CHARLES READE AND LAURA SEYMOUR
The instances of distinguished men, or of notable women, who have brokenthrough convention in order to find a fitting mate, are very numerous. Afew of these instances may, perhaps, represent what is usually calleda Platonic union. But the evidence is always doubtful. The world is notpossessed of abundant charity, nor does human experience lead one tobelieve that intimate relations between a man and a woman are compatiblewith Platonic friendship.
Perhaps no case is more puzzling than that which is found in thelife-history of Charles Reade and Laura Seymour.
Charles Reade belongs to that brilliant group of English writers andartists which included Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins, TomTaylor, George Eliot, Swinburne, Sir Walter Besant, Maclise, and GoldwinSmith. In my opinion, he ranks next to Dickens in originality and power.His books are little read to-day; yet he gave to the English stage thecomedy "Masks and Faces," which is now as much a classic as Goldsmith's"She Stoops to Conquer" or Sheridan's "School for Scandal." His power asa novelist was marvelous. Who can forget the madhouse episodes in HardCash, or the great trial scene in Griffith Gaunt, or that wonderfulpicture, in The Cloister and the Hearth, of Germany and Rome at the endof the Middle Ages? Here genius has touched the dead past and made itglow again with an intense reality.
He was the son of a country gentleman, the lord of a manor which hadbeen held by his family before the Wars of the Boses. His ancestors hadbeen noted for their services in warfare, in Parliament, and upon thebench. Reade, therefore, was in feeling very much of an aristocrat.Sometimes he pushed his ancestral pride to a whimsical excess, very muchas did his own creation, Squire Raby, in Put Yourself in His Place.
At the same time he might very well have been called a Tory democrat.His grandfather had married the daughter of a village blacksmith, andReade was quite as proud of this as he was of the fact that anotherancestor had been lord chief justice of England. From the sturdystrain which came to him from the blacksmith he, perhaps, derivedthat sledge-hammer power with which he wrote many of his most famouschapters, and which he used in newspaper controversies with hiscritics. From his legal ancestors there may have come to him the loveof litigation, which kept him often in hot water. From those who hadfigured in the life of royal courts, he inherited a romantic nature,a love of art, and a very delicate perception of the niceties ofcultivated usage. Such was Charles Reade--keen observer, scholar,Bohemian--a man who could be both rough and tender, and whose boisterousways never concealed his warm heart.
Reade's school-days were Spartan in their severity. A teacher withthe appropriate name of Slatter set him hard tasks and caned himunmercifully for every shortcoming. A weaker nature would have beencrushed. Reade's was toughened, and he learned to resist pain and toresent wrong, so that hatred of injustice has been called his dominatingtrait.
In preparing himself for college he was singularly fortunate in histutors. One of them was Samuel Wilberforce, afterward Bishop of Oxford,nicknamed, from his suavity of manner, "Soapy Sam"; and afterward, whenReade was studying law, his instructor was Samuel Warren, the authorof that once famous novel, Ten Thousand a Year, and the creator of"Tittlebat Titmouse."
For his college at Oxford, Reade selected one of the most beautifuland ancient--Magdalen--which he entered, securing what is known as ademyship. Reade won his demyship by an extraordinary accident. Always anoriginal youth, his reading was varied and valuable; but in his studieshe had never tried to be minutely accurate in small matters. At thattime every candidate was supposed to be able to repeat, by heart, the"Thirty-Nine Articles." Reade had no taste for memorizing; and out ofthe whole thirty-nine he had learned but three. His general examinationwas good, though not brilliant. When he came to be questioned orally,the examiner, by a chance that would not occur once in a million times,asked the candidate to repeat these very articles. Reade rattled themoff with the greatest glibness, and produced so favorable an impressionthat he was let go without any further questioning.
It must be added that his English essay was original, and this alsohelped him; but had it not been for the other great piece of luck hewould, in Oxford phrase, have been "completely gulfed." As it was,however, he was placed as highly as the young men who were afterwardknown as Cardinal Newman and Sir Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke).
At the age of twenty-one, Reade obtained a fellowship, which entitledhim to an income so long as he remained unmarried. It is necessary toconsider the significance of this when we look at his subsequent career.The fellowship at Magdalen was worth, at the outset, about twelvehundred dollars annually, and it gave him possession of a suite of roomsfree of any charge. He likewise secured a Vinerian fellowship in law, towhich was attached an income of four hundred dollars. As time wenton, the value of the first fellowship increased until it was worthtwenty-five hundred dollars. Therefore, as with many Oxford men ofhis time, Charles Reade, who had no other fortune, was placed in thisposition--if he refrained from marrying, he had a home and a moderateincome for life, without any duties whatsoever. If he married, he mustgive up his income and his comfortable apartments, and go out into theworld and struggle for existence.
There was the further temptation that the possession of his fellowshipdid not even necessitate his living at Oxford. He might spend his timein London, or even outside of England, knowing that his chambers atMagdalen were kept in order for him, as a resting-place to which hemight return whenever he chose.
Reade remained a while at Oxford, studying books and men--especially thelatter. He was a great favorite with the undergraduates, though less sowith the dons. He loved the boat-races on the river; he was a prodigiouscricket-player, and one of the best bowlers of his time. He utterlyrefused to put on any of the academic dignity which his associatesaffected. He wore loud clothes. His flaring scarfs were viewed as beingalmost scandalous, very much as Longfellow's parti-colored waistcoatswere regarded when he first came to Harvard as a professor.
Charles Reade pushed originality to eccentricity. He had a passion forviolins, and ran himself into debt because he bought so many and suchgood ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shockedthe punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to theaccompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing,indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that hewas a fellow of Magdalen and a D.C.L. of Oxford, he was always ready tocaper and to display the new steps.
In the course of time, he went up to London and at once plunged intothe seething tide of the metropolis. He made friends far and wide, andin every class and station--among authors and politicians, bishops andbargees, artists and musicians. Charles Reade learned much from all ofthem, and all of them were fond of him.
But it was the theater that interested him most. Nothing else seemed tohim quite so fine as to be a successful writer for the stage. He viewedthe drama with all the reverence of an ancient Greek. On his tombstonehe caused himself to be described as "Dramatist, novelist, journalist."
"Dramatist" he put first of all, even after long experience had shownhim that his greatest power lay in writing novels. But in this earlyperiod he still hoped for fame upon the stage.
It was not a fortunate moment for dramatic writers. Plays were boughtoutright by the managers, who were afraid to risk any considerable sum,and were very shy about risking anything at all. The system had not yetbeen established according to which an author receives a share of themoney taken at the box-office. Consequently, Reade had little or nofinancial success. He adapted several pieces from the French, for whichhe was paid a few bank-notes. "Masks and Faces" got a hearing, and drewlarge audiences, but Reade had sold it for a paltry sum; and he sharedthe honors of its authorship with Tom Taylor, who was then much betterknown.
Such was the situation. Reade was personally liked, but his plays werealmost all rejected. He lived somewhat extravagantly and ran into debt,though not very deeply. He had a play entitled "Christie Johnstone,"which he believed to be a great one, though no manag
er would ventureto produce it. Reade, brooding, grew thin and melancholy. Finally, hedecided that he would go to a leading actress at one of the principaltheaters and try to interest her in his rejected play. The actress hehad in mind was Laura Seymour, then appearing at the Haymarket under themanagement of Buckstone; and this visit proved to be the turning-pointin Reade's whole life.
Laura Seymour was the daughter of a surgeon at Bath--a man in largepractise and with a good income, every penny of which he spent. Hisfamily lived in lavish style; but one morning, after he had sat up allnight playing cards, his little daughter found him in the dining-room,stone dead. After his funeral it appeared that he had left no provisionfor his family. A friend of his--a Jewish gentleman of Portugueseextraction--showed much kindness to the children, settling their affairsand leaving them with some money in the bank; but, of course, somethingmust be done.
The two daughters removed to London, and at a very early age Laura hadmade for herself a place in the dramatic world, taking small parts atfirst, but rising so rapidly that in her fifteenth year she was castfor the part of Juliet. As an actress she led a life of strangevicissitudes. At one time she would be pinched by poverty, and atanother time she would be well supplied with money, which slippedthrough her fingers like water. She was a true Bohemian, ahappy-go-lucky type of the actors of her time.
From all accounts, she was never very beautiful; but she had an instinctfor strange, yet effective, costumes, which attracted much attention.She has been described as "a fluttering, buoyant, gorgeous littlebutterfly." Many were drawn to her. She was careless of what she did,and her name was not untouched with scandal. But she lived through itall, and emerged a clever, sympathetic woman of wide experience, both onthe stage and off it.
One of her admirers--an elderly gentleman named Seymour--came to her oneday when she was in much need of money, and told her that he had justdeposited a thousand pounds to her credit at the bank. Having saidthis, he left the room precipitately. It was the beginning of a sort ofcourtship; and after a while she married him. Her feeling toward him wasone of gratitude. There was no sentiment about it; but she made him agood wife, and gave no further cause for gossip.
Such was the woman whom Charles Reade now approached with the requestthat she would let him read to her a portion of his play. He had seenher act, and he honestly believed her to be a dramatic genius of thefirst order. Few others shared this belief; but she was generallythought of as a competent, though by no means brilliant, actress. Readeadmired her extremely, so that at the very thought of speaking with herhis emotions almost choked him.
In answer to a note, she sent word that he might call at her house. Hewas at this time (1849) in his thirty-eighth year. The lady was a littleolder, and had lost something of her youthful charm; yet, when Reade wasushered into her drawing-room, she seemed to him the most graceful andaccomplished woman whom he had ever met.
She took his measure, or she thought she took it, at a glance. Here wasone of those would-be playwrights who live only to torment managersand actresses. His face was thin, from which she inferred that he wasprobably half starved. His bashfulness led her to suppose that he wasan inexperienced youth. Little did she imagine that he was the son of alanded proprietor, a fellow of one of Oxford's noblest colleges, and onewith friends far higher in the world than herself. Though she thought solittle of him, and quite expected to be bored, she settled herself in asoft armchair to listen. The unsuccessful playwright read to her a sceneor two from his still unfinished drama. She heard him patiently, notingthe cultivated accent of his voice, which proved to her that he was atleast a gentleman. When he had finished, she said:
"Yes, that's good! The plot is excellent." Then she laughed a sort ofstage laugh, and remarked lightly: "Why don't you turn it into a novel?"
Reade was stung to the quick. Nothing that she could have said wouldhave hurt him more. Novels he despised; and here was this woman, thequeen of the English stage, as he regarded her, laughing at his dramaand telling him to make a novel of it. He rose and bowed.
"I am trespassing on your time," he said; and, after barely touching thefingers of her outstretched hand, he left the room abruptly.
The woman knew men very well, though she scarcely knew Charles Reade.Something in his melancholy and something in his manner stirred herheart. It was not a heart that responded to emotions readily, but it wasa very good-natured heart. Her explanation of Reade's appearance ledher to think that he was very poor. If she had not much tact, she hadan abundant store of sympathy; and so she sat down and wrote a veryblundering but kindly letter, in which she enclosed a five-pound note.
Reade subsequently described his feelings on receiving this letter withits bank-note. He said:
"I, who had been vice-president of Magdalen--I, who flattered myself Iwas coming to the fore as a dramatist--to have a five-pound note flungat my head, like a ticket for soup to a pauper, or a bone to a dog, andby an actress, too! Yet she said my reading was admirable; and, afterall, there is much virtue in a five-pound note. Anyhow, it showed thewriter had a good heart."
The more he thought of her and of the incident, the more comforted hewas. He called on her the next day without making an appointment; andwhen she received him, he had the five-pound note fluttering in hishand.
She started to speak, but he interrupted her.
"No," he said, "that is not what I wanted from you. I wanted sympathy,and you have unintentionally supplied it."
Then this man, whom she had regarded as half starved, presented her withan enormous bunch of hothouse grapes, and the two sat down and atethem together, thus beginning a friendship which ended only with LauraSeymour's death.
Oddly enough, Mrs. Seymour's suggestion that Reade should make a storyof his play was a suggestion which he actually followed. It was to herguidance and sympathy that the world owes the great novels which heafterward composed. If he succeeded on the stage at all, it was notmerely in "Masks and Faces," but in his powerful dramatization of Zola'snovel, L'Assommoir, under the title "Drink," in which the lateCharles Warner thrilled and horrified great audiences all over theEnglish-speaking world. Had Reade never known Laura Seymour, he mightnever have written so strong a drama.
The mystery of Reade's relations with this woman can never be definitelycleared up. Her husband, Mr. Seymour, died not long after she and Readebecame acquainted. Then Reade and several friends, both men and women,took a house together; and Laura Seymour, now a clever managerand amiable hostess, looked after all the practical affairs of theestablishment. One by one, the others fell away, through death or byremoval, until at last these two were left alone. Then Reade, unableto give up the companionship which meant so much to him, vowed that shemust still remain and care for him. He leased a house in Sloane Street,which he has himself described in his novel A Terrible Temptation. It isthe chapter wherein Reade also draws his own portrait in the characterof Francis Bolfe:
The room was rather long, low, and nondescript; scarlet flock paper;curtains and sofas, green Utrecht velvet; woodwork and pillars,white and gold; two windows looking on the street; at the other endfolding-doors, with scarcely any woodwork, all plate glass, but partlyhidden by heavy curtains of the same color and material as the others.
At last a bell rang; the maid came in and invited Lady Bassett to followher. She opened the glass folding-doors and took them into a smallconservatory, walled like a grotto, with ferns sprouting out of rockyfissures, and spars sparkling, water dripping. Then she opened two moreglass folding-doors, and ushered them into an empty room, the likeof which Lady Bassett had never seen; it was large in itself, andmultiplied tenfold by great mirrors from floor to ceiling, with noframes but a narrow oak beading; opposite her, on entering, was a baywindow, all plate glass, the central panes of which opened, like doors,upon a pretty little garden that glowed with color, and was backed byfine trees belonging to the nation for this garden ran up to the wallof Hyde Park.
The numerous and large mirrors all down to the ground laid hold of t
hegarden and the flowers, and by double and treble reflection filled theroom with delightful nooks of verdure and color.
Here are the words in which Reade describes himself as he looked whenbetween fifty and sixty years of age:
He looked neither like a poet nor a drudge, but a great fat countryfarmer. He was rather tall, very portly, smallish head, commonplacefeatures, mild brown eye not very bright, short beard, and wore a suitof tweed all one color.
Such was the house and such was the man over both of which LauraSeymour held sway until her death in 1879. What must be thought of theirrelations? She herself once said to Mr. John Coleman:
"As for our positions--his and mine--we are partners, nothing more. Hehas his bank-account, and I have mine. He is master of his fellowshipand his rooms at Oxford, and I am mistress of this house, but not hismistress! Oh, dear, no!"
At another time, long after Mr. Seymour's death, she said to an intimatefriend:
"I hope Mr. Reade will never ask me to marry him, for I should certainlyrefuse the offer."
There was no reason why he should not have made this offer, because hisOxford fellowship ceased to be important to him after he had won fame asa novelist. Publishers paid him large sums for everything he wrote. Hisdebts were all paid off, and his income was assured. Yet he never spokeof marriage, and he always introduced his friend as "the lady who keepsmy house for me."
As such, he invited his friends to meet her, and as such, she evenaccompanied him to Oxford. There was no concealment, and apparentlythere was nothing to conceal. Their manner toward each other was that ofcongenial friends. Mrs. Seymour, in fact, might well have been describedas "a good fellow." Sometimes she referred to him as "the doctor," andsometimes by the nickname "Charlie." He, on his side, often spoke of herby her last name as "Seymour," precisely as if she had been a man. Oneof his relatives rather acutely remarked about her that she was not awoman of sentiment at all, but had a genius for friendship; and that sheprobably could not have really loved any man at all.
This is, perhaps, the explanation of their intimacy. If so, it is a veryremarkable instance of Platonic friendship. It is certain that, aftershe met Reade, Mrs. Seymour never cared for any other man. It is no lesscertain that he never cared for any other woman. When she died, fiveyears before his death, his life became a burden to him. It was thenthat he used to speak of her as "my lost darling" and "my dove."He directed that they should be buried side by side in Willesdenchurchyard. Over the monument which commemorates them both, he causedto be inscribed, in addition to an epitaph for himself, the followingtribute to his friend. One should read it and accept the touching wordsas answering every question that may be asked:
Here lies the great heart of Laura Seymour, a brilliant artist, a humbleChristian, a charitable woman, a loving daughter, sister, and friend,who lived for others from her childhood. Tenderly pitiful to all God'screatures--even to some that are frequently destroyed or neglected--shewiped away the tears from many faces, helping the poor with her savingsand the sorrowful with her earnest pity. When the eye saw her it blessedher, for her face was sunshine, her voice was melody, and her heart wassympathy.
This grave was made for her and for himself by Charles Reade, whose wisecounselor, loyal ally, and bosom friend she was for twenty-four years,and who mourns her all his days.
END OF VOLUME FOUR
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