works of prose fiction equally meritorious, and as worthy the commendation of moralists as epic poetry or the drama. Satisfied on this point, he at once relinquished his dramatic aspirations, and prepared himself with all the enthusiasm of his nature to enter the lists as a novelist. In his "small room in some obscure court, near St. Paul's," he called up the recollections of past days, of the lovely Shannon, the mountain ranges of Clare, the wakes, fairs, and festivals of the Munster peasantry, the humor, shrewdness, pathos, and frolic he as a child had witnessed, and perhaps to some extent shared, and he resolved to essay an Irish novel illustrative of these familiar scenes. Having first tried short stories for the literary weeklies, and found them eagerly read and highly appreciated, he commenced a series of tales to be published in book form, which he designed to call Anecdotes of Munster, but which were afterward known under the general title of Holland-Tide.
Pending the appearance of this his first continued effort, his labors were as varied and as unremitting as ever—correcting for the press the lucubrations of unskilled writers, reviewing in the weekly papers the various books that the metropolitan publishers were constantly inflicting on the public, writing theatrical criticisms, sketches, poetry, and political articles—doing any thing and every thing, in fact, no matter how foreign to his tastes, as long as they honorably secured him present competency and a reasonable prospect of finally accomplishing his grand purpose. At one time he describes himself as busy revising a ponderous dictionary; at another, collecting materials for a pamphlet on Catholic emancipation. Now he is promised £50 for a piece for the English opera, and again he acknowledges the receipt of several pounds for reports furnished a Catholic newspaper recently started. His leisure moments, if he can be said to have had any, were devoted to versification, while his parliamentary duties kept him out of bed till three, and sometimes five o'clock in the morning. His brother William, who visited him in London in 1826, thus describes his altered appearance and his methodical manner of life:
"I had not seen him since he left Adare, and was struck with the change in his appearance. All color had left his cheek, he had grown very thin, and there was a sedate expression of countenance unusual in one so young, and which in after years became habitual to him. It was far from being so, however, at the time I speak of, and readily gave place to that light and lively glance of his dark eye, that cheerfulness of manner and observant humor, which from his very infancy had enlivened our fireside circle at home. Although so pale and thin as I have described him, his tall figure, expressive features, and his profusion of dark hair, thrown back from a fine forehead, gave an impression of a person remarkably handsome and interesting.... He was indefatigable at his work; rose and breakfasted early, set to his desk at once, and continued writing till two or three o'clock in the afternoon; took a turn round the park, which was close to his residence; returned and dined; usually took another walk after dinner, and returning to tea, wrote for the remainder of the evening, after remaining up to a very late hour."
The series of tales, published by Simpkin and Marshall late in this year brought Griffin £70 sterling, and at once established his reputation as a powerful and original writer, and an accurate delineator of Irish peasant character. Its reception by the public and the gentlemen of the critical profession was so generally favorable that, feeling assured he had at length entered on the right road to distinction, and that his future was no longer doubtful, Griffin gave up his various engagements with the press, and not unwillingly, it is to be presumed, laid down for ever the load of literary drudgery which had so long bowed his spirit to the earth. His fortitude had been severely tested, not by one great calamity, but by a series of trials, harder to be borne, and had remained unshaken; his constancy of purpose had been proof against all allurements to swerve from the honorable pursuit of letters; and it is not too much to affirm, on the authority of many who knew him intimately, that his moral character remained unsullied amid all the temptations which usually beset a young man of his isolated condition in every large city. His first success was naturally followed by a desire to revisit his home, a wish in which he had long secretly indulged, but which was now strengthened by intelligence of the dangerous illness of a favorite sister. He arrived at Pallas Kenry, his brother's residence, in February, 1827, but unfortunately a few hours after the death of this young lady, an event which, coupled with his feeble health, destroyed for a time the pleasure which he had anticipated from a trip to Ireland, and the renewal of his acquaintance with those peaceful scenes the remembrance of which had so cheered his absence.
"I started for Limerick at a very early hour to meet him," says his brother, "and I cannot forget how much I was struck by the change his London life had made in his appearance. His features looked so thin and pale, and his cheeks so flattened, and, as it were, bloodless, that the contrast with what I remembered was horrid; while his voice was feeble, and slightly raised in its pitch, like that of one recovering from a lingering illness. It was affecting, in these circumstances, to observe the sudden and brilliant light that kindled in his eyes on first seeing me, and the smile of welcome that played over his features and showed the spirit within unchanged."
The unremitting attention of his relatives, however, at length assuaged his mental grief and bodily sufferings, and his mind, naturally resigned, gradually resumed its wonted tranquillity. He spent the summer months at Pallas Kenry in the undisturbed enjoyment of home, but still industriously occupied with his pen.
"When engaged in composition, (says his biographer,) he made use of a manifold writer, with a style and carbonic paper, which gave him two and sometimes three copies of his work. One of these he sent to the publisher, the others he kept by him, in case the first should be lost. He had his sheets so cut out and arranged that they were not greater in size than the leaf of a moderate-sized octavo, and he wrote so minute a hand that each page of the manuscript contained enough matter for a page of print. This enabled him very easily to tell how much manuscript was necessary to fill three volumes. His usual quantity of writing was about ten pages of these in the day. It was seldom less than this, and I have known it repeatedly as high as fifteen or twenty, without interfering with those hours which he chose to devote to recreation. He never rewrote his manuscript, and one of the most remarkable things I noticed in the progress of his work was the extremely small number of erasures or interlineations in it, several pages being completed without the occurrence of a single one."
The result of this diligent application was the first series of Tales of the Munster Festivals, embracing The Half-Sir, The Card Drawers, and The Shuil Dhuv, with which he proceeded to London, and which he disposed of to his publishers for £250, a price that would now be considered totally inadequate, but which forty years ago was looked upon as ample remuneration for that species of labor. The work, though decidedly superior to Holland-Tide, was much less favorably received by the critics, and Griffin had now to pay the penalty of success by having the children of his brain held up to public censure, as not being formed true to nature, or as acting in a manner contrary to the canons of London society. Though such strictures generally emanated from persons who either would not or could not understand the peculiarities of the people of Ireland, he felt keenly alive to their praise or censure, particularly the latter; nor does he seem to have exhibited that callousness which his long acquaintance with the press, and the class of men who are sometimes permitted to sit in judgment on their superiors, might have taught him.
Having remained long enough in London to superintend the publication of the tales, he gladly returned to Pallas Kenry, where he spent nearly a year in the undisturbed society of his relatives and a few friends living in his neighborhood. These latter must have been few indeed, for he is described as still of a very shy and reserved disposition, except when among intimate friends; and though shown every mark of esteem and hospitality by his countrymen, he had so great an abhorrence of being lionized that he seldom accepted invitations, save such as could not in ordinary politeness be rejected. Not that his temper was soured or that his conversational powers were deficient, but home was to him the centre and only object of attraction. "Would you wish to view at a distance our domestic circle?" asks his sister in one of her letters to America. "William and I are generally first at the breakfast table, when, after a little time, walks in Miss H——; next Mr. Gerald, and, last of all, Monsieur D——. After breakfast our two doctors go to their patients; Gerald takes his desk by the fire-place and writes away, except when he chooses to throw a pinch or a pull at the ringlets, cape, or frill of the first lady next to him, or gives us a stave of some old ballad."
Under such sweet influences, so different from his wretched life in London, the greater part of his best work, The Collegians, was written. Two or three subjects for a successor to Shuil Dhuv had been selected and partly developed; but having the fear of the critics before his eyes, he laid them aside unfinished. The spring and summer of 1828 thus passed away fruitlessly; but at length a theme presented itself that satisfied his judgment, and he set about writing on it with all possible expedition. The Collegians was originally published in three volumes, one and a half of which Griffin brought with him to London in November. The remaining portion was written in that city in such hot haste that he was obliged frequently to deliver his sheets of manuscript without having time to reread or revise them. This work, on its first appearance, was received with the greatest favor; it placed the author at once at the head of the novelists of his own country, and gave him a high rank among the writers of the English language—a verdict which the experience of posterity has fully confirmed.