Word Portraits of Famous Writers. Various
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JOHN WILSON 1785-1854
ELLEN WOOD (Mrs. Henry Wood) 1814-1887
INTRODUCTION
“The world has always been fond of personal details respecting men who have been celebrated.” These were the words of Lord Beaconsfield, and with them he prefixed his description of the personal appearance of Isaac D’Israeli; but we hardly need the dictum of our greatest statesman to convince ourselves that at all events every honest literature-lover takes a very real interest in the individuality of those men whose names are perpetually on his lips. It is not enough for such a one merely to make himself familiar with their writings. It does not suffice for him that the Essays of Elia, for instance, can be got by heart, but he feels that he must also be able to linger in the playground at Christ’s with the “lame-footed boy,” and in after years pace the Temple gardens with the gentle-faced scholar, before he can properly be said to have made Lamb’s thoughts his own. At the best it is but a very incomplete notion that most of us possess as to the actual personality of even the most prominent of our British writers. The almost womanly beauty of Sidney, and the keen eyes and razor face of Pope, would, perhaps, be recognised as easily as the well-known form of Dr. Johnson; but taking them en masse even a widely-read man might be forgiven if, from amongst the scraps of hearsay and curtly-recorded impressions on which at rare intervals he may alight, he cannot very readily conjure up the ghosts of the very men whose books he has studied, and to whose haunts he has been an eager pilgrim.
Such a power the following pages have attempted to supply. They contain an account of the face, figure, dress, voice, and manner of our best-known writers ranging from Geoffrey Chaucer to Mrs. Henry Wood—drawn in all cases when it is possible by their contemporaries, and when through lack of material this endeavour has failed, the task of portrait-painting has devolved either on other writers who owed their inspiration to the offices of a mutual friend, or on those whose literary ability and untiring research have qualified them for the task. Infinite toil has not always been rewarded, and it would be easy to supply at least half a dozen names whose absence is to be regretted. Beaumont and Fletcher are as much read as Thomas Otway, and William Wotton has perhaps as much right of entrance as his famous opponent Richard Bentley, but as a small child pointed out when the book was first proposed: “You can’t find what isn’t there.” And the worth of the book naturally consists in keeping to the lines already indicated.
An asterisk placed under the given reference means that the writer of that particular portrait (who is not necessarily the writer of that particular book) did not actually see his subject, but that he is describing a picture, or else that he is building up one from substantiated evidence. Sometimes, as in the case of Suckling, this distinction leads to the same book supplying two portraits, only one of which is at first hand.
When a date is placed at the foot of a description, it refers to the appearance presented at that time, and not to the period when the words were penned.
British writers only are named, and amongst them there is of course no living author.
Chaucer’s birth-date has been given as About 1340, for the traditional year of 1328 is based on little more than the inscription on his tomb, which was not placed there until the middle of the sixteenth century, while according to his own deposition as witness, his birth could not have taken place until about twelve years later.
In only one other instance has there been a departure from recognised precedent, and that is in the case of Thomas de Quincey. In defiance of almost every compiler and present-day writer, I have entered the name in the Q’s and spelt it as here written. The reason for this is threefold: First, he himself invariably spelt his name with a small d. Second, Hood, Wordsworth, and Lamb, and, I believe, all his other contemporaries did the same. Third, de Quincey himself was so determined about the matter that he actually dropped the prefix altogether for some little time, and was known as Mr. Quincey. “His name I write with a small d in the de, as he wrote it himself. He would not have wished it indexed among the D’s, but the Q’s,” wrote the Rev. Francis Jacox, who was one of his Lasswade friends, and in spite of his recent and skilful biographers, it must be conceded that after all the little man had the greatest right to his own name.
I am glad to take this opportunity of thanking those who have helped me, and who will not let me speak my thanks direct. It is a pleasant thought that while working amongst the literary men of the past, I have received nothing but kindness from those of to-day. First and foremost to Mr. George Augustus Sala, to whom I am infinitely indebted; also to Mrs. Huntingford, Mrs. and Mr. Frederick Chapman, Mr. Henry M. Trollope, Dr. W. F. Fitz-Patrick, and Mr. S. C. Hall: to all these, as well as to my own personal friends, I offer my hearty and sincere thanks.
M. E. W.
JOSEPH ADDISON
1672–1719
Temple Bar, 1874. *
“Of his personal appearance we have at least two portraits by good hands. Before us are three carefully-engraved portraits of him, but there is a great dissimilarity between the three except in the wig. Sir Godfrey Kneller painted one of these portraits, which is entirely unlike the two others; let us, however, give Sir Godfrey the credit of the best picture, and judge Addison’s appearance from that. The wig almost prevents our judging the shape of the head, yet it seems very high behind. The forehead is very lofty, the sort of forehead which is called ‘commanding’ by those people who do not know that some of the least decided men in the world have had high foreheads. The eyebrows are delicately ‘pencilled,’ yet show a vast deal of vigour and expression; they are what his old Latin friends, who knew so well the power of expression in the eyebrow, would have called ‘supercilious,’ and yet the nasal end of the supercilium is only slightly raised, and it droops pleasantly at the temporal end, so that there is nothing Satanic or ill-natured about it. The eyebrow of Addison, according to Kneller, seems to say, ‘You are a greater fool than you think yourself to be, but I would die sooner than tell you so.’ The eye, which is generally supposed to convey so much expression, but which very often does not, is very much like the eyes of other amiable and talented people. The nose is long, as becomes an orthodox Whig; quite as long, we should say, as the nose of any member of Peel’s famous long-nosed ministry, and quite as delicately chiselled. The mouth is very tender and beautiful, firm, yet with a delicate curve upwards at each end of the upper lip, suggestive of a good joke, and of a calm waiting to hear if any man is going to beat it. Below the mouth there follows of course the nearly inevitable double chin of the eighteenth century, with a deep incision in the centre of the jaw-bone, which shows through the flesh like a dimple. On the whole a singularly handsome and pleasant face, wanting the wonderful form which one sees in the faces of Shakespeare, Prior, Congreve, Castlereagh, Byron, or Napoleon, but still extremely fine of its own.”
Johnson’s
Lives of the Poets.
“Of his habits, or external manners, nothing is so often mentioned as that timorous or sullen taciturnity, which his friends called modesty by too mild a name. Steele mentions, with great tenderness, ‘that remarkable bashfulness, which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit;’ and tells us ‘that his abilities were covered only by modesty, which doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem