THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ^ ISAAC FOOT <
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 BEING MEMORIALS OF 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, DEAN OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 HENRY ALFORD, DEAN OF CANTERBURY 
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 
 
 ETC. 
 
 AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 1 MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE," " THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES, 
 ETC 
 
 LONDON 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD 
 
 1895 
 
 [All rights reserved}
 
 I'rinted by BAI.LANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ON the day after Arthur Stanley died, his 
 only surviving sister and his most intimate 
 friend, Hugh Pearson, wrote to me, asking me 
 to be his biographer. I gladly accepted the 
 office, as I felt sure that no one could know more 
 of a cousin with whom much of my life had 
 been spent, and to whose kindness in my 
 boyhood and youth I had been most deeply 
 indebted. But Sir George Grove, who was 
 one of his literary executors, did not consider 
 me competent for the work, and at first under- 
 took to carry it out himself, afterwards intrusting 
 it to others, whom to the utmost of my power 
 I helped with materials. To myself, it was 
 only left to write a magazine article, without 
 any material but my own recollections and such 
 letters as I personally possessed. It is given 
 again here, in a slightly enlarged form, with
 
 VI PREFACE 
 
 illustrations. To this are added some memorials 
 of my dear friend, Henry Alford, Dean of Can- 
 terbury, and of Mrs. Duncan Stewart, a clever 
 and charming old lady, who was for some years 
 a well-known figure in London society. 1 
 
 AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. 
 
 1 The Article on Arthur Penrhyn Stanley first appeared in Mac- 
 millans Magazine ; that on Mrs. Duncan Stewart in Good Words ; 
 that on Paray le Monial in Evening Hours.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I'AGB 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. . . . I 
 
 HENRY ALFORD 95 
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 137 
 
 PARAY LE MON1AL 183
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 ALDERLEY RKCTORY AND CHURCH .... 5 
 
 ALDERLEY MERE 15 
 
 HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY 38 
 
 EDWARD STANLEY, BISHOP OF NORWICH . To face 42 
 
 RUIN IN THE PALACE GARDEN, NORWICH ... 44 
 
 BISHOP'S BRIDGE, NORWICH 45 
 
 THE CHAPEL DOOR, PALACE, NORWICH ... 47 
 
 NORWICH FROM MOUSEHOLD 48 
 
 CATHERINE STANLEY To face 55 
 
 CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, CANTERBURY ... 57 
 
 SITE OK BECKET'S SHRINE, CANTERBURY ... 59 
 
 MARY STANLEY 7 face 62 
 
 CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, CHRIST CHURCH ... 67 
 
 COURTYARD, DEANERY, WESTMINSTER .... 73 
 
 LADY AUGUSTA STANLEY . . . 7 face 74 
 
 CHANTRY OF HENRY V., WESTMINSTER ... 90 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, DEAN OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 To face 92 
 
 IN THE DEANERY GARDEN, CANTERBURY . . .121 
 
 HKNRY ALFORD, DEAN OF CANTERBURY . To face 126 
 
 FROM THE DEAN'S GARDEN, CANTERBURY . . . 129 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S, CANTERBURY 135 
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART To face 174 
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 197 
 
 SHRINE OF MARGUERITE-MARIE ALACOQUF. . . . 207 
 
 Mil
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 THERE are few country places in England 
 which possess such a singular charm as Alder- 
 ley. All who have lived in it have loved it, 
 and to the Stanley family it has ever presented 
 the ideal of that which is most interesting and 
 beautiful. There the usually flat pasture-lands 
 of Cheshire rise suddenly into the rocky ridge 
 of Alderley Edge, with its Holy Well under 
 an overhanging cliff, its gnarled pine-trees, and 
 its storm-beaten beacon-tower ready to give 
 notice of an invasion, looking far over the 
 green plain to the smoke of Stockport and 
 Macclesfield, which indicates the presence of 
 great towns on the horizon. Beautiful are the 
 beech-woods which clothe the western side of 
 the Edge, and feather over mossy lawns to the 
 mere, which receives a reflection of their gor-
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 geous autumnal tints, softened by a blue haze 
 on its still waters. 
 
 Beyond the mere and Lord Stanley's park, 
 on the edge of the pasture-lands, are the church 
 and its surroundings a wonderfully harmoni- 
 ous group, encircled by trees, with the old tim- 
 bered inn of the " Eagle and Child " at the 
 corner of the lane which turns up to them. In 
 later times the church itself has undergone 
 a certain amount of "restoration," but sixty 
 years ago it was marvellously picturesque, its 
 chancel mantled in ivy of massy folds, which, 
 while they concealed the rather indifferent 
 architecture, had a glory of their own very 
 different from that of the clipped, ill-used ivy 
 which we generally see on such buildings ; but 
 the old clock-tower, the outside stone staircase 
 leading to the Park pew, the crowded groups 
 of large square, lichen-stained gravestones, the 
 disused font in the churchyard overhung by 
 a yew-tree, and the gable-ended schoolhouse 
 at the gate, built of red sandstone, with grey 
 copings and mullioned windows, were the same. 
 
 Close by was the rectory, with its garden 
 the "Dutch Garden," of many labyrinthine 
 flower-beds joining the churchyard. A low 
 house, with a verandah, forming a wide balcony 
 for the upper story, where bird-cages hung
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 amongst the roses ; its rooms and passages 
 filled with pictures, books, and the old carved 
 oak furniture, usually little sought after or 
 valued in those days, but which the Rector 
 delighted to pick up amongst his cottages. 
 
 This Rector, Edward Stanley, younger brother 
 of the Sir John who was living at the Park, 
 was a little man, active in figure and in move- 
 ment, with dark, piercing eyes, rendered more 
 remarkable by the snow-white hair which was 
 characteristic of him even when very young. 
 With the liveliest interest on all subjects- 
 political, philosophical, scientific, theological ; 
 with inexhaustible plans for the good of the 
 human race in general, but especially for the 
 benefit of his parishioners and the amusement 
 of his seven nieces at the Park, he was the 
 most popular character in the country-side. 
 To children* he was indescribably delightful. 
 There was nothing that he was not supposed 
 to know and indeed who was there who knew 
 more than he of insect life, of the ways and 
 habits of birds, of fossils and where to find 
 them, of drawing, of etching on wood and litho- 
 graphing on stone, of plants and gardens, of 
 the construction of ships and boats, and of 
 the thousand home manufactures of which he 
 was a complete master ?
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 In his thirty-first year Edward Stanley had 
 married Catherine, eldest daughter of Oswald 
 Leycester, afterwards Rector of Stoke-upon- 
 Terne, of an old Cheshire family, which, through 
 many generations, had been linked with that 
 of the Stanleys in the intimacy of friendship 
 and neighbourhood ; for Toft, the old seat of 
 the Leycesters and the pleasantest of family 
 homes, was only a few miles from Alderley. 
 
 At the time of her engagement, Catherine 
 Leycester was only sixteen, and at the time of 
 her marriage only eighteen, but from childhood 
 she had been accustomed to form her own 
 character by thinking, reading, and digesting 
 what she read. Owing to her mother's ill- 
 health, she had very early in life had the re- 
 sponsibility of educating and training her sister, 
 who was much younger than herself. She was 
 the best of listeners, fixing her ejjes upon the 
 speaker, but saying little herself, so that her 
 old uncle, Hugh Leycester, used to assert of 
 her, " Kitty has much sterling gold, but gives 
 no ready change." To the frivolity of an ordi- 
 nary acquaintance, her mental superiority and 
 absolute self-possession of manner must always 
 have made her somewhat alarming ; but those 
 who had the opportunity of penetrating be- 
 neath the surface were no less astonished at
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 5 
 
 her originality and freshness of ideas, and her 
 keen, though quiet, enjoyment of life, its pur- 
 suits and friendships, than by the calm wisdom 
 of her advice, and her power of penetration 
 
 ALDERLEY RECTORY AND CHURCH. 
 
 into the characters, and consequently the temp- 
 tations and difficulties, of others. 
 
 In the happy home of Alderley Rectory her 
 five children were brought up. Her eldest 
 son, Owen, had from the first shown that 
 
 interest in all things relating to ships and 
 
 *
 
 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 naval affairs which had been his father's natu- 
 ral inclination in early life ; and the youngest, 
 Charles, from an early age had turned his 
 hopes to the profession of a Royal Engineer, 
 in which he afterwards became distinguished. 
 Arthur, the second boy, born December 13, 
 1815, and named after the Duke of Wellington, 
 was always delicate, so delicate that it was 
 scarcely hoped at first he would live to grow 
 up. From his earliest childhood, his passion 
 for poetry, and historical studies of every kind, 
 gave promise of a literary career, and engaged 
 his mother's unwearied interest in the forma- 
 tion of his mind and character. A pleasant 
 glimpse of the home life at Alderley in May, 
 1818, is given in a letter from Mrs. Stanley 
 to her sister, Maria Leycester : 
 
 " How I have enjoyed these fine days, and one's 
 pleasure is doubled, or rather I should say trebled, in 
 the enjoyment of the three little children basking in 
 the sunshine on the lawns and picking up daisies and 
 finding new flowers every day, and in seeing Arthur 
 expand like one of the flowers in the fine weather. 
 Owen trots away to school at nine o'clock every 
 morning, with his Latin grammar under his arm, 
 leaving Mary with a strict charge to unfurl his flag, 
 which he leaves carefully furled, through the little 
 gothic gate, as soon as the clock strikes twelve. So 
 Mary unfurls the flag and then watches till Owen
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 7 
 
 comes in sight, and as soon as he spies her signal 
 he sets off full gallop towards it, and Mary creeps 
 through the gate to meet him, and then comes with 
 as much joy to announce Owen's being come back, 
 as if he was returned from the North Pole. Mean- 
 while I am sitting with the doors open into the trellis, 
 so that I can see and hear all that passes." 
 
 In the same year, after an absence, Mrs. 
 Stanley wrote : 
 
 i( Alder ley, Sept. 14, 1818. What happy work it 
 was getting home ! The little things were as happy 
 to see us as we could desire. They all came dancing 
 out, and clung round me, and kissed me by turns, and 
 were certainly more delighted than they had ever been 
 before to see us again. They had not only not forgot 
 us, but not forgot a bit about us. Everything that we 
 had done and said and written was quite fresh and 
 present to their minds, and I should be assured in 
 vain that all my trouble in writing to them was thrown 
 away. Arthur is grown so interesting, and so enter- 
 taining too, he talks incessantly, runs about and 
 amuses himself, and is full of pretty speeches, repartees, 
 and intelligence : the dear little creature would not 
 leave me, or stir without holding my hand, and he 
 knew all that had been going on quite as much as the 
 others. He is more like Owen than ever, only softer, 
 more affectionate, and not what you call ' so fine a boy.' " 
 
 When he was four years old, we find his 
 mother writing to her sister :
 
 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 "January 30, 1820. As for the children, my Arthur 
 is sweeter than ever. His drawing fever goes on, and 
 his passion for pictures and birds, and he will talk 
 sentiment to Mademoiselle about le printcmps, les 
 oiseaux, and les fleurs, when he walks out. When he 
 went to Highlake, he asked quite gravely whether 
 it would not be good for his little wooden horse to 
 have some sea-bathing ! " 
 
 And again, in the following summer : 
 
 " Alderley, July 6, 1820. I have been taking a 
 domestic walk with the three children and the pony to 
 Owen's favourite cavern, Mary and Arthur taking it 
 in turns to ride. Arthur was sorely puzzled between 
 his fear and his curiosity. Owen and Mary, full of 
 adventurous spirit, went with Mademoiselle to explore. 
 Arthur stayed with me and the pony, but when I said 
 I would go, he said, colouring, he would go, he thought : 
 ' But, Mamma, do you think there are any wild dogs 
 in the cavern ? ' Then we picked up various specimens 
 of cobalt, &c., and we carried them in a basket, and we 
 called at Mrs. Barber's, and we got some string, and 
 we tied the basket to the pony with some trouble, and 
 we got home very safe, and I finished the delights of 
 the evening by reading ' Paul and Virginia ' to Owen 
 and Mary, with which they were much delighted, and 
 so was I. 
 
 "You would have given a good deal for a peep 
 at Arthur this evening, making hay with all his little 
 strength such a beautiful colour, and such soft ani- 
 mation in his blue eyes."
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 It was often remarked that Mrs. Stanley's 
 children were different from those of any one 
 else ; but this was not to be wondered at. 
 Their mother not only taught them their 
 lessons, she learnt all their lessons with them. 
 Whilst other children were plodding through 
 dull histories of disconnected countries and 
 ages, of which they were unutterably weary 
 at the time, and of which they remembered 
 nothing afterwards, Mrs. Stanley's system was 
 to take a particular era, and, upon the basis 
 of its general history, to pick out for her chil- 
 dren from different books, whether memoirs, 
 chronicles, or poetry, all that bore upon it, 
 making it at once an interesting study to her- 
 self and them, and talking it over with them 
 in a way which encouraged them to form their 
 own opinion upon it, to have theories as to 
 how such-and-such evils mio-ht have been 
 
 o 
 
 forestalled or amended, and so to fix it in 
 their recollection. 
 
 To an imaginative child, Alderley was the 
 most delightful place possible, and whilst 
 Owen Stanley delighted in the clear brook 
 which dashes through the Rectory garden for 
 the ships of his own manufacture then as 
 engrossing as the fitting out of the Ariel 
 upon the mere in later boyhood little Arthur
 
 IO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 revelled in the legends of the neighbourhood 
 of its wizard of Alderley Edge, with a hundred 
 horses sleeping in an enchanted cavern, and of 
 the church-bell which fell down a steep hill 
 into Rostherne Mere, and which is tolled by 
 a mermaid when any member of a great neigh- 
 bouring family is going to die. 
 
 Being the poet of the little family, Arthur 
 Stanley generally put his ideas .into verse, and 
 there are lines of his written at eleven years old, 
 on seeing the sunrise from the top of Alder- 
 ley church-tower, and at twelve years old, on 
 witnessing the departure of the Ganges, bear- 
 ing his brother Owen from Spithead, which 
 give evidence of poetical power, more fully 
 evinced two years later in his longer poems 
 on "The Druids" and on "The Maniac of 
 Betharam." When he was old enough to go 
 to school, his mother wrote an amusing account 
 of the turn-out of his pockets and desk before 
 leaving home, and the extraordinary collection 
 of crumpled scraps of poetry which were found 
 there. In March 1821 Mrs. Stanley wrote: 
 
 " Arthur is in great spirits, and looks well prepared 
 to do honour to the jacket and trousers preparing for 
 him. He is just now opposite to me, lying on the 
 sofa (his lesson being concluded) reading Miss Edge- 
 worth's ' Frank ' to himself most eagerly. I must
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY I I 
 
 tell you his moral deductions from ' Frank.' The other 
 day, as I was dressing, Arthur, Charlie, and Elizabeth 
 were playing in the passage. I heard a great crash, 
 which turned out to be Arthur running very fast, not 
 stopping himself in time, and coming against the win- 
 dow at the end of the passage, so as to break three 
 panes. He was not hurt, but I heard Elizabeth 
 remonstrating with him on the crime of breaking 
 windows, to which he answered with great sang-froid, 
 'Yes, but you know Frank's mother said she would 
 rather have all the windows in the house broke than 
 that Frank should tell a lie : so now I can go and 
 tell Mamma, and then I shall be like Frank.' I did 
 not make my appearance, so when the door opened 
 for the entree after dinner, Arthur came in first in 
 something of a bustle, with cheeks as red as fire, and 
 eyes looking as his eyes do look saying the instant 
 the door opened, ' Mamma ! I have broke three panes 
 of glass in the passage window : and I tell you now 
 'cause I was afraid to forget.' I am not sure whether 
 there is not a very inadequate idea left on his mind as 
 to the sin of glass-breaking, and that he rather thought 
 it a fine thing having the opportunity of coming to tell 
 Mamma something like Frank ; however, there was 
 some little effort, vide the agitation and red cheeks, 
 so we must not be hypercritical." 
 
 After he was eight years old, Mrs. Stanley, 
 who knew the interest and capacity of her little 
 Arthur about everything, was much troubled 
 by his becoming so increasingly shy, that he
 
 12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 never would speak if he could help it, even 
 when he was alone with her, and she dreaded 
 that the companionship of other boys at school, 
 instead of drawing him out, would only make 
 him shut himself up more within himself. Still, 
 in the frequent visits which his parents paid to 
 the seaside at Highlake, he always recovered 
 his lost liveliness of manner and movement, 
 climbed merrily up the sandhills, and was never 
 tired in mind or body. It was therefore a 
 special source of rejoicing when it was found 
 that Mr. Rawson the Vicar of Seaforth (a place 
 five miles from Liverpool, and only half a mile 
 from the sea), had a school for nine little boys, 
 and thither in 1824 it was decided that Arthur 
 should be sent. In August his young aunt 
 wrote : 
 
 "Arthur liked the idea of going to school, as making 
 him approach nearer to Owen. We took him last 
 Sunday evening from Crosby, and he kept up very 
 well till we were to part, but when he was to separate 
 from us to join his new companions, he clung to us in 
 a piteous manner and burst into tears. Mr. Rawson 
 very good-naturedly offered to walk with us a little 
 way, and walk back with Arthur, which he liked 
 better, and he returned with Mr. R. very manfully. 
 On Monday evening we went to have a look at him 
 before leaving the neighbourhood, and found the little 
 fellow as happy as possible, much amused with the
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY I 3 
 
 novelty of the situation, and talking of the boys' pro- 
 ceedings with as much importance as if he had been 
 there for months. He wished us good-bye in a very 
 firm tone, and we have heard since from his Uncle 
 Penrhyn that he had been spending some hours with 
 him, in which he laughed and talked incessantly of 
 all that he did at school. He is very proud of being 
 called 'Stanley,' and seems to like it altogether very 
 much. The satisfaction to Mamma and Auntie is not 
 to be told of having disposed of this little sylph in so 
 excellent a manner. Every medical man has always 
 said that a few years of constant sea-air would make 
 him quite strong, and to find this united to so desir- 
 able a master as Mr. R., and so careful and kind a 
 protectress as Mrs. R., is being very fortunate." 
 
 In the following summer the same pen writes 
 from Alderley to one of the family : 
 
 "July 1825. You know how dearly I love all these 
 children, and it has been such a pleasure to see them 
 all so happy together Owen, the hero upon whom all 
 their little eyes were fixed, and the delicate Arthur 
 able to take his own share of boyish amusements with 
 them, and telling out his little store of literary wonders 
 to Charlie and Catherine. School has not transformed 
 him into a rough boy yet. He is a little less shy, but 
 not much. He brought back from school a beautiful 
 prize-book for history, of which he is not a little proud ; 
 and Mr. Rawson has told several people, unconnected 
 with the Stanleys, that he never had a more amiable, 
 attentive, or clever boy than Arthur Stanley, and that
 
 14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 he never has had to find fault with him since he came. 
 My sister finds, in examining him, that he not only 
 knows what he has learnt himself, but that he picks 
 up all the knowledge gained by the other boys in their 
 lessons, and can tell what each boy in the school has 
 read, &c. His delight in reading 'Madoc' and 'Thalaba' 
 is excessive." 
 
 In the following year Miss Leycester 
 writes : 
 
 "Stoke, August 26, 1826. My Alderley children 
 are more interesting than ever. Arthur is giving Mary 
 quite a literary taste, and is of the greatest advantage 
 to her possible, for they are now quite inseparable 
 companions, reading, drawing, and writing together. 
 Arthur has written a poem on the life of a peacock- 
 butterfly in the Spenserian stanza, with all the old 
 words, with references to Chaucer, &c., at the bottom 
 of the page ! To be sure, it would be singular if they 
 were not different from other children, with the advan- 
 tages they have where education is made so interesting 
 and amusing as it is to them. ... I never saw any- 
 thing equal to Arthur's memory and quickness in 
 picking up knowledge ; seeming to have just the sort 
 of intuitive sense of everything relating to books that 
 Owen had in ships, and then there is such affection 
 and sweetness of disposition in him. . . . You will not 
 be tired of all this detail of those so near my heart. It 
 is always such a pleasure to me to write of the Rectory, 
 and I can always do it better when I am away from it 
 and it rises before my mental vision."
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 The summer of 1826 was marked for the 
 Stanleys by the news of the death of their 
 beloved friend Reginald Heber, and by the 
 marriage of Isabella Stanley to Captain Parry, 
 the Arctic voyager, an event at which his 
 
 ALDEKLEY MERE. 
 
 mother " could not resist sending for her little 
 Arthur to be present." Meantime he was 
 happy at school, and wrote long histories home 
 of all that took place there, especially amused 
 with his drilling sergeant, who told him to "put
 
 1 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 on a bold, swaggering air, and not to look 
 sheepish." But each time of his return to 
 Alderley he seemed shier than ever, and his 
 mother became increasingly concerned at his 
 want of boyishness. His cousin Emma Tatton, 
 afterwards Lady Mainwaring, recollected how, 
 when a large party of children were playing 
 together, she said, " Now, Arthur, you must 
 come and play at trap and ball." " But I can't, 
 Cousin Emma," the boy answered, hanging 
 down his hands and head. " But you must." 
 "No, Cousin Emma, I really can't." "Well 
 then, Arthur, I'll tell you what, I'll let you off, 
 if you'll go at once and write me an ode to a 
 Snowdrop and give it to me to-morrow morn- 
 ing at breakfast ; " and the next morning it was 
 ready. Here is a paraphase of Psalm cxxxix. 
 which he wrote at twelve years old (1827) :- 
 
 " If up to heav'n I wing my flight, 
 And seek the realms of endless light, 
 There Thy eternal glories shine, 
 And all is holy, all divine, 
 All free from sin, and pain, and care, 
 For, full of mercy, Thou art there ! 
 
 If I descend to deepest hell, 
 Where evil souls for ever dwell 
 And bitterly lament their woe, 
 While torturing fires for ever glow, 
 Thy dreadful vengeance there I fear, 
 For Thou, O mighty Lord, art there !
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 1 7 
 
 If through the ocean's path I stray, 
 And o'er its surface urge my way, 
 If blows the wind, if mounts the wave, 
 Thy strong right hand can always save, 
 Though many storms obscure the air, 
 For, wrapt in tempests, Thou art there ! 
 
 If, wand'ring from my native home, 
 
 To earth's remotest verge I come, 
 
 Where everlasting winter reigns 
 
 And binds the seas in icy chains, 
 
 Or where the sun-scorched deserts glare, 
 
 In heat or cold, Thou, Lord, art there ! 
 
 Whether the rosy morning rise 
 With radiance on the gladdened skies, 
 Or noon shed forth his burning ray, 
 Or evening bring the close of day, 
 Thy glories through the world appear, 
 For Thou, O gracious Lord, art there ! 
 
 In vain amid the darkest night 
 
 I would escape Thy piercing sight : 
 
 Thou through the deepest shade can'st see, 
 
 And darkness is as light to Thee, 
 
 E'en as the brightest noontide glare, 
 
 For Thou, omniscient God, art there ! 
 
 Where from Thy presence shall I fly ? 
 Where hide from Thy all-searching eye ? 
 My deeds are still before Thy face, 
 Thy goodness is -in every place : 
 Thy bounteous grace is ever near, 
 For Thou, O Lord, art everywhere ! "
 
 I 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 We find Mrs. Stanley writing: 
 
 "January 27, 1828. Oh, it is so difficult to know 
 how to manage Arthur. He takes having to learn 
 dancing so terribly to heart, and enacts Prince Pitiful ; 
 and will, I am afraid, do no good at it. Then he thinks 
 I do not like his reading because I try to draw him 
 also to other things, and so he reads by stealth, and 
 lays down his book when he hears people coming; 
 and having no other pursuits or anything he cares for 
 but reading, has a listless look, and I am sure he is 
 very often unhappy. I suspect, however, that this is 
 Arthur's worst time, and that he will be a happier man 
 than boy." 
 
 In January 1828 Mrs. Stanley wrote to 
 Augustus W. Hare, long an intimate friend 
 of the family, and soon about to marry her 
 sister : 
 
 " I have Arthur at home, and I have rather a 
 puzzling card to play with him how not to encourage 
 too much his poetical tastes, and to spoil him, in 
 short and yet how not to discourage what in reality 
 one wishes to grow, and what he, being timid and shy 
 to a degree, would easily be led to shut up entirely to 
 himself; and then he suffers so much from a laudable 
 desire to be with other boys, and yet, when with them, 
 finds his incapacity to enter into their pleasures of 
 shooting, hunting, horses, and take theirs for his. He 
 will be happier as a man, as literary men are more 
 within reach than literary boys."
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 19 
 
 In the following month she wrote : 
 
 " Alderley, February 8, 1828. Now I am going to 
 ask your opinion and advice, and perhaps your assist- 
 ance, on my own account. We are beginning to consider 
 what is to be done with Arthur, and it will be time 
 for him to be moved from his small school in another 
 year, when he will be thirteen. We have given up all 
 thoughts of Eton for him from the many objections, 
 combined with the great expense. Now I want to ask 
 your opinion about Shrewsbury, Rugby, and Win- 
 chester ; do you think, from what you know of Arthur's 
 character and capabilities, that Winchester would suit 
 him, and vice versa ? " 
 
 In answer to this Augustus Hare wrote to 
 her from Naples : 
 
 "March 26, 1828. Are you aware that the person 
 of all others fitted to get on with boys is just elected 
 master of Rugby ? His name is Arnold. He is a 
 Wykehamist and Fellow of Oriel, and a particular 
 friend of mine a man calculated beyond all others to 
 engraft modern scholarship and modern improvements 
 on the old-fashioned stem of a public education. 
 Winchester under him would be the best school in 
 Europe ; what Rugby may turn out I cannot say, for 
 I know not the materials he has there to work on." 
 
 A few weeks later he added : 
 
 "Florence, April 19, 1828. I am so little satisfied 
 with what I said about Arthur in my last letter, that I
 
 2O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 am determined to begin with him and do him more 
 justice. What you describe him now to be, I once 
 was; and I have myself suffered too much and too 
 often from my inferiority in strength and activity to 
 boys who were superior to me in nothing else, not 
 to feel very deeply for any one in a similar state of 
 school-forwardness and bodily weakness. Parents in 
 general are too anxious to push their children on in 
 school and other learning. If a boy happens not to 
 be robust, it is laying up for him a great deal of pain 
 and mortification. For a boy must naturally associate 
 with others in the same class ; and consequently, if he 
 happens to be forward beyond his years, he is thrown 
 at twelve (with perhaps the strength of only eleven or 
 ten) into the company of boys two years older, and 
 probably three or four years stronger (for boobies 
 are always stout of limb). You may conceive what 
 wretchedness this is likely to lead to, in a state of 
 society like a school, where might almost necessarily 
 makes right. But it is not only at school that such 
 things lead to mortification. There are a certain 
 number of manly exercises which every gentleman, at 
 some time or other of his life, is likely to be called on 
 to perform, and many a man who is deficient in these 
 would gladly purchase dexterity in them, if he could, 
 at the price of those mental accomplishments which 
 have cost him in boyhood the most pains to acquire. 
 Who would not rather ride well at twenty-five than 
 write the prettiest Latin verses? I am perfectly im- 
 partial in this respect, being able to do neither, and 
 therefore my judgment is likely enough to be correct. 
 So pray during the holidays make Arthur ride hard
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 21 
 
 and shoot often, and, in short, gymnasticise in every 
 possible manner. I have said thus much to relieve my 
 own mind, and convey to you how earnestly I feel on 
 the subject. Otherwise I know Alderley and its inha- 
 bitants too well to suspect any one of them of being 
 what Wordsworth calls 'an intellectual all-in-all.' 
 About his school, were Rugby under any other master, 
 I certainly should not advise your thinking of it for 
 Arthur for an instant ; as it is, the decision will be 
 more difficult. When Arnold has been there ten years, 
 he will have made it a good school, perhaps in some 
 respects the very best in the island ; but a transition 
 state is always one of doubt and delicacy. Winchester 
 is admirable for those it succeeds with, but it is not 
 adapted for all sorts and conditions of boys, and some- 
 times fails. However, when I come to England, I will 
 make a point of seeing Arthur, when I shall be a little 
 better able perhaps to judge." 
 
 In the summer of 1828 Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, 
 with her sister Maria and her niece Lucy 
 Stanley from the Park, went by sea to Bordeaux 
 and for a tour in the Pyrenees, taking little 
 Arthur and his sister Mary with them. It was 
 his first experience of foreign travel, and most 
 intense was his enjoyment of it. All was new 
 then, and Mr. Stanley wrote of the children as 
 being almost as much intoxicated with delight 
 on first landing at Bordeaux as their faithful 
 maid, Sarah Burgess, who "thinks life's fitful
 
 22 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH I :s 
 
 dream is past, and that she has, by course of 
 transmigration, passed into a higher sphere." 
 It is recollected how, when he first saw the 
 majestic summit of the Pic du Midi rising above 
 a mass of cloud, Arthur Stanley in his great 
 ecstasy flung himself on the ground exclaim- 
 ing, " What shall I do ! what shall I do ! " He 
 described his impressions afterwards in a poem 
 on the Maladetta one of the many poems he 
 wrote as a child. His father's knowledge of 
 geology had given it such a weird interest that 
 nothing in after-life impressed him more. "It 
 was so awful," he wrote in his journal, " thinking 
 that this mighty Maladetta had burst up out of 
 the earth, driving every other mountain before 
 it ; and, as one looked round, seeing them all 
 leaning away from it, as if they shrank in terror 
 from their king." 
 
 In the following October Mrs. Stanley de- 
 scribed her boy's peculiarities to Dr. Arnold, 
 and asked his candid advice as to how far 
 Rugby was likely to suit him. After receiving 
 his answer she wrote to her sister : 
 
 "October 10, 1828. Dr. Arnold's letter has decided 
 us about Arthur. I should think there was not another 
 schoolmaster in his Majesty's dominions who would 
 write such a letter. It is so lively, agreeable, and
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 23 
 
 promising in all ways. He is just the man to take a 
 fancy to Arthur, and for Arthur to take a fancy to." 
 
 It was exactly as his mother had foreseen. 
 Arthur Stanley went to Rugby in the following 
 January, a bright and eager, but timid and 
 delicate little boy, in a "many-buttoned" blue 
 jacket, frills, and a pink watch-ribbon. He was 
 immediately captivated by his new master. " I 
 should never have taken him for a doctor ; he 
 was very pleasant, and does not look old," he 
 wrote to his sister Mary after his first sight of 
 Arnold, who was the man of all others suited to 
 stimulate the best type of English boy. Soon 
 Arthur wrote home that, though he had a great 
 sense of desolation at school, he had "no 
 miseries." Indeed, like many other nervous 
 boys, he was astonished to find that school 
 existence was not very unlike life everywhere 
 else, for, as he wrote afterwards to a school 
 companion, he had looked forward to a long 
 farewell to all goodness and happiness, and 
 wondered how he should ever come out 
 safe." 
 
 Two months after Arthur Stanley's entrance 
 at Rugby, his parents visited him as they were 
 returning from Cheshire to London. Mrs. Stan- 
 ley wrote to her sister :
 
 24 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 "March 1829. We arrived at Rugby exactly at 
 twelve, waited to see the boys pass, and soon spied 
 Arthur with his books on his shoulder. He coloured 
 up and came in, looking very well, but cried g good 
 deal on seeing us, chiefly I think from nervousness. 
 The only complaint he had to make was that of having 
 no friend, and the feeling of loneliness belonging to 
 that want, and this, considering what he is and what 
 boys of his age usually are, would and must be the 
 case everywhere. We went to dine with Dr. and Mrs. 
 Arnold, and they are of the same opinion, that he was 
 as well off and as happy as he could be at a public 
 school, and on the whole I am satisfied quite satisfied 
 considering all things, for Dr. and Mrs. Arnold are 
 indeed delightful. She was ill, but still animated and 
 lively. He has a very remarkable countenance, some- 
 thing in forehead, and again in manner, which puts me 
 in mind of Reginald Heber, and there is a mixture 
 of zeal, energy, and determination tempered with wis- 
 dom, candour, and benevolence, both in manner and in 
 everything he says. He has examined Arthur's class, 
 and said Arthur has done very well, and the class gene- 
 rally. He said he was gradually reforming, but that it 
 was like pasting down a piece of paper as fast as one 
 corner was put down another started up. ' Yes,' said 
 Mrs. A., 'but Dr. Arnold always thinks the corner 
 will not start again. 1 And it is that happy sanguine 
 temperament which is so particularly calculated to do 
 well in this, or indeed any situation." 
 
 Soon Arthur Stanley became very happy at 
 Rugby. From the first he had given evidence
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 25 
 
 of his distinctive individuality. He was in his 
 element when he was elected first President of 
 a Debating Society, but it was in vain that once 
 or twice he tried to think he liked playing at 
 football. " Perhaps in time I may like cricket," 
 he wrote to Alderley, where he thought it would 
 give pleasure ; but he never did, he always hated 
 it. He hated mathematics and arithmetic too ; 
 only one boy, indeed, was ever remembered 
 more utterly hopeless about arithmetic than 
 Arthur Stanley : it was W. E. Gladstone, after- 
 wards Chancellor of the Exchequer ! Stanley's 
 physical peculiarities alone made him different 
 from other boys. Through life, the senses of 
 smell and taste were utterly unknown to him ; 
 once only in Switzerland he fancied he smelt 
 the freshness of a pine-wood. " It made the 
 world a paradise," he said. 
 
 But though he never understood school ways, 
 Arthur Stanley's school-fellows respected the 
 peculiarities of "the child of light," as Matthew 
 Arnold called him, and left him alone like a dog 
 of another nature. His study became known 
 as the " Poet's Corner," and from it he was able 
 to announce prize after prize to the home circle, 
 to whom his letters were rapidly becoming one 
 of the most interesting things of life. Want 
 of a friend was speedily supplied at Rugby,
 
 26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 and many of the friends of his whole after-life 
 dated from his early school days, especially 
 Charles Vaughan, afterwards his intimate com- 
 panion, eventually his brother-in-law. His 
 rapid removal into the shell at Easter, and into 
 the fifth form at Midsummer, brought him 
 nearer to the head-master, at the same time 
 freeing him from the terrors of preposters and 
 fagging, and giving him entrance to the library. 
 So he returned to Alderley in the summer 
 holidays well and prosperous, speaking out and 
 full of fun and happiness, ready to enjoy 
 "striding about upon the lawn on stilts" with 
 his brother and sisters. On his return to school, 
 his mother continued to hear of his progress in 
 learning, but derived even more pleasure from 
 his accounts of football, and of a hare-and- 
 hounds hunt in which he " got left behind with 
 a clumsy boy and a silly one " at a brook, which, 
 after some deliberation, he leapt, and " nothing 
 happened!' 
 
 In September 1829 his mother writes : 
 
 " I have had such a ridiculous account from Arthur 
 of his sitting up, with three others, all night, to sec 
 what it was like / They heartily wished themselves 
 in bed before morning. He also writes of an English 
 copy of verses given to the fifth form Brownsover, a 
 village near Rugby, with the Avon flowing through
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 2"J 
 
 it and the Swift flowing into the Avon, into which 
 WicklifFe's ashes were thrown. So Arthur and some 
 others instantly made a pilgrimage to Brownsover to 
 make discoveries. They were allowed four days, and 
 Arthur's was the best of the thirty in the fifth form, 
 greatly to his astonishment, but, he says, 'Nothing 
 happened, except that I get called Poet now and then, 
 and my study, Poet's Corner.' The master of the 
 form gave another subject for them to write upon in 
 an hour, to see if they had each made their own, and 
 Arthur was again head. What good 3nse there is 
 in giving subjects of that kind to excite interest and 
 inquiry, though few would be so supremely happy as 
 Arthur in making the voyage of discovery. I ought 
 to mention that Arthur was detected with the other 
 boys in an unlawful letting off of squibs, and had a 
 hundred lines of Horace to translate ! " 
 
 The following gleanings from his mother's 
 letters give, in the absence of other material, 
 glimpses of Arthur Stanley's life during the 
 next few years : 
 
 " February 22, 1830. Arthur writes me word he has 
 begun mathematics, and does not wonder Archimedes 
 never heard the soldiers come in if he was as much 
 puzzled over a problem as he is." 
 
 "June I, 1830. We got to Rugby at eight, fetched 
 Arthur, to his great delight and surprise, and had two 
 most comfortable hours with him. There is just a 
 shade more of confidence in his manners, which is very 
 becoming. He talked freely and fluently, looked well
 
 28 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 and happy, and came the next morning at six o'clock 
 with his Greek book and his notebook under his 
 arm." 
 
 "June 22, 1830. There was a letter from Arthur 
 on Monday, saying that his verses on Malta had failed 
 in getting the prize. There had been a hard contest 
 between him and another. His poem was the longest 
 and contained the best ideas, but he says 'that is 
 matter of opinion ; ' the other was the most accurate. 
 There were three masters on each side, and it was 
 some time iri*being decided. The letter expresses his 
 disappointment (for he had thought he should have it), 
 his vexation (knowing that another hour would have 
 enabled him to look over, and probably to correct the 
 fatal faults), so naturally, and then the struggle of his 
 amiable feeling that it would be unkind to the other 
 boy, who had been very much disappointed not to 
 get the Essay, to make any excuses. Altogether it is 
 just as I should wish, and much better than if he had 
 got it." 
 
 "Jufy 20, 1830. Arthur came yesterday. He be- 
 gins to look like a young man." 
 
 "December 1830. Arthur has brought home a 
 letter from Mrs. Arnold to say that she could not 
 resist sending me her congratulations on his having 
 received the remarkable distinction of not being 
 examined at all except in extra subjects. Dr. Arnold 
 called him up before masters and school, and said 
 he had done so perfectly well it was useless." 
 
 " December 30, 1830. I was so amused the other 
 day taking up the memorandum-books of my two 
 boys. Owen's full of calculations, altitudes, astro-
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 2 9 
 
 nomical axioms, &c. Arthur's of Greek idioms, Grecian 
 history, parallels of different historical situations. 
 Owen does Arthur a great deal of good by being so 
 much more attentive and civil; it piques him to be 
 more alert. Charlie profits by both brothers. Arthur 
 examines him in his Latin, and Charlie sits with his 
 arm round his neck, looking with the most profound 
 deference in his face for exposition of Virgil." 
 
 "February 1831. Charlie writes word from school: 
 ' I am very miserable, not that I want anything, except 
 to be at home.' Arthur does not mind going half so 
 much. He says he does not know why, but all the 
 boys seem fond of him, and he never gets plagued 
 in any way like the others; his study is left un- 
 touched, his things unbroke, his books undisturbed. 
 Charlie is so fond of him, and deservedly so. You 
 would have been so pleased one night, when Charlie 
 all of a sudden burst into violent distress at not having 
 finished his French task for the holidays, by Arthur's 
 judicious good-nature in showing him how to help 
 himself, entirely leaving what he was about of his 
 own employment." 
 
 "July 1831. I am writing in the midst of an 
 academy of art. Just now there are Arthur and" 
 Mary drawing and painting at one table ; Charlie deep 
 in the study of fishes and hooks, and drawing varie- 
 ties of both at another ; and Catherine with her slate 
 full of houses with thousands of windows. Charlie 
 is fishing mad, and knows how to catch every sort, 
 and just now he informs me that to catch a bream 
 you must go out before breakfast. He is just as 
 fond as ever of Arthur. You would like to see Arthur
 
 3O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 examine him, which he does so mildly and yet so 
 strictly, explaining everything so d I' Arnold" 
 
 "July 17, 1831. I have been busy teaching Arthur 
 to drive, row, and gymnasticise, and he finds himself 
 making progress in the latter ; that he can do more as 
 he goes on a great encouragement always. Imagine 
 Dr. Arnold and one of the other masters gymnasticising 
 in the garden, and sometimes going out leaping as 
 much a sign of the times as the Chancellor appearing 
 without a wig, and the king with half a coronation." 
 
 " Alder ley, November II. We slept at Rugby on 
 Monday night, had a comfortable evening with Arthur, 
 and next morning breakfasted with Dr. Arnold. What 
 a man he is ! He struck me more than before even 
 with the impression of power energy, and single- 
 ness of heart, aim, and purpose. He was very indig- 
 nant at the Quarterly Review article on cholera the 
 surpassing selfishness of it, and spoke so nobly was 
 busy writing a paper to state what cholera is, and 
 what it is not. . . . Arthur's veneration for him is 
 beautiful ; what good it must do to grow up under 
 such a tree." 
 
 11 December 22, 1831. I brought Arthur home on 
 Wednesday from Knutsford. He was classed first in 
 everything but composition, in which he was second, 
 and mathematics, in which he did not do well enough 
 to be classed, nor ill enough to prevent his having 
 the reward of the rest of his works. I can trace the 
 improvement from his having been so much under 
 Dr. Arnold's influence ; so many inquiries and ideas are 
 started in his mind which will be the groundwork of 
 future study. . . . Charlie is very happy now in the
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 31 
 
 thought of going to Rugby and being with Arthur, and 
 Arthur has settled all the study and room concerns very 
 well for him. I am going to have a sergeant from 
 Macclesfield to drill them these holidays, to Charlie's 
 great delight, and Arthur's patient endurance. The 
 latter wants it much. It is very hard always to be 
 obliged to urge that which is against the grain. I 
 never feel I am doing my duty so well to Arthur as 
 when I am teaching him to dance, and urging him 
 to gymnasticise, when I would so much rather be 
 talking to him of his notebooks, &c. He increasingly 
 needs the free use of his powers of mind too as well 
 as of his body. The embarrassments and difficulty 
 of getting out what he knows seems so painful to 
 him, while some people's pain is all in getting it in ; 
 but it is very useful for him to have drawbacks in 
 everything." 
 
 " May 22, 1832. We got such a treat on Friday 
 evening in Arthur's parcel of prizes. One copy he 
 had illustrated in answer to my questions, with all 
 his authorities, to show how he came by the various 
 bits of information. In this parcel he sent ' An Ancient 
 Ballad, showing how Harold the King died at Chester,' 
 the result of a diligent collation of old chronicles he 
 and Mary had made together in the winter. Arthur 
 put all the facts together from memory." 
 
 "Dec. 26, 1832. Arthur and Charlie came home on 
 Wednesday. Arthur has not shaken off his first fit 
 of shyness yet. I think he colours more than ever, 
 and hesitates more in bringing out what he has to 
 say. I am at my usual work of teaching him to use 
 his body, and Charlie his mind."
 
 32 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 "April 13, 1833. I never found Arthur more 
 blooming than when we saw him at Rugby on Mon- 
 day. Mrs. Arnold said she always felt that Arthur 
 had more sympathy with her than any one else, that 
 he understood and appreciated Dr. Arnold's character, 
 and the union of strength and tenderness in it ; that 
 Dr. A. said he always felt that Arthur took in his 
 ideas, received all he wished to put into him more in 
 the true spirit and meaning than any boy he had 
 ever met with, and that she always delighted in 
 watching his countenance when Dr. Arnold was 
 preaching." 
 
 "July 1833. At eight o'clock last night the Arnolds 
 arrived. Dr. Arnold and Arthur behind the carriage, 
 Mrs. Arnold and two children inside, two more with 
 the servant in front, having left the other chaiseful at 
 Congleton. Arthur was delighted with his journey 
 said Dr. Arnold was just like a boy jumped up, 
 delighted to be set free had talked all the way of 
 the geology of the country, knowing every step of 
 it by heart so pleased to see a common, thinking 
 it might do for the people to expatiate on. We talked 
 of the Cambridge philosophers why he did not go 
 there he dared not trust himself with its excitement 
 or with society in London. Edward said something of 
 the humility of finding yourself with people so much 
 your superior, and at the same time the elevation of 
 feeling yourself of the same species. He shook his head 
 ' I should feel that in the company of legislators, but 
 not of abstract philosophers.' Then Mrs. Arnold went 
 on to say how Deville had pronounced on his head 
 that he was fond of facts, but not of abstractions, and
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 33 
 
 he allowed it was most true ; he liked geology, botany, 
 philosophy only as they are connected with the history 
 and well-being of the human race. . . . The other chaise 
 came after breakfast. He ordered all into their places 
 with such a gentle decision, and they were all off by 
 ten, having ascertained, I hope, that it was quite worth 
 while to halt here even for so short a time." 
 
 It was in November 1833 that Arthur 
 Stanley went to Oxford to try for the Balliol 
 Scholarship, and gained the first scholarship 
 against thirty competitors. The examination 
 was one especially calculated to show the wide 
 range of Arnold's education. Stanley wrote 
 from Oxford to his family : 
 
 "November 26, 1833. On Monday our examination 
 began at 10 A.M. and lasted to 4 P.M. a Latin theme, 
 which, as far as four or five revisals could make sure, 
 was without mistakes, and satisfied me pretty well. 
 In the evening we went in from 7 P.M. till 10, and had 
 a Greek chorus to be translated with notes, and also 
 turned into Latin verses, which I did not do well. On 
 Tuesday from 10 to I we had an English theme and 
 a criticism on Virgil, which I did pretty well, and Greek 
 verses from 2 to 4 middling, and we are to go in again 
 to-night at 9. I cannot the least say if am likely to get 
 it. There seem to be three formidable competitors, 
 especially one from Eton." 
 
 "Friday, November 29, J\ P.M. I will begin my 
 letter in the midst of my agony of expectation and fear. 
 I finished my examination to-day at two o'clock. At 8 
 
 c
 
 34 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 to-night the decision takes place, so that my next three- 
 quarters of an hour will be dreadful. As I do not know 
 how the other schools have done, my hope of success can 
 depend upon nothing, except that I think I have done 
 pretty well, better perhaps from comparing notes than 
 the rest of the Rugby men. Oh, the joy if I do get it ! 
 and the disappointment if I do not. And from two of 
 us trying at once, I fear the blow to the school would 
 be dreadful if none of us get it. We had to work the 
 second day as hard as on the first, on the third and 
 fourth not so hard, nor to-day Horace to turn into 
 English verse, which was good for me; a divinity and 
 mathematical paper, in which I hope my copiousness in 
 the first made up for my scantiness in the second. 
 Last night I dined at Magdalen, which is enough of 
 itself to turn one's head upside down, so very magnifi- 
 cent. ... I will go on now. We all assembled in the 
 hall and had to wait an hour, the room getting fuller 
 and fuller with Rugby Oxonians crowding in to hear the 
 result. Every time the door opened, my heart jumped, 
 but many times it was nothing. At last the Dean 
 appeared in his white robes and moved up to the head 
 of the table. He began a long preamble that they 
 were well satisfied with all, and that those who were 
 disappointed were many in comparison with those who 
 were successful, &c. All this time every one was 
 listening with the most intense eagerness, and I almost 
 bit my lips off till ' The successful candidates are 
 Mr. Stanley' I gave a great jump, and there was a 
 half shout amongst the Rugby men. The next was 
 Lonsdale from Eton. The Dean then took me into 
 the chapel, where the Master and all the Fellows were,
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 35 
 
 and there I swore that I would not reveal the secrets, 
 disobey the statutes, or dissipate the wealth of the 
 college. I was then made to kneel on the steps and 
 admitted to the rank of Scholar and Exhibitioner of 
 Balliol College, 'nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus.' I 
 then wrote my name, and it was finished. We start 
 to-day in a chaise and four for the glory of it. You 
 may think of my joy ; the honour of Rugby is saved, 
 and I am a scholar of Balliol ! " 
 
 Dr. Arnold wrote to Mrs. Stanley : 
 
 " I do heartily congratulate you, and heartily thank 
 Arthur for the credit and real benefit he has conferred 
 on us. There was a feeling abroad that we could not 
 compete with Eton or the other great schools in the 
 contest for University honours, and I think there was 
 something of this even in the minds of my own pupils, 
 however much they might value my instruction in 
 other respects, and those who wish the school ill for 
 my sake were ready to say that the boys were taught 
 politics, and not taught to be scholars. Already has 
 the effect of Arthur's success been felt here in the en- 
 couragement which it has given to others to work hard 
 in the hope of treading in his steps, and in the con- 
 fidence it has given them in my system. And yet, to say 
 the truth, though I do think that, with God's blessing, I 
 have been useful to your son, yet his success on this 
 occasion is all his own, and a hundred times more 
 gratifying than if it had been gained by my examining. 
 For I have no doubt that he gained his scholarship 
 chiefly by the talent and good sense of his composi- 
 tions, which are, as you know, very remarkable."
 
 36 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Arthur Stanley remained at Rugby till the 
 following summer, gaining more now, he con- 
 sidered, from Dr. Arnold than at any other 
 time, though his uncle, Augustus Hare, who 
 had been applied to, discouraged his being 
 left at school so long, because, "though most 
 boys learn most during their last year, it is 
 when they are all shooting up together, but 
 Arthur must be left a high tree among shrubs." 
 Of this time are the following letters from Mrs. 
 Stanley : 
 
 "February 3, 1834. I have just lost Arthur, and a 
 great loss he is to me. The latter part of his time at 
 home is always so much the most agreeable ; he gets 
 over his reserve so much more. He has been trans- 
 lating and retranslating Cicero for his improvement, 
 and has been deep in Guizot's Essay on the Civilisation 
 of Europe, besides being chief!}' engaged in a grand 
 work, at present a secret, but of which you may per- 
 haps hear more in the course of the spring. I have 
 generally sat with him or he with me, to be ready 
 with criticisms when wanted, and it is delightful to be 
 so immediately and entirely understood the why and 
 wherefore of an objection seen before it is said. And 
 the mind is so logical, so clear, the taste so pure in all 
 senses, and so accurate. He goes on so quietly and 
 perseveringly as to get through all he intends to get 
 through without the least appearance "of bustle or 
 business. He finished his studies at home, I think,
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 37 
 
 with an analysis of the Peninsular battles, trying to 
 understand thereby iheflro and con of a battle." 
 
 "May 21, 1834. I have taken the opportunity of 
 spending Sunday at Rugby. Arthur met us two miles 
 on the road, and almost his first words were how dis- 
 appointed he was that Dr. Arnold had influenza and 
 would not be able to preach ! However, I had the 
 compensation of more of his company than under any 
 other circumstances. There were only he and Mrs. 
 Arnold, so that I became more acquainted with both, 
 and altogether it was most interesting. We had the 
 Sunday evening chapter and hymn, and it was very 
 beautiful to see his manner to the little ones, indeed to 
 all. Arthur was quite as happy as I was to have such 
 an uninterrupted bit of Dr. Arnold he talks more 
 freely to him a great deal than he does at home." 
 
 The spring of 1834 had been saddened to 
 the Stanleys by the death of Augustus Hare 
 at Rome ; and the decision of his widow the 
 beloved "Auntie" of Arthur Stanley's child- 
 hoodto make Hurstmonceaux her home, led 
 to his being sent, for a few months before going 
 to Oxford, as a pupil to Julius Hare, who 
 was then Rector of Hurstmonceaux. Those 
 who remember the enthusiastic character of 
 Julius Hare, his energy in what he under- 
 took, and his vigorous though lengthy elucida- 
 tion of what he wished to explain, will imagine 
 how he delighted in re-opening for Arthur
 
 3 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Stanley the stores of classical learning which 
 had seemed laid aside for ever in the solitude 
 of his Sussex living. " I cannot speak of the 
 blessing it has been to have Arthur so long 
 with you," his mother wrote afterwards. " He 
 
 HURSTMONCKAUX RECTORY. 
 
 says he feels his mind's horizon so enlarged, 
 and that a foundation is laid of interest and 
 affection for Hurstmonceaux, which he will 
 always henceforward consider as 'one of his 
 homes, one of the many places in the world 
 he has to be happy in.' He writes happily
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 39 
 
 from Oxford, but the lectures and sermons 
 there do not go down after the food he has 
 been living on at Hurstmonceaux and Rugby." 
 
 It may truly be said of Arthur Stanley that 
 he "applied his heart to know, and to search, 
 and to seek out wisdom." During his college 
 life, however, his happiest days were still those 
 rare ones which he was able to spend with 
 the Arnolds at Rugby his "seventh heaven," 
 whence he wrote of spending a time of the most 
 luxurious happiness he ever had, so unbrokenly 
 delightful. 
 
 In this brief sketch one cannot dwell upon 
 his happy and successful career, upon his many 
 prizes, his honours of every kind, 1 even upon 
 his Newdigate poem of " The Gipsies," which 
 his father heard him deliver in the Sheldonian 
 Theatre, and burst into tears during the tumult 
 of applause which followed. Well remembered 
 still is the impression produced upon the vast 
 assembly by the beautiful lines in which the 
 Gipsies narrate the cause of their curse : 
 
 "They spake of lovely spots in Eastern lands, 
 An isle of palms, amid a waste of sands 
 Of white tents pitched beside a crystal well, 
 Where in past days their fathers loved to dwell ; 
 
 1 The Ireland Scholarship and a First Class in Classics, 1837 ; the 
 Chancellor's Latin Prize Essay, 1839 ; the English Essay, 1840, &c.
 
 4O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 To that sweet islet came at day's decline 
 
 A Virgin Mother with her Babe Divine ; 
 
 She asked for shelter from the chill night-breeze, 
 
 She prayed for rest beneath those stately trees ; 
 
 She asked in vain what though was blended there 
 
 A maiden's meekness with a mother's care ; 
 
 What though the light of hidden Godhead smiled 
 
 In the bright features of that blessed Child ? 
 
 She asked in vain they heard, and heeded not, 
 
 And rudely drove her from the sheltering spot. 
 
 Then fell the voice of Judgment from above, 
 
 ' Who shuts Love out, shall be shut out from Love ; 
 
 Who drive the houseless wanderer from their door, 
 
 Themselves shall wander houseless evermore ; 
 
 Till He, whom now they spurn, again shall come, 
 
 Amid the clouds of heaven, to speak their final doom.'" 
 
 The suspicions which were already enter- 
 tained at Oxford as to Stanley's orthodoxy 
 led to his being warned not to stand for Balliol, 
 but he was warmly welcomed to a fellowship 
 at University. 
 
 At Christmas, 1839, he was ordained at 
 St. Mary's, at Oxford, with, amongst others, 
 Richard Church, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's. 
 To the last he was full of mental difficulties 
 as to subscription. " If men subscribed liter- 
 ally to the Articles," he said, " no man in 
 orders, from the Archbishop to the poorest 
 curate on the Cumberland fells, could stay in 
 the Church." He was himself finally decided 
 by a letter from Arnold, who urged that his 
 own difficulties of the same kind had graduall
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 4! 
 
 decreased in importance ; that he had long 
 been persuaded that subscription to the letter 
 to any amount of human propositions was im- 
 possible, and that the door of ordination was 
 never meant to be closed against all but those 
 whose "dull minds and dull consciences" could 
 see no difficulty. Before his ordination he 
 wrote to his friend Vaughan : 
 
 "Alas that a Church with so divine a service should 
 keep its long list of Articles ! I am strengthened more 
 and more in my opinion that there is only needed, and 
 only should be, one ' I believe that Christ is both 
 God and man.'" 
 
 Many divines had already been shocked by 
 a characteristic passage which he, then still 
 an undergraduate, had been allowed to add to 
 his father's installation sermon : 
 
 " If the heart of man be full of love and peace, 
 whatsoever be his outward act of division, he is not 
 guilty of schism. Let no man then think himself free 
 from schism because he is in outward conformity with 
 this or any other Church. He is a schismatic, and he 
 only, who creates feuds, scandals, and divisions in the 
 Church of Christ." 
 
 It was the preaching part of his clerical 
 duties which Arthur Stanley most dreaded. 
 "He could see his way to twelve sermons,
 
 42 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 but no more." His first sermon was preached 
 in Mr. (afterwards Bishop) Pelham's church 
 at Bergapton. Arnold was present. The ser- 
 mon was for a church building society, and 
 the Rector had felt the subject to be a very 
 safe one. The delivery was terrible. Mr. 
 Somerset Hay was there. As he came out, 
 two old women were walking very wide apart, 
 one on one side of the road, the other on the 
 other, to get out of the way of the carriages, 
 and this made them raise their voices. " Mrs. 
 Maisey," called out one of them, "how be 
 you feeling? I got nothing. I'm very hungry." 
 Stanley's father often spoke to him about his 
 bad delivery. 
 
 In deciding to remain at Oxford as a tutor 
 at University College, Stanley believed that his 
 ordination vows might be as effectually carried 
 out by making the most of his vocation at 
 college, and endeavouring to influence all who 
 came within his sphere, as by undertaking any 
 parochial cure. To his aunt, who remonstrated, 
 he wrote : 
 
 "February 15, 1840. I have never properly thanked 
 you for your letters about my ordination, which I 
 assure you, however, that I have not the less valued, 
 and shall be no less anxious to try, as far as in me lies, 
 to observe. It is perhaps an unfortunate thing for me,
 
 -
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 43 
 
 though, as far as I see, unavoidable, that the over- 
 whelming considerations, immediately at the time of 
 ordination, were not difficulties of practice, but of sub- 
 scription, and the effect has been that I would always 
 rather look back to what I felt to be my duty before 
 that cloud came on, than to the time itself. Practically, 
 however, I think it will in the end make no difference. 
 The real thing which long ago moved me to wish to go 
 into orders, and which, had I not gone into orders, I 
 should have acted on as well as I could without orders, 
 was the fact that God seemed to have given me gifts 
 more fitting me for orders, and for that particular line 
 of clerical duty which I have chosen, than for any 
 other. It is perhaps as well to say that until I see a 
 calling to other clerical work, as distinct as that by 
 which I feel called to my present work, I should not 
 think it right to engage in any other; but I hope I 
 shall always feel, though I am afraid I cannot be too 
 constantly reminded, that in whatever work I am 
 engaged now or hereafter, my great end ought always 
 to be the good of the souls of others, and my great 
 support the good whicli God will give to my own soul." 
 
 Two years before this, in 1837, the Rector 
 of Alderley had been appointed to the Bishopric 
 of Norwich, and had left Cheshire amidst an 
 uncontrollable outburst of grief from the people 
 amongst whom he had lived as a friend and 
 a father for thirty-two years. Henceforward, 
 the scientific pursuits, which had occupied his 
 leisure hours at Alderley, were laid aside in the
 
 44 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 no-leisure of his devotion to the See, with whose 
 interests he now identified his existence. His 
 one object seemed to be to fit himself more 
 completely for dealing with ecclesiastical sub- 
 jects, by gaining- a clearer insight into clerical 
 
 RUIN IN THE PALACE GARDEN, NORWICH. 
 
 duties and difficulties ; and, though he long 
 found his diocese a bed of thorns, his kindly 
 spirit, his broad liberality, and all-embracing 
 fatherly sympathy, never failed to leave peace 
 behind them. His employments were changed,
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 45 
 
 but his characteristics were the same ; the 
 geniality and simplicity shown in dealing with 
 his clergy, and his candidates for ordination, 
 had the same power of winning hearts which 
 was evinced in his relation to the cottagers at 
 
 BISHOP'S BRIDGE, NORWICH. 
 
 Alderley ; and the same dauntless courage 
 which would have been such an .advantage in 
 commanding the ship he longed for in his 
 youth, enabled him to face Chartist mobs with 
 composure, and to read unmoved the many 
 party censures which followed such acts as his
 
 46 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 public recognition in Norwich Cathedral of the 
 worth of Joseph Gurney, the Quaker philan- 
 thropist ; his appearance on a platform side 
 by side with the Irish priest Father Mathew, 
 advocating the same cause ; and his enthusi- 
 astic friendship for Jenny Lind, who on his 
 invitation made the palace her home during 
 her stay in Norwich. 
 
 In the early years of his father's episcopate, 
 Arthur Stanley was his father's examining 
 chaplain for ordination candidates. He was 
 then a very juvenile, cherubic-looking youth. 
 The Bishop, with characteristic hospitality, 
 invited all the candidates to dinner. One of 
 them, who was not well prepared, and exces- 
 sively nervous as to the result of his examina- 
 tion, has often narrated since how he looked 
 round to see his dreaded future examiner. 
 "Can you tell me which is Arthur Stanley?" 
 he said to the bright, ingenuous-looking boy at 
 his side. " fs he here?" And he has never 
 forgotten the shrill voice of the youth as he 
 said, " I am Arthur Stanley." At first he could 
 not believe it ; then he was in a most dreadful 
 fright. 
 
 Most delightful, and very different from the 
 modern building which has partially replaced it, 
 was the old Palace at Norwich. Approached
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 47 
 
 through a stately gateway, and surrounded by 
 lawns and flowers, amid which stood a beautiful 
 ruin the old house with its broad old-fashioned 
 
 THE CHAPEL DOOR, PALACE, NORWICH. 
 
 staircase and vaulted kitchen, its beautiful 
 library looking out to Mousehold and Kett's 
 Castle, its great dining-room hung with pictures
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKKTCIIKS 
 
 of the Christian Virtues, its picturesque and 
 curious corners, and its quaint and intricate 
 passages, was indescribably charming. In a 
 little side-garden under the Cathedral, pet pee- 
 wits and a raven were kept, which always came 
 to the dining-room window at breakfast to be 
 
 NORWICH FROM MOUSKHOLP. 
 
 fed out of the Bishop's own hand the only 
 relic of his once beloved ornithological, as occa- 
 sional happy excursions with a little nephew 
 to Bramerton in search of fossils were the only 
 trace left of his former geological pursuits. 
 
 " I live for my children, and for them alone 
 I wish to live, unless in God's providence I can
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 49 
 
 live to His glory," were Bishop Stanley's own 
 words not many months before his death. He 
 followed with longing interest the voyages of 
 his son Owen as Commander in the Britomart 
 and Captain of the Rattlesnake, and rejoiced in 
 the successful career of his youngest son Charles. 
 These were perhaps the most naturally con- 
 genial to their father, and more of companions 
 to him when at home than any of his other 
 children. But in the last years of his life he 
 was even prouder of his second son Arthur, 
 whose wonderful descriptive power and classical 
 knowledge first became evident to his family 
 in 1840 in his letters from Greece, which gave 
 his intimate circle a foretaste of the interest 
 which the outer world experienced twelve years 
 later in the publication of " Sinai and Palestine." 
 There were not so many travellers' letters then. 
 "A letter from Arthur" caused the whole 
 family to collect in the old-fashioned drawing- 
 room at Stoke Rectory ; his aged grandparents 
 were established in their red arm-chairs, and 
 maps were brought out and many books of 
 former travellers consulted, and compared with 
 the accounts in the closely-written sheets, in 
 which a mother's eyes easily conquered all the 
 difficulties of the strange handwriting so often 
 
 *~> o 
 
 illegible to others.
 
 5O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Arthur Stanley's Greek tour opened a new 
 era in his life. It was a time of limitless enjoy- 
 ment "the visions of the library at Rugby 
 and of the lecture-room at Balliol constantly 
 blending themselves with the visions of battles, 
 of temples, and oracles." His enchantment 
 came to a climax at Athens "even more 
 beautiful than Corfu : the long, ivy-leaf shape 
 of the blue mountain range, the silver sea of 
 Salamis, the hills of Pentelicus and Hymettus 
 glowing like hot furnaces in the sun, the 
 columns of the Parthenon and the Olym- 
 pieium, with their delicate red interwoven with 
 the deep blue sky." In describing these and 
 similar scenes on his return, his whole being 
 glowed and quivered with excitement. 
 
 The year 1842 was clouded by Dr. Arnold's 
 death "the greatest calamity," wrote Arthur 
 Stanley, " that ever has happened to me, almost 
 the greatest that ever can befall me." He 
 hastened to Rugby for the following week, 
 where he preached the funeral sermon, and he 
 left Rugby feeling "as if he had lived years of 
 manifold experience." "I may be thought," 
 he wrote, " to attach an exaggerated importance 
 to what has passed . . . but, if he was not an 
 apostle to others, he was an apostle to me." 
 His sorrow, his reverence, his sympathy, found
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 5 I 
 
 relief in devoting his best energies to that " Life 
 of Arnold," which has translated his character 
 to the world, and given Arnold a wider influ- 
 ence since his death than he ever attained 
 in his life. Perhaps, of all Stanley's books, 
 Arnold's Life is still the one by which he is 
 best known, and this, in his reverent love for 
 his master, to whom he owed the building up 
 of his mind, is as he would have wished it 
 to be. 
 
 For twelve years Arthur Stanley resided at 
 University College as Fellow and Tutor, un- 
 dertaking also, in the latter part of the time, 
 the laborious duties of secretary to the Uni- 
 versity Commission, into which he threw him- 
 self with characteristic ardour. In 1845 he 
 was appointed Select Preacher to the Univer- 
 sity, an office resulting in the publication of 
 those "Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic 
 Age," in which he especially endeavoured to 
 exhibit the individual human character of the 
 different apostles. 
 
 Very comic are the recollections which 
 Arthur Stanley's pupils retain of his lectures, 
 which, always interesting and original, were 
 delivered in a small voice hardly audible in the 
 lecture-room, while the lecturer's legs were 
 twisted round those of the table in his nervous-
 
 52 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 ness. He had not an idea of the usual way of 
 dealing with young men, or what to say to 
 them, least of all how to reprove them. If one 
 of them was hopelessly behind-hand with some 
 exercise, he would meet him, and in his shyest 
 way say, " Good morning, Mr. Smith. I have 
 . . . not had that essay, you know." Some- 
 times he would rush out of his rooms to catch 
 the undergraduates, who would emerge from 
 all the corners and passages singing " For he's 
 a jolly good fellow," and would seize some un- 
 fortunate Bible-clerk quietly going home to his 
 room, instead of his real prey, and inform him, 
 to his astonishment, that they were going to 
 hold common-room upon him next morning. 1 
 
 He was not discomfited, however, but greatly 
 amused, when an undergraduate told him that 
 the effect of his sermon in chapel the day 
 before had been spoilt by his having a glove 
 on his head the whole time. 
 
 Stanley's terribly illegible handwriting often 
 brought him into comical difficulties at Oxford 
 as elsewhere. " Stanley never could be made 
 a bishop, he writes such an abominable hand," 
 said Dean Wellesley. But in printing his 
 books he never found this a disadvantage, as 
 the best readers and compositors were always 
 
 1 Recollections of Rev. E. S. Bnnkes.
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 53 
 
 given to him, while the worst are bestowed on 
 those who write best. 
 
 During this time, in which he refused the offer 
 of Alderley Rectory, and (1849) of the Deanery 
 of Carlisle, the recently half-empty college of 
 University became once more crowded with 
 students, drawn thither by his rising fame. 
 His peculiarities did not in the least prevent 
 his being popular. Men soon appreciated 
 one who rejoiced in their triumphs or bewailed 
 their disappointments as if they were his own, 
 and who diffused into his lectures a life and 
 geniality little known at Oxford. Meantime 
 he had rushed, not only with ardour, but with 
 supreme enjoyment, into the religious contro- 
 versies which were exciting Oxford at the time. 
 The publicity into which suspicions of his un- 
 orthodoxy brought his name was never with- 
 out its attractions. A Church with arms wide 
 enough to embrace almost every form and 
 tenet of belief was already becoming his ideal 
 of what a Christian Church should be. 
 
 The year 1849 was marked by the death of 
 Bishop Stanley, which occurred during a visit 
 to Brahan Castle in Scotland. Arthur was 
 with him in his last hours, and brought his 
 mother and sisters back to the desolate Norwich 
 home, where a vast multitude attended the
 
 54 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 burial of the Bishop in the cathedral. " I can 
 give you the facts," wrote one who was present, 
 "but I can give you no notion of how impres- 
 sive it was, nor how affecting. There were 
 such sobs and tears from the school-children 
 and from the clergy, who so loved their dear 
 Bishop. A beautiful sunshine lit up every- 
 thing, shining into the cathedral just at the 
 time. Arthur was quite calm, and looked like 
 an angel with a sister on each side." 
 
 From the time of his father's death, from the 
 time when he first took his seat at family 
 prayers in the purple chair where the venerable 
 white head was accustomed to be seen, Arthur 
 Stanley seemed utterly to throw off all the shy- 
 ness and embarrassment which had formerly 
 oppressed him, to rouse himself by a great effort, 
 and henceforward to forget his own personality 
 altogether in his position and his work. His 
 social and conversational powers, afterwards so 
 great, increased perceptibly from this time. 
 
 It was two days after Mrs. Stanley left 
 Norwich that she received the news of the death 
 of her youngest son, Charles, in Van Diemen's 
 Land ; and a very few months only elapsed 
 before she learnt that her eldest son, Owen, had 
 only lived to hear of the loss of his father. 
 Henceforward his mother, saddened though not

 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 5 5 
 
 crushed by her triple grief, was more than ever 
 Arthur Stanley's care : he made her the sharer 
 of all his thoughts, the confidante of all his 
 difficulties, all that he wrote was read to her 
 before its publication, and her advice was not 
 only sought but taken. In her new home in 
 London, he made her feel that she had still as 
 much to interest her and give a zest to life as 
 in the happiest days at Alderley and Norwich ; 
 most of all he pleased her by showing in the 
 publication of the " Memoir of Bishop Stanley," 
 in 1850, his thorough inward appreciation of the 
 father with whom his outward intercourse had 
 been of a less intimate kind than with herself. 
 
 In 1851 Arthur Stanley was presented to a 
 canonry at Canterbury, which, though he ac- 
 cepted it with reluctance, proved to be an 
 appointment entirely after his own heart, 
 giving him leisure to complete his "Com- 
 mentary on the Corinthians," a work which, 
 from its deficiency in scholarship, has passed 
 almost unnoticed ; and leading naturally to the 
 " Historical Memorials of Canterbury," which, 
 of all his books, was perhaps the one which it 
 gave him most pleasure to write. At Canter- 
 bury he not only lived amongst the illustrious 
 dead, but "lie made them rise into new life by 
 the way in which he spoke and wrote of them.
 
 56 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 That he endeavoured to teach the cockatoo on 
 its perch by the side of the paved walk lead- 
 ing through the canonry garden to call out 
 "Thomas a Becket" to astonished visitors, 
 was only typical of the way in which he inter- 
 wove all the other historical recollections of 
 the past with the daily life of the place. 
 Often on the anniversary of Becket's murder, 
 as the fatal hour five o'clock on a winter's 
 afternoon drew near, Stanley would marshal 
 his family and friends round the scenes of the 
 event, stopping with thrilling effect at each 
 spot connected with it " Here the knights ' 
 came into the cloister here the monks knocked 
 furiously for refuge in the church "-till, when 
 at length the chapel of the martyrdom was 
 reached, as the last shades of twilight gathered 
 amid the arches, the whole scene became so 
 real, that, with almost more than a thrill of 
 horror, one saw the last moments through one's 
 ears the struggle between Fitzurse and the 
 Archbishop, the blow of Tracy, the solemn 
 dignity of the actual death. 
 
 Stanley had a real pride in Canterbury. In 
 his own words, he "rejoiced that he was the 
 servant and minister, not of some obscure 
 fugitive establishment, for which no v ene cares 
 beyond his narrow circle, but of a cathedral
 
 57 
 
 whose name commands respect and interest 
 even in the remotest parts of Europe." In his 
 inaugural lectures as professor at Oxford, in 
 speaking- of the august trophies of Ecclesi- 
 astical History in England, he said, "I need 
 
 CANON STANLEY S HOUSE, CANTERBURY. 
 
 name but one, the most striking and obvious 
 instance, the cradle of English Christianity, 
 the seat of the English Primacy, my own proitd 
 cathedral, the metropolitan church of Canter- 
 bury." 
 
 The chief charm to Arthur Stanley of having 
 a home of his own was that he could welcome
 
 58 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 his mother to it, and greatly did she enjoy her 
 long visits to Canterbury, where she shook off 
 at once all the influences of her London life, 
 and threw herself with all her heart into the 
 interests of the place and its associations. 
 Never were the mother and son more wholly 
 united than in these happy years, when every 
 evening the literary work of the day was read 
 to her, and received her deepest attention, 
 often her severest criticism. It was a delight- 
 ful time to both, and Mrs. Stanley was one 
 who knew how to make the most of every 
 delicate shade of good in the character of her 
 son and daughters. "Are not one's children 
 given to one," she wrote, "that we may live 
 over again in them when we have done living 
 for ourselves ? " 
 
 Those who remember Stanley's happy inter- 
 course with his mother at Canterbury ; his 
 friendships in the place, especially with Arch- 
 deacon and Mrs. Harrison, who lived next 
 door, and with whom he had many daily 
 meetings and communications on all subjects ; 
 his pleasure in the preparation and publication 
 of his " Canterbury Sermons ; " his delightful 
 home under the shadow of the cathedral, con- 
 nected by the Brick Walk with the cloisters ; 
 and his constant work of a most congenial
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 59 
 
 kind, will hardly doubt that in many respects 
 the years spent at Canterbury were the most 
 prosperous of his life. Vividly does the re- 
 collection of those who were frequently his 
 
 SITE OF bliCKKT S SHRINK, CANTERBURY. 
 
 guests go back to the afternoons when, his 
 cathedral duties and writing being over, he 
 would rush out to Harbledown, to Patrix- 
 bourne, or -along the dreary Dover Road 
 (which he always insisted upon thinking most 
 delightful) to visit his friend Mrs. Gregory,
 
 6O UIOGRAPIIICAL SKETCHES 
 
 going faster and faster as he talked more 
 enthusiastically, calling up fresh topics out of 
 the wealthy past. Or there were longer excur- 
 sions to Bozendeane Wood, with its memories 
 of the strange story of the so-called Sir William 
 Courtenay, its blood-stained dingle amid the 
 hazels, its trees riddled with shot, and its wide 
 view over the Forest of Blean to the sea, with 
 the Isle of Sheppey breaking the blue waters. 
 
 Close behind Stanley's house was the Dean- 
 ery and its garden, where the venerable Dean 
 Lyall used daily at that time to be seen walk- 
 ing up and down in the sun. Here grew the 
 marvellous old mulberry, to preserve the life 
 of which, when failing, a bullock was actually 
 killed that the tree might drink in new life 
 from its blood. A huge bough which had 
 been torn off from this tree had taken root, 
 and had become far more flourishing than its 
 parent. Arthur Stanley called them the Church 
 of Rome and the Church of England, and gave 
 a lecture about it in the town. 
 
 His power of calling up past scenes of 
 history, painting them in words, and throwing 
 his whole heart into them, often enacting them, 
 in some respects made travelling with Arthur 
 Stanley delightful. In the shorter excursions 
 which he made in England, those who were
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 6 I 
 
 with him vividly recall his intense delight in 
 seeing the tombs of many of his intimate friends 
 of the long ago in the cathedrals. His mother, 
 his sister Mary, his cousin Miss Penrhyn, and 
 his friend Hugh Pearson usually made up the 
 summer party for longer journeys on the 
 Continent. He was a better fellow-traveller 
 to this familiar circle, which adored him and 
 only went his way, than to any others. He 
 was terribly impatient of being called upon to 
 visit anything he had seen before. He hated 
 all pictures and sculptures which were not 
 historical. He found Dresden "the most un- 
 interesting place he ever saw." He was quite 
 determined never to travel with any one who 
 "went after pictures," and he refused even to 
 attempt acquiring any interest in art. " The 
 difference between others and myself," he said, 
 " breaks out in the questions we respectively ask. 
 They : ' Who is the artist ? ' /: ' What is the 
 subject ? ' ' The beauties of nature had also lost 
 in his grown-up life all the charm they had for 
 him as a child. The scenery of Switzerland he 
 found utterly "unmeaning," its beauties "ficti- 
 tious " and dependent on clouds and sunset. 
 In France, Spain, and Germany, a place con- 
 nected with even the very smallest historic event 
 was attractive to him, but he had no patience
 
 62 BIOGRAPHICAL SKKTCHES 
 
 with anything else. One thing he did enjoy 
 everywhere. It was tracing an often impossible 
 likeness between the place he was in and some 
 other place. Thus his vivid fancy could ima- 
 gine that Nuremberg recalled Venice ; Rheims, 
 Canterbury ; Amalfi, Delphi ! For several 
 years the family tours were confined to France 
 and Germany, Switzerland and Northern Italy ; 
 but in 1852 the Stanley group went for several 
 months to Italy, seeing its northern and eastern 
 provinces, in those happy days of vetturino 
 travelling, as they will never be seen again, 
 studying the story of its old towns, and eventu- 
 ally reaching Rome, which Mrs. Stanley had 
 never seen, and which her son had the greatest 
 delight in showing her. It had been decided 
 that when the rest of the party returned to 
 England, he should go on to Egypt, but this 
 plan was changed by circumstances which 
 fortunately enabled him to witness the funeral 
 of the Duke of Wellington. By travelling 
 day and night, he arrived in London the 
 night before the ceremony. Almost immedi- 
 ately afterwards he returned to take leave of 
 his mother at Avignon, before starting with 
 his friend Theodore Walrond and two others 
 on that long and happy tour of which the 
 results have appeared in " Sinai and Pales-
 
 S
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 63 
 
 tine " rather a poetical and geographical work 
 than a contribution to history, but a book 
 which, without any compromise of its own 
 freedom of thought, has turned all the know- 
 ledge of previous travellers to most admirable 
 account. " Stanley was the most wonderful 
 companion in the East," records one of his 
 companions. " He got up his whole subject 
 before, and he particularly liked to tell us 
 everything : it fixed it in his mind. Then in 
 the evenings he would retire to his tent, and 
 write sheets upon sheets of those wonderful 
 letters which only his sister could decipher 
 and translate for other people. He had a 
 whole mass of books with him ; one set he 
 took with him up the Nile, and, as he came 
 down, another met him for the Holy Land." l 
 
 The attention of the family was concen- 
 trated on the East in 1854, as Mary Stanley 
 escorted a body of nurses to Constantinople, 
 and took charge of the hospital of Koulalee 
 during the war in the Crimea, gaining much 
 experience at this time which was afterwards 
 useful in her self-denying labours for the poor 
 in London. 
 
 As his eight years at Canterbury were the 
 happiest of Arthur Stanley's life, so for him- 
 
 1 Recollections of Hon. T. Freemantle.
 
 64 BIOGRAPHICAL SKl.Tflir.S 
 
 self they were the most profitable. Under 
 the shadow of the great cathedral he had 
 leisure for the literature which was the best 
 work of his life not only for what he pub- 
 lished then, but for the preparation for long 
 distant labours. In "that green oasis," as he 
 called it, he was removed from, had no calling 
 to, the controversies which marred his after- 
 life. And he lived in a peace and freedom 
 from abuse which at that time had its value 
 for him : no one cared then that he regarded 
 the Athanasian Creed as only a "curious 
 mediaeval hymn." 
 
 It was in 1858 that the happy home at Can- 
 terbury was exchanged for a canonry at Christ 
 Church, Oxford, attached to the Professorship 
 of Ecclesiastical History, to which Arthur 
 Stanley had been appointed two years before. 
 His professorial appointment had not been 
 welcomed at first, and he used to say that a 
 letter from Jowett was the only letter of con- 
 gratulation he received upon it. But his 
 three " Introductory Lectures on the Study of 
 Ecclesiastical History," delivered before his 
 residence, had attracted such audiences as have 
 seldom been seen in the University Theatre, 
 and aroused an enthusiasm which was the 
 greatest encouragement to him in entering
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 65 
 
 upon a course of life so different from that 
 he had left ; for he saw how a set of lectures 
 usually wearisome could be rendered interest- 
 ing to all his hearers, how he could make the 
 dry bones live. 
 
 Henceforward, for some years, the greater 
 portion of Stanley's days was spent in his 
 pleasant study on the ground floor (in the 
 first house on the left after entering Peck- 
 water from Tom quad), looking upon his little 
 walled garden, with its miniature lawn and 
 apple-trees, between which he was delighted 
 to find that he could make a fountain ; attended 
 to by his faithful married butler and house- 
 keeper ; concerning whom, when some one 
 remarked disparagingly upon their increasing 
 family, he is recollected characteristically to 
 have exclaimed, "I do not know if they will 
 have many children, but I do know one thing, 
 that, if they have a hundred, I shall never 
 part with Mr. and Mrs. Waters." 
 
 Here he was always to be found standing 
 at his desk, tossing off sheet after sheet, the 
 whole floor covered with scraps of papers 
 written or letters received, which, by a habit 
 that nothing could change, he generally tore 
 up and scattered around him. Here were com- 
 posed those Lectures on the Eastern, and after-
 
 66 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 wards on the Jewish Church, to which Stanley's 
 "picturesque sensibility," as Lord Beaconsfield 
 called it, so exactly fitted him to do justice 
 Lectures which have done more than any- 
 thing ever written to make the Bible history 
 a living reality instead of a dead letter, which, 
 while with the freedom which excited such an 
 outcry against Dean Milman, they do not scruple 
 to describe Abraham as a Chaldean Sheykh 
 of the desert, Rachel as a Bedouin chief's 
 daughter, and Joseph as the royal officers are 
 exhibited in the Theban sculptures, open such 
 a blaze of sunshine upon those venerable his- 
 tories, that those who look upon them by the 
 new light feel as if they had never seen them 
 before. 
 
 Stanley liked excessively the importance of 
 his new position at Oxford. " There is a 
 pleasure," he wrote, "in finding oneself at the 
 top of a tree ; everything open to one's view, 
 great persons civil, smaller persons grateful 
 for notice." It was also a great enjoyment to 
 him in the years of his Oxford life to take 
 up the threads of many old friendships which 
 years of separation had relaxed. He observed 
 with some dismay how the intellectual power of 
 the University had ceased to take orders. But 
 he took advantage of introductions from Rugby,
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 6 7 
 
 and of the acquaintances made in college by 
 a young cousin residing in his house, to invite 
 many undergraduates to his Canonry, by seeing 
 them again and again to become intimate with 
 
 CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, CHRIST CHURCH. 
 
 them, and in many cases to gain a permanent 
 influence over them. His conversation was 
 considered versatile rather than accurate, 
 brilliant rather than profound. But those he 
 was really at home with, will always retain a
 
 68 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 delightful recollection of the home-like evenings 
 in his pleasant drawing-room, of his sometimes 
 reading aloud, of his fun and playfulness, and of 
 his talking over his future lectures and getting 
 his younger companions to help him with draw- 
 ings and plans for them. The very childlike 
 helplessness of the Canon had its attraction to 
 those who were much with him and loved him. 
 But it has been rightly said that "he went 
 dreamily about the world, puzzled and put out 
 by its every-day requirements, always demand- 
 ing some one to take care of him, and generally 
 finding what he sought." Upon the University 
 Stanley never made any deep impression, whilst 
 he obtained an influence over a great many 
 individuals. The Prince of Wales, then an 
 undergraduate, was frequently at his house, and 
 many more visitors from the outside world came 
 to the Canonry at Oxford than to that at Canter- 
 bury Germans, Americans, and the friends 
 Stanley had made during a tour in Russia. 
 
 An article which Arthur Stanley contributed 
 in 1861 to the Edinburgh Review in defence of 
 the authors of " Essays and Reviews" would 
 have destroyed all hopes of a bishopric, if he 
 had wished for it. To his mother, who felt 
 how utterly he was unsuited to episcopal life, 
 this was an unmixed cause for rejoicing. " If it
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 69 
 
 had rained mitres as thick as hail," said Jowett, 
 " Stanley had such a curiously shaped head that 
 they would never have fitted it." 
 
 In the early spring of 1862, in fulfilment of a 
 wish which had been expressed by the Prince 
 Consort, Arthur Stanley was desired to accom- 
 pany the Prince of Wales in his projected tour to 
 the East. In looking forward to this journey, 
 he chiefly considered with joy how he might 
 turn the travel to the best account for his royal 
 companion, and how he might open for his 
 service the stores of information which he had 
 laid up during his former Eastern tour. But 
 he combined the duties of chaplain with those 
 of cicerone, and his sermons preached before 
 the Prince of Wales at Tiberias, Nazareth, and 
 other holy sites of sacred history were after- 
 wards published in a small volume. " Gather 
 up the fragments that remain, that nothing be 
 lost," was his constant teaching in Palestine. 
 "It is by thinking of what has been here, by 
 making the most of things we see in order to 
 bring before our minds the things we do not 
 see, that a visit to the Holy Land becomes a 
 really religious lesson." To Stanley's delight, 
 one great event marked the royal tour in the 
 East : the Mosque of Hebron, hitherto inexor- 
 ably closed, was thrown open to the travellers.
 
 7O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 It had not been without many sad and 
 anxious misgivings that Stanley had consented 
 to obey the desire, not command, of his Queen, 
 in being a second time separated from his 
 mother for so long a time and by so great a 
 distance. He never saw her again, yet he was 
 the only one of her children who received her 
 farewell words, and embrace, and blessings. A 
 few days after he was gone she became ill, and 
 on the morning of the 5th of March, in pain- 
 less unconsciousness, she died. It was as well, 
 perhaps, that the dear absent son was not 
 there, that he had the interest of a constant 
 duty to rouse him. He returned in June. 
 Terrible indeed is the recollection of the piteous 
 glance he cast towards his mother's vacant 
 corner, and mournfully, to those who were 
 present, did the thought occur, what it would 
 have been if she had been there then, especially 
 then, with the thousand things there were to 
 tell her. " Nothing," he said, " can ever make 
 my mother's memory other than the greatest 
 gift I have received." 
 
 Sad indeed were the months which followed, 
 till, in the autumn of 1863, Arthur Stanley was 
 appointed to the Deanery at Westminster 
 "the one change," he wrote, "that my dearest 
 mother desired for me." This was soon fol-
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 lowed by the fulfilment of a still dearer wish 
 of hers for him, and sunshine again flowed in 
 upon his life with his marriage, in Westminster 
 Abbey, to Lady Augusta Bruce, fifth daughter 
 of the seventh Earl of Elgin, whom he had first 
 met at the house of Madame Mohl in 1857. 
 
 Of all that his marriage was to Dean Stan- 
 ley it is impossible to speak of his true and 
 perfect companionship with Lady Augusta, of 
 the absolute completeness with which she filled 
 the position of his wife, of mistress of the 
 Deanery, of leader of every good work in West- 
 minster, where her goodness, wisdom, and tact 
 were always in evidence and won all hearts. 
 She loved the poor. She had an ennobling in- 
 fluence upon all. There were those who cavilled 
 at the universal cordiality of her manner, but, as 
 they knew her better, they learnt that it was 
 an echo from her heart. " By her supporting 
 love he was comforted for his mother's death, 
 and her character, though cast in another 
 mould, remained to him, with that of his 
 mother, the brightest and most sacred vision 
 of earthly experience." 
 
 Going soon after his marriage to visit Hugh 
 Pearson at Sonning, he went on the box of the 
 fly. " I see you've got Lady Augusta Bruce 
 inside," said the driver ; " I remember her very
 
 72 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 well at Windsor." "Not Lady Augusta Bruce 
 she is Lady Augusta Stanley now she is 
 my wife." " Well then I do wish you joy, for 
 your wife is just the best woman in England." 
 Highly delighted was the Dean with this. 
 
 Congenial, as all Stanley's other homes, 
 were the surroundings of the residence under 
 the walls of the Abbey, decorated by much of 
 the old oak furniture, inanimate friends, which 
 had already travelled from Alderley to Norwich, 
 Canterbury, and Oxford. Most delightful was 
 the library at the Deanery, a long room sur- 
 rounded by bookcases, with a great gothic 
 window at the end, and a curious picture of 
 Queen Elizabeth let in above the fireplace. 
 Here, all through the mornings, in which 
 visitors, with very rare exceptions, were never 
 admitted, the Dean stood at his desk and 
 scattered his papers as of old, while Lady 
 Augusta employed herself at her writing-table 
 close by. His " Memorials of Westminster," 
 full of attractive glimpses of history ; the second 
 and third volume of his " Jewish Church," which 
 he considered to be the best contribution he 
 could make to the religious changes of the time, 
 and into the graphic picturesqueness of which 
 he threw all the vigour of his early writings ; 
 his " Address on the Three Irish Churches,"
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 73 
 
 characteristically advocating the equal endow- 
 ment, under State management, of the Protes- 
 
 COURTYARD, DEANERY, WESTMINSTER. 
 
 tant Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, and Presby- 
 terian Churches ; his "Lectures on the Church of 
 Scotland," in which, through a brilliant review of
 
 74 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 the ecclesiastical story of Scotland, he claims 
 the highest distinction for the Established 
 Church ; his Addresses as Lord Rector of St. 
 Andrews, and many articles for the Quarterly, 
 the Edinburgh, the Nineteenth Century, Good 
 Words, and Macmillans Magazine, flowed 
 from his pen in this room ; and lastly, his 
 "Christian Institutions," which seem written 
 chiefly to disabuse people of the fancy of Roman 
 Catholic and High Church divines, that they 
 can discover in the Early Church their own 
 theories concerning the Papacy, the hierarchy, 
 and the administration of the Sacraments. It 
 was a necessity to Stanley to be always writing 
 something, and the same passion for impossible 
 analogies appeared in all he wrote. He often 
 latterly returned to the pursuit of his earliest 
 days, and expressed himself in verse, but he 
 wrote nothing thus that will live. 
 
 More than ever did friends gather around 
 Stanley during his life at the Deanery, as much 
 as ever was he able to enjoy the pleasures of 
 society, growing every year more full of anec- 
 dote, of animation, of interesting recollections. 
 And the visitors whom the Dean and Lady 
 Augusta delighted to receive comprised every 
 class of society, from their royal mistress and 
 her children to great bands of working-men,
 
 '
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 75 
 
 whom it was an especial pleasure to Arthur 
 Stanley to escort over the Abbey himself, 
 picking out and explaining the monuments 
 most interesting to them. Every phase of 
 opinion, every variety of religious belief, above 
 all, those who most widely differed from their 
 host, were cordially welcomed in the hospitalities 
 of the Deanery ; and the circle which gathered 
 in its drawing-rooms, especially on Sunday 
 evenings after the service in the Abbey, was 
 singularly characteristic and unique. Amid 
 these, "small, swift, rapid, almost precipitate in 
 his movements," the little eager Dean moved 
 constantly, his thoughts on the history of the 
 time, in which, in the vivid pictures of his 
 imagination, he was always one of the most 
 conspicuous actors, overflowing in a torrent of 
 words at once harmonious and pictorial. 
 
 He always spoke more of events or of scenes 
 than of politics perhaps because, as to the 
 latter, he was a little uncertain of himself; for 
 while in his personal politics he adored Glad- 
 stone, the sunshine of court favour always made 
 him appear to sympathise with Lord Beacons- 
 field. "When disposed to be friendly," says 
 Dean Church, "Stanley was very delightful 
 and attractive ; and I think what made him so 
 was not his brilliancy and resource and know-
 
 76 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 ledge, but the sense that he was sincerely 
 longing to be in sympathy with every one for 
 whom he could feel respect. Yet he had a 
 certain freely indulged contempt for what he 
 did not like, and a disposition to hunt down and 
 find faults when he did not love people." Most 
 cordially did Lady Augusta unite with the Dean 
 in wishing that the spare rooms of the house 
 should be ceaselessly filled with a succession 
 of guests, to meet whom the most appropriate 
 parties were always invited, or who were urged 
 by the Dean unrestrainedly to invite their own 
 friends, especially the now aged " Auntie," his 
 mother's sister, long the survivor, as he expressed 
 it, " of a blessed brotherhood and sisterhood." 
 
 Greater, too, than the interest of all his other 
 homes was that which Stanley found in the 
 Abbey of Westminster " the royal and national 
 sanctuary which has for centuries enshrined the 
 manifold glories of the kingdom " of which he 
 had become the natural guardian and caretaker. 
 There are those who have smiled at the eager- 
 ness he occasionally displayed to obtain the 
 burial of an illustrious person in the Abbey 
 against all opposition. There are those who 
 have been incapable of understanding his 
 anxiety to guard and keep the Abbey as it had 
 been delivered to him ; wisely objecting even
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 77 
 
 to give uniformity to a rudely patched pavement, 
 on account of the picturesqueness and the 
 human interest attached to its variations of 
 colour and surface ; delighting in the character- 
 istics of his choir projecting into the nave, like 
 the coro of a Spanish cathedral ; l carefully, 
 even fiercely, repelling any attempt to show 
 more deference to the existing monuments 
 of one age than of another, each being a 
 portion of history in itself, and each, when 
 once placed there, having become a portion 
 of the history of the Abbey, never to be dis- 
 placed. The Abbey became dearer to him 
 than any other building in the world. He 
 gave fresh life to it. He restored the beautiful 
 Chapter House, which had been used as a 
 Record Office. He brought together again the 
 fragments of Torrigiani's altar, which served 
 as a tomb to Edward VI. He removed 
 Catherine de Valois from the vault of the 
 Percies to rest by her husband Henry V. 
 
 1 It was painful to those who knew the Dean well to see a letter in 
 the Times a few days after his death, urging that the destruction of the 
 choir the thing of all others he most deprecated should be carried 
 out as a memorial of him ! Those who wish to know what he really 
 desired for his Abbey have only to read the preface to his " Memorials 
 of Westminster," expressing his anxious suggestion of a cloister for the 
 reception of future monuments, enclosing the Jewel Tower, on the 
 present site of Abingdon Street, to face the Palace of Westminster on 
 one side, and the College Garden on the other.
 
 78 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 His care in collecting and replacing the 
 fragments of the reredos of St. Michael's 
 altar, and his curious amalgamation of tiny 
 fragments of lost screens and altars in the 
 Chapter House, are marks of his tender care 
 for the minutest details of the Abbey, which 
 it was his great object to preserve, to enrich, 
 but never, under any false pretext of " restora- 
 tion" or improvement, to change. How en- 
 raptured he was to discover the monogram of 
 Izaak Walton scratched by the angler him- 
 self upon the tomb of Isaac Casaubon ; how 
 delighted to describe the funeral of Henry V., 
 in which his three chargers were led up 
 to the altar as mourners behind his waxen 
 effigy ; how enchanted to make any smallest 
 discovery with regard to those to whom the 
 more obscure monuments are erected, to trace 
 out the whole history of " Jane Lister, dear 
 childe," who is. buried in the cloisters, and 
 upon whom he preached one of his sermons 
 to children ; how pleased to answer some one 
 who cavilled at the space allotted to the 
 monument of Mrs. Grace Gethin, with the 
 quotations referring to her in Congreve and 
 D' Israeli. One of his last thoughts connected 
 with outside life was the erection of a monu- 
 ment to mark "the common pit " into which the
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 79 
 
 remains of the family and friends of the great 
 Protector were thrown at the Restoration. 
 
 At Westminster Stanley preached more 
 often than he had ever done before ; but two 
 classes of his sermons there will be especially 
 remembered those on Innocents' Day to 
 children, so particularly congenial to one whose 
 character had always been so essentially that 
 of the "pure in heart," and those on the deaths 
 of illustrious Englishmen oraisons funebres 
 often preached in the Abbey, even when 
 those commemorated were not to repose there. 
 "He had," said Dr. Stoughton, "a felicitous, 
 perhaps over-taxed, gift of adapting passages 
 of Scripture to passing events." "Charity, 
 Liberality, Toleration," these became more 
 than ever the watchwords of his teaching, of 
 his efforts to inculcate the spirit that would 
 treat all who follow Christ as brothers, by 
 whatever path they might be approaching 
 Him, and by whatever hedges they might 
 be divided. Those who heard him will always 
 remember the eagerness of "the little figure 
 with the sweet, refined, earnest face on these 
 occasions." His last utterance in the Abbey, on 
 Saturday, July 9, 1881, was on the text "Blessed 
 are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 
 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
 
 8O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 see God," one of his course of sermons on 
 the Beatitudes. In everything his precept 
 was that of the aged St. John " Little chil- 
 dren, love one another." 
 
 It was with the fancy that in life, as in 
 death, he could make the Abbey the great 
 temple of conciliation, that the most hetero- 
 geneous preachers were invited by Arthur 
 Stanley to make use of its pulpit preachers 
 from the very north and south and east and 
 west of religious opinion. His delight in con- 
 tradictions, which made him ask guests of 
 the most opposite opinions to meet at his 
 table, came out even more in his decanal 
 office. A catholic, comprehensive, all-embrac- 
 ing Christianity was what he sought ; though 
 to many it seemed as if his main object 
 must be to bring into the Abbey those who 
 had no right to be there. Max M tiller, a lay- 
 man ; Caird and Tulloch, Nonconformists ; Arch- 
 deacon Reichel, Dr. Stoughton, Dr. Moffat, and 
 even Dr. Colenso, were amongst those in- 
 vited to preach ; and he showed an innate 
 and mysterious sympathy with heretics of 
 every kind. Only from the High Churchmen 
 did he receive refusals. Pusey declined to 
 preach in the Abbey because the Dean had 
 endorsed Colenso's book, so " frightfully un-
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 8 I 
 
 settling to the faith of the lower classes : " 
 Liddon, who afterwards consented, refused at 
 first because he could not preach in a pulpit 
 which had been contaminated by Maurice : 
 Keble, because he would not seem to " bear 
 with doctrines " which Stanley avowedly up- 
 held. 
 
 It has been asserted, perhaps justly, that Stan- 
 ley went so far in his efforts for comprehensive- 
 ness (i.e. charity) that he did away with the 
 ordinary meanings of terms. As Donald Mac- 
 leod has said " ' Latitudinarian,' with most 
 opprobrious sense, was the epithet hurled at 
 him, but ' Latitudinarian,' in the better signi- 
 ficance of wide toleration, was the title he 
 would himself have gloried in." The con- 
 troversies into which he remorselessly plunged 
 himself were felt, by all his best friends, to 
 not sour, but somewhat embitter his character, 
 to impair his usefulness, and mar his influence, 
 as well as to waste his time, so ephemeral and 
 unimportant was their nature. But his love 
 of controversy seemed like a passion, leading 
 him to espouse the cause of heretics in what- 
 ever form they might exist. It made his 
 career at Westminster, what Jowett described 
 it, "brilliant but melancholy." What his own 
 exact faith was, no one knew when he was
 
 82 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 alive, no one has been able to make out since. 
 That it was highly inappropriate to a Dean 
 of Westminster is the only fact that is quite 
 certain. He certainly disbelieved, on historic 
 grounds, all the Biblical miracles except the 
 Resurrection, and the expression " Jesus is the 
 Son of God " was used by him in no doctrinal 
 sense, but only as a summary of the life and 
 character of our most holy example. And yet 
 he ever maintained that the greatest of all 
 miracles was the character of Christ ; it was 
 for the Christlike side of all Churches and all 
 Christians that he endeavoured to testify his 
 appreciation, and he did this so fully that 
 Maurice said, " Stanley has done more to make 
 the Bible a living reality in the homes of the 
 people than any living writer ; " and the Bishop 
 of Manchester, that Stanley daily brought down 
 light from heaven into the lives of other 
 people. 
 
 Possibly his most definite confession of a 
 mildewed faith was given in his sermon on 
 the death of Kingsley, when, after insisting 
 that the main part of the religion of mankind 
 and of Christendom should consist in the strict 
 fulfilment of the duty of man, which is the 
 will of God, he says, " The first and last 
 business of every living being, whatever his
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 83 
 
 station, party, creed, tastes, desires, is Mor- 
 ality. Virtue, virtue, always virtue." Or per- 
 haps a fuller profession of faith is found in 
 his lines on the Ascension : 
 
 " He is gone : towards their goal 
 World and Church must onward roll. 
 Far behind we leave the past ; 
 Forward are our glances cast. 
 
 Still His words before us range 
 Through the ages as they change. 
 Wheresoe'er the Truth shall lead, 
 He will give whate'er we need." 
 
 It is mentioned as amusingly characteristic 
 of Stanley that when the Greek Archbishop of 
 Syra was taking part in a consecration in the 
 Abbey, he should say, whilst inveighing against 
 the damnatory clauses, " It is interesting to 
 remember that this excellent person, not hold- 
 ing the Double Procession of the Holy Ghost 
 according to the Athanasian Creed, without 
 doubt shall perish everlastingly." 
 
 That abuse should be abundantly showered 
 upon "the heretic Dean" was not unnatural, 
 and greatly did he enjoy it. It came from the 
 most diverse quarters and was made for the 
 most diverse reasons, but his love of warfare 
 and a struggle made it a positive delight to him. 
 It has been truly said, especially with reference 
 to his life at Westminster, that " War was in
 
 84 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 his heart, while Peace was on his lips." When 
 he- permitted a new reredos with statues of 
 saints to be erected in the Abbey, he received 
 a letter beginning, "Thou miserable idolater." 
 And he left behind him a whole parcel of 
 letters of the most scurrilous abuse, labelled 
 " May God forgive the writers as I do." 
 
 The thought of the Abbey recalls the Jeru- 
 salem Chamber and the meetings within its 
 walls of the Lower House of Convocation, in 
 which the Dean so frequently spoke, and often 
 perhaps in too vehement defence of a cause 
 or a person he thought to be unjustly op- 
 pressed, often perhaps incurring the silent 
 censure of many a remote country parsonage 
 by the expression of his opinions, but ever 
 with kindly feelings towards those from whom 
 he differed the most, and who, when they 
 knew him well, seldom failed to love and 
 appreciate him. Through life the exemplifi- 
 cation of Christian catholicity in his own 
 person, Stanley could hardly help taking part 
 with those who were attacked, whenever he 
 saw that religious animosity was excited. 
 "Charity suffereth long and is kind" was 
 never absent from his thoughts, and led him 
 to be ever the champion of those whom he 
 imagined to be persecuted, as much of the
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 writers in " Essays and Reviews," of Bishop 
 Colenso, Pere Hyacinthe, and even of Mr. 
 Voysey, as of the Tractarians in early life. 
 Yet to many it seemed a strange inconsistency 
 that, while he did not scruple publicly to sub- 
 scribe for the defence of Mr. Voysey, he should 
 refuse the use of the Abbey to the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury for the special service before the 
 Pan-Anglican Synod. Thus it naturally came 
 about, as Dean Church says, that "his in- 
 fluence was a very mixed one, depressing as 
 well as elevating, raising the standard of reli- 
 gious ideas and work, but also confusing and 
 thwarting very much in detail." His inmost 
 heart meanwhile was bent upon the ennobling 
 and purifying of his fellow-men. "If together 
 we cannot do something for London, may the 
 malison of St. Peter and St. Paul be upon 
 us," he wrote to the Dean of St. Paul's on 
 his appointment in 1871. But it was not as 
 a Churchman, but as a literary man of extra- 
 ordinarily picturesque charm and personality 
 that he never failed to have a fascinating 
 and elevating influence upon all who came in 
 contact with him. 
 
 Next to the immediate concerns of his 
 Abbey, what occupied Stanley was the welfare 
 of the poor around him, whom he tried without
 
 86 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 ceasing to raise, cheer, and enliven, sending 
 many a mental sunbeam into a dismal home 
 by the thought of his annual flower-show and 
 its prizes, and taking great personal interest 
 in the neighbouring hospital and its work. 
 In all his efforts for the people of West- 
 minster, the Dean was ably seconded by 
 Lady Augusta. His desire to benefit the 
 working classes was also shared by his elder 
 sister, Mary, who, in a direction quite inde- 
 pendent of his own, was unceasingly employed 
 in trying to find employment for the poor, to 
 teach them provident habits, and to improve 
 their homes. At one time she undertook the 
 anxiety of a large contract to supply the army 
 with shirts, in order to give employment to a 
 great number of poor women. Latterly her 
 wonderful powers of organisation always en- 
 abled her to deal with vast numbers, but it 
 had taken long years of personal work amongst 
 the people to acquire her experience, as well 
 as the respect and confidence which contri- 
 buted so much to the success of her schemes 
 for their good. Of all these, the most im- 
 portant was the Penny Bank, opened once a 
 week in a little court at the back of a house 
 in York Street, Westminster, and managed 
 personally by Miss Stanley for more than
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 
 
 twenty- five years, though it had as many as 
 1000 depositors at a time. The undertaking 
 was indescribably laborious, especially during 
 the annual audit week in December, when 
 every single account had to be compared with 
 that in the ledger. In itself this ledger was 
 a study the dates for the whole half year 
 on one page (to save turning over), the 
 blotting-paper stitched in between each leaf 
 (to save blotting), for in dealing with such 
 large numbers every instant of time saved 
 was of importance. No less remarkable was 
 the simple but ingenious device by which the 
 visits of her numerous clients were distributed 
 equally over the three hours that she sat at 
 the receipt of custom, so that each should be 
 speedily served, and that there should be no 
 undue crowding at one time. Mary Stanley 
 would invite four or five ladies, before the 
 people arrived, to come and tie up flowers 
 for them in bunches. Many hundreds of nose- 
 gays were thus prepared, and it is remembered 
 how anxious she was that they should be 
 prettily arranged, for "I want to give my 
 people what is beautiful, and what is worth 
 doing at all is worth doing well." Her in- 
 variable patience, quickness, and good-humour 
 with the people rendered what would have
 
 88 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 been impossible to many comparatively easy 
 to Mary Stanley ; but a brave heart was also 
 required, and a friend who thought of starting 
 a similar bank in another part of London, and 
 came to her with all its dangers and difficulties, 
 recalls the energy with which she closed the 
 discussion : " My dear, if you stand counting 
 the difficulties when there is a good work 
 before you, you will never do anything that 
 is worth doing all your life ! Only begin, 
 begin, begin, and the difficulties will all dis- 
 appear." Under other superintendence and 
 in another house the Penny Bank founded by 
 Mary Stanley still flourishes in Westminster, a 
 memorial of her energy, kindliness, and wisdom. 
 As Dean of Westminster Stanley still en- 
 joyed in summer many foreign tours, when the 
 pleasure of showing places to Lady Augusta 
 sometimes counterbalanced his hatred of re- 
 visiting what he had seen before. In these 
 tours he visited Vallombrosa, Canosa, Gergo- 
 via, Sedan, and many other historic sites ; he 
 made the acquaintance of Nardi, Dupanloup, 
 D'Aubign6 ; he attended the Old Catholic Con- 
 gress at Munich and Cologne ; he had a quaint 
 interview with Pius IX., and he became the 
 intimate friend of Pere Hyacinthe. "There 
 is nothing in the world," he wrote, "that in-
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 89 
 
 terests me so much as an ecclesiastical curi- 
 osity." He had still the most thorough 
 enjoyment in travelling " It tires one out in 
 body, but is a most unspeakable refreshment 
 in mind." Meantime historic events of his 
 own time thrilled him with interest. He 
 bitterly regretted the " fall of the Papacy, as 
 involving the destruction of a quaint historical 
 anomaly." "My great wish in this life," he 
 said, "is to be Pope. Then I would call a 
 General Council, and I should say, ' Am I 
 infallible ? '- ' Yes.' ' Is whatever I say certain 
 to be true?' 'Yes.' 'Then the first use I 
 make of my infallibility is to declare I am 
 not infallible, that no Pope ever was infallible, 
 that the Church has fallen into many grievous 
 errors, and stands in great need of refor- 
 mation." 
 
 Dean Stanley's marriage with the devoted 
 attendant of the Duchess of Kent, whom the 
 Queen honoured with unvaried kindness and 
 friendship, had brought him into constant 
 communication with the Court, to which the 
 outward tie had been drawn closer by his 
 appointment of Deputy Clerk of the Closet, 
 Chaplain to the Queen, and Chaplain to- the 
 Prince of Wales. He was summoned every 
 year to take part in the services which com-
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 memorate at Frogmore the death of the 
 beloved Prince Consort. It was after repre- 
 senting her royal mistress at the marriage of 
 
 CHANTRY OF HENRY V., WESTMINSTER. 
 
 the Duke of Edinburgh in the bitter Russian 
 cold of January 1874, that Lady Augusta 
 Stanley received the chill from which she 
 recovered. Amid the heartrending 
 
 never
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 9 I 
 
 sorrow of watching her gradual failure of 
 every power, her being obliged to lay aside 
 one duty or pleasure after another, the news 
 that he had been elected Lord Rector of St. 
 Andrews brought a temporary sunbeam to 
 Arthur Stanley. The duties of the appoint- 
 ment were just what, at a happier time, he 
 would most have enjoyed, and he did enjoy 
 giving his inaugural lecture, and describing 
 that " secluded sanctuary of ancient wisdom, 
 with the foam-flakes of the Northern ocean 
 driving through its streets, with the skeleton 
 of its antique magnificence lifting up its gaunt 
 arms into the sky." 
 
 But Lady Augusta continued to fail daily. 
 For nearly a year longer her visible presence 
 was still with him, a year of hopes and fears, 
 a year of sad forebodings and farewells, and 
 on Ash Wednesday, 1876, one of the happiest 
 of earthly unions was severed by her death 
 at Westminster. On her deathbed she said, 
 " Think of me as near, only in another room 
 in my Father's house are many mansions." 
 But 
 
 "The sunshine of the heart was dead, 
 The glory of the home was fled, 
 The smile that made the dark world bright, 
 The love that made all duty light." 
 
 For five years Arthur Stanley was left to
 
 92 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 fulfil his appointed task alone. After a time he 
 was full of animation still, his mental activity 
 was as great as ever, and he was always full of 
 work. He found much interest in a short tour 
 in the United States, where, he said, he was 
 chiefly struck by his own ignorance ; and after 
 that by the extraordinary difference between 
 the States -- like separate kingdoms. The 
 kindly welcome and friendship shown him in 
 America seemed, at the time, almost to make 
 him happy. Sometimes also in England, when 
 he was in the society of those whose thoughts 
 met his, some of his old animation and cheer- 
 fulness returned ; and he ever gratefully recog- 
 nised and reciprocated the loving attention with 
 which his home was cared for by his wife's 
 sister, and her cousin who had been more than 
 a sister. But his friends saw him change more 
 and more every year his hair became grey, 
 his figure became bent, his voice became feeble ; 
 and, after the death of his dear sister Mary, in 
 the autumn of 1879, had loosened another of 
 his closest ties to earth, he seemed to be only 
 waiting for a summons which could not be very 
 far off. In speaking of what he would do in 
 the future, he now always said, " If I am still 
 here," and he looked at places he had loved as 
 if for the last time.
 
 S
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY 93 
 
 On Good Friday, 1881, he preached upon 
 the words, " Father, into Thy hands I com- 
 mend my spirit." He said he had preached 
 the same sermon in the same pulpit at that 
 season ten years before, and he would like to 
 preach it once again. The way in which he 
 said "once again" sent a thrill of sadness 
 through all who heard it. 
 
 On Saturday, July 9, during one of his 
 sermons on the Beatitudes, he'was taken ill in 
 the Abbey, and though there were few who 
 believed him in danger till within some hours of 
 the end, all through the week which followed 
 he was being led gently and painlessly to the 
 entrance of the dark valley, and on July 18, 
 just before the Abbey clock struck the hour of 
 midnight, surrounded by almost all those he 
 most loved on earth, his spirit passed away. 
 His sister, who sat constantly by his side 
 through the last hours, wrote afterwards : 
 
 "There he lay, immovable and speechless, only just 
 breathing heavily. 
 
 " As we gathered round his bed, the deep silence was 
 only broken by a few prayers offered up at intervals 
 by Canon Farrar and my husband. Then, for the last 
 half-hour, as the breathing became fainter, the silence 
 grew more intense. No one stirred or spoke, only the 
 nurse went on fanning his dear face as the shadows
 
 94 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 of death grew darker. At length even the fan ceased, 
 and there was stillness absolutely uninterrupted. 
 
 "A long pause another faint breath a pause yet 
 longer again a breath fainter than the last. Another 
 long, long pause, and when for some moments we had 
 waited for another breath which never came, we knew 
 that he had left us, and we knelt down and offered up 
 our thanks for the peaceful departure of our dear, dear 
 brother. And so we came away, as the cathedral 
 chimes struck a quarter to twelve, and left that room, 
 never to meet there, again for ever." 
 
 He was buried with immense concourse of 
 people one might almost say with the great 
 pomp which he loved and rests by Lady 
 Augusta's side in Henry VI I. 's chapel at West- 
 minster ; but his funeral was far less touching 
 and impressive than hers, for he was not there 
 to be felt for and sorrowed with. 
 
 In speaking of his dear Westminster, the 
 sense of the Dean's last words was, " I have 
 laboured amidst many frailties and with much 
 weakness to make this institution more and 
 more the great centre of religious and national 
 life in a truly liberal spirit." 
 
 This was the characteristic of his existence ; 
 thus since he has passed beyond all bounds of 
 doubt or controversy in most loving reverence 
 should he ever be remembered.
 
 HENRY ALFORD 
 
 I HAVE been asked to write some memorial of 
 my dear friend Dean Alford. The remem- 
 brance of his strong personality is ever present 
 with me. I can hear his genial voice still, and 
 feel myself carried away by his enthusiasm for all 
 things good and beautiful ; and yet, in gathering 
 up the fragments that remain, there is not much 
 to be told. He was one of those who always 
 poured out his best thoughts in books, not in his 
 letters, which are neither graphic nor charac- 
 teristic. Of his published works there is a 
 perfect library. Outside them, he had only his 
 personal existence, infinitely loving and lov- 
 able ; replete with tenderest care for others and 
 utter indifference about himself; full of little 
 peculiarities, which, to those who loved him, 
 had their own charm as being his. What chiefly 
 strikes one on looking back is, that no one had 
 a more vigorous sense of enjoyment than Dean 
 Alford, or more power of diffusing it ; whether 
 in the old Deanery, under the shadow of his 
 
 95
 
 96 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 own glorious cathedral, or in thymy uplands 
 of the Roman Campagna, or amid the grand 
 purple precipices of the Maritime Alps, his 
 companions were equally carried away by it. 
 
 Henry Alford was born in London on 
 October 7, 1810, being the son of the Rev. 
 Henry Alford and his wife, Sarah Eliza Paget 
 (daughter of a Tamworth banker), who died 
 four months after the birth of her only child. 
 His earliest amusement was to write books, 
 and he became the author of "The Travels of 
 St. Paul, from his Conversion to his Death " 
 illustrated at six years old. 
 
 As curate of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire, 
 and afterwards of Wraxall near Bristol, his 
 father was his constant companion and friend. 
 Henry Alford portrays their intimate relation- 
 ship in the "School of the Heart "- 
 
 " Evening and Morning those two ancient names 
 So link'd with childish wonder, when with arms 
 Fast wound about the neck of one beloved, 
 Oft questioning, we heard Creation's tale, 
 Evening and Morning brought to me strange joy." 
 
 In 1817 the father went abroad with Lord 
 Calthorpe, and Henry, at seven years old, was 
 sent to school at Charmouth. After returning 
 to England in 1818, his father took the curacy 
 of Dray ton, which was only a mile from Heale
 
 HENRY ALFORD 97 
 
 House in Somerset, where his elder brother, 
 Samuel, lived with his numerous children, who 
 were like brothers and sisters to the little Henry. 
 
 In 1824 Henry Alford was sent to Ilminster 
 School a gentle, delicate boy, with wondrous 
 powers of memory, of unusually serious thoughts, 
 which found minute expression in the self- 
 examination of his journal, or in letters of 
 meditative piety and advice addressed to his 
 cousins at Heale. His school companions never 
 lost the impression that he was a genius, with a 
 natural talent for everything. "His mind was 
 always poetical and imaginative, loving scenery, 
 flowers, and whatever constituted beauty in 
 nature and art. He was humorous and witty, 
 with a quick sense of whatever was ludicrous 
 and amusing, and was ready to get pleasure 
 out of the least thing." Above all, his school 
 companions always retained the impression 
 of the extraordinary purity of his boyish life. 
 One of them well remembers his saying in 
 early years, when speaking of the titles given to 
 our Saviour, that he liked to call him " Jesus, 
 my Master." 1 
 
 In the summer of 1827, Henry Alford left 
 Ilminster to go to a tutor at Acton in Suffolk. 
 This tutor was the Rev. John Bickersteth, under 
 
 1 Letter from America. Memoir, p. 492. 
 
 G
 
 98 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 whose influence his religious tendencies deve- 
 loped. On November 18, 1827, he wrote in a 
 Bible, " I do this day, as in the presence of God 
 and my own soul, renew my covenant with God, 
 and solemnly determine henceforth to become 
 His, and to do His work as far as in me lies." 
 As the time of going to Cambridge approached, 
 he trembled before the temptations which were 
 sure there to assail him. To one of his cousins 
 he wrote : 
 
 "You cannot think how I dread Cambridge; I quite 
 shrink from the thought of going there, and fear I shall 
 fall. I have no stamina as yet of religious principle, 
 at least so I fear, and all as yet is talk and pride. 
 People want me to get into the first class at Trinity. 
 I hope I shall be enabled to do my best as in the sight 
 of God, and not to regard the praise or dispraise of 
 men, and then, if I fail of my object of attainment of 
 earthly honours, I can be calm and contented under 
 the will of my Heavenly Father." 
 
 Settled at Trinity, he was soon deep in lec- 
 tures and enjoying all his classical studies, but 
 finding nothing "satisfying" except the Bible. 
 
 " I read ^Eschylus and Homer," he says, " and then 
 turn to Isaiah and Joel; and the heathen poetry, 
 sublime as it is in itself, is mere prose in comparison. 
 I read Algebra and Euclid, and then turn to the 
 Epistle to the Romans, and all the reasoning of ancients
 
 HENRY ALFORD 99 
 
 and moderns appears weak and inconclusive; every 
 store of spiritual and intellectual knowledge is hid in 
 that divine book." 
 
 His letters lack the simplicity of youth, and 
 are full of moral reflections. After apologising 
 for this in a letter to his cousin, Fanny Alford 
 (June 16, 1829), he says : 
 
 " I cannot help it. It seems natural to my mind to 
 think on things which are going on around me, as if 
 they carried an instruction with them, and were meant 
 in some measure to bear a secondary meaning, and teach 
 a lesson of spirituality and heavenly-mindedness." 
 
 To Walter Alford he wrote from Cambridge 
 in the following October : 
 
 " It is not so much the gross outward temptations of 
 this or any other place that I have to fear ; my inmost 
 feelings recoil and turn with disgust from the brutality 
 and sensuality of many men whom I see around ; 
 but it is the insidious undermining, if I may say so, 
 which study and literary habits carry on against the 
 work of God in the soul ; it is the springing up of those 
 seeds of pride which an enemy hath sown in my heart, 
 and which are working slowly, but I fear surely, towards 
 maturity the pride of intellectual, philosophical, or 
 classical acquirements it is these I have to dread. Oh, 
 the chilling influence of literary pursuits and literary 
 society ! "
 
 IOO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 He wrote also of the temptations which he 
 felt from " being constantly brought into con- 
 tact with men who live without God in the 
 world, and in being surrounded with professors 
 of religion, many of them neither moral nor 
 religious." 
 
 In leisure moments, Henry Alford often occu- 
 pied himself in translating favourite passages 
 in the classics for his cousins, and urging them 
 to compare them with still nobler passages in 
 the Scriptures. " You cannot think how beauti- 
 ful it is," he wrote, "to select and admire the 
 sublimest and finest parts of the classical philo- 
 sophers and poets, and then to find parallel 
 passages in Scripture, as may almost always be 
 done, and comparing them ; not to destroy the 
 beauty of the former, but to exalt and bring 
 into light the divine sublimity of the latter." 
 
 His chief college friendships seem to have 
 been with Arthur Hallam, Tennant, and Alfred 
 Tennyson. Writing of Alford's college life, 
 Dean Merivale says : 
 
 " I really think he was morally the bravest man I 
 ever knew. His perfect purity of mind and singleness 
 of purpose, seemed to give him a confidence and un- 
 obtrusive self-respect which never failed him. Then, 
 as throughout his career, he was singularly remarkable 
 for the versatility of his talents. If one of the friends
 
 HENRY ALFORD IOI 
 
 among whom he was then held in estimation was more 
 eminently gifted in verse, another more deeply plunged 
 into the dark profound of juvenile metaphysics, a third 
 promising to take higher rank in classics, a fourth in 
 mathematics, Alford could at least hold his own with 
 all of them, could appreciate all, could sympathise with 
 all, and could gain in return the sympathy of all." 
 
 In 1831 Henry Alford's habits of self-exa- 
 mination increased to what many would feel 
 to be a very unwholesome extent. In the 
 words of Bishop Beveridge he wrote, " My 
 very repentance wants repenting of ; my holiest 
 acts want purifying afresh in the blood of 
 Christ." 
 
 " Even the Love of Him 
 Now mingled in my bosom with all sounds 
 And sights that I rejoiced in and in hours 
 Of self-arraigning thought, when the dull world, 
 With all its saws of heartlessness and pride, 
 Came close upon me, I approved my joys 
 And simple fondnesses, on trust that He 
 Who taught the lesson of unwavering faith 
 From the meek lilies of green Palestine, 
 Would fit the earthly things that most I loved 
 To the high teaching of my patient soul. 
 And the sweet hope that sprung within me now 
 Seemed all-capacious, and from every source 
 Apt to draw comfort." ' 
 
 Meantime he worked tremendously hard. 
 "In those days he almost seemed to do with- 
 
 1 From "The School of the Heart."
 
 IO2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 out sleep," wrote one of his intimate friends 
 and companions. In January 1832 he was an- 
 nounced thirty-fourth wrangler, eighth in the 
 first class of the classical tripos. In the pre- 
 ceding year his father had married again, a 
 Miss Susan Barber, whom he cordially wel- 
 comed as stepmother ; and immediately after 
 taking his degree he became himself engaged 
 to his cousin, Fanny Alford of Heale. 
 
 " In their summer walks amid the woods and terraces 
 of Burton," writes Mrs. Alford, "and on the heights 
 above Sedgmoor, the betrothed cousins framed for 
 their future life no more ambitious scheme than the 
 care of some country parish. They learned to open 
 their hearts unreservedly to one another ; the}' read, 
 learned, and reasoned on Scripture together, and prayed 
 together; they formed, and very nearly accomplished, 
 in those six weeks, the design of reading together 
 the first volume of Dobson's edition of Hooker's 
 Works, his first five books of ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' 
 and his sermon on 'The Certainty and Perpetuity of 
 Faith in the Elect.' Archdeacon Evans's charming 
 book, ' The Rectory of Valehead,' was twice read 
 through, first by Henry alone, then by him to his 
 future wife and her sisters. The good Archdeacon had 
 been his tutor at Cambridge, and exercised great in- 
 fluence over his mind at that time. Henry determined 
 to enable his future wife to read the New Testament 
 in Greek, and for this purpose began a Greek Gram- 
 mar in the form of a series of letters to her, which
 
 HENRY ALFORD IO3 
 
 grew to the extent of sixty folio pages. For the 
 amusement of his cousins generally he wrote some 
 small pieces entitled ' Guesses at Truth,' &c., and gave 
 them as his contribution to the ' Family Mirror,' a 
 periodical which never attained the dignity of appear- 
 ing in print, but was circulated in manuscript among 
 various young members of the Alford family. In the 
 enthusiasm of those young days he planned the forma- 
 tion of a society amongst ourselves for the regulation 
 of social intercourse, with the object of avoiding frivolous 
 conversation and giving mutual aid in detecting and 
 correcting faults." 
 
 The beauties of Nature, then as always, were 
 his greatest delight : 
 
 " Beauty and Truth 
 
 Go hand in hand and 'tis the providence 
 Of the great Teacher, that doth clearest show 
 The gentler and more lovely to our sight, 
 Training our souls by frequent communings 
 With her who meets us in our daily path 
 With greetings and sweet talk, to pass at length 
 Into the presence, by unmarked degrees, 
 Of that her sterner sister ; best achieved 
 When from a thousand common sights and sounds 
 The power of Beauty passes sensibly 
 Into the soul, clenching the golden links 
 That bind the memories of brightest things." 1 
 
 And especially delightful to him was the 
 scenery of the hill-ridges above Sedgmoor : 
 
 From " The School of the Heart."
 
 IO4 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 " I would stand 
 
 Upon the jutting hills that overlook 
 Our level moor, and watch the daylight fade 
 Along the prospect ; now behind the leaves 
 The golden twinkles of the western sun 
 Deepened to richest crimson ; now from out 
 The solemn beech-grove, through the natural aisles 
 Of pillared trunks, the glory in the West 
 Showed like the brightly burning Shechinah, 
 Seen in old times above the Mercy-seat 
 Between the folded wings of Cherubim." 
 
 Returning to Cambridge in October 1832, 
 Henry Alford took pupils, and in the following 
 spring published his " Poems and Poetical Frag- 
 ments." In October 1833 ne was ordained at 
 Rochester, and entered upon the curacy of 
 Ampton. which his father had vacated to take 
 the rectory of Winkfield. Many misgivings 
 beset him at first as to how he could fulfil his 
 clerical duties. " My inexperience may be in a 
 few years remedied," he wrote to his betrothed 
 wife soon after, " but I feel as if I had no ground 
 to go upon. My fancied fitness for the minis- 
 try and my cherished schemes of usefulness 
 have all slipped away, and I am left a mere boy 
 in understanding." And again, after he had 
 been seven weeks at Ampton, " Oh, how the 
 profession of God's ministry and the light of 
 His countenance bring to notice all my many 
 shortcomings, and set before me my secret
 
 HENRY ALFORD IO5 
 
 sins." On November 6, 1834, his journal 
 records : 
 
 " I went up to town and received the Holy Orders 
 of a Priest ; may I be a temple of chastity and holi- 
 ness, fit and clean to receive so great a guest; and, on 
 so great a commission as I have now received, O my 
 beloved Redeemer, my dear Brother and Master, hear 
 my prayer." 
 
 In March 1835 the small, obscure, and till 
 then neglected vicarage of Wymeswold, in 
 Leicestershire, fell vacant, with its population of 
 1 200 and an income of \ 20, and was accepted 
 by him with a view to his immediate marriage 
 with his cousin Fanny, "that dear person, who 
 had been through life the chief object of his 
 love on earth." At Wymeswold he built and 
 superintended the schools, he almost rebuilt the 
 church, and conducted three services every Sun- 
 day. He also began to preach the unwritten, 
 though much meditated, sermons for which he 
 afterwards became celebrated. The narrow 
 income of his living necessitated taking pupils, 
 but the extra labour thus involved rendered 
 only more delightful his holiday rambles with 
 his wife, especially their first foreign tour in 
 1837, described in his Sonnets, which at this 
 time go far to form a record of his life. Of the
 
 IO6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 quiet happiness of his home life he tells us in 
 " Every Day's Employ : "- 
 
 " I have found Peace in the bright earth 
 
 And in the sunny sky : 
 By the low voice of summer seas, 
 And where streams murmur by. 
 
 I find it in the quiet tone 
 
 Of voices that I love : 
 By the flickering of a twilight fire, 
 
 And in a leafless grove. 
 
 I find k in the silent flow 
 
 Of solitary thought : 
 In calm half- meditated dreams, 
 
 And reasonings self-taught. 
 
 But seldom have I found such peace 
 
 As in the soul's deep joy 
 Of passing onward free from harm 
 
 Through every day's employ. 
 
 If gems we seek, we only tire, 
 
 And lift our hopes too high ; 
 The constant flowers that line our way 
 
 Alone can satisfy." 
 
 During the residence of the Alfords at 
 Wymeswold their four children were born, 
 and there, in April 1844, their youngest boy, 
 Clement, died. " Is not the triumph of having 
 one dear child landed in glory enough to 
 comfort the heart even of bereaved parents ? " 
 the Vicar wrote to his brother-in-law, Walter 
 Alford.
 
 HENRY ALFORD 
 
 In 1845 the design of writing a commentary 
 on the Greek Testament had begun to assume 
 a definite form in Henry Alford's mind. He 
 fancied at first that it could be accomplished 
 in a twelvemonth of hard labour; but 1847 
 found him only advanced sufficiently to have 
 an increasing sense of the importance and 
 magnitude of the work he had undertaken ; 
 and after a visit to Bonn in that summer for 
 the sake of German study, he resigned his 
 pupils having trained as many as sixty, of 
 whom many have since filled conspicuous posi- 
 tions and gave up to his commentary all the 
 time which was not claimed by his parish. 
 Yet in the fullest sense he fulfilled his parochial 
 duties. Mrs. Alford writes : 
 
 " It was his habit to enter thoroughly into the indi- 
 vidual cases of his pastoral work. Some portion of it 
 was necessarily intrusted to his curate, and he took 
 great pains to secure colleagues of congenial spirit with 
 himself. Each soul was treated distinctly as a part of 
 the charge committed to him. Though naturally dis- 
 posed to be reserved and shy, Henry did not seclude 
 himself from personal intercourse with any of his 
 parishioners if it might be profitable for them. Privately 
 as well as publicly his gentle and winning sympathy 
 was ready to be offered to each one who sought it, 
 whether in joy or sorrow. Nor did he omit to take 
 any suitable opportunity that presented itself to him
 
 IO8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 either of correcting or of encouraging those whom he 
 desired to see walking in the way of godliness." 
 
 His standard of what he required in a curate 
 is expressed in the following passage from a 
 letter in which he asks help in seeking one : 
 
 " I want him to teach and preach Jesus Christ, and 
 not the Church ; and to be fully prepared to recognise 
 the pious Dissenter as a brother in Christ and as 
 much a member of the Church as ourselves. Above 
 all, he should be a man of peace, who will quietly do 
 his own work and not breed strife." 
 
 In November 1850 the first volume of the 
 Greek Testament was published. Alford had 
 thrown his whole soul into it. "His bravery," 
 says Dean Merivale, "was manifested in the 
 unfailing serenity and confidence with which he 
 encountered his work, and the cheerful, un- 
 doubting satisfaction with which he looked both 
 forward and backward. His mind seemed at 
 perfect peace, as one well assured that his work 
 was appointed him, and that he was doing it." 
 
 When working at Babbicombe at the second 
 volume of his Greek Testament during his 
 summer holiday in 1850, Henry Alford lost 
 his remaining son, Ambrose. His memory was 
 always a most precious possession to his parents. 
 He had lived, to a rare degree, in the purest
 
 HENRY ALFORD IO9 
 
 light of truth, and he died before the clear 
 stream of his boyish life had mingled with the 
 turbid waters of the world. The boy's danger 
 was only apparent an hour before his death. 
 There were few parting words, but those very 
 sweet ones. His father records them 
 
 " Refresh me with the bright blue violet, 
 And put the pale faint-scented primrose near, 
 For I am breathing yet : 
 Shed not one silly tear, 
 But when my eyes are set, 
 Scatter the fresh flowers thick upon my bier, 
 And let my early grave with morning dew be wet. 
 
 I have passed swiftly o'er the pleasant earth, 
 My life hath been the shadow of a dream ; 
 
 The joyousness of birth 
 Did ever with me seem : 
 
 My spirit had no death, 
 But dwelt for ever in a full swift stream, 
 Lapt in a golden trance of never-failing mirth. 
 
 Touch me once more, my father, ere my hand 
 Have not an answer for thee ; kiss my cheek 
 
 Ere the blood fix and stand 
 When flits the hectic streak ; 
 
 Give me thy last command, 
 Before I lie all undisturbed and meek, 
 Wrapt in the snowy folds of funeral swathing-band." 
 
 In a paper written nearly twenty years after- 
 wards, Henry Alford describes no imaginary 
 scene, but his boy's death-bed on the last day 
 of August.
 
 I IO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 " You remember when we last entered such a cham- 
 ber; and on that little press-bed in the corner by the 
 window lay all we cared for ; in that room we scarce 
 dared breathe ; even grief was lulled, and all was 
 solemnised without a feeling beyond. We stood all 
 four round his dying bed, with the sunset from the 
 western sea filling the room with rosy light ; and we 
 watched till the dear features lost meaning and their 
 lines stiffened ; and then I pressed down the eyelids, 
 and we left Mama with him, and we three went out 
 bewildered, and sat down on the beach, and I said, 
 ' Where is he now ? ' The sun had gone down, and had 
 left in the lower sky a few lines of dull red, and under 
 them the sea looked a pale ghostly blue, and the sky 
 above was clear, yet without a star. And there was 
 not a sound, not a breath, not a ripple. All seemed 
 to speak of a presence gone. He had been about 
 those rocks, and on that beach, and cleaving those 
 waters and now ? " 
 
 Long after, writing from Devonshire to his 
 daughter Mary, Henry Alford says : 
 
 "July 17, KS66. The journey was long enough. 
 After passing Exeter came the well-known line of red 
 coast and the accustomed pang and tears in the eye as 
 a certain bay of sorrow came in sight. Sixteen years 
 ago ! O darling ! what would he have been now ? Yes, 
 but what is he now ? " 
 
 It was in the old paternal house of Heale, 
 which had witnessed their betrothal and mar-
 
 HENRY ALFORD III 
 
 riage, that the bereaved parents sought a refuge 
 in their grief. Its desolation and decay were 
 congenial to them. 
 
 " We are at our childhood's home, a large old house 
 in one of the beautiful sites in the county of Somerset. 
 Everything here is hushed and solemn. . The house is 
 one of the last century, and part of no one knows how 
 many centuries before. The timber is vast and un- 
 trimmed, the boughs waving before and scraping the 
 windows. The front looks up a decayed avenue of 
 chestnuts yearly despoiled of some of their companions, 
 at the end of which is a tall column erected by the 
 great Lord Chatham to the memory of Sir William 
 Pynsent, who bequeathed him the estate of Burton 
 Pynsent, now all gone to ruin, the house fallen down, 
 the garden a wilderness. Add to all this that my 
 wife's father, the head of our family, is paralysed and 
 helpless, waiting his dismissal. In this place we have 
 all grown up and played our childish games, and now 
 it is the centre and resort of the widely scattered 
 members of a family numbering twelve married couples 
 and thirty grandchildren, besides brothers and sisters 
 of the last generation in all numbering sixty-two 
 persons. Is it not a place strangely in harmony with 
 our present feelings ? ' This is not your rest ' is 
 written on every mouldering stone of the old house ; 
 and to add to all, dear Ambrose was here full of life 
 and spirits only a month ago." 
 
 Afterwards, writing to Lady Sitwell, Henry 
 Alford said :
 
 112 BIOGRAPHICAL SKKTCI1KS 
 
 "I have found that the fact of our dear children having 
 wrestled with and overcome death seems more than 
 ever to remove all terror from the prospect of our own 
 struggle with him. To think that those cherished ones, 
 from whom we have carefully fenced off every rough 
 blast, whom we led by the hand in every thorny path, 
 have gone by themselves through the dark valley ; that 
 those weapons of which we had only begun to teach 
 them the use have been successfully wielded by their 
 little hands, and that their victory is gained before 
 it had come to our own turn to prove them. Such 
 thoughts seem to show us the meaning of the wonderful 
 expression, ' More than conquerors.' If they could 
 struggle and overcome, much more we, with so much 
 more knowledge and experience. No doubt our fight 
 will be harder, for the world has wrapped itself more 
 closely round our hearts. But let not our faith fail in 
 Him who has conquered death, and I do not doubt that 
 He who now leads our dear children in the green pas- 
 tures of eternal joy will in His own time make perfect 
 His strength in our weakness, and show us that all 
 deep afflictions have been in reality our best and 
 greatest blessings." 
 
 In 185 1-52 Henry Alford was frequently em- 
 ployed as a lecturer, and his lectures, many of 
 which were repeatedly delivered, became very 
 popular. One of them, " The Queen's English," 
 was afterwards published as a little volume. 
 In the autumn of 1852 he watched over the 
 death-bed of his father, his best and earliest
 
 HENRY ALFORD 113 
 
 friend, the friend whom he always felt to have 
 understood him best. In the following spring 
 came the offer of Quebec Chapel in London, 
 and he determined to leave Wymeswold. To 
 his wife, on receiving the offer, he wrote : 
 
 " I feel deeply that my work at Wymeswold is done ; it 
 has been the work of a pioneer. I have been the means 
 of preparing and working for what is to come ; but, like 
 all others who do this, I am not the man to continue 
 it. Untoward circumstances have thrown me into 
 false positions ; and now that my Greek Testament 
 withdraws me from the parish, I have, and must have 
 to the people in general, the aspect of an idle shepherd, 
 letting others do his work ; and after eighteen years, 
 as the generation grows up which knows not Joseph, 
 this must infallibly get worse and worse. . . . First 
 trust me, which I mention only first because it is in 
 this matter the necessary inlet to the other, and next 
 trust God. If we take up this plan, determined to 
 serve Him, not neglecting common prudence, but at 
 the same time, in a humble self-sacrificing spirit, He 
 will bring us safe through, never doubt it ; so let me at 
 least have your sympathy. Eve wept over her flowers ; 
 Eve's daughter can do no less. Eve's son will have 
 hard work to get up a dry parting ; but sure I am of one 
 thing heaven's flowers will bloom the sweeter for it." 
 
 A letter to his daughter Mary about this 
 time, on their future life, contains the following 
 touching words :
 
 I I 4 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 " In the life which is now opening may we be kept 
 as a Christian family, without any difference or cold- 
 ness to each other, and each be the means of good to 
 the rest, as long as we are spared together here ! I 
 feel and know that I am often hasty and wayward 
 to dear Alice and you, and that my manner and 
 words discourage and grieve you. This is very sinful 
 in me ; and when you see it, you see that your father 
 on earth is not like your Father in heaven, on whose 
 brow there is never a frown, who never is wayward 
 or hasty. Forgive it, and do not let it discourage you, 
 dearest children. Pray for me, and I will strive to be 
 gentle and loving at all times, and to reprove, not with 
 temper, but with equity and mildness." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Half our little band is already with the Lord ; let 
 us ever so live as those hoping to join them where they 
 are. They are one with Christ in glory ; let us be one 
 with Him and them in faith and hope and purity, living 
 by one blessed spirit. Many and sweet are our com- 
 forts here, deep and blessed our love for each other, 
 and what will our joy and love be when our circle 
 is again completed, father and mother, brothers and 
 sisters, in a glorious eternity ! " 
 
 In September 1853 the Alfords removed 
 to a house in Upper Hamilton Terrace, St. 
 John's Wood, in a situation whose quietness 
 was favourable to literary work, while the
 
 HENRY ALFORD I 1 5 
 
 distance from Quebec Chapel was not too great 
 for a walk. During the four years of his resi- 
 dence here, Henry Alford's habit was to rise 
 at six, light his own fire in his study, and 
 work there till one o'clock. One hour before 
 breakfast was given to composing his sermons, 
 and the rest of the morning to the Greek Tes- 
 tament. In the afternoon he visited amongst 
 the poor inhabitants of his district, though the 
 principal care of them devolved upon his curate. 
 Evenings passed at home were spent in reading 
 aloud to his family, and few read so well or 
 effectively. His morning sermons were care- 
 fully written, and six volumes of these Quebec 
 Sermons were published ; but his afternoon 
 sermons were extempore. Reading any of the 
 sermons, however, is not what hearing them 
 was. He had the manner and the voice which 
 gave at once a solemnity and an interest to all 
 he said ; his hearers knew that he felt all he was 
 saying to the uttermost, and his rich stores of 
 knowledge of theology and literature of every 
 kind made him especially acceptable to the 
 cultivated classes who formed the main portion 
 of his congregation. 
 
 Yet, people went to Henry Alford's church 
 not for an intellectual feast, but to gain help in 
 living the Christian life. He put forth the truths
 
 I I 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 on which that life depends. He pictured the 
 life itself, and fearlessly exposed the faults and 
 temptations by which a London existence, espe- 
 cially in fashionable London, is surrounded. 
 
 The afternoon sermons were rather a kind of 
 exegetical lecture, embracing the whole con- 
 text of a passage, and going fully into its con- 
 nection and argument. Critical questions were 
 often handled, though only as far as the subject 
 in hand fairly demanded. This kind of preach- 
 ing was then a novelty, though it has since 
 become less uncommon, and the Sunday after- 
 noon congregation at Quebec Chapel was con- 
 sequently of a peculiarly high order members 
 of Parliament, eminent lawyers, and other 
 varied representatives of the intellectual classes, 
 to whom the study of a definite portion of the 
 New Testament which was presented to them 
 had an especial interest, as inviting them to 
 verify what was said by the conscientious 
 study of the chapter for themselves. It was 
 known also that Alford was a careful scholar 
 and a diligent student. Men went to him as 
 to one who could render a reason, and who 
 was not likely to rely on a mistranslation 
 in the Authorised Version, either because 
 he had not looked at his Greek Testament 
 before he went into the pulpit, or because
 
 HENRY ALFORD I I 7 
 
 he would not have detected the error if he 
 had. 1 
 
 Of these lectures the Rev. E. T. Vaughan 
 writes : 
 
 "The work which Alford did in making these 
 critical and exegetical helps, which had hitherto been 
 the property in England only of a few readers of 
 German, to become the common heritage of all educated 
 Englishmen, was a work which no other man of his 
 own generation could have achieved equally well, or 
 was likely to have attempted. His industry was won- 
 derful, his power of getting through work such as I 
 have never known equalled. No man could sum up 
 more clearly and concisely the conflicting opinions of 
 others ; none could, on the whole, exercise a fairer or 
 more reasonable judgment between them. No man 
 could be more honestly anxious to arrive at truth ; he 
 shirked no difficulty which he felt ; he kept back 
 nothing which he believed. On all critical and exe- 
 getical questions he was always open to conviction, and 
 never ashamed to confess a change of opinion." 
 
 After having been some months at Quebec 
 Chapel, Henry Alford wrote to his friend Mr. 
 Vaughan : 
 
 "The chapel is full, and the people seem attached 
 and kind, and liberal in contributing to every good 
 work. My morning congregation is, of course, the 
 
 1 Memoir. Letter of B. Shaw, Esq.
 
 I 1 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 congregation, and for them I write my sermons, 
 having begun with the year. But the afternoon con- 
 gregation is the one I love best, being my own child. 
 It has increased from absolutely nothing to within a 
 hundred or two of the morning. To them I do not 
 preach, but expound the Gospels ; in fact, expand my 
 Greek Testament notes, a sort of thing in which, as 
 you may imagine, I delight much. My district work 
 is very interesting, and when our schools are once 
 set on foot, will be much more so. But my situation, 
 you must know, is no sinecure. I find it difficult to 
 get time for my Greek Testament work amongst its 
 duties." 
 
 In the spring of 1854 the living of Tydd St. 
 Mary's, Lincoln, was offered to Henry Alford 
 by the Lord Chancellor Cran worth. He 
 comically describes in his journal his visit to 
 the Lord Chancellor on the occasion of his 
 declining it : 
 
 " When I asked to see Lord Cranworth, the servant 
 said his master was engaged. I then said, ' I am not 
 come to ask for anything, but to refuse something 
 offered.' ' Oh, sir, then I am sure he will see you,' 
 was the reply." 
 
 When wearied with the work of the London 
 season, the summer tours of the Al fords in the 
 Pyrenees, the South of F'rance, and Scotland 
 were the greatest refreshment. The family
 
 HENRY ALFORD 
 
 travelled in the simplest and most primitive 
 fashion, Mrs. Alford and her daughters carry- 
 ing their necessaries in hand-bags over the 
 mountains, and the father of the family looking 
 like a pilgrim of old time, and almost confining 
 his luggage to a thick walking-stick, which 
 unscrewed at different points, and disclosed 
 comb, tooth-brush, &c. &c. In 1856 Henry 
 Alford became one of the ' Five Clergymen ' 
 of the Clerical Club, who met for the purpose 
 of revising the Authorised Version of the New 
 Testament of which the first publication the 
 Gospel of St. John appeared in the spring of 
 1857. "In this work he soon won the affec- 
 tionate esteem of his companions. Thoroughly 
 versed in the subject, he was not in the least 
 disposed to dogmatise, or press his own opinion 
 unduly ; he was quick in catching and appre- 
 ciating the suggestions and arguments of others, 
 even when they were at variance with his 
 own. His opinion on difficult points of criticism, 
 interpretation, and rendering was always re- 
 ceived with respect ; but in general he seemed 
 to keep himself in the background." l 
 
 Alford's character in private at this time 
 "was strongly marked," says Mr. Shaw, "by 
 three qualities earnestness, for his religion 
 
 1 Memoir. Letter of Rev. W. G. Humphry.
 
 I 2O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 was no mere theory ; manliness, for it never 
 degenerated into sentimentalism ; energy, for 
 it abhorred all idleness of mind or body ; his 
 grasp of the truth he held was very tenacious, 
 he never felt tempted to go from his anchorage." 
 One of those who knew him best wrote long 
 afterwards concerning his life at this time : 
 
 " His bravery was manifested in the unfailing sere- 
 nity and confidence with which he encountered his 
 work, and the cheerful, undoubting satisfaction with 
 which he looked both backward and forward. I never 
 heard a murmur from him, I never saw him despond, 
 I never knew him look anxiously about for the means 
 of bettering and advancing himself. His mind seemed 
 at perfect peace, as one well assured that his work was 
 appointed him, and that he was doing it. I knew 
 many of his troubles, but this brave spirit of his, 
 anchored in domestic love and religious faith, never 
 quailed before any of them." 
 
 In March 1857, whilst he was engaged with 
 his family in receiving a drawing-lesson from 
 Leitch the artist, a letter came from Lord 
 Palmerston offering him the Deanery of Can- 
 terbury, an offer which came just when he was 
 feeling especially overdone with work, and 
 which he hailed gladly, as giving him the time 
 sorely needed for his Biblical studies, as well 
 
 1 See Memoir, p. 497.
 
 HENRY ALFORD 
 
 121 
 
 as for attending the meetings of the Ecclesi- 
 astical Commission, of which he was an official 
 member, and of the Lower House of Convo- 
 cation of the Province of Canterbury, of which, 
 after the Prolocutor, he was the senior member. 
 
 IN THE DEANERY GARDEN, CANTERBURY. 
 
 Great too was the delight of his art-loving soul 
 in his new home, in the charming old house 
 and ancient garden, with its time-honoured 
 mulberry-trees, nestling under the shadow of 
 one of the grandest cathedrals in the world.
 
 122 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 By the establishment of an afternoon sermon 
 in the cathedral Dean Alford was able to carry 
 out, in some measure, the work for which he 
 had seemed so peculiarly fitted at Quebec 
 Chapel. During his sermons the cathedral 
 was crowded. Few Churchmen, certainly few 
 Churchmen in high places, had ever dared to 
 speak before with his fearless liberality. His 
 position towards the great Nonconforming 
 communities was almost unique. "True to 
 the traditions of his cathedral," said Arch- 
 bishop Tait, " which offered a sanctuary in 
 time of danger to the persecuted Protestants 
 of the Continent, he was enabled, from his 
 longing after perfect communion with all who 
 served his Lord, to unite with many from 
 whom others are by conscientious convictions 
 separated, and to make it understood that the 
 faithful minister and leader of the Church of 
 England has a heart as wide as the Church 
 of Christ." : After one of his sermons a poor 
 woman was heard to say, " And the common 
 people heard him gladly." 
 
 In everything the change from London to 
 Canterbury was for the happiest. By the older 
 inhabitants of the Precincts the Dean was at 
 first looked upon as a revolutionist, but the 
 
 1 See the Archbishop's Charge, October 2, 1872.
 
 HENRY ALFORD 123 
 
 gentleness of his character disarmed opposition. 
 Work of the most interesting kind could now 
 also frequently be varied by tours which were 
 full of interest, and which afforded him de- 
 lightful opportunities for the sketching which 
 was his greatest enjoyment, and in which he 
 became a facile though never a distinguished 
 artist. Above all, he was able to finish the 
 great work of his life, concerning which he 
 thus touchingly expressed his hopes : 
 
 " I have now only to commend to my gracious God 
 and Father this feeble attempt to explain the most 
 mysterious and glorious portion of His revealed Scrip- 
 tures ; and with it this, my labour of now eighteen 
 years, herewith completed. I do it with humble thank- 
 fulness, but with a sense of utter weakness before the 
 power of His Word, and inability to sound the depths 
 even of its simplest sentence. May He spare the 
 hand which has been put forward to touch the Ark ! 
 May He, for Christ's sake, forgive all rashness, all 
 perverseness, all uncharitableness, which may be 
 found in this book, and sanctify it to the use of His 
 Church ; its truths, if any, for teaching ; its manifold 
 defects for warning. My prayer is and shall be, that 
 in the stir and labour of men over His Word, to which 
 these volumes have been one humble contribution, 
 others may arise and teach whose labours shall be so 
 far better than mine, that this book and its writer may 
 ere long be utterly forgotten."
 
 I 24 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 The close of 1860 finds in the Dean's 
 journal : 
 
 " I am now writing with the ten midnight bells 
 ringing in 1861. God be praised for all the mercies of 
 another happy year, in which I have been enabled to 
 finish my Greek Testament, the work of eighteen years. 
 May He grant that future years, if I am spared to see 
 any, may be spent more to His praise ! If I am to live, 
 keep me with Thee; if I am to die, take me to Thee ! " 
 
 In the following spring the Dean paid his 
 first visit to Rome, seeing and enjoying much, 
 and obtaining leave from Cardinal Antonelli to 
 spend several mornings in the study of the 
 Codex Vaticanus, making fac-simile copies of 
 all the principal various readings. Yet he 
 returned to England full of bitterness at the 
 impurity of faith in Rome in whom "was 
 found the blood of all the saints from Ignatius 
 to the Waldenses," and feeling that, with re- 
 gard to external Rome, after a month one only 
 "begins to see what there is to see." In 1863 
 he went back to Rome for the winter, taking 
 his wife, a niece, and his youngest daughter 
 with him ; his elder daughter had been married 
 in the preceding year. On this occasion he was 
 even more strongly impressed with the ignor- 
 ance and superstition of the lower orders in Italy 
 " their whole creed and practice being pagan."
 
 HENRY ALFORD 125 
 
 The completion of the second volume of the 
 " New Testament for English Readers," and 
 his editorship of the Contemporary Review, 
 were among the heavier of the Dean's next 
 few years at Canterbury. The preparation and 
 publication of his " Family Prayers," his " Year 
 of Praise," and many articles in Good Words 
 were amongst their lighter occupations. His 
 hymns, one of which has become the Baptismal 
 Canticle of the English Church, were always a 
 great source of enjoyment to him. The chief 
 events of his home life were the marriage of 
 his youngest daughter, the birth of two grand- 
 daughters, and his renting on a long lease a small 
 country-house, Vine's Gate, half-way up Toy's 
 Hill from Brasted, commanding a view down 
 a wooded glen over Lord Amherst's and Lord 
 Stanhope's parks, and away as far as Sevenoaks. 
 He took this place partly with the view of provid- 
 ing himself with a home in case of infirmities 
 unfitting him for work, in which case he had 
 decided to resign his Deanery. Always averse 
 to the dignities of his position, he relaxed them 
 altogether at Vine's Gate, carrying out especi- 
 ally one of his pet peculiarities, which made him 
 rebel against wearing stockings at all, or even 
 shoes, except out of doors, and then of the merest 
 sandal description.
 
 I 26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Those who saw much of the Dean in these 
 years of his Canterbury life retain a most vivid 
 recollection of his conversational charm, as 
 well of his own facility of expression, never at a 
 loss for a word, and the best word, to express 
 his meaning, as of his wonderful power of draw- 
 ing out the best points in others, and the intensity 
 of his sympathy. Vividly also do they recall 
 the exquisite pathos as well as humour of his 
 readings aloud, and his facility in passing from 
 one subject to another, throwing himself with 
 equal eagerness his whole being into the one 
 which was arresting his attention at the time. 
 This was especially the case on serious ques- 
 tions. " As in his writings on great subjects, 
 so in his conversation respecting them, there 
 was a wholeness of heart, a unity of spirit, re- 
 sembling ' the cloud which moveth altogether if 
 it moveth at all." In all his words, as in all 
 his acts, his extreme largeness of heart was 
 manifest. " So you cannot conceive," he wrote 
 to a niece, " how one who denies the Atonement 
 in our sense can receive the Holy Communion 
 with earnestness ; but I can. Unitarians, I 
 think, often beat us in their intensely ' thankful 
 remembrance of Christ's death,' regarding it as 
 
 1 Memoir. Reminiscences of Rev. Dr. Stoughton.
 
 HENRY ALFORD I 2 "J 
 
 the great central act of love, though not in the 
 sense we do." His own perfect faith at this 
 time is touchingly shown in his lines on " Life's 
 Answer : " 
 
 " I know not if the dark or bright 
 
 Shall be my lot : 
 If that wherein my hopes delight 
 Be best or not. 
 
 It may be mine to drag for years 
 
 Toil's heavy chain : 
 Or day and night my meat be tears 
 
 On bed of pain. 
 
 Dear faces may surround my hearth 
 
 With smiles and glee : 
 Or I may dwell alone, and mirth 
 
 Be strange to me. 
 
 My bark is wafted to the strand 
 
 By breath divine : 
 And on the helm there rests a hand 
 
 Other than mine. 
 
 One who has known in storms to sail 
 
 I have on board. 
 Above the raging of the gale 
 
 I hear my Lord. 
 
 He holds me when the billows smite, 
 
 I shall not fall : 
 If sharp, 'tis short ; if long, 'tis light ; 
 
 He tempers all. f 
 
 Safe to the land, safe to the land, 
 
 The end is this : 
 And then with Him go hand in hand 
 
 Far into bliss."
 
 . 
 
 I 2 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 It was typical of his character that, when- 
 ever any one took a walk with Dean Alford, he 
 outwalked them. He could not loiter. His 
 rapidity in everything was extraordinary much 
 too extraordinary. This was especially the 
 case with his rapidity of thought. He often 
 regretted that, write as hard as he might, his 
 pen could not keep pace with his ideas. But 
 his most ardent admirers probably feel that he 
 wrote too much and published too much. Had 
 he been able at an earlier age to concentrate 
 his attention on a few subjects, he might have 
 attained in them to a far higher point of excel- 
 lence. But he would always throw all his 
 energies for a time into the subject on which 
 he was engaged, and then turn to something 
 else. Thus it is recorded in his Memoir that 
 five of the hymns in his " Year of Praise " were 
 composed on five successive days. He pub- 
 lished everything good that he wrote. 
 
 The incessant restlessness of action produced 
 by the Dean's activity of thought amounted 
 to incapability of taking rest. It was a real 
 misfortune to him that he had a natural talent 
 for everything far too many things to admit 
 of his attaining perfection in any of them ; 
 but in his humility about this he was always 
 indescribably lovable. In his little home
 
 HENRY ALFORD 
 
 I 29 
 
 arrangements, whether carpentering, upholster- 
 ing, painting, arranging, decorating, or gar- 
 dening, he was not so much the planner and 
 
 FROM THE DEAN'S GARDEN, CANTERBURY. 
 
 contriver as the head- workman. He was en- 
 thusiastically fond of music, and looked upon 
 it as the expression of poetic thought. Often 
 hasty, he was always generous ; and though
 
 I 30 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 often ruffled by slight annoyances, he could 
 bear any great trial with more than patient 
 with happy resignation. 
 
 In 1868 Dean Alford published an illus- 
 trated volume on the Riviera, to which he 
 had paid repeated visits with ever-fresh enjoy- 
 ment. Most intensely did he delight in the 
 rich foregrounds of heath and arbutus and 
 pines with which the forest-clad hills near 
 Cannes abound, backed by the jagged line 
 of the Estrelles, the most varied of all minor 
 European mountain chains. At Monaco he 
 " saw hell in all its vice, and listened to some 
 splendid music." On one of these southern 
 tours he had written to his wife : 
 
 " March 1 866. I am flitting away from home, a boy 
 of fifty-seven, to enjoy a holiday a boy of twenty-five 
 would despise. It all looks strange and bizarre, but 
 far above it all is an atmosphere of calm sunny thank- 
 fulness, causing me to think and feel ' Not more than 
 others I deserve, but God hath given me more.' " 
 
 In 1868 the Dean again went to the Riviera, 
 visiting, on his return journey, Ars with its 
 memories of its holy Cure Vianney, and after- 
 wards describing it in articles in the Contem- 
 porary Review. 
 
 Early in 1870 the Dean entered into an 
 
 arrangement for undertaking a Commentary
 
 HENRY ALFORD I 3 I 
 
 on the Old Testament, to be completed in 
 five volumes and in seven years, "if life were 
 spared." At the same time he took a pro- 
 minent part in the Committee for Biblical 
 Revision, which began by Christians of all 
 denominations kneeling and receiving the 
 Communion together around the tomb of 
 Edward VI. in Westminster Abbey. But his 
 health was not now what it was. In the 
 autumn he began frequently to complain of 
 sleeplessness and oppression in the head, and 
 he returned from Vine's Gate to Canterbury 
 in November 1870, with an expression in his 
 journal of "gladness to get once more into 
 the old place, and pleasure after his long hill 
 solitude to see old faces once more." In 
 December his physician pronounced his brain 
 overworked, and that it must have total rest 
 thus giving a death-blow to his most fondly 
 cherished work. 
 
 A few days after he wrote to a niece : - 
 
 "After all you were right, and it was a rash act to 
 undertake the Old Testament. The doctor has told 
 me it is too late in life to enter on a new and laborious 
 department of study. . . . As to being low about it, 
 I cannot see it so. If God's good hand has brought 
 me to sixty in vigour, surely all after is pure gain, 
 in whatever form it may please Him to shape it."
 
 I 3 2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 And to his eldest daughter : 
 
 " My own view is, a man who has lived to sixty 
 has so much cause for thankfulness, it ought to over- 
 power every other feeling ; so it has not occurred to 
 me to be in low spirits. I shall now look up the 
 colour-box and the garden-tools, and the fishing-rods 
 of old days, and take up light literature once more." 
 
 But it must have been in the prescience that 
 the blessing of his earthly presence would not 
 long be with them that he had written to 
 comfort his daughter afterwards the pathetic 
 lines " Filiolae Dulcissimae." 
 
 " Say, wilt thou think of me when I'm away, 
 Borne from the threshold and laid in the clay, 
 Past and forgotten for many a day ? 
 
 Wilt thou remember me when I am gone, 
 Farther each year from thy vision withdrawn, 
 Thou in the sunset and I in the dawn ? 
 
 Wilt thou remember me when thou shall see 
 Daily and nightly encompassing thee 
 Hundreds of others, but nothing of me? 
 
 All that I ask is a gem in thine eye, 
 
 Sitting and thinking when no one is by, 
 
 ' Thus he looked on me thus rung his reply.' 
 
 'Tis not to die, though the path be obscure, 
 
 Grand is the conflict, the victory sure : 
 
 Past though the peril, there's One can secure. 
 
 'Tis not to land in the region unknown, 
 Thronged by bright spirits, all strange and alone, 
 Waiting the doom from the Judge on the throne.
 
 HENRY ALFORD 133 
 
 But 'tis to feel the cold touch of decay, 
 Tis to look back on the wake of one's way 
 Fading and vanishing day after day. 
 
 This is the bitterness none can be spared : 
 This the oblivion the greatest have shared : 
 This the true death for ambition prepared. 
 
 Thousands are round us, toiling as we, 
 Living and loving, whose lot is to be 
 Passed and forgotten, like waves on the sea. 
 
 Once in a lifetime is uttered a word 
 
 That doth not vanish as soon as 'tis heard : 
 
 Once in an age is humanity stirred : 
 
 Once in a century springs forth a deed 
 From the dark bands of forgetfulness freed, 
 Destined to shine, and to help, and to lead. 
 
 Yet not e'en thus escape we our lot : 
 
 The deed lasts in memory, the doer is not : 
 
 The word liveth on, but the voice is forgot. 
 
 Who knows the forms of the mighty of old ? 
 
 Can bust or can portrait the spirit enfold, 
 
 Or the light of the eye by description be told ? 
 
 Nay, even He who our ransom became, 
 Bearing the Cross, despising the shame, 
 Earning a name above every name, 
 
 They who had handled Him while He was here, 
 Kept they in memory his lineaments clear, 
 Could they command them at will to appear? 
 
 They who had heard Him, and lived on His voice, 
 
 Say, could they always recall at their choice 
 
 The tone and the cadence which made them rejoice ? 
 
 Be we content then to pass into shade, 
 
 Visage and voice in oblivion laid, 
 
 And live in the light that our actions have made.
 
 134 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Yet do thou think of me, child of my soul : 
 That when the waves of forgetfulness roll, 
 Part may survive in the wreck of the whole. 
 
 Still let me count on the tear in thine eye, 
 ' Thus he bent o'er me, thus went his reply,' 
 Sitting and thinking when no one is by." 
 
 At the beginning of 1870 the Dean wrote in 
 his journal : 
 
 "Sat up to the New Year. God be praised for all 
 His mercies during the past year of great events. He 
 only knows when my course will end. May its even- 
 ing be bright and its morning eternal day. . . . God 
 only knows whether I shall survive this year. I some- 
 times think my health is giving way, but His will be 
 done." 
 
 The New Year's day of 1871 was a Sunday. 
 He preached extempore in the cathedral as 
 usual in the afternoon. Notes taken down at 
 the time record that he said : 
 
 "The secret of the peacefulness with which the 
 Psalmist went each night to rest, undisturbed by the 
 cares of the past day or fears for the morrow, is 
 answered in the verse ' For the Lord sustained me.' 
 . . . While we heartily thank God for His goodness 
 to us in times past, let us pray to Him still to guide 
 our steps during the year which has just begun, with- 
 out longing too anxiously for the gratification of our 
 own particular wishes, which must be short-sighted, 
 and may be wrong. ... It is not for us to consider 
 how many of those present will meet together here
 
 HENRY ALFORD 
 
 135 
 
 next New Year's Day, or what public events may then 
 have taken place. Our duty is only to trust wholly 
 in God's love, casting all our care upon Him, for He 
 careth for us, and to strive earnestly to become less 
 and less unworthy of His love and care." 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S, CANTERBURY. 
 
 In the following days the Dean suffered 
 much from the severe cold to which he was 
 exposed while attending meetings for the estab- 
 lishment of a Relief and Mendicity Society in 
 Canterbury, but on the 6th he was able to
 
 136 BIOGRAPHICAL SKKTCIIIS 
 
 entertain a large dinner-party. On Sunday 
 the 8th he was able to assist in the Holy 
 Communion and to preach, but on the follow- 
 ing days he was less well, and on the morning 
 of the 1 2th, when even his nearest neighbours 
 had only just heard that he was unwell, the 
 passing bell of the cathedral announced that 
 the Deanery was desolate. 
 
 Painlessly and peacefully he had passed into 
 the better life. Truly for him, in his last 
 moments, was the petition in his own hymn 
 answered : 
 
 "Jesus, when I fainting lie, 
 And the world is flitting by, 
 Hold up my head : 
 
 When the cry is, ' Thou must die,' 
 And the dread hour draweth nigh, 
 Stand by my bed ! " 
 
 That hymn and another of his own were 
 sung at his funeral. He rests beneath the yew- 
 trees in St. Martin's Churchyard, on the slope 
 of the hill just outside Canterbury. There, 
 where the first English queen built her little 
 chapel, and where Augustine baptized the first 
 Christian king, the dear Dean Alford is buried. 
 His tomb, by his own written desire, bears the 
 inscription 
 
 " Deversorium viatoris Hierosolymam proficiscentis."
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 
 
 " No spring or summer beauty hath such grace 
 As I have seen in one autumnal face. " 
 
 No. 101 is one of the smallest houses in Sloane 
 Street, looking upon the gardens. It was 
 occupied within the last few years by a delicate, 
 beautiful old lady, who retained to the last the 
 graceful figure of her youth, with a sweetness 
 of manner which beguiled, and a wonderful 
 mingling of wit, wisdom, and pathos which 
 subjugated, all who came in contact with her. 
 It was no wonder that many of the smartest 
 footmen in London had often daily to wait for 
 hours round the unpretending door ; it was not 
 strange that the most charming and interesting 
 elements of London society met constantly in 
 the little rooms, or that they were always found 
 and always felt at their best there. Talking of 
 self-respect, Mrs. Duncan Stewart would often 
 quote to her friends the maxim of Madame 
 George Sand 
 
 " Ve'rite' envers le monde, 
 Humilite envers Dieu, 
 Dignite* envers soi-meme," 
 
 137
 
 138 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 and would playfully add, " But who should one 
 be well with if not with oneself, with whom 
 one has to live so very much ? " and the un- 
 selfish singleness of purpose which had steered 
 her unscathed through the vicissitudes of a very 
 varied life lent a tender charm to her declining 
 years, whilst her marvellous memory enabled 
 her to bring forth for the instruction or amuse- 
 ment of her younger friends a ceaseless treasure 
 out of the rich storehouse of her wealthy past. 
 Her society was a constant contradiction to the 
 theory of De Tocqueville, that "the charming 
 art of conversation to touch and set in motion 
 a thousand thoughts, without dwelling tire- 
 somely on any one is amongst the lost arts, 
 and can only be sought for in History Hut." 
 Sometimes, in rare moments of depression, she 
 would speak of the pain of old age, of the dis- 
 tress of feeling that she could do so little for 
 others, of the being "just a creature crawling 
 between heaven and earth." Yet, with small 
 means and feeble powers, those who knew her 
 best remember that there was never a day in 
 which she did not make some one happy, in 
 which she had not formed some fresh plan for 
 the pleasure and welfare of others. 
 
 Harriet Everilda was the only daughter of 
 Major Antony Gore, younger brother of Sir
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART I 3 Q 
 
 Ralph Gore, of Manor Gore, in the county of 
 Donegal, who succeeded his uncle Ralph, Earl 
 of Ross, as seventh baronet, the earldom being 
 limited to direct heirs male. Her mother, who 
 was the daughter of a clergyman in Devonshire, 
 died at her birth, and her father soon after. 
 Though of a Protestant family, she was placed 
 for her early education in a convent Les Dames 
 Anglaises at Rouen, and there acquired that 
 perfect familiarity with the French language 
 which she always retained. She often thought 
 in French, and entered into the feelings of her 
 French acquaintance as few Englishwomen could 
 do. It was from an association with the sur- 
 roundings of her childhood that she always said 
 in her old age that it was more natural to her 
 to pray in French than in English. 
 
 Upon leaving her convent, Miss Gore went 
 to reside with her guardian, Mr. Gordon, who 
 filled the post of British Consul at Havre de 
 Grace, and in his house the great charm of her 
 mental powers already made itself felt. Wash- 
 ington Irving and his brother Peter were 
 especially devoted to her. Her passionate 
 interest in everything connected with the stage 
 was first due to their influence. For eleven 
 nights consecutively Washington Irving took 
 her to see Talma act, and in late years she would
 
 I4O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 often describe the marvellous powers of Madame 
 Rachel, whom she also saw with him, especially 
 in the "Cinna" of Corneille how, as Emilie, she 
 would sit quietly in her chair when all the 
 people were raging around her, and then of the 
 thrilling electric force with which she would 
 hiss out in the fury of her vengeance against 
 Augustus 
 
 " Je recevrois de lui la place cle Livie 
 Comme un moyen plus sur d'attenter a sa vie." 
 
 It is remembered how, at this time, visitors 
 at Mr. Gordon's house would ask him where 
 Harriet Gore was, and he would answer, " Oh, 
 she is at the end of the terrace making 
 Washington Irving believe, he is God Almighty, 
 and he is busy believing it." 
 
 In her twenty-fourth year Harriet Gore was 
 married at Paris to Duncan Stewart, a pros- 
 perous Baltic merchant, whose mercantile pur- 
 suits had taken him to Havre. He was a 
 younger son of an ancient Scotch family, whose 
 clan, the Stewarts of Appin, had occupied and 
 dominated a large tract of country on the west 
 coast of Argyleshire from a remote period. 
 Staunch supporters of the crown since the 
 twelfth century, the family had been loyal to 
 the Jacobite cause, and had joined with enthu-
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART I 4 I 
 
 siasm in the wars of Montrose and the risings 
 of 1715 and 1745. Duncan Stewart's grand- 
 father was with Prince Charlie at Culloden, his 
 grandmother and her two children had followed 
 her husband and the army to the neighbour- 
 hood of Inverness in a carriage, and his father 
 one of those children remembered all his 
 life the carriage being stopped by English 
 soldiers after the battle, and a little ring being 
 roughly pulled from his finger. The grand- 
 father fled to the Continent w r ith the Prince ; 
 the father afterwards settled in Dumfriesshire, 
 where he bought a small property and became 
 a deputy- lieutenant for the county. By his 
 wife, Margaret Graham of Shaw, he had a 
 large family. The two eldest sons, James and 
 Charles Stewart, succeeded to divisions of their 
 father's land, and became active country gentle- 
 men. Charles, who survived till 1874, was 
 widely known throughout Scotland as one of 
 the first authorities on the management of land, 
 the breeding of stock, and county business ; 
 like his two sisters, he never married, and 
 lived with them and their aged mother at 
 Hillside in Dryfesdale for many long years. 
 Their home was a notable instance of "plain 
 living and high thinking," and widely and 
 deeply were they beloved and respected.
 
 142 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 The younger brother, Duncan, who, after 
 the fashion of cadets of Scottish families, in- 
 deed like Francis Osbaldiston in " Rob Roy," 
 had turned to mercantile pursuits, and in those 
 pursuits had acquired comparative wealth, ever 
 came back with delight to his old home. To 
 that old-fashioned home, immediately after his 
 marriage, he brought his beautiful and brilliant 
 young wife, whose French wardrobe and ready 
 wit were a revelation to the homely Scottish 
 ladies who inhabited it. Though of a thoroughly 
 noble, unselfish character, the venerable mother 
 was almost aghast on first meeting with an ele- 
 ment so discordant to the quiet monotone of her 
 long experience, and perhaps went on a wrong 
 as well as a hopeless tack in exaggerating 
 her own homeliness as an example, while the 
 sisters were perplexed by one who, engrossed 
 in the charms of modern literature, unconcern- 
 edly abandoned all housewifely duties to take 
 care of themselves. Time, and the wide 
 sympathies of either side, eventually led to 
 a mutual respect and admiration, but never to 
 the union of intimate affection. Through life, 
 Mrs. Duncan Stewart honoured her sisters- 
 in-law as noble and Christian women, but their 
 tastes and pursuits were always too dissimilar 
 for close intercourse.
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 143 
 
 Through many years after his marriage, the 
 business in which Mr. Duncan Stewart was 
 engaged compelled him to reside in Liverpool 
 or at a country-house in the neighbourhood. 
 Here the family lived luxuriously and enter- 
 tained constantly. Economy, at this period 
 of her life, was certainly not studied by Mrs. 
 Stewart ; but her husband adored her, and 
 always liked her to do just as she pleased. 
 The Scottish relations grieved in silence, for 
 was she not "just Duncan's wife." 
 
 Eight children were born to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Duncan Stewart during their residence in 
 Liverpool. During this time, also, the eldest 
 girl, Minnie, died, after having been nursed by 
 her mother with inexhaustible devotion through 
 a long illness. It was very characteristic of the 
 impassioned character of Mrs. Stewart, that 
 when she saw that the precious life of Minnie 
 had passed away, she prayed aloud prayed 
 most earnestly that her child Chrissy might 
 die too, because otherwise Minnie would be so 
 lonely, as she would have no one to play with. 
 She chose Chrissy because she was the child 
 Minnie loved best, and she wished to give up 
 the best to Minnie. When her husband urged 
 her not to tempt God to take Chrissy really 
 away from them, she answered that she had
 
 144 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 been so rent by Minnie's death that nothing 
 could ever rend her more. Mrs. Stewart, long 
 afterwards, often talked to the writer of her 
 sufferings at this time. She would speak of 
 the difficulty of a living faith, of keeping it 
 alive equally when prayer was not answered ; 
 she would tell how, when her child was dying, 
 she knew it must die the clergyman came 
 and knelt by the table, and prayed that resig- 
 nation might be given to the mother to bear 
 the parting, and resignation to the child to die, 
 and she would describe how she listened and 
 prayed too, and yet at the end she could not 
 feel it, she did not, and though she knew it 
 was impossible she could not but break in 
 with " Yet, O Lord, yet restore her ! " 
 
 "Do you know," said Mrs. Stewart, "that 
 till I was thirty I had never seen death, never 
 seen it even in a poor person ; then I saw it in 
 my own child, and I may truly say that then 
 death entered into the world for me as fully as 
 it did for Eve, and it never left me afterwards, 
 never. If one of my children had an ache 
 afterwards, I thought it was going to die ; if I 
 awoke in the night and looked at my husband 
 in his sleep, I thought, ' He will look like that 
 when he is dead.' " 
 
 Liverpool was never quite congenial to Mrs.
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 145 
 
 Stewart. She had many good friends there, 
 but the associates she liked best were Mr. Bald, 
 her husband's partner, and his wife, and a 
 young Mr. Power, afterwards Sir William 
 Tyrone Power, to whose family she was much 
 attached. Men adored her, cultivated her, sat 
 at her feet ; but with women, as a rule, she 
 was, in her young days, not so popular. She 
 sought her intimacies mainly in London, to 
 which she never failed to pay a long annual 
 visit, sometimes with her husband, and some- 
 times when he was away shooting and fishing 
 in Scotland. At that time the centre of a 
 certain literary society of which Mrs. Stewart 
 became an intimate was Lady Morgan, a little 
 old woman of such pungent wit, that Mr. Fon- 
 blanque, then the editor of the Examiner, used 
 to say of her, " She is just a spark of hell-fire, 
 and is soon going back to her native element." 
 Another person with whom Mr. and Mrs. 
 Stewart were intimate was Madame Jerome 
 Bonaparte, born Paterson, daughter of a father 
 upon whom she looked down, though she de- 
 lighted to write to him of her succes de societe. 
 " But he could always avenge himself," said 
 Mrs. Stewart ; "he could always write to her 
 ' My dear Betsy ' : " it was a terrible revenge. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Macready and Mr. and Mrs.
 
 146 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Charles Kean were also amongst the friends 
 of the Duncan Stewarts, and they were well 
 acquainted with the Sobieski Stuarts, whose 
 gallant appearance when young Mrs. Stewart 
 would recall many years after, deploring its 
 change into the " mildew of age." The Stewarts 
 also saw much perhaps more than many 
 considered desirable of Lady Blessington, the 
 recollection of whose "perfect beauty" always 
 remained with Mrs. Stewart as a possession. 
 The little circle at Gore House, which was like 
 the court of Lady Blessington, frequently in- 
 cluded at this time Prince Louis Napoleon, who 
 was then in exile in England. Another habitud 
 was Landseer, whom, with characteristic gal- 
 lantry, Count d'Orsay introduced wjth " Here, 
 Mrs. Stewart, is Landseer, who can do every- 
 thing better than he can paint." The Stewarts 
 also frequently visited Captain Marryat at his 
 seat of Langham, in Norfolk. Mrs. Stewart 
 always spoke of this society of her youth as 
 "real society," because then people were never 
 in a hurry. One of its most marked features 
 was old Lady Cork, who, after eighty, always 
 dressed in white, with a little white pulled 
 bonnet. 
 
 The years spent in Liverpool were enlivened 
 by her intimacy with Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli,
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 147 
 
 who afterwards became her closest friends. Of 
 her first meeting with them she said : 
 
 " One day, when I was sitting alone in my house at 
 Liverpool, and my husband, who loved hunting and 
 fishing, was away after the grouse, as every Scotchman 
 is, a note of introduction was brought in for me from 
 Mrs. Milner Gibson, whom I had known in London, 
 and the cards of Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli. He was a 
 young man then, all curly and smart, and his wife, 
 though much older than himself, was a very handsome, 
 imperial-looking woman. I told them that I should be 
 delighted to show them everything in Liverpool, as 
 Mrs. Milner Gibson had asked me. 
 
 "When I went to see them next day at the hotel, 
 I asked Mrs. Disraeli how she had slept, and she said, 
 ' Not at all, for the noise was so great ! ' Then I said, 
 ' Why not move to my house, for my house is very 
 quiet, and I am alone and there is plenty of room ? ' 
 And they came, and a most delightful ten days I had. 
 We shut out Liverpool and its people, and we talked, 
 and we became great friends, and when we parted, it 
 was with very affectionate regard on both sides. After- 
 wards they wrote to me every week, and when I went 
 to London my place was always laid every day at their 
 table, and if I did not appear at their dinner, they 
 always asked me why I had not come to them. 
 
 " After Lady Beaconsfield died, we drifted apart, he 
 and I, and though I saw him sometimes, it was never 
 in the old intimate way. The last time we met it was 
 at Lady Stanhope's I had a good talk with him though. 
 It was not until we were parting that I said, ' I hope
 
 148 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 you are quite well?' and I shall never forget the hollow 
 voice in which he answered, 'Nobody is quite well.' 
 After that I never saw him again, but I had a message 
 from him through William Spottiswoode. 'Tell Mrs. 
 Stewart always to come to talk to me when she can ; 
 it always does me good to see her.' " 
 
 It was probably on the occasion of the 
 second visit to the Duncan Stewarts at Liver- 
 pool, that Disraeli, then comparatively an 
 unknown man, was taken by Mr. Stewart 
 to the Royal Exchange when the place was 
 thronged with merchants at high noon. The 
 scene is a striking one, and it impressed 
 Disraeli much. He said to Mr. Stewart, " My 
 idea of greatness would be th^t a man should 
 receive the applause of such an assemblage 
 as this that he should be cheered as he 
 came into this room." At that time Disraeli 
 visited the place unnoticed ; but a day came, 
 several years later, when the Disraelis were 
 again on a visit to the Duncan Stewarts at 
 Liverpool, and when he had attained to a 
 prominent position in politics, and he again 
 visited the same place in company with Mr. 
 Stewart. On this occasion his entrance was 
 noticed, and a cheer was raised, which soon 
 spread into a roar, and ended in a perfect 
 ovation. Disraeli was deeply moved. He
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 149 
 
 recalled to Mr. Stewart the remark he had 
 made years before, and admitted, with pride 
 and pleasure, that his ideal test of greatness 
 had been realised. 
 
 After many years' residence in Liverpool, 
 a sudden reverse of fortune came upon the 
 Stewarts. The parents went to London, send- 
 ing their children to the care of an uncle, Mr. 
 David Stewart of Dumfries. This uncle, who 
 soon became as much beloved as he was re- 
 spected by the young Stewarts, devoted him- 
 self entirely to their welfare, though he kept 
 so strictly within their mother's injunction, that, 
 till six o'clock in the evening, he never uttered 
 a word of anything but French, a rule pecu- 
 liarly abhorrent to his Scotch nature. 
 
 After an interval of eighteen months, their 
 father's affairs being again prosperous, the chil- 
 dren rejoined their parents in London. They 
 found them established in Wilton Crescent, 
 whence they afterwards moved to a larger house 
 in Seymour Street. Whilst living here, many 
 old friends collected round Mrs. Stewart, and 
 she also at this time became increasingly 
 intimate with Mrs. Delane and Mrs. Milner 
 Gibson. It was probably during this period also 
 that she saw much of Leigh Hunt, of whom she 
 was wont to say that she believed him to be
 
 I5O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 the only person who, if he saw something yellow 
 in the distance, and was told it was a buttercup, 
 would be disappointed if he found it was only a 
 guinea. Yet these were Leigh Hunt's days of 
 greatest privation. Mr. Carlyle was very poor 
 too at this time, yet a friend who knew him very 
 well, and went often to see him, told Mrs. 
 Stewart that one day going to Carlyle and 
 seeing two gold sovereigns lying exposed in a 
 little vase on the chimney-piece, he asked what 
 they were for. Carlyle looked for him em- 
 barrassed, and gave no definite answer. " Well, 
 now, my dear fellow," said the visitor, " neither 
 you nor I are quite in a position to play ducks 
 and drakes with sovereigns ; what are they 
 for?" "Well," said Carlyle, "the fact is that 
 Leigh Hunt likes better to find them there, 
 than that I should give them to him." 
 
 Whilst the Stewarts were living in Seymour 
 Street, another of the children, Florence, died. 
 Mr. Stewart had again suffered losses in busi- 
 ness, and the family moved to Smart's Hill, in 
 Kent, where the mother, with inborn facility, 
 soon accommodated herself to her change of 
 fortune. After a time they moved again to a 
 villa, The Limes, at Croydon. 
 
 Meantime a cousin of the Stewarts, Countess 
 Bremer, who had been lady in waiting to the
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART I 5 I 
 
 Princesses of Hanover, had married, and a lady 
 was temporarily required to fill her place. The 
 eldest daughter, Harty (Pauline Harriet), went 
 for a time, and was shortly afterwards appointed 
 to a fixed post with the Princesses, resigning 
 her place in the home life. It must have been 
 soon after this that her mother wrote to her : 
 
 " My own dear child, I cannot help saying to you 
 that if you ever pine for home, you must come even 
 away from those dear people : it is only for just as long 
 as you are quite contented and happy, that ^Me can be at 
 all contented and happy to know you bear you to be 
 away. You are well assured of this, I am sure ? My 
 own dear child, our hearts are with you, as yours with 
 us, and all in Christ in God, I hope and trust. But 
 remember, whenever your heart tells you to come home, 
 then we want you, and must have you, please God." 
 
 But Harty never came back. In 1865 she 
 married a Hanoverian, the Baron Otto von 
 Klenck, aide-de-camp to King Ernest of Han- 
 over and the Duke of Cumberland, though the 
 bond of intimate affection between her and her 
 mother was never weakened by separation. 
 In 1852, her younger sister, Chrissy (Chris- 
 tina Adelaide Ethel), had been married to Mr. 
 James Alexander Rogerson, of Wamphray, a 
 near neighbour of the beloved uncles and aunts 
 of Hillside.
 
 I 5 2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 It was in 1869, whilst he was staying with 
 his brother Charles at Hillside, that Mr. Dun- 
 can Stewart became dangerously ill. Mrs. 
 Stewart joined him, and nursed him with the 
 devotion which she always showed in sickness. 
 In November 1869 he died. Mrs. Duncan 
 Stewart was left with an income reduced to the 
 narrowest limits by her husband's heavy finan- 
 cial losses an income which the devotion of 
 her sons delighted to render sufficient for the 
 maintenance of her little home in Sloane Street. 
 Meantime the affection with which her eldest 
 daughter was regarded at the court of Hanover 
 had led to her receiving constant marks of con- 
 sideration and favour from the King and Queen, 
 and she was their guest for a considerable time. 
 The blind King delighted in her conversation, 
 and for many years she would save up every 
 interesting story she heard for him. It is re- 
 membered that one day she was telling him 
 a story as they were out driving together. 
 Suddenly the horses started, and the carriage 
 seemed about to upset. " Why do you not 
 go on with your story ? " said the King. 
 " Because, sir, the carriage is just going to 
 upset." "That is the coachman's affair," 
 said the King ; " do you go on with your 
 story."
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART I 5 3 
 
 Of the sad and eventful weeks which saw the 
 close of the Hanoverian dynasty Mrs. Stewart 
 had ever much of interest to tell : 
 
 " I was for many weeks with my daughter in the 
 palace at Herrenhausen after the King left for Langen- 
 salza, where, like a knight, he desired to be placed in 
 front of his army, so that all his soldiers might see him, 
 and where he was not satisfied till he felt the bullets 
 whizzing round him. The people in Hanover said he 
 had run away. When the Queen heard that, she and 
 the Princesses went down to the ' place ' and walked 
 about there, and, as the people pressed around her, 
 said, ' The King is gone with his army to fight for his 
 people, but I am here to stay with you till he comes 
 back.' But, alas ! she did not know ! 
 
 "We used to go out and walk at night, in those 
 great gardens of Herrenhausen, in which the Electress 
 Sophia died. The Queen talked then, God bless her, 
 of all her sorrows. We often did not come in till 
 the morning, for the Queen could not sleep. But even 
 in our great sorrow and misery, Nature would assert 
 herself, and when we came in, we ate up everything 
 that there was. Generally I had something in my room, 
 and the Queen had generally something in hers, though 
 that was only bread and strawberries, and it was not 
 enough for us, for we were so very hungry. One 
 night the Queen made an aide-de-camp take the key 
 and we went to the Mausoleum in the grounds. I 
 shall never forget that solemn walk, Harty carrying a 
 single lanthorn before us, or the stillness when we
 
 154 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 reached the Mausoleum, or the white light shining 
 upon it, and the clanging of the door as it opened. And 
 we all went in, and we knelt and prayed by each of the 
 coffins in turn. The Queen and Princesses knelt in 
 front, and my daughter and I knelt behind, and we 
 prayed oh ! so earnestly, out of the deep anguish of 
 our sorrow-stricken hearts. And then we went to the 
 upper floor where the statues are, and there lay the 
 beautiful Queen, the Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 
 in her still loveliness, and there lay the old King, the 
 Duke of Cumberland, with the moonlight shining on 
 him, wrapped in his military cloak. And when the 
 Queen saw him, she, who had been so calm before, 
 sobbed violently, and hid herself against me, for she 
 knew that I also had suffered, and after that we walked 
 or lingered in the gardens till the daylight broke. 
 
 "The Queen was always longing to go away to her 
 own house at Marienburg, and at last she went. She 
 never came back, for as soon as she was gone, the 
 Prussians, who had left her alone while she was there, 
 stepped in and took possession of everything. 
 
 "The Queen is a noble, loving woman, but she can 
 also be queenly. When Count von W., the Prussian 
 commandant, arrived, he desired an interview with her 
 Majesty. He behaved very properly, but, as he was 
 going away it was partly from gaucherie, I suppose 
 he said, 'I shall take care that your Majesty is not in- 
 terfered with in any way ! ' Then our Queen rose, and 
 in all queenly simplicity she said, ' I never expected it.' 
 He looked so abashed, but she never flinched ; only, 
 when he was gone out of the room, she fainted dead 
 away upon the floor."
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 155 
 
 Some one who knew her well said most 
 truly of Mrs. Stewart that her life was not 
 a long uninterrupted course, but, as it were, a 
 chain of separate circles. That part of it which 
 belonged to her residence in Sloane Street was 
 what the Scotch call the "uptake," the making 
 of many friendships so infinitely easy to her, 
 one leading to another, until every day was 
 filled by affectionate interests. Yet in the new 
 connections she formed, old friends of former 
 days were never forgotten. Two of those she 
 had long known, on finding her surrounded by 
 a brilliant circle, were once led to say, " Now 
 you have so many friends, you will not care 
 for us ; you must find us so stupid arid uninte- 
 resting." And long will they remember her 
 cordial answer, " No, no, my dear, you are my 
 rocks." One secret of the great charm of her 
 conversation was that she was not merely 
 careful to evade ever repeating an ill-natured 
 story of any one, but, where there was positively 
 nothing of good to be said, had always some 
 apt line of old poetry or some proverb to bring 
 forward urging mercy " Mercy, oh, so much 
 grander than justice." The writer vividly re- 
 members how, after once listening with polite 
 self-restraint to a scandalous story about a well- 
 known member of society, she said, with char-
 
 I 5 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 acteristic sweetness, " Yes, he was very fallible, 
 yet how capable of becoming that greatest of 
 all things, a good man." 
 
 In her old age, Mrs. Stewart's strong interest 
 in the stage was never diminished, and those 
 connected with it were always amongst her 
 most cherished visitors, especially Lady Martin, 
 whom, as Helen Faucit, she regarded as " the 
 last representative of the studied phase of 
 acting ; " Mrs. Crowe and her sister Miss Isabel 
 Bateman ; Mr. Irving; Mr. and Mrs. Kendal ; 
 and, amongst amateurs, the not less gifted Mrs. 
 Greville. 
 
 Amongst others whose visits Mrs. Stewart 
 most valued were Mr. William Spottiswoode, 
 Mrs. Grote, Lady Eastlake, Lady Gordon, 
 Mrs. Oliphant, Lady Wynford, Lady Hope, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hill, Mr. Henry James 
 the American novelist, and her old friend, Mr. 
 Pigott, whom she would describe as being "a 
 finished critic, but with all the innocence of a 
 child picking daisies." There was no end to 
 the variety of different persons and characters 
 who met in Mrs. Stewart's little rooms, and the 
 remarkable point was that no one cared in the 
 least whom they met they all went for her. 
 Her constant letters to her daughter Harty 
 show how much she enjoyed this period of her
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART I 5 / 
 
 life, and how much interest she found in it. 
 Here are some gleanings from letters of 1880- 
 1883, but they are all undated : 
 
 " Oh, my darling, here are two more days without 
 any writing. I can only rest when people are not here. 
 On Monday Chrissy had a very pleasant luncheon 
 party. At a charming party in the evening at the 
 Felix Moscheles', I fell into a deep admiration of the 
 Berlin actor, Herr Barney, who is come over to give 
 added strength to the Saxe-Meiningen company. He 
 has the finest possible figure and head, crisp, short, 
 curling hair, and a noble face. He acts Marc Antony 
 in the 'Julius Caesar ' and seems made for it by nature. 
 Yesterday I went at four to Madame Modjeska's recep- 
 tion, full, and of interesting people ; home for visitors, 
 dined at Lord Eustace Cecil's, and at eleven o'clock 
 was at Leonie Blumenthal's, where was a magnificent 
 party, fine company, &c." 
 
 " My own dearest child, I think that it was this day 
 last week that I despatched my last letter to you, telling 
 of the good success of my last luncheon. Since then, 
 life has been too fast for me. I have had scarcely a 
 minute but for rest during the intervals. At this 
 season one thing leads on to another, which one cannot 
 avoid. It is a chain of links ; if one says A, one must 
 say B, and so on, and so on. On Thursday a pleasant 
 dinner at Lady Hampson's led on to a party this after- 
 noon to see the drill of the Fire Brigade a most 
 interesting sight. Captain Shaw invited me and to 
 bring what friends I chose, and I took three carriages 
 full. Friday, I was all afternoon at Lady Hooker's at
 
 I 5 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Kew. Lovely weather. Dear Lord and Lady Ducie 
 took me down, and it was delightful. Lady Martin, 
 who is as good as every one is to unworthy me, takes 
 me to the Meiningen company on Saturday to see ' The 
 Winter's Tale,' so I am well off. 
 
 " Dear William Spottiswoode took me down to dinner 
 last night, so it was very pleasant. He told me that 
 Lord Beaconsfield (who meets him every week at a 
 scientific place) had spoken to him of his re-meeting 
 with me, and expressed himself very wishful to see me 
 again. William said I might depend on the pleasure 
 he had had and the wish to see me more. I know how 
 careful and reticent William is so this pleased me." 
 
 " Sunday, I am dining out this evening with about 
 thirty persons, all of name and note, at the Bough tons' 
 not grand fashionable people, but artists, authors, 
 &c. I will write you of it to-morrow." 
 
 " Monday. The dinner yesterday was very amusing 
 guests all more or less distinguished, from Browning 
 down to Edmund Yates and his beautiful wife." 
 
 "1880. Capital company at dinner yesterday. I 
 sat between Lowell and Sir James Stephen, and had 
 a very good time. Among many, Lowell said one 
 bit worthy of the Biglow Papers. Opposite us was 
 Huxley, whom Lowell saw for the first time 'So/ says 
 he to me, 'that's the great Huxley?' 'Yes,' says I. 
 ' Well,' says he, ' in a match between him and God, I'd 
 bet on God: " 
 
 " Did I tell you a thing Froude said the other day to 
 me a propos of not understanding, comprehending 
 Tennyson's last poem, the ' De Profundis,' in the last 
 Nineteenth Century ? ' Wad I presume, blessed sir ? '
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART I 5 9 
 
 the reply of an old Scotswoman to her minister as 
 to a very metaphysical sermon." 
 
 " 1 88 1. Tell Mrs. M. how glad I shall be to make 
 her acquaintance. Tell her how very fortunate I have 
 been in having had so many pleasant American friends, 
 beginning fifty-five years ago with Washington Irving, 
 and arriving now at Henry James and Mr. Lowell, both 
 of whom lunch with me this very day to meet the great 
 American botanist, Dr. Gray indeed, Sir Ughtred 
 Kay-Shuttleworth told me I must say tfte botanist of 
 the world. I have also Lady Airlie, Lady Gordon, &c." 
 
 " Coombe Bank, March 27. I am here since Friday 
 with a house full of Arbuthnots and Spottiswoodes, I the 
 only interloper, and they are all as good as gold to me ; 
 to-night a large ball, house and grounds lighted with 
 electric light ! ! " 
 
 " After describing his wife's terrible illness, Mr. 
 Lowell said ' My dear Mrs. Stewart, I'd have given 
 Job ten and won.' " 
 
 " 101 Sloane Street, $>th April. I had a very good 
 time (for, with my infirmities, though much is taken, 
 much remains, I thank God) at Coombe Bank. I 
 drove and walked every day. Kind William Spottis- 
 woode, when he took leave of me full of thanks and 
 real gratitude, said, ' You bring sunshine into this 
 house ! ' This was not true, but, as Sterne wrote a 
 long time ago, so kind and good 'that the recording 
 angel dropt a tear/ and obliterated the falsehood." 
 
 " I came home last Thursday to a clean house, full 
 of flowers, and dear Chrissy's unceasing care, and 
 troops of friends, unlike poor Macbeth. I had not 
 been twenty-four hours back till came my dear Caroline
 
 l6O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Bromley, Lady Eastlake (so very dear and affectionate), 
 Lady Stanhope, Lady Airlie, Lady Strangford, dearest 
 Mrs. Hill, &c. God knows, my child, my lines have 
 been cast in pleasant places." 
 
 "November 15. My own darling child, my letters 
 are so stupid they are not worth sending, yet I send 
 them. I see very few people. I have very quiet and 
 delicious evenings reading by my fireside. Tis an 
 interval of rest. 
 
 "Chrissy is gone down to friends at Brighton. She 
 is very dear and good and helpful and loving and com- 
 fortable to me invariably, and I am very grateful and 
 love her dearly, and am very thankful to have her, and 
 lost when she is away." 
 
 " 1882. We had a most brilliant day at the Camp. 
 Personally to me it was most charming. I took down 
 Mrs. F. Hill ; Lady Brownlow was as good as gold to me, 
 and we saw everybody and everything most comfort- 
 ably. It was a wonderful English sight. The Duchess 
 of Albany gave away the prizes, and I was close to 
 her and Prince Leopold saw both for the first time in 
 my life. She is pretty enough for anything, and very 
 sweet and simple. She gave away the prizes charm- 
 ingly, and smiled more sweetly and simply on the 
 privates than on the generals. This, her first public 
 appearance, charmed everybody. Have you ever seen 
 a Wimbledon camp ? 'Tis a beautiful sight ! so gor- 
 geous and yet so English ! 
 
 " I do trust you, my child, for giving proper grateful 
 messages for me from the Queen downwards. God 
 knows how I feel them, and so do you, I think. You 
 cannot exceed my feelings.
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART l6l 
 
 " My darling, when I look round on my dear children 
 and my dear friends, and feel how many hearts and 
 homes are open to me at all times, I truly believe I 
 cannot be grateful enough." 
 
 The great charm and infinite variety of Mrs. 
 Stewart's conversation were even more felt in 
 country-houses than in London. The writer 
 will always remember one day at Sarsden 
 (Lady Ducie's), being told that an old lady was 
 coming that evening, an old lady who would 
 have travelled straight through from Scotland, 
 and would probably arrive perfectly exhausted. 
 The dinner-hour arrived, and with it there 
 glided in amongst the company a graceful, 
 refined old lady, with features the colour of 
 white alabaster, in a black velvet dress, a chain 
 and cross round her waist, and a lace head-dress 
 which was neither veil nor hood, but so in- 
 finitely becoming to the wearer, that from the 
 first moment of seeing her in it, it was impos- 
 sible to imagine her in anything else. And 
 soon, in conversation, the animation, the in- 
 spiration of her eyes, spoke even more power- 
 fully than her lips, and the next day the 
 whole party were at her feet. Her conversation 
 grew hourly more enchanting. She sat for 
 her portrait in her picturesque lace head-dress 
 to one of her fellow-guests ; she was pleased at 
 
 L
 
 1 62 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 being asked to sit " II faut vieillir pour etre 
 heureuse," she said. Whilst she was sitting, 
 she described her visit to Ober-Ammergau. 
 Her anxiety to go was intense, but, though she 
 was in Germany with the Queen of Hanover, 
 all the means seemed to fail. The Princess 
 Mary of Hanover and the Archduchess Eliza- 
 beth walked. But, to be in waiting upon them, 
 went Baron von Klenck, her Hanoverian son- 
 in-law, and he came back greatly impressed, 
 and said to his wife when he came in, "If thy 
 mother still wishes to go, in God's name let 
 her set forth ; " and she went. She described 
 the life at the village the simplicity, the cheap- 
 ness ; then, in the play, the awful agony of the 
 twenty minutes of the Crucifixion, the sublimity 
 of the Ascension. " I have seen hundreds of 
 ' ascensions ' on the stage and elsewhere, but 
 I have never seen anything like that simple 
 ^-presentation." 
 
 The following day, at luncheon, Mrs. Stewart 
 described a sitting with Mrs. Guppy, the spiri- 
 tualist. Her daughter, Count Bathyany, and 
 others were present. 
 
 "We were asked what sort of a manifestation we 
 would have : we declared we would be satisfied with 
 nothing less than a ghost. There was a round hole in 
 the table, with a lid upon it. Presently the lid began to
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 163 
 
 quiver; gradually it was thrown on one side, and a 
 hand came up, violently agitating itself. Mrs. Guppy 
 said, ' Dear spirits ' (we are always very affectionate, 
 you know), ' would you like the glass ? ' and a great tall 
 fern-glass was put over the place ; otherwise I should 
 have touched that hand. Then, inside the glass (but 
 we could not touch it, you know), came up something 
 wrapped in muslin. Mrs. Guppy said it was a head. 
 Afterwards we were asked to go down to supper : there 
 was quite a handsome collation. A young American, 
 who was with us, was so disgusted with what he had 
 seen that he would touch nothing, would take neither 
 bread nor salt in that house. I was weak. I did not 
 quite like to refuse, and I ate a few strawberries. Of 
 course, as far as the moral protest went I might have 
 eaten a whole plateful. Bathyany took a rose away 
 with him for his Countess, for at the end of our seance 
 quantities of flowers appeared, we knew not whence, 
 quite fresh, beautiful flowers : they appeared on the 
 table close to Count Bathyany. 
 
 " The spirits are very indulgent. They think we are 
 in better humour if our strength is kept up. After I 
 have been sitting there for some time, they generally 
 say, ' Harriet is exhausted : let her have a glass of 
 wine.' Then sometimes they give us nicknames 
 beautiful nicknames my daughter they called ' Muta- 
 bility,' and me they named 'Distrust.'" 
 
 In nothing was Mrs. Stewart more remark- 
 able than in her wonderful memory for poetry, 
 which she would repeat for hours together.
 
 164 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 She often spoke with surprise of the general 
 want of appreciation for Byron in England, and 
 would dwell on his wonderful satire, as evinced 
 by his lines in the "Age of Bronze," on Marie 
 Louise and Wellington ; on his philosophy, for 
 which she would cite the lines on Don Quixote ; 
 on his marvellous powers of condensation and 
 combination, for which she would repeat those 
 on the burning of Moscow. But, in all she 
 said, Mrs. Stewart's individuality lent such a 
 power and sweetness to her sayings and doings 
 that any reproduction of them either seems to 
 lose all point, or to be so crude as to give a 
 false picture of her. 
 
 Mrs. Stewart afterwards paid repeated visits 
 to Lord and Lady Ducie, and they were amongst 
 the greatest pleasures of her later years. To 
 her daughter she wrote in the great frost : 
 
 " Tortworth, Jan. 1880. I can't tell you all the 
 goodness and kindness I have had, from my Lord and 
 Lady downwards it passes words." 
 
 " I \th. Tortworth. I am so persistently weak and 
 dtfatte, I don't know what to make of it. The doctor 
 says it is not real weakness, but nervous exhaustion. 
 To myself it seems like quite comfortable dying away 
 no pain, but also no will, no power ; and this is the 
 first time in my life that I have felt myself totally 
 without the former."
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 1 65 
 
 "January 17. They shut the gates on me. The 
 cold is so exceptionally severe, severer than for sixty 
 years past, and I am not to be suffered to leave this 
 large house whilst it lasts. It is in vain to rebel, so I 
 put up with my luxuries with patience. I have not 
 been outside the doors since I came, but the house is 
 very large to take exercise in, the company cheerful, 
 and, as you know, I love the dear Ducies. They say 
 they will keep me ' till June and the roses,' if the cold 
 does not abate. ... I breakfast in my room, go down 
 about 10.30, find everybody brisk and cordial, all the 
 papers, and plenty of the best new books remain till 
 luncheon at two, come back to my room, rest and books 
 till dinner-time at eight, a cheerful evening acting, 
 talking, music, and to bed at eleven. I wish you were 
 here, and so does Lady Ducie heartily ', and then I should 
 have little left to wish for." 
 
 A portion of the summer was frequently 
 spent by Mrs. Stewart with her daughter 
 Christina in Scotland, " enjoying entire rest 
 and peace, dallying from day to day, eating 
 lotus (and a good deal besides) with such satis- 
 faction as not to be able to make any plan for 
 moving on." On one of these occasions of 
 long-ago, whilst staying at the place of her son- 
 in-law, Mr. Rogerson, near Inverness, she had 
 made the acquaintance of Brother Ignatius. 
 
 "One day while out walking, my daughter met with 
 a young man, of wonderful beauty, dressed as a monk,
 
 1 66 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 with bare feet and sandals. He asked her whether he 
 was near any inn, and said, ' The fact is I have with 
 me two sisters [Sister Gertrude and another], and a 
 brother Brother Augustine. And the brother is very 
 ill, probably ill to death, and we cannot go any farther.' 
 So my daughter made them come to her house, and 
 showed them infinite kindness, giving them water 
 for their feet and all Scripture hospitality. Brother 
 Augustine was very ill, very ill indeed, and they all 
 remained in or near my daughter's house three weeks, 
 during which I became very intimate with them, especi- 
 ally with Brother Ignatius and Sister Gertrude. We 
 used to go out for the day together, and then, in some 
 desolate strath, Brother Ignatius would sing, sing 
 hymns like an archangel, and then he would kneel on 
 the grass and pray. 
 
 " Many years afterwards I heard that Brother Ignatius 
 was going to preach in London some very bad part 
 of London and I went. The room was packed and 
 crowded, but I was in the first row. He preached a 
 beautiful young monk, leaning against a pillar. There 
 were at least a hundred of his attitudes worth painting, 
 but there was nothing in his words. At last a little 
 girl thought he looked faint, and brought him a 
 smelling-bottle, which she presented to him kneeling. 
 He smelled at it, and seeing me, an old woman near 
 him, he sent it on to me, and I smelled at it too. After- 
 wards I stayed to see him, and we talked together in 
 a small room, talked till midnight. Then he gave me 
 his blessing, gave it to me very solemnly, and after- 
 wards I said, ' And God bless you too, my dear young
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 1 6/ 
 
 In other summers, Mrs. Stewart was fre- 
 quently at Hopetoun House, and paid other 
 Scottish visits with great enjoyment. 
 
 " What a climate it is ! just heavenly, no more. 
 Balmy, fragrant, almost fresh, but not bracing. In 
 ' trim gardens ' in the midst of wildness, it seems like 
 Eden, with wasps instead of snakes." 
 
 It was at Lord Ducie's that Mrs. Stewart 
 first made acquaintance with his cousins, Lord 
 and Lady Denbigh, which led to other pleasant 
 visits. 
 
 " Newnham Paddox. I wish you were with me in 
 this heavenly place, with these dear people. You like 
 magnificence. So do I, when it is not spoiled by 
 lower things. A. and Crissy do not. We will not 
 quarrel with them, but I still think that we are right. 
 This is a really grand place, le grand air \n. everything, 
 the finest family chapel in the kingdom, I suppose. 
 Lord Denbigh sold an estate which accrued to him in 
 Shropshire to build it, and he has done it worthily. I 
 go in to low mass at 8.30 every morning in my long fur 
 coat and a black veil to be sure the chapel is only at 
 the end of the long corridor. Kindness of every sort 
 and cordiality is here for me. It is a wonderful sight, 
 and touching in its way, to see the younger son of the 
 house, Basil, a lovely boy of eight years, serve the 
 mass every morning. We are a very small party here 
 as yet most cultivated people they are excellent 
 music, excellent reading aloud, everybody occupied,
 
 I 68 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 everybody receptive and communicative, every soul 
 here as yet Roman Catholic, but you know I don't like 
 them the less for that. I intended to go home on 
 Monday, but am kept per force. I compromise for 
 Thursday, but I doubt if I get the gates open then, so 
 cordial, so dear, so hospitable are my hosts their care 
 and tenderness to me is nearly filial." 
 
 " Newnham Paddox. I wish I could make you 
 see my visit. Such affectionate kindness, such honour 
 and respect is shown me, that I cannot comprehend it, 
 only receive it humbly and with gratitude. 
 
 'They say this world's a world of woe, 
 And I pity the fools that find it so.' 
 
 Here are lines I have found at stately Newnham, and 
 they strike me as so funny and incongruous that I 
 copy them." 
 
 From 1877 onwards Mrs. Stewart had been 
 frequently very ill and suffering, and was often 
 confined for weeks to bed or the sofa in her 
 little room in Sloane Street, which was con- 
 stantly brightened by presents of flowers and 
 fruit, and cheered by the presence of ministering 
 friends. When she was able, she would talk 
 for hours on all events of the day with wonder- 
 ful shrewdness and sagacity, amid which such 
 gleams of fun would break forth as were in- 
 describable. Well does the writer remember 
 some one in her room remarking that an elec-
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 169 
 
 tion failure which had just befallen Sir William 
 Harcourt would be as good as a dose of physic 
 to him, and the sparkling humour with which 
 she replied, " No ; it would be a dose of castor- 
 oil administered to a marble statue." 
 
 Of her own pains and aches Mrs. Stewart 
 would seldom speak. " Take care," she would 
 say, if one had a tendency thus to complain, 
 "or you will become that most dreadful of all 
 things, a self-observant valetudinarian. I was 
 once in a house with a lady who, after talking 
 of nothing else for an hour, said, ' I won't 
 speak of my own health, for when I was young, 
 a dear, old, wise, judicious woman said to me, 
 " When anybody asks how you are, always say 
 you are quite well, for nobody cares.'" 
 
 From one of her most severe illnesses Mrs. 
 Stewart declared that she rallied from the time 
 Mr. Alfred Denison paid her a visit. She had 
 said to him that she had a presentiment she 
 should not recover, and he had answered her 
 that he had never been ill without that pre- 
 sentiment, but that it had never come true. 
 
 Speaking of the cases in which the highest 
 and lowest motives combine, and " Oh, in life 
 there are so many of these cases," led Mrs. 
 Stewart one day to speak of the occasions on 
 which a lie is justifiable.
 
 I 70 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 "There was once a case in which I thought I ought 
 to tell a lie, but I was not sure. I went to Dr. and 
 Mrs. Bickersteth, and I asked them. They would 
 only answer, ' We cannot advise you to tell a lie '- 
 they would not advise it, but they did not forbid it. 
 So, when a husband came to question me about his 
 wife, I equivocated. I said, ' She certainly did not do 
 what you imagine.' He said to me very sternly and 
 fiercely ' That is no answer : is my wife innocent ? ' 
 And I said, ' She is.' I said it hesitatingly, for I 
 knew it was false, and he knew it was false ; he knew 
 that I had lied to him ; he did not believe me in his 
 heart, but he was glad to believe me outwardly, and he 
 was grateful to me, and that husband and wife lived 
 together till their death. I believe that was one of the 
 rare cases in which it is right to tell a lie. You will say 
 that it might lead one to tell many others, but I do not 
 think it has. Was it not Mr. Stopford Brooke who 
 once said that ' merciless truth ' was the most selfish 
 thing he knew ? " 
 
 Another day, Mrs. Stewart spoke again of 
 how far a lie might be justified by circum- 
 stances, such as giving a wrong direction to a 
 man who was in pursuit of another to kill him, 
 &c. ; and when some one objected, she dwelt 
 upon its being far greater to be noble for others 
 than holy for oneself. Some one observed 
 that in this case we should all follow the inner 
 voice, which would tell truly what duty was. 
 'Yes," said Mrs. Stewart, "having formed
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART I J I 
 
 your character by the Master without, you may 
 then act in crises by the voice within, which 
 will never be false to your life's teachings. 
 Perhaps," she added, " I should say, like Dr. 
 Johnson, I have been speaking in crass ignor- 
 ance, according to the failings of my fallible 
 human nature ; and yet, may we not all, whilst 
 acting like fallible human beings as we are, 
 trust respectfully in God's mercy though 
 speaking of no glorious future as reserved for 
 us, lest He should say, ' What hast thou done 
 to deserve that ? ' ' 
 
 Long in the hearts of those present will 
 echo the sweet and thrilling tones in which, 
 after this conversation, Mrs. Stewart repeated 
 the lovely lines on Mary Magdalen in Moore's 
 " Rhymes of the Road : "- 
 
 " No wonder, Mary, that thy story 
 
 Touches all hearts for there we see 
 The soul's corruption and its glory, 
 Its death and life combined in thee. 
 
 No wonder, Mary, that thy face, 
 
 In all its touching light of tears, 
 Should meet us in each holy place 
 
 Where man before his God appears, 
 Hopeless were he not taught to see 
 All hope in Him who pardon'd thee. 
 
 Often, very often, in these hours of feeble-
 
 172 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 ness, would Mrs. Stewart speak and wonder on 
 the mysteries of a future state. 
 
 "Do not think I murmur, but life is very trying 
 when one knows so little of the beyond. The clergy- 
 man's wife has just been here, and she said, ' But you 
 must believe, you must believe Scripture literally, you 
 must believe all it says to the letter.' But I cannot 
 believe literally; one can only use the faith one has. 
 I have not the faith which moves mountains. I have 
 prayed that the mountains might move, with all the 
 faith that was in me all. But the mountains did not 
 move. No, I cannot pray with the faith which is not 
 granted me. 
 
 " I think that I believe all the promises of Scripture ; 
 yet, when I think of Death, I hesitate to wish to leave 
 the certainty here for what is yes, must be the un- 
 certainty beyond. Yet lately, when I was so ill, when 
 I continued to go down and down into the very depths, 
 I felt I had got so far, so very far, it would be difficult 
 to travel all that way again. ' Oh, let me go through 
 the gates now,' I said, and then the comforting thought 
 came that perhaps after all it might not be the will of 
 God that I should travel the same way again, and that 
 when He leads me up to the gates for the last time, it 
 may be His will to lead me by some other, by quite a 
 different way." 
 
 The kindness of Mrs. Stewart's nature was 
 so great, and she was so appreciative of the 
 good qualities of all who came near her, that
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 
 
 no one could help feeling better and a little 
 nearer their ideal when with her, or when they 
 had been long under her influence. To look 
 at the best side of people, and to shut her eyes 
 to their faults, was not with her, as with many, 
 simply a duty ; it was the very essence of her 
 nature. 
 
 No one had a more sensitive and grateful 
 appreciation of the smallest present or kindness 
 shown to her by others. Even if the gift was 
 worth nothing and cost nothing to the sender, 
 she would out of the fulness of her heart speak 
 so warmly of the kindness and with her it was 
 not words, but real feeling that the giver was 
 often ashamed of how little had been done. It 
 was often almost distressing, however, that she 
 was as open-handed as she was large-hearted. 
 If a person who enjoyed so many pleasures can 
 be said to have had a special one, her special 
 pleasure was to give away. However much a 
 thing pleased her, she would always rather give 
 it away than keep it for herself. Baskets of 
 fruit or flowers, game or new-laid eggs, that 
 were carefully sent by loving friends for her 
 special use, were often looked at and enjoyed 
 for half-an-hour, and then passed on to some 
 friend who would enjoy them equally, and per- 
 haps need them more. It would amuse her
 
 174 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 children to find that some little object which 
 they had selected for her own use, or some 
 dainty which they had sent to tempt her appe- 
 tite, had been given away within an hour to a 
 sick friend, or perhaps even to the first person 
 who happened to call. It was not that she 
 failed to appreciate or enjoy the gift, but that 
 with her the impulse to give away was irre- 
 sistible. Some one said to Mrs. Stewart that 
 one of her nearest belongings would probably 
 end her life in the Queen's Bench from her 
 over-charity and generosity. "Thank God if 
 it is for that!" Mrs. Stewart characteristically 
 replied. 
 
 Mrs. Stewart retained the happy quality of 
 eagerness about everything to a degree very 
 unusual for her age. To the last she was 
 most eager to promote and participate in any 
 human enjoyment, and her eagerness to help 
 others who needed it was measured only by 
 her ability. She did not ask herself, " Should 
 I do this?" but, " How much can I do?" and 
 cold prudence had only a small voice in her 
 counsels. Her kindness, her appreciativeness, 
 her impulsive and sustained generosity, and 
 her eager intelligent interest in everything, 
 created for herself great happiness even in her 
 later personal sufferings; and to one who
 
 XRS. DONCAN STEWART
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 175 
 
 asked her, when a book appeared with that 
 title, "Is Life Worth Living?" she replied, 
 " Ay, to the very dregs." 
 
 Mrs. Stewart could not endure any language 
 which seemed to her the least exaggerated. 
 Mrs. Kendal one day spoke to her of her being 
 in "the honoured place of age," having reached 
 "the table-land," whilst she and others were 
 only like ants trying to climb up to it. Mrs. 
 Stewart turned sharply round upon her, with 
 "My dear, you are a fool ; you know perfectly 
 well that no one is old, and that there is no 
 table-land." 
 
 A visit which Mrs. Stewart greatly enjoyed 
 in her last years was that to those who were 
 then Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 " Aldworth (1880 or 1881). I will write on my 
 first night at this precious house, because I think, I 
 know, it must interest you. Sabine Greville brought 
 me this afternoon by the loveliest of all lovely English 
 drives, really a country fit for a poet to live in. We 
 found here two young Roman Catholics, brother and 
 sister, dear Mrs. Tennyson in all her delicate beauty, 
 and the dear old man. The house is wonderfully 
 beautiful, on a very high hill, commanding the whole 
 country. I am installed luxuriously in three rooms 
 en suite. We dined at 6.30. When Tennyson had 
 finished his dinner, he went off. At first I thought he 
 was ill, but everybody seemed to take it as a matter of
 
 176 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 course. We sate on and finished our dinners. Then 
 we moved into another room, where dessert was laid 
 and the master was sitting with his wine and fruit. 
 Then, after an hour of very good talk, he went away to 
 sleep and smoke, she went to rest till 9.30, and we 
 young ones went into the music-room. Hallam tucked 
 me up reverently and lovingly on a sofa, and the music 
 began real good music, Beethoven and such like. At 
 9.30 to the drawing-room again, Mrs. Tennyson went 
 to bed at ten, and he read to us, and it has been a 
 great enjoyment ! Everybody breakfasts in their own 
 room." 
 
 "August 31. Here at Aldworth a happy day, a 
 day to note, if I could do it worthily. A deal of good 
 talk with the master, in and out. A walk by myself 
 out of the gates. A very good talk with Hallam, 
 whom I like more and more, and with dear beautiful 
 Mrs. Tennyson. Hallam sung a German hymn to me, 
 in his manly true voice, without music, just sitting by 
 me, in the drawing-room ; it was very fine. 
 
 " They drove me to a great house, but the drive to 
 and fro was the thing. Much good talk. I wish I 
 could remember all, not to record it, for it was very 
 personal, but to enjoy it. After dinner, the master 
 was very genial, very confiding, full of interesting talk. 
 I think I know his character now. He read in the 
 evening, and now at eleven o'clock I am come to bed, 
 grateful that I am here, and saying to the time : 
 
 ' Stay, for thou art fair ! ' " 
 
 " Thursday night (zA. Milford Mrs. Greville's again). 
 This morning was fine. On going down at eleven
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 1 77 
 
 o'clock, I found Mr. Tennyson and Hallam waiting to 
 walk with me ; they took me about the grounds, showed 
 me the dogs and horses, and then went off for their own 
 long walk. Dear Mrs. Tennyson was in the drawing- 
 room, and I talked with her till one very very interest- 
 ing. Luncheon at 1.30, alone with them, and much good 
 and loving talk. I was very thankful, for I felt that 
 they loved me and trusted me. Sabine most kindly 
 drove over to fetch me, nine miles of lovely country, 
 and I felt all love and reverence, and was invited to 
 come back with affectionate urgency. They said, ' This 
 is the thin edge of the wedge ; we hope that you will 
 come again whenever you can and will.' All this was 
 and is very pleasant and dear to one's heart, and I 
 thank God again and again." 
 
 The buoyant nature of Mrs. Stewart enabled 
 her soon to rally even after the severest ill- 
 nesses, but in 1883 her increased feebleness 
 of body, though never of mind, struck all who 
 loved her. Here are a few notes of this time : 
 
 "Stfi July 1883. This last has been a terrible 
 week William Spottiswoode's funeral at the Abbey. 
 I had not intended to go, but they sent for me, and I 
 could not and would not shrink. It was a grand and 
 terrible experience. I was so near the grave that I 
 could touch everything and everybody with my hand, 
 and I got so bewildered, that my only resource on 
 leaving the Abbey was to drive smart out into the 
 breezy country to blow off the atmosphere. The day 
 after I went down to Kew (imperative and very good 
 
 M
 
 178 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 for me), where I could not but clutch fast hold of dear 
 Joseph Hooker, Lady Eastlake, and even Browning, to 
 make sure they were still here." 
 
 " Walton Heath, October gth. I came here on 
 Saturday to my dear Caroline Bromley a charming 
 place, full of books and kindness, and care and con- 
 sideration. We are in the middle of a large airy heath 
 a most healthy place, and have the loveliest garden 
 and orchard that you did ever see, full of sweet-smell- 
 ing things." 
 
 " November 4. I have set up a fine large black cat, 
 called Joe a travelled cat. He was in Cairo with the 
 poor Elliots when they died in one week. Joe is very 
 fond of me, and will hardly leave my lap. I find him 
 very heavy, and would often be glad to get rid of him, 
 but don't like to disturb him : he does not so much 
 mind disturbing me." 
 
 11 November 25. I am getting quite fairly better. 
 Henry James came and sate by my bedside a long 
 while to-day, and I had a good time. Lady Gordon 
 was here yesterday, and everybody is very very good 
 to me. Mrs. Bald sends me beautifully chosen game, 
 Mrs. Houlds worth grapes and figs such grapes ! and 
 the goodness and the goodness ! My maidens, East 
 and Polly, are as you know them. I hope their mother 
 is coming up to spend Christmas, and I intend and plan 
 that they should have a happy time, please God." 
 
 In the autumn of 1883, after a visit to her 
 much-valued friend Mrs. Hamilton, of Brent 
 Lodge, Mrs. Stewart had insisted, in spite of her 
 infirmities, upon going to Scotland. Hitherto
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART 
 
 she had always travelled third-class, saying it 
 was the one economy she could indulge in 
 without hurting any one else. But this time 
 her loving daughter Christina and Miss 
 Hamilton insisted upon going beforehand to 
 engage a Pullman car and have everything 
 ready. When she arrived, she was as much 
 enchanted as a girl of sixteen, shook hands 
 with the caretaker, and completely captivated 
 him ; washed her hands at once to try the tap ; 
 was enraptured with the furniture, saying her 
 only trouble was whether to lie on the sofa or 
 sit in the arm-chair ; and then suddenly she 
 burst into tears, and flung her arms round her 
 daughter Chrissy, saying, "My dear, you should 
 not make me wish so much to live ; surely the 
 angels in Heaven can never take the care of 
 me you do ! " 
 
 In January 1884, the death of her kind son- 
 in-law, James Rogerson of Wamphray, was a 
 great shock to Mrs. Stewart in her enfeebled 
 state. Soon her weakness increased so much, 
 that her Hanoverian daughter was summoned 
 from Gmunden, and came at once with her 
 husband and children. The mother was able 
 to have pleasure in this last reunion, and the 
 daughter had the unspeakable comfort of 
 having had the power of sharing with her
 
 I SO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 sister in loving ministrations to the last weeks 
 of their mother's life here. Before this, Mrs. 
 Stewart had always seemed to avoid all 
 thought of death, but now, when she saw and 
 accepted that death must be the termination 
 of her illness, she set herself, so to speak, to 
 examine the process. She evidently had no 
 fear, and repeatedly spoke of the entire trust 
 and confidence with which she left herself in 
 God's hands. She also said in a musing kind 
 of way, more than once, "It is curious, this 
 thing which you call dying this curious thing 
 called dying." She retained the use of all her 
 powers of observation till a few hours before 
 the end, and the whole of the last week was 
 strongly characteristic of her her intellect, her 
 sweetness, her sense of humour, being all seen 
 as it were under an electric light. A few days 
 before the end, a dear Roman Catholic friend, 
 who had always hoped that in her last hours 
 she might be received into the Roman Church, 
 came to her, and urged it vehemently " There 
 was no time to be lost ; it was not necessary to 
 understand or receive all the articles of the 
 [Roman] faith ; all that was really necessary 
 was to resign one's own will entirely, to say 
 in humble trust, ' Whatever God wills, I will,' 
 that would be enough." " Oh, dear friend,"
 
 MRS. DUNCAN STEWART l8l 
 
 answered Mrs. Stewart in the sweetest and 
 most touching manner, " could it be possible 
 that I, a poor weak woman, could will anything 
 but what God wills ? I love you and I love 
 much in your religion, and I love God ; but 
 how can I accept technically what I cannot 
 believe absolutely ? " and to this she remained 
 firm against all entreaties, oft-repeated the last 
 three days of her life, though, when the same 
 friend offered to pray with her, she accepted 
 it gladly with " Yes, surely we may pray to- 
 gether, to our common Father" 
 
 On the 1 6th of February 1884, Mrs. Stewart 
 passed peacefully and painlessly into the other 
 life. Her sons and daughters were with her, 
 and her two faithful servants. Her last words 
 were " Higher, Higher," and we may believe 
 that she has reached that higher existence 
 where her thirst for life, not repose, meets 
 its first fruition. Her mortal remains were 
 laid in a grave of flowers at Kensal Green, 
 many faithful hearts mourning, many sad eyes 
 weeping, beside her coffin. East, her maid, to 
 whom she had ever been caressing in thoughts 
 and acts and words, only echoed the unspoken 
 feeling of many as to the common round 
 of outer events when she said simply, " It is 
 so terrible that the omnibuses should still
 
 I 82 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 be running and Mrs. Stewart be gone." But a 
 couplet written by a brother of Mrs. Barbauld 
 might be applied to her, who 
 
 " From the banquet of Life rose a satisfied guest, 
 Thank'd the Lord of the feast, and in hope went to rest."
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 
 
 TRAVELLERS often complain of the dulness of 
 the journey through France which they are 
 forced to take in the search after a warm 
 winter climate. They think there is nothing 
 to see between Paris and Marseilles, because 
 they never look. Yet even the traveller who 
 is hurried straight on without stopping might 
 find much to interest him in the rapid transi- 
 tions the extraordinary changes in all the 
 characteristics of the country he is passing 
 through. First come the central plains of 
 France ; then the rolling hills of Burgundy in 
 the white moonlight ; then the great towns, 
 Dijon and Lyons, deep down below and 
 mapped out in the night by their lamps ; the 
 dawn over the Rhone valley, with its arid 
 hills and crumbling castles ; the change to 
 the blue sky fading into softest amber ; the 
 first stunted olives ; the white roads leading, 
 
 dust-surrounded, to the white Proven9al cities, 
 
 183
 
 184 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Avignon, Tarascon, and Aries ; the desolate 
 stone -laden Crau, so utterly forlorn that it 
 seems like the world of another life ; the still 
 blue Mediterranean with its fringes ot pink- 
 blossoming almonds growing in thickets of 
 asphodel and violets ; Marseilles, and its har- 
 bour and its shipping, and its thousand bastides 
 gleaming snowy-white amid the foliage on the 
 hillsides ; and lastly, the granite phase near the 
 coast, and its peculiar growth of heath and 
 lavender, and rosemary and pines. Even the 
 winter traveller who is ill-tempered and in a 
 hurry ought not to say that he can find nothing 
 to admire. 
 
 But for those who have time to break their 
 journey and to linger on the way, no words 
 can portray the wealth of interest and plea- 
 sure and instruction which may be found, and 
 which too often passes unheeded and unsought, 
 in the charming little French towns by the 
 wayside. The writer's own feeling is that his 
 pleasantest Continental days, those which come 
 back to him most in dreams, those which- he 
 delights to linger over in memory, are not days 
 spent in the great well-known sight -seeing 
 places, Rome, Florence, Venice, Dresden, or 
 Vienna ; not even days amid the greatest 
 beauties of the Alps or the Pyrenees ; but
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL I 8 5 
 
 those passed in lingering in the little wayside 
 towns of France and Germany. Seldom com- 
 pelled to hurry, in annual journeys to and from 
 the south, short mornings were spent in the 
 railway, generally in reading up the story of 
 the places to be visited, and happy afternoons 
 in rambling about old churches too big and too 
 grand for the little towns they adorned, in 
 sketching the ruins of some forgotten abbey by 
 a willow-fringed river, or hearing some charm- 
 ing story of happy, and often holy and beauti- 
 ful, peasant life from simple and friendly lips. 
 Delightful too were the evenings in the primi- 
 tive clean country inns not great Anglicised 
 houses, with the vulgarity and ostentation 
 which generally follow the word "hotel," and 
 which always attend the places whither couriers 
 drag their long-suffering victims, but simple 
 homes with a welcome from simple hearts, quiet 
 cheerful wholesome dinners at bright little 
 tables cC Jwte, where the mistress alternately 
 carved and pressed her home-made dainties, 
 and where the master formed one of the 
 company the humble village magnates, the 
 doctor, the attorney, perhaps the mayor, and 
 sometimes a stranger or two, making up the 
 rest of the party. And then would come the 
 rest in snowy beds, whose sheets were scented
 
 I 86 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 with lavender, in little rooms with brick floors 
 and a single strip of carpet, and a china bdnitier, 
 with a bunch of box blessed on Palm Sunday, 
 hanging against the whitewashed wall at the 
 bed's head ; and the being awakened by the 
 hostess calling her chickens under the window, 
 to the rippling of the river through the orchards, 
 and the sweet scent of the lime-flowers which 
 hung over the little garden. 
 
 Such days as these may be spent at many 
 of the places between Paris and Marseilles at 
 Fontainebleau, with its delightful palace-garden 
 and its green forest alleys ; at Sens, with its 
 grey cathedral and memories of Becket ; at 
 Auxerre, with its excursions to the abbeys of 
 Pontigny and Vezelay ; at Tonnerre, with its 
 interesting churches and hospital and tombs ; 
 at Montbard, with its lovely river and its 
 beautiful abbey of Fontenay ; at Dijon, with 
 its delightful walk to the hill of Fontaines ; at 
 Nuits, with its glorious old church and its ex- 
 cursion to Citeaux ; at Beaune, with its chest- 
 nut-girded ramparts and mediaeval streets ; at 
 Autun, with its Roman remains and glorious 
 cathedral ; at Villefranche, for the sake of Ars 
 and its memories, and at many places farther 
 on, and, being more in the south, perhaps better 
 known than these.
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 
 
 Circumstances certainly have a strange power 
 of gilding, and there are companionships which 
 make almost all scenes beautiful, and which seem 
 to gather up the flowers of life and weave them 
 involuntarily into a garland of perfect happi- 
 ness. When the golden cord which twined it 
 is broken, the garland withers. Nothing can 
 ever be quite the same again, the delicate lines 
 seem washed out of the picture, the pathos lost 
 which made the poem, and yet, even then, it 
 will often be found that Nature, especially in 
 her quiet moods (and under the expression 
 Nature, one may be allowed to mean all old 
 "unrestored" buildings, for which Time has 
 done more than even the builder), has a won- 
 derful power of comfort and companionship. 
 
 Once I was alone at Macon, where we had 
 often been before. 
 
 Macon is one of the places which people find 
 most fault with, but which we have always liked. 
 It has so completely a character of its own, with 
 its long quay of quaint houses, two miles long 
 I should think, facing the immense river, which 
 has nothing beyond it, but which makes a great 
 angle just fronting the centre of the town, and 
 so sweeps all its impurities away to the rich 
 distant pasture-lands, and leaves you to that 
 fresh pure air which is now looked upon as a
 
 I 88 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 cure for Roman fever, and which is perfectly 
 impregnated in May and June with the scent of 
 lime avenues ; for here as well as at Tonnerre 
 people cultivate the lime-flowers tilleuls and 
 gather them in a regular harvest, to dry and 
 sell to the apothecaries to mix with their tisanes. 
 Indeed no old French wife who knows her duty 
 ever dreams of being without a good supply of 
 dried fleurs de tilleul to take in boiling water, 
 with a feuille (foranger and a teaspoonful of 
 Eau de Melisse des Carmes, for a cold, or 
 hysteria, or indigestion, or sleeplessness, or 
 headache, or ... almost everything. 
 
 The ruined cathedral of Macon, battered to 
 pieces at the Revolution, stands with its two 
 octagonal towers looking down upon the quiet 
 market-place. The back part of the town is so 
 deserted, so silent and grass-grown, that you 
 might think you were in a Spanish city. The 
 high walls of convents, with richly wrought 
 heavy rails before the windows, throw a gloom 
 over the narrow streets. Here and there the 
 lines of houses are broken by a courtyard with 
 acacias and lilacs, before one of the ancient 
 Holds, which in winter receive the provincial 
 noblesse. The whole life of Macon seems to 
 be concentrated by the river-side, which is the 
 scene of constant change from the quantity of
 
 PARAY LE MON1AL 189 
 
 merchandise from the south of France, and the 
 produce of the Maconnais vineyards, which is 
 always being disembarked or embarked. Here 
 also, for those who know the beauty of simple 
 lines, there is a charm in the country seen be- 
 yond the river : 
 
 " Large and strange, 
 
 Crossed everywhere by long thin poplar-lines, 
 Like fingers of some ghastly skeleton-hand," 
 
 pointing at the town. There is a charm, and a 
 great one, in the Inn, which faces the broad 
 gleaming water, to which you look across the 
 rugged pavement of the street, between great 
 green boxes, set out on the edge of the pave- 
 ment, and planted with huge tufts of white 
 marguerites and Portugal-laurels clipped round 
 to look like orange-trees. 
 
 In the end of May there is always a great 
 fair at Macon, which is resorted to by the 
 whole country-side. Then the usually quiet 
 town assumes a festal aspect, the walks under 
 the lime-trees are lined with booths filled with 
 gay wares and most brilliantly lighted towards 
 evening, and in the little place are numbers of 
 shows theatres, and operas, and horseman- 
 ship at one sous of entrance money, between 
 which a merry crowd wanders and laughs and
 
 I9O BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH KM 
 
 chatters, entering first Le Thddtre de Jesus, and 
 then rushing to see La Vraie Femme a la Barbe, 
 who is exhibiting next door. The most popu- 
 lar, and certainly the most exciting, of all these 
 spectacles on our last visit was the Massacre 
 of the Innocents, but then three sous were 
 charged for that. It was an awful tableau. 
 Soldiers were holding numbers of little chil- 
 dren, without a vestige of garments, head 
 downwards by their feet ; some were being 
 slaughtered and apparently pouring with blood, 
 while others were lying weltering in their gore 
 at the feet of their agonised mothers. It was 
 wonderfully done far too horrible, and much 
 more vivid than the famous picture of Guido. 
 The crowd at the fair was so great and the 
 weather so beautiful, that late at night, when 
 the little theatres were all closing, and the 
 shops were putting away their wares, Macon 
 invented a new amusement, a fiery regatta on 
 the broad limpid river, boats which chased 
 each other, wreathed from end to end with gar- 
 lands of coloured lamps, reflected a thousand- 
 fold in every little riplet. They pursued, they 
 escaped, they turned, they pursued again, the 
 crews sang and the people cheered, and, as 
 our landlady said, "il avait fair tout-a-fait 
 Venitien"
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL IQI 
 
 But lately the peasants who have come into 
 the Macon fair from the neighbouring towns 
 from Bourg, and Chagny, Chalons, Autun, and 
 Lyons have extended their journey a little 
 farther, and taken the opportunity of mingling 
 a religious duty with a secular one, by mak- 
 ing the pilgrimage to the shrine of Paray 
 le Monial, which has only lately become a 
 familiar name to Protestant England, though 
 in France it has long been honoured. 
 
 Since 1864, when the nun Marguerite- Marie 
 Alacoque, who had died in 1690, received the 
 tardy honours of "beatification," the interest 
 in the place where her life was spent and 
 where she lies buried has been gradually and 
 steadily increasing. Before this, its noble old 
 church attracted few but local visitors, and in 
 England it was quite unknown : in Murray's 
 Handbook it was not even mentioned. But 
 the erection and opening of a new church 
 above the grave of the saintly woman in June 
 1866, and the announcement in the following 
 September that steps were being taken at 
 Rome for her future canonisation, became 
 the signal for an extraordinary furore about 
 her. English Catholics began to say to one 
 another, "We must increase the devotion to 
 the Mere Marguerite-Marie Alacoque ; this
 
 192 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 is a thing to be done," and no energy has" 
 been wanting to fan the flicker of enthusiasm 
 about her into a flame, which finally blazed 
 forth at the time of the Sardinian occupation 
 of Rome, when the neglected and almost lost 
 saint was invoked by a myriad voices, and her 
 intercession sought in favour of the dethroned 
 Pope, who was even then employed in doing 
 her honour. Since then the <% devotion " has 
 grown in a way which is simply marvellous. 
 By dint of preachings and persuasions, pil- 
 grimages in her honour were established in 
 1873 even in unenthusiastic England (though 
 it must be owned that many of the nominal 
 " pilgrims " paid their visits by proxy), and in 
 France processions with banners and chaunts 
 streamed forth from every province in honour 
 of the poor nun who had died nearly 200 years 
 before, and with the hope of her influence in re- 
 establishing the temporal kingdom of the Pope. 
 For a long time Paray le Monial was only 
 accessible by a branch line from Chagny, but 
 now it has its own separate line from Macon, 
 which is only used by the pilgrims and by the 
 working people of the country. 
 
 The district this railway passes through 
 must be bleak and bare in winter, but in 
 summer it is charming. The undulating up-
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 1 93 
 
 lands swell into free heights covered with 
 heath or golden with broom, while here and 
 there a granite fragment crops up above the 
 short grass. The lower slopes are rich with 
 vineyards, the vines being tied to low posts 
 and cut close to the ground. At wide inter- 
 vals come the villages clustering round their 
 churches, which are almost always more or 
 less picturesque. In the hollows, poplars 
 fringe the abundant streams, and rows of 
 luxuriant walnuts mark the divisions between 
 the fields of clover and lucerne. By the side 
 of the railroad the common flowers of France 
 grow together most luxuriantly scabious, 
 salvia, mignonette, hawkweed, and here and 
 there masses of dark blue columbine. 
 
 It is the country where the childhood of 
 Lamartine was spent, and of which he gives so 
 vivid a description in his "Confidences." One 
 may still see amid its trees the low pyramidal 
 spire at his paternal home of Milly. One may 
 follow the stony path which he describes as 
 winding from door to door between the 
 cottages amid which the little chateau stands 
 like a great pillar of blackened stone, in its 
 tiny garden surrounded by a low dark wall, 
 behind which the hill begins to rise at once 
 imperceptibly treeless, shrubless, yet green
 
 194 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 in summer with vines. "This was all," wrote 
 Lamartine "yet it is that which sufficed for 
 so many years for the happiness, the thoughts, 
 the peaceful work and leisure of my father, my 
 mother, and their eight children. It is that 
 which now forms the centre of their recollec- 
 tions. It is the Eden of our childhood, and 
 we could wish that the world began and ended 
 for us with the walls of this poor enclosure." 
 
 Not far distant we may also see Monceaux, 
 the chateau which was the home of Lamartine's 
 later life. It stands beautifully situated on a 
 rising ground amid the vineyards, surrounded 
 by tall trees. In 1870 the writer was present 
 there at the sale, when all the sacred house- 
 hold relics were first exposed to the curiosity 
 of the country-side and then put up to auction 
 in the little chestnut avenue, where the bidders 
 sat pleasantly all through the hot summer day 
 upon the grass ; and he secured as a precious 
 memorial, for a few francs, the old green satin 
 quilt which covered the bed of the sweet 
 woman whose saintly life is laid open to us 
 in Le Manuscrit de ma Mere. After reading 
 her journal, the whole of this country seems 
 fragrant with the recollection of her, and it 
 was over these hills that the peasantry of 
 Milly carried their beloved mistress at mid-
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 195 
 
 night, through the deep untrodden snow, to 
 her last resting-place at Saint- Point. 
 
 There are numbers of old chateaux like that 
 of Monceaux dominating the Maconnais vine- 
 yards, simple old country-houses, distinguished 
 by their manorial dovecotes, and standing on 
 heights in an enclosure surrounded by a wall. 
 The owners are quiet folk, often proud enough 
 of their " blue blood ; " but leading simple, 
 sleepy lives, with few other diversions than 
 occasional visits to neighbouring chateaux, as 
 sleepy as their own, and only a few miles 
 distant, or the being occasionally joined by the 
 priest or the doctor in a game of bowls upon 
 their terrace. 
 
 As we advance into the hills, the lines of 
 poplars draw together as the uplands close in. 
 Here is Cluny with its glorious Benedictine 
 abbey, of which so large a portion remains 
 the abbey which furnished the line of German 
 pontiffs to the Papacy, and trained its Prior 
 Hildebrand for the Papal throne and placed 
 him upon it. 
 
 The train stops everywhere. It has super- 
 seded all other means of locomotion in this 
 quiet agricultural country, and it is the country 
 people who are considered. At all the stations 
 are groups of working men getting in and out
 
 196 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 in their blue blouses, and women in their blue 
 aprons and their caps with flapping crimped 
 white fringes. Endless are the little excur- 
 sions which the train makes out of each of 
 the stations, returning to it again before it 
 finally moves on. But in the train, besides 
 the country people with their baskets and 
 umbrellas (of course we are going second 
 class and how much the pleasantest class it 
 is !) are Sisters of Charity, priests with their 
 breviaries and ever-moving but silent lips, and 
 women in the Macon head-dress the lofty 
 little tower of straw, rising from a brim shaded 
 by long black lace lappets ; and all these are 
 on pilgrimage. 
 
 The country opens again now. The fields 
 are pasture-land, mistletoe grows in the or- 
 chards, the vegetation becomes poorer, and 
 here, stranded on the wind-stricken upland, is 
 a brown Burgundy town, with high roofs and 
 dormer windows. It is Paray le Monial. 
 
 At the close of the seventeenth century, 
 when the rapid growth of Jansenism was 
 agitating the Roman Church, the Jesuit party 
 sought for some new influence which might 
 stimulate the flagging energies of ultra-Roman 
 Catholicism. This influence was unexpectedly 
 found in a poor nun of Paray le Monial, who
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 
 
 197 
 
 came, like St. Catherine of Siena, though by a 
 very different path, and partly under the influ- 
 ence of the strangest fanaticism, to the rescue 
 of her Church, as the foundress of the new 
 form of devotion known as the "Adoration of 
 the Sacred Heart." 
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 
 
 The Order of the Sisters of the Visitation, a 
 branch of the Carmelites, had been founded by 
 St. Fran9ois de Sales, and one of their con- 
 vents was early established at Paray. Here 
 was received as a nun, in her twenty-third year,
 
 198 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 in 1671, Marguerite, the daughter of Claude 
 Alacoque, a small proprietor at Veroure, near 
 Autun, and of Philiberte Lamyn, his wife. On 
 entering the convent, Marguerite adopted in 
 religion the name of Marie, which she affixed 
 to her own. From the age of four she is said 
 to have been devoted to pious thoughts and 
 acts, and she had always loved solitude. Her 
 parents had wished her to marry, and on find- 
 ing her impracticable, besought her, in choos- 
 ing a convent, to join the Ursulines of Macon, 
 whose abbess was her relation ; but she insisted 
 upon selecting an Order more exclusively de- 
 voted to the honour of the Virgin. 
 
 Being of delicate health, and suffering cruelly 
 from self-inflicted macerations, Marguerite- 
 Marie Alacoque soon fell into a visionary state, 
 which increased till her religious transports 
 began to take a miraculous form. Even then 
 there is something most sincere and touching 
 in her desire to shrink from notoriety, and her 
 own simple dread lest her fancies should be 
 delusions. " I constantly fear lest, being mis- 
 taken myself, I should mislead others," she 
 wrote to her confessor. " I pray constantly to 
 God that He will permit me to be unknown, 
 lost, and buried in lasting oblivion. My Divine 
 Master has required of me by my obedience
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 1 99 
 
 that I should write to you, but I cannot and do 
 not believe that it can be His will that any 
 recollection should remain after death of so 
 pitiful a creature." 
 
 She appears to have forgotten all else in the 
 longing after a complete heart-union with her 
 Saviour. " I desire," she wrote to one who asked 
 her advice, " nothing more than to be blind and 
 ignorant as regards human affairs, in order 
 perfectly to learn the lesson I so much need, 
 that a good nun must leave all to find God, be 
 ignorant of all else to know Him, forget all else 
 to possess Him, do and suffer all in order to learn 
 to love Him." Many of her letters now exist, of 
 which a great portion were written to a certain 
 Father La Colombiere, who was then living in 
 St. James's Palace, as one of the chaplains of 
 Catherine of Braganza, Queen of Charles II. 
 Those who read them will feel that, however 
 imaginative and ecstatic she was, she had at 
 least a firm faith in the facts and feelings she 
 narrates, and a simple anxiety that while she, 
 the instrument, was forgotten, the narration of 
 them might redound to the glory of God. In 
 the early part of her life at the convent, she 
 seems to have been really anxious to counteract 
 by honest practical work the increase of her 
 visionary tendency, and we find her in turn
 
 2OO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 fulfilling the offices of "infirmarian," "mistress 
 of the children," and " mistress of the novices." 
 Many of her letters at this time might be mis- 
 taken for those of St. Teresa ; for instance : 
 " I would wish to love my Love with a love as 
 piercing as that of the seraphim, and I should 
 not grieve if it must be from Hell that I should 
 love Him thus." And again : " Nothing that 
 the world can give would be more pleasing to 
 me than the cross of my Divine Master, a cross 
 exactly like His, that is, heavy, ignominious, 
 painful, comfortless, pitiless. Others have the 
 happiness of mounting with the Divine Master 
 upon Tabor, but I am content to know no 
 other path than that of Calvary, to spend my 
 whole existence amid the thorns, the nails, 
 the blows of the cross, with no other pleasure 
 than that of knowing that this world has no 
 pleasure to give me." Yet shortly after her 
 writing thus, the simple truth of her natural 
 character is shown by her adding " Alas ! 
 how I fear that this very thirst for suffering 
 may perhaps in itself be a temptation of the 
 Devil." 
 
 "As to her prayers for suffering," rather 
 quaintly says one of her biographers, " they 
 were most abundantly answered. Her life in 
 the convent was one of constant and acute
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 2OI 
 
 pain ; agonising neuralgia and rheumatism 
 allowed her no rest, and her only comfort was 
 in frequent communion what she called the 
 reception of ' the Bread of Love.' " 
 
 " I have such a thirst for communion," she 
 wrote, " that I feel if I had to reach it barefoot 
 through a path of flame, it would cost me 
 nothing in comparison of being deprived of it." 
 
 Gradually, as her sickness and her self- 
 inflicted penances increased, her religious fer- 
 vour began to border upon insanity. That 
 which might profitably be understood in an 
 allegorical sense was by her taken as an actual 
 and literal occurrence. Her Saviour, she be- 
 lieved, constantly spoke to her. He addressed 
 her from the Sacrament of the Altar ; He met 
 her beneath the walnut-trees in the garden ; 
 He showed her His wounds, which He said 
 were still bleeding from the persecutions of 
 living unbelievers. He told her that the hour 
 of divine vengeance was at hand, and she 
 interceded with Him, as Abraham did with the 
 Almighty on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 One day He said to her, " I search a victim for 
 my heart, who will offer herself up as a sacrifice 
 for the accomplishment of my designs." Then 
 in her "longing after the presence of divine 
 love," she offered her own heart to the Saviour,
 
 2O2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 and He accepted it. Visibly and actually, as 
 she believed and described (always under 
 the promise of secrecy to those who swore it 
 and immediately betrayed it), visibly and ac- 
 tually the Saviour received her heart, and 
 placed it within His own, which she said that 
 she " saw through the wound in His sacred 
 side, and that it was burning like the sun, or 
 like a fiery furnace." Her own heart at the 
 same time appeared "like an atom which was 
 being consumed in this furnace." And when 
 it was entirely aflame " Our Saviour placed it 
 again in the side of His servant," saying, 
 " Receive, my beloved, the pledge of my love." 
 From this time Marguerite- Marie was possessed 
 by one idea alone the promulgation of the 
 worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in its 
 actual and literal sense. Persecuted at first, 
 and laughed at by her own Sisterhood, she 
 gradually gained an ascendancy over them, and 
 henceforth believing that God had given her 
 a mission to accomplish, she threw aside, in 
 what she fancied to be His cause, all feelings 
 of personal reticence, urging upon the world, in 
 her letters and words, the adoration of the 
 Sacred Heart, and announcing the eleven 
 benefits which her vivid imagination assured 
 her that her Saviour had verbally promised to
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 2O3 
 
 those who would honour Him under this 
 peculiar form : i. All the graces necessary 
 for their condition of life. 2. Peace in their 
 families. 3. Consolation in their sufferings. 
 4. A refuge in Christ during their life, and 
 more especially at their death. 5. Abundant 
 blessings on all their enterprises. 6. That 
 sinners should find in the Sacred Heart the 
 source and infinite ocean of piety. 7. That 
 through it tepid souls should become fervent. 
 8. That by it fervent souls should be raised 
 to a higher perfection. 9. That Christ would 
 bless all houses in which the image of His 
 Sacred Heart was set forth and honoured. 
 10. That he would give to priests devoted to 
 the Sacred Heart the power of melting the 
 most hardened hearts. 11. That those who 
 spread abroad this devotion should have their 
 name indelibly written upon the heart of their 
 Saviour ! 
 
 Fortunately perhaps for the world and for 
 herself, from the time of her "revelation" the 
 health of Marguerite Alacoque failed rapidly. 
 She was never free from a burning pain in her 
 side, which on Fridays was increased to agony. 
 When she knew that she was dying, with the 
 ecstatic fervour of stronger days she implored 
 the nuns not to attempt to alleviate her anguish,
 
 2O4 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 saying that " the last moments of suffering were 
 only too precious to her, and that she had still 
 the longing which had always possessed her 
 of living and dying upon the cross." She died 
 October 17, 1690, in her forty-third year, and 
 the eighteenth of her religious profession. Her 
 last words were " I have now nothing left to 
 do, but to lose my breath in the Sacred Heart 
 of Jesus." 
 
 The first important disciple of Marguerite 
 Alacoque was her correspondent La Colombiere, 
 who believed that her message was of heavenly 
 origin, and solemnly consecrated himself to the 
 devotion of the Sacred Heart. In 1678 she 
 had the happiness of hearing that, in the 
 Monastery of the Visitation at Moulins, the 
 worship of the Sacred Heart had commenced, 
 though at Paray it was not inaugurated till six 
 years after her death. In 1697 Queen Mary 
 Beatrice, then exiled in France, was persuaded 
 by the Jesuits to implore the Papal authority 
 to institute a festival in honour of the " Sacred 
 Heart of Jesus ; " but her petition was rejected, 
 and authority for the " Adoration of the Sacred 
 Heart " was only obtained in 1711 from Clement 
 XI. Yet meanwhile, by the indefatigable exer- 
 tions of the Jesuits, the " devotion " had already 
 become most popular, and the extraordinary
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 
 
 dimensions it has assumed since then are such 
 that there is now scarcely a cottage or a room 
 in a humble inn in France or Italy which is 
 not decorated with a common gaudy print of 
 the ''Sacred Heart of Jesus." On August 23, 
 1856, an apostolic decree of Pius IX. made 
 the fete of the " Sacred Heart" obligatory upon 
 the whole Catholic Church. For a time it 
 seemed as if the wish of Marguerite Alacoque 
 was to be fulfilled, and that she herself was to 
 remain forgotten, while the doctrine for which 
 she had laid down her life was received every- 
 where. But her convent companions, seeing 
 how great, though subtle, her influence had 
 been, watched over the grave where she was 
 laid, and in 1703 her tomb was opened and 
 her body enclosed in an oak coffin. When the 
 sisterhood were expelled from their convent 
 at the Revolution of 1 792, they took her bones 
 with them, and for some time they were con- 
 cealed in the paternal home of one of the 
 sisters at La Charite sur Loire. It is interest- 
 ing, however, that, even during the dispersion, 
 the nuns regularly assembled in the deserted 
 chapel at Paray on the day and hour of her 
 death, to sing hymns in her honour. After 
 their return, bringing back the body of Mar- 
 guerite, the Bishop of Autun was induced to
 
 2O6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 allow an inquiry to be instituted into the life 
 and miracles of " the servant of God." Three 
 alleged miracles out of many were selected for 
 strict investigation, all being instantaneous 
 cures of nuns from shocking internal disorders 
 upon touching her bones ! The examination 
 proved satisfactory, and in 1824, Leo XII. 
 saluted Marguerite-Marie by the title of Vener- 
 able ; in 1863 Pius IX. gave her the additional 
 honour of Beatification ; her canonisation is 
 still to come. 
 
 Paray in its present state is one great shrine 
 to Marguerite- Marie Alacoque. It exists by 
 the pilgrimages in her honour. Half its houses 
 are inns or lodgings for the pilgrims. Two- 
 thirds of its shops are for the sale of medals, 
 prints, or biographies of La Bienheureuse. Its 
 grand old romanesque church La Paroisse 
 stands by the river side with two tall towers 
 on either side of the gable of its west front, 
 and, at the east end, a great apse diverging 
 into a whole succession of little apses. Inside, 
 it is a noble cruciform round-arched church, 
 pure and beautiful. The only peculiar feature 
 is the magnificent ancient font, now used as a 
 faultier, and surmounted by a crucifix. All 
 around in groups, and behind the high altar 
 in masses, are the banners offered to the
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 
 
 2O7 
 
 " Sacred Heart of Jesus," chiefly of white 
 satin, fringed and embroidered with gold. 
 Some of these are from towns, some from 
 congregations in Paris, but by far the greater 
 number from small country parishes painfully 
 and laboriously contributed by peasants, chiefly 
 
 SHRINE OF MARGUERITE-MARIE ALACOQUE. 
 
 Bretons. The clean but rugged street winds 
 up the hill to a picturesque old town-hall and 
 the quaint tower of St. Nicholas ; but it is only 
 a few steps from La Paroisse, between shops 
 full of rosaries and relics, to the iron grille 
 which screens the Church of the Visitation. 
 This is the sanctum sanctorum. It is covered 
 with colour and gilding. Day as well as night
 
 2O8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 
 
 numberless candles blaze ceaselessly around 
 the shrine. Against the walls hang ranges of 
 banners even more splendid than those we 
 have already seen. That of Alsace, adorned 
 with a cross, and the motto " In hoc signo 
 vinces," is hung with crape. Over the altar is 
 a modern picture of the event which is sup- 
 posed to have taken place so often on that 
 very spot, the appearance of Our Saviour to 
 Marguerite- Marie. Beneath lies her body in 
 a golden shrine beautifully decorated with 
 enamel. It is dressed in the habit she wore in 
 life, and is formed from the still-perfect bones, 
 enclosed in a waxen image. One portion of 
 the actual flesh is believed to remain intact ; 
 it is that portion of the head which is sup- 
 posed to have rested, like that of St. John, 
 on the bosom of the Saviour. The shrine of 
 Marguerite, as it is now, almost forms the 
 altar, and thus, as one of her poor devotees 
 said, " The grave of the Bienheureuse serves 
 as a pedestal for the Throne of the Sacred 
 Heart." 
 
 The convent adjoining the chapel is little 
 changed from the days when Marguerite-Marie 
 inhabited it. The corridors have been painted 
 by the nuns with scenes from her life. The 
 Chapter- House remains where she was so often
 
 PARAY LE MONIAL 2O9 
 
 questioned about her visions, and the Infirmary 
 where she died. In the garden we may still 
 see the group of walnut-trees where she is 
 affirmed to have laid her head upon the bosom 
 of her Saviour, and the little " Chapel of the 
 Apparition," erected on the spot where her 
 heart is supposed to have been inflamed by 
 actual contact with the Sacred Heart of her 
 devotion. 
 
 As we sate in the chapel, one group of pil- 
 grims after another came in, and approached 
 the shrine upon their knees and kissed with 
 reverence the relics, and murmuring voices re- 
 peated one of the authorised collects of the 
 Beatified: "O Lord Jesus Christ, who hast 
 revealed in a wonderful manner to the Blessed 
 Virgin Marguerite the impenetrable riches of 
 Thine heart ; grant, that by her merits and her 
 example, loving Thee in all and above all, we 
 may become worthy to dwell eternally in the 
 same Sacred Heart." 
 
 Printed by BALLANTVNE, HANSON & Co. 
 Edinburgh and London
 
 WORKS BY AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE 
 
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 Picardy Abbeville and Amiens Paris and its Environs Arras and 
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 SUSSEX. Second Edition. With Map and about 50 
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 4 WORKS BY AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE 
 
 THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES. CHARLOTTE, 
 COUNTESS CANNING, AND LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATKR- 
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 24 smaller Woodcuts from Sketches by the Author. 
 
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 the Plates. Crown 410, ^3, 35. net. 
 
 The Embassy at Paris in the time of Louis XVIII. and Louis 
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 and Rebellion, &c. The Story of the Indian Mutiny as told in Lady 
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 Recollections of her Conversations Visits from and to the Royal 
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 of Earlham, 1775-1875, and the Story of their Religious Life 
 under many Different Forms. Illustrated with 33 Photogravure 
 Plates and about 20 Woodcuts. In 2 vols., crown 8vo, 255. 
 712 pages. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES: Being Memorial 
 Sketches of ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, Dean of Westminster ; 
 HENRY ALFORD, Dean of Canterbury ; Mrs. DUNCAN STEWART ; 
 and PARAY LE MONIAL. Illustrated with 8 Photogravure Portraits 
 and 20 Woodcuts, i vol., crown 8vo, los. 6d. 
 
 BY THE LATE AUGUSTUS WILLIAM HARE 
 
 RECTOR OF ALTON, BARNES 
 
 THE ALTON SERMONS. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo, 
 
 SERMONS ON THE LORD'S PRAYER. Crown 8vo, 
 
 15. 6</. 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON
 
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