My Life as an Author | Page 2

Middleton--Parting Stanzas--Ruined Mansion--Valete
271-280
CHAPTER XXXIV.
English and Scotch Readings, very rapid, from Isle of Wight to
Peterhead--My Entrepreneur D.: his Experiences: I Failed with Him,
but Succeeded Alone--Specimen of Readings--Local Critiques--Many
Friends Unrecorded--Miscellaneous Poems--Mr. Gall's Primeval
Man--Arbroath--Mill the Atheist--Mr. Boyd's Piety--Hamilton
Mausoleum--Wild Cattle--Burns's Country--James Baird the
Millionaire and the Hodman 281-288
CHAPTER XXXV.
Electrics--Sir Culling Eardley at Erith--Atlantic Telegraph--The First
Message--Meddlesome Revisers--Antique Telegraphy--Addison and
Strada--Professor Morse--A Telegram-Sonnet 289-295
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Rifle, a Patriotic Prophecy in 1845--Early Pamphlet--Defence not
Defiance--Albury Club--Blackheath Review--Lord
Lovelace--Alarums--Drummond's Scare--A Lucky Shot 296-303
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Autographs and Advertisements--Worth Eighteenpence each--A

Hundred at Once--Photographs--Oil Paintings--Locks of
Hair--Interviewers--Puffs and Anti-puffs 304-311
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Kindness to Animals--Louis Napoleon and
Alfort--Vivisection--Pontrilas Court--The Omnibus Hack--Divers
Ballads 312-315
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Orkney and Shetland--Our Voyage--Wick Herring Fair--Balfour at
Shapinshay--Kirkwall--Aytoun--Gulf Stream--Snuff-Boxes and
Corals--Fair Isle Hosiery--Stennis--Scalloway--Lerwick
Literature--Artificial Flora--Thurso Castle--Robert Dick--Cape
Wrath--Stornoway--Callanish--Pipers--The brooch of Lorne, &c.
316-321
CHAPTER XL.
Literary Friends--Mrs. Somerville, Miss Granville, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs.
Beecher Stowe, Ouida, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Carter Hall, Mrs. Grote,
Lady Wilde, Miss Mackay, Rogers, Carlyle, Haweis, Tennyson,
Browning, Mortimer Collins, Dickens and Son, Owen, Austen,
Pengelley, Bowerbank, S. Mackenzie, M. Arnold, S. Brooks, Albert
Smith, Mark Lemon, Tenniel, Cooper, P.B. Cole, E. Yates, Frank
Smedley, J.G. Wood, Cuthbert Collingwood, Mr. and Mrs. Zerffi,
Birch, Miss Hooper, Miss Barlee, G. MacDonald, Ronald Gower, Fred.
Burnaby, Charles Marvin--A Diner-Out--A Mormon
Guest--Apostles--Frank's Ranche--Twelve Anecdotes--Thackeray and
Leech, Longfellow, C. Kingsley, Ainsworth, Lord Elgin 322-350
CHAPTER XLI.
Some Older Friendships--Nightingale, and Farley Heath--Walter
Hawkins--His Tomb--Anchor--Anagrams--Christmas Largesse--Sham
Antiques--Joseph Durham--Alice's Statue--"Sir Joe" and the

Noviomagians--Prince Albert at St. Peter's Port--Baroness
Barnekow--Swedish Proverbial--King Oscar's Poems--Geo.
Metivier--French Proverbial--John Sullivan--Canon Jenkins--Barnes,
De Chatelain, De Pontigny--Correspondents, &c. 351-362
CHAPTER XLII.
Political--A Dark Horse--No Party-Man--Gladstone--Ambidextrous
Stanzas--Liberal and Tory--The One-Vote System--Fancy
Franchises--The Voter's Motto--Fair Trade v. Free Trade--Radically
Conservative--Strikes, &c. 363-372
CHAPTER XLIII.
A Cure for Ireland--Racial Difficulties--The Unsunned Corner--Æsop
Smith's Prescription--An Irish Balmoral in 1858--My Anti Celtic
Ballads--Adventures 373-379
CHAPTER XLIV.
Some Spiritist Experiences--Not a Spiritualist, but an Honest Recorder
of Facts--Alexis--Howell--Vernon's Mesmerised Child--Mrs. Cora
Tappan--Chauncey Townsend's
Book--Spirit-Drawings--Planchette--Showers of Flowers, and
Sugar-Plums, and Pearls--Mr. Home--Prayer before Séance--The Table
in the Air--Live Coals in My Hand--The Vitalised Accordion--The
Colonel's Ghost--Iamblicus--Query Electrical Influence--Our
Mysterious Key--Miss Hudson--Thought-Reading 380-399
CHAPTER XLV.
Fickle Fortune--Losses and Failures--Testimonial--"L'espoir est ma
force"--My Levée in 1851--The Missed Codicil--Life and Death
400-403
CHAPTER XLVI.

Henry De Beauvoir, killed in Africa--Archdeacon Kitton--Our Old
Chancery Suit: A Lost Fortune--Belgravian Five Fields, another Missed
Chance--Earl Grosvenor 404-407
CHAPTER XLVII.
Flying: my Lecture at the Royal Aquarium with Fred. Burnaby as
Chairman--Henry Middleton's Invention--De Lisle Hay's "Conquest of
the Air"--Ezekiel's Angels--Ovid, and Tennyson--Claude
Hamilton--Extracts 408-412
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Luther--The Peroration as to his Life and Exploits--Anniversary
Stanzas, in many Languages--Bullinger's Music--Wycliffe
Ballad--Wondrous Parallel 413-416
CHAPTER XLIX.
Final--Whatever is, is Right--Sick-bed Repentance--Intuitions--What
We Shall Be--Protest Against Atheism--The Infinities--A Childlike
Hymn--Eternal Hope--Mercy for Ever--The Assurance of Ovid
417-431

MY LIFE AS AN AUTHOR.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
I have often been asked to prepare an autobiography, but my objections
to the task have ever been many and various. To one urgent appeal I
sent this sonnet of refusal, which explains itself:--
"You bid me write the story of my life, And draw what secrets in my
memory dwell From the dried fountains of her failing well, With

commonplaces mixt of peace and strife, And such small facts, with
good or evil rife, As happen to us all: I have no tale Of thrilling force or
enterprise to tell,-- Nothing the blood to fire, the cheek to pale: My life
is in my books: the record there, A truthful photograph, is all I choose
To give the world of self; nor will excuse Mine own or others' failures:
glad to spare From blame of mine, or praise, both friends and foes,
Leaving unwritten what God only knows."
In fact I always rejected the proposal (warned by recent volumes of
pestilential reminiscences) and would none of it; not only from its
apparent vainglory as to the inevitable extenuation of one's own faults
and failures in life, and the equally certain amplification of
self-registered virtues and successes,--but even still more from the
mischief it might occasion from a petty record of commonplace
troubles and trials, due to the "changes and chances of this mortal life,"
to the casual mention or omission of friends or foes, to the influence of
circumstances and surroundings, and to other revelations--whether
pleasant or the reverse--of matters merely personal, and therefore more
of a private than a public character.
Indeed, so disquieted was I at the possible prospect of any one getting
hold of a mass of manuscript in old days diligently compiled by myself
from year to year in several small diaries, that I have long ago
ruthlessly made a holocaust of the heap of such written self-memories,
fearing their posthumous publication; and in this connection let me now
add my express protest against the printing hereafter of