PART II

In September, 1836, the Howitts took possession of their Surrey home, West End Cottage, an old-fashioned dwelling, with a large garden, an orchard, a meadow by the river Mole, and the right of boating and fishing to the extent of seven miles. The new life opened with good prospects of literary and journalistic employment, William Howitt's political writings having already attracted attention from several persons of power and influence in the newspaper world. On December 3 of this year, Mary wrote to inform her sister that, 'In consequence of an article that William wrote on Dymond's _Christian Morality_, Joseph Hume, the member for Middlesex, wrote to him, and has opened a most promising connection for him with a new Radical newspaper, _The Constitutional_. O'Connell seems determined to make him the editor of the _Dublin Review_, and wrote him a most kind letter, which has naturally promoted his interest with the party. I cannot but see the hand of Providence in our leaving Nottingham. All has turned out admirably.'

Unfortunately for these sanguine anticipations, the newspaper connections on which the Howitts depended for a livelihood, now that the despised chemist's business had been given up, proved but hollow supports. O'Connell had overlooked the trifling fact that a Quaker editor was hardly fitted to conduct a journal that was emphatically and polemically Catholic; and though he considered that William Howitt was admirably adapted to deal with literary and political topics, he was obliged to withdraw his offer of the editorship. A more crushing disappointment arose out of the engagement on _The Constitutional_. Mr. Howitt, according to his wife, did more for the paper than any other member of the staff. 'He worked and wrote like any slave,' she tells her sister. 'In the end, after a series of the most harassing and vexatious conduct on the part of the newspaper company, he was swindled out of every farthing. Oh, it was a most mortifying and humiliating thing to see men professing liberal and honest principles act so badly. A month ago, when in the very depths of discouragement and low spirits, I set about a little volume for Darton, to be called _Birds and Flowers_, and have pretty nearly finished it. William, in the mean time, has finished his _Rural Life_, and sold the first edition to Longman's.'

The manager of the unlucky paper was Major Carmichael Smith, who, when matters grew desperate, sent for his step-son, Thackeray, then acting as Paris correspondent for a London daily. 'Just as I was going out of the office one day,' writes William, 'I met on the stairs a tall, thin young man, in a dark blue coat, and with a nose that seemed to have had a blow that had flattened the bridge. I turned back, and had some conversation with him, being anxious to know how he proposed to carry on a paper which was without any funds, and already deeply in debt. He did not seem to know any more than I did. I thought to myself that his step-father had not done him much service in taking him from a profitable post for the vain business of endeavouring to buoy up a desperate speculation. How much longer _The Constitutional_ struggled on, I know not. That was the first time I ever saw or heard of William Makepeace Thackeray.'

The Howitts were somewhat consoled for their journalistic losses by the triumphant success of _Rural Life in England_. The reading public which, during the previous century, had swallowed mock pastorals, made in Fleet Street, with perfect serenity, was now, thanks to the slowly-working influence of Wordsworth and the other Lake poets, prepared for a renaissance of nature and simplicity in prose. Miss Mitford's exquisite work had given them a distaste for the 'jewelled turf,' the 'silver streams,' and 'smiling valleys' which constituted the rustic stock-in-trade of the average novelist; and they eagerly welcomed a book that treated with accuracy and observation of the real country. William Howitt's straightforward, undistinguished style was acceptable enough in an age when even men of genius seem to have written fine prose without knowing it, and tripped up not infrequently over the subtleties of English grammar. His lack of imagination and humour was more than atoned for, in the uncritical eyes of the 'thirties,' by the easy loquacity of his rural gossip, and the varied information with which he crammed his pages. The Nature of those days was a simple, transparent creature, with but small resemblance to the lady of moods, mystery, and passion who is so overworked in our modern literature. No one dreamt of going into hysterics over the veining of a leaf, or penning a rhapsody on the outline of a rain-cloud; nor could it yet be said that, 'if everybody must needs blab of the favours that have been done him by roadside, and river-brink, and woodland walk, as if to kiss and tell were no longer treachery, it will soon be a positive refreshment to meet a man who is as superbly indifferent to Nature as she is to him.' [Footnote: Lowell]

The Howitts took great delight in the pleasant Surrey country, so different from the dreary scenery around Nottingham, and Mary's letters contain many descriptions of the woods and commons and shady lanes through which the family made long expeditions in a little carriage drawn by Peg, their venerable pony. Driving one day to Hook, they met Charles Dickens, then best known as 'Boz,' in one of his long tramps, with Harrison Ainsworth as his companion. When Dickens's next work, _Master Humphrey's Clock_, appeared, the Howitts were amused to see that their stout and wilful Peg had not escaped the novelist's keen eye, but had been pressed into service for Mr. Garland's chaise.

On another occasion, in July 1841, William, while driving with a friend, was attacked by two handsome, dark-eyed girls, dressed in gipsy costume, who ran one on each side of the carriage, begging that the kind gentleman would give them sixpence, as they were poor strangers who had taken nothing all day. Mr. Howitt, who had made a special study of the gipsy tribe, perceived in an instant that these were only sham Romanys. He paid no attention to their pleading, but observed that he hoped they would enjoy their frolic, and only wished that he were as rich as they. Subsequently, he discovered that the mock-gipsies, who had been unable to coax a sixpence out of him, were none other than the beautiful Sheridan sisters, the Duchess of Somerset, and Mrs. Blackwood (afterwards Lady Dufferin), whose husband had lately taken Bookham Lodge.

During the four years spent at Esher, Mary seems to have been too much occupied with the cares of a young family to use her pen to much purpose. She produced little, except a volume of _Hymns and Fireside Verses_, but she frequently assisted her husband in his work. William, industrious as ever, published, besides a large number of newspaper articles, his _Boys' Country Book_, the best work of the kind ever written, according to the _Quarterly Review_; and his _History of Colonisation and Christianity_, in which he took a rapid survey of the behaviour of the Christian nations of Europe to the inhabitants of the countries they conquered in all parts of the world. It was the reading of this book that led Mr. Joseph Pease to establish the British India Society, which issued, in a separate form, the portion of the work that related to India. Mr. Howitt next set to work upon another topographical volume, his _Visits to Remarkable Places_, in which he turned to good account the materials collected in his pedestrian rambles about the country.

In 1840 the question of education for the elder children became urgent, and the Howitts, who had heard much of the advantages of a residence in Germany from their friends, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Jameson, and Henry Chorley, decided to give up their cottage at Esher, and spend two or three years at Heidelberg. Letters of introduction from Mrs. Jameson gave them the _entrée_ into German society, which they found more to their taste than that of their native land. 'For the sake of our children,' writes Mary, 'we sought German acquaintances, we read German, we followed German customs. The life seemed to me easier, the customs simpler and less expensive than in England. There was not the same feverish thirst after wealth as with us; there was more calm appreciation of nature, of music, of social enjoyment.' In their home on the Neckar, the Howitts, most adaptable of couples, found new pleasures and new amusements with each season of the year. In the spring and summer they explored the surrounding country, wandered through the deep valleys and woods, where the grass was purple with bilberries, visited quaint, half-timbered homesteads, standing in the midst of ancient orchards, or followed the swift-flowing streams, on whose banks the peasant girls in their picturesque costumes were washing and drying linen. In the autumn the whole family turned out on the first day of the vintage, and worked like their neighbours. 'It was like something Arcadian,' wrote Mary when recalling the scene. 'The tubs and baskets piled up with enormous clusters, the men and women carrying them away on their heads to the place where they were being crushed; the laughter, the merriment, the feasting, the firing--for they make as much noise as they can--all was delightful, to say nothing of the masquerading and dancing in the evening, which we saw, though we did not take part in it.' In the winter the strangers were introduced to the Christmas Tree, which had not yet become a British institution: while with the first snow came the joys of sleighing, when wheel-barrows, tubs, baskets, everything that could be put on runners, were turned into sledges, and the boys were in their glory.

During the three years that were spent at Heidelberg, William Howitt wrote his _Student Life in Germany_, _German Experiences_, and _Rural and Domestic Life in Germany_, works which contain a great deal of more or less valuable information about the country and the people, presented in a homely, unpretentious style. Mary was no less industrious, having struck a new literary vein, the success of which was far to surpass her modest anticipations. 'I have been very busy,' she writes in 1842, 'translating the first volume of a charming work by Frederica Bremer, a Swedish writer; and if any publisher will give me encouragement to go on with it, I will soon complete the work. It is one of a series of stories of everyday life in Sweden--a beautiful book, full of the noblest moral lessons for every man and woman.' In the summer of 1841 the Howitts, accompanied by their elder daughter, Anna, made a long tour through Germany and Austria, in the course of which they collected materials for fresh works, and visited the celebrities, literary and artistic, of the various cities that lay in their route. At Stuttgart they called on Gustav Schwab, the poet, and visited Dannecker's studio; at Tübingen they made the acquaintance of Uhland, and at Munich that of Kaulbach, then at the height of his fame. By way of Vienna and Prague they travelled to Dresden, where, through the good offices of Mrs. Jameson, they were received by Moritz Retzsch, whose _Outlines_ they had long admired. At Berlin they made friends with Tieck, on whom the king had bestowed a pension and a house at Potsdam; while at Weimar they were entertained by Frau von Goethe, whose son, Wolfgang, had been one of their earliest acquaintances at Heidelberg. This interesting tour is described at length in the _Rural and Domestic Life of Germany_.

Another year was spent at Heidelberg, but the difficulties of arranging the business details of their work at such a distance from publishers and editors, brought the industrious couple back to London in the spring of 1843. 'On our return to England,' writes Mary, 'I was full of energy and hope. Glowing with aspiration, and in enjoyment of great domestic happiness, I was anticipating a busy, perhaps overburdened, but, nevertheless, congenial life. It was to be one of darkness, perplexity, discouragement.' The Howitts had scarcely entered into possession of a new house that they had taken at Clapton, when news came from Heidelberg, where the elder children had been left at school, that their second son, Claude, had developed alarming symptoms of disease in the knee-joint. It was known that he had been slightly injured in play a few weeks before, but no danger had been anticipated. Mr. Howitt at once set out for Heidelberg, and returned with the invalid, on whose case Liston was consulted. The great surgeon counselled amputation, but to this the parents refused their consent, except as a last resource. Various less heroic modes of treatment were tried, but poor Claude faded away, and died in March, 1844, aged only ten years and a half. This was the heaviest trial that the husband and wife had yet experienced, for Claude had been a boy of brilliant promise, whom they regarded as the flower of their flock. Only a few months before his accident his mother had written in the pride of her heart: 'Claude is the naughtiest of all the children, and yet the most gifted. He learns anything at a glance. Claude is born to be fortunate; he is one that will make the family distinguished in the next generation. He has an extraordinary faculty for telling stories, either of his own invention or of what he reads.'

A lesser cause of trouble and anxiety arose out of the translation of Miss Bremer's novels. 'When we first translated _The Neighbours_,' writes Mary, 'there was not a house in London that would undertake its publication. We published it and the other Bremer novels at our own risk, but such became the rage for them that our translations were seized by a publisher, altered, and reissued as new ones.' The success of these books was said to be greater than that of any series since the first appearance of the Waverley novels. Cheap editions were multiplied in the United States, and even the boys who hawked the books about the streets were to be seen deep in _The Home_ or _The H. Family_. In a letter to her sister written about this time, Mary expatiates on the annoyance and loss caused by these piracies. 'It is very mortifying,' she observes, 'because no one knew of these Swedish novels till we introduced them. It obliges us to hurry in all we do, and we must work almost day and night to get ours out in order that we may have some little chance.... We have embarked a great deal of money in the publication, and the interference of the upstart London publisher is most annoying. Mlle. Bremer, however, has written a new novel, and sends it to us before publication. We began its translation this week, and hope to be able to publish it about the time it will appear in Sweden and Germany.'

In addition to her translating work, Mrs. Howitt was engaged at this time upon a series of little books, called _Tales for the People and their Children_, which had been commissioned by a cheap publisher. These stories, each of which illustrated a domestic virtue, were punctually paid for: and though they were never advertised, they passed swiftly through innumerable editions, and have been popular with a certain public down to quite recent times. Perhaps the most attractive is the _Autobiography of a Child_, in which Mary told the story of her own early days in her pretty, simple style, with the many little quaint touches that gave all her juvenile stories an atmosphere of truth and reality. Her quick sympathy with young people, and her knowledge of what most appealed to the childish mind, was probably due to her vivid remembrance of her own youthful days, and to her affectionate study of the 'little ways' of her own children. Many are the original traits and sayings that she reports to her sister, more especially those of her youngest boy, Charlton, who had inherited his parents' naturalistic tastes in a pronounced form, and preferred the Quakers' meeting-house to any other church or chapel, because there was a dog-kennel on the premises!

About a year after her return to England, Mrs. Howitt turned her attention to Danish literature, finding that, with her knowledge of Swedish and German, the language presented few difficulties. In 1845 she translated Hans Andersen's _Impromsatore_, greatly to the satisfaction of the author, who begged that she would continue to translate his works, till he was as well known and loved in England as he was on the Continent. Appreciation, fame, and joy, declared the complacent poet, followed his footsteps wherever he went, and his whole life was full of sunshine, like a beautiful fairy-tale. Mary translated his _Only a Fiddler_; _O. T., or Life in Denmark_; _The True Story of My Life_; and several of the _Wonderful Stories for Children_. The _Improvisatore_ was the only one that went into a second edition, the other works scarcely paying the cost of publication. Hans Andersen, however, being assured that Mrs. Howitt was making a fortune of the translations, came to England in 1847 to arrange for a share of the profits. Though disappointed in his hope of gain, he begged Mrs. Howitt to translate the whole of his fairy-tales, which had just been brought out in a beautifully-illustrated German edition. Much to her after regret, she was then too much engrossed by other work to be able to accede to his proposal. The relations between Hans Andersen and his translator were marred, we are told, by the extreme sensitiveness and egoism of the Dane. Mrs. Howitt narrates, as an example of his childish vanity, the following little incident which occurred during his visit to England in the summer of 1847:--

'We had taken him, as a pleasant rural experience, to the annual hay-making at Hillside, Highgate, thus introducing him to an English home, full of poetry and art, sincerity, and affection. The ladies of Hillside--Miss Mary and Margaret Gillies, the one an embodiment of peace and an admirable writer, whose talent, like the violet, kept in the shade; the other, the warm-hearted painter--made him welcome.... Immediately after our arrival, the assembled children, loving his delightful fairy-tales, clustered round him in the hay-field, and watched him make them a pretty device of flowers; then, feeling somehow that the stiff, silent foreigner was not kindred to themselves, stole off to an American, Henry Clarke Wright, whose admirable little book, _A Kiss for a Blow_, some of them knew. He, without any suggestion of condescension or difference of age, entered heart and soul into their glee, laughed, shouted, and played with them, thus unconsciously evincing the gift which had made him earlier the exclusive pastor of six hundred children in Boston. Soon poor Andersen, perceiving himself neglected, complained of headache, and insisted on going indoors, whither Mary Gillies and I, both anxious to efface any disagreeable impression, accompanied him; but he remained irritable and out of sorts.'

It was in 1845 or 1846 that the Howitts made the acquaintance of Tennyson, whose poetry they had long admired. 'The retiring and meditative young poet, Alfred Tennyson, visited us,' relates Mary, 'and cheered our seclusion by the recitation of his exquisite poetry. He spent a Sunday night at our house, when we sat talking together till three in the morning. All the next day he remained with us in constant converse. We seemed to have known him for years. So in fact we had, for his poetry was himself. He hailed all attempts at heralding a grander, more liberal state of public opinion, and consequently sweeter, nobler modes of living. He wished that we Englanders could dress up our affections in more poetical costume; real warmth of heart would gain rather than lose by it. As it was, our manners were as cold as the walls of our churches.' Another new friend was gained through William Howitt's book, _Visits to Remarkable Places_. When the work was announced as 'in preparation,' the author received a letter, signed E. C. Gaskell, drawing his attention to a beautiful old house, Clopton Hall, near Stratford-on-Avon. The letter described in such admirable style the writer's visit to the house as a schoolgirl, that William wrote to suggest that she ought to use her pen for the public benefit. This timely encouragement led to the production of _Mary Barton_, the first volume of which was sent in manuscript for Mr. Howitt's verdict. A few months later Mrs. Gaskell came as a guest to the little house at Clopton, bringing with her the completed work.

In 1846 William Howitt took part in a new journalistic venture, his wife, as usual, sharing his labours and anxieties. He became first contributor, and afterwards editor and part-proprietor of the _People's Journal_, a cheap weekly, through the medium of which he hoped to improve the moral and intellectual condition of the working classes. 'The bearing of its contents,' wrote Mary, in answer to some adverse criticism of the new paper, 'is love to God and man. There is no attempt to set the poor against the rich, but, on the contrary, to induce them to be careful, prudent, sober and independent; above all, to be satisfied to be workers, and to regard labour as a privilege rather than as a penalty, which is quite our view of the matter.' The combination of business and philanthropy seldom answers, and the Howitts, despite the excellence of their intentions, were unlucky in their newspaper speculations. At the end of a few months it was discovered that the manager of the _People's Journal_ kept no books, and that the affairs of the paper were in hopeless confusion. William Howitt, finding himself responsible for the losses on the venture, tried to cure the evil by a hair of the dog that had bitten him. He withdrew from the _People's Journal_, and, with Samuel Smiles as his assistant, started a rival paper on the same lines, called _Howitts Journal_. But, as Ebenezer Elliott, the shrewd old Quaker, remarked, apropos of the apathy of the working-class public: 'Men engaged in a death struggle for bread will pay for amusement when they will not for instruction. They woo laughter to unscare them, that they may forget their perils, their wrongs, and their oppressors. If you were able and willing to fill the journal with fun, it would pay.' The failure of his paper spelt ruin to its promoter; his copyrights, as well as those of his wife, were sacrificed, and he was obliged to begin the world anew.

The Howitts seem to have kept up their spirits bravely under this reverse, and never for a moment relaxed in their untiring industry. They moved into a small house in Avenue Road, St. John's Wood, and looked around them for new subjects upon which to exercise their well-worn pens. Mary hoped to get employment from the Religious Tract Society, which had invited her to send in a specimen story, but she feared that her work would hardly be considered sufficiently orthodox, though she had introduced one of the 'death-bed scenes,' which were then in so much request. As she anticipated, the story was returned as quite unsuitable, and thereupon she writes to her sister in some depression: 'Times are so bad that publishers will not speculate in books; and when I have finished the work I am now engaged on, I have nothing else certain to go on with.' However, writers so popular with the public as the Howitts were not likely to be left long without employment. Mary seems to have been the greater favourite of the two, and the vogue of her volume of collected _Poems and Ballads_, which appeared in 1847, strikes the modern reader with amazement. Some idea of the estimation in which she was then held is proved by Allan Cunningham's dictum that 'Mary Howitt has shown herself mistress of every string of the minstrel's lyre, save that which sounds of broil and bloodshed. There is more of the old ballad simplicity in her composition than can be found in the strains of any living poet besides.' Another critic compared Mrs. Hewitt's ballads to those of Lord Macaulay, while Mrs. Alaric Watts, in her capacity of Annual editor, wrote to assure her old friend and contributor that, 'In thy simplest poetry there are sometimes turns so exquisite as to bring the tears to my eyes. Thou hast as much poetry in thee as would set up half-a-dozen writers.' The one dissentient voice among admiring contemporaries is that of Miss Mitford, who writes in 1852: 'I am for my sins so fidgety respecting style that I have the bad habit of expecting a book that pretends to be written in our language to be English; therefore I cannot read Miss Strickland, or the Howitts, or Carlyle, or Emerson, or the serious parts of Dickens.' It must be owned that the Howitts are condemned in fairly good company.

The work of both husband and wife suffered from the inevitable defects of self-education, and also from the narrowness and seclusion of their early lives. Mary possessed more imagination and a lighter touch than her husband, but her attempts at adult fiction were hampered by her ignorance of the world, while her technique, both in prose and verse, left something to be desired. It is evident that the publishers and editors of the period were less critical than Miss Mitford, for, in 1848, we find that Mrs. Howitt was invited to write the opening volume of Bradshaw's series of Railway novels, while in February 1850, came a request from Charles Dickens for contributions to _Household Words_. 'You may have seen,' he writes, 'the first dim announcements of the new, cheap literary journal I am about to start. Frankly, I want to say to you that if you would write for it, you would delight me, and I should consider myself very fortunate indeed in enlisting your services.... I hope any connection with the enterprise would be satisfactory and agreeable to you in all respects, as I should most earnestly endeavour to make it. If I wrote a