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"Introductory " in "Richard Woodhouse's cause book: The opium- eater, the magazine wars, and the literary scene in 1821"

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Citation Morrison, Robert. 2000. "Introductory essay" in "Richard Woodhouse's cause book: The opium-eater, the magazine wars, and the London literary scene in 1821." Harvard Library Bulletin 9 (3), Fall 1998: vii-xxii.

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Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Woodhouse'sCause Book Vll

Richard Woodhouse's Cause Book: The Opium-Eater, the Magazine Wars, and the London Literary Scene in I 82 I

Robert Morrison

ichard Woodhouse is known primarily as the close friend of , and the most important transcriber and collector of "Keatsiana" in the years following the poet's death. r But for three ROl3ER T MORRISON is R months in the autumn of 1821, Woodhouse also kept a diary in a Associate Professor of English, legal cause book in which he recorded with great vividness the literary life of Acadia University, NS, Canada. London, and the wit, anxieties, and insights of a tightly-knit and highly-gifted group of writers. The Cause Book was first published by in 188 5 but in a bowdlerized form in which nearly forty percent of the manuscript had been cut away. Ten years later, it was republished by James Hogg, but with no mention of Garnett's excisions, and with the additionally ill-founded information that the Cause Book had in fact "perished in a fire. "2 Horace Eaton consulted the Cause Book when writing his 1936 biography of , but he quoted only five previously omitted passages. Grevel Lindop examined the Cause Book for his 1981 biography of De Quincey but quoted only one previously unpublished section.3 Critics continue to refer to the Cause Book in the editions of either Garnett or Hogg, but most are unaware that they are reading a severely truncated version. The quotations in the biographies of Eaton and Lindop have helped to fill a few gaps, but over thirty percent of the manuscript has hitherto remained unpublished. As the interest of his biographers suggests, at the center of the Cause Book is Thomas De Quincey, whose most famous work, Confessionscif an English Opium- Eater, appeared contemporaneously with the events recorded by Woodhouse. The Cause Book, the finest example extant of De Quincey's table talk, throws considerable light on the and contains De Quincey's thoughts on some of the central literary figures of the age, including , , Percy Shelley, and Keats. At the same time, the Cause Book chronicles the ongoing tension between and its chief

1 Sec Mshel A. E. Steele. "The Woodhouse Transcripts Frin1ds (London: Sa1npson LO\.\', MJrston and Co., of the Poems of Keats," Han•ard Library B111/etin3 1895), ix. (1949): 232-256. 3 Horace Eaton, Tlwmas De Q11i11ccy:A Biography (New 2 "Notes of Conversations with Thon1J.s De Quincey" in York: Oxford University Press, 1936), 279, 281; Greve! Confessions of an Eng/isl, Opi11111-Eater,ed. Richard Lindop, T7,e Opinm-Eater: A Life of Tho111asDe Q11inccy Garnett (London: Kegan Paul. Trench and Co., 1885), (London: Dent, 198 1), 253-254. 189-273; James Hogg, Preface to De Q11inccyand his Vlll HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

rival, Blackwood'sEdinbu,gh Magazine, in the months immediately following the most tragic result of the magazine wars in early nineteenth-century Britain, when, in February 1821, , editor of the London, was mor- tally wounded in a duel with James Christie, ally of Blackwood's. Finally, the Cause Book brings to life the intel- lectualism and behind-the-scenes badinage that informed the London at the height of its power, when its reg- ular contributors included De Quincey, , , and , and when its circle stretched from medical doctors and police magistrates to influential the- ater managers and the brilliant British comedian Charles Mathews. Richard Woodhouse was born in Bath on 11 December 1788, the eldest of fifteen children.4 He attended Bath Grammar School (like De Quincey) and then Eton, before spending two years in Spain and Portugal acting in the business interests of his family, who were wine importers. When he returned to , he studied law and was established as a barrister by 18 11, the same year he met John 11,is is the only known portrait of Taylor and James Hessey, the future owners of the London Magazine, for whom Richard Woodhouse, showin,ghim as a he became a legal and literary advisor. In 1815 Woodhouse published A Grammar boy. Reproduced uo'th the kind pennis- sion of the Keats House, Hampstead. cifthe Spanish, Portuguese,and Italian Languages,and by 1818 he had met Keats and was soon anxious "in all places, & at all times, & before all persons" to express his "high opinion of his poetical merits- Such a genius, I verily believe, has not appeared since Shakspeare & Milton." 5 When Keats left England in September 1820, Woodhouse cut off a lock of the poet's hair and authorized Keats to draw on him in Rome for money. After Keats's death, Woodhouse's poetic tribute appeared in the August 1821 issue of the London. "'Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty,"' he wrote, and the blend Of both comes on us like a prophet's dream- When mighty truths, embodied, condescend To visit man, and whisper to his eyes.- There's not a page of landscape but doth seem

4 Joanna Richardson, "Richard Woodhouse and his 5 The Keats Circle, ed. H. E. Rollins, 2 vols (Cambridge, Family," Keats-Shelley ,'11emorialBulletin, 5 (1953): 39-44. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 1:cxlv. Woodhouse'sCause Book lX

A painted lesson, full of truths sublime:- And moral rules and precepts of the wise Spake in the mythic Gods of olden time.6 In the years immediately following Keats's death Woodhouse himself contracted tuberculosis, and while prolonged stays in Madeira (1829-30) and then Italy (1832) improved his health enough to convince him that he could return to England, he declined rapidly once in London and died in September 1834. Woodhouse's Cause Book is bound in handsome, though now bowed, green vellum and is fifty-five pages on thirty-two leaves, with many blank leaves after the text. Woodhouse dated the Cause Book "1st January 1812" on the first flyleaf, but he did not begin to write in it until nearly ten years later. On the verso of the flyleaf, dated "November 19, 1821," Woodhouse writes that "in the Event of my death, whenever it shall happen, I desire that this book may be given to Mr. Taylor of " and, in 1834, along with all other documents in Woodhouse's pos- session relating to Keats, the Cause Book passed to Taylor.7 When Taylor died in 1864, the Cause Book came into the possession of the publishing house of Kegan Paul, Trench, and Company, and it was still in their possession in 1885.8 By 1936, however, it had passed into the hands of "the Misses Bairdsmith,"9 De Quincey's two surviving granddaughters. Shortly thereafter it passed to Miss M. Craig, De Quincey's great-granddaughter, and in 1954 she sold it to Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, who donated it to the Houghton Library, where it is now housed.10 Richard Garnett first published the Cause Book in 1885, when he included it as an appendix to his edition of the Confessions.In Garnett's opinion, however, while the Cause Book contained "nothing uninteresting," the record was "not all equally worthy of preservation,"u and he duly marked for exclusion well over a third ofWoodhouse's text using a system of pencilled square brackets that are still clearly visible in the manuscript. Garnett's principles for exclusion were fairly straightforward, for he would allow "nothing to lower ... the character" of De Quincey,12 and he was undoubtedly guided in this regard by the knowledge that De Quincey's two surviving daughters would be allowed to see his version of the Cause Book before it went to press. Perhaps surprisingly, Garnett retained the numerous references to De Quincey's opium addiction and his levels of inges- tion, though De Quincey himself had discussed this information at length in his Confessions and other published writings. In most other instances, however, Garnett excised discussions of what he called "things personal" because "it does not appear whether Woodhouse entertained any intention of some day giving his notes of De Quincey's conversation to the world," and "it could not be expected that [De Quincey's] references ... should always be measured with the nicest discretion."13 The result, even allowing for those passages which concern De Quincey's drug dependency, is a fine example oflate- Victorian bowdlerization, for the De Quincey that emerges in Garnett's abridgement is more genial and out-

6 , Keats's Publisher: A Memoir efjohn Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1885), xix. Taylor (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936), 126. 9 Horace Eaton, Thomas De Quincey, 279. 7 For details, see Stuart M. Sperry, "Richard ro]ohn Keats, 1795-1995: with a Catalogue of the Han,ard Woodhouse's Interleaved and Annotated Copy of Keats Collection (Houghton Library, 1995), 115-r 16. The Keats's Poems (1817)," Literary Monographs, ed. Eric call number for the Woodhouse Cause Book is Keats Rothstein and Thomas K. Dunseath (Madison, Wisc.: 4.20.r r. University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 1:103. 1 r Garnett, Introduction, xx. 8 Richard Garnett, Introduction to Confessions ef an r 2 Garnett, Introduction, xxi. English Opium-Eater, ed. Richard Garnett (London: 1 3 Garnett, Introduction, xx. X HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

wardly respectable, more exclusively interested in literary matters, and much more emotionally stable than he appears in the complete manuscript. Garnett deleted the passage in Mavor shorthand in the 28 September entry in which Woodhouse recorded that De Quincey once abruptly left the house of the lawyer Basil Montague after an "observation which offended him and which he thought erroneously was meant of him . . . on persons marrying below their station in life, which he himself had done, having married his housekeeper whom he men- tions in his Confessions."Garnett cut that part ofWoodhouse's 6 December entry in which De Quincey refers to the unfounded rumour that "he was himself the father" ofWordsworth's daughter Catherine, "the grounds for this fiction" being "the plainness of the child's appearance, the comparative want of fondness, or rather indifference of most people, even Wordsworth himself for the little thing, and the Opium-Eater's partiality for it, & grief for its death." The "unnatural tale current, & which the Opium-Eater had heard even in London, of Wordsworth having been intimate with his own sister" was also removed. More drastically, Garnett excised many of De Quincey's references to the machinations of Blackwood's, and all the extraordinary passages in which De Quincey lashed out at his close friend and Blackwood'slinchpin John Wilson with an intensity that verged on paranoia. Garnett justified these deletions by claim- ing that Woodhouse was "smarting under the coarse and insolent abuse levelled at his literary associates by the Tory press" and ')ust in the mood to draw De Quincey into talk on the characters and failings of the offenders."14 But the full manuscript makes it clear that De Quincey was at least as willing to talk to Woodhouse about Blackwood'sas Woodhouse was to listen. Garnett, however, was plainly anxious that this vitriolic side of De Quincey not be revealed, and so his version of the manuscript begins characteristically with an emphasis on De Quincey as discerning literary critic: "The Opium-Eater was formerly (indeed he is still) a great Admirer of Wordsworth." But Garnett achieved this effect only by cutting away the first three paragraphs of the first entry, in which De Quincey examines the "scurrilous personal attacks" in Blackwood's and the "cruelty & meanness" of Wilson. Similarly, Garnett's version contains no reference to De Quincey's semi-hysterical reaction when Wilson arrived in London in October for a visit, or to the role of J. G. Lockhart and in the Blackwood's enterprise. Even the 3 November anecdote concerning 's unexpected visit to Mrs. Wilson, and the 25 November discussion of Blackwood's archaisms are removed, as if to clear De Quincey of all knowledge of the recklessness and extravagance of Blackwood's during its early years. Although Garnett "assured" his readers he had omitted a "comparatively insignificant portion"r5 of the manuscript, he had to anticipate the watchful eyes of De Quincey's two daughters, and he cut until there was little trace of the strain and emotional extremity that so often informed De Quincey's condition throughout these months. The result is a much more rational and engaged Opium-Eater than the brilliant but haunted figure of the unabridged manuscript. Garnett's excisions, however, did not end with the removal of unnatural tales and bitter personal attacks. He was also apparently anxious to avoid any hint of repetition, and so when De Quincey mentioned the same subject twice, Garnett's policy seems to have been simply to cut the first reference. In the entry

14 Garnett, Introduction, xx-xxi. I 5 Garnett, Introduction, xxi. Woodhouse's Cause Book Xl for 15 November De Quincey described the cool reception he received from the publisher John Murray when he first arrived in London, and then looped back to the same topic later in the same entry. Garnett simply cut the paragraph with the first reference. Similarly, on 8 December De Quincey embarked on a lengthy examination of "style" and "thought," but when he offered yet "further illustra- tion of his Subject," Garnett apparently felt the point had been made and removed the long closing section of the paragraph in which De Quincey expanded his discussion to include Shakespeare, Milton, and Edward Gibbon. Finally, Garnett excised any material in the manuscript that he did not consider directly related to De Quincey. Thus, his version contains no mention of Samuel James Arnold, Richard Birnie, John Leslie, Herbert Marsh, Isaac Milner, Charles Oilier, and Richard Brinsley Peake. Garnett also cut the two marvellous anec- dotes concerning Charles Mathews, plus several revealing conversations, includ- ing the 28 September discussion in which Hamilton Reynolds mocks Allan Cunningham's "heroics," and the 6 December episode in which Lamb consid- ers the nature of "bawdry." The result of these excisions is a De Quincey whose digressions have been removed and whose ideas have been circumscribed, and who has been curiously divorced from the central role he assumed within the vibrant London circle. Horace Eaton's biography incorporated a number of pre- viously unpublished passages concerning De Quincey's overheated response to Wilson, and Lindop's biography cited the passage in which De Quincey dis- cussed the "unnatural tales" surrounding the Wordsworth family. But even with these additions, the significance of the Cause Book, and the full range and com- plexity of De Quincey's experience during these London months, has remained largely unacknowledged. The unabridged Cause Book is the most compelling and intimate record avail- able of De Quincey's passions and habits, his precarious position as a contributor to the London, and his association with some of the foremost literary figures of the day. It is composed of thirteen entries that were written between 28 September and 29 December, 1821, so that Woodhouse's account coincides almost precisely with the publication of De Quincey's Confessions in the London for September and October, 1821. The Confessions is De Quincey's autobio- graphical but highly selective and artistically patterned rendering of his own past, and it is written in a tone that ranges from the humorous and the bizarre to the urbane and the pathetic. The two articles, and the book version that was pub- lished in 1822, launched his career as one of the most prolific and popular essay- ists of his age, though De Quincey lived a hand-to-mouth existence and strug- gled constantly against the grind of poverty. His life up until the writing of the Confessions had been a strange one. He was born in in 1785 to a pros- perous linen merchant, and as a young boy he read widely and acquired a repu- tation as a brilliant classicist. "That boy," said his headmaster at Bath Grammar School, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob, better than you or I could address an English one." 1 6 At seventeen, De Quincey ran away from Manchester Grammar School and spent five harrowing months penniless and hungry on the streets of London, an episode recorded with great vividness in the Confessions. Reconciled with his family, he entered Oxford in 1804, but left four years later

16 Confessions ofan English Opium-Eater, ed. Greve! Lindop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7. XU HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

without taking his degree. He then moved to the English to be near his two literary idols, Wordsworth and Coleridge. After an initial period of inti- macy, he was gradually estranged from both men, and in 1813 he became depen- dent on opium, a drug he began experimenting with during his student days at Oxford. Over the next few years he slid deeper into debt and addiction before penury forced him to join Blackwood'sin 1819 at the urging of Wilson. Following the success of the Confessions,he produced over two hundred magazine articles on topics ranging from philosophy and history to aesthetics, economics, literary criticism, and contemporary politics. His well-known essay "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" was published in Blackwood's in l 82 7, and a second installment appeared in the same magazine in 1839; his many "Literary Reminiscences" of Wordsworth, Coleridge, , and others appeared in Tait's Magazine beginning in 1834; and Blackwood's pub- lished his 1845 sequel to the Confessions," de Profundis." In 1854, as the first volumes of his Collected Works began to appear, praised De Quincey's writings as "filled with passages of a power and beauty which have never been surpassed by any other prose writer of the age," and the same year the EclecticReview noted that, when completed, De Quincey's Works would "constitute the most valuable and most enduring collection of papers, which had originally appeared in a periodical form, to be found in the entire world of literature."r7 De Quincey died in Edinburgh in 1859. When Woodhouse met De Quincey in 1821 the final installment of Confessions had already been published, and De Quincey was the toast of the London circle. "Everybody who noticed magazines at all is interested in the Fate of the Opium Eater," enthused the London's editor John Taylor in late October. 18 Of De Quincey's many admirers at this time, however, only Woodhouse set himself of recording the nature and uniqueness of De Quincey's pres- ence during these months in London, for as he had quickly recognized and championed the genius of Keats three years earlier, so he now described his many meetings with De Quincey in Boswellian fullness. "The Opium-Eater," as he almost habitually calls him, is "a short, sallow-looking person, of a very peculiar cast of countenance, & apparently much an invalid. His demeanour was very gentle, modest & unassuming." De Quincey's nocturnal habits and melancholia are discussed, as is the evening when he smoked a "segar, until he felt his head slightly dizzy." According to Woodhouse, De Quincey reads poetry "with too inward a voice; he dwells much upon the long vowels ... he ekes out particu- lar syllables, has generally much appearance of intensity." Woodhouse, however, was highly impressed by De Quincey's informal conversation, and "the depth and reality .... of his knowledge." After a lengthy disquisition on patronage, Woodhouse writes that, "tho' not the very language of [De Quincey], it con- tains the substance of what he said, and is given somewhat in his manner, & in the order in which he gave it; and it will afford some idea of the general tenor of his conversation, & of the richness of his mind, & of the facility with which he brings in the stores of his reading & reflection to bear upon the ordinary topics of conversation." In the Cause Book, Woodhouse seems always to have

17 Henry Bright, "Thomas De Quincey and his Works," 18 De Quincey and his Publishers, ed. Barry Symonds, Westminster Review, n.s. 5 (1854): 520; Anon., "Selections, unpub. Ph.D. thesis (University of Edinburgh, 1994), Grave and Gay, by Thomas De Quincey," Eclectic 97. Review, n.s. 8 (1854): 399. T¼odhouse'sCause Book Xlll

kept something of this ideal in mind, and De Quincey as companion and talker is brought vividly to life. "What would one give," once remarked, "to have [De Quincey] in a box, and take him out to talk!" 19 The Cause Book makes us share her wish. Several hitherto unpublished passages ofWoodhouse's manuscript throw a good deal of new light on the Confessions,a text in which De Quincey professes to be engaged in self-revelation but in which he obscures as much as he reveals, tanta- lizing and partially initiating the public into a world that he nevertheless veils with pseudonyms, cryptic allusions, willful distortion, and blanks in the text which sug- gest but do not disclose identity. As Woodhouse makes clear, Shelley's publisher Charles Ollier was one of many who knew immediately who the author of the Confessionswas, but even those closest to De Quincey had questions about the nature and veracity of his experience and, in the Cause Book, De Quincey responded to these questions, developing and even altering the memories that inform his Confessions.John Leslie, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh, is revealed as the "Scotchman of eminent name [who] has lately told us, that he is obliged to quit even mathematics, for want of encouragement," 20 and four of the six men De Quincey knows "directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters" feature in these conversations with Woodhouse, including the late Dean of Carlisle, Isaac Milner.21 In the Confessions,De Quincey goes out of his way to ensure that Wilson is not included in his general condemnation of "Scottish Professors,"2 2 whereas the unabridged Cause Book betrays the full extent of De Quincey's deep-seated ani- mosity toward his friend. In the Confessions,De Quincey apostrophizes his wife Margaret as his "Electra," who nursed him while he struggled with the horror of nightmares and opium withdrawal. But in the Cause Book Woodhouse declares that, before their marriage, Margaret was also De Quincey's housekeeper, and that when the Malay paid his famous visit to , it was Margaret who stood "so picturesquely" by his side, her "beautiful English face ... and its exquisite fair- ness, together with her erect and independent attitude" in stark contrast to the "sallow and bilious skin ... small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations" of the Malay.23 In each case, previously unpublished passages from the Cause Book contain new information about the circumstances and anxieties of De Quincey's most famous work. The Cause Book also contains De Quincey's thoughts on a remarkable series of preoccupations and people that he later exploited for marketable magazine copy. His plans for on political economy and education, as well as for translations of Kant, Richter, and German fiction were all realized, and his views on style, French literature, and his own career at Oxford also appeared in later essays. His claim that he had "an immense fund of literary anecdotes respecting the living writers" produced full-length articles on Hazlitt, Lamb, Taylor, Southey, Allan Cunningham, and .24 De Quincey offers penetrating

19 Lindop, Opium-Eater, 288. C. Black, 1889-90) 11:341-354; "Recollections of 20 Confessions, 65; see also, Robert Morrison, "The Charles Lamb" in De Quincey, Collected Writings, 3:34- 'Scotchman of eminent name' in De Quincey's 92; "Charles Lamb" in De Quincey, Collected Writings, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," Notes and Queries, 5:215-58; "Mr John Taylor" in De Quincey, Collected 46 (1999): 45-47. Writings, 3:127-43; "William Wordsworth and Robert 21 Confessions, 3, 235. Southey" in Recollections ef the Lakes and the , 22 Confessions, 5. ed. David Wright (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 23 Confessions, 36, 56. 207-235; "Allan Cunningham" in De Quincey, Collected 24 "William Hazlitt" in The Collected Writings ef Thomas De Writings, 3:145-59; "The Poet Clare" in De Quincey, Quincey, ed. David Masson, 14 vols (Edinburgh: A. and Collected Writings, 3:143-145. XlV HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

William Blackwood by Sir William Allan. Reproducedwith the kind per- missionef the ScottishNational Portrait Gallery.

criticism of Wordsworth, is a champion of Shelley and Keats, and spreads gossip about Coleridge's drug addiction, and when he once drank off "a large wine glass full" of opium in front of an astonished stranger.25 's escape from an insane asylum, so powerfully recounted in the "Literary Reminiscences," appears first in the Cause Book, where De Quincey shifts the interest from the brutal treatment Lloyd received at the hands of those running the asylum, to Lloyd's insistence that De Quincey was a "nobody," a "non entity."26 The Cause Book highlights the broad range of De Quincey's sympathies and experience, and points toward much of what is most valuable in his later career.

25 "William Wordsworth," in De Quincey, Recollections, Taylor Coleridge" in De Quincey, Recollections,33-rr r. 119-206; "" in De Quincey, 26 "Reminiscences of Charles Lloyd" in De Quincey, Collected Writings, rr: 354-377; "John Keats" in De Recollections,313-333. Quincey, Collected Writings, 11:377-393; "Samuel J¼odhouse's Cause Book xv

The Cause Book, however, does not solely concern De Quincey's conversation and writings; it also situates him within the larger stresses of the magazine wars then ongoing between Blackwood's and the London. The crucial event in these wars was the shooting to death of the London's first editor John Scott by Blackwood's accomplice James Christie in February 1821, just months before De Quincey's Confessions appeared and Woodhouse began the Cause Book. Blackwood's Magazine had been founded in 1817 by William Blackwood, an increasingly successful Edinburgh bookseller and publisher.27 Blackwood's imme- diate aim was to challenge the Scots Magazine, an ailing miscellany published by his Edinburgh rival Archibald Constable; less directly, he hoped to establish a spir- ited Tory monthly that would challenge the influence of the Whiggish and complement the ponderous Toryism of the . Initially, Blackwood's plans went badly. The first issue appeared in April 1817 under the title the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, and was dull and unfocused; what was worse, it began with an article praising Francis Horner, arch Whig and one of the founders of the rival Edinburgh Review. Blackwood quickly served notice on his two editors, Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn, and took over the position himself, gathering Wilson and Lockhart around him as prize contributors and advisors. The reconstituted effort appeared as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in October, 1817, and was a highly marketable blend of slander, sensationalism, eru- dition, buffoonery, and truculent High Toryism. Blackwood never looked back. In the first issue alone Wilson delivered a vicious personal assault on Coleridge; Lockhart began his infamous series on the "Cockney School of Poetry," which included scurrilous attacks on , Hazlitt, and Keats; and Wilson, Lockhart, and James Hogg combined to produce the "Chaldee Manuscript," an allegorical attack on Constable and other notable Edinburgh Whigs that left many gasping and others threatening legal action. Blackwood pacified some, paid-off others, and compromised to the extent of issuing a second printing in which the "Chaldee Manuscript" was expunged and Lockhart's attack on Hunt slightly mit- igated. But Blackwood's had made its mark, and in doing so had established a new pattern for magazines by removing all formal departments, mixing together fic- tion, reviews, correspond~nce, and essays, and infusing exuberance throughout. Older competitors like the Gentleman's Magazine, the Monthly, and the New Monthly looked hopelessly old-fashioned, while in the months that followed its sensational first issue, Blackwood's convincingly proclaimed itself "a Real magazine of mirth, misanthropy, wit, wisdom, folly, fiction, fun, festivity, theology, bruis- ing and thingumbob."28 Only with the founding of Fraser'sin 1830 was its dom- inance as a magazine seriously challenged. The London was founded in January 1820 as a direct challenger to Blackwood's,and while in format the two magazines closely resembled one another, the London was more liberal and literary in tone, and it openly opposed Blackwood'shabit of scabrous personal abuse. The veteran journalist John Scott was put in charge of the new mag- azine and, as Ian Jack has noted, "certainly no editor has ever gathered round himself

27 The rise of Blackwood's is documented fully, if sympa- Maurice Milne, "The Veiled Editor Unveiled: William thetically, in 's Annals of a Publishing Blackwood and his Magazine," Publishing History, 16 House, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1897) and F. D. (1984): 87-103; and Emily Lorraine de Montluzin, Tredrey's The House of Blackwood (Edinburgh: "William Blackwood: The Human Face Behind the Blackwood, 1954). More recent discussions include J. Mask of 'Ebony,"' Keats-Shelley Journal, 36 (1987): 158- H. Alexander, "Blackwood's: Magazine as Romantic Form," The Wordsworth Circle, 15 (1984): 57-68; 28 Blackwood's Magazine, 12 (1822): 105-106. XVI HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

John Taylor by an unknown artist. Reproduced with the kind pennission ef the Keats House, Hampstead.

a more brilliant circle of writers."29 The umdon featured the work of De Quincey, Keats, Hazlitt, Lamb, Hunt, Clare, Hamilton Reynolds, , and , making it one of the most outstanding literary journals of the nine- teenth-century. Scott's plan as regarded Blackwood'swas to try to avoid conflict, and initially the relationship between the two magazines was amicable enough. Indeed, in May 1820 Scott went as far as to praise Blackwood'sfor several reasons, including its ''.just and quick feeling of the elements of poetical beauty and power" and the "ability, energy, and effect" with which it had "vindicated ... several neglected and

29 Ian Jack, English Literature 1815-1832 (Oxford: Clarendon Frank P. Riga and Claude A. Prance, "The London Press, 1963), 21. The best accounts of the rise and fall of Magazine, 1820-29: A Brief History" in Index to The the London are Josephine Bauer, The London Magazine London Magazine (New York: Garland, 1978), xi-xxix; (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1953); Tim and Patrick O'Leary, Regency Editor: Life efJohn Scott Chilcott, A Publisher and his Circle: the Life and Work of (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1983). John Taylor (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972); vVoodhouse'sCause Book XVll

James Augustus Hessey; the drawing is probably a sketch for a portrait painted by William Hilton. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Keats House, Hampstead.

calumniated, but highly deserving poetical reputations."30 By autumn, however, the situation had deteriorated into slander and accusation as Blackwood's continued its malicious assaults on "Cockneys" and London contributors like Hazlitt, Hunt, and the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, while an increasingly angry Scott contended that the "outrage, hypocrisy, and fraud ... of Mr Blackwood's Publication .... has at length converted what was at first but a system of provocation, into a downright system ef terror."31The climax came in February 1821 when Scott and Blackwood's ally James Christie duelled by moonlight in a field at Chalk Farm. Scott received a fatal bullet wound and died on 27 February, just four days after Keats had died in Rome. Unlike Keats, though, Scott actually was killed by the recklessness and cru- elty of the periodical press. In April, Taylor and Hessey bought the London, and though they were able to avoid open conflict with Blackwood's, a good deal of ani- mosity remained between the two magazines. "I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen," Lamb had written in the London in August 1821, "and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair."32 On the Blackwood'sside, there were minor concessions after the killing but, more characteristically, in the April 1821 issue of

30 London Magazine, I (1820): 496. 32 Charles Lamb, Elia and the Last Essays of Elia, ed. Jonathan 31 London Magazine, 2 (1820): 668 (Scott's italics). Bate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 67-68. XVlll HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

Blackwood's henchman William Maginn continued the provoca- tive attack on the London circle by gaily referring to Lockhart as "wet with the blood of the Cockneys" and Wilson as one who had "slain" many with his "trenchant and truculent falchion."33 Wilson himself was in London in the autumn of 1821, and claiming he wished now to write for the London, though Hessey was con- vinced that "the whole was a Plot to obtain some knowledge of the Conductors of the Work, and that then they would attack us."34 In the event, however, Blackwood's did not launch another assault, primarily because it was unneces- sary. The London continued as the leading literary magazine of the day, and Taylor and Hessey attracted a number of important new contributors, including De Quincey and Carlyle. But with the more dogmatic and less genial Taylor as editor, the magazine began gradually to lose that spirit of camaraderie and liberal intellec- tualism that had been such a dis- tinguishing feature under Scott. By 1823 there had been a marked decline and Lamb felt as if he was lingering among the London's "creaking rafters, like the last rat." Taylor and Hessey sold the London in 1825, and in 1829 it "departed this life," as Allan Cunningham lamented.35 Although De Quincey declared that "a literary Pleiad might have been gathered

John iVilso11 by Sir Henry Raebum. out of the stars connected with this journal" during the early 1820s, the London never Reprod11cedwith the kind pem1ission of fully recovered from the blow oflosing Scott, and did not see out the decade. Arthur the Scottish Natio11al Portrait Gallery.

33 O'Leary, Regency Editor, 168. Maginn veils the attack The Life and utters of (London: Oxford only slightly by using pseudonyms, so that Lockhart is University Press, 1928), 48. As Cunningham knew, the referred to as "Z," and Wilson as Blackwood's notional London had not really died, but had dwindled into editor, "Christopher North." insignificance and then been taken over by its main 34 Symonds, De Quincey and his Publishers, 112. competitor at the time, the New lvlonthly lvlagazine, then 35 The utters of Charles and lvlary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, 3 under the editorship of the poet Thomas Campbell. vols (London: Dent, 1935), 2:394-395; C. C. Abbott, vVoodhouse'sCause Book XIX

Henry Hallam spoke for many when in 183 1 he remarked that "since the old times of the London-the golden age of Elia, De Quincey, and a few more--there has really been no literary periodical of any excellence."36 De Quincey's role in the conflict between Blackwood's and the London was a complicated one. He and Wilson met at Wordsworth's in 1808, and their close friendship spanned five decades. In 1839 De Quincey described Wilson as "the only very intimate male friend I have had," and in 1862 Wilson's daughter Mary Gordon wrote that "Wilson loved [De Quincey] to the last, and better than any man he understood him."37 Wilson had been a key contributor to Blackwood's from its founding, and by 18 18 he was encouraging De Quincey to write for the magazine, sending him for review David Ricardo's Principlesof PoliticalEconomy and Taxation and Shelley's The Revolt of Islam, which De Quincey, with Lockhart and Wilson, reviewed positively for Blackwood'sinJanuary 1819.38 By December 1820 De Quincey was in Edinburgh and promising Blackwood an "Opium arti- cle," translations from Kant, essays on political economy, and much else; and in January 1821 he published a second contribution to Blackwood's, a translation of Schiller's "The Sport of Fortune. "39 At this same time, De Quincey was draw- ing money on Wilson, addressing him as "my dear Wilson," and advising him to damn Scott in Blackwood's in retaliation for Scott's attacks in the London: "I am burning for vengeance," De Quincey told Wilson in November 1820. "I do so loathe the vile whining canting hypocrisy of the fellow, that I would myself con- tribute at any price of labor to his signal humiliation .... for the love of God, make an example of the Bugger." 40 The Cause Book records that Wilson himself told De Quincey "that when Scott's attacks upon Blackwood'sMagazine came out he felt within himself that Scott must be a dead man." In only a matter of weeks Wilson's prophecy was tragically realized. De Quincey's situation, too, changed markedly between November 1820 and February 1821. His hopes of writing for Blackwood's quickly went sour when he and Blackwood quarrelled, and within six weeks De Quincey was back in the Lake District. By early March he knew of Scott's death, and claimed to have changed his mind about the acrimony between the two magazines: "I can say that, though I never saw [Scott], I have felt the deepest anxiety about him and sorrow for his death," De Quincey told a neighbour; "and the more so, because I learnt enough when I was at Edinburgh to acquit him most fully of all injustice in the main matter of his charge against Blackwood." 41 In May or June De Quincey travelled to London looking for work, and by the second week in August he was preparing the "Opium article" he had promised to Blackwood's for publication in the London. More distressingly, he was doing so in Scott's old lodgings-4 York Street, .42 De Quincey, who was fascinated by murder, often worried that he might be responsible for someone's death, such as the Malay's in the Confessions,or the young woman in the frail gig at the con- clusion of "The English Mail-Coach." He undoubtedly recognized the grim ironies of writing his Confessionsin the rooms of a man who had died because of

36 "The umdon Magazine" in De Quincey, Collected York: W.J. Widdleton, 1863), 327. Writings, 3:143; The L£tters of Arthur Henry Hallam, ed. 38 See, Robert Morrison, "De Quincey, Champion of Jack Kolb (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Shelley" in Keats-Shelley Journal, 41 (1992): 36-41. Press, 1981), 437. "Elia" was Lamb's pseudonym; 39 Eaton, Thomas De Quincey, 259-264. Hallam wrote "De Quincy." 40 Symonds, De Quincey and his Publishers, 34. 37 De Quincey, Collected Writings, 2:355; Mary Gordon, 41 Symonds, De Quincey and his Publishers, 72. "Christopher North": A Memoir of John Wilson (New 42 O'Leary, Regmcy Editor, 162; Lindop, Opium-Eater, 246. xx HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

animosity he had helped to incite, and of actively supporting the London when only a few months earlier he had been publishing in Blackwood'sand speaking of the London with contemptuous abuse. De Quincey's shifting allegiances, as well as the arrival of Wilson himself in London in October, put great stress on him throughout the autumn of 1821, as he battled with debt, opium addiction, and a desire both to hide and preserve his con- nection with Blackwood's.On the one hand, De Quincey had met with great kind- ness and support from the London circle, and he had opinions, particularly on polit- ical economy and German literature, that were well-suited to the magazine; but, on the other, he knew that, despite a bad beginning, he could produce the kinds of articles demanded by Blackwood's, and he was undoubtedly anxious not to alienate himself further from this powerful and potentially lucrative source. De Quincey worked to consolidate his relationship with the London, particularly with offers of articles, including a third installment of the Confessionsand a closing address for the volume ending December 1821. He coupled these efforts with attempts to distort or camouflage his relationship with Blackwood's, though his attempts in this direc- tion were obviously complicated by the fact that Wilson knew the whole of his his- tory with Blackwood's,and could easily seek to undermine De Quincey's position with the London. As the Cause Book demonstrates, De Quincey's response was a concerted and malicious attack on Wilson, designed apparently to demolish Wilson's character in the eyes of Taylor and Hessey and at the same time to secure his own position as loyal contributor to their magazine. Thus Wilson is "base & envious," has "no principles at all," is responsible for the nastiest of the Blackwood's articles, and seems fated to do De Quincey some "great & unexpiable injury." Yet at the very time De Quincey was flailing Wilson to Woodhouse and the London circle, he was also dining with him and almost certainly planning a secret return to Blackwood's.He admitted to Woodhouse that he had been "much dis- appointed . . . by the treatment [he] met with from Blackwood" during his time in Edinburgh, and on 2 November he went so far as to break an engagement with Hessey so that he could accept Wilson's "invitation to-night," for "on many accounts" it would be "very inconvenient to me" to miss him; "and also, from old remembrances, I should be sorry to refuse an invitation."43 Within three months De Quincey was having to deny to Hessey that Wilson had "been making offers ... for Mr. B.," but Wilson's statement to Blackwood in September 1823, that De Quincey was "disgusted with all the Cockneys, and ... is very friendly to [Blackwood's]& us all," almost certainly reflects the kinds of things De Quincey had been saying to Wilson all along about his position with the London.44Ironically, De Quincey's policy of treacherous duplicity ultimately proved successful because he became an important writer for both magazines, but simultaneously courting the London and Blackwood'swas a task that wore badly on his already shattered nerves. Indeed, the strains of his divided allegiances appear in the Confessionsthemselves, where glib remarks about the London poor and the frantic xenophobia of the Malay dream are better-suited to the High Toryism of Blackwood's than the liberalism of the London, while his praise for "Cockneys" like Hazlitt, Keats, and Ricardo was anathema to Blackwood'sbut adhered firmly to the editorial policies of the London.45 The Cause Book reveals

43 Symonds, De Quincey and his Publishers, 125. 45 See, Robert Morrison, "Red De Quincey," The 44 Symonds, De Quincey and his Publishers, 126, 216-217. Wordsworth Circle, 29 (1998): 135-136. Woodhouse'sCause Book XXl

the ongoing mistrust and tension between the two magazines, and the ways in which these tensions played themselves out in De Quincey's paranoid reaction to Wilson's presence, his Janus-faced attempts simultaneously to pursue relation- ships with both Blackwood's and the London, and the conflicting political and lit- erary impulses that inform his Confessions. While the hostility between the two rival magazines weighed heavily on De Quincey, however, it seems to have done little to dampen the spirits of the other London contributors. Woodhouse notes that Hamilton Reynolds "in a fine tone of bravado, hoped to God" Blackwood's would attack, and said "he was quite ready for them." Indeed, to a remarkable extent, the London circle of autumn 1821 was the circle that had championed Keats against Blackwood's only a few years earlier, for the Cause Book features close friends of the poet like Hamilton Reynolds, Taylor, Hessey, and of course Woodhouse, as well as James Rice, John Percival and the painter Peter De Wint, each of whom contributed £ro to a subscription fund for Keats when he settled in Rome. The Cause Book also concerns key London contributors like Clare, Cunningham, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, and Thomas Hood, as well as other figures who travelled in the London circle, including Dr. George Darling and the dramatist Richard Brinsley Peake, best known for his stage adaption of 's Frankenstein (1818). This group met often at the famous dinners Taylor hosted for contributors of the London, and the wit and erudition of their conversations characterized the mag- azine during these autumn 1821 months when it was at the height of its fame. The Cause Book contains a series of entertaining anecdotes, including the first meeting between James Hogg and the Scottish painter David Wilkie. Contributors gossip about the prices paid by publishers like Murray and Constable, and touch on topics ranging from religious controversy to the newly discovered Memoirs of John Evelyn and the recent death of Queen Caroline. Lamb teases De Quincey about the London scenes in the Confessions,and puns after spilling his wine, while Charles Mathews, the brilliant comedic actor, dis- plays the exceptional talent for mimicry that so impressed the Romantics. "If in whatever decks this earthly Ball," wrote Coleridge in early 1820,

'Tis still great Mother Nature, one in all; Hence Matthews! needs must be her genuine Son, A Second Nature that acts all in one- Byron declared that "Mathews ... seems to have continuous chords in his mind, that vibrate to those in the minds of others, as he gives not only the look, tones, and manners of the persons he personifies, but the very train of thinking, and the expressions they indulge in."46 Mathews's genius, and the exceptional range and ability of the members of the London circle, come vibrantly alive in the Cause Book. After spending many evenings in Woodhouse's company during the autumn of 1821, De Quincey left London for the Lake District on 29 December. In October r 822 he asked Hessey to give "my kindest regards to all friends- especially Woodhouse, Hilton, and the Dewints," and two months later he

46 The Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. L. Griggs, 6 Lovell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-71), 5:11; Lady 140. Blessington 's Conversations of , ed. Ernest J. XXll HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

Joh11 Hamilton Rey11olds by Joseph Severn. Reproduced with the kind per- missio11of the National PortraitGallery, Londo11.

recalled to Hessey how during his 1821 stay Woodhouse "accompanied me home every night-almost without exception." 4 7 Yet despite his long subse- quent visits to London, De Quincey and Woodhouse seem never to have met again. During their many evenings together in 1821, however, Woodhouse cap- tured in great detail the London literary scene at a pivotal moment, and recorded, by turns, the intense interest surrounding the highly successful first appearance of the Confessions, the power and range of De Quincey's conversation, the acri- mony between Blackwood's and the London in the months following the tragic deaths of Keats and Scott, and the personalities and relationships that made the London one of the foremost literary journals of the nineteenth century.

4 7 Symonds, De Quincey and his Publishers, I 57, I 70.