True Manliness

Thomas Hughes

Thomas Hughes

True Manliness / From the Writings of Thomas Hughes

THOMAS HUGHES

[Preliminary Note. – Having somewhat rashly consented to write a short biographical preface to a volume of selections to be made in America from the writings of my friend, Mr. Hughes, I applied to him directly for the needful facts and dates. His answer was an autobiographical letter which I found so interesting that I resolved to print it, omitting only a few intimate allusions natural in such a communication, but with which the public has nothing to do. My temptation was the greater that the letter was not intended for publication, and had, therefore, that charm of unpremeditated confidence which is so apt to be wanting in more deliberate autobiographies. I cannot consult him, (and I confess that I purposely waited till I could not) for he is already at sea, on his way to America, and I fear that friendship may have tempted me to an unwarrantable liberty, but I could not bring myself, even at the risk of seeming indiscreet, to deny to others what had given me so much pleasure. At any rate, the indiscretion is wholly my own and in direct violation of the injunction with which Mr. Hughes’ letter concludes: “I hate the idea of being presented in any guise to any public; so if you can’t squelch the plan altogether, give only the driest and meagrest facts and dates.” I feel somewhat as if I had been reporting a private conversation, and take upon myself in advance all the reproach that belongs of right to that scourge and desecrator of modern life, the “Interviewer.” For the first time, I look forward with dread to my next meeting with an old friend, after having thus practised the familiar stage device of putting the right letter into the wrong cover. As the brief record of a well-spent and honorable life, devoted to unselfish ends and associated with notable friendships, Mr. Hughes’ letter has a higher than merely personal interest. Of any critical introduction to American readers no one could stand in less need than he. The same qualities of manliness, frankness, simplicity and sympathy, with whatever is generous and humane, that gave and continue to “Tom Brown” a success that may be compared with that of “Robinson Crusoe,” are not wanting in his other works. – J. R. L.]

“I was born on October 20th, 1822, at Uffington, Berks, of which village my grandfather was Vicar. He was also a Canon of St. Paul’s, and spent half the year at his house in Amen Corner, with which my first memories of London are connected. It was, till this year, the strangest quiet old nook in the city, behind its big timber gates, within one hundred yards of Fleet street on one side, and Newgate Market on the other, but the distant murmur of life only made the repose more striking in those days. Now they are building some new minor Canons’ houses on the vacant ground beyond which will be opened out towards Newgate street, and the corner will be a thoroughfare. The most remarkable fact of my childhood happened there, as I was in the house (I believe) with Sir Walter Scott, a great friend of my grandfather, on his last sad visit to London.

“My grandmother was a very notable woman in many ways, and a great economist and early riser. She used to take me and my brother out shopping in the early morning, and our excursions extended as far as Billingsgate fish-market, then at the height of the career which has secured for it an unenviable place in our English vocabulary. It was certainly a strange place for a lady and small boys, and is connected with the most vivid of my childish memories. Toddling after my grandmother to the stall where she made her purchases, we came one morning on the end of a quarrel between a stalwart fish-fag and her fancy man. She struck him on the head with a pewter pot which flattened with the blow. He fell like a log, the first blood I had ever seen, gushing from his temples, and the scene is as fresh as ever in my memory at the end of half a century. The narrow courts in that neig