John Forster As Biographer: a Case Study in Nineteenth-Century Biography
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1 John Forster as Biographer: A Case Study in Nineteenth-Century Biography Ph. D. Dissertation by Helena Langford September 2010 Department of English Language and Literature University College London Supervisor, Rosemary Ashton UCL 2 3 Abstract John Forster as Biographer: A Case Study in Nineteenth-Century Biography John Forster (1812-1876) has traditionally been glimpsed almost exclusively via his relationships with key nineteenth-century figures such as Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens. His biographical works can be seen as a nexus between the often conflicting positions which he occupied as a journalist, editor, literary agent and advisor, barrister, philanthropist, husband and government secretary. Forster’s biographical career is roughly divided into three periods; the early biographies (1830-1864) constituted several historiographies of key figures in the history of the long parliament, concluding in the two-volume Sir John Eliot (1864). The years 1848 to 1875 were occupied with biographies of eighteenth-century poets, novelists and dramatists, in particular Oliver Goldsmith (1848) and Jonathan Swift (1875). In the last decade of his life, Forster was diverted from these two passions by the memoirs of his friends, Walter Savage Landor (1869) and Charles Dickens (1872-4). Arising out of collaborative work with UCL and the Victoria and Albert Museum, this study centres on the National Art Library's Forster bequest. Examining and documenting in detail the materials which Forster collected and exploited to write his biographies, it explores the nature, both physical and intellectual, of Forster's library, and its importance in analysing his research and writing interests. The works are situated within the development of biography as a genre, and alongside the emerging ethos of unrestricted education and the new printing and binding technologies and techniques which were becoming available. The archive’s material elements - images, bindings, annotations, Grangerizations, the ways in which it has been curated and catalogued – form a unique documentation of standard Victorian biographical practices, and of Forster’s individualistic working habits. 4 Contents Page List of Plates 5 Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 8 Chapter One: Sir John Eliot 42 Chapter Two: Oliver Cromwell 74 Chapter Three: The Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith 100 Chapter Four: Life of Jonathan Swift 140 Chapter Five: Walter Savage Landor: A Biography 181 Chapter Six: The Life of Charles Dickens 204 Conclusion 230 Appendix: prices of the biographies discussed in this study 240 List of works cited 241 5 List of Plates Plate 1. Matthew Ward, Portrait of John Forster in his library at 58 Lincoln’s Inn Fields (ca. 1850), V&A, p.135. Plate 2. John Watkins, John Forster’s library at Palace Gate House, 1864, taken from Richard Renton, John Forster and his Friendships (1912). p.135. Plate 3. Illustration of Goldsmith with his nurse, Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith (1848), p. 136. Plate 4. Maclise’s portrait of Forster as Kitely in Every Man in his Humour (1847-8), V&A, p. 136. Plate 5. Maclise’s sketch of Dickens reading ‘The Chimes’ at 58, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Monday 2nd of December 1844, British Museum, p. 137. Plate 6. Stanfield illustration for Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith (1848), p. 137. Plate 7. Ibid. Stanfield illustration, p.138. Plate 8. Ibid. Leech illustration, p. 138. Plate 9. Ibid. Hamerton illustration, p.139. Plate 10. Ibid. Hamerton illustration, p. 139. Plate 11a. Page of manuscript of Life of Jonathan Swift, Forster Collection, p. 175. Plate 11b. Page of manuscript of Life of Jonathan Swift (cut and pasted notes), Forster Collection, p. 175. Plate 12. Joseph Addison’s Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705), Forster Collection binding, p. 176. Plate 13. Modern spine to Addison’s Remarks, Forster Collection binding, p. 176. Plate 14. Sample of original binding from Addison’s Remarks, pasted into Forster Collection copy, p. 176. Plate 15. Frontispiece to Forster’s Life of Jonathan Swift (1875), p. 177. Plate 16. Jonathan Swift, Charles Jervas (1709-10), National Portrait Gallery, p. 177. Plate 17. Jonathan Swift, Charles Jervas (1718), National Portrait Gallery, p. 178. Plate 18. Frontispiece to Works of Swift (1736), p. 178. Plate 19. Frontispiece to Faulkner’s edition of Swift’s Works (1772), p. 179. 6 Plate 20. Frontispiece portrait to Swiftiana (1804), p.179. Plate 21. Jonathan Swift, Francis Bindon (1735), National Portrait Gallery, p180. Plate 22. Frontispiece to Scott’s edition of the Works (1824), p. 180. Plate 23. Walter Savage Landor, William Boxall (1852-53), V&A, p. 203. 7 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Rosemary Ashton, Henry Woudhuysen and John Meriton for their patience, guidance and support. I would also like to thank the staff of the National Art Library, in particular Carlo Dumontet and Deborah Sutherland, for their continued welcome and for their help and advice on the Forster Collection. I would like to thank to Anne Chiang, Lesley Moss, Nick Shepley and Anna Smaill for their camaraderie and encouragement. This thesis was undertaken as part of the AHRC Collaborative Awards Scheme. I would like to thank the AHRC for their financial assistance and the considerable support given to Collaborative Award holders. Without their support it would have been impossible for me to complete this PhD. Personal thanks go to those who have, over the past four years, given me their friendship, prayers and understanding, in particular Clare and Charlie Tait, Robert Davies, Christine Mottram, Pat and Peter Rogers, Alice Sisson, Alex and Buddy Owen, Carolyn Studman, Jo Davies, David and Jane Langford, and all at SJTL. I would like to give particular thanks to Alan Shelston and Jackie Eden, whose support during and following my time at Manchester meant so much to me. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Jonathan Langford, for being there with love at every stage of the process. 8 John Forster as Biographer: A Case Study in Nineteenth-Century Biography Introduction The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it ... Concerning the Age which has just passed, our fathers and grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so vast a quantity of information that the industry of a Ranke would be submerged by it, and the perspicacity of a Gibbon would quail before it. It is not by the direct method of a scrupulous narration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict that singular epoch. If he is wise, he will adopt a subtler strategy. He will attack his subject in unexpected places; he will fall upon the flank, or the rear; he will shoot a sudden, revealing searchlight into obscure recesses, hitherto undivined. He will row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be considered with a careful curiosity.1 This was Lytton Strachey’s response to the Victorians’ overwhelming archival legacy. Eminent Victorians (1918) steered the course of modern biography away from ‘those two fat volumes, with which it is our custom to commemorate the dead’ (Strachey, p. viii). In the early nineteenth century, Leopold von Ranke’s methodological principles of collection, examination and interrogation of documentary evidence established the archive as ‘a symbol of truth, plausibility, and authenticity’ as well as emphasising objectivity.2 Since this led to what Strachey felt to be an over-reliance on documents, he remoulded the genre in the form of biographical sketches with fluidity and character, written with the brevity and eloquence of the academic éloge and the individualism of Carlyle’s heroic pen portraits. The nineteenth century is generally seen as the age of biography; Richard Altick defined it as such in his Lives and Letters (1960); A. O. J. Cockshut readjusted the timeframe to 1813-1914, with the years 1840-1875 as a ‘parabola of prudence and restraint’.3 John Forster’s biographical career marginally out-spanned these dates, from 1831 to 1876. Forster wrote and continually revised nine 1 Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (London: Chatto and Windus, 1918), p. vii. 2 Iggers and Powell, Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline (Syracuse, New York; Syracuse University Press, 1990); Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 116-120; and Appleby et al., Telling the Truth About History (London: Norton, 1994), pp. 73-76. 3 A.O.J. Cockshut, Truth to Life: The Art of Biography in the Nineteenth Century (London: Collins, 1974), p. 32. 9 volumes of biographical essays and five ‘full’ biographies. His biographies and historiographical sketches sold well (in the main) and won him regard as a historian and biographer, but were superseded even in his own lifetime by more rigorous historical research. Despite his interest and lively humour, Forster’s moralistic tone and hagiographic style quickly became outmoded. The waning of his reputation as a popular scholarly writer and journalist began soon after his death, leaving anecdotal traces of relationships with his more famous friends; Browning, Carlyle, Lamb, Hunt, Macready, Bulwer Lytton, Dickens. In 1869, Forster oversaw the bequest of the extensive collection by his friend, the late Alexander Dyce, to the South Kensington Museum. His own library followed in 1876. The Forster archive in what became the Victoria and Albert Museum contains over eighteen thousand printed books, over sixty bound folio volumes of manuscript material, forty-eight oil paintings, and a large number of drawings, prints and sketches. Although the Forsters lived less than a mile from the original site of the Museum, the collection took eighteen months, over the years 1876-77, to transport.