Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/626

 the ferry stood Peacock's house at Lower Halliford. Meredith's youthful admiration for Peacock bore fruit in a genuine though not very close influence. While still at Weybridge Meredith dedicated his 'Poems' of 1851 to 'Thomas Love Peacock, Esq. .. . with the profound admiration and affectionate respect of his son-in-law, Weybridge, May 1851.' In all probability Peacock had assisted in the publication of the volume, which was issued by Peacock's friends, J. W. Parker & Son of West Strand, and which cost the poor author about 60l. (a single copy has since fetched as much as 30l). Parker & Son also published 'Fraser's Magazine,' to the pages of which Peacock's daughter and son-in-law were early contributors. An 'Essay on Gastronomy and Civilisation' (Dec. 1851) is signed M[ary] M[eredith]; it was subsequently expanded into a little book. Two among George Meredith's earnest identified single poems, 'Invitation to the Country' and 'Sweet of the Year,' also appeared in 'Fraser' (Aug. 1851, June 1852). While still at Weybridge, with 'duns knocking at the door,' Meredith began working at 'The Shaving of Shagpat,' much of it being read aloud to his little step-daughter, and many passages declaimed to Janet Duff Gordon, his literary Egeria of a few years later. In 1853 Peacock invited Meredith and his wife, whose struggle with poverty threatened to overwhelm them, to live in his house. There Arthur Gryffydh (1853-90), the only child of the union, was born on 11 June 1853. Soon after Peacock installed the young family in a cottage (still standing) at Lower Halliford.

'No sun warmed my roof-tree,' Meredith was said to have exclaimed in later years; 'the marriage was a blunder.' The course of estrangement, though not its cause, is traced implicitly in 'Modern Love.' Outwardly relations were amicable, and visits were paid to the FitzGeralds (nephews of the author of 'Omar') at Seaford, and were returned. In 1858 Mrs. Meredith went off to Capri with the artist Henry Wallis, eventually returning to Weybridge, where she died at Grotto Cottage in 1861. Meredith claimed his son, and for a time they lived together in London, no one knows where, or upon what resources. Ned Peacock and his son, however, were still occasional visitors, as they continued to be for at least another ten years.

In Meredith's first volume, 'Poems' of 1851, there is nothing, perhaps, altogether first rate, for the 'Love in the Valley,' as we know it, was rewritten in 1878. But the general level of accomplishment and beauty is high; there is daring in the young poet's rhythmical experiments without rhyme. Although Meredith often complained later of the lack of encouragement extended to his early efforts, his first volume won much praise. W. M. Rossetti, then twenty-two years old, described it as Keatsian in the 'Critic' (15 Nov.), and Charles Kingsley in 'Fraser' (Dec. 1851) put the 'Love Poems' above Herrick's. Tennyson also wrote that he found the verse of 'Love in the Valley' very sweet upon his lips. The quinine, so distinctive of Meredith's later verse, was imported later. Meredith's second venture, 'The Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian Entertainment,' followed in 1855. It is a fantasia on the subject-matter of 'The Arabian Nights,' easily outstripping its forerunner, Beckford's 'Vathek,' in the skill with which it catches the oriental spirit. Arabic students have indeed sought a lost original. The author expressly repudiated any elaborate allegorical intention. George Eliot in 'The Leader' (5 Jan. 1856) described it as a work of genius—poetical genius, and as 'an apple tree among the trees of the wood.' 'Farina: a Legend of Cologne,' which followed the Arab tale in 1857, is a rather slighter burlesque or ironical sketch, something in the vein of Peacock, aimed at the mediæval and romantic tale. George Eliot praised it, though without very much emphasis, in the 'Westminster Review' October 1857.

All three volumes had been easel-pieces from which the author could hardly with reason expect pecuniary return, and from 1856, when Meredith severed his connection with Halliford, down to the close of 1858, we can only conjecture his means of support. Extremely poor, he almost despaired of literature while doing a certain amount of hackwork and supplementing his slender income by occasional journalism. He may possibly have received some assistance from his father's sisters. His home was temporarily fixed in London. There at 8 Hobury Street, Chelsea, 'The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,' commenced at The Limes, was concluded with comparative rapidity, during 1858-9. Published in 1859, it was reviewed with enthusiasm in 'Cope's Tobacco Plant' by James Thomson [q. v.] in May, and favourably by the 'Athenæum' on 9 July 1859; on 14 October 'The Times' devoted three columns to it. Mudie, it seems, took three hundred copies, but then lost nerve owing to suspicion of 'low ethical tone' formulated by the 'Spectator.'