“‘That dawny little bit av a crayture?’
“‘A leprechaun, no less.’
“‘Why, begorra, the boys might as well be shootin’ at a jacksnipe.’”
Mr. Lever’s conversational powers were simply marvellous; his anecdotes fell like ripe fruit from an overladen tree. In London his great delight was a night at the Cosmopolitan Club, Berkeley Square. This club is only open upon Wednesday and Sunday nights during the Parliamentary session. The members stroll in from eleven o’clock at night to about three o’clock A.M. Cabinet ministers, ambassadors of all nations, members of the legislature, eminent littérateurs, Royal Academicians, repair thither for a gossip; and here, amidst the best talkers in the world, Charles Lever stood pre-eminent. As the wits and raconteurs at Will’s Coffee House were silent whilst Joseph Addison talked Spectator, so the members of the Cosmopolitan maintained a breathless attention when Charles Lever talked Cornelius O’Dowd; and many a man has “dined out considerably” upon a mot, and has, perhaps, established a reputation, by the retailing of an anecdote recounted within the salons of the club by the inimitable and fascinating “Harry Lorrequer.” When the writer parted with Lever upon that evening, he felt justifiably elated at being enabled to amuse, if not astonish, the most brilliant man of the day, but, upon a rigid self-examination, was somewhat disappointed upon discovering that, instead of his having been engaged in entertaining Lever, Lever had been entertaining him, and that he had not uttered a single sentence out of the veriest commonplace. Such was the charm of Lever’s manner that he took you, as it were, from out yourself, and for the time infused his own groove of thought, causing your ideas to mingle with his and float joyously onward upon the glittering current of his conversation. Lever was a devoted worshipper of the “sad solemnities of whist,” playing rubber after rubber up to any and all hours. It is related that an eminent wearer of the ermine, a fellow of Trinity College, a gallant field officer, and Lever met, dined early, and played whist until the hour at which the train departed for Kingston by which “Harry Lorrequer” was to leave en route for London. “Come on to Kingston,” said Lever, “sleep at the Anglesea Arms Hotel, and I will not go until the morning boat.” They played all night and until one o’clock next day. Si non e vero e ben trovato, but the writer has the story from unimpeachable authority.
Charles Lever’s last novel, concluded shortly before his death, is Lord Kilgobbin. Let its unutterably sad preface speak for itself:
“To the memory of one whose companionship made the happiness of a long life, and whose loss has made me helpless, I dedicate this book, written in breaking health and broken spirits. The task that once was my joy and my pride I have lived to find associated with my sorrow. It is not, then, without a cause I say, I hope this effort may be my last.—Trieste, January 20, 1872.”
It is with a pang of regret that we peruse the Cornelius O’Dowd papers. They are tinged with that abominable spirit which is sending Italy at the present hour to perdition, and we greatly fear that Mr. Lever wrote them for the London market. He was no bigot, however; on the contrary, his life was passed amongst Catholics, and his dearest and best friends were of the true church; consequently, the pain is intensified when we come to stand face to face with the fact that these papers were, if not the outcome of a pecuniary necessity, at least the result of a craving for money, and the hollow effusions of a hirelingpen. His Italian sojourn led him gradually away from the more kindly tone towards Catholics which pervaded his earlier Irish novels.
Lever and Griffin have been compared as writers of Irish fiction. We would rather have been the author of The Collegians than of any work of Mr. Lever’s. There is a virgin simplicity in Gerald Griffin’s style that “Harry Lorrequer” could not touch; an atmosphere which he could not breathe; a purity which, while the morale of Lever’s writings is unimpeachable, is of that order that is so rarely attained by the most chaste and most elevated amongst our writers of fiction. Griffin’s Irish is not stagy—it is real; so, too, is Lever’s. But while the former paints the portrait, leaving the imagination of the reader to put in the finishing touches, the latter rubs in a laugh here or a keen thrust there, so as to dramatize the picture; and, while it is more vivid during perusal, the mind falls back upon the other for less exciting pabulum.