HER MAJESTY'S TOWER.*
IT had been well for Mr. Dixon's skill in nomenclature had this book appeared under some other title, and better for his character as an historical romancist if it had not been published at all. The title is a false one,—a trap to catch the eye and ear. The privilege of dedication is abused, and the general tone is wanton, sensational, and tricky. We cannot understand what enabled the first series of these tales from English history to reach a sixth edition, unless it be that the name of the book has misled the public ; if that be the reason, the present series will probably be a failure, for it has far leas right to its misnomer than the first, and people will not be so readily deceived another time. When Mr. Dixon's New America appeared, he felt his way carefully, and contrived to keep within the confines of propriety, and the book proved a commercial success ; but when he speculated with Spiritual Wires, and defiantly outstepped the bounds of decency and toleration, the tide turned, and the wave recoiled upon him : so will it be, we think, with Vol. II. of Her Majesty's Tower. Much of it is borrowed from De Kos' Memorials of the Tower of London, but there the aim and title of the work are kept in view throughout, and not forgotten, as is the case here, in a general atmosphere of verbi- age. The principal plots and events of our political history are always read with interest, whether told in a crude and unembellished manner or described in vigorous and glowing language ; but here we meet with neither ; plot sinks before style and events dissolve into words. Why, then, should this book be thrust forward with such a puff and noise ? What are its contents but some few scenes from English historywritten in a sensational manner and hung upon .st peg never intended for them ? We are briefly and simply told in what part of the Tower the prime movers in certain events were im- prisoned, we are furnished with two long inscriptions from the walls of one important chamber, and we are informed of the position of LIeriot's sun-dial ; but there is naught else to identify the title of the book with its contents, if we except a description of the Powder-Room. Can it be that Mr. Dixon has taken to book-making? In more • than one sense, it is an objectionable calling ; but it is fashionable, and people do not stop to consider its component parts. At first sight, Mr. Dixon's new book looks well ; it is beautifully printed, and the type large—well adapted for getting quickly to the end— but very soon a change for the worse takes place ; we get disgusted at its light, flippant tone, and bewildered at the minutiae and nick- names that beset us. Titles and synonyms are used in the most exhaustive and perplexing way, and one is obliged to thoroughly get by heart all the names that belong to each individual. Thus Robert Carr is spoken of at hap-hazard as " Carr," "Rochester," "Somerset," or " Nestor," and Lady Frances Howard as " Lady Essex," " Countess of Somerset," or " Calypso," and even after these two individuils had been married we read of them as "Lady Somerset and Carr." Mr. Dixon is apparently very fond of mixed allegory, not Scriptural, to judge from the follow- ing sentences :—" But Carr slept soundly in Calypso's lap ;" " Lady Essex and her Nestor ; " Now came a strife between Solo- mon's craft an I Rosalind's wit ;" " When the ' Queen of Hearts' was married to the Palsgraf of the Rhine poor Rosalind hoped that her cousin's heart would open to her woes ;" " The stately and decent Court of Gloriana." How can one avoid being mystified by such absurdities? We know that " Gloriana" is intended for • Her Airway's Tutees, By W. Hepworth Dixon. Vol. IL London: Hurst and
Blackest 1870. •
Queen Elizabeth, but we cannot tell who are the " Queen of Hearts" and the Palsgraf of the Rhine ; and we object to North- ampton as well as Somerset being likened within twenty pages of each other to the hero Nestor, whom neitherof them much resembled. Having got a particular period or event at his fingers' ends, Mr. Dixon assumes that his readers are equally au fait of the subject, whilst in reality the majority are helplessly inquiring of each other who are the persons of whom he is writing so familiarly but un- intelligibly ; the effect of this is, that he gains an excessive amount of credit at the expense of his readers, who are made to think they are more ignorant than they are. We find too here the same want of care and attention in minor matters so palpable in Vol. I. of this work : iu that book scarcely a single inscription was correctly quoted from the prison walls, and the architectural details were very faulty ; in this there are only two inscriptions given, the accuracy of which we have been unable to test, but there are other technical errors of a different kind. On page 98, we read- " Cecil laid before the Lords a paper drawn that very day [Tues- day, November 6] and written from first to last by the King's own pen " ; and on page 172, " On Monday morning [November 4] they heard from Fawkes that all was well at Vinegar House." It is not often that Mr. Dixon condescends to help his readers with a date, and when he does so far make the effort, he fails ; he is also oblivious of the seasons, or he would not talk of " under the green trees and by the limpid streams of Wilton House" in the month of December. But the following passage is certainly a comedy of errors;' Mr. Dixon is speaking of a time prior to the trial of Cobham, Grey, and Markham, in 1603 :—" George Brooke was the brother and heir of Cobham ; these two lives were all that stood between William Cecil, now Lord Cranborne, and a vast estate ; and Cranborne was already promised in marriage to Northampton's niece." First, William Cecil was at this time a boy under four- teen years of age, and as his father, Robert Cecil, was living, the Cobham estate would naturally go to him on the death of Lord Cobham and his brother ; secondly, there was no Lord Cranborne in existence at this date (1603), for the title was not created until two years later, and then it was conferred upon Robert Cecil; and lastly, the sentence that concludes the above remarkable passage is as mysterious as it is incorrect. Who is "Northampton's niece"? Mr. Dixon's way of styling people by relationship-titles is very puzzling, and he assumes here that a young lady, of whom not one in a hundred has ever heard, will instantly be recognized as easily as
"the subject of all verse," Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother."
However, we have ascertained that Northampton, besides having his own niece, the fantastic Frances Howard, acquired two more by the marriage of his nephew the Earl of Suffolk with (1) Mary, daughter of the last Lord Dacre and (2) Katherine, daughter of Sir Henry Knevit ; William Cecil eventually married the daughter of the last-named lady, and not his mother-in-law, " Northamp- ton's niece," as Mr. Dixon puts it. The principal associations in this volume belonging to the Tower are enumerated at the begin- ning of Chapter I., and apparently form the germ from which Mr. Dixon has produced so fine a crop of irrelevant matter ; thus,— "During the fourteen years through which Raleigh wrote in the Bloody Tower and lit his fires in the Garden House, a line of prisoners, more or less closely linked with his fortunes, passed into the Tower. . . . . The first of these prisoners, in point of time, was Thomas, Lord Grey, of Wilton Castle, who lived nine years in the Brick Tower on the northern wall. With Grey cams William Watson and William Clarke, two secular priests, the alleged companions of his crime. These men were followed by Guy Fawkes and his companions, who were thrown into the dungeons of the Keep; by Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne, who were lodged in the lower rooms of the Bloody Tower ; by Father Fisher, who has left his name on a door-post in the White Tower ; by the Earl of Northumberland, ' the Wizard Earl,' who lay in the Martin Tower; by Lady Arabella Stuart, who lived and died in the Belfry and the Lieutenant's house ; by her husband, William Seymour, who escaped from the Water Gate ; by the Countess of Shrewsbury, who occupied the Queen's lodgings; by Sir Thomas Overbury, who was poisoned in the Bloody Tower ; and on the morrow of Raleigh's liberation, by Lord and Lady Somerset, who lived and quarrelled in the Bloody Tower and the Garden house. All these prisoners may be called the Raleigh group. The story of this group of prisoners is that of the rise and fall of a great conspiracy, the Anglo-Spanish Plot."
This is, we suppose, Mr. Dixon's apology for the title of his work, for the latter certainly contains little else that can be considered incidental to the Tower. Still, it does not appear to us to meet any particular want, nor does it command interest by much fresh information of its own, so that in fact it resolves itself into a mere book speculation, with Her Majesty's acceptance of the dedication as an expedient advertisement ; and we think that even here blame is due, and believe that had Her Majesty known of the unhealthy tone of the work, she would not have allowed her name to be associated in any way with its appearance. It is not likely, from its pernicious writing and impure colouring, to secure friends beyond the pale of the circulating library ; there are so many passages either containing double meanings, one of which is objectionable, or else bearing a significance that no lady will care to analyze, that few but universal readers will read it, and fewer still appreciate it ; there is a tendency to draw attention to sub- jects distasteful and of no importance here, to dwell upon them and invest them with a morbid and undue interest. The worst specimens we cannot quote, but we give the two following :—
"That Father Garnet loved good wine and plenty of it, we know from the highest source—himself. Claret was his table-drink, and he liked to wind up his repast with sack. Sometimes he drank so freely that his servants had to put him to bed. Now and then he got drunk. But there is no reason to believe, with Bishop Abbott, that he was a constant sot ; the very life he led being evidence against such a calumny. That he was fond of female society, and indulged his weakness to the point of public scandal, there can be no doubt. The ladies living under his roof may have thought themselves the Martha and Mary of a new reign of grace [t] ; but the Prefect knew that the world would not judge their conduct in this pious vein."
And again,— " Lady Suffolk was no solitary queen of vice, nor was Northampton the only broker in his country's shame. All ranks seemed rotten ; the finest ladies to wear their prices, so to speak, upon their sleeves. A royal closet, unclean with the litter and language of a kennel; galleries besieged by gamesters, pensioners, and jades ; antechambers choked by sorcerers, poisoners, and pimps ; a garden walked by bravoes, ready for any service, however foul and dark, that stood beyond the hangman's reach; with a bald and febrile man of middle age presiding over the dice and drink, the sale and cozenage ; scenes which were varied and disturbed by Lake's reports, by Montagu's divinity, and by Archie's broad grins:—such was the court in which the hoary and dying Northampton was seeking to obtain the Staff. Having failed in his hope of catching the Prince of Wales, he turned his face elsewhere, and Saving made his calculations, taught his pupil how to bend her beautiful, burning eyes on Carr."
We object to this flippant and unnatural style ; it is essentially fast, and will therefore take for a time, like other novelties; but its jerkiness and disconnection will betray its artificial character, and prove it only the book of a day.
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