Meanwhile time rolled on—and whether Mr. O’Leary had died of the whale feast, or been eaten himself by his godson, no one could conjecture, and his name had probably been lost amid the rust of ages, if certain booksellers, in remote districts, had not chanced upon the announcement of his volume, and their “country orders” kept dropping in for these same “Loiterings,” of which the publishers were obliged to confess they knew nothing whatever.
Now, the season was a dull one; nothing stirring in the literary world; people had turned from books, to newspapers; a gloomy depression reigned over the land. The India news was depressing; the China worse; the French were more insolent than ever; the prices were falling under the new tariff; pigs looked down, and “Repealers” looked up. The only interesting news, was the frauds in pork, which turned out to be pickled negroes and potted squaws. What was to be done? A literary speculation at such a moment was preposterous; for although in an age of temperance, nothing prospered but “Punch.”
It occurred to us, “then pondering,” as Lord Brougham would say, that as these same “Loiterings” had been asked for more than once, and an actual order for two copies had been seen in the handwriting of a solvent individual, there was no reason why we should not write them ourselves. There would be little difficulty in imagining what a man like O’Leary would say, think, or do, in any-given situation. The peculiarities of his character might, perhaps, give point to what dramatic people call “situations,” but yet were not of such a nature as to make their portraiture a matter of any difficulty.
We confess the thing savoured a good deal of book-making. What of that? We remember once in a row in Dublin, when the military were called out, that a sentinel happened to have an altercation with, an old woman of that class, for which the Irish metropolis used to have a patent, in all that regards street eloquence and repartee. The soldier, provoked beyond endurance, declared at last with an oath, “that if she didn’t go away, he’d drive his bayonet through her.” “Oh, then, the devil thank you for that same,” responded the hag, “sure, isn’t it your trade?” Make the application, dear reader, and forgive us for our authorship to order.
Besides, had we not before us the example of Alexandre Dumas, in France, whose practice it is to amuse the world by certain Souvenirs de “Voyage,” which he has never made, not even in imagination but which are only the dressed-up skeletons of other men’s rambles, and which he buys, exactly as the Jews do old uniforms and court suits, for exportation to the colonies. And thus while thousands of his readers are sympathizing with the suffering of the aforesaid Alexandre, in his perilous passage of the great desert, or his fearful encounter with Norwegian wolves, little know they that their hero is snugly established in his “entresol” of the “Rue d’Alger,” lying full length on a spring-cushioned sofa, with a Manilla weed on his lip, and George Sand’s last bulletin of wickedness, half cut before him. These “Souvenirs de Voyage” being nothing more than the adventures and incidents of Messrs. John Doe and Richard Doe, paragraphed, witticized, and spiced for public taste, by Alexandre Dumas, pretty much as cheap taverns give “gravy” and “ox-tail”—the smallest modicum of meat, to the most high-seasoned and hot-flavoured condiments.
If, then, we had scruples, here was a precedent to relieve our minds—here a case perfectly in point, at least so far as the legitimacy of the practice demanded. But, unhappily, it ended there: for although it may be, and indeed is, very practicable for Monsieur Dumas, by the perfection of his “cuisine,” to make the meat itself a secondary part of the matter; yet do we grievously fear that a tureen full of “O’Leary,” might not be an acceptable dish, because there was a bone of “Harry Lorrequer” in the bottom.
With all these pros and cons our vain-glorious boast to write the work in question stared us suddenly in the face; and, really, we felt as much shame as can reasonably be supposed to visit a man, whose countenance has been hawked about the streets, and sold in shilling numbers. What was to be done? There was the public, too; but, like Tony Lumpkin, we felt we might disappoint the company at the Three Jolly Pigeons—but could we disappoint ourselves?
Alas! there were some excellent reasons against such a consummation. So, respected reader, whatever liberties we might take with you, we had to look nearer home, and bethink us of ourselves. After all—and what a glorious charge to the jury of one’s conscience is your after all!—what a plenary indulgence against all your sins of commission and omission!—what a makepeace to self-accusation, and what a salve to heartfelt repinings!—after all, we did know a great deal about O’Leary: his life and opinions, his habits and haunts, his prejudices, pleasures, and predilections: and although we never performed Boz to his Johnson, still had we ample knowledge of him for all purposes of book-writing; and there was no reason why we should not assume his mantle, or rather his Macintosh, if the weather required it.
Having in some sort allayed our scruples in this fashion, and having satisfied our conscience by the resolve, that if we were not about to record the actual res gesto of Mr. O’Leary, neither would we set down anything which might not have been one of his adventures, nor put into his mouth any imaginary conversations which he might not have sustained; so that, in short, should the volume ever come under the eyes of the respected gentleman himself, considerable mystification would exist, as to whether he did not say, do, and think, exactly as we made him, and much doubt lie on his mind that he was not the author himself.
We wish particularly to lay stress on the honesty of these our intentions—the more, as subsequent events have interfered with their accomplishment; and we can only assure the world of what we would have done, had we been permitted. And here let us observe, en passant, that if other literary characters had been actuated by similarly honourable views, we should have been spared those very absurd speeches which Sallust attributes to his characters in the Catiline conspiracy; and another historian, with still greater daring, assumes the Prince of Orange ought to have spoken, at various epochs in the late Belgian revolution.
With such prospective hopes, then, did we engage in the mystery of these same “Loiterings,” and with a pleasure such as only men of the pen can appreciate, did we watch the bulky pile of MS. that was growing up before us, while the interest of the work had already taken hold of us; and whether we moved our puppets to the slow figure of a minuet, or rattled them along at the slap-dash, hurry-scurry, devil-may-care pace, for which our critics habitually give us credit, we felt that our foot beat time responsively to the measure, and that we actually began to enjoy the performance.
In this position stood matters, when early one morning in December the post brought us an ominous-looking epistle, which, even as we glanced our eye on the outside, conveyed an impression of fear and misgiving to our minds. If there are men in whose countenances, as Pitt remarked, “villany is so impressed, it were impiety not to believe it,” so are there certain letters whose very shape and colour, fold, seal, and superscription have something gloomy and threatening—something of menace and mischief about them. This was one of these: the paper was a greenish sickly-white, a kind of dyspeptic foolscap; the very mill that fabricated it might have had the shaking ague. The seal was of bottle-wax, the impression, a heavy thumb. The address ran, “To H. L.” The writing, a species of rustic paling, curiously interwoven and gnarled, to which the thickness of the ink lent a needless obscurity, giving to the whole the appearance of something like a child’s effort to draw a series of beetles and cockroaches with a blunt stick; but what most of all struck terror to our souls, was an abortive effort at the words “Arthur O’Leary” scrawled in the corner.
What! had he really then escaped the perils of blubber and black men? Was he alive, and had he come back to catch us, in delicto—in the very fact of editing him, of raising our exhausted exchequer at his cost, and replenishing our empty coffers under his credit? Our suspicions were but too true. We broke the seal and spelled as follows—
“Sir—A lately-arrived traveller in these parts brings me intelligence, that a work is announced for publication by you,