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= Charles_Lever =
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Introduction
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Charles James Lever (31 August 1806 - 1 June 1872) was an Irish
novelist and raconteur, whose novels, according to Anthony Trollope,
were just like his conversation.
Early life
============
Lever was born in Amiens Street, Dublin, the second son of James
Lever, an architect and builder, and was educated in private schools.
His escapades at Trinity College, Dublin (1823-1828), where he took
the degree in medicine in 1831, are drawn on for the plots of some of
his novels. The character Frank Webber in the novel 'Charles O'Malley'
was based on a college friend, Robert Boyle, who later became a
clergyman. Lever and Boyle earned pocket-money singing ballads of
their own composing in the streets of Dublin and played many other
pranks which Lever embellished in the novels 'O'Malley', 'Con Cregan'
and 'Lord Kilgobbin'. Before seriously embarking upon his medical
studies, Lever visited Canada as an unqualified surgeon on an emigrant
ship, and has drawn upon some of his experiences in 'Con Cregan',
'Arthur O'Leary' and 'Roland Cashel'. Arriving in Canada, he journeyed
into the backwoods, where he was affiliated to a tribe of Native
Americans but had to flee because his life was in danger, as later his
character Bagenal Daly did in his novel 'The Knight of Gwynne'.
Back in Europe, he pretended he was a student from the University of
Göttingen and travelled to the University of Jena (where he saw
Goethe), and then to Vienna. He loved German student life, and several
of his songs, such as "The Pope He Loved a Merry Life", are based on
student-song models. His medical degree earned him an appointment to
the Board of Health in County Clare and then as a dispensary doctor in
Portstewart, County Londonderry, but his conduct as a country doctor
earned him the censure of the authorities.
Career
========
In 1833 he married his first love, Catherine Baker, and in February
1837, after varied experiences, he began publishing 'The Confessions
of Harry Lorrequer' in the recently established 'Dublin University
Magazine'. During the previous seven years, the popular taste had
turned toward the "service novel", examples of which include 'Frank
Mildmay' (1829) by Frederick Marryat, 'Tom Cringle's Log' (1829) by
Michael Scott, 'The Subaltern' (1825) by George Robert Gleig, 'Cyril
Thornton' (1827) by Thomas Hamilton, 'Stories of Waterloo' (1833) by
William Hamilton Maxwell, 'Ben Brace' (1840) by Frederick Chamier and
'The Bivouac' (1837), also by Maxwell. Lever had met William Hamilton
Maxwell, the titular founder of the genre. Before 'Harry Lorrequer'
appeared in volume form (1839), Lever had settled - on the strength of
a slight diplomatic connection - as a fashionable physician in
Brussels (Hertogstraat 16).
'Lorrequer' was merely a string of Irish and other stories - good, bad
and indifferent, but mostly rollicking. Lever, who strung together his
anecdotes late at night after the serious business of his day, was
astonished at its success. "If this sort of thing amuses them, I can
go on forever." Brussels was indeed a superb place for the observation
of half-pay officers, such as Major Monsoon ('Commissioner Meade'),
Captain Bubbleton and the like, who terrorised the taverns of the
place with their endless Peninsular stories, and of English society a
little damaged, which it became the speciality of Lever to depict. He
sketched with a free hand, wrote, as he lived, from hand to mouth, and
the chief difficulty he experienced was that of getting rid of his
characters who "hung about him like those tiresome people who never
can make up their minds to bid you good night". Lever had never taken
part in a battle himself, but his next three books, 'Charles O'Malley'
(1841), 'Jack Hinton' (1843), and 'Tom Burke of Ours' (1844), written
under the spur of the writer's chronic extravagance, contain some
splendid military writing and some of the most animated battle-pieces
on record. In pages of 'O'Malley' and 'Tom Burke' Lever anticipates
not a few of the best effects of Marbot, Thibaut, Lejeune, Griois,
Seruzier, Burgoyne and the like. His account of the Douro need hardly
fear comparison, it has been said, with Napier's. Condemned by the
critics, Lever had completely won the general reader - from the Iron
Duke himself downwards.
In 1842 he returned to Dublin to edit the 'Dublin University
Magazine', and gathered round him a typical coterie of Irish wits
(including one or two hornets) such as the O'Suilivans, Archer Butler,
William Carleton, Sir William Wilde, Canon Hayman, DF McCarthy,
McGlashan, Dr Kencaly and many others. In June 1842 he welcomed at
Templeogue, four miles southwest of Dublin, the author of the 'Snob
Papers' on his Irish tour (the 'Sketch Book' was, later, dedicated to
Lever). Thackeray recognised the fund of Irish sadness beneath the
surface merriment. "The author's character is not humour but
sentiment. The spirits are mostly artificial, the fond is sadness, as
appears to me to be that of most Irish writing and people." The
Waterloo episode in Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair' (1847-1848) was in part
an outcome of the talk between the two novelists. But the "Galway
pace", the display he found it necessary to maintain at Templeogue,
the stable full of horses, the cards, the friends to entertain, the
quarrels to compose and the enormous rapidity with which he had to
complete 'Tom Burke', 'The O'Donoghue' and 'Arthur O'Leary' (1845)
made his native land an impossible place for Lever to continue in.
Templeogue would soon have proved another Abbotsford.
Thackeray suggested London, but Lever required a new field of literary
observation and anecdote. His creative inspiration exhausted, he
decided to renew it on the continent. In 1845 he resigned his
editorship and went back to Brussels, whence he started upon an
unlimited tour of central Europe in a family coach. Now and again he
halted for a few months, and entertained to the limit of his resources
in some ducal castle or other which he hired for an off-season. Thus
at Riedenburg, near Bregenz, in August 1846, he entertained Charles
Dickens and his wife and other well-known people. Dickens would later
publish Lever's novel 'A Day's Ride' in serial in his weekly journal
'All the Year Round', running parallel to 'Great Expectations' for
part of its run from 1860 to 1861. Like his own 'Daltons' or 'Dodd
Family Abroad' he travelled continentally, from Karlsruhe to Como,
from Como to Florence, from Florence to the Baths of Lucca and so on,
and his letters home are the litany of the literary remittance-man,
his ambition now limited to driving a pair of novels abreast without a
diminution of his standard price for serial work ("twenty pounds a
sheet"). In the 'Knight of Gwynne, a story of the Union' (1847), 'The
Confessions of Con Cregan' (1849), 'Roland Cashel' (1850) and 'Maurice
Tiernay' (1852) we still have traces of his old manner; but he was
beginning to lose his original joy in composition. His innate sadness
began to cloud the animal joyousness of his temperament. Formerly he
had written for the happy world which is young and curly and merry;
now he grew fat and bald and grave. "After 38 or so what has life to
offer but one universal declension. Let the crew pump as hard as they
like, the leak gains every hour." His son, Charles Sidney Lever, died
in 1863 and is buried in Florence's English Cemetery.
Later life
============
Depressed in spirit as Lever was, his wit was unextinguished; he was
still the delight of the salons with his stories, and in 1867, after a
few years' experience of a similar kind at Spezia, he was cheered by a
letter from Lord Derby offering him the more lucrative consulship of
Trieste. "Here is six hundred a year for doing nothing, and you are
just the man to do it." The six hundred could not atone to Lever for
the lassitude of prolonged exile. Trieste, at first "all that I could
desire", became with characteristic abruptness "detestable and
damnable". "Nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no one to speak to." "Of
all the dreary places it has been my lot to sojourn in this is the
worst" (some references to Trieste will be found in 'That Boy of
Norcott's', 1869). He could never be alone and was almost morbidly
dependent upon literary encouragement. Fortunately, like Scott, he had
unscrupulous friends who assured him that his last efforts were his
best. They include 'The Fortunes of Glencore' (1857), 'Tony Butler'
(1865), 'Luttrell of Arran' (1865), 'Sir Brooke Fosbrooke' (1866),
'Lord Kilgobbin' (1872) and the table-talk of 'Cornelius O'Dowd',
originally contributed to 'Blackwood's'.
His depression, partly due to incipient heart disease, partly to the
growing conviction that he was the victim of literary and critical
conspiracy, was confirmed by the death of his wife (23 April 1870), to
whom he was tenderly attached. He visited Ireland in the following
year and seemed alternately in high and low spirits. Death had already
given him one or two runaway knocks, and, after his return to Trieste,
he failed gradually, dying suddenly, however, and almost painlessly,
from heart failure on 1 June 1872 at his home, Villa Gasteiger. His
daughters, one of whom, Sydney, is believed to have been the real
author of 'A Rent in a Cloud' (1869), were well provided for.
Assessments
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Trollope praised Lever's novels highly when he said that they were
just like his conversation. He was a born raconteur, and had in
perfection that easy flow of light description which without tedium or
hurry leads up to the point of the good stories of which in earlier
days his supply seemed inexhaustible. With little respect for unity of
action or conventional novel structure, his brightest books, such as
'Lorrequer', 'O'Malley' and 'Tom Burke', are in fact little more than
recitals of scenes in the life of a particular "hero", unconnected by
any continuous intrigue. The type of character he depicted is for the
most part elementary. His women are mostly roués, romps or Xanthippes;
his heroes have too much of the Pickle temper about them and fall an
easy prey to the serious attacks of Poe or to the more playful gibes
of Thackeray in 'Phil Fogarty' or Bret Harte in 'Terence Denville'.
This last is a perfect bit of burlesque. Terence exchanges nineteen
shots with the Hon. Captain Henry Somerset in the glen. "At each fire
I shot away a button from his uniform. As my last bullet shot off the
last button from his sleeve, I remarked quietly, 'You seem now, my
lord, to be almost as ragged as the gentry you sneered at,' and rode
haughtily away." And yet these careless sketches contain such haunting
creations as Frank Webber, Major Monsoon and Micky Free, "the Sam
Weller of Ireland".
According to the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' Eleventh Edition:
A library edition of the novels in 37 volumes appeared from 1897 to
1899 under the superintendence of Lever's daughter, Julie Kate
Neville. Henry Hawley Smart is said to have taken Lever's work as one
of his models when he set out on his career as a sporting novelist.
Eugene O'Neill lists Lever as one of the authors represented on the
family bookshelf in 'Long Day's Journey into Night', along with
Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Gibbon, 'et al'.
Select bibliography
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* 'The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer' Dublin, W. Curry, (1839)
* 'Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon' Dublin, William Curry, Jun.
and Co. (1841)
* 'Jack Hinton, the Guardsman' (1843)
* 'Tom Burke of "Ours"' Dublin, William Curry, Jun. and Co. (1844)
* 'The O'Donoghue: a tale of Ireland fifty years ago' Dublin, W.
Curry, (1845)
* [
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008967427 ' Nuts and
Nutcrackers. '] London, W. S. Orr, (1845)
* 'Arthur O'Leary: His wanderings and ponderings in many lands'
London, H. Colburn, (1845)
* 'The Knight of Gwynne; a tale of the time of the union' London,
Chapman and Hall, (1847)
* 'Confessions of Con Cregan: the Irish Gil Blas' London, W. S. Orr,
(1849)
* 'Roland Cashel' London, Chapman and Hall, (1850)
* ' The Daltons, or, Three roads in life' London, Chapman and Hall,
(1852)
* [
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006678383 'The Dodd Family
Abroad'] London, Chapman and Hall, (1854)
* 'The Martins of Cro'Martin' London, Chapman and Hall, (1856)
* 'The Fortunes of Glencore' London, Chapman and Hall, (1857)
* 'Davenport Dunn : a man of our day' London, Chapman and Hall, (1859)
* 'One of Them' London, Chapman and Hall, (1861)
* 'Barrington' London, Chapman and Hall, (1863)
* 'Luttrell of Arran' London, Chapman and Hall, (1865)
* 'Sir Brook Fossbrooke' Edinburgh, W. Blackwood, (1866)
* 'The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly' Vol. 1, London Smith, Elder and
Co. (1868)
* 'A Rent in a Cloud' London, Chapman & Hall, (1869)
* 'That Boy of Norcott's' London, Smith, Elder, (1869)
* 'Lord Kilgobbin' New York, Harper & Bros., (1872)
* 'The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly' London, Chapman and Hall, (1872)
See also
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*Stage Irish
Further reading
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* 'Dr Quicksilver, The Life of Charles Lever', Lionel Stevenson,
London 1939.
* 'Charles Lever: New Evaluations', Edited Tony Bareham, Ulster
Editions and Monographs 3. 1991.
* 'Charles Lever, The Lost Victorian', S.P Haddelsey, Ulster Editions
and Monographs 8. 2000.
* [
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000536328 'Life'], by WJ
Fitzpatrick (1879).
* [
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000538844 Letters], ed. in 2
vols. by Edmund Downey (1906).
*
* 'Dublin Univ. Mag.' (1880), 465 and 570.
* Anthony Trollope's
[
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000027057742;view=1up;seq=238
Autobiography, p. 218]
*
*
*
*
* Julian Moynahan, "Charles Lever" chapter in 'Anglo-Irish: The
Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture', Princeton University
Press, 1995,
* Hugh Walker's
[
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t2m622q3f;view=1up;seq=676
'Literature of the Victorian Era' (1910), pp. 636-639]
* 'The Bookman History of English Literature' (1906) p. 467.
* 'Bookman' (June 1906; portraits).
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