Like many before him and after him, Charles Lever qualified as a medical doctor in early life but later forsook medicine for writing. His lively devil-may-care stories enthralled the public and in his day his novels were as popular as those of his friend Charles Dickens.
Charles was born in Dublin on 31 August 1806. His father had left Lancashire to work as a builder/architect on some large buildings in Ireland including the GPO and Maynooth College. Charles was educated in private schools where he gained a name as a ringleader in various escapades. It was this spirit of levity that cost five years of his life to gain a BA from Trinity College, Dublin- later many of his student pranks were to be described in his novels.
In 1828 Lever travelled to Canada on an emigrant ship as an unqualified medical practitioner. After landing he got involved with a group of North American Indians. Presumably they didn’t accept his unique sense of humour because he had to flee for his life. He again left Ireland to travel through Germany and Austria but returned to study medicine in Trinity College.
He graduated with an MB in 1831 and the following year he was to be found in Kilrush, Co Clare trying to cope with the epidemic of cholera which had wreaked havoc throughout the country. He found that the poor people in Kilrush showed “splendid heroism and noble generosity to each other in their misfortune”.
h4. Unorthodox approach
When he was appointed medical officer to the dispensary district of Portstewart, Co Derry he married his childhood sweetheart and felt that he was ready to settle down but his unorthodox approach did not endear him to local people. Soon they were referring to him as “the mad doctor” or “Doctor Quicksilver”. One great advantage this appointment had was to give him sufficient free time to start writing fiction.
Lever did not achieve literary or medical success in Portstewart so he and his wife moved to Brussels where he hoped to be accepted as a fashionable physician.
By the time that he had earned his first £50 he found that he had spent £350 so when he was offered the editorship of the Dublin University Magazine he was happy to accept it.
This was a magazine that had serialised his first novel The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, a collection of lively, amusing tales of Irish life. Lever was very surprised at the success of Harry Lorrequer when it was published in book form and he was quoted as saying: “If this sort of thing amuses them I can go on for ever.”
h4. Sir William Wilde
Back in Dublin he settled in Templeogue House which was then on the outskirts of the city. Here he gathered around him the leading wits and conversationalists of the city. Among them was Sir William Wilde, Oscar’s father.
Soon Wilde found that he was spending more time there than he could afford so he stopped attending these soirees. Peeved that Wilde was not visiting anymore, Lever presented himself at Wilde’s house with one eye heavily bandaged so that he would be admitted as a patient. His lavish lifestyle in Templeogue did not last and soon again the Levers were off on their travels.
In 1845 he set off out on a tour of central Europe travelling in a family coach. He rented various castles and maintained his lavish entertaining everywhere he went. Among the famous names who stayed with him was Dickens.
As he travelled, he scrutinised everyone around him as potential characters for his novels. Officers who had served in the Peninsular war in Spain and Portugal gave his material for writing on military matters which he did so well in the novels Charles O’Malley and Tom Burke of Ours. By the time Lever had reached his mid forties he had begun to feel depressed although people found him to be as entertaining as ever.
h4. Element of sadness
Many years before, William Makepeace Thackeray had noted that there was an element of sadness in Lever’s writing which he felt to be part of most Irish writing. Then Lever received a letter from Lord Derby offering him a consulship in Trieste. Derby knew Lever’s outlook on life and told him: “Here is six hundred a year for doing nothing and you are just the man to do it.”
Trieste was at first “all that I could desire” but later he found that it had become “of all the dreary places it has been my lot to sojourn in this is the worst”. His beloved wife died in 1870 causing his depression to worsen. His last visit to Ireland was in the following year and when he returned to Trieste he was found to be suffering from heart disease from which he died in his sleep on 1 June 1872.
Lever’s books are rarely read nowadays so what he told a friend towards the end of his life is a fitting epitaph: “Over and over I have wished that I had never left my dispensary, with its half-crown fees, but such regrets come too late.”
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