“Libellous Attack” on De Quincey

Kenneth Forward

doi:10.2307/458709

“Libellous Attack” on De Quincey

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020

Kenneth Forward

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University of Nebraska

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For a voluminously autobiographical writer, De Quincey on occasion can be surprisingly reticent. His most frankly reminiscent narratives are sometimes colored by circumstances which he elaborately hints at rather than reveals. Peculiarly disconcerting to the student on this account is an article in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine for February, 1841, reprinted by Masson under the title “Story of a Libel, with Thoughts on Duelling,” which tells of his helplessness in the face of a downright insult to his wife perpetrated in 1824 by an anonymous slanderer. His account is both incomplete and ambiguous. He hesitates to be explicit on so ticklish a subject, and yet he cannot let the story alone. For all his suppressions, however, and though Masson has not identified it, the libel is recoverable to-day. With practical certainty we may also name its author. In other essays, once we have the key, we may find allusions to the libel and its author, even answers to some of its charges; in particular, we may see that De Quincey's painful recollection of it shaped some of his alterations in the revised Confessions of 1856.

Type: Research Article
Information: PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1937 , pp. 244 - 260

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/458709 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

^{page 244 note 1} The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ed. David Masson (London, 1896–97), iii, 160–196. Cited Works hereafter.

^{page 244 note 1} a Horace Ainsworth Eaton in Thomas De Quincey: A Biography (New York, 1936), which has appeared since this study was accepted for publication, locates the libel (not quite precisely) and conjecturally names the author (p. 302); cf. Malcolm Elwin's impressionistic account in De Quincey (London, [1935]), p. 111.

^{page 244 note 2} Ernest de Selincourt, Dorothy Wordsworth: A Biography (Oxford, 1933), p. 304; M. L. Armitt, Rydal, ed. W. F. Rawnsley (Kendal, 1916), pp. 679, 685 f.—The son, William, was born Nov. 9, 1816, according to De Quincey (A. H. Japp, De Quincey Memorials [London, 1891], ii, 116); baptized Nov. 15 (Eaton, p. 221). The bride was baptized March 21, 1796 (Eaton, p. 219).

^{page 244 note 3} Date from Masson's preface in Works, iv, 8.

^{page 245 note 4} Some of these passages were cancelled in the revision of 1852 and later; compare Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vi (1839), 1, 3, 11, 246 with Works, ii, 230, 231 f., 252, 284.

^{page 245 note 5} “Fourteen years have gone by since then” [1824]; see Works, iii, 176.—The paper begins, moreover, “This mention of Allan Cunningham” (p. 160); and the London reminiscence dealing with Cunningham, though published in Dec. 1840, professes to have been written shortly after Jan. 28, 1838; see Works, iii, 150.

^{page 245 note 6} For discussions of casuistry earlier published, see Works, x, 29 f. and note, and viii 398 ff. (both 1823); viii 310–368 (1839–40).

^{page 245 note 7} Works, iii, 172.

^{page 246 note 8} Works, iii, 178.

^{page 246 note 9} Ibid.

^{page 246 note 10} Ibid., iii, 179, 182.

^{page 246 note 11} Ibid., iii, 176.

^{page 246 note 12} Ibid., iii, 177.

^{page 246 note 13} Ibid., iii, 174 f.

^{page 246 note 14} Ibid., iii, 176.

^{page 247 note 15} Ibid.

^{page 247 note 16} Chiefly articles, translations, and reviews in the London and Knight's Quarterly magazines; but the bitterness of his struggle is clearer in the series of notices announcing his translation of Walladmor, a German counterfeit Waverley novel, over which he groaned two months; see Works, xiv, 132 ff. First in three volumes and later in two, its publication is imminent in Times advertisements for Oct. 1 (p. 4, col. 2), Oct. 20, Nov. 1 and 9 (all p. 4, col. 1), and Nov. 24 (p. 3, col. 5); on Dec. 20 (p. 4, col. 1) it is “published this day.” The translator's “Postscript” to the book itself is dated Dec. 11; see Walladmor (London, 1825), ii, 309.

^{page 247 note 17} Times, July 3, 1824, p. 4, col. 4.

^{page 247 note 18} Times, Aug. 18, p. 4, col. 1; John Bull, July 25, p. 241

^{page 248 note 19} John Bull, Aug. 1, p. 256.

^{page 248 note 20} Information supplied by Dr. H. T. Silverstein.

^{page 248 note 21} Times, Oct. 2, p. 1, col. 1.

^{page 248 note 22} The Cottage Physician and Family Adviser, No. X (John Bull, Aug. 22, p. 273); A Physician's Advice, for the Prevention and Cure of Indigestion …, No. 3 (Times, Aug. 12, p. 4, col. 1).

^{page 248 note 23} The John Bull Magazine, and Literary Recorder (London: James Smith, 163, Strand, 1824), i, 21–24.—Dr. H. T. Silverstein kindly procured for me photostats of these pages in the British Museum copy (P. P. 5950), which is an octavo of one volume only, containing six numbers (July–Dec. 1824).

^{page 248 note 24} “About midsummer last year,” wrote De Quincey to John Wilson, Feb. 24, 1825; see Mrs. [Mary] Gordon, ‘Christopher North’: A Memoir of John Wilson (New York, 1866), p. 274.—Charles Knight met him in London in time to get a translation for the fifth number of the Quarterly Magazine, published July 31 (Times, Aug. 2, p. 1, col. 3); see Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century (London, 1864–65), i, 326 f.

^{page 248 note 25} Works, iii, 176.

^{page 248 note 26} Ibid., xi, 222, note 1.

^{page 249 note 27} Ibid.

^{page 249 note 28} Or in John Bull. He may have mistaken the paper; in April 1809 Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to him, “We received your paper; not the Times, but the Globe”; see Letters of the Wordsworth Family, ed. William Knight (Boston & London, 1907), i, 420.—I find no trace in the Times of any “notice” or “extracts” such as he supposes he might have seen there; see Works, iii, 173.

^{page 249 note 28} a Date kindly furnished by Professor Eaton in a letter of July 1, 1936. Extracts from this reprint which he quotes (p. 303, note 11) show only a careless printer's variation from corresponding passages in the original version.

^{page 249 note 29} Walter James Graham, English Literary Periodicals (New York, 1930), p. 360.

^{page 249 note 30} John Bull Magazine, i, 22 f.

^{page 250 note 31} Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, xvi (1824), 115.—The letter is most severe upon the publication of “My Wedding Night,” which it assumes to be authentically Byron's.

^{page 250 note 32} Blackwood's, xvi, 242 f.—I owe this citation to Mr. Kenneth P. Miller.

^{page 250 note 33} Miriam M. H. Thrall, Rebellious Fraser's: Nol Yorke's Magazine in the Days of Maginn, Thackeray, and Carlyle (New York, 1934), pp. 161–244, gives the best recent review of Maginn's life, including some new facts.

^{page 250 note 34} Mrs. [Margaret] Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and His Sons (New York, 1897), i, 177, 179, 368–375, 401 f.

^{page 251 note 35} R. Shelton Mackenzie, “Memoir of William Maginn,” in The Fraserian Papers; see Miscellaneous Writings of … Dr. Maginn, v (New York, 1857), pp. liii f.; cf. Thrall, pp. 239 f.

^{page 251 note 36} Thrall, p. 179.

^{page 251 note 37} [E. V. Kenealy], “William Maginn,” Dublin University Magazine, xxiii (1844), 86; Noctes Ambrosiana, ed. R. S. Mackenzie (New York, 1866), i, 436 and notes.

^{page 251 note 38} S[amuel] C[arter] Hall, A Book of Memories (London, 1871), p. 159. Thrall (p. 212) admits the fact but objects to inferences drawn from it.

^{page 251 note 39} Alexander Andrews, The History of British Journalism … to … 1855 (London 1859), ii, 175.

^{page 251 note 40} xxiii (1844), 72–101. Lockhart found this memoir outrageous; see Oliphant, ii, 360; cf. Kenealy, p. 74.

^{page 251 note 41} Mackenzie's “Memoir,” p. x.

^{page 251 note 42} Ed. cit., i, 474 f.

^{page 251 note 43} Thrall, passim, and pp. 161–244.

^{page 252 note 44} Lockhart to Blackwood; see Oliphant, i, 243.

^{page 252 note 45} Memoir of Wilson, pp. 287 f.

^{page 252 note 46} The O'Doherty Papers, ed. R. S. Mackenzie, in Miscellaneous Writings of … Maginn (New York, 1855), ii, 250.

^{page 252 note 47} Nos. 28, 32, 99, and introduction to Part III (O'Doherty Papers, i, 123, 127, 158, 145). See also O'Doherty Papers, ii, 157; Nodes i, 333, 452; and cf. Blackwood's, x (1821), 563–569. The name is also spelt Kitchener.

^{page 252 note 48} Ed. Jeremiah Finch Smith, in Remains Historical & Literary Connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester, lxxiii, Chetham Society, (Manchester, 1868), ii, 226 f.; signature C. identified, p. v.—Quoted in part in Notes and Queries, 5th series, viii (1877), 108.

^{page 253 note 49} S. M. Ellis, William Harrison Ainsworth and His Friends (London & New York, 1911), passim.

^{page 253 note 50} Ellis, i, 113, 161, 171, 223.

^{page 253 note 51} Extract from the original letter, MS. 530, National Library of Scotland, from a transcript kindly furnished me by the Librarian, Mr. Henry W. Meikle.—The passage is omitted from The Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, ed. Alexander Carlyle (London & New York, 1909), ii, 58, and expurgated in J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life (New York, 1882), i, 214. With Cunningham's attitude, cf. the account of satirical comments on De Quincey at Lamb's on July 6, in Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, ed. Thomas Sadler (Boston, 1869), ii, 9. On the preceding day, Carlyle and Irving had had tea with Lamb. (Ibid.)

^{page 253 note 52} In the second article De Quincey says he has heard that some of Goethe's admirers in London “have on occasion of our former article pushed their partisanship to the extent of forgetting the language of gentlemen” (Works, xi, 225).

^{page 254 note 53} Date from Froude, i, 339.

^{page 254 note 54} Reminiscences, ed. Charles Eliot Norton (London, 1887), ii, 152.

^{page 254 note 55} Works, v, 321, note 2.—Though the passage shows an amused familiarity with the Doctor's convivial habits, I have no evidence that the two men ever met.

^{page 254 note 56} Works, iii, 293, note 2.

^{page 254 note 57} Works, iii, 176.—I find no record of any book by Maginn published before 1824; it might have been anonymous, like his Whitehall of 1827.

^{page 255 note 58} Receipt of “The Confessions of an English Pudding-Eater” was acknowledged in The Literary Humbug; or Weekly Take-in, i (1823), 48. A heavy parody, “Confessions of an English Glutton,” was published in Blackwood's, xiii (1823), 86–93. The London itself printed in Jan. 1825 Lamb's “Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been neglected,” at which De Quincey took no offence; see Charles and Mary Lamb, The Works, ed. E. V. Lucas (London, [1905]), vii, 667, and Times, Dec. 30, 1824, p. 4, col. 2.

^{page 255 note 59} Kenealy, p. 80; Mackenzie's “Memoir,” p. xx.

^{page 255 note 60} Blackwood's, xlviii (Am. ed., xi), 52–63, 205–214.

^{page 255 note 61} “Memoir,” p. xxi. Cf. Kenealy, p. 81; R. P. Gillies, Memoirs of a Literary Veteran (London, 1851), iii, 150; William Jerdan, The Autobiography (London, 1853), iii, 83 and iv, 387 f.; Lionel Stevenson, “Romanticism Run to Seed,” Virginia Quarterly Review, ix (1933), 516.

^{page 255 note 62} O'Doherty Papers, i, 253.—Mackenzie says (p. 246*) that Maginn cited this sketch as evidence of “his ability to be intense, as well as amusing.”

^{page 256 note 63} Oliphant, i, 392; cf. pp. 391 and 274 for date, and letter of Alan Lang Strout, LTLS, March 28, 1936, p. 278.

^{page 256 note 64} Works, iv, 51.

^{page 256 note 65} De Quincey's denial is supported by Dorothy Wordsworth's letter of March 2, 1817: “At the up-rouzing of the Bats and the Owls he regularly went thither [to the Simpson cottage], and the consequence was that Peggy Sympson .. . presented him with a son ten weeks ago, and they … are now spending their honeymoon in our cottage at Grasmere”; see De Selincourt, Dorothy Wordsworth, p. 304.

^{page 256 note 66} Walladmor, ii, 136 f.—I attribute the passage to the “obedient (but not quite faithful) translator” both because it is typical of De Quincey's sentiment and because characteristic allusions to English persons and affairs are frequent in the context (ii, 2, 96, 111, 240, 279; cf. Works, xiv, 132 ff.); the first allusion is to the Chronicle of Oct. 26, 1824; see Hazlitt's Collected Works, ed. Arnold and Glover (London, 1903), ix, 158 453.

^{page 256 note 67} Works, iv, 48.

^{page 256 note 68} Ibid., ii, 368.

^{page 257 note 69} In March 1824 De Quincey replied to another critic who, like Maginn, was skeptical of the Malay story itself; see Works, ix, 39, note 2.

^{page 257 note 70} Confessions … Reprinted from the First Edition …, ed. Richard Garnett (London 1885), pp. 106 f.

^{page 257 note 71} Works, iii, 403 f., 460 ff.

^{page 257 note 72} Garnett's ed., p. 40; cf. Works, iii, 359, much expanded.

^{page 257 note 73} Works, ii, 55 f.

^{page 258 note 74} Works, ii, 56; cf. iii, 293, note 2.

^{page 258 note 75} Blackwood's, lviii (American ed., xxi), 50; not included in Masson's edition but reprinted in part by Japp in Memorials, ii, 269 ff.

^{page 258 note 76} Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (London, 1822), p. 45, from photostat, furnished by Mr. Walter B. Briggs, of a Harvard College Library copy; Garnett's ed., p. 39.

^{page 258 note 77} Works, iii, 358.

^{page 258 note 78} Works, iii, 286, 457 ff.

^{page 258 note 79} Garnett's ed., p. 135; Works, iii, 439 f.—In the “Maxims of O'Doherty,” Sept. 1824, Maginn says the new Café Turc in Paris is “gorgeous as the Opium-Eater's Oriental Dreams,” and immediately afterwards misquotes, or adapts, a section of this same passage from The Excursion; see O'Doherty Papers, i, 166.

^{page 258 note 80} Works, iii, 215.

^{page 259 note 81} Garnett's ed., p. 96; Works, iii, 396.

^{page 259 note 82} Works, iii, 256 f.

^{page 259 note 83} Blackwood's, lviii, 45 ff. Cf. note 75, supra.

^{page 259 note 84} Revised text of 1859 in Works, v, 146 ff.—See especially Masson's note, pp. 163 f. At least one bit of Latin verse mentioned by Maginn is also missing.

^{page 259 note 85} Garnett's ed., p. 116; Works, iii, 410.

^{page 259 note 86} Works, iii, 178.

^{page 260 note 87} See “Chronology of De Quincey's Writings,” Works, xiv, 375 ff.

^{page 260 note 88} Works, xiv, 46 ff., 61 ff.; ix, 428 ff.

^{page 260 note 89} Ibid., viii, 87.

^{page 260 note 90} Ibid., ii, 86–108.

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