The 1901 supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography carries a short life of William Gilbert, the Victorian novelist and social observer, written by Thomas Seccombe. Gilbert, born in 1804 and dead in 1890, spent his first fifty years in medicine, the navy, and journalism before publishing his first book at fifty-four, and he is remembered today less for his own fiction than as the father of W. S. Gilbert of the Savoy operas. The entry is a reference biography rather than a work of criticism, but it sketches a strange and appealing career: a man of strong liberal convictions who turned late to novel-writing and found, in the contrast between rich and poor, the subject that would occupy his remaining three decades.
“He was a strong liberal, and his tall thin figure was familiar at the Reform Club, of which he was for many years a member.”
The Story
A Restless Early Life
Gilbert was born at Bishopstoke on 24 May 1804, the younger son of a colonial broker who claimed descent from Sir Humphrey Gilbert. He was educated at Clapham school, and in 1818 entered the East India Company’s service as a midshipman. His views on the rights of man brought him into conflict with his officers, and he left the service in 1821. After a period with a private tutor, a combination of health, inclination, and economy took him to Italy, where he spent several years, mastered the language, and wrote a volume of poems on Italian subjects and a blank-verse tragedy, Morna, based on Romani’s libretto for Norma. An English version of the old Lucia di Lammermoor libretto belongs to the same period. All of these were printed for private circulation only.
Medicine, the Navy, and Journalism
Returning to England around 1825, Gilbert studied at Guy’s Hospital and was briefly attached to its staff. He served for a time as an assistant surgeon in the navy, then drifted into varied journalistic work. On inheriting a competent fortune from his father he abandoned his profession altogether.
First Books in His Fifties
In 1858, at fifty-four, he published his first book, Dives and Lazarus, a searching study of London slum life and of the deepening contrast between the lots of rich and poor — his favourite subject. Like many of his books it appeared anonymously. Its modest success seems to have encouraged him, for he had been troubled by a sense of failing health and was probably tired of a life in which, despite great natural endowments and varied experience, he had done little or nothing.
Margaret Meadows and the Dramatised Mary Warner
In 1859 came Margaret Meadows, a “tale for the Pharisees.” Tom Taylor dramatised it without the author’s consent, and it succeeded greatly with Miss Bateman in the title role of “Mary Warner.” The dispute went to an arbitrator, who awarded Gilbert damages and ordered his name printed as joint author on the bills; at Gilbert’s own request, that last provision was never carried out.
Shirley Hall Asylum and the Later Novels
Of the later novels the best known was Shirley Hall Asylum (1863), an entertaining study of monomania on which Gilbert wrote with the thorough knowledge of an expert. It drew a letter of unstinted praise from the Comte de Montalembert. Doctor Austin’s Guests followed in 1866, and the same year brought The Magic Mirror, a round of tales for young and old illustrated by W. S. Gilbert. Further novels followed steadily: The Washerwoman’s Foundling and The Wizard of the Mountain in 1867; The Doctor of Beauweir and King George’s Middy, illustrated by “Bab,” in 1868–9; Sir Thomas Branston and a biography of Lucrezia Borgia in 1869; The Landlord of the Sun and Martha in 1871; Clara Levesque in 1872; Facta non Verba in 1874; James Duke, Costermonger, another tale of the social deposits, in 1879; and Memoirs of a Cynic in 1880, a powerful protest against cruelty and hypocrisy in modern disguises, containing what appears to be genuine autobiographical matter. Alongside the fiction he published Disestablishment from a Church point of view (1875) and The City (1877), an inquiry into the Corporation, its Livery Companies, and the administration of their charities and endowments.
Last Years and Death
Gilbert lived latterly at Salisbury, contributing occasionally to Good Words and other magazines and full of literary projects to the end. He was said to be a severe but valuable critic of his son’s comic operas. A strong liberal, his tall thin figure was long familiar at the Reform Club, of which he was a member for many years. He died in the Close at Salisbury on 2 January 1890 and was buried in the cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral on 6 January, the service conducted by his grandson, the Rev. Spencer Weigall of the South African Mission. He had married, on 14 February 1836, Anne, second daughter of Dr. Thomas Morris of Southampton Street, Strand; their son was W. S. Gilbert.
Characters
The entry’s cast is drawn from life rather than fiction. Gilbert himself dominates it: the midshipman whose politics got him dismissed, the Italianate poet of Morna, the hospital and naval surgeon, the anonymous novelist of the slums, the Reform Club liberal, the severe critic of his son’s operas. Around him stand his father, the colonial broker of supposed Gilbert descent; his wife, Anne Morris; his son, W. S. Gilbert, author of the Bab Ballads and The Mikado, who illustrated several of his father’s works and in whose possession hung Henry Weigall’s 1858 portrait of the novelist; and his grandson, the Rev. Spencer Weigall, who conducted his funeral. Two outside figures belong to the Margaret Meadows affair: Tom Taylor, who dramatised the novel without consent, and Miss Bateman, whose “Mary Warner” made it a hit. The Comte de Montalembert appears only as the admiring correspondent of Shirley Hall Asylum.
Themes
The entry returns repeatedly to the contrast between rich and poor, which it calls Gilbert’s favourite subject — the matter of Dives and Lazarus and of James Duke, Costermonger, and the ground of his inquiries into the City’s charities and endowments. A second thread is the late start: a life of varied experience and great natural endowments that produced almost nothing until its author was in his mid-fifties. A third is anonymity and its accidents — books published without a name, a hit play made from a novel without its author’s consent, damages awarded and credit refused. Seccombe’s own assessment, quoted in the prefatory discussion, is that Gilbert’s novels were never very popular but were highly esteemed by a select circle for their originality; that he was a story-teller sui generis, lacking in perspective, in fusing power, and in continuity, yet possessed of a style of sparkling lucidity, a clever rather than profound observation, and a very dry but subtle humour with some infusion of the spirit of Democritus.
Why It Endures
Gilbert’s own reputation has faded, and the entry survives chiefly for two reasons. It is a small, sharp portrait of a Victorian eccentric — the radical midshipman turned anonymous novelist of the social deposits — and it is the record of a literary paternity: the father whose books his famous son illustrated, and whose late, strange fiction stands behind the name that the Bab Ballads and The Mikado made famous.
