Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1

James Lever Charles

Description

The success of Harry Lorrequer was the reason for writing Charles O'Malley. That I myself was in no wise prepared for the favor the public bestowed on, my first attempt is easily enough understood. The ease with which I strung my stories together, - and in reality the Confessions of Harry Lorrequer are little other than a note-book of absurd and laughable incidents, - led me to believe that I could draw on this vein of composition without any limit whatever. I felt, or thought I felt, an inexhaustible store of fun and buoyancy within me, and I began to have a misty, half-confused impression that Englishmen generally labored under a sad-colored temperament, took depressing views of life, and were proportionately grateful to any one who would rally them even passingly out of their despondency, and give them a laugh without much trouble for going in search of it.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819909590
• Langue: English

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PREFACE
The success of Harry Lorrequer was the reason forwriting Charles O'Malley. That I myself was in no wise prepared forthe favor the public bestowed on, my first attempt is easily enoughunderstood. The ease with which I strung my stories together, – andin reality the Confessions of Harry Lorrequer are little other thana note-book of absurd and laughable incidents, – led me to believethat I could draw on this vein of composition without any limitwhatever. I felt, or thought I felt, an inexhaustible store of funand buoyancy within me, and I began to have a misty, half-confusedimpression that Englishmen generally labored under a sad-coloredtemperament, took depressing views of life, and wereproportionately grateful to any one who would rally them evenpassingly out of their despondency, and give them a laugh withoutmuch trouble for going in search of it.
When I set to work to write Charles O'Malley I was,as I have ever been, very low with fortune, and the success of anew venture was pretty much as eventful to me as the turn of theright color at rouge-et-noir . At the same time I had then anamount of spring in my temperament, and a power of enjoying lifewhich I can honestly say I never found surpassed. The world had forme all the interest of an admirable comedy, in which the partallotted myself, if not a high or a foreground one, was eminentlysuited to my taste, and brought me, besides, sufficiently often onthe stage to enable me to follow all the fortunes of the piece.Brussels, where I was then living, was adorned at the period by amost agreeable English society. Some leaders of the fashionableworld of London had come there to refit and recruit, both in bodyand estate. There were several pleasant and a great number ofpretty people among them; and so far as I could judge, thefashionable dramas of Belgrave Square and its vicinity were beingperformed in the Rue Royale and the Boulevard de Waterloo with veryconsiderable success. There were dinners, balls, déjeûners, andpicnics in the Bois de Cambre, excursions to Waterloo, and selectlittle parties to Bois-fort, – a charming little resort in theforest whose intense cockneyism became perfectly inoffensive asbeing in a foreign land, and remote from the invasion of home-bredvulgarity. I mention all these things to show the adjuncts by whichI was aided, and the rattle of gayety by which I was, as it were,"accompanied," when I next tried my voice.
The soldier element tinctured strongly our society,and I will say most agreeably. Among those whom I remember bestwere several old Peninsulars. Lord Combermere was of this number,and another of our set was an officer who accompanied, if indeed hedid not command, the first boat party who crossed the Douro. It isneedless to say how I cultivated a society so full of all thestoried details I was eager to obtain, and how generously disposedwere they to give me all the information I needed. On topographyespecially were they valuable to me, and with such good result thatI have been more than once complimented on the accuracy of mydescriptions of places which I have never seen and whose features Ihave derived entirely from the narratives of my friends.
When, therefore, my publishers asked me could Iwrite a story in the Lorrequer vein, in which active service andmilitary adventure could figure more prominently than mere civilianlife, and where the achievements of a British army might form thestaple of the narrative, – when this question was propounded me, Iwas ready to reply: Not one, but fifty. Do not mistake me, andsuppose that any overweening confidence in my literary powers wouldhave emboldened me to make this reply; my whole strength lay in thefact that I could not recognize anything like literary effort inthe matter. If the world would only condescend to read that which Iwrote precisely as I was in the habit of talking, nothing could beeasier than for me to occupy them. Not alone was it very easy tome, but it was intensely interesting and amusing to myself, to beso engaged.
The success of Harry Lorrequer had been freelywafted across the German ocean, but even in its mildest accents itwas very intoxicating incense to me; and I set to work on my secondbook with a thrill of hope as regards the world's favor which – andit is no small thing to say it – I can yet recall.
I can recall, too, and I am afraid more vividlystill, some of the difficulties of my task when I endeavored toform anything like an accurate or precise idea of some campaigningincident or some passage of arms from the narratives of twodistinct and separate "eye-witnesses." What mistrust I conceivedfor all eye-witnesses from my own brief experience of theirtestimonies! What an impulse did it lend me to study the nature andthe temperament of narrator, as indicative of the peculiar coloringhe might lend his narrative; and how it taught me to know the forceof the French epigram that has declared how it was entirely thealternating popularity of Marshal Soult that decided whether he wonor lost the battle of Toulouse.
While, however, I was sifting these evidences, andseparating, as well as I might, the wheat from the chaff, I was ina measure training myself for what, without my then knowing it, wasto become my career in life. This was not therefore altogetherwithout a certain degree of labor, but so light and pleasantwithal, so full of picturesque peeps at character and humorousviews of human nature, that it would be the very rankestingratitude of me if I did not own that I gained all my earlierexperiences of the world in very pleasant company, – highlyenjoyable at the time, and with matter for charming souvenirs longafter.
That certain traits of my acquaintances foundthemselves embodied in some of the characters of this story I donot to deny. The principal of natural selection adapts itself tonovels as to Nature, and it would have demanded an effort above mystrength to have disabused myself at the desk of all theimpressions of the dinner-table, and to have forgotten featureswhich interested or amused me.
One of the personages of my tale I drew, however,with very little aid from fancy. I would go so far as to say that Itook him from the life, if my memory did not confront me with thelamentable inferiority of my picture to the great original it wasmeant to portray.
With the exception of the quality of courage, Inever met a man who contained within himself so many of the traitsof Falstaff as the individual who furnished me with Major Monsoon.But the major – I must call him so, though that rank was farbeneath his own – was a man of unquestionable bravery. His powersas a story-teller were to my thinking unrivalled; the peculiarreflections on life which he would passingly introduce, the wiseapothegms, were after a morality essentially of his own invention.Then he would indulge in the unsparing exhibition of himself insituations such as other men would never have confessed to, allblended up with a racy enjoyment of life, dashed occasionally withsorrow that our tenure of it was short of patriarchal. All these,accompanied by a face redolent of intense humor, and a voice whosemodulations were managed with the skill of a consummate artist, –all these, I say, were above me to convey; nor indeed as I re-readany of the adventures in which he figures, am I other than ashamedat the weakness of my drawing and the poverty of my coloring.
That I had a better claim to personify him than isalways the lot of a novelist; that I possessed, so to say, a vestedinterest in his life and adventures, – I will relate a littleincident in proof; and my accuracy, if necessary, can be attestedby another actor in the scene, who yet survives.
I was living a bachelor life at Brussels, my familybeing at Ostende for the bathing, during the summer of 1840. Thecity was comparatively empty, – all the so-called society beingabsent at the various spas or baths of Germany. One member of theBritish legation, who remained at his post to represent themission, and myself, making common cause of our desolation andennui, spent much of our time together, and dined tête-à-tête every day.
It chanced that one evening, as we were hasteningthrough the park on our way to dinner, we espied the major – for asmajor I must speak of him – lounging along with that half-careless,half-observant air we had both of us remarked as indicating adesire to be somebody's, anybody's guest, rather than surrenderhimself to the homeliness of domestic fare. "There's thatconfounded old Monsoon," cried my diplomatic friend. "It's all upif he sees us, and I can't endure him."
Now, I must remark that my friend, though very farfrom insensible to the humoristic side of the major's character,was not always in the vein to enjoy it; and when so indisposed hecould invest the object of his dislike with something little shortof antipathy. "Promise me," said he, as Monsoon came towards us, –"promise me, you'll not ask him to dinner." Before I could make anyreply, the major was shaking a hand of either of us, andrapturously expatiating over his good luck at meeting us. "Mrs.M.," said he, "has got a dreary party of old ladies to dine withher, and I have come out here to find some pleasant fellow to joinme, and take our mutton-chop together." "We're behind our time,Major," said my friend, "sorry to leave you so abruptly, but mustpush on. Eh, Lorrequer," added he, to evoke corroboration on mypart. "Harry says nothing of the kind," replied Monsoon, "he says,or he's going to say, 'Major, I have a nice bit of dinner waitingfor me at home, enough for two, will feed three, or if there be ashort-coming, nothing easier than to eke out the deficiency byanother bottle of Moulton; come along with us then, Monsoon, and weshall be all the merrier for your company.'"
Repeating his last words, "Come along, Monsoon,"etc., I passed my arm within his, and away we went. For a moment myfriend tried to get free and leave me, but I held him fast andcarried hi