Lever was fond of portraying banished heroes, misanthropes—men who had dug their own graves, or, overtaken by some whirlwind of misfortune, “gave signs that all was lost.” The character of Lord Glencore is admirably drawn, and his life of torture in his mad cry for vengeance fearfully vivid. Luttrell of Arran is the story of a disappointed life, from out of which springs a bright flower of maidenhood—Kate, one of Lever’s most charming creations. Again, we have the Knight of Gwynne, over whose gentle head wave after wave of hard fortune pitilessly breaks, and, driven from the lordly home of his ancestors to a sheeling by the sad sea-wave, he is as cheerful in adversity as he was noble in prosperity. The portrait of the fire-eating Bagenal Daly is not overdrawn, and the introduction of Freeny the robber, although highly melodramatic, is not only possible but probable. Freeny’s “character” stood remarkably high. He would rob a rich miser to save a poor family from starvation, and his word was as good as his bond; ‘98 turned many a man upon the king’s highway who, but for being “out,” would have lived respecting and respected. The Martins of Cro’ Martin is another ghastly narrative of the wreck and ruin of a proud old Irish race. It is “an owre true” story. A few miles outside of the town of Galway, on the road to Oughterard, stand two gaunt pillars surmounted by granite globes. The gates have disappeared, as also the armorial bearings; but this was formerly the entrance to Ballinahinch, the seat of the “ould, anshint” Martins, and from that gate to Ballinahinch Castle was a drive of forty Irish miles. The castle, situated in one of the loneliest and loveliest valleys in Connemara, was maintained in a style of regal magnificence, the stables, marble-stalled, affording accommodation for sixty hunters. On an island, in the centre of a small lake opposite the castle, stands a desolate, half-ruined keep, within the four walls of which such of his retainers or neighbors as proved refractory were imprisoned by “The Martin” of the period. Recklessness and improvidence scattered the broad acres, mortgage overlapped mortgage, and every inch of the grand old estate became the property of the London Law Life Assurance Society. Notably the last of the family was Richard Martin, commonly known as “Humanity Dick,” in reference to a bill introduced by him into the British House of Commons for the repression of cruelty to animals. Upon the occasion of its introduction the English members essayed to cough him down. “I perceive,” said Mr. Martin, “that many of you seem troubled with severe coughs; now, if any one gentleman will cough distinctly, so that I may be able to recognize him, I can give him a pill which may, perhaps, effectually prevent his ever being again troubled with a cough on this side of the grave.” Mr. Martin’s prescription was at once effectual.
With “Humanity Dick’s” granddaughter perished the race; and her name is still breathed in Connemara as a prayer, as one “who never opened a cabin-door without a blessing, nor closed it but to shut hope within.” The farm-house where she was nursed is still fondly pointed out, and “Miss Martin’s lep”—she was a superb horsewoman—is proudly shown to every “spalpeen” of an Englishman who travels that wild, bleak, and desolate road between Oughterard and Clifden. Mr. Lever, with that magic all his own, has told the sad story. His Mary Martin is but the portrait of that fair young Irish girl who dearly loved “her people” unto the last, and who, in the bright blossom of her life, died an exile from that western home which was at once her idol and her pride. Where but in Ireland could this sad and solemn gathering around the bedside of a dying girl take place?
“And yet there was a vast multitude of people there. The whole surface of the lawn that sloped from the cottage to the river was densely crowded with every age, from the oldest to the very infancy; with all conditions, from the well-clad peasant to the humblest ‘tramper’ of the highroads. Weariness, exhaustion, and even hunger were depicted on many of their faces. Some had passed the night there, others had come long distances, faint and foot-sore; but, as they sat, stood, or lay in groups around, not a murmur, not a whisper, escaped them. With aching eyes they looked towards an open window where the muslin curtains were gently stirred in the faint air. The tidings of Mary Martin’s illness had spread rapidly; far-away glens down the coast, lonely cabins on the bleak mountains, wild, remote spots out of human intercourse, had heard the news, and their dwellers had travelled many a mile to satisfy their aching hearts.”
This is Ireland. This is the undying affection of the people for the “rale ould stock.” This is the imperishable sentiment, as fresh at this hour as the emerald verdure upon the summit of Croagh Patrick.
In A Day’s Ride: a Life’s Romance, Mr. Lever has given us Algernon Sydney Potts—one of those romantic visionaries who believe in destiny, bow to their Kismet, and, going with the tide, clothe the meanest accidents of life in dreamy panoply. The adventures which befall the Dublin apothecary’s son, from his ride in Wicklow to his imprisonment in an Austrian fortress, are as varied as they are exciting, and we are strongly inclined to believe that Lever, “letting off” a good deal of Bohemia, is at his best in the wild vagaries of this reckless day-dreamer. Tom Burke of Ours is a dashing military story, as is also Jack Hinton, the Guardsman. The O’Donoghue is charmingly written and is thoroughly Irish. That Boy of Norcott’s is unsatisfactory. Commencing in Ireland, it wanders from the old country with the evident intention of returning to it; but a change came o’er the spirit of the author’s dream, and it bears all the imprint of having been hastily written, a changed venue, and of being “hurried up” at its conclusion. Sir Brook Fosbrooke, on the other hand, bears traces of the utmost care, the details of character being worked out with microscopic minuteness. The old lord chief-justice is supposed to have been meant for Lord Chief-Justice Lefroy, of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Ireland, who died at a very advanced age a few years since, in full possession of the astounding legal acumen which marked his extended career at the bar, and subsequently upon the bench.
The writer spent a long-to-be-remembered day with Charles Lever in the April before his death. He was stopping in Dublin at Morrison’s Hotel, Dawson Street. We found him seated at an open window, a bottle of claret at his right hand and the proof-sheets of Lord Kilgobbin before him. It was a beautiful morning borrowed from the month of May; the hawthorns in the college park were just beginning to bloom, and nature was young and warm and lovely.
At the date of our visit he looked a hale, hearty, laughter-loving man of sixty. There was mirth in his gray eye, joviality, in the wink that twittered on his eyelid, saucy humor in his smile, and bon mot, wit, repartee, and rejoinder in every movement of his lips. His hair very thin, but of a silky brown, fell across his forehead, and when it curtained his eyes he would jerk back his head—this, too, at some telling crisis in a narrative when the particular action was just the exact finish required to make the story perfect. Mr. Lever’s teeth were all his own, and very brilliant, and, whether from habit or accident, he flashed them upon us in company with his wonderful eyes—a battery at once both powerful and irresistible. He spoke slowly at first, but warming to his work, and candying an idea in a short, contagious, musical laugh, his story told itself all too rapidly, and the light burned out with such a glare as to intensify the succeeding darkness. Like all good raconteurs, he addressed himself deferentially to his auditor in the beginning, and as soon as the fish was hooked, the attention enthralled, he would speak as if thinking aloud. Mr. Lever made great use of his hands, which were small and white and delicate as those of a woman. He made play with them—threw them up in ecstasy or wrung them in mournfulness, just as the action of the moment demanded. He did not require eyes or teeth with such a voice and such hands; they could tell and illustrate the workings of his brain. He was somewhat careless in his dress, but clung to the traditional high shirt-collar, merely compromising the unswerving stock of the Brummel period. “I stick to my Irish shoes,” he said, thrusting upwards about as uncompromising a “bit of leather” as we have ever set eyes on right under our nose, “and until a few years ago I got them from a descendant of the celebrated Count Lally, who cobbled at Letterkenny. There is no shoe in the world equal to the Irish brogue.”
“You are ‘taking time by the forelock,’ as we say in the play,” said the writer, pointing to the rough copy of the Cornhill Magazine, in which the story was running.
“Always at the heel of the hunt,” he replied. “This is the May number, and not corrected yet.”
“I consider Lord Kilgobbin as good as, if not better than, anything you have written.”