Cornhill Magazine

“ The most honoured journalist of to-day is Frederick Greenwood (1830- ) , who has edited "The Cornhill 189 Magazine" and more than one newspaper. He has written poems, stories, and essays, his "Lover's Lexicon" and "Dreams" being two of his latest volumes.
Another editor of The Cornhill Magazine, James Payn (1830- ) , has written many successful novels, of which "Lost Sir Massingberd" (1864) and "By Proxy" (1878) are perhaps the most popular. Mr Payn's many accomplishments, his delightful humour and gift of genial anecdote, have endeared him to a wide circle. ”

“ Tomkins, and poor Emily, and Fanny, and Lucy, who have to sit by and see paterfamilias put to the torture!
Now, on this eventful Saturday, I did not cry, because it was not so much the Editor as the Publisher of the Cornhill Magazine who was brought out for a dressing; and it is wonderful how gallantly one bears the misfortunes of one's friends. That a writer should be taken to task about his books, is fair, and he must abide the praise or the censure. ”

“ Sorell has taken a cottage for him at Boar’s Hill—above Hinksey?’
Yes, Connie knew. She seemed suddenly on her guard.
‘But he can’t live alone?’ said Nora. ‘Who on earth’s going to look after him?’
Connie hesitated. Down a side street she perceived the stately front of Marmion, and at the same moment a tall man emerging from the dusk crossed the street and entered the Marmion gate. Her heart leapt. No! Absurd! He and Otto had not arrived yet. But already the Oxford dark, and the beautiful Oxford distances were peopled for her with visions and prophecies of [242] hope. ”

“ Since the destruction by fire of the Royal Exchange in 1838, there has been added to the curiosities of Cornhill a thickset, sturdy, and hirsute crossing-sweeper—a man who is as civil by habit as he is independent by nature. He has a long flowing beard, grey as wood smoke, and a pair of fierce moustaches, giving a patriarchal air of importance to a marked and observant face, which often serves as a painter’s model. ”

“ One of the things which I am proudest of as regards the Cornhill is the fact that I was able to discover three or four new writers who later made names for themselves. One of these was Mr. Patchett Martin, who, in a series of books, Deeds that Won the Empire, showed himself extraordinarily adept at carrying on the Macaulay tradition of readableness and picturesqueness in the handling of historical events. Another "find" was Mr. Bullen, a man really inspired with the spirit of the sea, and a man with a sense of literature. ”

“ Is Mr. Home himself a conscious and controlling agent in the effects produced, and are the manifestations of the so-called Spirits the tricks and devices of his own ingenuity? Is he, in short, a conjuror, without the candour to avow his function? If so, he may tell us that he “is thoroughly impassive in these matters, and that, whatever happens, happens from causes over which he has not the slightest influence;” but his statement is merely a part of his jugglery, and the writer of the “Cornhill” narrative is begging the entire question when he terms it “unreserved,” as if it were true. ”

“ This bit of Cornhill swindling was considered rather sharp practice, even for that locality, and ended by shrouding the girl in an impenetrable mystery, and giving to the old chief a child, who, as she expanded and grew up became quite as dear to his heart as any one of his own offspring; and in fact, by reason of her superior intelligence, she became far more so, for mind ever makes itself felt and admired. ”

“ Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, first ushered into the world as a serial in the Cornhill. To the Cornhill for many years Du Maurier has every month contributed an illustration; he has reproduced every possible situation that is likely to be encountered in the English novel of manners; he has interpreted pictorially innumerable flirtations, wooings, philanderings, ruptures. The interest of the English novel of manners is frequently the interest of the usual; the situations presented to the artist are apt to lack superficial{345} strangeness. ”

“ I wrote at once to him, telling him that I had become Editor of the new Cornhill, and asking him to write for me, under the seal of secrecy, a monthly article in Diary form, which was to be called "Pages from a Private Diary" In it he was to put all the best things he could think of in the way of good stories, criticism of matters old and new, comments upon life, literature, and conduct, accounts of historical figures and historical events, all informed with verve and interest and all presented in that inimitable style, half-serious, half- quizzical, of which Beeching was a master. ”

“ You must take the City of Letters by Storm. It will never yield to a mere summons to surrender.
The Cornhill, though so agreeable an experience, did not last long. The Spectator soon claimed me for its own. I had to resign the Cornhill in order, first, to find more time for The Spectator, and then, to carry the full weight of editorship which came to me with Mr. Hutton's death. Mr. Hutton's death was quickly followed by Mr. Townsend's retirement. This made me, not only sole Editor, but sole Proprietor, of the paper. ”

“ James’s ceased to patronize them, Bloomsbury voted them low, and Cornhill declared them a nuisance. Journalists, having as yet no readers in the slums, [Pg 200] and therefore writing exclusively for St. ”

“ He was a close friend of King John, and hated as one of the cruellest of his evil counsellors. It was under his auspices that Cornhill, who was probably his nephew, but possibly his son, first entered into public life. About 1204 Cornhill's name begins to appear frequently in the records as a royal clerk and an officer of the exchequer. In that year he received from King John the grant of some houses in London (Rotuli Chartarum, i. 123) ”

“ I have a very short mental as well as physical sight in some matters, and am far less uneasy at the idea of public impatience, misconstruction, censure, etc., than I am at the thought of the anxiety of those two or three friends in Cornhill to whom I owe much kindness, and whose expectations I would earnestly wish not to disappoint. If they can make up their minds to wait tranquilly, p. ”

“ For the waves of Cornwall said: “If we surround them, they will merely elude us. And if they elude us, they will regard our strength and our cunning as mere attributes in a game of play invented by themselves. ”

“ There is no virtue in the dead hand of a near relation. A curious old troth plight was formerly practised in Cornwall: The couple broke a wedding ring taken from the finger of a corpse, and each kept one half. The editor of a local paper (Cornishman) once obtained a piece of rope, with which a man was hanged, for a poor woman who had walked fourteen miles to Bodmin in the hopes of getting it, that she might effect the cure of her sore eyes. [154]
The Rev. S. Rundle writes that “a Cornish surgeon recommended a charmer as being more efficacious than himself in curing shingles. ”

“ CHAPTER XV THE MECHANISM OF THE CORNELIAN TRAGEDY
The ideal of the deliberative will, then, formed the real, living passion of this man devoid of passions; for no one that lives can withhold himself from passion: he is only able to change its object by passing from one to the other. The judgment that holds Corneille to be an intrinsically prosaic, ratiocinatory and casuistical genius is therefore to be looked upon as lacking of penetration. Had he been a casuist, it seems clear that he would have composed casuistical works. ”

“ The unfortunate fellow never recovered from the shock, but died in a lunatic asylum.” “A middle-aged Camborne man was subject to violent fits until two years ago, when some one told him to kill a toad, put one of its legs in a bag, and wear it suspended by a string around his neck. He did so, and has never had a fit since.”—Cornishman, December, 1881.
“In Cornwall a black cock is buried on the spot where the person is first attacked by epilepsy” (to avert a similar attack) .—Comparative Folk-Lore, Cornhill, 1876.
For other charms see Addenda, A Bundle of Charms, by the Rev. ”

“ Deacon Cornhill listened with open-mouthed wonder to the rapid account of his youthful friend, unable to speak until he had concluded, when he managed to say:
“I don’t know what is proper to say to you, boy. You have done me a sarvice I shall never forget, if I live to be as old as Methusaleh; I shan’t, I vum I shan’t. I want to pay for it. Who’d thought them slick-seeming men were sich cutthroats?”
“Black your boots and make ’em shine? I ain’t no time to waste in perlaver. They need it. Time’s money, and bizness must be ’tended to afore pleasure.” ”

“ Corneille was "of the Court" by all his feelings and by all his prejudices, and he shared Mademoiselle's belief that there is a natural difference between the man of quality and the man below the quality, because generous virtues are mingled with the blood which runs in noble veins, while the blood of the man of lower birth is mingled with lower passions. Being a true courtier, Corneille believed that above the two varieties of the human kind—the quality and the lesser people—Providence set the order of Princes who are of an essence apart, elect, and quasi-divine. ”

“ It is no uncommon thing for a Cornishman to build his own house, make his own shoes, be both fisherman and miner, and, possibly, small shop-keeper besides; and wherever the Cornish miner emigrates, he is pretty sure to take the lead in enterprise and danger.
Wilkie Collins says: "As a body of men they are industrious, intelligent, sober, and orderly, neither soured by hard work, nor depressed by harsher privations"; and the old poet Taylor, in 1649, writes: "Cornwall is the compleate and repleate Home of Abundance, for high, churlish hills and affable, courteous people. ”

“ Grown to a woman worthy
Of Garibaldi's kiss!"
Doggrel? Yes, doggrel no doubt! Let us pass on.
In the early numbers of our Cornish Magazine a host of contributors (some of them highly distinguished) discussed the question, 'How to develop Cornwall as a holiday resort.' 'How to bedevil it' was, I fear, our name in the editorial office for this correspondence. More and more as the debate went on I found myself out of sympathy with it, and more and more in sympathy with a lady who raised an indignant protest—
"Unless Cornishmen look to it, their country will be spoilt before they know it. ”

“ A chorus of protests arose from the bed.
“For mercy’s sake, Cornie, you’re surely not going down to see a man on business now! What on earth? Did you really get to be an interior decorator, after all? You don’t mean it! I thought you were just kidding when you wrote about it. What do you mean? They’re only poor people. Well, what do you care? You’re surely not going on with such things after you’re married?”
Cornelia, flinging the masses of her hair into a lovely [Pg 369] coil, and fastening the snaps of her little blue organdie, smiled again dreamily. ”

“ But the difficulty can only exist for persons who are insensible to dramatic excellence, or who so strongly object to the forms of the French drama that they cannot relish anything so presented. Rodrigue, Chimène, Don Diègue are not of any age, but of all time. The conflicting passions of love, honour, duty, are here represented as they never had been on a French stage, and in the “strong style” which was Corneille’s own. Of the many objections urged against the play, perhaps the weightiest is that which condemns the frigid and superfluous part of the Infanta. ”

“ Such is the singular passion that fills Corneille's tragedies. The creatures that give utterance to it are hardly human beings: they are embodiments of will, force, intellect and pride. The situations in which they are placed are calculated to expose these qualities to the utmost; and all Corneille's masterpieces are concerned with the same subject—the combat between indomitable egoism and the forces of Fate. It is in the meeting of these 'fell incensed opposites' that the tragedy consists. ”

“ I am frequently reminded of that difference here in Cornwall. Anywhere in Cornwall you may see a carter, a miner, a fisherman, a bricklayer, who with the high distinction of his finely cast face, the mingling in his manner of easy nonchalance and old-world courtesy, seems only to need a visit to the tailor to add dignity to a Pall Mall club. No doubt England is not a new country, and the English lower social classes have become in a definite degree more aristocratic than those of Russia or even Germany. But the forefathers of the Cornish were civilised when we English were a horde of savages. ”

“ Young Cornwallis was a person of great distinction; at two he had become an individual with one paramount object in life—not to be treated longer as a baby. It is difficult at two years of age to overawe one's superiors. ”

“ The fact that one of the characters jumps on another’s back, and the rather promiscuous kissing which takes place, are nothing to the liberties usually taken in contemporary plays. A worse fault is the στιχομυθία, or, to borrow Butler’s expression, the Cat-and-Puss dialogue, which abounds. But the common objection to the play at the time was that it was too natural and too devoid of striking incidents. Corneille accordingly, as he tells us, set to work to cure these faults, and produced a truly wonderful work, Clitandre. Murders, combats, escapes and outrages of all kinds are provided ”