YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. BY JAMES T. FIELDS. Was it not yesterday
we spoke together SHAKEWEARBU FORTY-FOURTH EDITION. BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. New York 11 East Seventeenth Street.
Camfcntrgr. INSCRIBED TO MY FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE SATURDAY CLUB.
CONTENTS. I. INTRODUCTORY 1 II. THACKERAY 11 III. HAWTHORNS 39 IY.
DICKENS 125 V. WORDSWORTH 251 VI. Miss MITJFORD 261 VII. BARRY
CORNWALL AND SOME OF HIS FRIENDS . . 355 INTRODUCTORY, Some there
are t By their good works exalted, lofty minds And meditative
authors of delight And happiness which to the end of time Will
live, and spread and kindle WORDSWORTH, L INTRODUCTORY.
QURROtHSTDED by the portraits of those I have long O counted my
friends, I like to chat with the people about me concerning these
pictures, my companions on the wall, and the men and women they
represent. These are my assembled guests, who dropped in years ago
and stayed with me, without the form of invitation or demand on my
time or thought. They are my eloquent silent partners for life, and
I trust they will dwell here as long as I do. Some of them I have
known intimately several of them lived in other times but they are
all my friends and associates in a certain sense. To converse with
them and of them When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I
summon up remembrance of things past is one of the delights of
existence, and I am never tired of answering questions about them,
or gossiping of my own free will as to their every-day life and
manners. If I were to call the little collection in this diminutive
house a Gallery of Pictures, in the usual sense of that title, many
would smile and remind me of what Foote said with his
characteristic sharpness of DavidG-arrick, when he joined his
brother Peter in the wine trade Davy lived with three quarts of
vinegar in the cellar, calling himself a wine merchant. My friends
have often heard me in my garrulous old q-ge discourse of things
past and gone, and know what YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. they bring
down on their heads when they request me to run over, as they call
it, the faces looking out upon us from these plain unvarnished
frames. Let us begin, then, with the little man of Twickenham, for
that is his portrait which hangs over the front fire place. An
original portrait of Alexander Pope I certainly never expected to
possess, and I must relate how 1 came by it. Only a year ago I was
strolling in my vagabond way up and down the London streets, and
dropped in to see an old picture-shop, kept by a man so thoroughly
instructed in his calling that it is always a pleasure to talk with
him and examine his collection of valuables, albeit his treasures
are of such preciousness as to make the humble purse of a commoner
seem to shrink into a still smaller compass from sheer inability to
respond when prices are named. At No. 6 Pall Mall one is apt to
iind Mr. Graves clippd round about by first-rate canvas. When I
dropped in upon him that summer morning he had just returned from
the sale of the Marquis of Has tingss effects. The Marquis, it will
be remembered, went wrong, and his debts swallowed up everything.
It was a wretched stormy day when the pictures were sold, and Mr
Graves secured, at very moderate prices, five original por traits.
All the paintings had suffered more or less decay, and some of
them, with their frames, had fallen to the floor. One of the best
preserved pictures inherited by the lateMarquis was a portrait of
Pope, painted from life by Richardson for the Earl of Burlington,
and even that had been allowed to drop out of its oaken frame.
Horace Walpole says, Jonathan Kichardson was undoubtedly one of the
best painters of a head that had appeared in Eng land. He was pupil
of the celebrated Kiley, the master of Hudson, of whom Sir Joshua
took lessons in his art and it was Richardsons Treatise on Painting
which INTRODUCTORY. inflamed the mind of young Keynolds, and
stimulated his ambition to become a great painter...
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