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MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
MEN BOOKS CITIES AR T
BY
FREDERIC HARRISON
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
I 906
All rights reserved
Copyright 1906 3y T/^ Macmillan Company
NOTE
THIS volume v is the reply to frequent appeals to the
writer to collect pieces which within the last ten or
twenty years have appeared in America and in Reviews
and Journals at home. The first was called out
by friends in the United States who desired a slight
biographical sketch, as it is their custom to expect.
It is indeed a chapter from certain Memoirs that
the writer intends to retain in manuscript penes se.
Various as are the other pieces in subject, and
occasional as they were in origin, the author in his old
age submits them to his readers as permanent im-
pressions left on his mind by a somewhat wide experi-
ence. He now arranges in order some reminiscences
of the famous men and women he has known, the
great books he has studied, the splendid memories of
Nature and of Art which he will cherish to the last.
He has to thank the courtesy of publishers for per-
mission to use pieces which appeared many years ago
in America in The Forum, The North American
Review, Harper's Magazine ; and at home, in The
Fortnightly, Nineteenth Century, and Contemporary
Reviews; in The Times, The Dally Chronicle, The
Tribune, The Speaker, and some other periodicals.
HAWK HURST, Oct. 1906.
CONTENTS
PAGE
1. MY MEMORIES. 1837-1890 i
School Life ....... 5
Oxford ....... 7
Education . . . . . . .11
A Visit to A. Comte . . . -15
Literary Life . . . . . .16
Meliorist at last . . . . . .17
Postscript, 1906 . . . . . 19
2. THE BURIAL OF TENNYSON. 1892 . . 21
His Successors . . . . . .24
His Special Form . . . . .27
3. THE BURIAL OF RENAN. 1892 ... 30
4. SIR A. LYALL'S 'TENNYSON.' 1903 . . 33
5. THE MILLENARY OF KING ALFRED. 1897 . 50
6. THE TERCENTENARY OF CROMWELL. 1899 . 58
7. THE STATUE OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 1899 . 68
8. THE REMAINS OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 1899 . 76
9. THE CENTENARY OF GIBBON. 1894 . . 83
10. THE CARLYLE HOUSE. 1895 .... 97
11. SCIENTIFIC HISTORY. 1906 .... 104
vii
viii MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
PAGE
12. THE NEW MOTLEY. 1896 . . . in
13. MAINE'S 'ANCIENT LAW' REVISED. 1906 . 118
14. IMPERIAL MANNERS. 1906 . . . .123
15. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 1906 . . . .127
16. ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 1906 .... 132
17. THACKERAY. 1903 . . . . .137
18. REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT. 1901 . 143
19. THE COMPLETE RUSKIN. 1906 . . . 161
20. MAURICE HEWLETT. 1906 . . . .175
21. IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 1901 . . .185
Chicago . . . . . . .189
Democracy . . . . , . .193
The Capitol 201
Mount Vernon ...... 206
Problems to be Solved . . . . .209
22. THE TRUE COSMOPOLIS. 1896 . . .216
The Renascence . . . ... .220
Imperialism . . . . . .229
23. THE REGRETS OF A VETERAN TRAVELLER. 1887 233
24. THE RIVIERA DI LEVANTE. 1898 . . .250
Postscript, 1906. . . . . . 259
25. ECCO LA TOSCANA ! 1904 . . . . 260
26. A PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES. 1896 . . 269
27. L'ESPRIT FRAN^AIS. 1899 .... 276
28. A WORD FOR ENGLAND. 1898 . . . 277
29. ON A SCOTCH REPLY. 1898 .... 283
30. THE SCOTTISH PETITION TO THE QUEEN. 1898 289
CONTENTS ix
PAGE
31. IDEAL LONDON. 1898 . . . 295
Postscript, 1906 . . . .316
32. Music IN GREAT CITIES. 1898 . . 317
Postscript, 1906 . . . . . .320
33. HISTORIC PARIS. 1894 ... . 321
34. OUR CATHEDRALS. 1895 .... 338
35. PICTURE EXHIBITIONS. 1888 . . . 345
36. NUDE STUDIES. 1885 ..... 369
37. A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES. 1905 . . 376
38. AT BURLINGTON HOUSE. ANCIENT MASTERS. 1906 391
39. TOBACCO. 1905 ...... 396
40. CARD-PLAYING. 1905 . . . . .401
41. GAME PRESERVING AND BATTUES. 1905 . . 405
42. *THE GLORIOUS TWELFTH.' AUGUST 1890 . 412
43. THE JOLLY GIRL. 1882 .... 477
44. MAN AND THE BRUTES. 1900 . . . 424
MY MEMORIES
1837-1890
[The Forum of New York, October 1890, Vol. X., in reply to a
request to <write some reminiscences. ~\
THOSE of us who are approaching sixty years of
age have the good luck, I often think, to bear the
memory of a most extraordinary time. We are still
young enough, as we fondly flatter ourselves, to hope
that we may yet see great changes in the world.
And we are old enough to remember what the world
was without some of its most familiar institutions,
and without what now seem indispensable appliances
of life. As a child, I can remember things which are
now thought barbarous relics of the past ; and I often
wonder how we managed to live without lucifer
matches, railways, telegraphs, penny post, or even
household suffrage.
My memory reaches back from 1837 over the
whole reign of the Queen, whose fifty-three years of
rule have witnessed wonderful things things which
have transformed our external life and have deeply
modified our inner life. Among my earliest recol-
lections is the return home one day of my father with
the words, " The King is dead ! " My first definite
impression of public life was the coronation of the
Queen, of which I witnessed the procession in Palace
IE B
2 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Yard at Westminster. There for the first time I
began to conceive what living history means ; to
think about statesmen, nations, and government. I
saw the great Duke and the heroes of Waterloo it
was then only three years further off than is Sedan
from us now I remember Marshal Soult, and Ester-
hazy, and the ambassadors of many kings. There
too I first heard the roar of a vast crowd ; and I was
told how the Abbey and the Hall at Westminster
before me had been the scene of the coronation of
a score of kings and queens, and had been built
by men who fought in the Crusades and at Crecy
and Agincourt. I can recall now, like a series of
historical pictures, every separate scene in that long,
and to me, a small country child, most wonder-stirring
day.
The American people, spread over an almost bound-
less continent, where everything around them is the
work of one or two generations, wonder not a little
at our slow and old-world English ways. In this
small, centralised, densely packed island, we grow up
from childhood with the roots of the old order always
around us. I was born in the days of rotten boroughs,
bribery, and pocket seats ; when noblemen's butlers
returned members to Parliament in his lordship's hall.
The widow of an M.P. used to frank our letters, and
that saved us sometimes eightpence apiece. Omni-
buses, cabs, and policemen had just been invented ; but
they were still thought new-fangled fads. Post-boys,
hackney coaches, and watchmen were still familiar
figures of the streets. It was the era of Pickwick.
We did without railways. From London to Brighton
or to Bath we had to drive ; and if with the same
horses, no faster than thirty miles in a day. Ocean
steam navigation was an experiment ; our only tele-
graph was the wooden semaphore ; there was no fire
MY MEMORIES : 1837-1890 3
brigade, and our only fire engines were hand pumps ;
the water supply came in part from wells ; there were
no main sewers, and cesspools existed in great cities.
Slavery existed in our colonies and possessions beyond
sea, and nearly a million of Negroes were bought and
sold in the King's dominions. India was governed by
a company of private merchants, who had a monopoly
of the trade to China. Men were hanged by the
score, and sometimes in chains. Forgery and other
felonies were still punishable by death. Southey was
our poet laureate, though Scott and Coleridge,
Campbell and Lamb, still lived. Landseer and
Maclise formed our ideals in art, Bulwer-Lytton was
our model in literature, and Count D'Orsay in
manners. Tennyson, Macaulay, Carlyle, Mill,
Dickens, Thackeray, Darwin, and Gladstone were
unknown youths. The memory of the old system
was still quite fresh. Many living men could remem-
ber Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, and the last
war between England and the United States. My
own grandfather was born under George II., and
my father could remember the victories of Nelson.
My mother told anecdotes of Napoleon, which she
had from the family of Sir Hudson Lowe, while
the Emperor was a prisoner at St. Helena. The
brother of Louis XVI. had just ceased to be king of
France, and was living at Holyrood, as the ex-King
Charles X. Metternich was supreme in Germany,
the Czar Nicholas in Russia, and Louis Philippe in
France.
My childhood was thus passed in the great epoch
of progress which followed on the break-up of the old
absolutism in Europe after 1830. It was also the
epoch of the vast material changes which have arisen
out of the railway system, ocean steam navigation, the
telegraph system and the manifold uses of electricity,
4 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
the cheap postal system, popular literature, the develop-
ment of journalism, the enormous expansion of great
cities, and the settlement of Australia, South Africa,
and of the western continent of America. More
especially in England, the period covers the immense
succession of reforms which come between the Reform
Act of 1832 and the free-trade legislation of 1846.
As may be supposed, this series of changes was but
dimly understood by a boy. But it gave me a general
sense that everything around me was an open question ;
that there was no habit of life which we might not
expect to see changed. My father, a cautious city
man, conservative by instinct and by conviction, shook
his head, even while his good sense admitted the
improvement. For my part, I liked the new thing ;
waited to see what would come next ; and, except that
I admired Alcibiades, the Crusaders, and Charles I., had
no particular prejudices. Though I lived in a quiet
country village, all my real interests were in London,
which could be seen across miles of rich open meadows,
from the lovely northern hill on which our house
stood. A walk from town then would take one into
an exquisite rural solitude, unbroken by the roar of
the engine, unpolluted by the pall of smoke. My
tranquil days were passed in many a leafy copse and
sloping glade, beyond which the dome of St. Paul's
seemed to hang in the atmosphere of the dim distance,
as does that of St. Peter's from the Campagna. In
those days it was quite possible to belong to the capital
by interest, society, and habits, and yet to dwell in a
beautiful country and in a peaceful rural solitude. I
have lived to see London increase 150 per cent in
population, and 500 per cent in area ; and now I
must go forty miles away from it to find the same
rustic peace. And, with all our railways, telegraphs,
post offices, and newspapers, it is no longer possible to
MY MEMORIES: 1837-1890 5
dwell in a pure country and yet to belong to a great
city. In my boyhood it was.
SCHOOL LIFE
At the age of nine I went to reside in London, and
for two years was taught in a day school by Joseph
King of Maida Hill, the most admirable schoolmaster
I have ever known. I began Greek with Homer and
Latin with Virgil, the grammars being taught verbally,
without books. At the age of eleven I went to King's
College School, which I left as second in the school
in 1849. My schoolfellows were sons of Charles
Dickens, T. Landseer, Richard Lane, Macready, the
actor, Lord Westbury, the Chancellor ; afterwards
the only son of Edward Irving, and in the sixth form
for two years I sat next to Henry Parry Liddon, late
Canon of St. Paul's. I was a boy at school when the
great movement of 1848 swept over Europe, shook
down so many thrones, and opened the era of so many
wars of race and of frontier. Cram-full of Livy and
Tacitus, Thucydides and Xenophon, Corneille and
Schiller, Milton, Byron, and Shelley, at the precise
age when youths debate whether despotisms or re-
publics are to be preferred, when they write essays on
the character of Julius Caesar or Cromwell, compose
odes to Liberty and Latin verses on Brutus and
Tarquin, we were just ready to be impressed with
the tumultuous succession of events which surged
across Europe in 1848-49. I delighted to note that
Louis Philippe lost his throne on the 24th of February
the Rtgifugiumj or day when Rome celebrated the
expulsion of her kings. It was a stirring time, when
kings, emperors, and popes fled in disguise, when new
republics were being proclaimed, when socialism, com-
6 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
munism, and imperialism fought it out in a dozen
great cities, when Chartism was thought to be revolu-
tionary, and when Bright and Cobden were dangerous
demagogues. It was difficult for a youth entering
manhood between the years 1848 and 1852 not to be
an ardent politician. And, passing my time, as I did,
between the whirl of the great city and the studies
of the university, I took a lively interest in all the
political and social events of that era. I do not
remember that I fell into precise party lines or that
I formed dogmatic opinions. We were all too full
of political theories and classical examples to be mere
Tories, Whigs, and Radicals. And we were too
much impressed by the burning questions which arose
day by day to be satisfied with any abstract politics.
London and Oxford corrected each other. Plato and
Lord Palmerston taught very different codes of politics.
We were interested by both, and by a thousand new
events which neither of these masters seemed able to
explain. Like most of my companions, I came to
the conclusion that society in the middle of the nine-
teenth century was an extraordinarily complex thing
a thing of intense interest and of profound meaning.
Gradually I settled into a deep, lasting, and passionate
sympathy with the popular cause everywhere and in
all forms. Having no hereditary or acquired prejudices
in favour of any class or of any special type of society,
I slowly parted with my boyish liking for conquerors,
cavaliers, and princesses in distress, and took my side
with the cause of oppressed nations and the struggling
people. I had seen the Chartist movement in London
and had heard great debates in Parliament, and I
became a convinced free trader and an ardent nationalist.
Aurelio Saffi, the friend of Mazzini and one of his
colleagues in the Triumvirate at Rome in 1849,
settled at Oxford, and he became my teacher in
MY MEMORIES : 1837-1890 7
Italian and my close friend. He introduced me to
other Italian exiles ; and from them and from Francis
Newman, whom I knew later, I received a deep
interest in the cause of nations struggling to be free.
At the same time I read much French, and knew
France and Frenchmen. As a schoolboy, three times
I passed my autumn in France ; once, in a French
family in Normandy, connected with my own. While
living among them, I saw every phase of French
provincial life as described by Balzac in the 'forties.
This commenced my close familiarity with France,
which for forty years I have visited almost without
the interruption of a single year. I was three times in
France during the reign of Louis Philippe, and again
during the second republic, just before the coup d'etat
of 1851. The atrocities of that time and the infamies
of the empire of 1852 stirred me to the soul. By the
time I was twenty-five, I had seen most of the principal
cities of France, Germany, and Northern Italy ; I
had some knowledge of the language, circumstances,
and recent history of all of these countries ; I was a
republican by conviction, had a deep enthusiasm for
the popular cause throughout Europe, and was inclined
to the socialist solution of the great class question.
OXFORD
I went up to Oxford from school in 1849 > at a
time when the great controversy in theology, which
shook the Church and led to the conversion of
Cardinal Newman, Cardinal Manning, and many
others, was passing into a new phase. Liberalism
was in the ascendant, and the dominant type of
thought presented to me was Positive rather than
Catholic. J. Stuart Mill, George Grote, Arnold and
8 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
his historical school, Carlyle and his political school,
Comte and his Positive school, were the influences
under which my mind was formed. I was still a
student when Kingsley published Alton Locke and
Yeast, Ruskin his Modern Painters and Seven Lamps
of Architecture, and F. Denison Maurice his Theo-
logical Essays. The minds of raw youths are influenced
first, not by the great masters of thought, but by the
masters of expression and of pathos. I spent six years
at Oxford as student, fellow, and tutor. And besides
the regular curriculum of the ancient and modern
historians and philosophers, I became saturated with
Mill's Logic and Political Economy, Grote's History of
Greece, the works of Carlyle, the earlier pieces of
Lewes, Herbert Spencer, and Miss Martineau, the
English classical historians, and Guizot, Michelet,
Mazzini, and Quinet. Comte I knew only through
G. Lewes, Littre, and Harriet Martineau.
At the same time I read not a little theology,
both orthodox and unorthodox. Cardinal Newman's
Parish Sermons, Keble's Christian Tear, Jeremy
Taylor, Bishop Butler, Dante, Paradise Lost, and
the Bible, were my constant reading, along with
Robertson of Brighton, F. D. Maurice, Francis New-
man, Theodore Parker, Strauss, Lewes, and the two
Martineaus. John Henry Newman, the cardinal, and
Francis Newman, the theist, interested me almost
equally ; Lewes's History of Philosophy and the Lives
of the Saints occupied me alternately ; I hardly ever
missed a university sermon or a number of the West-
minster Review. Whilst at Oxford, with science and
metaphysics I took no serious pains, though I tried
to make out what they came to in the end. But
almost every phase of theology, every age in history,
and every scheme of social and political philosophy,
supplied me with matter for thought, and in turn
MY MEMORIES : 1837-1890 9
commanded my sympathy. I imagine that is a very
common form of the Oxford mind, at least it was so
in the 'fifties. And if I took the complaint in any
unusual mode, it was simply in this that I saw a
good deal to respect in all of these different views of
the "great problem."
I was brought up as a High Churchman, my god-
father being an intimate ally of Henry Phillpotts,
Bishop of Exeter, and he took care to give me a
thorough training in orthodox divinity. At school
I had been something of a Neo-Catholic, and took
the sacrament with a leaning toward transubstantiation.
As a student at college, I slowly came to regard the
entire scheme of theology as an open question ; and I
ultimately left the university, about the age of twenty-
four, without assured belief in any form of supernatural
doctrine. But as the supernatural died out of my
view, the natural took its place, and amply covered
the same ground. The change was so gradual, and
the growth of one phase of thought out of another
was with me so perfectly regular, that I have never
been able to fix any definite period of change, nor
indeed have I ever been conscious of any real change
of mind at all. I have never known any abrupt break
in mental attitude ; nor have I ever felt change of
belief to involve moral deterioration, loss of peace, or
storms of the soul. I never parted with any belief
till I had found its complement ; nor did I ever look
back with antipathy or contempt on the beliefs which
I had outgrown. That which was objective law to
me as a youth, has become subjective duty to me as a
man. I have found theology to be a fine moral training,
when it ceased to be an external dogma. I have at
no time of my life lost faith in a supreme Providence,
in an immortal soul, and in spiritual life ; but I came
to find these much nearer to me on earth than I had
io MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
imagined, much more real, more vivid, and more
practical. Superhuman hopes and ecstasies have slowly
taken form in my mind as practical duties and indomit-
able convictions of a good that is to be. Theology,
with its religious machinery and its spiritual consola-
tions, has gained a fresh meaning to me, now that I
look on it as a mode of moral evolution and not as
historical reality. I read the Bible, my Christian
mystics and poets still, and with greater pleasure and
deeper insight than I did when I was told to believe
in thirty-nine articles and to repeat the three creeds
and the catechism.
Happily, both at school and at college, we were
left pretty free to learn what we pleased (so that we
did really learn), and to cultivate our minds as thinking
beings and not as machines. Our teachers succeeded
in instilling into our minds a zeal for work and a
passion for self-improvement. But neither at school
nor at college were we ever put through the mill. I
read the classics with delight, so as to enjoy them for
themselves, without ever grinding them up into verbal
exercises. In history, I believe I had from Richard
Congreve the very best of teaching ; for which I am
ever grateful. And in philosophy, we were taught to
use our own common sense, and not to repeat tags of
windy systems. I managed to satisfy my tutors ; but
they taught me to read for my mind's sake, and not
for the sake of " the schools." I always felt complete
indifference to prize-winning in all its forms, and I
was happy enough not to be pressed into that silly
waste of time by parents, tutors, or friends. I read
what I enjoyed, and I enjoyed what I read. Poetry,
art, history, politics, and religion gave us unfailing
matter for thought and interminable topics of debate.
Both at school and at college we passed much of our
time like the Athenians in the days of Paul, but I do
MY MEMORIES: 1837-1890 n
not think it was time ill spent. In my experience,
these discussions turned most often on questions of
religion, though those of politics, especially of the inter-
national order, were nearly as constant. Over social
problems we ranged freely, without forming systematic
doctrines and without crystallising into any prejudice.
EDUCATION
I have now an experience of some forty years as
student, teacher, and examiner ; and it forces on me
a profound conviction that our modern education is
hardening into a narrow and debasing mill. Educa-
tion is over-driven, over-systematised, monotonous,
mechanical. At school and at college, lads and girls
are being drilled like German recruits forced into a
regulation style of learning, of thinking, and even of
writing. They all think the same thing, and it is
artificial in all. The round of endless examination
reduces education to a professional " cram," where the
repetition of given formulas passes for knowledge, and
where the accurate memory of some teacher's " tips "
takes the place of thought. Education ought to be
the art of using the mind and of arranging knowledge ;
it is becoming the art of swallowing pellets of special
information. The professor mashes up a kind of
mental " pemmican," which he rams into the learner's
gullet. When the pupil vomits up these pellets, it
is called "passing his examination with honours."
Teachers and pupils cease to think, to learn, to enjoy,
to feel. They become cogs in a huge revolving mill-
wheel, which never ceases to grind, and yet never
grinds out anything but the dust of chaff. The
academic mill, which runs now at high pressure, like
a Cunard liner racing home, seldom forms a fresh
12 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
mind. From this curse of modern pedantry, my
companions and I were happily saved by the influence
of Richard Congreve.
For the first thirty years or my life I was essentially
a learner, but only in part a student of books. Never
having been a great reader, and not having acquired
the passion of pure study, I cared mainly for men,
things, places, and people. As a student, and then a
barrister of Lincoln's Inn, I read quite as much history
and philosophy as law ; and I tried to correct my
defective training in science by following the lectures
of Owen, Huxley, Tyndall, Liveing, and others, with
the proper text-books and studies in the Museums. In
these days we must give ourselves up either to literature
or to practical life, if we wish to succeed, and perhaps
if we wish to be useful. But I have never been able to
give up problems of religion and philosophy for politics,
nor yet to drop interest in politics for the sake of
books. My interests have always led me to study
movements on the spot, and from the lips of those
who originate them. In this spirit I have sought to
understand the various social and labour questions by
personal intercourse with practical men. For some
years I worked as a teacher in the Working Men's
College, under F. Denison Maurice, along with Tom
Hughes and his colleagues. For three years I served
on the Trades Union Commission, and then was
Secretary to the Digest Commission. I have thus
been in close relations with all the leading workmen
and with the leading economists of recent times. I
have known intimately the principal leaders of the
trades unions, of all the labour leagues, and of all the
social and co-operative movements of the last thirty
years. I have followed up the history of the trade
questions and of the labour societies in London and in
many provincial and foreign towns. I have attended
MY MEMORIES: 1837-1890 13
trades -union, co-operative, industrial, international,
and socialist congresses, both in England and abroad ;
and have visited conferences, committees, and meetings
in all parts of the country. A thousand blue-books
and treatises on economics would not have taught me
what I learned from the Rochdale Pioneers, from
trades-union congresses, from strike or union com-
mittees, from international congresses, and from men
like George Odgers, Allen, Burnett, Applegarth,
Howell, Holyoake, Arch, and Burns. Economists
who lay down the law on industrial problems, without
personal knowledge of a single workman or of a single
fact in a workman's life, are like the philosophers in
Laputa extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. No
political economy is worth a cent if it is not based on
personal knowledge ; it is not merely the " dismal
science," but it is the pedants' science.
In the same way, I have always tried to make out
political problems by personal intercourse with those
who led them. The franchise question, the industrial
question, the American civil war, and Home Rule,
are not to be understood from newspapers and reports.
I went to Italy after the campaign of 1859, at the
crisis of the foundation of the Italian kingdom, and
had conversations with Mazzini, Garibaldi, Minghetti,
Saffi, Poerio, Farini, Pepoli, and many of the men
who governed Italy in 1859 and who made the
northern kingdom. In the same way, I followed up
the history of the third republic in France and the
communal insurrection of 1871. I have had conver-
sations with Gambetta, with his lieutenants, and with
the leaders of many socialist and republican parties.
During the great struggle which established the
republic in 1877-78, I journeyed through all parts of
France, and saw the political leaders of each district.
The movements of Germany and of the United States
14 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
I have never had the opportunity to study on the spot ;
and I am conscious of the enormous difference between
reading newspapers and seeing men. To hunt up
and to " interview " men of note is a silly and odious
habit of our day. But no study and no books can
supply the place of personal intercourse with those
who know and those who lead. I am sure whole
libraries would not give me what I have gained in
converse with Gambetta, Mazzini, Renan, Michelet,
Louis Blanc, Tourgenieff, F. Newman, G. H. Lewes,
John Bright, J. Stuart Mill, Carlyle, G. Eliot,
Ruskin, Cardinal Manning, John Dillon, John Burns,
Spencer, Comte, John Morley, and Gladstone.
On questions political, industrial, and international,
I have often addressed the public ; but I have always
declined to enter politics as a profession. My business
always seemed to me to endeavour to teach. Com-
promise is the soul of politics, and personally I loathe
compromise. The statesman's duty is to reckon with
the opinions of the majority ; and personally I feel
scanty respect for the majority, and I cannot bring
myself to profess it. For five-and-twenty years my
essential business has been to teach the principles of
Positivism. Every other aim or occupation has been
subsidiary and instrumental to this. The field is large
enough for a lifetime ; and it is one which makes
impossible any career whatever, either literary, political,
practical, or social. I have enlarged to the public on
Positivism usque ad nauseam^ and I will not return to
it now. To one point only would I refer the pro-
longed study and the gradual stages by which I came
to adopt it.
MY MEMORIES: 1837-1890 15
A VISIT TO A. COMTE
I was quite thirty-five before I fully absorbed the
Positive system. I had been a systematic student of
it for ten or twelve years before. Comte's system was
known to me as an undergraduate, but it was not
completely published until I was twenty-five. Before
that, I had paid him a visit in Paris, and had had a
long and memorable conversation with him. My
college tutor, Richard Congreve, a pupil of Dr. Arnold
of Rugby, afterward became the first preacher of
Positivism in England ; and several of my intimate
college friends are now my colleagues at Newton Hall.
But none of us adopted Positivism until after we had
left Oxford. For my part, the acceptance of the
general principles of Auguste Comte has been the
result of very long and unremitting study, and it
proceeded by a series of marked stages. First his
view of history commanded my assent ; then his
scheme of education ; next his social Utopia ; then
the politics ; after that his general view of philosophy ;
and finally the religious scheme in its main features.
During the whole of the process, up to the last point,
I reserved large portions of the system, to which I felt
actual repugnance, or at least confirmed doubt. And
during the various stages I kept up lively interest, and
no little sympathy, with many kindred, rival, and even
antagonistic systems, philosophical and religious. Even
now I am regarded by some Comtists pur sang as a
profane amateur, a schismatic, and a Gallio. And
while cynics outside accuse me of fanaticism, some of
my fellow-believers suspect me of heresy.
16 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
LITERARY LIFE
I hope that I am not expected to say anything
about literary methods, habits, or theories. I no more
pretend to be a man of letters than I pretend to be a
politician. I have even less of the man of letters
about me than of the politician. In matters literary, I
have but one advice to give. Keep out of literature,
at least till you feel ready to burst. Never write a
line except out of a sense of duty, or with any other
object save that of getting it off your mind. About
literature I have nothing to say. I have always felt
myself more or less of an amateur. Nor do I remem-
ber to have wasted an hour in thinking about style, or
about conditions of literary success. As I have sought
to teach many things, and have fought hard for many
opinions, I have tried to put what I had to say as well
as I could. But as I have always some practical
object in view, my eagerness keeps me from spending
thought over the mode of saying it. Mark Pattison,
of Oxford, used to say to a pupil who happens to be
now both a brilliant writer and a leading statesman :
" My good friend, you are not the stuff of which men
of letters are made. You want to make people do
something, or you want to teach something ; that is
fatal to pure literature." I am afraid that 1 have a
dash of the same vice, and something of the Jacobin
within me murmurs that " the Republic has no need
of men of letters." Once or twice in my life I have
taken up the pen in a vein of literary exercise
I began this very paper in that mood as a man turns
to a game of billiards or to gardening after his day's
work. But the demon soon rises, and I find myself
in earnest trying to bring men over to our side. It
is hopeless to make a man of letters out of a temper
MY MEMORIES : 1837-1890 17
like that. Literature is art, and the artist should never
preach.
It was lucky for me that I recognised this defect
at once ; for the critics have made a dead set at
Positivism, and to be known as its advocate is to be
turned into the literary world like a dog suspected of
rabies. All my formal Positivist teaching is neces-
sarily gratuitous ; and as I have had to print and to
circulate most of my pieces at my own cost, I have
long found literature not so much a profession as an
expensive taste. I was nearly thirty before I published
anything at all. My first article happened to be on
" Essays and Reviews," and I was not so foolish as to
attribute the interest it aroused to anything beyond the
accident of the subject and the circumstances of the
time. I did not pursue literature as a calling. For
ten years I occasionally entered into discussions on
political, industrial, or philosophical questions, but I
did not use my pen professionally. My profession
was the law, the practice of which I followed for some
fifteen years without great zest and without any
ambition. I afterward taught jurisprudence as pro-
fessor ; and, having inherited a modest fortune, which
I have had no desire to increase, I eventually
withdrew to my present occupation of urging on
my neighbours opinions which meet, I must admit,
with but moderate acceptance.
MELIORIST AT LAST
Here ends my confession, which I am told my
American readers wish me to make. As they know
nothing about me but my name, they have a right to
ask me how I came by the bundle of opinions with
which I am credited. I have no objection to tell
c
1 8 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
them, though one cannot do so without an abominable
dose of talking about one's self. As I look back over
my life, which, though not yet a long one, has been
passed in a very critical time, I am struck with this
the essential persistence of the social organism in the
midst of universal change. Every aspect and appliance
of practical life has been transformed within my own
memory ; and yet, in all its essential conditions, human
life remains the same. Railways, telegraphs, the post,
journalism, steamships, electricity, the doubling of the
population, and the shrinking of the planet, do not
really change society. My children live much as I
did fifty years ago. And all these revolutions in the
material world but slightly affect the moral and the
mental world. On the other hand, the greatest
empires, the most rooted institutions, the oldest pre-
judices, the most sacred beliefs, crumble almost without
warning ; and what was a wild paradox yesterday is a
harmless truism to-morrow. I have seen the downfall
of so many habits, ideas, laws, and systems of thought,
that I can imagine no reform and no new dispensation
as beyond our reasonable hope. And yet again, amidst
endless, rapid, universal change, I find that the vital
essence of things remains. Creeds die ; but not the
spiritual life they nourished. Societies suffer revolu-
tion ; but the living elements do not greatly vary.
Our knowledge enlarges, our formulas change, our
methods grow ; but everywhere it is growth, not
destruction. What I have witnessed is not really
revolution ; it is normal evolution. The cells and
germs are forever in perpetual movement. The
organism Humanity remains, and lives the life of
unbroken sequence.
MY MEMORIES : 1837-1890 19
POSTSCRIPT, 1906
The sixteen years that have passed since I set down
my experiences for an American public have witnessed
memorable changes in our own land and in the world
a new reign, many obstinate wars, the recasting
of international relations, the new East, the transfor-
mation of Russia, the filling up the vacant parts of
our planet, the growth of Democracy, and Socialism,
and an enormous expansion of Wealth, Trade, and
Mechanical inventions. But I see no cause to vary
the language with which I closed the foregoing paper.
It is still evolution, not social revolution. Dogmas
are continually melting away, but the essentials of
religious feeling remain healthy and active. And in
spite of the appalling bloodshed of some recent wars
and the delirious multiplication of armaments, there
may be heard deep down in the murmurs of the masses
and in the aspirations of the wise, a heart-felt yearning
for peace and international friendship.
As for myself, I am not conscious of having
seriously altered my convictions or my habits. It is a
curious accident that I can distinctly recall all the
leading events and nearly all the famous persons of the
sixty-four years of the reign of Queen Victoria, and
have witnessed all the State ceremonies from her
Coronation to her Burial, as well as the public funerals
of the men illustrious in politics, literature, and art.
Visits from time to time to Paris, Rome, Berlin, Hol-
land, and the United States, and again to Athens,
Constantinople, and Egypt, enabled me to enlarge my
understanding of public affairs, and to see something
of those who administer them. Four years spent at
the London County Council gave me some inkling of
the difficulties of municipal business. After a service
20 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
of twenty-five years I resigned my tasks as President
of the English Positivist Committee, and, being now
in my seventy-fifth year, I have for some years past
withdrawn from London and live in a quiet country,
occupied with my books, my garden, and in stringing
together the loose ends of a rather scattered activity.
I can hardly now claim that detachment from letters,
which was true enough in 1890. Since then, having
quitted the legal profession, I have published a variety
of books, and have even committed myself to what my
friends tell me is the senile weakness of a romance and
then a tragedy. The habit of writing, like other
indulgences, is apt to grow upon one ; and, as I
gradually withdrew from active affairs, I did not resist
the temptation to give form to occasional thoughts,
memories, and fancies. Some few of these I now offer
for a leisure hour to the general reader.
HAWKHURST, 1906.
THE BURIAL OF TENNYSON
1892
As the throng which gathered to the funeral of our
great poet slowly melted away from the Abbey, the
same thought was borne in upon many of us Have
we then no poet left in England ? The passing away
of a great figure which for two generations has filled
the mind and speech of men is always wont to leave
this impression of a void. Forty years ago, when
Wellington was laid beside Nelson in St. Paul's,
Tennyson groaned out : " The last great Englishman
is low." And as we left the Laureate alone with his
peers in Poets' Corner, there rose to a hundred lips the
murmur : " The last English poet is gone ! " It was
a natural feeling, an unthinking impulse ; perhaps a
blind mistake.
It is inevitable that we should seek at times like
this to compare, to judge, to anticipate the verdict of
our posterity. But the impulse should be resisted : it
is futile and worse than useless. We are far too near
to judge Tennyson truly or even to decide if he has
left a successor. The permanent place of a poet
depends on his one or two, three or four, grandest
bursts, and his inferior work is forgotten. So too the
poetry which startles and delights its immediate genera-
tion is almost always much weaker than the poetry
22 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
which mellows like wine as generations succeed. It
needed for Dante five entire centuries before his real
greatness was admitted ; it needed two centuries for
Shakespeare.
It would be strange if English poetry were to close
its glorious roll with the name of Tennyson. For
three hundred years now our race has never failed to
find a fine poet " to stand before the Lord." Shake-
speare had done immortal things while Spenser still
lived. Ben Jonson survived until the early lyrics of
Milton. Dryden was in full career when Paradise
Lost was published, and when Dryden died Pope was
already "lisping in numbers." Pope survived till
Gray was a poet and Cowper a youth ; and with
Burns, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley,
the list comes down to the poet whom we have just
buried. In these three centuries, from the Faery
Shteen until to-day, the only gap is for the ten years
which separate the Rape of the Lock from the death of
Dryden. But at Spenser's death, who really knew
what Shakespeare was, and at that of Byron and
Shelley, who thought of Tennyson as their successor ?
They who were present at the burial in the Abbey
had opened to them, as in a vision, some glimpse down
into the depths of the poetry, the persistence, and
solemnity of English life into that deep under-current
which flows far below our gross and common every-
day life. What a flood of memories from ancient
history, what a halo of heroism, art, and devotion,
consecrate that spot ! A church built in the age of
the Crusades, with foundations and memorials, tombs
and crypts, that go back to the Saxon kings, in the
history of which Agincourt, the Civil Wars, the Re-
formation, and the Commonwealth are mere episodes,
and wherein even three centuries of a long succession
of poets form but the later chapters such a building
THE BURIAL OF TENNYSON 23
seems to hold the very heart of the English people.
Statesmen, artists, churchmen, poets, men of science
and men of business, all schools, creeds, and interests,
came that day together ; sect, party, and rivalry ceased
to divide men all were Englishmen come to do
honour to their poet. There was no parade, no
eloquence, nothing of unusual show ; no trumpets,
helmet, or plume, no " guard of honour " or officials
in uniform or robes ; there was no concourse of
elaborate music or feats of epideictic oratory. It was
the daily service of the Abbey choir, the ordinary
burial, with no feature of it uncommon, except the
great Union Jack spread out upon the coffin. Not a
word was spoken outside the Prayer-Book ; nothing
was done which is not done every day when honoured
men are buried. Merely this that the vast cathedral
and the square in which it stands were filled with silent
and eager masses, that around the coffin were gathered
men of every type of activity and thought which
England holds, that the whole English-speaking race
was represented and was deeply stirred.
In the whole world there is nothing left which in
continuity and poetry of association can be put beside
a burial in our Abbey. It is doubtful if anything
recorded in history ever matched it altogether in the
volume and beauty of its impressiveness, or ever before
so mysteriously blended the sense of antiquity with the
sense of life. For there is nothing artificial, nothing
of mere antiquarianism, in the Englishman's love for
the Abbey and its sacred dust. The common seaman
in Nelson's fleets felt it ; the American citizen feels
it more intensely often than the Londoner ; they feel
it in their hearts at home in Africa and in Australasia ;
to the whole English-speaking people the associations
of the Abbey are both profoundly historic and vividly
modern. The Abbey suggests to us all three things
24 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
in equal force : the Past, Poetry, Living Work. That
is the true strength of England, which to the German
is a metaphysical enigma and to the Frenchman seems
an amazing paradox that below our eternal money-
grabbing and vulgar routine there is a sense among us
that the Past and the Future are really one, and that
we must be the link between the two. That makes
the most material and most conventional of European
nations at bottom the most capable of great poetry.
His SUCCESSORS
So let. us not despair of one day finding a poet
worthy to carry on the torch. It is plain that no one
is yet acknowledged as the real equal of Tennyson.
But we may have such a one among us even now.
Although for three centuries the succession of English
poets has never failed, there have been some brief
periods when the most discerning eye must have failed
to recognise the man. When Dryden died there
must have been searchings of heart until the star of
Pope rose above the horizon. And when Byron died
young, like Keats and Shelley before him, and Cole-
ridge, the poet, had long subsided into interminable
monologues, neither Campbell, nor Scott, nor Southey,
nor even Wordsworth, could be said to hold the poetic
field. Wordsworth's, indeed, is a very striking case.
His general reputation as a poet was hardly established
till more than forty years after his first poems were
published, and he was more than seventy before he
received any public honour. And it may well be that
we are all blind now, and that a new Tennyson,
another Shelley or Milton, is in our midst, did we only
know it. There is an element of hope perhaps in
numbers. The English-speaking race is to-day quite
THE BURIAL OF TENNYSON 25
three times as numerous as it was at the death of Byron,
twelve times as numerous as it was at the death of
Dry den, and those who can and who do write verses
may be forty or fifty times as many. So the field is
vastly larger.
But, alas ! in poetry numbers count for much
less than in elections and other practical affairs.
Indeed, in poetry, numbers and genius seem almost
to stand in inverse ratios. When Shakespeare pro-
duced his plays, there were certainly not half a
million persons living who could write pure English ;
and when the Iliad was first chanted at a festival,
there was no man living who could write his name.
There are now at least sixty millions who can write
our language, and of these some millions, we may
be sure, in public or in secret, compose lines that
they fondly believe to be verse. What ! not one
prime poet in some million of versifiers ? We do
not see him yet ! Neither Tennyson, Hugo, Heine,
nor Longfellow has left any recognised equal and
successor.
The strange part of it is that there never was an
age when so great a quantity of very excellent verse
was produced as in our own. There can be no doubt
about it. We have to-day scores of elegant poets and
hundreds of volumes of really graceful verse. Of edu-
cated men and women, at least one in three could turn
out a passable lyric or so, far better than the stuff
published as poetry in the age of Pope, or Johnson, or
Southey. There are not so many true poets, perhaps,
as there were in the lifetime of Spenser and of Shake-
speare. But it may be truly said that at no period in
the long history of English poetry has it been so free
from affectation, mannerism, false taste, and conven-
tional commonplace. Since verse began there has
never been so high, so pure a level of third-rate verse.
26 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
There are a dozen writers whose exquisite technique
makes that of Dryden or Byron look quite careless
and that of Pope monotonous, and there are at least
a hundred writers who far surpass the imitators of
Dryden, Pope, or Byron.
That perhaps is the ominous side of our high
poetic standard. If out of such a mass of graceful
verse we find no really great poetry, it would look as
if there were something amiss. Can it be that we all
think too much of this graceful form that so many
can reach ? Is it that we are all, writers and readers
alike, under the glamour of a style which is not the
less a " fashion " by being subtly harmonious and
severely subdued ? As the poet said, " All can raise
the flower now, for all have got the seed." Poetry is
raised too much now from another's seed, from a
single seed, from what is indeed a highly specialised
seed. And poetry mayhap has begun to suffer from
the maladies which follow upon "breeding in-and-in ":
rickety bones, transparent and etiolated skins, ex-
quisitely refined impotence. Neither readers nor
writers intend it or even know it, but we are all
looking for echoes of the Idylls or In Memoriam : it
becomes our test and standard ; the poet is afraid to
let himself go, lest he be thought Byronic and im-
patient of the " slow mechanic exercise " which not
only sootheth pain but produces poetry. No age that
ever fell under the spell of a style knew it at the time.
Their contemporaries could not hear the eternal jingle
in the papistic couplet when Pope's imitators produced
volumes. People who listened to songs " in the
manner of Tom Moore " were deaf to the doggerel of
the words. Dryden in his day was the ruin of the
poetasters who tried to catch his swing. So was Pope
the ruin of his followers : they caught his measured
cadence ; they could not catch his wit, his sparkle,
THE BURIAL OF TENNYSON 27
and his sense. Dr. Johnson latinised the English
language for a whole generation. And perhaps the
perfections of Tennyson's art are among the causes
that we have no perfect poetry.
His SPECIAL FORM
Perfection of form is often, nay, is usually, a snare
to its own generation. Raffaelle ruined " the school
of Raffaelle," and so did Guido ruin the school of
Guido. Intense attention to form, especially to a
form which is capable of a high degree of imitation,
too often leads to insipidity. How common now
in the scholastic world is the art of elegant Latin
verse ! Our schools and colleges can show thou-
sands of "copies" of faultless elegiacs and sonorous
hexameters, with fewer flaws than you might pick in
Statius and Claudian. But how dull, how lifeless, how
artificial are these prize compositions if we read them
as poetry ! Faultless, yes ; but we wish the author
would now and then break loose into a solecism, and
but for ten lines forget Ovid and Virgil. Much of
our very graceful, very thoughtful, very virginal
poetry is little but " exercises " in English verse
composition to the tune, not of Ovid's Tristia^ but of
In Memoriam.
Now, the exquisite jewelry of Tennyson's method,
subtle as it is, is imitable up to a certain point, just as
Virgil's hexameter is imitable up to a certain point,
and for the same reason. Both are the poetry of
intense culture, inspired by the worship of form. I
take a stanza typical of this art a stanza not sur-
passed in melody by any poetry of this century a
stanza which is wonderfully prophetic of the poet
himself and his enduring influence :
28 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
His memory long will live alone
In all our hearts, as mournful light
That broods above the fallen sun
And dwells in heaven half the night.
That is simply perfect : a noble thought, an exquisite
simile, a true and splendid analogy between Nature and
Man, the simplicity as of marble, and a music which
Shelley only has equalled. Yet it is imitable up to a
measure : we can analyse the music, we can mark the
gliding labials, the pathetic cadence in the " mournful
light " and " dwells in heaven," the largo in " broods
above." It is beautiful, but it is imitable, as Milton
and Shakespeare are not imitable. Take Milton's
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Or again, " that last infirmity of noble mind," or
" Laughter holding both his sides," or " thy rapt soul
sitting in thine eyes." When Shakespeare says " the
multitudinous seas incarnadine," or
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep :
this is not imitable. Both thought and phrase are
incalculable. No other brain could imagine them ;
once heard they are indelible, unalterable, unapproach-
able. It is not the music which rivets our attention
first, but the thought. The form matches the idea,
but the idea transcends the form. Poetic form, we
are often told, must be "inevitable." True, most
true. But poetic thought also must be incalculable.
For this reason the greatest poets who clothed incalcu-
lable thought in inevitable perfection of form Milton,
Shakespeare, Dante, ^Eschylus, Homer never misled
THE BURIAL OF TENNYSON 29
their generation into imitation, never founded " a
school." We shall have a poet worthy to succeed
Tennyson when we no longer have Tennyson on the
brain : when we are all less absorbed in the technical
mastery of the instrument, and are intent on the great
human message which the instrument merely trans-
mutes into music.
THE BURIAL OF RENAN
IT was passing strange that France should lose her
greatest writer of prose within a few days of the blow
by which England lost her greatest writer in verse.
And some friends of both were present at the funeral
in the Pantheon and in the Abbey. It was an eloquent
contrast, suggestive of profound differences in our
national idiosyncrasies and condition. The burial of
Renan was a great ceremony of state, with military
and official pomp, academic and bureaucratic dignity,
pageantry, oratory, and public consecration in a civil
monument now for the third time wrenched from the
Church. The burial of the English poet was a simple
and private act of mourning to which a multitude
came in spontaneous sympathy. It had no dignity
but that which was given it by the place by the
historic Past, by Poetry itself, and by at least the
pathos of the old faith. France has broken with her
Past, with the old religion, and she has no continuous
poetic traditions. France is deliberately pushing forth
on the ocean to find a New World. Nor has any one
of this generation done more to stimulate this move-
ment than Ernest Renan. The founders of New
Worlds cannot look to robe themselves in all the
poetry and solemnities of the Old Worlds, but they
may bear within them the Life and the Future.
Ernest Renan was a consummate master of the
3
THE BURIAL OF RENAN 31
French language ; and masters of language exercise a
power in France which is not known to other nations
and which is hardly to be understood in some. He
was a scholar, a man of learning, a subtle and ingeni-
ous critic. With his learning, his versatility, his
romantic colouring, and his exquisite grace of form,
it would have been singular if he had not acquired
great influence. It was, of course, the influence of
the critic : the solvent, dispersive, indefinite influence
of the man of letters who hints his doubts and hesitates
his creed. Renan assuredly had no creed, needed
none, and was mentally incapable of conceiving him-
self as having a creed. I knew him personally, and
have heard him expound his ideas in conversation and
in lectures and also in private interviews. I do not
believe that there was left in his mind an infinitesimal
residuum of dogma, old or new. As the Cambridge
scholar said, when he was asked to define his view as
to the Third Person in the Trinity, Renan " would
not deny that there might be a sort of a something "
behind all that he knew and all that interested him so
keenly. But for himself, his whole activity of brain
was absorbed in the romantic side of history, in the
lyrical aspect of religion, in the decorative types of
philosophy.
Ideas of such mordant potency have seldom been
clothed in a mantle of more spiritual religiosity of
external hue. One can fancy the terror that he once
struck into the tender Catholic spirit who for the first
time heard these ghastly doubts issue forth, as it were,
from a dreamy patristic hagiology. It was as when
the Margaret of Faust kneels down in her agony
before the image of the Madonna and hears her prayer
answered by the strident mockery of Mephistopheles.
But the tender Catholic spirit is grown stouter now
and is inured to many things. We can see how
32 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Renan, so negative himself, so vague, and so allusive,
is leading on to a knowledge more systematic than his
own, more positive, more definite and real. He has
been an influence in his generation, even though he
hardly knew whither he was tending, and though such
ignorance or mistiness appeared to him to be the true
philosophic nirvana to which only the wise attain.
We are now in the age of mist. We are becoming
very " children of the mist " ; for the one dogma that
seems destined to survive is the duty of being undog-
matic. We have all learned to say with the poet,
"Our little systems have their day" ; with the critic
we all believe in " the power, not ourselves, that makes
for righteousness." That is comprehensive, large,
suggestive. The definite, perhaps the intelligible, is
limited : limitations mean narrowness, hardness, slavery,
somewhere. " O friends," cries the popular preacher
of to-day, be he layman or cleric, "let our spirits be
free, let us seek to know, not to decide ; to analyse,
not to believe. Away with the system-mongers and
the slaves of any 'doxy.' Let us sip truth from every
flower and leave the drones to brood over the honey ! "
The cultivated mind is becoming incapable of giving
final assent to anything definite. It sees something
in everything and error only in attempts to give that
something a form. Of this philosophy and religion
of the Great May-be, Monsieur Ernest Renan is the
chief of the apostles ; he is Peter and Paul and Doubt-
ing Thomas all in one very charming writer of
French prose.
SIR A. LY ALL'S 'TENNYSON'
1903
ALTHOUGH ten years have passed since Tennyson's
death and half a century since the appearance of some
of his best pieces, his latest biographer can claim with
truth that he still holds the field in poetry, that none
has yet come forth even to challenge his crown.
We may take the wisely balanced estimate of his
complete works by Sir Alfred Lyall as that which
will prove the final and authoritative judgment of
the Twentieth Century on the supreme poet of the
Victorian Era.
Sir Alfred is himself a poet of distinction, with more
than a tincture of philosophy and scholarship, and,
withal, a man whose life has been passed in the
government of men. Here, then, we have a judgment
of our great poet, at once subtle, sympathetic, and
authoritative. Agreeing as it does in substance with
the brief sketch that I ventured to put out two years
ago, I propose to examine it in detail and to add
further criticism of my own.
As do all judicious men, Lyall seizes at once on
the dominant note of Tennyson's poetry his supreme
mastery of form, especially in all modes of lyric art.
He rightly calls the Laureate "an essentially lyric
poet." In speaking of In Memoriam^ he says : " His
33 D
34 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
sure and never-failing mastery of poetic diction carries
him through this long monotone with a high and even
flight." I hardly find Lyall's cooler phrases quite
warm enough to express the enthusiasm I feel myself
for what I have called his "unfaltering truth of form,"
" his infallible mastery of language " ; " the rhythm,
phrasing, and articulation are so entirely faultless, so
exquisitely clear, melodious, and sure." No doubt,
Lyall uses language much of the same kind. But
nothing satisfies me unless we place Tennyson quite
alone, unapproachable, in an order by himself, amongst
the Victorian poets, if only by virtue of this unique
perfection of style. No man honours more than I do
the intellectual power of Browning, the serene medita-
tions of Arnold. But perfect poetry must be perfect
in form.
Almost the only estimate on which Lyall seems to
be open to question is in placing Tennyson's zenith
too soon in his career. To rank the early volumes
as containing "some of the most exquisite poetry
that he ever wrote," so that " The Lady of Shalott "
is an " example of his genius at a period when
he had brought the form and conception of his
poetry up to a point which he never afterwards
surpassed," this is surely anticipating things. To
tell us that " his genius had reached its zenith
fifty years before death extinguished it," that is
to say, in 1842 is too hasty a view. It means
that neither in form nor - in conception did The
Princess, or In Memoriam, or Maud, or the Idylls,
rise to a higher level of perfection than "Mariana,"
"The Lady of Shalott," and "The Palace of Art."
Certainly, these lovely lyrics of 1832 and 1842 have
abundance of Tennyson's peculiar charm ; and it is
to us to-day wonderful that critics and public failed
at once to see all that they heralded to come. But
SIR A. LYALL'S 'TENNYSON' 35
to say that Tennyson therein had reached his zenith,
that he never afterward surpassed them, is to do him
scant justice.
" The Lady of Shalott " is indeed an exquisite
poem, full of imagination and colour, but the riper and
more pathetic " Lancelot and Elaine " is grander in
art as well as more powerful in its human realism.
And though the versification of the early poem is both
subtle and musical, it has weak points such as Tenny-
son's more finished poem would avoid. The rhymes
are not at all faultless. Even if we allow that license
which Tennyson constantly asserts as of "two"
rhyming with "true," "barley" with "cheerly"-
the license is a fault where it requires a mispronun-
ciation of a word according to a cockneyism or a
vulgarism. To make "girls" rhyme with "churls"
suggests the speech of the streets. We almost expect
" gals." I doubt if " holy " is a good rhyme to
" wholly," for the two words are identical in sound.
Somewhat higher up the rhyme is mere repetition, for
"river" rhymes to "river," and also to "mirror,"
another cockney mispronunciation.
I am not a convert to the new theory of rhyme,
which would make any general similarity of sound
a good rhyme. No doubt, to lay down a rule
about similar spelling, or "rhyme to the eye," is
absurd. Rhyme ought to mean harmony of sound,
where the words are correctly pronounced. What
I object to, is a homophony obtained by a vulgar
enunciation of either word, as " gurl " and " churl,"
or " lidy " and " tidy." As I noted formerly,
Tennyson's "Six Hundred" makes a false rhyme
with "blunder'd," thunder'd," "wonder'd," "sun-
der'd," because it involves our pronouncing hundred
as " hunderd," which only vulgar persons say.
Any one who knew how readily the poet could
36 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
slip into rustic dialect can understand how he made
the mistake.
But a close view of " The Lady of Shalott " will
show us rhymes and phrases which are certainly short
of the " Tennysonian perfection." One doubts if four
such rhymes as "early," "barley," "cheerly," "clearly,"
should be immediately followed by three rhymes so
close in sound as "weary," "airy," "fairy." No
doubt, the good fellows who towed barges down to
Camelot pronounced barley as " bearly " and " weary "
as " wairy," but we do not so speak to-day in polite
society. Nor does it seem like Tennyson's best to
write
She floated by,
. . . between the houses high.
One cannot imagine an adjective more jejune and
childish than "houses high." No! "The Lady of
Shalott " is a sweet fantasy, but not to be mentioned
in the same breath with " Come into the Garden,
Maud," "Tears, Idle Tears," or "Come down, O
Maid," " Old Year," " Ring out, Wild Bells."
Lyall very justly praises the lovely blank verse of
the classical romances and the Idylls, and justly rebukes
the deaf ears of the orthodox and conventional critics
of the old Quarterly who could not hear it ; but he
does not note that, in power and majesty, Tennyson
never quite reached the level of Paradise Lost^ and some
rare bursts of Wordsworth. " Ulysses " and the
original "Morte d'Arthur" contain the grandest lines
of heroic metre that the Laureate ever wrote. But
even these do not reach the diapason of the " mighty-
mouth'd inventor of harmonies," with his swelling
organ-voice, as when the multitude of angels cast to
the ground their crowns of amarant and gold ; and
then, taking their golden harps, begin their sacred
song with the words :
SIR A. LY ALL'S < TENNYSON' 37
Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King ; thee, Author of all being,
Fountain of Light, thyself invisible.
This, indeed, is the only English heroic verse which
can be set beside Homer.
It is amusing to read that the poet specially valued
himself on his "shortness," and on his inexorable rule
of throwing away hundreds of verses that he judged
not to be perfect. It is quite true that he suppressed
thousands of such lines, and, as the Memoir shows us,
with invariable judgment. But as to "shortness," the
Works even now comprise some 60,000 lines, more
or less at least three times the output of Milton.
And the Poems, with few exceptions, would be more
effective if they were not so long. Even the " Two
Voices" suffers by being in 150 stanzas, when one
hundred would be ample for the argument, vague and
indecisive as it is. Much the same may be said of
Maud^ of the Idylls^ and, lastly, of the historical
dramas. The scheme, the intellectual motive, the
form of none of them is adequate to sustain such
elaboration, so much monotonous detail. The Idylls
of the King contain far more lines than Paradise Lost^
which, indeed, would bear being shorter.
Tennyson would too often paint vignettes upon a
canvas which was fit for a cartoon of life-size groups.
As Lyall points out, his habit was to paint a picture
by elaborating a succession of local features, not by
broad strokes. And in conducting an argument, or
developing a plot, he sought to obtain his effects by
a multiplicity of kindred, but distinct points. The
whole was always beautiful and often impressive.
But it was at times tedious, and was never the highest
form of art. The Homeric and sculptured figures
of GEnone, Ulysses, Tithonus, became long-drawn
38 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
subtle romances of love, disappointment, destiny, and
ambition, more akin to the modern novel than to
classical simplicity. Tennyson, no doubt, was never
diffuse in words, and wrote with a cultured brevity
and economy of phrase. But he was certainly most
profuse in images, ideas, and colours ; and, in arguing
a thesis or in narrating a story, he relied on artful
elaboration, rather than on the flash, the thunder, of
the greatest poets.
How many stanzas, how many pages, would Tenny-
son have filled if he had conceived such an invocation
as this :
Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th* upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st : Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant : what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support.
Hamlet's soliloquy, " To be, or not to be," goes
in thirty-two lines, and it contains as much thought
as the whole of In Memorlam in 3000 lines, and it is
quite as impressive.
The truth is this. Tennyson phrased each thought
with masterly concision. But he framed each picture
with a laborious multiplication of touches ; he told
his tale with a continuous stream of subtle suggestions,
just as Samuel Richardson does in Clarissa ; and he
works up a recondite philosophical thesis by piecing
together a sorites of ingenious arguments, on no one
of which is he willing to rely as conclusive. It is a
mode of art singularly popular, but it is not the art of
the greatest masters of song.
An excellent point made by Lyall is the attention
he draws to the versatility of the Laureate, even from
the first. How any men pretending to be critics
SIR A. LYALL'S 'TENNYSON' 39
could talk, as the Quarterly men did, about " fantastic
shrines" and "baby idols" in speaking of volumes
which passed from " Mariana " to " CEnone " and
thence to "Morte d' Arthur," "St. Simeon Stylites,"
"Fatima," "Three Voices," "Locksley Hall," and
" The Vision of Sin " this seems strange indeed to
us. But, after all these, we have seen the Poet of
" Come into the Garden, Maud," produce the " Pass-
ing of Arthur," " The Revenge," " Rizpah," " Vast-
ness," " The Foresters," and " Becket." Since
Shakespeare, no one of our poets, unless it be Byron,
has shown anything like the same range of invention
and grasp of diverse themes and all modes of the lyre.
Lyall is again entirely just in treating In Me.moriam
as Tennyson's masterpiece, "of all the continuous
poems the longest and the most elaborate." It is, as
I said, "one of the triumphs of English poetry," and
it would not be easy to name any other poem of such
length so faultless in form, so consummate in music
and in harmony of tone. Sir Alfred also shows how
greatly the success of In Memoriam was due to its
"sympathetic affinity with the spiritual aspirations
and intellectual dilemmas of the time." Of course,
Lyall rejects the curious notion of some Tennysonians,
that In Memoriam founded a Theodicy, or religious
philosophy of its own. The poet had a too "dubitat-
ing temperament," as Lyall phrases it, to found any
scheme of philosophy or theology whatever, even if
his " musical meditations " had been more definite.
" Dogmatic theology had long been losing ground " ;
science, he says, had introduced the conception of law
in lieu of will or caprice. Tennyson had lived from
his Cambridge days in 1828, "in communion with
the thought and knowledge of the day." It took a
strong hold of his imagination, says Lyall. Down to
his latest years, Tennyson was constantly shaken with
40 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
the enigmas of the Universe, the Infinite, Death, the
petty and transitory nature of our Earth. As he
recognised no authoritative Revelation, Creed, or
Church, all this hung over his subtle and brooding
soul, and made him almost a pessimist, in spite of his
resolute will to " believe where we cannot prove."
Such was the tone of the cultured academic mind of
the first half of the nineteenth century. Tennyson
lived his whole life in this atmosphere, and transfigured
its hopes, its doubts, its horror, and its yearnings in a
series of exquisite, but depressing, descants.
Lyall's account of Tennyson's religious position
is admirably worked out and quite convincing. He
rightly fulfilled " the poet's mission, which is to
embody the floating thought of the period." " The
poet leads us to a cloudy height ; and though it is
not his business to satisfy the strict philosophical
inquirer, he offers to all wandering souls a refuge in
the faith." Nothing can be put more accurately.
And, as Lyall shows, the clouds rather thickened than
dispersed with the advancing age of the poet. " The
sense of the brevity of human existence and the un-
certainty of what may lie beyond, although Tennyson
fought against it manfully, did undoubtedly haunt his
meditations and depress the spirit of his later inspira-
tions." Such pieces as " Despair " and " Vastness "
indicate a morbid tone in man's view of life, duty,
and religion ; and, with all their sublimity and pathos,
they tend to debilitate and unman us. As Lyall says,
" they have a tendency to weigh down the main-
springs of human activity." " They are beautiful as
poetry, but they are neither philosophy nor religion."
The second chapter of the Memoir shows where
and how, at the age of twenty, the poet's intellectual
interests grew. At Cambridge, from 1828 to 1830,
he lived in the society of the " Apostles," described
SIR A. LYALL'S * TENNYSON' 41
in Carlyle's Sterling^ the brethren who, as Sterling
said, "are waxing daily in religion and radicalism."
Arthur Hallam, one of the most brilliant of them,
wrote that the spirit of the young society had been
created by Frederick Denison Maurice. Maurice had
left Cambridge a year or two before ; but he had
already begun to exert on young inquiring minds the
remarkable influence which he so long retained.
With a really beautiful nature and high social aspira-
tions, Maurice was, as Ruskin found him, "by nature
puzzle-headed and indeed wrong-headed." In spite
of this, the poet formed a close friendship with the
theologian, made him godfather to his son, and
thought that, had he been less obscure to the ordinary
mind, he might have taken his place as the foremost
thinker among the Churchmen of their time. Church-
men of that stamp were certainly of a flabby, incon-
clusive order of mind.
In aesthetic parsonages they grumble at the im-
pression Lyall seems to convey that the Laureate's
mood was too often inconsequent and gloomy. But
such was his frame of mind, and it grew on him with
age. The problems of Infinity, Eternity, the brevity
and littleness of human life loomed ever darker, and
never rested in any complete and final answer. He
was ever "in many a subtle question versed," and
" ever strove to make it true." But to the last he
never quite beat his music out. He faced the spectres
of the mind j but he never absolutely laid them. I
remember as a young man when first admitted to his
company, he turned to me, with that grand assumption
which he affected to those with whom he disagreed,
saying with a most cadaverous air : " If I thought as
you do, I should go and drown myself." I smiled ;
for the absurdity as well as the ill manners of such an
outburst amused me. I replied quietly, looking, I am
42 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
sure, as cheerful as he looked disconsolate : " No !
Mr. Tennyson, if you thought as I do about Life and
Death you would be a happy man ! " Personally,
the poet seemed to be even more unsatisfied with his
own beliefs than the poems showed. But if they did
not tend to peace of mind and energy of action, the
pathos and the dreaminess of this habit of thought
were the inspiration of much exquisite poetry. Like
other people, he mistook his own gift of words for
profound thought.
We shall all agree with Lyall as to the rare charm
of the lyrics of Maud^ especially of the songs, which
are amongst the most exquisite in all modern poetry.
But he points out with a sure hand the essential
weakness of the "Monodrama," where violent storms
of passion, ecstatic love and happiness, and actual
madness have to be told of himself by a single speaker.
Maud is a very singular, almost unique, example of a
rare type an elaborate and passionate lyric, wherein
is rehearsed a romantic and indeed sensational story,
such as we expect in a psychologic novel or a rousing
melodrama. Lyall dwells enthusiastically on all the
beauties of the poem ; but he is forced to admit that
the task which the poet had set to himself was beyond
the reach of lyric art.
The Princess is one of the Laureate's delicious
masterpieces for which even the least friendly critics
have never had anything but praise. It was a theme
that gave scope to every one of Tennyson's gifts his
fancy, his exquisite sense of beauty both material and
moral, his glowing imagination and deep sense of
purity, the reign of love, the perfection of Woman.
For my part, I always count this poem as Tennyson's
most typical triumph, for whilst it gives every opening
to his peculiar genius, it has nothing whereof he was
other than perfect master. Maud may have structural
SIR A. LYALL'S 'TENNYSON' 43
defects ; the Idylls of the King are a cross between
Idyll and Epic, and are not quite faultless in either
sense ; and even In Metnoriam is somewhat long-
winded, lugubrious, and unsettling to the general
reader. But The Princess has perennial delight for the
whole reading world, whilst it satisfies every canon of
the most searching criticism.
No part of Lyall's estimate is more elaborate and
more just than the very subtle study he has made of
the Idylls of the King. He analyses the sources of
their sustained popularity the colour, the imagination,
the fine symbolism and the marvellous versatility of
the twelve cantos. But he cannot close his mind to
the incongruity inevitable in such a scheme the
transmuting Malory's magical myths, told in frank
mother-tongue, into ethical allegories, psychologic
subtleties, and modern delicacy of thought and speech.
The Arthurian romance in its original form never was
a thing for young ladies to dream over, for ministers
to preach about, or for the hierophants of culture to
expound in elaborate "keys" and commentaries. As
in Maud, as in The Promise of May, in " Vastness "
and in "Despair," the poet set himself a task where
the conditions of real success were unattainable by any
art. The author of these exquisite Pastorals, songs,
lyrics, fantasies, medleys, and meditations forced him-
self to produce an Epic of 11,000 lines, a crowded
stage of heroes, battles, supernatural beings, of passion-
ate love and tragic death, all predetermined by a
mysterious destiny ; and yet the poet will not put oft"
his love of dulcet Pastoral, psychologic analysis, and
ethical homily. The result, as Lyall says, is too much
of a "splendid anachronism," something in places
almost tame and artificial. But it is strangely fascin-
ating and deserves its immense popularity with the
general public. .
44 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Equally subtle is Lyall's analysis of the Romances,
Ballads, and Pastorals. He is enthusiastic over their
grace, refinement, fancy, and imagination, whilst
recognising that Tennyson's genius was "essentially
cultivated and picturesque." This does not accord
with the unconscious simplicity of the true ballad or
the rustic power of plain speech now and then reached
by Burns, Lady Nairne, and by Wordsworth. " The
Twa Corbies " and " Edwin and Angelina " are both
said to be ballads : but how wide is the gulf between
them ! Difficile est proprie communla dicere ; and that
camel will get through the eye of the needle after all,
before culture and word-painting will ever produce
the pathos that rings in the genuine speech of rude
men. Tennyson's two " Northern Farmers " are a
rare success. But they were enough. The prolonged
imitation of mere provincial vulgarisms becomes dull
and unpleasing, if carried too far, as does the music of
whistling in imitation of the voice or the violin. It is
a wonderful trick but soon grows tiresome. Lyall has
put this excellently. But it is a pity that he has not
said quite enough of " Rizpah." This poem was
Tennyson's supreme triumph in the weird, tragic, and
ghastly romance. It has true directness, horror, and
realism. And, dreadful as it is, it is within the range
of poetry, nor has modern poetry done anything
grander in that vein.
It is pleasant to find that Lyall does full justice to
the Dramas, especially to the gallant attempt to revive
a genuine historical drama, which our new historical
precision has made an almost impossible task. The
best of Tennyson's Plays have not been properly
valued. They inevitably want the grace, music, and
glow of the lyrics and idylls and the subtlety of the
meditative poems. And Tennyson's genius was
lyrical, not dramatic. Accordingly, none of them,
SIR A. LYALL'S 'TENNYSON' 45
except Becket, succeeded on the stage with a
London public eager for very different spectacles.
Nor have they in full measure all the charm that the
cultured reader finds in the Lyrics. But they have
sound qualities of their own, and will doubtless be
played to more worthy audiences when a real reform
of the theatre has been achieved. In the meantime,
they ought to be read by all who care for serious
poetry and the idealisation of great historic catas-
trophes.
One regrets that the poet did not take King Alfred
for one of his heroes. The scantiness of the historical
record would have given ample scope to his imagina-
tion, whilst the nobility of the great King and his
mission as saviour of the English name would have
given fire to the poet's patriotism. After some reflec-
tion, he rejected William the Silent as subject for a
drama, because he clung tenaciously to English history
and legend. Lyall truly remarks on the singular
tendency of Tennyson to restrict his subjects to his
own country. He confines his vision, except for the
antique, to England and even particular parts of
England. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden,
Pope, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats,
and Browning, are full of interest in other lands.
Foreign travel did not inspire Tennyson ; foreign
history, legend, and art left him cold ; he rarely
alludes even to Scotland or to Ireland. He is the
most intensely English of all our poets, unless
it be Cowper or Crabbe. That has been Tenny-
son's strength. It may hereafter prove to be a
weakness.
Lyall does full justice to Tennyson's command of
every type of metrical resource. But he does not
seem to complain of that peculiarity of his later manner
which at last became a mannerism and even an offence.
46 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
To me the enormously long rhymed lines of his decline
are quite intolerable. Lines of sixteen syllables as in
" Despair," or of eighteen and even twenty in " Vast-
ness," are abortions in English verse ; and that for the
sound reason that the English language has an inor-
dinate number of consonants in proportion to vowels,
and consequently piles up an agglomeration of letters
in every long line. No other poetry has ever burdened
itself with verses of sixty letters and twenty syllables.
Such monstrosities in poetry are not verses but tumours.
Hardly any modern language is so ill-fitted for them
as is our own.
Another tendency which grew on the Laureate
with years was the constant resort to trochaic metres
( ^-'), and also to three-syllable feet, such as dactyls
( ^^) or anapaests (^^ ). We all enjoyed
the "May Queen," "Locksley Hall," the "Light
Brigade," and felt the quick, eager, and tripping
trochees well fitted for a short ballad. But when it
came to dactyls in lines of sixteen and eighteen syllables,
when long-winded metaphysical debates were spun
out in verses consisting of seven feet and a half, with
twenty syllables and sixty letters Tennyson or not
the effect is wearisome. The rattle of the three-
syllable foot is quite unsuited to philosophical homily.
The poet, in his earlier mode, quite felt the futility of
English hexameters and pentameters when he wrote
in his " Experiments " :
When was a harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in
England ?
When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon ?
Although after the "experiment " of "Boa'dicea,"
he did not resort to pure hexameters, for which our
language is so utterly unfit, he constantly resorted to
long lines of octameters full of dactyls, the effect of
SIR A. LY ALL'S 'TENNYSON' 47
which to our ears is even less pleasing than that of
Boadicea." l
There seems to be very good reason for the more
sparing use in English poetry of trochees, dactyls, or
anapaests. The excessive quantity of letters in English
syllables, as compared with the classical or Latin
tongues, causes an English three-syllable foot to bulk
larger, both to the ear and to the eye, than does a
Greek, Latin, or Italian three-syllable foot. The first
line of the Iliad has only eleven consonants ; the first
line of the JEneid has nineteen ; the first line of
Paradise Lost has twenty-one ; the first line of " Vast-
ness " has thirty-one consonants. And they tumble
over each other, choke the mouth and disturb the eye.
A peculiarity of English speech is the tendency to
throw back the accent to the antepenultimate syllable,
to clip and hurry the pronunciation, and this especially
in the more vulgar language. The trochaic and
dactylic metres naturally accentuate this tendency ;
and, however suited for ballad purposes and for
impetuous bursts of emotion, these verses, with the
accent on the penultimate and antepenultimate of the
foot, are not suited for sustained narration, grave
reasoning, and dignity of tone. English heroic verse
has always chosen an iambic metre i.e. feet of two
syllables, one short and one long, with the stress on
the last syllable, not on the first. We could not stand
Paradise Lost in a dactylic or ballad metre. 2
1 The fourth line of " Vastness " scans thus :
i .__._!. * , _ 5 _ _ 6 _
What is it | all but a | trouble of | ants in the | gleam of a | million
_ 1 _ 1
million of | suns |
a dactylic octameter catalectic (i.e. cut short).
2 Suppose it ran in dactyls :
_i_ _ *. . J _ i _ . 5 _ _6_
Man's want of | proper ob | edience and | tasting of | disallowed | apples
48 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Tennyson has shown himself to have consummate
mastery of the iambic metres in all their forms, and all
his noblest pieces are so cast. The nature of our
language and all the traditions of our poetry point to
some of the iambic forms as best for all continuous,
grave, and stately poems. And this makes it the more
unlucky that he so often abandoned them in his later
verses for trochaic and dactylic types, indelibly
associated with ballads, burlesques, and even nursery
rhymes. 1
We may offer these criticisms without at all im-
pugning Tennyson's undoubted claim to be looked on
as the supreme poet of the Victorian Era, and one of
the chief lyric poets of our English tongue. It is
unworthy of him and of ourselves to exalt him to a
superhuman pedestal, where it is counted profanity to
hint at a weakness or a fault. Like almost all our
poets, except Milton, Gray, Coleridge, and Arnold,
he published a great deal more than he need have
done. Tennyson no doubt published far less of care-
less, ill-digested, and poor work than almost any of
our poets. All of them, except Milton and Gray,
sank at times into bathos unworthy of them. This
Tennyson never did. But he published much, in his
later career, which is inferior to his best. The future
will no doubt be content to remember little more than
a half, or even a third, of his immense output. Most
of his poems would be more effective if they were only
half as long as they are. Again, his best work was all
completed in the first thirty years of his very long
1 The trochaic metre suits :
" John Gilpin," " The Babes in the Wood," " Three Jolly Huntsmen,"
and " Lord Bateman."
Dactylic metre suits :
_ i _ 3 _ _ 1 _ _ i _ 5_
'Tis the | voice of the | sluggard I | heard him com | plain.
SIR A. LY ALL'S 'TENNYSON' 49
course of active work. But having accepted these
provisos, let us make the most of him who was the
greatest poet of the last three generations ; let us
delight in his grace, soothe our spirit in his music,
revel in his fantasies, and honour his noble ideals, his
pure imagination, his profound seriousness.
THE MILLENARY OF KING ALFRED
[An address given in 1897, proposing the celebration of the thou-
sandth anniversary of Alfred's death. This took place in
October i<)oi,<uuhen the Statue was unveiled by Lord Rosebery
at Winchester.]
ON the 26th of October 1901, exactly four years
hence, a thousand years will have passed since the death
of our greatest King. We are a little overdone with
anniversaries, and those not always of the worthiest.
But this is no ordinary occasion ; for it will be the
thousandth anniversary of him to whom England owes
an incalculable debt of gratitude, one whom our best
teachers describe as the noblest Englishman recorded
in our history. Alfred's name is almost the only one
in the long roll of our national worthies which awakens
no bitter, no jealous thought, which combines the
honour of all ; Alfred represents at once the ancient
Monarchy, the army, the navy, the law, the literature,
the poetry, the art, the enterprise, the industry, the
religion of our race. Neither Welshman, nor Scot,
nor Irishman can feel that Alfred's memory has left
the trace of a wound for his national pride. No differ-
ence of Church arises to separate any who would join
to do Alfred honour. No Saint in the Calendar was a
more loyal and cherished member of the ancient faith ;
and yet no Protestant can imagine a purer and more
THE MILLENARY OF KING ALFRED 51
simple follower of the Gospel. Alfred was a victorious
warrior whose victories have left no curses behind
them : a King whom no man ever charged with a
harsh act : a scholar who never became a pedant : a
Saint who knew no superstition : a hero as bold as
Launcelot as spotless as Galahad.
The commemoration of this glorious Founder of
our national unity of a man so close to the very roots
of the throne, so dear to the sympathies of the people,
bound up with all our traditions and institutions, the
inspiration of our early literature and language such
a commemoration should be a national, not a private,
concern. The House of Commons might well vote
the cost of a torpedo-boat for the Founder of our
maritime power, for him to whom we largely owe it
that there exists any England at all.
If it be done, it should be done royally ; in a form
at once magnificent and national. I do not presume
to say what form it should take. I trust that, when
the time comes, the Government itself will take
counsel of the most competent advisers it can find. In
my daydreams I have imagined a grand Mausoleum^
dedicated to the memory of Alfred, and in manifold
forms of art recording the great events of his life. I
use the word -Mausoleum not in the commercial,
but in the true, the historic, sense the monument
erected to King Mausolus in the fourth century B.C.
by the piety of his wife.
It was one of the triumphs and one of the wonders
of the ancient world : and itself exerted a dominant
influence over the development of Hellenic art. All
visitors to the British Museum are familiar with the
fragments of it which time has spared, and have seen
the suggestions of its original form over which the
learned dispute. It contained colossal statues of the
King arid his wife Artemisia still noble even in their
52 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
ruined state a grand monumental edifice, adorned
with a multitude of statues, reliefs, friezes, and finials,
the least fragment of which is to-day a study and a
joy. Now, I do not suggest that we should imitate
that or any other monument of antiquity ; but I can
imagine the boundless opportunities for great com-
memorative art which a monument of this kind
presents.
In my daydreams I have seen rising in some con-
spicuous spot in Wessex a shrine in that Byzantine
manner which was the dominant architecture of
Europe in the age of Alfred the style of the Holy
Wisdom of Constantinople, or possibly of that Pantheon
at Rome which Alfred knew but in any case, a
building wherein could be worked out in marble, in
mosaic, in bronze, and in enamel, scenes to recall to
us the aspect and events of our Hero's life his terrific
combats with the Dane on land and sea, his council-
hall, his midnight meditations, his studies, his prayers,
his boyish experiences in Rome.
What a scope for the artist in every form of art is
presented by the varied incidents of that crowded life
and heroic age, when all costume was noble, all acces-
sories picturesque, and manners Homeric in simple
nature. It seems to me that any fine works of art
should be under a roof, and not exposed to our climate,
and that a covered building might contain not only
the principal monument, but a Museum to which
might be transferred Alfred's Jewel at Oxford and
any other genuine relic of his time, with coins, carv-
ings, enamels, arms, robes, and any contemporary
manuscript and illumination which it was possible to
obtain.
Or a simpler form would be a colossal statue to be
seen afar off on the top of some historic down in a
more massive and bolder type of art. And if such a
THE MILLENARY OF KING ALFRED 53
monument were raised in the open air, there is little
doubt where it should be placed. I was the other day
again in the ancient and famous city of Winchester
the royal city of Alfred, where his bones still crumble
in their thrice -desecrated tomb I thought fresh
efforts should be made to identify the exact spot and
I felt how deep a debt lies on Winchester and on
England to replace that lost grave at least with a
cenotaph and a monument "the tomb," says the
Annals, " made of the most precious porphyry marble."
How fitly it might stand on the historic Hill which
looks down on College, Cathedral, and wall !
A Mausoleum which should combine a grand statue
of the King with various illustrations of his life and
deeds would open great opportunities to several artists
in different arts. And it would be a narrow patriotism
indeed which limited these artists to our own land.
It would dishonour the memory of Alfred to do this.
No English ruler has ever been so large-minded in all
his interests, so Catholic in his task, so pre-eminently
European in his type of mind. Xo him of all men,
Art, Learning, Culture were too wide and human to
know any local habitation. He sought out for his
service, his biographer tells us, Welshmen, Irishmen,
Bretons, Franks, Scots, Frisians, and Danes ; " he
was munificent towards foreigners of all races " j he
sent abroad for teachers, artificers, discoverers, and
seamen. It would be a pity if a monument to com-
memorate his name were not open to the genius of
the civilised world.
Another thought, indeed, has occurred to me.
Our Westminster Abbey is at last crowded to excess,
and must very soon cease to be the resting-place of
the great men whom the nation delights to honour.
We need a new Abbey, a Campo Santo^ where in ages
to come the noblest sons of England may be laid (as
54 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
the poet says) "to the noise of the mourning of a
mighty nation." It is easy to say that future ages
will take care of themselves. But there is one thing
that the Future cannot do it cannot create a Past.
And what it will want for its Campo Santo, when
the venerable Abbey can serve no longer, is a Past.
A national Mausoleum of King Alfred may at least
suggest a Past a past more ancient than the Abbey
of the Edwards and the Henrys it might grow into
the nucleus of a national Heroum just as Poets' Corner
grew into a sanctuary of art round the tomb of
Chaucer in the Abbey. And I can conceive that in
ages to come Nelson's famous phrase of, "Victory or
Westminster Abbey," might be replaced by the hope
of warrior, statesman, or poet to be thought worthy
to lie in the Mausoleum of Alfred.
When the thousandth anniversary of Alfred comes
round, we all trust that the royal Lady, the forty-ninth
sovereign since Alfred, may be able and willing to
give her personal sanction to a national Festival.
Modern history has no such sequence of national
continuity to present no throne, no institutions, no
organic patriotism, no literature of such vast duration
and such venerable traditions. And this is a healthy
and fruitful form of patriotic feeling. It can offend
no man, neither in these islands nor in the Empire,
nor abroad in other nations. The little Englander
and the greater Englander, the Englishman and the
Imperialist, Old England and New England, can unite
in honour of the great King who ruled an England
far smaller than any little England of to-day, yet
whose genius and heroism made it the nucleus the
pou sto of all that his descendants ever held in their
dominion, of all that his descendant, Her Majesty,
holds in dominion at this hour [1897]. The memory
of Alfred calls up no thought of Conquest, but the
THE MILLENARY OF KING ALFRED 55
noblest form of Defence, it calls up international
sympathies and co-operation, a great civilising and
missionary task, it suggests schools, temples, libraries,
industries, courts of justice, civic organisation : all the
boundless influence of a great brain and a majestic
character, be the field of his energy as small as a single
province and the materials to his hand of the simplest
sort.
Many other modes of using for ourselves and our
children this matchless occasion occur to me, on which
to-night I can only touch. There is still needed a
perfectly complete and critical edition of every line of
the King's authentic writings. We should never
forget that Alfred is the Father of English History,
the Founder of English prose. He is in the true
sense the Father of the History of the English people
in a sense more literally true than Herodotus ever
was the " Father of History " in that Alfred gave
an impulse and form to the English Chronicle^ the
oldest national record in modern Europe j and himself
wrote or inspired the writing of some of its typical
parts. He is the Founder of English prose, in that
he not only formed an organic prose, but his influence
caused the maintenance of English prose until the
Conquest for the time superseded it by Latin and
French. No perfect collection of these noble pieces
of our scholar King has yet been made : and it would
form a worthy task for a company of Scholars to
achieve it.
Nor, again, is there any adequate English biography
of our great Hero. After all that has been done by
eminent scholars who have given us every authentic
fact ascertainable in Alfred's career, there is yet no
full and adequate biography of the King by an English
hand. The splendid pictures drawn by Green and by
Freeman, in more than one work of each, remain after
56 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
all but glowing sketches ; and they are but episodes
embedded in voluminous works. And, excellent as
is the German work of Dr. Pauli, it is possible to
imagine a new biography based on more recent
research, and worthy to rank with the masterpieces
of English prose.
Perhaps it is not too late for the Holy See to repair
its neglect to place Alfred amongst its canonised
Sovereigns. There are already twelve of these in the
Calendar, we are told : not one of the twelve was the
peer of the Saxon King whom four centuries ago
our Henry VI. vainly besought the Pope to canonise.
Rome acts always with deliberation. But, after a
thousand years, it may yet recognise the holiness of
a saint the halo of whose glory will last as long as
the Church.
Some commemoration of the great King there is
certain to be in the millenary year 1901. I would
raise a voice in hope that it may be at once national
and worthy of the nation : that it may not degenerate
into a scramble or a farce. It would be an occasion
to call for representation of every side of our national
life as the pulse from Alfred's mighty heart throbbed
into every vein of the nation's organism. Soldiers,
sailors, scholars, churchmen, missionaries, teachers,
councillors, judges, prelates, artists, craftsmen, dis-
coverers chiefs and people all alike might gather
to do honour to the royal genius who loved them all,
who breathed into them all his own inspiration. I
can imagine an assemblage of chosen delegates from
our regiments and our fleets, from cathedral, abbey,
church, and chapel (without distinction of creed), from
universities and schools, from art and science academies,
from libraries and institutes, from Parliament and
from Government, from courts of justice and from
county halls and city councils, from the labourers in
THE MILLENARY OF KING ALFRED 57
town and country all joining around a national
monument to our first great Hero. Such military
display as was thought right would best be furnished
forth by the volunteers and naval reserves in honour
of the King who first organised a regular militia at
home for the defence of our shores by sea and land
whose very name as a warrior spells "Defence not
Defiance" Such a national commemoration would
be a real festival of industry, art, order, union, peace,
and religion.
No people, in ancient or modern times, ever had a
Hero-Founder at once so truly historic, so venerable,
and so supremely great. Alfred was more to us than
the heroes in antique myths more than Theseus and
Solon were to Athens, or Lycurgus to Sparta, or
Romulus and Numa were to Rome, more than St.
Stephen was to Hungary, or Pelayo and the Cid to
Spain, more than Hugh Capet and Jeanne d'Arc were
to France, more than William the Silent was to Hol-
land nay, almost as much as the Great Charles was
to the Franks.
The life-work of the Great Alfred has had a con-
tinuity, an organic development, a moral, intellectual,
and spiritual majesty which has no parallel or rival
amongst rulers in the annals of mankind. And I
cannot doubt that four years hence the English-
speaking people will remember him who gave them
the precious germs of that which our forefathers have
made a thousand years of national life and honour.
THE TERCENTENARY OF
CROMWELL
THREE hundred years have come and gone since the
mightiest spirit that ever held command over these
three kingdoms came into the world. For two
hundred and fifty years the English people who owed
him so much (all but a remnant of stalwart men)
reviled his memory and ridiculed his life. He was
despised and rejected of men. We hid our faces
from him. At last, in the latter half-century, a man
of genius drove home to the bottom of our conscience
as a people, our folly, ingratitude, and shame. Years
and years of remorse will hardly suffice to expiate our
offence.
Thomas Carlyle spoke, we may admit, with
passion, with something of a prophet's rage and
excess. In fifty years we have grown calmer, more
judicial, more amply informed of the truth. And
recognising as we do the substantial justice of
Carlyle's story nay, seeing in many things how even
his high estimate may be amplified and coloured
we have no temptation to-day to exaggerate qualities
or to palliate faults. We are willing to admit the sad
and dark side of this vast national epic, as well as the
immortal and heroic side we see to-day. We are all
no longer under the spell of an advocate's passion.
We are penetrated with the conviction of a weighty
53
TERCENTENARY OF CROMWELL 59
and unanswerable judgment, all errors weighed and
measured out in the issue. And we, the most ardent
Oliverians of us all, are no longer battling for Revision
of an unjust sentence. We come, like pilgrims, to
bow the head in silent meditation at the foot of an
empty and desecrated tomb.
It has taken three hundred years for Englishmen
to know what they owe to one of the greatest men
their race has produced. It is a wise rule that we
should in general observe anniversaries of death rather
than of birth, for all public and historic purposes.
Birthdays belong to family occasions, and are proper
to theological and mystical festivals. Except from
the point of view of some miraculous and superhuman
birth, the coming into the world of a statesman or
poet is a thing of which the public at the time took
no note, and which affected nobody and nothing out-
side the home itself. The effect of a great life upon
fellow-men is only complete and perceptible when the
life is closed, and often not till long afterwards. No one
outside a plain home in Huntingdon noticed the fact
that Elizabeth Cromwell was brought to bed of her
fifth child, and for forty years few people supposed
that a great event in English history had happened
on the 25th of April 1599. But when Oliver,
Protector, died, all Britain and Ireland held its breath
in hushed expectation and all Europe breathed more
freely. It is the end of a great career which concerns
nations not the unnoticed birth of a baby who may
live to have a great career half a century later. Real
centenaries should run with the date of death, not of
birth, or we shall all get bored by anniversary com-
memorations, as some affected people even now
profess to be bored.
But, as many honest men refuse to postpone the
commemoration of Oliver until 1958, and as the first
60 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
statue to him in London is to be raised this year, we
need not adjourn our remembrance of a great man
to a date which only our children will see. Let us
ask ourselves to-day the simple questions In what
things was Cromwell a great Englishman ? What
is the teaching of his life ? What are the effects he
left on the history of England ?
Oliver Cromwell is by general consent a typical
Englishman, having that union of somewhat incon-
gruous forces which is to be found in the English
people, which has made England English in his
courage, in his patience, his self-control, his masterful
stubbornness, his pitiless crushing down of opponents
when he felt himself to be on the path of duty, his
disdain of forms, theories, doctrines, and Utopias, his
passion for freedom with personal self- will, his Biblical
religion, his sterling honesty of aim and yet great
capacity for intrigue, his fierce hold on certain root
ideals with a boundless spirit of compromise, oppor-
tunism, toleration of all things and all men that he
judged to be instrumental to his ends. An eminent
historian (himself a descendant of the Protector) tells us
to regard him " with all his physical and moral audacity,
with all his tenderness and spiritual yearnings, in the
world of action what Shakespeare was in the world
of thought, the greatest because the most typical
Englishman of all time " not a model but a mirror,
wherein we may see alike our weakness and our
strength.
The " most typical " of Englishmen is wholly true :
as to " the greatest," it is a term rather too strong for
those who admit great faults, and perhaps some crimes.
It is true that both faults and crimes were essentially
those of the age and of the moral standard of the party
he led ; and what we most condemn to-day met with
nothing but praise from some of the best spirits of the
TERCENTENARY OF CROMWELL 6r
time. Yet perhaps in "the greatest" of Englishmen
we would ask for a career more entirely spotless, and a
nature of more heroic beauty. King Alfred, whom
Freeman called "the model Englishman," would be
more fairly matched with Shakespeare, if we choose to
imagine the greatest of our national types, for to King
Alfred neither crimes nor faults are imputed. Crom-
well is of us, is near to us ; we are living still in the
daily influence of his work ; we know every incident
of his life, almost every thought of his mind. We feel
for him as we feel for our own country, when uncon-
sciously, instinctively, often in spite of the pricking of
conscience we murmur England ! with all thy faults
I love thee still ! We honour Cromwell in spite of
his faults j some of us, it may be feared, because of
his faults.
It is as an Englishman that Cromwell must be
judged, and it is unreasonable to ask Scots or Irish to
join us to-day. Though Cromwell gave Scotland
good government for the first time in its history, so
that a Scotchman and an enemy writes : " We always
reckon those eight years of the usurpation a time of
great peace and prosperity " ; though he certainly
prepared the way for the ultimate Union the source
of Scotland's happiness and glory yet it will not be
forgotten that Cromwell conquered Scotland, and ruled
it as a conqueror. As to Ireland, Cromwell remorse-
lessly carried out the atrocious policy of his age, and of
our country. For my part, I never will palliate or
condone it. And the "curse of Cromwell" in the
mouths of Irishmen will long rest on his memory and
on our peace.
The teaching of Cromwell's life is plain. The
silly legend about his ambition and demagogic intrigues
has long died away. If ever any English ruler had
power forced on him step by step, or ever lived a
62 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
reserved, austere, domestic life till roused by tyranny
to play the man as a citizen should, if ever English
statesman having absolute power stood clear of personal
interests or sordid desires, it was he. As our Hero-
King wrote : " You need not be solicitous about
power, nor strive after it. If you be wise and good, it
will follow you though you should not wish it." The
meditations of Alfred upon Power form a key to the
career of his successor eight centuries later. Nor let
it be forgotten that for the first time in our history,
and almost for the last time, morality and religion
were the titles for entrance to Oliver's Court, and
notorious vice unfitted all men for Oliver's service.
His tolerance of honest convictions, his patience under
open hostility, his loathing of confirmed profligacy,
his contempt for conventional formulas were alike
unalterable and boundless.
As a statesman, the unique merit of Cromwell's
government was his genius for administration, for
securing efficiency in every department, for selecting
the right man for every duty, for recognising and using
every kind of capacity in every department. His
success in this crowning art of the statesman has
perhaps never been equalled in our own history, hardly
in that of Europe, unless it be by Richelieu and
Frederick the Great. This plain yeoman, who had
tilled his farmstead until past forty years, stepped forth
into public life, made himself a thorough soldier,
created a consummate army, decided a tremendous
civil war, conquered two neighbouring kingdoms,
guided a national revolution, stemmed it back by
organising a solid conservative government, chose as his
deputies the most capable soldiers, seamen, governors,
diplomatists, financiers, lawyers, ministers, and pub-
licists who could be found to serve the Commonwealth ;
and in five years he had formed the strongest Govern-
TERCENTENARY OF CROMWELL 63
ment in Europe, and had made his country the leading
Power in the world.
In what we now call opportunism (that is, the
instinct of the statesman to change his tactics under
circumstances and to seize the occasion of the hour)
Cromwell has rarely been equalled by any man in all
recorded history. His note as a born statesman is the
union of matchless audacity with inexhaustible wari-
ness. No great man so brave and so daring was ever
so untiringly prudent and watchful. In his whole
career Cromwell never met with a single disaster,
either in war or in government. He was never off
his guard, was never once caught napping, never
relaxed his intense hold on the smallest detail, or
allowed a single point to be unguarded. In this he is
like Elizabeth, Wellington, or Marlborough, but he
surpassed them all in sleepless vigilance and unbroken
success. His were not the triumphs of a Napoleon
alternating with hideous catastrophes, nor the generous
imprudences of a Caesar or a Henry IV. In one of
the most complex and arduous careers in history,
Cromwell is almost the one great chief who in peace
and in war never met with a rebuff which more perfect
prudence would have sufficed to avert.
What permanent results did Cromwell stamp upon
the history of England ? In the broadest sense he
gave us modern England. Not, of course, alone, but
as chief leader in the English Revolution, much as
Frederick made modern Prussia, as Nelson won
Trafalgar, or as Wellington won Waterloo. Crom-
well made modern England with the blood and sweat
and heart of the flower of the English people. It is
far from clear that without him the finer part of the
English people would not have succumbed to the baser
part, that the Stuarts would not have founded at last
some such monarchy as that of the Louis in France.
64 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Those who understand the inner history of the Civil
War know that, down to the battle of Marston, if not
down to the New Model, the issue was far from clear
and Marston and Naseby were essentially Cromwell's
triumphs. And those who understand English history
know that the struggle was a long one, that it lasted
for at least sixty years from the Long Parliament to
the Act of Settlement, that what old Whigs call the
" Revolution " was a mere episode and after-glow of
the Commonwealth. Modern England begins with
the Act of Settlement : this was the direct fruit of the
Civil War: and the Civil War might have ended in a
Malignant Monarchy but for Oliver Cromwell and
his genius as soldier and statesman.
An exalted Personage once asked a certain historian
.to tell him what Cromwell had left of permanent to
the nation ? " Well, sir," was the answer, " our most
gracious Majesty, and our present Dynasty." This
may pass as an after-dinner phrase, but it is not
altogether a paradox. We have to look at these
problems in a large way and from an ample perspective.
The Commonwealth and the Protectorate destroyed
the Old Monarchy and the Feudal Constitution, and
they opened the ground for all our Liberal Institu-
tions. It is true that Stuarts, Monarchy, and Church
returned, but only for a space, mere shadows of
their ancient form. Look at England as a whole,
as it was at the accession of Charles I. and as
it was at the accession of Oueen Anne, and note
*^/
the enormous change within those two genera-
tions. Monarchy, peerage, parliament, law, justice,
finance, toleration, equity, commerce, religion all
were transformed, and stood on a wholly new social
system. Who, along with the people of England,
and their sense of freedom, justice, and truth, had
made this possible ? Who but Oliver Cromwell ?
TERCENTENARY OF CROMWELL 65
Of course, the Protectorate was followed by the
Restoration, and most of its direct acts of State were
annulled. It is true that Parliamentary Government,
as understood by the Whigs, was far from an idea of
Cromwell, who contemplated rather the Presidential
system of the United States. But, though Cromwell
did not found Parliamentary Government, nor religious
liberty, nor the legal and administrative system that
he prematurely set up, he made all these things
possible in the end, little as he foresaw what he was
doing. Our subsequent history, no doirbt, was a
compromise, and much of it. was as anti-Cromwellian
as it could be. But it was Cromwell who, in the
evolution of the English nation, made our subsequent
history possible.
The eminent historian quoted above now tells us
that Cromwell has left nothing permanent, that not
only his institutions, but hrs ideas failed of result, that
his negative work lasted, but his positive work vanished.
This is an over-statement which, if it were pressed,
would be a paradox or a sophism. It is a matter
of language. In great revolutions of nations and
societies there is no arbitrary distinction between
negative and positive results. To destroy for ever
an effete political and social system is practically
to found a new system. And if new institutions
improvised on the cleared ground do not take
permanent root, they prepare the way for modified
institutions of a kindred sort. It would be easy
to show that Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne,
Richelieu, or Napoleon left no permanent results on
history, because their positive work vanished, and
their institutions were swept away, or developed in
new forms. That Cromwell's " ideas " have failed is
manifestly untrue. What, then, mean our eulogies,
centenaries, statues, and honours to his memory our
66 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
grateful sense of his hatred of oppression, of persecu-
tion, of his zeal for good government, justice, morality,
religion in things public as well as private ? Let us
not make ourselves blind over the records of institutions
and negotiations. The ideas of Cromwell live deep
down in the hearts of Englishmen.
We hear too much of the objection that Cromwell
was a soldier and ruled by the sword. He was a
civilian not a soldier a citizen by nature, and
always a statesman by the summons of the nation, a
soldier for a brief spell by dire necessity. Cromwell
was forty-three when he first drew a sword, and of the
fifty-eight years of his life he spent but nine under
arms. Great soldier as he was in the field, he was far
less the professional soldier than George Washington,
or William the Silent. If we study his whole career
after Worcester we see him continually labouring to
return to a civil government, and all his ways differ
essentially from the ways of a Frederick or a Napoleon,
though he held absolute power, and was beset by
enemies within and without. The Protectorate,
which lasted less than five years, was a constant effort
to restore the ravages and calm the passions of civil
war.
We are told again that Cromwell's rule rested
wholly on the Army, that it was a military despotism,
and that a military despotism was an impossibility in
England, doomed to an abhorred collapse. In words,
it is true that the Protectorate, like the Long
Parliament, rested on armed men, who, perhaps, were at
all times a minority of the nation. Neither Parliament
nor Protector was any product of manhood suffrage.
But the armies of Parliament and Protector were
formed of men wholly different in origin and in
character from the troops who followed Frederick
or Napoleon, or even Wellington or Moltke. The
TERCENTENARY OF CROMWELL 67
" Ironsides " were ardent politicians, usually religious
and political enthusiasts, who held their own Parliament
in the camp, a Parliament more able and honest than
the Rump at Westminster. The Clarke Papers^ so
admirably edited by Mr. C. H. Firth, have shown
us what these men were like, and how they affected
the State. With all their faults and follies they
were the flower of England, and the most genuine
politicians of their age. And far into the Restoration
the old " Ironsides " were known, up and down the
country, as the most trusty, virtuous, and industrious
citizens in their villages or towns. Most revolutions
are carried through by a minority of enthusiasts. It
was so in the Commonwealth. And the larger part
of what was brave, pure, and just in England gathered
round the great man, who, of all English chiefs since
Alfred, was the most brave, the most sincere, the
most just, the most devout.
THE STATUE OF OLIVER
CROMWELL
1899
AT last, after two centuries and a half, London has a
statue of the greatest ruler who ever governed the
three kingdoms. The hatred of his memory, which
so long kept him in exile from the Palace of West-
minster, has at length fizzled out in the whining of a
handful of Ritualists, Jew financiers, and Jacobites.
That Churchmen, the parasites of smart Society,
Irishmen, mediaeval aesthetes, and the like should
feel sore at honours paid to the great Protector is
not unnatural. But they were not expected to sub-
scribe to the statue and were not invited to attend
the commemoration. They have vented their ill-
humour ; and now at last a grand effigy of Oliver
stands in the precincts of the ancient Hall, on the
gateway of which his mangled head rotted for twenty
years. It looks on the Abbey, where the nation en-
tombed him with royal honours at the premature end
of his short dictatorship.
To oppose the erection of a statue to Cromwell shows
a curious misunderstanding of what such a memorial
implies. It does not mean that we approve of all that
the man commemorated did in life : much less that all
parties and sections of the public approve his career.
68
STATUE OF OLIVER CROMWELL 69
If so, there could be no statues of Wellington, Gordon,
Jenner, or George III. If warm approval of all the
acts of such an one and absolute unanimity were
needed, before a statue could be raised, there would be
no statues at all, or none but that of Alfred the Great.
And, even in his case, uniform admiration seems almost
to dull the public interest ; and we perhaps want a few
grumblers, as Devil's advocates, even for Alfred.
But just consider those of whom we have statues in
London already : Charles I., James II. James II. !
Richard Cceur de Lion, George IV. four of the worst
Kings who ever occupied the throne to say nothing of
Francis, Duke of Bedford, Benjamin, Earl of Beacons-
field, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Duke of York
of the last century. There would be plenty of black
balls in the box, if these noble persons were submitted
to a public ballot. Nobody asks to have the statue of
any of these removed not even that of the miscreant
James II., whom Macaulay describes as "a libertine,
narrow in understanding, obstinate, harsh, and unfor-
giving " one whom the nation drove from the throne
in favour of the present Dynasty. There must be a
give-and-take in such things. And if the mass of the
public can tolerate the sight in bronze of a sinister
brute like James II., we have a right to claim a place
for one who represents the good side of that great
national struggle, whereof James II. was the incarna-
tion of the evil side.
A memorial of Oliver rests on the fact that he was
the leader of a movement which transformed the course
of English history, and then, for nearly five years, was
the paramount ruler of the three kingdoms at an epoch
eminent for skilful administration and national power.
The most ardent Oliverians do not to-day pretend to
justify many things in the Protector's public action,
nor do they dream of celebrating him as a perfect
70 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
character. No one now repeats the extravagant
hyperboles of Carlyle, whose sardonic idolatry tends
rather to stimulate hostility to the memory of Crom-
well, not to disarm it. But the reaction against
Carlyle's old-Cameronian hero-worship seems to be
going too far ; and even some who deeply approve the
overthrow of the Stuart absolutism and all that it
meant in Church and State, rather minimise the part
that Oliver had in the work, and insist on his failure
to bring the work to its full completeness. In these
days of so much flabby theology and playing with
medievalism on one side, of so much conventional
liberalism and pedantic specialism on the other side,
the occasion is one to insist on the supreme importance
of the entire life of Cromwell in the successful evolution
of the English people.
It is now plain that the Stuart absolutism in Church
and State could not have been broken down without
Civil War. Of that Civil War, one marked by rapid
and complete success not elsewhere recorded in modern
history, Cromwell was the soul. All the great battles
were victories of his, were won by his genius alone
when all seemed lost. The conquest of the other two
kingdoms was also his sole task. No one now, even of
his most bitter opponents, doubts Cromwell's great place
as a soldier. But his supreme part in the Civil War
was much more than that of a soldier. The organising
of a regular army, having consummate discipline and
efficiency in all its arms and resources, out of the raw
farmers and workmen hastily enlisted, was Cromwell's
own achievement, and was perhaps even more decisive
than brilliant tactics in the field. But this is to say
that, but for Cromwell, the Monarchy and Feudalism
might have beaten down the Parliament and people,
might have established a retrograde absolutism and a
persecuting Church.
STATUE OF OLIVER CROMWELL 71
But it is as the instrument of a great political and
social evolution, much more than as a consummate
soldier, that we celebrate Cromwell ; it is as statesman,
not as warrior, that he stands to-day at the gateway
of Parliament, looking down on the minor politicians
in Parliament Square. We are told by some eminent
historians of the Protector that his negative or destruc-
tive work was invaluable and permanent ; his positive
and constructive work was mistaken and evanescent.
Part of this statement is a mere matter of language ;
part of it is due to the viewing the broad course of
English history from a standpoint somewhat too special
and narrow.
What is negative^ what is positive work, in things
political and social ? Destructive work, in statesman-
ship, provided it be permanent^ is ipso facto constructive,
if it enables the new system to form and to grow. As
Luther, WicklifFe, Latimerwere primarily destructives
in theology, or as Voltaire, Hume, Kant were primarily
destructives in metaphysics, though vast constructions
have grown up on the ground which they cleared and
laid bare, so some of the most mighty founders of
political reconstruction left at their deaths nothing
permanent except their decisive work of destruction.
In societies, to destroy the effete, at the right time,
in the right way, and once for //, is to reconstruct.
Sulla, Attila, Philip II., Robespierre, and Marat were
mere destructives and anarchists, because their destruc-
tion was evil, and what they destroyed was destined
to revive. But those who sweep away what is
destined to perish past any revival, and, after finally
preparing the new ground, design a new type of
society and show forth an ideal of a better world,
these men are constructive statesmen, even though
their direct foundations are entirely modified and
rebuilt.
72 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charles the Great, Godfrey
de Bouillon, Louis XL, William the Silent, effected
memorable works of reconstruction. The first three
transformed the world and the whole course of civilisa-
tion, and the latter three made possible great national
reconstruction. And yet the State system, the institu-
tions laboriously founded by each of these quickly
perished ; and hardly one of them left anything abso-
lutely permanent behind him, unless it were the city
of Alexandria and the Calendar. If we use terms very
strictly, and press things rigidly, the residuum of their
entire work may be said to lie in destruction, or nega-
tive results. Especially would this be true of William
the Silent, whose whole career was one of failure and
disappointment ; for, at his murder, almost everything
he had toiled to found was crumbling away. And yet
after three centuries the nation he created reveres him
as its Father, and the British Empire is now fighting
on the Orange River in Africa, with the mere offshoot
and emigrants from that nation.
Almost every criticism now urged against the
statesmanship of the Protector, might be made with
tenfold force against that of William the Silent.
William's great scheme of uniting the seventeen pro-
vinces utterly failed and for ever, his attempt to
harmonise Lutheran and Calvinist, Walloon and Hol-
lander, noble and democrat, broke down before his
own eyes. He turned from France to England, from
England to Germany, from monarchs to people, from
Princes to preachers, from magnates to tradesmen.
His diplomacy was one long tangle of changes, con-
flicting principles, ever-varying combinations, as was
that of Henry of Navarre, Mazarin, Cavour, or Bis-
marck. The failures, abortive schemes, vacillations,
high-handed acts, and arbitrary blunders imputed to
the Protector may all be matched in the history of
STATUE OF OLIVER CROMWELL 73
these statesmen ; and, in the case of William the Silent,
they were tenfold as great. And yet the world has
long been agreed that William created a nation, and
that his negative success has really proved to be a posi-
tive success of the first order.
That destructive statesmanship should be construc-
tive in result, requires many important conditions.
The destruction must be necessary and timely ; it
must be final ; it must prepare a permanent reconstruc-
tion. The Protectorate fulfilled all these conditions.
Mr. John Morley, in his new and fascinating Life of
Cromwell, quotes a sentence of mine wherein I speak
of Oliver's success as a constructive statesman. If Mr.
Morley will look again at chapter xi. of my little book
he will see that his quotation omits the most important
phrase in my sentence. I wrote that Oliver was one
of the rare order "of constructive and conservative
statesmen." By that I meant that a statesman who,
after a great revolutionary clearance, stems the current
of destruction, conserves and re-establishes order and
good government, ipso facto constructs a new and
sounder system. After Worcester Cromwell was in
supreme authority for exactly seven years, during
which his policy was essentially Conservative. As he
truly said, the needs of the time were "Healing and
Settling." For seven years he did heal and settle in
the only way possible, often by arbitrary acts, now and
then by unjustifiable acts, constantly trying new
methods, but always bent on honest settlement. And
this seven years of heroic, but often abortive, striving
towards settlement in a conservative, but not a re-
actionary sense, made possible the final Settlement,
which thirty years later was brought about in the time
of the third William of Orange.
Although many of the Protector's schemes and
arrangements disappeared with him and some of them
74 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
before him, they were ultimately succeeded by institu-
tions of a similar order and having like purpose, which
never could have been founded at all had not Cromwell's
reforms and experiments preceded them. Like William
the Silent, Cromwell failed at times because he was in
advance of his age, especially in the matter of religious
equality, official competence, law reform, and the
proper spheres of Parliament and Executive. Had
Cromwell had his way he would have made the political
system of England akin to that of the United States ;
and in my opinion it is a pity he did not have his way.
But his failure to fall in with the Parliamentary system,
which was hardly established for more than a century
after his time, was one of those failures for which he
is deserving of honour and not of blame.
It is quite true that his rule as Protector was based
on the Army, that much of it was oppressive to the
defeated party, that it was unconstitutional, such as
could not be permanently established in England.
Quite true : but the effectual destruction of the old
divine -right Monarchy could not have been made
decisive in any other way. Feudalism could not have
been crushed by a few defeats in the field. And the
mediaeval regime in law, local administration, religious
persecution, and arbitrary taxation could not have been
broken down without years and years of a military
regime based on a different spirit. Marston Moor,
Naseby, and Worcester were not enough to transform
England from a Feudal Monarchy and semi-Catholic
Church into a free Commonwealth and Protestant
toleration. It needed the five years of the greatest
ruler that England has ever known ; and if the five
years had been fifteen it would have been better for us
now. The government of Scotland was oppressive ;
the conquest of Ireland was atrocious ; the foreign
policy of the Protectorate was selfish. But all of
STATUE OF OLIVER CROMWELL 75
these were involved in the very nature of the English-
men of that day. To ask of Cromwell that he should
be of different mould was to ask him not to be an
Englishman of the seventeenth century, not to be an
Englishman at all. At any rate, in all this he did not
go counter to the best hopes and aims of the worthiest
men of his own time and nation. In his fine address,
Lord Rosebery has summed up, in a curiously happy
phrase, the essential force of Cromwell's nature. He
was truly "a practical mystic, the most terrible and
formidable of all combinations." He combined spiritual
inspiration with the energy of a mighty man of action.
THE REMAINS OF OLIVER
CROMWELL
1899
THE munificent gift to the nation of a statue of the
great Protector has naturally awakened a new interest
in the supposed fragment of his remains ; and, as
having given some attention to the matter when pre-
paring my little book on Oliver's Life^ I wish to
support the very reasonable demand for a serious
and official inquiry into the facts. I do not pretend
to pronounce any decisive opinion ; nor am I inclined
to a hasty or sentimental view of the case. What
we ask is a thorough examination with convincing
authority, not crude action without adequate in-
vestigation. I certainly believe, as was remarked by
others, that a strong prima facie case for inquiry
exists. Experts of much more weight than laymen
can have in such a matter think the same. What I
wish to urge is, that now is the time for inquiry, and
that it very much concerns the good name of our
nation to make it.
Let us consider what is at stake, supposing that the
mummy head is truly that of Oliver himself. Many
competent men, some on historical and some on
physiological grounds, believe that it is. If so, a
really dreadful responsibility lies upon us. Whatever
76
REMAINS OF OLIVER CROMWELL 77
view we take of the Civil War and the Usurpation,
whatever we hold about Oliver's character and designs,
no one doubts that he was de facto ruler of England
in a time of glory and power, that his is one of the
greatest names in the roll of English history, that he
was laid with magnificent ceremony in the Abbey by
the de facto Government of these islands. There he
lay with official sanction until the Restoration, when
one of the most foul and barbarous outrages recorded
in our history was perpetrated upon his remains. It
was not the action of a mob, it was not done in the
fury of revolution or civil war, nor was it the incon-
siderate act of irresponsible subordinates. It was
deliberately done by Parliament, the Government, and
the Crown with every form of loathsome brutality.
And in the judgment of many of us it still stands
an unatoned stain on our monarchy and our national
history. The sickening details of this outrage rise to
our gorge when we think of the Restoration and the
annals of Westminster.
The outrage is one almost without example in our
history. In France, in the Netherlands, in Germany,
the tombs of the great dead have been desecrated by
furious mobs in civil and religious insurrections. But
our history is happily almost wholly free from that
peculiar type of brutality. The one stain on our
history of this odious kind is the official and monarchic
outrage on the Protector's bones. It would be diffi-
cult to find in European history another instance
where a monarchy and a Parliament had inflicted in
cold blood this vindictive desecration on the ruler
who for years had maintained its honour amongst the
nations, and had carried its flag to a foremost place
in the earth. Suppose that a Spanish Viceroy had
desecrated the tomb of William the Silent at Delft,
or that a Bourbon Restoration were even yet to
78 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
desecrate the tomb of Napoleon in the Invalides.
What would be the feelings of a Dutch patriot, or
of a French patriot, if he had good reason to believe
that the severed head of William, or that of Napoleon,
were this very day to be seen in a box in a country
house ? Every Frenchman or any Dutchman, of
decent feeling, whatever his religion or his politics,
would exclaim in wrath and disgust "In God's
name, let us know if this thing can be ! " Now a
great many of us think that it is quite possible such
a thing really is, with regard to the outraged remains
of Oliver, and we think it becomes this nation's honour
to find out the truth.
I have never pretended to offer any conclusive
opinion in a difficult problem of the kind ; and I
only took up the inquiry with great hesitation and
repugnance. The subject is a gruesome and painful
one in any case ; and, to those of us who profoundly
revere the memory of our great Protector, almost
horrible and repulsive. No one with such a sense
can witness the uncovering of a relic which, whatever
it be, is an appalling sight, without a qualm of divided
feeling that, maybe, he is looking at the features of
one of the grandest spirits our English soil ever reared
or, it may be, on some nameless skull that curiosity
or imposture may have invested with interest. In
my own case, the very depth of veneration with which
I should bow my head before the true remains of the
hero made me very loth to admit that so extraordinary
a survival of such a relic was possible. I believe that
was the feeling of Carlyle, and that he could not bring
himself to examine it with patience.
Gradually, and by a convergent set of testimonies,
I have come to think that such a survival is not only
possible, but probable. The documentary history of
the relic is very far from adequate ; but it is perfectly
REMAINS OF OLIVER CROMWELL 79
reasonable and consistent so far as it goes. Under
the circumstances, a perfectly unbroken and complete
history would be, in the highest degree, unlikely to
exist. If the head which undoubtedly fell one night
from Westminster Hall be still above ground, it would
only be preserved in a secret and surreptitious way.
The principal evidence I take to be, the obvious corre-
spondence of the mummy head with the authentic
portraits and busts of Oliver, and especially with the
cast taken after death on which Carlyle relied. I
have made a study of all these portraits and busts, and
I cannot detect one feature or one circumstance
wherein the relic fails. The extraordinary combina-
tion of incidents is this an embalmed mummy head,
corresponding minutely to the portraits and busts of
Oliver, severed from the body long after death, and after
embalming, fixed upon an ancient halberd head, itself
bearing marks of long weathering, and the whole
piece with its integuments, hair, bony structure, flesh,
and iron spike minutely corresponding to the history
of the relic itself extremely probable and consistent.
What ingenuity could combine all these elements
the head of a mummy resembling Oliver so closely as
to convince biologists and sculptors, which had been
severed from the body after embalming, and was en-
crusted on an antique lance-head ? And to what end
was such strange ingenuity directed ? The relic is
not for sale, nor on show, nor has it been thrust upon
the public notice. For nearly the whole of the
century it has been honourably preserved by two
families, who regard it as a sacred trust.
I am very far from asking any one to take my
opinion on the matter, which after all only amounts
to a prima facie case of strong probability. What we
ask for now is an inquiry an authoritative and con-
clusive inquiry to place the matter at rest before the
8o MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
statue is set up. It is really a cruel thought that, for
aught we know, the grandest head that ever sat on
English shoulders may be lying loose in the house of
a private owner ; the head, be it remembered, which
an English King and Parliament so foully disinterred,
cut off, and set up in mockery at the gateway of
Parliament. To leave this possibility floating about
as a matter of periodical gossip is really to continue
and approve the original outrage.
Now, the inquiry can be made a very simple and
easy one. I suggest that a small Commission should
be asked to investigate and report to the Home Secre-
tary. It so happens that there are many descendants
of the Protector amongst our public men, especially
in the present Government and party in office. Fore-
most stand a late Cabinet Minister, and our most
learned living historian. Lord Ripon, the highest in
rank of the known descendants of Oliver, would make
an admirable chairman ; Mr. S. Rawson Gardiner,
another descendant, would, of course, be at his side.
Sir John Lubbock, also a descendant, would represent
the scientific question ; the Regius Professors of
History at Oxford and Cambridge, and certainly Mr.
C. H. Firth, as a Cromwellian expert, should be
added. There might be a sculptor, say Mr. Thorny-
croft, who is preparing the statue, and possibly an
expert in craniology and in taxidermy, or the like.
All we want is an authoritative opinion from men of
varied experience. A month or two of careful sifting
of evidence, a few hours of actual inspection, and
half a dozen sittings would dispose of the whole affair.
And, whatever were the report of the Commission,
the matter would be set at rest for ever.
But in case such a Commission were to report that
in their opinion there is sufficient ground to believe
the relic to be in truth the outraged head of our great
REMAINS OF OLIVER CROMWELL 81
Protector, then the Government should address the
Dean of Westminster, having obtained the sanction
of the Crown, and ask Parliament to efface the
atrocious blot upon its annals by formally replacing
the surviving fragment of our great Dictator in the
very vault where the nation laid him in glory and
honour nearly two centuries and a half ago. Long
as is the interval, it is not too late to atone for an
unparalleled atrocity. And to those whose instinct it
is to leave things alone, we would say : In any case
the outraged remains of some Englishman still cry
out for peaceful burial it may well be the outraged
remains of one of the greatest Englishmen our land
ever bore.
The proper resting-place for any remnant of the
Protector's bones which chance may have spared is
unquestionably the vault in Henry VI I. 's Chapel,
where the nation laid him. For years past many of
us have visited that solemn corner of the Abbey year
by year, and rehearsed the tale of ignominy with
yearning for some ultimate reparation of the national
crime. Our glorious Abbey, unlike St. Denis or the
Pantheon in Paris, has no desecrated tombs but these.
And the bitter memories they still awaken in us
rise, unbidden and irrepressible, in the midst of the
pilgrimages we make to our national burying-place
of the mighty dead.
In the Abbey should be laid in final rest any
relic of Oliver that might conceivably be recovered.
Another suggestion has been made, which we need
not discuss until it is plain that some obstacle could
be raised to this obvious reburial, on behalf of the
Abbey or the Crown. Some have thought that
the relic itself might be embodied in the pedestal
or beneath the statue of Oliver, so that the new
effigy would be at once monument and actual tomb.
G
82 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
There is something to be said for the idea ; but it is
one which it is needless to discuss. The proper place
for the new statue of Oliver would be Charing Cross,
and I should like to see the fine statue of Charles I.
removed to the neighbourhood of the beautiful banquet-
ing hall where he died. Oliver himself should have
no connection with Parliament, nor should he stand
in its environs at all. He belongs to England, and
not to the three kingdoms which our Parliament (at
least as yet) claims to represent. Let Oliver stand in
Charing Cross hard by the very spot where some of
his bravest Ironsides shed their blood.
THE CENTENARY OF GIBBON
1894
THE present year is the hundredth anniversary since the
death of the greatest of all English historians. Edward
Gibbon died in London, in January 1794, in his fifty-
seventh year. His reputation has been so perfectly
established since the appearance of the first volume of
the Decline and Fall in 1776, it has been so unbroken,
it is so continuously growing, that there is as little
need for any formal commemoration of his achieve-
ment as there is for that of Shakespeare or Bacon.
And his life was so simple, so transparent, and has
been told by himself and by his friends with such
ingenuous familiarity, that there would seem to be at
first sight no occasion for any further research into his
labours, or for any special revival of interest in his
memory.
There are some circumstances, however, of a rather
peculiar kind which make it a genuine concern of
English literature to ask for some further light, to
review what the great historian left at his premature
death, and to bring his personality before the world
ere the means of so doing shall have been effaced
by time. The National Portrait Gallery (which has
likenesses of Peg Woffington and of John Wilkes) has
no portrait at all of Edward Gibbon. The only
83
84 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
recognised portraits are in private hands, and not
accessible to the public. The house at Putney in
which he was born, his house at Lausanne, the house
in which he died, in St. James's Street, have all been
destroyed. There is no record of him in our great
burying-places, not even a bust or a tablet. The
bones of Edward Gibbon lie in a vault of a small
village church in Sussex, a spot with which, except by
friendship, he himself had no kind of connection, and
where he was merely an occasional visitor. Not one
in a thousand, or in ten thousand, of his ardent
admirers has ever stood beside his quiet grave, and
few of them, perhaps, could say where his body has
found rest. The public at large has never seen either
portrait, bust, inscription, manuscript, relic, or any
visible memento to recall to them the greatest historian
of our language, or to give voice to the honour we all
feel for one of the most signal triumphs of our litera-
ture. We cannot be said to have erred by any excess
of hero-worship in the case of our great historian.
But there is something more than this, and that of
a practical kind. Gibbon died before he had completed
his fifty-seventh year. He was not worn out ; his
mind had never been in such activity ; he still talked
of his being "a good life for ten, twelve, or perhaps
twenty years." His great work had been completed
more than six years before ; he was still an indefatig-
able student, and was preparing his Antiquities of the
House of Brunswick. Death suddenly cut short this
busy career an end largely due to neglect and im-
prudence about a week after his return from his
friend's house in Sussex. He made this lifelong friend,
John B. Holroyd, Lord Sheffield, his executor, who
buried him in the Sheffield mausoleum in the church
of Fletching, near East Grinstead in Sussex. Lord
Sheffield was the possessor of the well-known portrait
THE CENTENARY OF GIBBON 85
by Reynolds and that by Warton dated 1774, and
stated by Lord Sheffield to be " by far the best likeness
of him that exists." Lord Sheffield also had all
Gibbon's manuscripts, his memoirs, essays, diaries and
journals, materials for the House of Brunswick, and all
his other letters.
As is well known, Lord Sheffield issued two quarto
volumes in 1796, containing the historian's miscel-
laneous works ; and again, in 1814, he issued a second
edition in five octavo volumes, with much additional
matter. For what posthumous work of Gibbon's it
possesses the world is exclusively indebted to Lord
Sheffield, who had also portraits, manuscripts, corre-
spondence, and every other relic of the great historian.
He discharged his task with great diligence, discretion,
and devotion to the memory of his friend. But after
the lapse of a hundred years, and the vast increase in
the world-wide fame of Edward Gibbon, it seems
reasonable to ask that the present generation should
have the means of deciding for itself whether his
literary executor has omitted nothing which the world
would care to have.
Friendship constant, pure, generous, and warm
friendship was the ennobling trait in Gibbon's far
from heroic nature ; and it formed the main beauty of
his simple life. His love for his aunt, Catherine
Porten, for his stepmother, for Deyverdun, for the
Neckers, redeems his biography from commonplace.
But, above all, his friendship with Lord Sheffield is a
landmark in the history of literature in their age.
Nothing is more natural or more honourable than
Holroyd's devotion to his great friend's memory. He
buried him in his own family tomb, carried off all his
remains, edited his memoirs and correspondence, and
undertook a careful selection of his manuscripts, essays,
and materials for publication. Lord Sheffield made
86 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
himself more than the Boswell of Gibbon ; he not
only published his Life and remains, but he took
effective care that no one else should ever intrude on
his own labour of love, or add by one line to the Gibbon
literature which he himself judged fit to entrust to the
public eye. Such devotion, such zeal, such jealousy
for the memory of his illustrious friend, are much to his
honour. But now that a century has passed, we may
fairly ask to have some review of the execution of this
difficult task.
This is not the case of a great writer having made
his own selection of his writings, and forbidding publi-
cation of whatever he judged unworthy of his reputa-
tion. That veto ought, as a general rule, to be
religiously respected though few of us would go so
far as to burn the manuscript of the jEneid. The
detestable trick of publishing any scrap from a great
man's pen that an editor can beg, borrow, or steal
should be sternly suppressed. There is nothing of the
kind here. Gibbon made no selection, put no veto on
any publication. Within twenty hours of his death
he talked of living for years, and evidently anticipated
a new literary career and the completion of his second
great work. The selection made of his remains, the
veto upon any further publication, was the sole act of
his friend, the first Lord Sheffield ; and it is now a
hundred years old. However judicious the choice,
however proper the embargo, it cannot be held con-
clusive, without fresh examination, by posterity for
evermore. Nor can it possibly bind the present
representative of the house, who was born long after
the death of the first Earl.
There is a strong, perhaps an unreasonable often
it is an unreasoned prejudice against centenary com-
memorations in this country. But the practice of
other nations, and the growing tendency of the public
THE CENTENARY OF GIBBON 87
mind, make something of the kind inevitable ; and they
certainly have their convenience. The "Services,"
public officials, Society, and the world in general
would greatly miss the suppression of birthdays,
jubilees, and anniversaries of royal or public personages
and great national events. A centenary is often a
convenient occasion for doing some forgotten duty,
recalling some fading memory, or repairing some
public omission or default. And it is a public default
that our national collections contain no likeness of the
greatest historian of modern times, that our national
monuments contain not a tablet to record his name,
that his memory is not kept alive by a single object
of any kind in any public place or museum, that not a
single living scholar has ever had access to the mass of
writings he left, which still remain sealed up in a
country house.
There can be no need at the present day for any
new eulogium upon Gibbon's work, nor any doubt as
to his true place in the world's abiding literature. As
the Athenian orator said : "When one is speaking to
those who know, there is no occasion for a long
harangue." The late Mr. Cotter Morison who,
after so much historical promise, was cut off prema-
turely has given us in his admirable Life of Gibbon
(The Men of Letters Series, 1878) an estimate of
our great historian so just, so mature, so sympathetic,
so enthusiastic, that it would be in vain to attempt to
add to it. Mr. Morison has stated with decision and
weight Gibbon's shortcomings and limitations, as well
as his supreme merit. The Decline and Fall is not
the work of a philosopher ; it is not altogether
scientific history ; it is not without very grave mis-
judgments. But it is a consummate work of art ; it
unites vast learning with a perfect mastery of lucid
narration, superb good sense with unfailing acumen,
88 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
vivacious wit, and brilliant vitality that irradiates the
whole enormous field.
The Decline and Fall is the most perfect book that
English prose (outside its fiction) possesses, meaning
by book a work perfect in design, totus^ teres^ atque
rotundus, symmetrical, complete, final, and executed
from beginning to end with the same mastery on one
uniform plan. There is no other history extant
which can be put beside it, if we reckon all the
following qualities and conditions : (i) its immense
field, both in extent of area and in epochs of time ;
(2) its consummate concentration and grasp of view ;
(3) its amazing range of learning and curious accuracy
of detail ; (4) its pomp of movement and splendour of
style. There have been before and since more subtle
observers and more truly enlightened spirits. There
have been historians quite as learned, who have made
even fewer errors, and some who have written in a
purer form. But no historian has ever combined
all Gibbon's supreme gifts. And, accordingly, the
Decline and Fall remains the type of the perfect
literary history, just as the Zeus of Pheidias remained
the type of the father of gods and men.
As Mr. Cotter Morison has so judiciously explained,
Gibbon was the first to give to the world a complete
history on the largest scale and with profound original
research. And his subject is one so mighty, his
scheme so vast, his execution so brilliant, that it still
remains in a class by itself as yet unapproached,
gaining by the efflux of time rather than losing in
value. His true theme is the complex stormy evolu-
tion of the modern world out of the ancient world,
the terrible and laboured transition from polytheism
and slavery to monotheism and free industry. And
this is the most critical and protracted transition in
the annals of mankind. The geography of his
THE CENTENARY OF GIBBON 89
subject embraces the old world from the Hebrides
to the Indus, from the deserts of Tartary to the
mountains of Atlas. His topic is the history of
civilisation over thirteen centuries. And this vast
canvas is filled without confusion, without effort,
without discord, by one glowing, distinct, harmonious
composition.
This is the supreme merit of Edward Gibbon,
that he produced the first perfect literary history on
a grand scale one which still remains the most
perfect we know. The only ancient history which
in breadth of subject, epical splendour of imagination
and beauty of narration, can be compared with his
is the Roman history of Livy, of which, alas, we
have only fragments. But we can hardly regard the
delightful chansons de gestes of the glorious Augustan
improvisatore as history in our sense of the term, for
his whole soul turned to rhetorical effect and not to
authentic record. But Gibbon fused the pomp and
clang of Livy's epic with the conscientious veracity
of Caesar's Memoirs. Herodotus has a field as wide
almost as Gibbon's, a spirit of inquiry as insatiable,
and has painted certain great scenes with an even
nobler art. But the Father of History was obviously
not equipped with the elaborate historical apparatus
of a modern library ; and his ever fresh and fascinat-
ing muses do not group into an organic composition
of the highest art. Each muse in turn takes up her
favourite subject legend, antiquities, voyages and
travels, anecdotes, fairy tales, memoirs, and battle
scenes but their inexhaustible encyclopaedia does
not form one continuous epic. Gibbon has combined
the epic unity of Livy with the infinite variety of
Herodotus, the vivacity and portraiture of Plutarch,
and the punctilious truthfulness of Caesar. He com-
bined the minute accuracy and vivid detail of the best
90 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
memoirs with the vast survey and poetic transfiguration
peculiar to the highest type of history. And he was
the first, and the greatest, of those who have done
this.
The true devotees of Gibbon are the foremost in
restraining their admiration within due limits, and
in frankly admitting the grave shortcomings of the
master. No one has done this more thoroughly than
Mr. Morison. He has abundantly shown that
Gibbon is in no sense to be judged as a philosophic
historian, that he was not a philosopher at all, that
he did not penetrate into the deepest truths behind
the record of events, that he sadly misjudged some
things of prime importance. But in Gibbon's century
the philosophy of history was in mere germ, and what
are now the commonplaces of every student were
truths concealed from them of old time. No one
will pretend that Gibbon possessed the profound
insight into the human mind of Thucydides, or of
Tacitus, of Julius Caesar ; we may add of De
Comines, of Bacon, or of Hume. He did not see
as deeply behind the veil of the heart and of social
movements as any of these. But of all these men,
Hume alone wrote history on a really grand canvas,
and, as we all know, Hume painted a great historical
picture without "studying from the life" at all. He
did all that a man of genius and a consummate writer
could do with a very cursory knowledge of his facts.
But Gibbon, though a great writer, was even greater
in research. And though he was not a profound
moralist, and wrote before such a science as sociology
had been dreamed of, his task was very different from
that of keen thinkers who meditate upon men and
events of their own age, or on things that passed
under the eyes of their own fathers and grandfathers.
The writer of history has a very different task from
THE CENTENARY OF GIBBON 91
that of the writer of annals or memoirs and in many
ways a much more difficult task.
Let us never pretend that Gibbon was a philosopher.
Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Leibnitz,
Hume, perhaps we may add Vico and Pascal, had yet
deeper insight to follow the dynamics of society.
Both Montesquieu and Hume, his immediate pre-
decessors, stood on a totally superior level as social
philosophers. With all their glaring misconceptions,
prejudices, and blunders, even Bossuet, Voltaire,
Condorcet, and Burke had a clearer vision into social
evolution and the grand battle of ideas and manners
than ever Gibbon attained in his fifty years of
voracious historical study. Nor need we deny that
some of Gibbon's own contemporaries wrote history
more in the spirit of philosophy. Voltaire, with all
his perversity, was an even superior artist, and had a
truer sense of the paramount mastery of ideas. And
Robertson's State of Europe showed a sounder historical
judgment than the Decline and Fall. Robertson's
best work preceded Gibbon's by some ten or fifteen
years ; Voltaire's and Hume's both by some twenty-
five or thirty years. So that Gibbon was certainly
not the earliest real historian of the eighteenth
century, and he was certainly by no means the most
eminent social thinker. Yet, notwithstanding, given
all these qualifications, he was the greatest literary
historian.
He was essentially the consummate literary artist
who transmutes mountains of exact research into a
complex mass, glowing with life in all its parts, and
glorious to contemplate as a whole. This is a literary,
rather than a philosophical, feat ; and as such it must
be judged. Its art is akin to that of the epic poet
who works out a grand plot in symmetrical order,
with episodes, incidents, digressions, but on a con-
92 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
sistent scheme, with beauty in each part and memor-
able form in each line. Now, it is beyond dispute
that Gibbon's subject and scheme far transcend in
breadth and importance to humanity those of any
other historian, even those of Herodotus and Livy,
Henri Martin, Grote or Milman, if we put aside such
manuals as those of Heeren, Becker, Ranke, and
Freeman. This is also beyond doubt, that no
historian of ancient or modern times has ever shown
the creative and formative imagination triumphing
over such transcendent difficulties and working on so
grand a scale. Carlyle's French Revolution is perhaps
a typical example of this power to infuse exact record
with poetic vitality, but Carlyle's masterpiece gives
us the story of five, or at most of twenty years, and of
one country, or, rather, of one city. Gibbon's epic
history is the story of mankind over the planet during
thirteen centuries. And Gibbon's story is even more
accurate, more brilliant, more organic, more truly a
work of art than is Carlyle's.
And what vigour, what wit, what a clarion ring
in every sentence from the first line of the first
volume to the closing phrase of the last ! How it
holds the attention, how it leaves its imprint on the
memory, how it conjures up scenes to the eye. It
is like watching some interminable procession, as of
a Roman triumph some Caesar returning from his
Eastern victories, with warriors of all races, costumes,
and colours, and the trophies of barbaric peoples, and
the roar of many tribes, strange beasts, the pomp of
war, and the spoils of cities. We need not insist that
it is a perfect style, or a style without grave limita-
tions or defects. It has not the lucid simplicity of
Voltaire and of Hume, nor the grace of Addison, nor
the pathos of Burke. It is too elaborate, too stiff
with jewelry, and too uniform in texture. And
THE CENTENARY OF GIBBON 93
perhaps these defects have induced the most versatile
of living critics to put on record his memorable
saying that he did not care for Gibbon except for his
Memoirs. This is as if one said that he did not care
for Shakespeare except for the Sonnets.
A famous authority on the beautiful was dis-
appointed with the Atlantic ; but we must not take
these purists too literally. The Atlantic becomes
rather grandiose, and at last somewhat monotonous ;
and so, Gibbon's interminable antithesis and unbend-
ing majesty do pall upon the constant reader, if he
takes in too much at a sitting. But how splendid is
the vigour, the point, the precision of the language ;
and, with all its faults, how well fitted to rehearse
these "strange stories of the deaths of kings," how
akin to the theme and to the glowing scheme of
the painter's colouring ! It is impossible to hurry
through your Gibbon ; you cannot skip ; you cannot
take in a description at a glance ; you cannot leave
out the adjectives, or jump the second half of a
clause. You may take up your Decline and Fall^ of
which you can repeat pages by heart ; you may have
read it fifteen times, but the sixteenth reading will
give you a phrase of which you had not previously
caught the full sense, or throw light on something
which has long been a puzzle. And how fixed in the
memory are the quips and innuendos, the epigrams
and the epithets, with which the page coruscates like
a piece of jewelry. It may not be a pure style, it is
certainly not a model style, but it is one that gives a
gorgeous colour to a supremely organic composition.
Needless, too, now to enlarge on Gibbon's con-
scientious research, his wonderful accuracy, and the
instinct which carries him sure-footed across the
rotten and worthless rubbish whereon he had to
tread. " That wonderful man monopolised," says
94 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Freeman, u the historical genius and the historical
learning of a whole generation. . . . The encyclo-
paedic history of 1300 years, as the grandest of
historical designs, carried out alike with wonderful
power and with wonderful accuracy, must ever keep
its place." This from the most scrupulously accurate
of modern historians, who so seldom found anything
accurate outside of the Constitutional History of
England, is conclusive. The accuracy of Gibbon's
work is only equalled by the vast range of his
knowledge ; and even this is surpassed by the
grandeur of his design and the splendour of his
handling. Such accuracy never before went with
such brilliancy ; such breadth of conception with
such literary art. Thucydides, for all his consummate
veracity, is often obscure, trivial, and sometimes
tedious. Tacitus, with all his insight into character
and mastery of phrase, remains always the Roman
noble of cast-iron type and limited world. We no
more expect critical exactness from Herodotus or
Livy than we do from Homer or Virgil. The great
painters of historical events are not supposed to be
given to laborious research ; the great memoir-
writers are ipso facto confined to their own memory ;
and the profound antiquarians are almost invariably
dull. But we take down our Gibbon time after
time, knowing that we can turn up chapter and verse
for every sentence, and yet are stirred and delighted
by his pictures, as if it were a familiar poem or a
work of fiction.
This need not debar us from admitting very serious
defects in his work. His perverse misconception of
Christianity, his cynical depreciation of its noblest
chiefs, his incurable taste for scandal, his disbelief in
heroism, in popular enthusiasm, in purity, in self-
devotion, and his own epicurean, unromantic, aristo-
THE CENTENARY OF GIBBON 95
cratic habit of mind, very seriously blot his great work
and cloud his own memory. Neander, Gfrorer, Von
Sybel, Michaud, Lacroix, Guizot, Milman, Michelet,
Carlyle, Froude, Freeman, Green, have a far truer
conception of the Middle Ages, the Crusades, of
Feudalism and its great chiefs, of the Catholic
Church and its services to civilisation, than has
Gibbon. They are constantly right where he is
wrong, and they tell us much of which he is quite un-
informed. But, for all that, no one of these excellent
men has given us a single work which can compare
with the Decline and Fall in breadth, in knowledge,
in unity of conception, and in splendour of form.
Let us, then, in the hundredth year after its
author's death, lay a wreath upon his tomb, for we
specially need to keep him as a type before us. The
age is one of interminable specialism, colossal research,
microscopic minuteness of examination ; and our
mountains of documents are become very Pelions
upon Ossa. All this is right and necessary ; and
Gibbon was an accomplished specialist, a glutton of
research ; no man so microscopic, so minute, so
documentary, in the true sense and in the right way.
But then Edward Gibbon was much more. His
gigantic accumulation of facts and indomitable ac-
curacy were not the ends of his labour but the instru-
ments. Research was to him, like grammar or
scholarship, not his title to honour, but his raw
material for thought and creation. He did not
discharge his note-books in a heap like bricks from
the brickyard, and leave us to build them up into a
house as we pleased. He built us the house, and did
not ask us to come into it till it was perfect from
foundation to roof- ridge, ornamented, elaborated,
habitable, and pleasant to dwell in. His teeming
brain disdained the aqueous placidity with which
96 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Bavius flows on through one hundred mild and
meandering chapters ; his creative genius abhorred
the rough-hewn masses of stone which year by year
Masvius unloads upon us from a thousand quarries.
When we grow weary of histories which are nothing
but undigested note-books or copies from the dullest
jottings of some contemporary memoir histories
without form, without mind, without imagination,
without purpose, without beginning, middle or end
when we yearn for a book for a man, an idea within
the cover, then, for the tenth or the twentieth time,
we take down the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire^ and we have one of the greatest dramas of
human civilisation, rehearsed with the ordered imagina-
tion of a poet and the monumental form of a con-
summate master of language.
THE CARLYLE HOUSE
1895
THE dedication to the public of the house in Chelsea
where Thomas Carlyle lived and died marks an on-
ward step in our growing habit of reverence for the
earthly work amongst us of our mighty dead. So far
as I know, this is the first time that London has. so
to speak, consecrated an entire house to the memory
of one of her worthies. Long ago, the house in which
Shakespeare was born has been preserved for the
nation, and, indeed, for the civilised world. Recently,
the little cottage which sheltered Milton at Chalfont
whilst he wrote his last poem has been given to the
public. The homes of Scott, of Byron, of Shelley,
though in private hands, are the object of many a
pilgrimage. But London has hitherto been even
more chary than England in general to take note of
the habitations and haunts of its famous denizens.
How few Londoners have even seen the house in
Gough Square where Johnson wrote his Dictionary,
or the house in which Dryden died, or the gravestone
of Goldsmith in the Temple, or the houses where
Dickens and Thackeray wrote.
But now the friends and admirers of Carlyle have
rescued from decay the house in which he toiled, poured
forth his soul, and died ; and they have dedicated it
97 H
98 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
to the public as a memorial, just as the followers of
Auguste Comte have acquired and preserved the house
in which he lived and died in Paris. It is a kind of
hero-worship not to be undertaken lightly, not to be
pushed too far, apt to degenerate into sentimentality,
fussiness, cliquism and other trivialities and egoisms.
But with Thomas Carlyle we are safe. Our regard
for his memory, his home, the portraits, and relics of
him is genuine, spontaneous, irrepressible. Chelsea
which has been the residence of Sir Thomas More and
Locke, of Swift and Steele, and Smollett and Walpole,
of Leigh Hunt, Turner, and George Eliot has long
been vocal with memories of Thomas Carlyle. There
are Carlyle Square, Carlyle Mansions, the statue
within a few yards of his home, and now there is a
Carlyle House, a public museum, the centre of a
general pilgrimage.
Let no one suppose from the words of qualification,
even of reproach, which are so often used about Carlyle
by those who reverence him most, that such dissent
is incompatible with profound respect. Few of us,
indeed, are followers of the gospel of Carlyle if there
can be a gospel of any idiosyncrasy so solitary and so
fulminant we are not followers, but grateful hearers
of his words. We cannot speak of him without
breaking out into language that sounds like criticism,
because we do not care to swear allegiance to his
infallibility. He himself has taught all who care to
hear him to be sincere first, to speak out what is in
them, and to take orders from none in the free air of
personal beliefs. Even as we listened to Mr. Morley's
eloquent and wise address, an enthusiast was heard to
whisper that the chairman himself seemed at times to
take upon him the office of advocatus Diaboli. I have
had occasion to speak of Carlyle as an intellectual
power in more than one piece, and in each I have
THE CARLYLE HOUSE 99
been stirred to disclaim, to qualify, to abate very much
in the homage it was my purpose to offer. It is the
peculiar quality of the great teachers of new truth,
especially in the moral and spiritual realm, to awaken
what he so truly called the " wrestlings of soul," which
go down to the depths of defiance as well as rise to
heights of loyalty and trust. All the great inspirers
of youth stir these wrestlings. There was no truer
prophecy in the Gospel than the words, " I came not
to send peace but a sword." And so Carlyle, like
all the deeper moralists, sent a sword into modern
society, into each hearer's spirit. It pierced him to
the quick, and stung him into many a struggle within
him which seldom issued in simple discipleship.
But the dedication to his memory of his home in
Chelsea, to be for ever a sort of London cenotaph of
his genius, is the season for other thoughts than for
" wrestlings of spirits " ; it calls for sweeter and more
pious recollections. I was one of those who, without
being in any sense intimates or friends, were occasion-
ally admitted to his house, and enjoyed the privilege of
hearing him talk. In response to sundry messages
that he would see me, I called one afternoon in Cheyne
Row, and was received with a most gracious and
genial courtesy. He made me feel at home at once,
and he talked on with a simple and hearty openness of
thought, full of drollery, epigram, laughter, and racy
deliverance on men and things, with warm kindliness
towards his visitor, a manly forgetfulness of himself
and his position as acknowledged master in letters, and
an utter absence of embarrassment, discontent, or
spleen. He rolled forth Latter-Day Pamphlets by the
hour together in the very words, with all the nick-
names, expletives, and ebullient tropes that were so
familiar to us in print, with the full voice, the Dum-
fries burr, and the kindling eye which all his friends
ioo MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
recall. It seemed to me the first time that I sat at his
fireside and listened to him that it was an illusion. I
seemed to be already in the Elysian fields listening to
the spirit rather than to the voice of the mighty
"Sartor." Could printed essay and spoken words be
so absolutely the same ? Was he reciting one of his
old pamphlets committed to memory, or was he really
speaking impromptu as thoughts passed through his
brain ? Was this really Thomas Carlyle, or was it
some mysterious personation of the man, made up to
represent the Sage, and dramatising his familiar speech ?
No ! it was all perfectly spontaneous, frank, and
simple ; and the generous old man was simply talking
freely to a young man who came to hear him talk.
And when, after a most memorable afternoon, he rose
to bid me farewell, and conducted me to his staircase
with a sweet and stately courtesy, I thought I had
rarely seen a more simple and genial dignity. How
the fierceness and crabbedness which the Memoirs
seem to attribute to much of his earlier life could ever
have dwelt in a nature so urbane, so hearty, so sym-
pathetic as that which I found in his later years, is
more than I can unravel. I have seen, and have
spoken with, some strong and famous men with
Gambetta, Mazzini, Garibaldi, John S. Mill, Tour-
geniefF but I can remember no more intense and
impressive personality than that of Thomas Carlyle.
I had seen him in earlier years in public places and in
society, walking with Froude and Fitzjames Stephen,
or on his historic and " humorous " horse Fritz. I
had even seen him receiving with artless gratification,
in a great London " crush," the fascinating homage of
many a grande dame ("the politest and gracefulest
kind of woman," we know the Master pronounced
her to be) but it was not till his latest years that I
had speech of him in his own house. He once took
THE CARLYLE HOUSE 101
me as his companion in a walk, and gave me earnest
and friendly counsel to betake myself from law to
letters a piece of advice which perhaps came too late
in my life to be of any service to me. On another
occasion I remember calling upon him at the instance
of the widow of my dear and honoured friend, Jules
Michelet, the historian. Madame Michelet was then
labouring, with all the energy of love and sorrow, to
raise a marble monument to her husband in Pere la
Chaise at Paris, and she was anxious to have the
thought and culture of Europe to join in the testimony
to the historian-poet of France. I accepted the com-
mission with reluctance and doubt ; but Carlyle
received the request with readiness, spoke warmly of
Michelet as a genuine man, and himself subscribed
the sum of five pounds. The gift of these English
admirers (amongst whom were also enrolled the names
of Charles Darwin, Joseph Chamberlain, and John
Morley) was recorded on the beautiful memorial
which we see to-day over the grave of the historian in
Paris. On this occasion, as on so many others which
have come to my notice, the whole nature of Carlyle
was inspired by generosity, sympathy, candour, manli-
ness genial interest in the young and the struggling
ones, ungrudging homage to great character and to
true genius.
It may have been with some surprise that certain
younger men heard Mr. Morley, with all his judicial
discrimination of Carlyle's powers, speak of him as
"the foremost figure in English literature during the
greater part of his life." And I have ventured to call
him, "by virtue of his original genius and mass of
stroke, the literary dictator of Victorian prose." Many
of our younger friends are puzzled by such language.
What does it mean ? To my mind it means this.
Not indeed that Carlyle was ever a critic, an arbiter, a
102 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
model, as Addison was, or as Johnson was, or as Voltaire
in France, and Goethe in Germany have been. Mac-
aulay, Hallam, or Southey more nearly filled such a part.
But the peculiar power of Carlyle was, by his superb
independence and the fiery impact of his genius, to
kindle a great variety of movements, and wake into
life many active minds. The Victorian age has been
one of singular activity, and of erratic and adventurous
energy. How many forms of this energy owed
inspiration to Carlyle ! Ruskin, Froude, Kingsley,
the Stephens, Tyndall, were avowed followers of his,
whilst we can see the traces of his mind in Tennyson,
in Huxley, in Maurice, in Freeman, in John Morley.
And if Browning, Arnold, George Eliot, Swinburne,
Morris, Symonds, move in a different world from that
of "Sartor," they have all been held spellbound at
seasons " by the glittering eye " of that ancient
Mariner. Of whom else, in the era between Byron
and Darwin, can the same be said ? No one would
compare Carlyle to Socrates. But as the Sage of
Athens used to call his function simply that of the
obstetric physician, who enabled those big with ideas
to bring them forth into the living air, so Carlyle had
something of this same gift that of helping ideas to
live and to come forth. Socrates, too, disclaimed any
system, any philosophy, any school. But a dozen
schools of very different kinds rose out of that ferment
of original questioning which the great moralist and
insatiable cross-examiner had scattered far and wide in
the market-place of thought.
Carlyle, too, had "his daemon," though what his
" daemon " was we know as little as in the case of
Socrates. Nor do any two of us agree exactly as to
what that daemon revealed to him or to us. But he
set us all thinking ; he inspired us with courage ; he
taught us to be honest, zealous, truthful, reverent.
THE CARLYLE HOUSE 103
Alas ! he was in much the very opposite of Socrates,
who lived in the world, with the world, a heroic
citizen, a soldier, a public counsellor, tolerant, jovial,
great-hearted, and indulgent almost to a fault. Carlyle
shut himself up with his books in that little home,
where his memory is now enshrined, knew nothing of
affairs except through books, and was too disdainful of
the world outside to sympathise with its troubles or
to comprehend its needs. Socrates was a true Sage.
Carlyle was preacher, rhapsodist, student. But it will
be long before we see his like again.
SCIENTIFIC HISTORY
1906
MR. HERBERT PAUL'S most interesting Life of Froude
has raised again the unsolved problem of the true
method of writing history. As Horace told his friend
long ago, it was a business full of peril and chance,
like walking over the crust of lava. But in our age
its difficulties are greatly increased. Not only has
the historian to meet the criticism of rival partisans,
but the scientific school and the literary school wage
incessant war on each other. And history to-day is
being made faster than it can be recorded. As the
greatest of historians put it in immortal words, a
strictly historical narrative of facts is wont to dis-
appoint those who want to be interested. Shall
history aim at being "a possession for all time," or
shall it seek to be " the success of the hour " ?
The conspicuous champions of Literary History
were, in old days, Livy and Plutarch ; in modern
times, Clarendon, Hume, Robertson, Alison, Michelet,
Thiers. The scientific historians of our own day
hold by Mommsen, Freeman, Stubbs, and Gardiner ;
and, we may add, so do the official representatives of
history in our Universities such as Bury, Firth, and
Oman. By common consent, Gibbon combined
Research and Literature as nearly as we are ever
destined to see them combined. And Macaulay,
104
SCIENTIFIC HISTORY 105
Froude, Carlyle, we may perhaps add Green, have
striven to do the same. All four have a multitude of
readers and long will have them, owing to their
brilliant literary power. The question still is, Can
we trust them as we trust Mommsen and Stubbs,
Gardiner, Bury, and Firth ?
Of all the literary historians of our day Froude has
been the most fiercely rebuked by the scientific school.
And now two warm admirers of his, one English, the
other foreign, have given us a studied defence of the
Freudian method. Mr. Herbert Paul, in his fascinating
Life^ very properly devotes more than a quarter of his
book to examining all that can be said for and against
the History of England. Froude had " a doctrine to
propound, a gospel to preach," says Mr. Paul. And
Dr. Sarolea of Brussels, and now of the University of
Edinburgh, in an eloquent volume of Essays^ proclaims
Froude to be a great historian, the " national historian
of England," on the very ground of his passionate
prejudices on behalf of persons and institutions. The
historian, says Dr. Sarolea, cannot be impartial, for
reasons whether of art, morality, or sociology.
Mr. Paul, as may be expected, takes a much more
guarded view. He is eminently aware of the idiosyn-
crasy and temptations which coloured Froude's splendid
narrative. " His besetting sin was a love of paradox."
" He was an advocate, an incomparably brilliant
advocate." " He was not a chronicler, but an artist,
a moralist, and a man of genius." And all through
his vigorous fourth chapter Mr. Paul eloquently
describes the spirit which sustained Froude in his
immense task, and the devotion with which he
pursued it over long years of toil. Mr. Paul does
not mince matters as to Froude's defects. " He was
an advocate rather than a judge." He gave undue
prominence to facts which told for his own cause.
io6 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
It is notorious that he was not always accurate in
detail. He set out on his task with a polemical
purpose. " Misquotation was too frequent a habit
with him." Even when gross errors had been pointed
out to him, Froude still left them in his text. All
this Mr. Paul admits.
In an equally vigorous fifth chapter, Mr. Paul
squires Froude in his grand joust with Freeman.
And Mr. Paul's citations from Freeman's own copy
of Froude s History^ with marginal notes, are indeed
amusing: "Beast," "vilest brute," "a lie," "may I
live to embowel J. A. Froude." It has already been
related that when Freeman sat down to attack Froude
in a review article he would have played a noisy piece
of music which he hated, to give him the needful fit
or ill-humour. Mr. Paul does right in showing us
the furious prejudice which animated these attacks.
But few historians will go with him when he says
that, "in patient assiduity of research, Froude was
immeasurably Freeman's superior." Mr. Paul has
shown ground for hesitating to accept the whole of
Freeman's criticism. On the other hand, he has
little idea of the extent of Froude's blunders. They
may be " mole-hills," as he calls them. But when a
meadow ceases to be green, and is turned brown with
mole-hills in every square yard, the pasture is sadly to
seek for the hungry cattle.
If Mr. Paul would carefully compare the printed
text of any one of Froude's books with the authority
which is there cited, he would find a mistranslation, a
misquotation, or a variation in almost every sentence.
What does he say when Froude tells "an apocryphal
anecdote," and adds " there is no reason why it should
not continue to be believed " ? What about his
" apocryphal " confession of Queen Catherine on her.
death-bed which represents her as doing exactly what
SCIENTIFIC HISTORY 107
she did not do ? What about " the most perfect
English history which is to be found in the historical
plays of Shakespeare " ? Mr. Froude was a very great
writer and almost a great dramatist. But he, too,
often studied his original " sources " in the spirit in
which Shakespeare studied his Holinshed. He sought
to draw out of the dry bones of the chronicles splendid
pictures of moving events, the play of great characters,
and the clash of contrasted natures and minds. C'est
magnifique^ mais ce nest pas Vhistoire.
Unfortunately, the habit of misquotation, small
slips, inadvertent "mole-hills," form not the serious
part of the charge against Froude as an historian of
authority. Even " mole-hills " cause nasty falls when
they inadvertently turn a negative into an affirmative.
The real defect of Froude's history is that, as his
friends and apologists agree, he made himself the
enthusiastic advocate of certain leading judgments
upon the Tudor Sovereigns, undertaking on crucial
points to reverse the current view and in that task
has failed. He has given us some splendid narratives,
and many powerful portraits of men and women.
He has done much to correct popular judgments, and
to qualify the prejudices of partisans against whom he
argues. But he has quite failed to satisfy independent
minds that Henry was a wise and benevolent states-
man ; that the Reformation was the beneficent work
of high-minded and godly patriots ; that Mary Stuart
was a mere fiend ; that Elizabeth was a heartless
tyrant. Freeman's vitriol has, perhaps, rather obscured
the true case. As Mr. Paul shows us, Freeman was
always violent, and often unjust. But Freeman did
not touch the serious charge the essential failure of
Froude to reverse accepted conceptions of historic
truth.
What are we to say to Dr. Sarolea's ingenious argu-
io8 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
ment that Froude was our great "national historian,"
not although but because he was a passionate advocate ?
The Edinburgh Professor tells us that the historian
cannot be artist, or moralist, or psychologist unless
he is an enthusiastic partisan ; that his text will be
colourless, his judgments neutral, and his figures
dummies. This is going very far beyond Mr. Paul,
or any reasonable friend of literature in history. It
is to confound the Judge with the advocate. The
historian ought, no doubt, to feel a steady flame of
enthusiasm for all great spirits, for all just causes
not for one but for all. His merit is to be judicial
to acquit the innocent with honour, to condemn
the guilty without fear. But just because he sits in
judgment on all parties alike, and because he has to
weigh and test every shred of evidence on both sides
equally, so he prostitutes his office, when he shows
favour towards any single party, or propounds any
partial estimate. Even when Carlyle restored Crom-
well to his true place in our history, he seriously
impaired his work by fanatical hero-worship.
Hero-worship and anathemas are alike false art as
well as shallow policy in history where Te Deum and
Commination Services have no place. The historian
holds a kind of mimic rehearsal of the Last Judgment,
only he has no Recording Angel to tell him the facts
truly. When the ghosts and shadows of the dead
rise before his sight from the past, he has before him
whole generations at once. None are wholly guilty,
none are wholly blameless. His task is to weigh
each sinner, not as if he were a saint, nor as if he
were a devil but to strike the true balance, neither
devoid of human sympathy with those who have borne
much grief, nor sparing of just indignation with those
who have lived to be a curse to their age. But the
essence of his task is to judge all equally together
SCIENTIFIC HISTORY 109
to conceive the whole human panorama in its entirety
and its true proportions.
The supreme task of the Muse of History the
incalculable difficulty is to present a broad and
glowing picture of a past age in its true proportions.
Neither artistic colour nor microscopic accuracy suffices
to do this. Literary brilliance is just as inefficient as
meticulous research. Both destroy the truth of pro-
portion literature by misleading us with false lights,
research by overwhelming its canvas with trivial
details.
The problem has never been better stated than by
Lucian in his delightful essay, " How to Compose
History." The perfect historian, he says, must start
with two indispensable qualifications "the one is
political insight, the other the faculty of expression."
You may acquire the gift of expression, he says, by
practice and study. But political insight is a rare
gift of nature. It is genius for affairs. The most
laborious student of documents without this gift is a
tedious pedant. The most brilliant advocacy, apart
from political insight, is merely a means of perverting
the truth. It is too little understood that no amount
of grinding old parchments, collating manuscripts,
and piling up facts, will outweigh political flair^ the
power of judging men and events with insight.
The great historian is really an unofficial statesman.
This insight of his can hardly be attained except by
those who have been conversant with affairs, in close
touch with those who rule or who advise rulers. All
great historians have been statesmen, or in intimate
relations with statesmen, in great times. Thucydides,
Polybius, Caesar, Tacitus, de Comines, Machiavelli,
Clarendon, Gibbon, Macaulay, Guizot, Thiers all
passed large parts of their lives in public life.
Hear Lucian's test of the great historian. Let
i jo MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
him be fearless, incorruptible, independent, a believer
in frankness and veracity ; one who will yield nothing
to his likes or dislikes j nor spare any one through
pity and good nature j an impartial judge, kind to all,
but too kind to none ; not of one nation, but a citizen
of the world, owning no hero, no king of men ; in-
different to what the public thinks or likes ; bent to
set down truly things which befell in fact. Thucy-
dides is the eternal model, who wrote, as he says, for
all time ; not Herodotus, who enchanted the Greeks
at their Festivals by eulogies on their noble selves.
THE NEW MOTLEY 1
1896
MESSRS. BELL AND SONS are still energetically pursuing
their task of adding to and improving the famous series
of Bohn's Libraries, which Thomas Carlyle pronounced
to be " the usefullest thing I know." As copyrights
expire, Messrs. Bell are constantly adding to the
Libraries, in the new and certainly pleasanter form,
reprints of standard works which "no gentleman's
library should be without." Amongst the latest addi-
tions is a reprint of Motley's Dutch Republic^ a book
of which it may be said that " no man's reading should
be without." And to this edition they have added a
biographical introduction by his countryman and
friend, Mr. Moncure D. Conway, and a good repro-
duction of the portrait of Motley after the picture
by Bischop, now the property of the Queen of the
Netherlands at The Hague.
To the hundreds of thousands of men and women
who have felt the thrill of a first reading of The Rise
of the Dutch Republic^ and to those who rejoiced that
the great Republic of the West should be officially
represented in England by a typical man of letters of
1 The Rise of the Dutch Republic. By John Lothrop Motley. A new
Edition in three volumes, with a Biographical Introduction by Moncure
D. Conway. Bohn's Standard Library.
Ill
ii2 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
America, it will be a pleasure to see the singularly
handsome, intellectual, and refined face of the historian
as given in this volume. It is a face little familiar to
the general reader ; and, as Motley has now been dead
for nearly twenty years, it can be remembered in life
by only a limited part of modern society. To those
who take up this volume, with its generous notice of
the author by his friend Moncure Conway, it is a
welcome frontispiece wherein we can see with our
eyes the grand brow, the delicate features, and the air
of power and resolution in the historian's whole
aspect.
John Lothrop Motley was born in Boston, Mass.,
in 1814, of an old New England Puritan family, that
traced descent to emigrants for conscience' sake, on
the one side from the North of Ireland, on the other
side from the English Midlands. Mr. Moncure
Conway, naturally and very rightly, dwells on the
literary life of the historian. Motley was also diplo-
matist, politician, and publicist, and for seven years
represented his country as Minister in Austria and in
England. But in this volume Mr. Conway gives us
almost exclusively a picture of the historian ; and this
was the only really important side of Motley's whole
career. It is the life of an ardent man of letters,
dominated by a high ideal of a great historical purpose.
This single purpose absorbed his whole life for more
than thirty years, until his death in May 1877. His
design was to describe from contemporary documents
the great struggle for freedom of belief which created
a powerful and independent republic in the Nether-
lands ; and no man ever devoted his life to study with
more industry and patience.
Motley, Mr. Conway tells us, belonged to that
inner circle of culture in New England which pro-
duced Emerson, Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
THE NEW MOTLEY 113
Wendell Phillips, Longfellow, and so many others.
He spent four years at Harvard College, 1827-31, and
then some four years in Germany and other parts of
Europe. At Gottingen he met Prince Bismarck, and
they became fellow-students at Berlin, intimate friends
and fellow-lodgers, sharing their meals and exercise.
This intimacy with the great statesman lasted through-
out Motley's life, and must have insensibly reacted on
his knowledge of men and affairs. Motley's early
studies were somewhat desultory, self-directed, and
wholly without academic or early success. Like
Gibbon, he was " sent down " by his college. Indeed
it is worth noting how very seldom eminent writers
of history have been distinguished by youthful or
scholastic triumphs. There seems to be some in-
stinctive opposition between them and their official
teachers. Returning to his native country in 1835
he was then in his twenty-second year Motley
devoted himself to literature he wrote romances,
poems, plays, sketches, essays, articles ; but it must be
admitted that the first ten years of his literary activity
were attended by no success, and, indeed, produced
little to deserve it.
But the course of these pieces, which turned so
largely on the Pilgrim Fathers and their early history,
directed Motley, about the age of thirty-three, to the
great struggle of the Dutch for freedom in religion and
in government. Motley's own account of the way in
which the grand subject took possession of his soul
may be set beside Gibbon's famous anecdote of the
origin of the Decline and Fall in the Church of the
Franciscans on the Capitol. " I have not first," said
Motley, " made up my mind to write a history, and
then cast about to take up a subject : my subject had
taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed me into itself"
He was warmly encouraged by Prescott, with whose
I
ii4 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Philip the Second he had feared to come into unfriendly
competition or damaging comparison ; and after some
ten years of labour The Rise of the Dutch Republic
appeared. He had been incessantly occupied over
documents and archives in Holland, Belgium, and
Germany. " Whatever may be the result of my
labours," he writes to Dr. Holmes in 1853, "nobody
can say that I have not worked hard like a brute beast ;
but I do not care for the result. The labour is itself
its own reward, and all I want. I go day after day to
the archives here (in Brussels), as I went all summer at
The Hague, studying the old letters and documents of
the sixteenth century. Here I remain among my
fellow-worms, feeding on those musty mulberry leaves
of which we are afterwards to spin our silk. . . . The
dead men of the place are my intimate friends. I am
at home in my cemetery. With the fellows of the
sixteenth century I am on the most familiar terms.
Any ghost that ever flits by night across the moonlit
square is at once hailed by me as a man and a brother.
I call him by his Christian name at once." It is a
typical picture of original research
. . . expertus credes quam gravis iste labor !
Mr. Conway gives us an interesting study of the
long labours which produced the work, the obstacles
that delayed its publication, and the wearisome search
for a publisher. It is one of the curiosities of literature
that one firm after another rejected'the book, which
at last was accepted by John Chapman at the author's
expense and risk. Motley thought it hardly worth
while to incur the expense of travelling from Vevey to
England "to secure a copyright which I could not
sell for ^100." It was deposited in the British
Museum, Oct. 20, 1855; but six months later Motley
writes from Italy that he supposes very few copies
THE NEW MOTLEY 115
have been sold. His publisher failed soon after, and
the receipts do not seem to have been large. As a
matter of feet, "77,000 copies were sold in England
during the first year of publication." Such are the
uncertainties of authorship and the mysterious ways of
the trade.
This is not the place for any new estimate of so
well-known a work as Motley's Dutch Republic^ which
has long passed into the class of standard histories,
such as are the handbooks of all historical study. The
latest student in that field, Ruth Putnam, in her
William the Silent (two vols., New York, 1895) very
truly describes the care with which Motley has been
used by all subsequent historians in Europe, and her
own admiration "for the untiring industry of his
laborious researches, and for the accuracy and skill of
his adaptations from the enormous mass of matter that
he examined." The forty years that have passed have
seen the publication and careful editing of many of
those contemporary records which Motley had to
study in manuscript. The Memoirs of Pontus Payen,
Renon de France, the correspondence of Cardinal
Granvelle, the publications of Gachard and Kervyn de
Lettenhove, have now enabled us to follow up this
period, without our personally "feeding on the mul-
berry leaves " in the archives of Brussels and The
Hague. But although a vast literature has grown up
round the great subject, it can hardly be said that
Motley has been corrected on very material points,
much less has he been superseded.
Motley's deficiencies, such as they are, certainly do
not lie in any want of industry, thoroughness, or
accuracy. All of these he had in a supreme degree.
But we can now see that he had a somewhat super-
abundant enthusiasm for his favourite heroes and
people, and a somewhat deficient strength of philo-
n6 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
sophic insight and calm. He can hardly be ranked
with the philosophic historians at all ; and no one has
claimed for him the magnificent power of Gibbon to
marshal in close array an enormous host of various
incidents and events. Motley's eloquence is not
always as chaste and simple as is required by our
modern taste ; and, though he is almost never tedious,
he has given disproportionate bulk to the story of a
single generation in so small a corner of Europe.
More serious defects are these. He has treated the
great William of Orange too much as a saint and
martyr, and too little as a man of his age. Hero,
statesman, mighty chief, and founder, as was William
of Nassau, he was a man who was always growing ; a
man who used all the resources familiar to his time ;
and, like all consummate opportunists, a man who was
perpetually foiling his opponents by superior craft and
alarming his colleagues by a change of front. He
professed in turn three different creeds, and was a
member of three successive Churches, without any
profound conviction of the minor professions or prac-
tices of any one of the three. To Motley he is always
too much the spotless ideal and religious enthusiast.
Nor does Motley adequately estimate the profound
roots of the Catholic reaction in Belgium, or enable
us to understand why, and in so short a time after the
rule of Alva, the Belgian provinces relapsed to the old
faith. We need something more than a partisan of
Puritan heroism to explain the revival of Catholicism.
I was a short time ago at High Mass on Sunday
morning in the Cathedral of Antwerp. As I recalled
the tremendous scene of iconoclasm enacted in that
very church 330 years ago, so splendidly described by
Motley, and then turned to the gorgeous ritual, the
noble music, the impassioned sermon, and the vast
throng of worshippers, who hour after hour crowded
THE NEW MOTLEY 117
round the many chapels and altars, knelt before the
images, gazed at the glorious pictures, and all the
statues, decorations, and symbols of the Catholic faith
I asked myself if the New England historian had
fully grasped those vast and abiding forces of which
Philip and Alva were the satanic incarnation.
Yet let us not call Motley a New England historian,
for he belongs to the Old as much as to the New
England. The best years of his life were passed in
Europe ; his last home was in England ; he died in
England ; he and his wife are buried in England ; he
married his daughters in England, and one of them, as
all the world knows, is the wife of the leader of Her
Majesty's Opposition. Old England divides the fame
of Motley with New England, and Englishmen will
thank his American fellow-citizen for giving us this
timely account of one who will long live amongst the
classics of the English tongue.
MAINE'S 'ANCIENT LAW REVISED
1906
FORTY-FIVE years after its first publication, and three
years after the expiry of the original copyright, the
famous book which founded in England the study of
Comparative Jurisprudence is about to start on a new
life. Ancient Law was published in 1861, and has
long grown to be a classical text. But as all classical
texts, especially in matters of law and of historical
research, soon become more or less antiquated by dis-
coveries which they themselves have stimulated and
partly suggested, so Ancient Law was of late years
tending to be thought superseded by later learning,
or disproved by more recent theories. Nothing of
the kind was true. But the book certainly had to
be brought up to date, and in sundry points it had to
be supplemented, explained, corrected, and justified.
This has been thoroughly well done by the man of
all others most qualified for such a task. Sir Frederick
Pollock, by his masterly "Introduction" and "Notes,"
appended to each of Maine's ten chapters, gives the
student all the explanations and corrections he needs,
and in fact launches Maine's first and typical work
upon a new career for the students of Comparative
Jurisprudence at home and abroad.
I am old enough not only to remember the
118
MAINE'S 'ANCIENT LAW REVISED 119
publication of the book in 1861, but to have attended
the course of lectures of which the book consists ;
and I was myself the pupil of Sir Henry Maine in
Lincoln's Inn in 1857. On the publication of the
volume with which I was so familiar, and which I
had seen in proof-sheets, I wrote in the Westminster
Review of 1 86 1 one of the earliest tributes to the
importance of the work, a paper which I know
satisfied the author himself. I remained in close
friendship with Sir Henry till his too early death in
1888; and I am still, with Sir Frederick Pollock,
one of his executors and trustees. It is needless now
to expatiate on the originality and value of Ancient
Law, but I may give from my own memory some
account of the part it has played in the development
of legal science.
When Maine first began to lecture at the Temple
in 1852, as Professor to the Inns of Court of Roman
Law and Jurisprudence, the British ignorance of
Roman Law and at any rate of Comparative Juris-
prudence was really a unique phenomenon. To the
successful case lawyer a "jurist " was a term of
reproach, meaning an ignorant impostor. And one
of the greatest masters of Real Property learning in
Lincoln's Inn would warn his pupils "against that
beastly book Justinian," by which he was believed
to mean the Institutes, for he had never heard of
Digest, Code, or Novels. The days of Selden and
Locke were long past, and even the time when
English lawyers sometimes followed a course of
study at Leyden. Blackstone, perhaps, would be
plucked to-day at Oxford for ignorance of the most
familiar rules in the Institutes. As to anything
like the history of legal ideas, it was hardly thought
worthy of notice. Bentham and Austin had brought
powers of rare acuteness to the analysis of law ; but
120 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
neither of them had any real historical training, nor,
indeed, any historical instincts. And in dealing with
the dominant conceptions of sociology all ex hypothesi
subject to the law of evolution the acutest logic is a
poor substitute for the study of the facts of progressive
development.
It is quite a commonplace with jurists that Maine's
Ancient Law opened a new era. In the half-century
since Maine began to lecture, the systematic study of
the " Corpus Juris " has taken its place in the Inns
of Court, in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge,
and London. Holland, Poste, Roby, Hunter, Bryce,
Muirhead, Clark, Goudy, Moyle, Greenidge have
worked systematically on this science ; whilst the
best works of German and French civilians are
ordinary text-books with our students. In the way
of the history of legal and social conceptions such
English writers as Tylor, Lubbock, M'Lennan,
Spencer, Lang, Pollock, Maitland, have removed from
English letters the opprobrium of treating English
law as something as sacred and as mysterious in origin
as the law of Moses. The movement itself was part
of the great tidal wave of Evolution which swept over
English thought about the middle of the nineteenth
century of which Darwin and Spencer were the
scientific and philosophical protagonists which pro-
duced the school of historical research of Stubbs,
Freeman, and Gardiner, the logical school of Mill
and Morley, the archaeological school of Frazer and
Westermarck. It would be extravagant to pretend
that Maine founded these movements but he touched
on them all ; and he was certainly the first to give
them brilliant literary form.
In forty -five years, during which some of the
acutest minds and some of the most profound scholars
in Europe have made a vast body of research in the
MAINE'S 'ANCIENT LAW REVISED 121
origins of human society and the evolution of social
institutions, it was, of course, inevitable that new
lights should be thrown on many of the problems
discussed in Ancient Law^ and some of its conclusions
be qualified and corrected. In this age, which has a
superstitious respect for the " latest " telegram and the
"newest" book, students were getting uneasy that
Maine did not know everything contained in the last
monograph issued in Germany, Russia, France, India,
or the Colonies, to say nothing of the indefatigable
output from American Universities. They can now
trust Sir Frederick Pollock, who knows all these, and
is in touch with the best scholarship of all these
countries, to point out where Maine's language has
to be supplemented, qualified, and revised. There
are eighteen " Notes " appended to the ten chapters,
which, with the " Introduction," make up about one-
third of the volume as new matter. Altogether,
Ancient Law may now be considered as much a new
work as if it had been recently compiled. There has
been, of course, no attempt to interpolate Maine's
text or to make such a ridiculous hash as the
" modernised " Blackstones present, nor is there any
pretension in the " Notes " to imitate Maine's
brilliant power of casting his apothegms into memor-
able phrases. But all debatable points have been
discussed with a learning at least as wide as Maine's,
and with a bibliography of the subject far more
complete than any open to the author a generation
ago.
The main points now noted are these. Maine's
incisive language must not be taken in too absolute
a way. He somewhat overrated the antiquity of
Roman Law, and gave a rather too systematic shape
to the XII. Tables. And we must guard against the
Continental use of such terms as " written law," and
122 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
remember that English lawyers use it in a different
sense. The most important corrections needed are
in Maine's third and fourth chapters on the " Law of
Nature," where he seems to ignore the extent to
which the Civil Law continued to influence mediaeval
jurists and churchmen. Nor is he right in his
account of the origin of what we call the " Law of
Nations." Maine perhaps placed Montesquieu's
constructive work higher than modern historians and
sociology would do. Nor need we be disturbed by
the ebb and flow of the eternal battle waged between
enthusiasts for the Patriarchal and the Matriarchal
theories, and around the prostrate forms of the archaic
brides as to " Early Forms of Marriage." Victory
is not yet declared if it ever will be. Maine's
dictum as to " Status " and " Contract " may require
limitation in terms, but in substance it is as sound as
it is luminous. On the whole, recent research rather
tends to confirm Maine's judgments, if his words are
not pressed too absolutely. And of all writers on
these obscure topics he clothes them in the most
brilliant literary form.
IMPERIAL MANNERS
1906
HISTORY does not repeat itself in periodic cycles, as
Vico and the older philosophy of history taught, but
it is curious how subtly the dominant ideals of an age
are repeated in the current ways and habits of men.
The Disraelite and Cecilite age of purple Imperialism,
which has happily ended in dust and ashes, has given
us some gaudy revivals of Imperial Rome in the first
century after Christ.
Nero is now the fashion. The most brilliant (and,
indeed, the most erudite) spectacle ever presented to a
London audience takes us to the centre of the Neronian
world. The Universities exhaust their learning in
vivid pictures of Imperial Society. The elaborate
work of Professor Dill of Belfast on Roman Society
from Nero to M. Aurelius was followed by the lectures
of Dr. Bigg, Canon of Christ Church and Professor
of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford. Both books
analyse the influence of the new thought and religion
of the first century on habits and manners. Oxford
has just given us an admirable translation of Lucian
the Voltaire, the Swift, the Le Sage of antiquity.
And on the top of the wave of Neronian fashions there
come two editions and translations of Petronius, Nero's
"arbiter of elegance," his Beau Brummel, and victim.
123
124 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
" Trimalchio's Supper- Party," with its Rabelaisian
buffoonery, its Swiftian grossness, its Thackerayan
Book of Snob s^ has a queer analogy to modern London
and Monte Carlo. How near is Petronian Rome to
the " smart " London of to-day !
Trimalchio to-day is a self-made millionaire, the
son not of a slave, but of an honest workman. He
began life, not as an aspiring freed-m'an, but as an
office boy. He brags of his rough beginnings and of
his lavish gifts to public charities and deserving friends.
His mansion in Hyde Park or Belgravia is stored with
curios which Bond Street dealers assure him to be
genuine and rare. He holds tight by the Imperial
cause, and parades his zeal for Empire with banquets,
illuminations, and royal donations. When he invites
you to sup, he tells you there will be wild boar's head
from the Campagna, cold pheasant in August, or
mangostines in ice from Java. He talks grandly
about Nero himself, and is intriguing to get His
Majesty to try his preserves.
The Trimalchio of Petronius boldly introduced to
the supper-table his head-huntsman and his Laconian
hounds. We do not have gamekeepers and whips in
Park Lane. But our own Trimalchios will show
you sport in their own county, and they can never
cease to talk of it.
Petronius makes his Trimalchio offer his guests
entertainments which are no longer exactly in vogue.
The grossness of speech and act, the tomfoolery, the
insolence of the Neronian nouveau riche are no
longer tolerated. And perhaps Petronius, like Swift,
overdoes the caricature. But in substance how like
they are !
The vulgarity of the adventurer is eternal. The
low-bred upstart seeks, by sheer weight of gold, to
force himself into the Imperial circles, and, indeed,
IMPERIAL MANNERS 125
sometimes succeeds in arriving there. He is sur-
rounded by cosmopolitan parasites, who own no
common race, or tongue, religion, or country. The
" Kaffir Circus " are the counterpart of Trimalchio's
" Graeculi esurientes." Trimalchio plays at dice over
supper. Belgravia plays bridge. The table is loaded
with eccentric viands, with bedizened dishes made
to imitate Dresden porcelain or Chinese monsters.
Trimalchio's wife, Fortunata, was a harridan, as low-
born as himself, covered with big jewels, and even
more extravagant than her lord. The profusion of
exotic plants and flowers was as eagerly sought at
Rome as it is in London or Paris. There as here,
then as now, in the vulgarian's establishment every-
thing was "de trap trap de chases outrl" Objects
of art, viands, entertainments, were bought, not
because they were good, but because they were
difficult to buy. Things were valued, not for what
they were, but for what they cost. Art, society,
manners, literature were coloured with the same
purple glare.
It should make us shudder to note the sinister
analogies of Imperial Rome and Imperial Britain.
There is the same wantonness in extravagance, the
pretence of art, refinement, and culture, with the
real debasement of all of them by vanity and low
tastes. Our English tongue gets vulgarised by
foreign slang. As Roman society caught up the
vernacular of slaves, British conversation gets in-
filtrated with costermongers' cant phrases learned in
music-hall songs. If Cicero would gasp at Petronius's
solecisms, Addison would shrink 'from the "short
story " in slum idiom which adorns half our magazines
and newspapers.
A Neronian banquet, such as Mr. Tree provides
with such magnificence and such learning, is hardly
126 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
a caricature of some New York festival of flowers,
jewels, delicacies, and entertainments. We imitate
New York at a distance. Petronius would smile
with pity at the poverty of the wildest debauch Park
Lane ever imagined. But we shall come to it in
time.
The Imperial " swelled-head " which made Caligula,
Nero, and Domitian crazy, ends in a ghastly ruin. The
Neronian age was a resplendent and resounding orgy.
But underneath the orgy there was growing up a new
society, a new faith, a nobler race, a purer life. The
first century showed the old world at its worst. But
it was the cradle of the new world which was destined
to sweep away the old.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
1906
IN these days of centenaries hardly enough has been
made of the memory of Franklin, who was born in
1706, and died at the ripe age of eighty-four, after
one of the most extraordinary careers in modern
history. He was at once one of the pioneers of
scientific discovery and one of the founders of the
great Republic of the West. The arch rebel of King
George III. was the idol of the Court of Versailles.
Saturated with true literature and absorbed in physical
science, he was one of the wisest statesmen, and also
one of the most creative revolutionists, even of the
eighteenth century, rich in subtle statecraft and
organic revolution. The fifteenth child of a humble
family of New England, Benjamin was born and
reared in poverty, and began a stern life of toil as a
boy in a printer's workshop. There, and in England,
he managed to give himself a sound and varied know-
ledge of books, nature, and men. Returning to
America, he set up in business as printer, bookseller,
publisher, and editor, and in each occupation that he
undertook he won wealth, friends, influence, and
fame. By the time he had reached the middle of
his life this home-spun printer had become the most
eminent citizen of his own State, and also a leader
127
i 2 8 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
of science renowned all over Europe. His " immortal
discovery," as a philosopher has called it, by which he
founded the modern science of electricity, placed him
on such an eminence as was afterwards obtained by
the founder of Evolution. Franklin was acknow-
ledged in England and in France as one of the great
lights of modern science.
This typical American patriot passed nearly half
his life in Europe, a large part of it in England, and
was regarded as a great discoverer, as a brilliant man of
the world, and also as the Ambassador of a new nation.
In the literary world he was the peer of Johnson,
Burke, Voltaire, and Turgot ; in the social world
he was the friend of statesmen, courtiers, and princes,
both at St. James's and at Versailles. The triumph
of his political life was the French alliance, which at
last enabled the United States to defeat the King and
to constitute themselves a 'nation. Returning to the
Republic he had so largely assisted to create, he
became, with Washington, the organiser of its
institutions. In the later years of his long life,
with wealth, influence, and honours growing up
spontaneously around him, he devoted his practical
genius to a series of foundations, academic, scientific,
philanthropic, whilst dispersing his own fortune in
public and private benevolence.
From boyhood to old age Franklin remained the
same stout and simple citizen ; gracious, social, cool-
headed, clear-sighted, fearless, wise. The Greeks
had an admirable phrase to describe such a character
of complete virtue and cyclopaedic capacity. He was
"a man four-square on all sides, himself without
defect," or, as our poet puts it, "who stood four-
square to all the winds that blow." Even better
than to Wellington may we attribute to Franklin the
famous lines :
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 129
Rich in saving common-sense . . .
In his simplicity sublime.
Franklin was, indeed, one of the most complete
intelligences and one of the most all-round personal-
ities of modern history. It was a character which
the eighteenth century specially produced, as in such
men as Priestley and Turgot, Condorcet and Burke.
But Franklin was far more successful in everything
he touched than any of these men, happier in his
conditions than any, with a far keener genius for
practical affairs, for obtaining permanent results out
of intricate entanglement. Plunged as he was from
birth to old age in circumstances apparently con-
tradictory and hopeless poor, untaught, the official
agent of an insurgent race accredited to an obstinate
tyrant a man of science harassed with daily dis-
tractions and business troubles, he remained the same
imperturbable, successful, happy conqueror over all
obstacles.
And one of the paradoxes . of his career is this.
The self-taught printer's boy, fighting his way in
trade, spending time and money in physical experi-
ments and practical adventures, incessantly travelling
from America to Europe, and immersed in society,
in diplomacy, and in scientific meetings, contrived to
acquire a literary gift of singular effectiveness. He
wrote on all kinds of subjects his memoirs, essays,
letters fill ten stout volumes. Their form is quite
unlike the brilliant and elaborate style of contemporary
Englishmen. Johnson, Burke, and Gibbon would
regard it as trivial. Goldsmith, Hume, Cowper, and
Gray would hardly call it "elegant." But it has
some of the qualities of Swift j homely, pellucid, easy,
incisive. One knows what it means, every word
of it. It arrests attention. It " hits the nail on the
head " ; it does its work j it makes one think, and,
K
130
still more, makes one act. Franklin had not the
imaginative genius and pungency of phrase that
lighted up the masterpieces of the fierce Dean. But
he was a kind of home-spun, practical, benevolent,
large-souled Swift- in simplicity of speech, quiet
humour, and social observation of men and manners.
A really solid, inexhaustible, efficient intellect always,
in every circumstance, master of itself, true to itself.
There has just come to my hands a little volume of
Selections from the Writings of B. Franklin^ which
may serve to give those who will not read ten octavo
volumes a glimpse of Franklin's mind and style. It
ranges from homely hints to a young tradesman to
physical experiments, the care of health, economics,
slavery and the slave trade, the American rebel cause,
Imperialism, grammar, reading, ladies' toilettes, foreign
manners, and international alliances. Here one may
read the letter to the Royal Society explaining the
famous "kite experiment" of 1752, which identified
lightning with electricity, and gave an electric shock
to the thought of Europe. Here is a pleasant causerie
on the game of chess ; there a scathing satire on the
"Slave trade" in the manner of Swift, which reads
to-day like an article on the use of Chinese coolies in
the Rand. We are again reminded of Swift in the
profoundly wise piece of caustic wit entitled " Rules
for reducing a great Empire to a small one." One
by one all the acts of folly and oppression committed
on the American Colonies by the Georgian rule are
laid bare. Paragraph by paragraph these warnings
might be addressed to our own transmarine Empire,
and I am not sure that some passages might not be
put into the mouth of an Irish Nationalist.
Franklin, though a figure less majestic than
Washington, less imaginative than Hamilton, remains
the typical Republican citizen ; and if the feeling of
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 131
his people for him is less that of reverence, it is
more that of affection and fellowship. He is more
easily understood as a man, and his origin and life are
more akin to those of the average man. He will
ever be remembered by the noble verse of Turgot,
which embodies a grand tribute to the patriot in an
exquisite epigram :
Eripuit caslo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.
He wrested the thunderbolt from the heavens and
their sceptre from tyrants. What remains of
eighteenth - century Philadelphia is to - day almost
the only historic and antique flotsam in the United
States. And I know no corner of that central pile
more pathetic than that where, in the roar and bustle
of that vast city, we come upon the lowly cemetery
and plain slab, as ordered by his testament, inscribed
to "Benjamin and Deborah Franklin, 1790."
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
1906
AN English study of Alexander Hamilton, in the
domain of thought the main Founder of the United
States as a cohesive Commonwealth, was urgently
needed. His was one of the finest minds of the
eighteenth century. For more than a century the
great State he did so much to create has been broaden-
ing in the lines which he traced for it, and to the
ends which his genius foresaw more truly than all his
colleagues. His hurried political pamphlets, which
brought order out of chaos at the close of the War of
Independence, have taken their place amongst the
permanent classics of political science. And yet few
Englishmen have ever opened the Federalist ; and
many well-read students of history, who know all
about his personal scandals and his tragic end, have no
very definite convictions as to the share in forming
the United States, due to Washington, to Jefferson,
Madison, Adams, and to Hamilton. As philosopher,
as publicist, as creative genius, Hamilton was far the
most important. And it was indeed time that English
readers should have the story told them from the
English point of view. His own son, Senator Cabot
Lodge, and other American writers have amply done
him justice. But one fears that standard American
132
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 133
works are not assiduously studied in England. Mr.
Oliver's work, which is not a biography, but " an essay
on American Union," adequately supplies a real want
in political history.
Sir Henry Maine, in his work on Popular Govern-
ment^ 1885, devoted the fourth essay to the Constitu-
tion of the United States, which he truly called "much
the most important political instrument of modern
times." And throughout this fourth essay Sir Henry
does ample justice to the sagacity and foresight of
Hamilton. He quotes Chancellor Kent, who com-
pares the Federalist (mainly written by Hamilton)
with Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavel, Montesquieu,
Milton, Locke, and Burke ; and Maine declares that
such praise is not too high. Talleyrand, a diplomatist
and a cynic, spoke of Hamilton with enthusiasm, and
Guizot praised his political writings as of consummate
wisdom and practical sagacity. Mr. Bryce, in his
great work on The American Commonwealth, does full
justice to Hamilton. Sir George Trevelyan, in his
American Revolution, calls Hamilton " the most brilliant
and most tragic figure in all the historical gallery of
American statesmen." In the new Cambridge Modern
History, vol. vii., Professor Bigelow truly describes
Hamilton as " the master spirit of the Convention
which framed the Constitution of the United States."
" A nation was to be created and established, created
of jarring commonwealths and established on the
highest level of right." The accomplishment of this
stupendous task by the dominant character of George
Washington and the piercing genius of Alexander
Hamilton places both amongst the great creative
statesmen of the world.
Mr. Oliver's book does not profess to be a history
or a biography, but " merely an essay on the character
and achievements of a man who was the chief figure
i 3 4 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
in a series of striking events." This is perhaps rather
too modest a claim. For the years from 1780 to 1796
the years when Hamilton first contributed to the
task of practical statesmanship down to his drafting
Washington's "Farewell Address"- the history of
the War and of the Settlement during the two Presi-
dencies of Washington is quite adequately sketched.
And as to a biography of Hamilton, a living portrait
of the man himself is vigorously drawn in the midst of
the historical and political chapters. It is quite true
that Hamilton and the circumstances of his career are
by no means the exclusive subject. Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, Burr, and other
prominent politicians have sections of the book to
themselves. And the aims and principles of the
various parties Federalists, Democrats, State Rights,
Republicans, Patriots, Neutralists so obscure to us
at home, are made clear as the story moves.
This is no doubt the true, perhaps the necessary
way of recounting the life-work of Hamilton. He
was so closely associated with every phase of the
American movement for the twenty years after the
virtual close of the war at Yorktown, in 1781, that
the life of Hamilton is hardly intelligible unless we
read it as part of the history of his country. And his
relations with his colleagues in government and with
his opponents, rivals, and enemies in controversy and
intrigue, are so close and so complex that no true
portrait of Hamilton is complete till we have sketches
of his contemporaries. On the whole, Mr. Oliver has
set Alexander Hamilton in his true place, as next to
Washington, the leading founder of the United States
the intellectual creator of the great Commonwealth
of which George Washington was the typical father
and the moral hero.
Hamilton is the American Burke in his union of
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 135
literary power with political science. If he falls short
of Burke in the majesty of speech and the splendour
of many-sided gifts, he was never hurried into the
frantic passions and fatal blunders which finally ruined
Burke's influence over his age. Hamilton at times
exaggerated the dangers he foresaw, was too pessimist
and even unjust to the failings he condemned. But
on the whole he made no great mistake, and all those
ideas for which he struggled with such tenacity and
earnestness have in the course of ages come to a
triumphant issue. Hamilton, too, reminds us of
Burke in the sadness of his personal history, in the
poignant disappointments of his career, and in the want
of full recognition of his supreme greatness in his life-
time. Colleagues whom we now see to have been his
inferiors, both morally and intellectually, men repre-
senting lower ideals, came to the first place in the
State he had created, a seat to which it was quite
impossible that he could have been chosen. Even in
America Hamilton has hardly been judged with full
honour. He was too conservative, too anti-democratic,
of too philosophic a temperament, too much the idealist,
and too little the demagogue ever to attain the popu-
larity which wins the votes of a vast majority.
The book has a moral somewhat startling, and at
the present moment charged with lively interest. The
concluding book is occupied with general reflections
upon Nationality, Empire, Union, and Sovereignty ;
and the problem of welding the thirteen American
States into a single Commonwealth is applied to the
present-day problem of reconciling the British Con-
stitution with our transmarine Empire. Mr. Oliver,
if I understand him aright, seems afraid that the British
Empire is held together by bonds too loose and unde-
fined, and would urge on it the Hamiltonian doctrine
of central Sovereignty and resolute Union. He quotes
136 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Washington's maxim: "Influence is not government."
He says the tie of affection or kinship is not union.
He seems, like Hobbes and Austin, to ask for force as
the basis of true union and government. Why, the
self-governing Colonies would fly into fifty bits at the
mere sound of such a thing. The American Civil
War of 1863 would be a flea-bite compared to this.
For my part, I quite agree with Washington that
" influence is not government," and with Mr. Oliver
that sentimental ties are not Union. But the casual
conglomeration called the British Empire has nothing
else to rest on, and the least attempt to bind it with
closer ties would mean immediate and final disruption.
THACKERAY
1903
THE appearance of a great contemporary writer's
works in various forms, as by the law of copyright his
btfoks become, one by one, the property of the public,
reminds us that he has now entered into the literary
elysium shared only by those who are English Classics.
A " Classic " is one who, being dead and gone, is read
more freely and with more reverence than ever was
done in his lifetime ; one whose rank is settled and
acknowledged ; who is found in manifold shapes of
type and form, and has a familiar corner in every
household.
Thackeray is eminently a classic. It is safe to
predict that no prose writer of the nineteenth century
will retain a more steady, even, and general popularity,
and be for ages one of the typical facts in the history
of English letters. The combination of faultless
English, at once pure, nervous, and simple, with wit,
humour, insight into the human heart, and perfect
command of his own genius and knowledge of its re-
sources and its limits this forms a power so rare that
the scholar and the "general reader," the philosopher
and the man of the world, the literary virtuoso and the
novel-trotter can all enjoy it, and will always enjoy it.
Thackeray has been dead now nearly forty years ; he
138 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
became famous nearly sixty years ago ; his master-
piece is now fifty-five years old ; and his collected
works were published thirty-three years ago.
And now Messrs. Dent and Co. are issuing an
edition of his prose works in thirty volumes, each with
some ten illustrations, at a modest price, in continua-
tion of their standard editions of Old English authors.
The form is convenient, the type easy, and the illustra-
tions entirely adequate (which in such a case is saying
a good deal). Thackeray will go on and will continue
long to be read in a dozen different forms. I have
read him in the magnificent large octavo edition, with
his own illustrations, of 1883-86 (which cost a small
fortune), and also in the twelve-volume edition of
1871-72, and in many more editions, including the
handy contraband of foreign reprinters. And now, as
I take up the new issue in thirty volumes, I can hardly
get on with this article for dipping into my favourite
scenes and wasting my time over passages that I know
by heart. He is ever fresh, ever welcome, ever racy
dear old Snob."
As I turn over this issue of thirty volumes of prose
and he left us capital ballads, burlesques, and rhym-
ing tags as well I am amazed at this huge product of
a writer who died at the age of fifty-two. It was also
the age of Shakespeare at his death. I do not recall
the name of any of our great prose writers, except
Henry Fielding and Goldsmith, who died at so early
an age. Scott and Dickens, who both worked them-
selves to death, reached a somewhat longer term.
Some poets, and two rare women novelists, died even
younger. But almost all our great prose writers
amongst men lived and wrote to a riper age, some of
them into a great age, as Hallam, De Quincey, and
Carlyle. But Shakespeare, Fielding, Thackeray, all
died in middle life, leaving an immense output. I do
THACKERAY 139
not claim Thackeray as the peer of Shakespeare, nor,
indeed, of Fielding. But he has a measure of their
supreme qualities of insight into the human heart, their
zest for life, their broad outlook at the world, and its
strange contrasts of manners, ranks, and characters.
There is another quality in which I hold Thackeray
to be eminent. I mean his sober evenness of work-
manship. He is almost never slovenly, or extravagant,
or drivelling. He wrote too much, as they all did, and
wrote for money, and not for fame or love of his art.
He wrote many pieces that are quite below his best
and his true form. But even his worst are written in
that faultless and racy English of which he was master ;
they are never hysterical, bombastic, or farcical ; they
are never so nonsensical or so tedious that we cannot
read them twice. Now, Fielding poured out volumes
of dramatic rubbish j Dickens is insufferably maudlin
at times, and too often grossly affected ; Lytton is
sometimes ludicrous, and George Eliot is sometimes
pedantic ; Trollope gives us stale small beer at times ;
Kingsley, Charlotte Bronte can be both coarse and
sensational. Even Scott and Shakespeare, Olympians
as they are, would rattle off what they knew to be
rubbish when the printer's boy or the prompter's boy
was waiting for copy. But Thackeray, though he
ended at last in some very poor stuff, never flung at
us rank balderdash or careless gabble.
Thackeray is a special favourite of mine, mainly
by reason of his consummate flow of effervescing talk,
his inexhaustible wit, and never -failing manly good
sense. He is the jolly man-of-the- world who sees the
follies and pretences of people about him, holds them
up to contempt, but is never morose, sardonic, or
peevish. I am quite aware of Thackeray's limitations,
and I am not about to ignore them. I do not say he
is a Fielding or a Scott, nor a Moliere or a Cervantes.
140 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
But I do say that Vanity Fair^ as a comedy of modern
society, is the best we have had since Tom Jones ; and,
if it be placed on a narrower stage, and inspired with
a less generous spirit than Tom Jones^ it may be put
beside it, and will live along with it. Thackeray is
not an epic poet like Scott ; he has not the deep
pathos that Dickens has reached more than once, and
Richardson many times ; he has not the noble humanity
of Fielding ; he has not the feminine subtlety of Jane
Austen or of Charlotte Bronte. He has not the
Gargantuan rage of Swift, nor the idyllic charm of
Goldsmith. But his prose, as English style, is superior
to any other prose of the nineteenth century. His
invention is the least spasmodic and uneasy. And he
will long stand with Fielding, Richardson, and Scott
as one of our four or five standard romancists.
Years ago, when I tried to make an estimate of
Thackeray, I was moved to say that, "of all the
Englishmen of his century, he had written the best
comedy of manners, the best extravaganza, the best
burlesque, the best parody, and the best comic song,"
and that some of his admirers would add "the best
lectures and the best critical essays." This was a
parody of Byron's famous eulogy of Sheridan ; and I
hold that it had as much justification. Vanity Fair
may be really " the best comedy of manners " without
being the greatest romance of the century. It has
not the epic poetry of Scott's best, nor the rollicking
waggery of Dickens at his best ; nor has it the
exquisite aroma of Jane Austen's boudoir, nor the
intense passion of Jane Eyre's confessions. But as
a serious anatomy of social manners in a broad and
judicial spirit it has something that none of these have,
that nothing has since Tom Jones^ something Shake-
spearean in its sane, comprehensive, penetrating survey
of human character all round.
THACKERAY 141
Vanity Fair^ too, stands out again as far the chief
masterpiece of Thackeray. For, to my mind, Esmond^
with all its beauties and its wonderful mastery of the
style and tone of the eighteenth century, is too artificial.
And the New comes and Pendennis^ for all their minor
merits, are too much variations upon one key, and
have no such power, no such unforgettable characters,
as Vanity Fair. This novel also is the only one of all
Thackeray's longer romances which has anything that
can be called a plot, a drama, and an organic story of
action. The plot of Vanity Fair is thin and desultory
enough not to be named beside the plots of Tom
Jones or Clarissa^ of The Antiquary or of Jane Eyre.
But it has something that can be called a drama of
incident worked out to a catastrophe. This cannot be
fairly said of any other of Thackeray's longer romances.
The story of them wanders on in the manner of serials
composed from month to month. I doubt if a reader
of the Virginians^ of Lovel^ or of Philip could write
out from memory a summary of the plot of any of
them.
This leads us to another point that Thackeray is
peculiarly at home in his shorter pieces and in detached
studies. I always hold the Hoggarty Diamond to be in
his best vein. The Snob papers, again, have every one
of his qualities in perfection. Few satires, unless it be
Don Quixote, Pantagruel, Gil Blas^ and The Barber of
Seville^ have ever killed the affectations they attacked
and improved public opinion. But the Book of Snobs
really killed certain forms of snobbery and reformed
social taste. The book has lost much of its interest
because it paints to some degree effete types of folly.
It was for this that Charlotte Bronte called Thackeray
"the first social regenerator of the day." He was
hardly that. But, in spite of his turn for painting
vulgarity, rascality, meanness, hypocrisy, pretentious-
142 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
ness, base natures, low vices, and pitiful shams,
although he is much more at home with a mean
character than he is with a noble nature Thackeray
is not a cynical mocker at human goodness. He
loved the best in human nature. He did not a little
to develop it.
REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT
1901
IT is now some years ago that I ventured to make a
prediction that " it will be the duty of the more
serious criticism of another generation to revive the
reputation of George Eliot as an abiding literary
force." And the quality which I especially noted
was this, that "she raised the whole art of romance
into a higher plane of thought, of culture, and of
philosophic grasp." I thought that this "noble aim"
of hers was being too much overlooked and I think
this is still true in England. Her American admirers
have shown more constancy in their affection.
It is more than forty-one years since I first made her
acquaintance, on New Year's Day 1860, at the house
of her close friends, Dr. and Mrs. Richard Congreve, at
Wandsworth. It was twenty-one years later, almost
to a day, that I was one of the mourners who followed
her body to the grave in Highgate Cemetery on the
29th December 1880. During those twenty -one
years I constantly saw her, had much conversation
with her on literary and philosophical topics, and
received many letters relating to her own writings, and
also to her views on art, politics, and religion. Some
of these letters have been published by her husband,
but the incidents that called them forth are not quite
144 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
evident to the readers of Mr. Cross's Life, and some
of the most interesting have not been published at
all. I am asked to contribute my own recollections
of her conception of life and her methods of work.
Having the sanction of those whom she left behind
her, I will try, before it is too late, to put down my
memories of a friend whom I so profoundly honoured.
As I do this, I recall to mind not a few of the most
golden days of my past life, and some of the most inspir-
ing " banquets " or symposia of high thinking to which
it has ever been my fortune to be bidden as a guest.
How well I remember that New Year's day when
I met Mr. and Mrs. Lewes at the dinner-table of Mr.
and Mrs. Richard Congreve ! She was then at the
age of forty, in the first outburst of her fame as the
author of Adam Bede^ and was just finishing the
second volume of the Mill on the Floss. She had no
friends at Wandsworth except Mr. and Mrs. Richard
Congreve, who had made her acquaintance the year
before. Mrs. Congreve, she wrote in her journal
(May 3, 1859), "was the chief charm of the place
to me." Dr. Congreve had retired for some years
from his work at Oxford to give himself up to the
study and propaganda of the principles of Auguste
Comte. He had just published his translation of the
Positivist Catechism^ which Mrs. Lewes had already
read, whilst George Lewes was occupied with the
Politique of Comte. I was a young man, just called
to the bar, who had been the pupil and then as tutor
was the successor of Richard Congreve at Oxford, but
I had written nothing, and was quite unknown to the
public. Though we were all more or less interested
in Comte, the talk round the table was quite general,
and the small party was nothing but a simple gather-
ing of intimate friends.
I listened with lively interest to the words of one
REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT 145
who was already famous, who from the first moment
impressed every one with a sense of grave thought,
high ideals, and scrupulous courtesy. She had not
a grain of self-importance in her manner, and took
quite a simple and modest part in the general talk,
listening to the brilliant sallies of George Lewes with
undisguised delight, respecting Congreve's views as
those of a trained historian and scholar, and showing
me the kindly welcome of a gracious woman to the
friend of her friends. I remember an argument in
which she engaged me, wherein I thought, as I
still think, she was mistaken. She maintained,
apropos of a review of troops she had lately seen,
that "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war"
was more conspicuous in our day than it was in the
Middle Ages. Having some knowledge of mediaeval
art, Italian war- paintings, and illuminated Froissarts, I
ventured to doubt. The company seemed to think
me bold in venturing to differ from her opinion on a
matter of local colour. But she did not think so
herself; and nothing could be more graceful than
the patience with which she listened to my points.
In the year 1860, at Wandsworth, she was work-
ing under severe pressure, having broken with her
own family, retaining only one or two women friends,
quite unknown to general society. Years afterwards,
when she lived in London and at Witley, she had the
cultured world at her feet; men and women of rank
and reputation crowded her Sunday receptions, and she
was surrounded by friends and reverential worshippers
of her genius. But she remained still the same quiet,
grave, reserved woman that she had been in her retreat
and isolation at Wandsworth, always modest in her
bearing, almost deferential towards any form of
acknowledged reputation, almost morbidly distrustful
of herself, and eager to purge out of her soul any
L
146 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
germ of arrogance and pride that her fame and the
court paid to her by men and women of mark could
possibly tend to breed.
It was the foundation of the Fortnightly Review^
in 1865, which brought me into constant association
with Mr. Lewes, who was then established in the
Priory, Regent's Park. Early in 1865 George Lewes
was chosen as its first editor. I contributed in that
year four articles to the new organ, and George Eliot
wrote in the first number. I was at that time a
constant visitor at the Priory, where Herbert Spencer,
Thomas Huxley, Anthony Trollope, the Congreves,
Deutsch, and Sir Frederic Burton were frequently
found. I there learned to estimate at its full value
the immense range of George Eliot's reading, both
in poetry and in philosophy, the high standard of
duty, whether personal or social, that she kept before
her own sight and required of others, and the
conscientious labour she devoted to her own art.
George Eliot was occupied on her novel of Felix
Holt during 1865 and the first half of 1866; and, as
every reader knows, the plot and denouement in the
later part of the story turn on an intricate legal
imbroglio, whereby an old English family were
suddenly dispossessed of their estates which they had
held for many generations. She had endeavoured to
work out this problem for herself, but found herself
involved in hopeless technicalities of law. As is
stated by Mr. Cross in the opening of chapter xiii.,
she had written me the kind letter of January 5, 1866,
to invite me to join a party consisting of Herbert
Spencer, T. Huxley, and others, and she there
imparted to me her difficulties as to the law of entail
and the statutes of limitations. She wrote of it in a
letter to me of the gth January that she "must go
sounding on her dim and perilous way through law-
REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT 147
books amidst agonies of doubt." I offered her text-
books, but she preferred to put to me her difficulties
in writing. The law case she required to fit her
plot in the year 1832 was one which on the first
sight of it seemed impossible in the face of the
statutes of limitations. She wanted to dispossess a
family which had been in peaceable possession of
estates for a century.
This was "the statement of her needs," as she
termed it :
It is required to know the longest possible term of
years for the existence of the following conditions :
1. That an estate, for lack of a direct heir, should have
come into the possession of A (or of a series A, A', A"
if that were admissible).
2. That subsequently a claim should have been set up
by B, on a valid plea of nearer kinship.
3. That B should have failed in his suit from inability
to prove his identity, over which certain circumstances
(already fixed) should have cast a doubt, and should have
died soon after.
4. That B's daughter, being an infant at the time of
his death, should have come to years of discretion and
have a legal claim on the estate.
These are the essentials as closely as I can strip them.
The last, viz., the legal claim of B's daughter, might be
dispensed with, if the adequate stretching of the time is not
to be obtained by any formula of conditions. The moral
necessities of the situation might be met by the fact of
injustice and foul play towards B ; but I should prefer
the legal claim, if possible.
You see, I should be glad of as large a slice of a century
as you could give me, but I should be resigned if I could
get forty years.
I was at first inclined to think the case to be
impossible, as contrary to the then existing statutes
148 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
of limitations. But I presently fell back on the rare,
but not impossible, case of a Base Fee^ under which a
settlement might be perfectly valid for the issue of a
tenant-in-tail for many generations, but would not
bar the rights of the remainder-men. It happened
that, before I finally submitted the scheme to George
Eliot, I asked the opinion of a colleague at the bar.
The man I consulted chanced to be the late Lord
Herschell, the ex -Chancellor, who died on a public
mission in the United States and who was then a
junior barrister. Having his entire concurrence, I
carried the scheme to George Eliot, who at once
recast her plot, and was enabled to carry back the
settlement of the Transome estates not only for forty
years, but for more than a century. An attempt was
made in a review to throw doubt upon the correctness
of the law on which Felix Holt was based ; but an
eminent conveyancer of Lincoln's Inn disposed of this
criticism in a conclusive answer in the press.
I have in my possession about sixteen letters written
to me in the months from January to May 1866,
asking for assistance in legal points relating to Felix
Holt, And during that period I had many inter-
views with her thereon, and read large portions
of the story in MS. and in proof. The letters
and my own recollections testify to the indefatigable
pains that she took with every point of local colour,
her anxiety about scrupulous accuracy of fact, and
the often feeble health under which the book was
produced.
I was again consulted on an incidental point
of law in the novel of Daniel Deronda. The letter
of June I, 1875 (partly printed by Cross, Life^
iii. 258), begged me to come and talk over a point
of difficulty. On the day following I received this
letter :
REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT 149
June 2, '75.
DEAR MR. HARRISON Herewith the statement you
have kindly allowed me to send.
It occurs to me that in my brief, fragmentary chat with
Mr. Bowen he had gathered Sir H. to be a tenant-in-tail
coming of age, so that his Father could make no disposition
without his consent. But even then I don't see why he
Sir H. should have objected to a settlement in the
given sense. Do you ? This question has reference
simply to my alarms about apparent improbabilities.
Yours thankfully, M. G. LEWES.
This question referred to the desire of Sir Hugo
Mallinger as to the settlement of the estates. She had
consulted Charles Bowen, then a junior barrister and
afterwards Lord Bowen, Lord of Appeal, but only in
casual conversation. She then sent me a statement of
the case she needed for the plot, and I forwarded to
her the sketch of a possible solution. This satisfied
her requirements. She wrote (June 15, 1875) :
I must write to tell you my joy that on further study
of your "document" I find in it precisely the case that
will suit the conditions I had already prepared. I mean
the case that "Sir H. might ardently desire a particular
house and property, locally part of the settled estates or
not, to leave to his widow and daughters for their home
and residence, etc." Clearly I have a special Providence
to whom my gratitude is due, and he is the able con-
veyancer who has drawn up said document. We are in
the pangs of preparation for starting to-morrow morning.
Felix Holt and Daniel Deronda were the only
novels on which I was consulted, and then simply as
to points of law and legal practice. I wrote the
" opinion " of the Attorney-General, printed in italics
in chapter xxxv. of Felix Holt^ as a guide to the
language used in Lincoln's Inn, and she inserted it
150 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
bodily in the book. I remember telling her that I
should always boast of having written one sentence
that was embodied in English literature. The
"opinion" was little more than "common form,"
and she took kindly my little mot. I need hardly
say that I had nothing whatever to do with the com-
position or scheme of either of these tales, nor with
anything else of her work. I do not think any one
else had. Except that she took pains to be accurate
as to legal subtleties, as to facts of history, and the
Jewish rites in Daniel Deronda, I do not believe she
took counsel of any one but of George Lewes. Every-
thing she produced was entirely original, both in con-
ception and in execution.
My purpose in this paper is to try to clear up such
points as this, and to explain the meaning of some
letters of hers printed by Mr. Cross, but of which he
could give no elucidation. The very long and beauti-
ful letter of August 15, 1866, printed in chapter xiii.
of the Life and Letters^ headed " Aesthetic Teaching,"
is hardly intelligible without some account of the
proposal to which it was an answer. During her
absence at the German Baths in July of that year I
wrote her a long letter to suggest that she might use
her great powers of imagination and her deep interest
in social questions to describe an ideal state of industrial
life. It would present a picture of the relations of
all concerned in a great manufacturing industry, under
conditions of health, happiness, and beauty, so as to
realise the Utopia of regenerated Industry directed by
an efficient spiritual force and inspired by the providence
of Humanity, as conceived by Auguste Comte. George
Eliot had been a careful student of all his works for
many years, and through the Congreves she was
familiar with every phase of the Positivist ideal, with
the general idea of which she had entire sympathy.
REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT 151
I even suggested, as a milieu^ a manufacturing village
in a beautiful part of northern France, where the
owner of a great factory had reorganised Labour on
humane and social lines, himself an ardent republican
and ex-socialist, whilst the education and worship of
the township were directed by the local physician,
who exerted a positive priesthood on a basis of scientific
convictions.
Her long and convincing letter of August 15 was
her answer to this proposal. She feared (and no doubt
with some reason) that the effort to idealise a social
state, consciously imagined as possible only in the
future, would want the life and reality that she gave
to her modern pictures. She was quite in her element
in painting character. She did not shrink from treating
a past epoch, as in Romola^ "The Spanish Gypsy,"
etc. etc. But, as she says in the letter, she was there
dealing with only some of the relations, treating of
selected characters, not with a form of society with
definite moral problems, nor with the panorama of a
regenerated type of human life. Furthermore, she
adds, her gift for tragic crises would have no scope
in the tableau of a glorified world where virtue and
happiness reigned. She was no doubt quite right.
She shrank from any Utopia in which there was danger
that " the picture might lapse into the diagram." But
the idea, as she said, continued to rest in her mind.
The poem of " The Spanish Gypsy " was one
result of the conception that was floating in her mind
of presenting in a typical scene some of the phases
of a religion of Human Duty. Later on she wrote
to me :
Yos, indeed, I not only remember your letter, but have
always kept it at hand, and .have read it many times.
Within these latter months I have seemed to see in the
152 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
distance a possible poem shaped on your idea. But it
-would be better for you to encourage the growth towards
realisation in your own mind rather than trust to trans-
plantation.
My own faint conception is that of a frankly Utopian
construction, freeing the poet from all local embarrass-
ments. Great Epics have always had more or less of this
character only the construction has been of the past, not
of the future. Write to me Poste Restante, Baden-
Baden, within the next fortnight. My head will have got
clearer then. CROSS (Life, iii. 51).
In the beginning of 1867 George Eliot made the
memorable journey to Spain, from which she wrote to
me the beautiful letter given by Mr. Cross (iii. p. 8).
She was then meditating her poem ; and undoubtedly
Positivist ethics supplied her with the conception of
Zarca.
The relation of George Eliot towards the ideal of
Auguste Comte has been accurately stated by Mr.
Cross (vol. iii. 419) as "a limited adherence." "For
all Comte's writing she had a feeling of high admira-
tion, intense interest, and very deep sympathy."
" But the appreciation was thoroughly selective.
Parts of his teaching were accepted and other parts
rejected." But her letters to me and her conversation
showed something more than sympathy, and not a little
practical co-operation. Her life-long friendship with
Richard Congreve, the recognised leader of English
Positivism, began in February 1859, an( ^ continued
until her death in December 1880. From that time
she read Comte regularly, and was occupied on him
during her last illness. The study of him, she wrote
in January 1867, "keeps me in a state of enthusiasm
through the day a moral glow." " My gratitude
increases continually for the illumination Comte has
contributed to my life." She subscribed to the foun-
REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT 153
dation of the Positivist School in 1870, of which
Richard Congreve remained Director until his death
in 1899, and also to the foundation of Newton Hall,
of which I have been the President since 1881. And
I have many letters from her relating to Positivist
writings of my own. An interesting letter is that
referring to the attack of Matthew Arnold on Comte.
On the publication of my article on " Culture,"
reprinted in my Choice of Books^ she wrote to me
(November 7, 1867) :
I suppose it is rather superfluous for me, as one of the
public, to thank you for your article in the Fortnightly.
But le superflu in the matter of expression is chose si neces-
saire to us women. It seems to me that you have said the
serious things most needful to be said in a good-humoured
way, easy for everybody to read. I have not been able
to find Matthew Arnold's article again, but I remember
enough of it to appreciate the force of your criticism.
Only on one point I am unable to see as you do. I don't
know how far my impressions have been warped by reading
German, but I have regarded the word " Culture " as a
verbal equivalent for the highest mental result of past and
present influences. Dictionary meanings are liable rapidly
to fall short of usage. But I am not maintaining an
opinion only stating an impression. My conscience
made me a little unhappy after I had been speaking of
Browning on Sunday. I ought to have spoken with more
of the veneration I feel for him, and to have said that in
his best poems and by these I mean a large number I
do not find him unintelligible, but only peculiar and
original. Take no notice of this letter, or else I shall feel
that I have made an unwarrantable inroad on your time.
The highly characteristic letter of January 15, 1870,
printed by Cross (iii. 103-4), was called out by my
article on the " Positivist Problem " in the Fortnightly
Review of November 1869. In her letter George
154 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Eliot admits that she has "an unreasonable aversion to
personal statements " ; she " shrinks from decided
Deliverances' on momentous subjects, from the dread
of coming to swear by my own deliverances, and
sinking into an insistent echo of oneself. That is a
horrible destiny and one cannot help seeing that
many of the most powerful men fall into it." All
this is not very clear without some explanation, which
I will try to give. In reply to various criticisms on
Comte by Professor Huxley, Matthew Arnold, and
Fitzjames Stephen, I attempted to state the general
conditions of the philosophical and religious problems
as understood by Positivism. At that date, 1869, I
did not at all accept Comte's idea of a Religion
of Humanity, and as I was believed to do so, being
a colleague of Richard Congreve, I thought it
right to state that fact in my article. This was not
to the liking of Congreve at all, who would have pre-
ferred me to keep silence about my personal opinions.
And George Eliot, in her sympathy with the Congreves
and her morbid horror of confessions of all kinds, was
inclined to remonstrate with me for making any
reference to my own beliefs. I never saw, nor do I
see, any ground for such reticence, but much the
contrary, as leading to false impressions. Those who
promote unpopular ideas naturally wish for nothing
but whole beliefs in all who go with them. But I
repudiate such an attitude. In the thirty-two years
since 1869 I have come to adopt the Religion of
Humanity, though not in the sense of some followers
of Comte, who wish to treat his writings as having a
sort of verbal inspiration. I have studied his system
now for fifty years, and have never allowed those
whom I address in public or in private to be in
ignorance from time to time as to the form and
extent of my adhesion. And I have no disposition
REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT 155
to shrink from "personal deliverances." There are
times when they are an indispensable guarantee of
good faith.
Nothing in the shape of a "service" on Positivist
lines was attempted in the Positivist chapel for the
first years of its foundation. But by degrees the need
for the full expression of religious feeling in public and
in private made itself felt ; and as our own children
grew up from infancy, their mother was called upon
to supply some equivalent for family prayer. We
consulted George Eliot, who, with her deep sympathy
with the inmost emotions of humanity, had so great a
gift of poetic expression. The letter of June 14,
1877 (given by Cross, Life, iii. 311), was the outcome
of this appeal. She there said that she was not able
to contribute " to the construction of a liturgy," but
that she would keep the subject in mind, and " perhaps
it might prompt some perfectly unfettered produc-
tions." " O may I join the choir invisible " had been
composed in 1867, and was published with "Jubal"
in 18745 and it was always regarded as a religious
embodiment of the Positivist hope of subjective im-
mortality. I continued to urge George Eliot to
produce other pieces in prose or in verse with the
same devotional feeling.
In the month of July 1877, we drove over from
Sutton Place to Witley, and there had long talks with
her on the same subject as we strolled about the heather
and the pine woods on those Surrey heights. And I
sent her a few passages of the kind, which at first she
seemed inclined to look on as inappropriate. On con-
sideration, she changed her mind, and wrote to me,
December 26, 1877 :
I have now reread more than once the Prayers we
spoke of, and withdraw my remark (made under reserve)
156 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
as not at all applicable. The prayers keep, I think, within
the due limit of aspiration and do not pass into beseeching.
Certainly, if just the right words could be found
what Vauvenargues calls cette splendeur ^expression qui
emporte avec die la preuve des grandes pens'ees a ritual
might bring more illumination than sermons and lectures.
The summer of 1878 was partly occupied by
George Eliot in writing Theophrastus Such perhaps
the only one of her books which was not a success. I
have a guilty conscience as to this book, as I may have
contributed to induce her to write it. I pointed out
to her that our English literature, so rich and splendid
in almost every field of poetry and prose, was deficient
in those collections of Thoughts which the French
call Pensees pregnant apothegms embedded in terse
and memorable phrase, which could be remembered
like fine lines of poetry, and be cited as readily as a
familiar proverb. It seemed to me it seems to me
still that she was eminently fitted to produce such a
book, "and indeed the Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot
was a volume culled from her writings. But Theo-
phrastus Such where the queer title came from I
know not was not an adequate expression of her
powers. She was in very poor health all the time,
and George Lewes was then stricken with his last
illness. His death delayed publication, and when she
read Theophrastus in revise, she had serious thoughts
of suppressing it (Cross, iii. 352). Would she had
done so ! Her life was ebbing away when it was
actually published.
After the death of George Lewes, November 28,
1878, we saw little of George Eliot for some time.
" Here I and sorrow sit," she wrote in her diary,
January I, 1879 ; and she devoted herself to the
publication of his posthumous works, and to found a
REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT 157
studentship in his memory, to be called after his name.
This necessitated interviews with friends ; and in the
spring she began to see a few intimate callers again.
She wrote, April 8, 1879 :
DEAR FRIENDS Will you come to see me some day ?
Though I have been so long without making any sign, my
heart has been continually moved with gratitude towards
you.
And on May 25, 1879, she writes :
T fell ill last week I was in town, and was obliged to
leave much undone, else I should have written to you. I
have not yet recovered my former level, but I hope soon
to do so under country influences. I keep by me two
letters, and sometimes reread them when I feel in need
of a moral stimulus which is half rebuke, half encourage-
ment.
In May 1879 George Eliot published a work
which George Lewes had left in MS. The Study of
Psychology^ its Object^ Scope^ and Method. It was an
elaborate treatise on the relation of psychology to
physiology, and treated in turn the views of Comte,
Mill, and Herbert Spencer. Lewes, without entirely
agreeing with any of these theories, tends rather to
place the science of psychology on the same basis as
Comte, whilst denying Comte's doctrine that the
Introspective method was wholly illusory. George
Eliot sent me a presentation copy of this book, which
I read with deep interest. And I made it the basis of
a paper I read to the Metaphysical Society on June 10,
1879, entitled the "Social Factor in Psychology,"
which was based on Lewes's chapter iv. I submitted
the paper to George Eliot, who sent me the following
letter. The term "Factor," by the way, was the
word used as headline to chapter iv. of Lewes's
book :
158 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
"June 10, '79.
I am greatly obliged to you for sending me the paper
you are to read to-day, and I appreciate it the more highly
because your diligence is in contrast with the general
sluggishness of readers about any but idle reading. It is
melancholy enough that to most of our polite readers the
Social Factor in Psychology would be a dull subject. For
it is certainly no conceit of ours which pronounces it to
be the supremely interesting element in the thinking of
our time.
I confess the word Factor has always been distasteful
to me as the name for the grandest of forces. If it were
only mathematical I should not mind, but it has many
other associated flavours which spoil it for me.
Once more evermore thanks. Yours most truly,
M. E. LEWES.
I trust your whole household is blooming again now.
I am a little better.
The fine letter of April 19, 1880 (printed by
Cross, iii. 388), is the last that I received. It was
written a few weeks before her marriage to Mr. John
Cross, on May 6, and a few months only before her
death. In it her warm admiration for Wordsworth
comes out very strongly. When she writes, " I think
you would find much to suit your purpose in 'The
Prelude ' such as,
There is
One great society alone on earth :
The noble Living and the noble Dead,"
she was referring to my " purpose," which was to find
suitable passages of poetry to read as introductions to
the courses of Positivist lectures which were then
being given.
It will be noticed how largely George Eliot's
thoughts and her correspondence with myself turned
REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE ELIOT 159
upon the Positivist ideal of an organised Religion of
Humanity. This was only natural, inasmuch as I
had been introduced to her by Dr. Richard Congreve,
and with him I was, during our intimacy, one of the
leaders of the Positivist movement, in which she
deeply sympathised. We were all anxious to see this
sympathy develop into full adhesion, which it never
did, and perhaps was never likely to have done. When
a separate group was formed, which met in Newton
Hall, George Eliot gave to its funds an annual sub-
scription, without withdrawing that which she had
contributed to an earlier movement.
But it must not be supposed that she was entirely
wrapped up in deep problems of metaphysics and ethics.
Far from it ! She was the most courteous and con-
siderate of friends, delighting in lively conversation
and good-natured gossip. She was an admirable
housewife, and very proud of her practical accomplish-
ments as a sensible and kindly mistress. She interested
herself much in finding a comfortable situation for any
young woman whom she judged to be in need of a
friend. We have letters she addressed to my wife
recommending a girl as a nurse. " I have reason to
believe," she wrote, " that her habits of feeling and
conduct are much above the average in young women
offering themselves for domestic service." The girl
in question was leaving her place, as George Eliot
suspected, owing to "a cabal against Mary in the
kitchen as ' the proud house-maid.' Her underclothing
was thought arrogantly good, and her bearing towards
the men had a little too much dignity."
Her zeal to help those who were in trouble was
always active. I remember once seeing her spring to
her feet, and stretching up her arms with that passion-
ate gesture she sometimes would display, she said,
" Yes ! the day will come when it will be a natural
160 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
instinct to stretch out a hand to help one who needs
support, as automatic and irresistible as it is now to
use our hands to keep ourselves from a fall."
There was much of Dinah Morris that was studied,
not from Aunt Samuel Evans, but from the depths of
the heart of George Eliot herself.
THE COMPLETE RUSKIN
1906
THE new Library Edition of Ruskin's Works is now
before the world j and to every one who values pure
English, original genius, and many-sided Art, it must
be an inexhaustible mine of study and delight. Let
no one suppose that this collection is mere reprint
" that we knew it all before " ; that it " gives us
nothing new." It gives us much that is new, and
it gives us the old under new forms. Though I am
myself saturated with the writings of John Ruskin,
whom I began to read fifty-six years ago, and though
I have read every one of his books as they came out,
between 1849 and 1899, I am amazed at the fresh-
ness and the richness of this monumental work.
What miracles of labour, thought, invention are
crowded in these thirty-seven big volumes ! What
microscopic delicacy of observation ! What subtlety
of hand ! What glowing enthusiasm for beauty,
truth, goodness ! It is the perennial fertility of the
writer, the encyclopaedic variety of the ideas, which
holds me spell-bound.
Has any English writer poured out such masses of
pregnant prose, such varied thoughts about nature,
poetry, art, society, history, religion ? We pass on
in these volumes from mountains to rivers, to the
161 M
1 62 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
sea, to the lakes ; to trees, rocks, gems, clouds,
sunsets to the buildings of Athens, of Italy, of
France, and England antique, mediaeval, renascent ;
then to pictures, Giotto and the Primitives, Bellini,
Tintoretto, Veronese ; to Claude and Turner, Prout
and Millais ; to Phidias, Michael Angelo, Florentine
reliefs and medallions j and then to the Dismal Science,
Social Economy, a new Heaven and a new Earth.
It is an encyclopaedia of homily, criticism, analysis,
poetry, and passion. I am not the man to value
quantity in lieu of quality. The rare bits we have
of Sappho, Vauvenargues, or Lovelace, are worth
whole libraries. But when I count up the contents
of these thirty-seven volumes of Ruskin to contain
some seven or eight millions of words, I confess I am
amazed at such productive energy and inexhaustible
eloquence. And in all these eight million words in
some 18,000 pages there is not one page that any other
but Ruskin could have written.
Though I am fanatico per II Giovanni Ruskin^
as the Venetians say, I am quite alive to his blunders,
his nonsense, his delirious loves and hates. Alas !
there are ignorance, babyism, and perversity scattered
broadcast, not a little extravagant rhetoric, and some
cruel injustice. But withal, what geysers of noble
feeling ! What an Ithuriel spear to unmask the
lurking toads of falsehood ! What patience ! What
subtlety ! What refinement in the drawings ! What
a sense of a pure and exquisite spirit pervades these
"sermons in stone," as Carlyle said these sermons
in colours, in drawings, in landscapes, in cathedrals,
in the eternal hills, and in the smoky factories of
crowded cities ! These thirty-seven volumes contain
enough teaching about buildings to equip a leading
authority in Architecture ; enough teaching about
Painting to found a school ; enough material to base
THE COMPLETE RUSKIN 163
a general history of Art ; enough history to give a
new reading to the Middle Ages ; enough about
Poetry to make a master in criticism ; enough of
Economy to create a special type of Socialism ;
enough verse to rival an average minor poet ; enough
of perfect prose to place him beside Bacon and Burke
for his inimitable style.
And withal, this man so often from boyhood
prostrated by physical maladies, and then by despair
and cerebral affliction ; who spent years and years
in travelling over Europe, in lonely meditation on
mountains, moors, lakes, and sea ; who gave up days
and nights to schools, classes, and college lectures ;
who poured out his thoughts daily to unknown
correspondents ; who flung away the whole of his
paternal inheritance with lavish, and indeed reckless,
generosity found time, as this collection shows us,
to produce hundreds of exquisite studies of buildings,
landscapes, pictures, statues, and natural objects from
Mont Blanc to a boulder or a tuft of grass all of
them full of suggestion to the artist and the naturalist,
unique in their method, and some few so subtle, so
lovely, that they might pass at a first glance for the
work of Prout or of Turner. Truly, it is only now
when we see in one uniform collection these eighty
different works, these 1400 plates, with all the new
biographical matter, the diaries, the notes, the letters
which serve to elucidate and illumine the text it
is only now that we can judge how largely bulks in
the glorious Victorian age the name of Ruskin
whose publications from 1837 to 1900 exactly cover
the whole reign of the late Queen.
I said there is a great deal that is new in this
collection, and what is old is given under new forms
and with fresh illustrations. In the first place, there
are more than 100 drawings by Ruskin himself
164 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
which have never been published. All students of
his work and life have seen many of the originals
wonderful in their subtlety and precision, now and
then really lovely in cloud and air effects. As an
old Alpinist, I make bold to say that no other man
has ever drawn the Alps with absolute truth, not even
Turner, who idealised and glorified the mountains
as he did the rivers, the sea, and the palaces of
Venice. Ruskin alone of draughtsmen has drawn the
Alps as they are as Tyndall might have drawn them
if he had been an artist, as Turner might have drawn
them if he had been a geologist. And in this collec-
tion we have in one set the whole series, singular in
their variety, but all marked with the same intense
patience and meticulous pains. Ruskin often declares
that he could only copy not compose. But there
are some of his larger studies of distant landscapes in
France and Switzerland which make one think he
might have been a real painter, if he had not chosen
to be a Professor of universal Art as he might have
been a great Social Reformer, if he had not chosen
to be a lonely Prophet in the wilderness.
But there is much beside the drawings which is
new. The nineteenth volume contains no fewer
than three unpublished Lectures, which together give
the essence of Ruskin teaching on his central idea :
the dependence of all great Art on moral and spiritual
enthusiasm. It was a noble message, to which his
whole life was devoted in some ways, a true message,
however much he misunderstood the hard facts of
history and overrated his own power to solve one of
the most complex problems of social science. Almost
every volume yet issued contains matter more or less
new even to diligent students of Ruskiniana. And
apart from new appendices, the body of extracts from
diaries, letters, memoranda, and criticisms give life
THE COMPLETE RUSKIN 165
and meaning to the essays in the text. But the
elaborate introductions to each volume, mainly the
work of Mr. E. T. Cook, running at times to 50
or 100 close pages, describe the circumstances, in
Ruskin's long and chequered life, under which each
book, essay, or lecture was produced. This bio-
graphical commentary is at times a revelation of a
mind one of the most marvellously endowed and
certainly one of the most vividly interesting in the
whole of the nineteenth century.
I am a Ruskinian myself but with a difference.
There are still people who accept the pure milk of
the Ruskinite word, just as there are people who still
believe in Christian science or other mysteries. But
I am free to confess that John Ruskin, in his long
life, his encyclopaedic range of study, his restless search
for new ideas, and his deluge of writing, maintained
continuously for sixty years, did emit much wild
guesswork, some arrant nonsense as he often confessed,
and changed his point of view backwards and forwards,
as passion, love, indignation, pity, and sorrow moved
him. What man of eager spirit and piercing inspira-
tion, who for sixty years flung himself into every
problem of art, of poetry, of morals, of religion even
of science could avoid inconsistencies, contradictions,
absurdities, and cruel injustice to those whom he could
not understand ? And yet I find fascination in all
these outbursts. Nay, more ; even when Ruskin is
most wrong, unjust, intolerant, I find food for reflection
and care. His view may be one-sided, but it is always
the view of a side which has to be taken into account
a view which can only be met by thoughts which
force us down to the very roots of moral, social, and
religious questions.
Take as an example the famous lecture of 1870
on Michael Angelo and Tintoret (vol. xxii. 75-110),
1 66 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
which so " fluttered the Volscians " of the Academies
and the art critics. As the world has done now for
400 years (the cartoon of the Pisan war was of 1506),
I hold by the supreme greatness of Buonarroti myself;
and in a little sketch of his life I wrote that " in
nobility of character, in sublimity of imagination,
and in stupendous achievements, Michael Angelo may
rank with the greatest sons of Humanity." And yet
I find much that is true, a great deal that is most
instructive, in Ruskin's furious onslaught, his de-
nunciations of "the ostentatious display of strength
and science." How true is his wrath with all "stage
decoration," with the fatal effect of the gigantic
powers of the master, whose influence, as I said in
my sketch, was " disastrous to his contemporary
followers." Ruskin's tirade against Michael Angelo
is not the whole truth far from it but it has truths
which we cannot shut out. How fine are Ruskin's
" four essentials of the greatest art " : I, faultless
workmanship ; 2, serenity ; 3, the human face first j
4, freedom from vice and pain. The famous (or
infamous) lecture on Michael Angelo should be read
again in vol. xxii., with the notes, criticisms, letters,
and personal reminiscences, for the first time included
in this series. It forms a typical example of Ruskin's
moods, ideas, and 'limitations. We find him therein
not so much the student and critic of art, as the per-
fervid poet, moralist, preacher, censor morum^ and social
reformer.
He himself regarded his lectures as the most careful
and important part of his life-work. The energy and
labour he gave to his museum and his art collections
are perfectly amazing. His first professorship at
Oxford dated from 1870-78. These years were
" the busiest period of his busy life." He delivered
eleven courses of lectures at Oxford. He wrote guide-
THE COMPLETE RUSKIN 167
books, works on botany, geology, drawing ; he started
a library of standard literature ; he catalogued and
annotated his art collection ; he founded a museum
at Sheffield ; he engaged in a series of social experi-
ments ; he founded the Company of St. George ; he
wrote incessantly to newspapers ; he issued that
wonderful medley called Fors Clavigera month by
month. That it all ended in a dreadful brain collapse
is not wonderful. It is a subject of wonder that he
ever recovered the lucidity and activity of his powers
at all. But it is not at all wonderful if, in the course
of production, so miscellaneous and so passionate, he
was hurried into many false judgments, and laid down
the law in many things, of which he could have no
really scientific knowledge. And yet in all this
torrent of poetry, homily, keen vision, and rapturous
enthusiasm, there are for some of us imperishable charms
and exquisite sympathies with beauty and goodness.
These volumes of lectures, read with the mass of
illustrations printed and pictorial, the notes and letters
made public for the first time in this series, display
the man, Ruskin, in more living reality than do his
greater works. They explain much that is latent in
Modern Painters and in The Stones of Venice^ often
qualifying and correcting his earlier judgments. All
through his long life, from the childhood when he
wrote poetry at nine, till he finished Prceterita just
before his death, Ruskin was perpetually learning, as
Michael Angelo said of himself, ancora impara. His
theme was the whole world of art, of nature, of
history, of man, of earth, of sky : and none of these
could present a problem which he did not burst to
solve. Often, as we know, he egregiously failed to
solve them. But how suggestive, how fascinating,
often how wonderful were his guesses, his insight, his
intense earnestness of soul !
i68 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
When it comes to me to find myself unable to
work and but faintly to enjoy sights of the world and
to read anything new, as I saw him in the last years
of his life, in his study, softly gazing at Coniston Old
Man, as he sat in a bower of roses, and turning over
a volume of pictures, I think I would wish to have
these thirty-seven volumes of the Library Ruskin by
my side, and gently read a favourite passage here and
there, or turn from one lovely drawing to another,
trying to recall a past vision of beauty.
It is the inexhaustible prodigality of this collection
of thoughts and suggestions which ever strikes me
with fresh wonder. It may sound a wild paradox,
but I ask myself if any other of our famous men of
genius, since Shakespeare, has poured out such a world
of original fancies about everything visible in Nature,
or in the handiwork of Man, about the literature of
the ancient and the modern poets, about the regenera-
tion of society, the inner meaning of religion, about
the duties of man, the prerogatives of woman, the
training of children, the dignity of Labour in the
indomitable search of that Sangreal of the true knight
* a new Heaven and a new Earth.
Mr. Cook's introductions will be found to have
singular interest for all lovers of the Professor, enriched
with many private letters of his, entries in diaries,
personal and biographical pictures from intimate friends,
and a vivid presentment of his Ijfe at Coniston, as those
who know it will bear witness. Surely no genius of
the Victorian age, hardly Carlyle or Tennyson, has ever
been revealed to us so faithfully and so lovingly, in
every detail of his life, and mind, and inmost feeling.
And assure'dly no English writer, unless it be Shake-
speare himself, has ever had his writings edited, anno-
tated, and illustrated with such zeal, labour, and ample
knowledge.
THE COMPLETE RUSKIN 169
A volume which will have special interest for
Ruskinian students will be the unpublished lectures
given at Oxford in 1874 "The ./Esthetic and
Mathematic Schools of Art in Florence." The eight
lectures were thus classified : I. The ./Esthetic Schools
of 1300 : Arnolfo, Cimabue, Giotto (the lecture on
Giotto being incorporated in the " Mornings in
Florence" and " The Shepherd's Tower"). II. The
Mathematic Schools of 1400 Brunelleschi, Quercia,
Ghiberti. III. The Christian Romantic Schools of
1500 Angelico, Botticelli. This section is illus-
trated by twelve drawings and photogravures. These
lectures contained some of Ruskin's most vigorous and
characteristic thoughts. He was himself pleased with
them, and he tells us that the lecture on Arnolfo was
considered the best he had ever given in Oxford.
Twelve lectures were written, he says, in six weeks
" from hand to mouth." They were delivered to a
great extent extempore from notes. And for that
reason they were not published, and now are only
recovered from a rough MS.^ with the assistance of
the notes taken by Mr. Wedderburn artd others.
Though they still remain fragmentary, this only adds
to their lifelike form and effect. As we read them we
seem to hear the eager, masterful, irrepressible tone of
the speaker as he poured out his passionate ideas and
glanced from grave to gay, from poetry to science,
from morals to religion.
The analysis of Florentine Art into the three
schools aesthetic, mathematic,. and romantic, typified
respectively in Giotto, Michael Angelo,and Bott'icelli
goes down to the roots of Ruskin's whole conception
of Art and of Society, and with him Art and Society
were indissolubly bound together. The distinction
between Imagination and Science, between spiritual
ideals and accomplished knowledge, between Angelico
1 70 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
and Buonarroti, is profoundly instructive, and explains
much in Ruskin's darkest sayings, his rapture in the
archaic limitations of Cimabue, and his indignation
with the academic megalomania of Michael Angelo.
Nothing has injured Ruskin's credit with students of
Art more than his violent repudiation of Michael Angelo
as a supreme type. In these lectures one sees more
clearly what Ruskin meant, and why, recognising as
he does the unapproachable power and knowledge of
the mighty sculptor, he turns from the man who defies
all the Christian spiritualities and revolts the Catholic
graces. But this judgment assumes that no power and
no knowledge, no tragic intensity or inimitable skill
of hand, can outweigh a want of spiritual convictions.
At Oxford this assumption thirty years ago might pass
unchallenged. But to those who have parted with the
spiritual convictions of Cimabue and Angelico, the
tirades of the Professor are sounding brass. Half of
Ruskin's doctrines and precepts about Art rest upon
his own very fervid and quite personal beliefs as to
things social and religious. And, as his beliefs were in
constant flux, and not quite intelligible at all times, his
Art judgment is open to eternal controversy. To
accept him as final arbiter in Art we must accept him
as infallible master in theology and in sociology. The
judicious accept him as an inspiration, but not as a
judge. And yet, how rich in suggestion and in light
are even his most daring paradoxes and fantasies !
Nothing can be more instructive than all these
volumes contain about Giotto. The force of Ruskin's
artistic instincts leads him direct to understand the
great Florentine who united profound intellect to
exquisite sense of beauty. Buonarroti had the intel-
lect, though less sane and less lucid. Angelico and
Botticelli had the sense of beauty, but not the brain
power. At first sight Giotto would not seem to
THE COMPLETE RUSKIN 171
satisfy Ruskin's ideal ; and in this book we learn that
he did not satisfy it at first sight. But at last Giotto is
felt to be supreme in all but such technical knowledge
as was impossible in the age of Dante. As I pointed
out in 1902, Ruskin has taught us to "rank Giotto as
one of the greatest forces in the entire history of art."
These "Mornings in Florence," these views of the
Campanile, justify even such language of admiration.
We know it is disputed how much Giotto did for the
Campanile. If he did not conceive its form, and the
motifs of the reliefs round its base, there must have
been two Giottos in Florence.
The Complete Works of John Ruskin will ever be
read, as the Sixth Article tells us the Apocrypha are
read, for example and instruction, yet not so as to
establish any doctrine. They may never become
" canonical " books, and yet how beautiful, how wise,
how illuminating they are !
For my own part, I am free to confess that with
all the means I have had for understanding Ruskin's
temperament and methods, I have gained a new
insight from the material here collected for the first
time. Although I knew him and heard him during
the last forty years of his life, had read, as I fondly
supposed, all that he had ever written, and had myself
compiled a biography, I have learnt much in the new
volume.
The chief interest of the new biographical matter
lies in the fresh light thrown by it on the very painful
and obscure part of Ruskin's life from 1874 to 1877.
It was the period of his worst illness and greatest
moral trial. As his editor tells us, "The work is
broken, scattered, incomplete, and marked by irrita-
bility of tone." He truly says " the fire now becomes
fitful and feverish." As Carlyle wrote, a little earlier :
" He has fallen into thick, quiet despair again on the
172 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
personal question ; and meant all the more to go
ahead with fire and sword upon the universal one."
He was suffering personal disappointment. In 1875
he wrote : " The woman I hoped would have been
my wife is dying." She died in May, having steadily
refused to see him. The death deeply affected
Ruskin's mind and nature, and coloured with gloom
and mysticism his whole after-career. How it shook
and over-shadowed his mind, how strangely it worked
itself into his art studies and his inmost musings and
fantasies, can be learned, I think, most faithfully and
at first hand from the letters and impressions now
given to the world.
These years were a period of great but restless
activity. The " great fountain of sorrow," he wrote,
"can never ebb away. Meanwhile I live in the outside
of me and can still work." He did work at Oxford
Lectures, the Drawing School, St. George's Company,
Fors Clavigera^ month by month, the Guide to Venice,
and other undertakings. And we now learn how
deeply at this time Ruskin became interested in vague
forms of spiritualism and hypochondria, which floated
about his mind, giving it no rest, but rather, as he
said, a "quite terrible languor." The effects of this
sorrow, malady, and mysticism combined, more or
less darkened the rest of his life, and clouded the
balance of his thoughts. I can now better understand
the tone of mind which induced his denunciation of
Darwin, Mill, Spencer, Miss Cobbe, Liberals, and
Agnostics, and his appeal to me, which led to our
controversy in 1876. When I wrote the reply
reprinted in my Choice of Books I had no idea of the
morbid condition of his mind or of the causes of his
affliction, though his private letters to me betrayed a
strange excitability. Ruskin's writing after the year
1874 was never quite the same thing, until perhaps
THE COMPLETE RUSKIN 173
in the calm of Pmterita (1885-89). We may
enter more fully into his state of mind by reading
the forty pages of Introduction that Mr. Cook has
compiled. It is a fascinating chapter in the psychology
of genius. The way in which Saint Ursula and Rose
La Touche are blended into a sort of Dantesque Vision
is a strange episode in a many-sided nature.
The elaborate study of Giotto's frescoes at Padua
belong to 1853 and 1860. I believe no sounder or
more illuminating art criticism was ever composed.
We may even say that truly right understanding of
Italian Primitive Art dates from this epoch, for
Englishmen at least, and largely by means of Ruskin.
Giotto, we now know, was one of the profoundest
men of genius whom the modern world produced.
His pre-eminence was obscured to our grandfathers
by the technical ignorance inevitable in his age.
No one has ever explained so well as Ruskin why
Giotto's artistic imagination should in no respect suffer
by his defects in manipulation and scientific training.
" Giotto was not one of the most accomplished
painters, but he was one of the greatest men who
ever lived," cries our Professor in his enthusiasm.
These frescoes do not teach us drawing, but they
expound to us "the history of the human mind."
The whole power of Giotto's work rests on "pure
Colour, noble Form, noble Thought." Giotto made
no attempt to give complete details, nor any laborious
realism. His was "a symbolical art which addresses
the imagination, not the realist art which supersedes
it." The entire series of these studies of Giotto
forms a masterly type of fine art judgment and analysis.
The Guide to the Academy at Venice (of 1877) and
St. Mark's Rest (of 1884) nave ^en, and long will
be, the handbooks of innumerable travellers. But the
copious notes of the editors and the plates in the new
174 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
edition will force most readers of the original manuals
to look at them again. One of the most interesting
studies in St. Mark's Rest is the subtle analysis of
Carpaccio's works, and of these the most new and
ingenious is the mystical meaning of the symbolical
St. Jerome. Here we have Ruskin with his lynx-eye,
his subtlety, his love of symbolism, and his mediaeval
passion. The St. Jerome is a typical example of the
way in which the early Venetians could blend intense
realism, the most precise representation of minute facts
as they saw them, with an enthusiastic idealism of
spiritual mysteries.
As we read and enjoy Ruskin's rhapsodies over the
faithful precision with which Giotto and Carpaccio
saw with the mind's eye miracles and transfigurations
exactly as scripture and legend recorded them, and
when he raves at Raphael and Michael Angelo, who
use these scriptures and legends merely as the texts
whereon they could dilate on their own delight in all
forms of human nature and of earthly grace careless
of the words of evangelist or father the question
arises in the mind : Why were Raphael and Michael
Angelo and the men of the New Learning bound by
any literalism of Holy Writ ? They were painters,
whose business it was to show us noble men and
lovely women in picturesque and moving incidents.
They were not the handicraftsmen of monks, bidden
to produce illustrations of homilies and sermons.
Michael Angelo did not take the Last Judgment
seriously in the vein of the Book of Revelation. Nor
do we to-day. Nor, for that matter, did Ruskin him-
self. Giotto's Bible at Padua is most impressive Art
but it is Primitive Art. Its profound interest is
historical not theological, not religious. Or if it
teach us religion, it is the religion of human nature
and of human genius.
MAURICE HEWLETT
1906
TEN years have passed since a new writer came forward
in English letters with a vein of his own so subtle that,
for the moment, it delighted the thoughtful rather than
the casual reader, who is slow to accept any unfamiliar
note. But in these few years the wider public has
learnt that, amongst the two or three living prose
writers of the first rank stands Maurice Hewlett, who
in a decade has given them, almost year by year, a
series of romances of rare imagination and power. In
the quality of fantastic idealism, indeed, he remains
alone without a rival. Now that novels tend to
become coloured photographs of commonplace life, the
gift of exuberant imagination is as precious as it is rare.
And when to inexhaustible fancy is added the charm
of curious felicity of form, we all feel that something
has been done to redeem our literature of to-day from
the charge of monotonous mediocrity and patient
copying of obvious fact.
Even yet, amidst the brilliant success of these
romances, the world has hardly recognised how rare a
gift is that of -Hewlett ; and even his early admirers do
not always grasp the sum total of his original creations.
I am only too conscious that in points of substance, as
well as of form, I am not the best fitted to do him
176 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
justice, for my own pursuits lead me to historical facts,
social and ethical problems ; whilst in language, my
taste is ever for the plain and direct words, such as the
average man can grasp. As this essay is an attempt to
explain Hewlett, not to praise him, I shall not hesitate
to say squarely where I cannot go with him in matters
of ethic and in mannerism of phrase admitting that
prose can never be an adequate measure of any poetry
least of all of the poetry of imagery, fancy, and
mysticism. But, bound over to prose realism as I am,
and by temperament alien to all innuendo, euphuism,
and forms of trope, I am carried away by the fantastic
magic of these masques, fairy tales, and chansons de
geste^ whilst, in spite of my cooler judgment, I am
charmed by the artful mosaic of word-painting and
word-conundrums with which each page dances and
scintillates.
The peculiar note of fantastic idealism (in which I
make bold to say Hewlett has no living rival) was struck
in his first romance; and the Forest Lovers (1898)
still remains the typical Hewlett. Later books show
historical insight, brilliant colour, subtle psychology, a
wider grasp of human life, of the genius of various
epochs and races. But the fantastic imagery, the
sympathy between man and nature, the wild passion
of adventure all glow in the dissolving fairy scenes
of Morgraunt Forest ; and these same qualities run
through the whole series of these " Gestes." This is
their proper title, as Ben Jonson says :
The gestes of kings, great captains, and sad wars.
Rather, perhaps, they are romances of adventure, as
Chaucer has it :
The halle was al ful, I wis,
Of hem that writen olde gestes.
MAURICE HEWLETT 177
Hewlett's books, even his historical and topo-
graphical pieces, are " olde gestes " that is, romances
in prose as to form, but in essence poetry, as were the
Decameron or the Morte Darthur.
These " Gestes " of his have . often an ideal world
of their own, wholly unconscious of time, place, or
reality. They have no known country, take place
in no recorded age, and are not bound by laws of
material nature or crude common sense. You might
as well ask when and where the Nibelungs came to
King Etzel's land search museums of archaeology
for Cinderella's slipper and show us in ruins the
castle of Uther Pendragon. The overture to the
Forest Lovers sounds the dominant note. "My
story," says our Troubadour, " will take you into
times and spaces alike rude and uncivil. Blood will
be spilt, virgins suffer distresses j the horn will sound
through woodland glades ; dogs, wolves, deer, and
men, Beauty and the Beasts will tumble each other,
seeking life or death with their proper tools. There
should be mad work, not devoid of entertainment."
Yes ! In these tales there is almost always " mad
work," but it is never "devoid of entertainment."
The author of these "masques," "extravaganzas,"
" visions," or allegories begs us " not to ask him what
it all means, or what the moral of it is." "Leave
everything to me," he says. So we do. We would
as lief ask him to explain Isoult la Desirous as we
would ask Spenser what were the other six virtues,
and what became of them, or in what order of
Mammalia the Blatant Beast was classed. We do
not cross-examine poets. As Browning said, "God
knows what I meant ! "
The Forest Lovers was the first of his books I saw,
and I still think it his true type. It was the rapid im-
provising of an omnivorous reader of poems, romances,
N
178 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
old ballads ; Provencal " Chansons " ; " Fabliaux,"
French, German, Italian ; Decameronic " Novelle " ;
Orlandic epics; sagas, folk-songs; Spenser's Faerie
hieene^ and Sidney's Arcadia. It was more mediaeval
than Elizabethan ; more Italian than English ; more
redolent of Malory and Ariosto than of Spenser and
Tasso. He calls out in his first lines " blood will
be spilt " ; " there will be mad work " :
Le donne, i cavalier, 1' arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, 1' audaci imprese io canto.
Our Maurice must have a foreign strain in his pedigree.
There is a touch of the diavolo incarnato in this Inglese
Italianato, with his " mad work," his taste for " bloody
work."
What we are to make of Pan and the Toung
Shepherd (of the same year 1898), I will not venture
to say. This is clearly poetry, a masque, an extrava-
ganza, or what not something made out of echoes of
Aristophanes and Ben Jonson. As we see it as a
play, we try to solve its mysteries, but anything less
dramatic can hardly be conceived as the book stands.
The Dramatis Persona are the great god Pan, who
talks like a tipsy tramp, seven immortal daughters of
earth, Aglae and her sisters, who sing Shelleyan stanzas,
shepherds and carters with Greek names: Geron,
Teucer, Mopsus, who talk north -country brogue
"Gi' us a snack, wenches ; this Piphany Eve." The
wench calls Pan "gaffer," "jail- bird," "rope- ripe
villain," "old knave." She boxes his ears as an "old
gallus-bird," when Pan makes rustic love, but she is
ready to marry him at last, as Parson "Sir Topas
would christianise a he-goat." And the masque ends
in a carol with the true country-side ring. What it
all means, in what vein of ideas this medley of Hellenic
myth, plough-boy roystering, and moorland witchery
MAURICE HEWLETT 179
took form in verse and drama we need not inquire.
The old shepherd believes not in God, but " in sheep,
and a bulging stocking 'gainst the rheumatics." The
young Shepherd believes in the seven sisters- trees by
the tarn : who sing o' nights. The immortal and
arboreal sisters do sing thus :
We ride at our will o'er the bonny wild moor,
Air is our fee, and the deep brake our demesne.
The god Pan falls in love " with the sinew and tan
of a country wench," who cuffs him soundly. And
the yokels chaff him in true ale-house style. We do
not often get such a medley of old and new, ethereal and
coarse ; but the Renascence often made it so, and loved
it so. Nor can I deny that the thing has in it poetry,
humour, learning, mother earth, and human nature.
If the Forest Lovers and Pan have no possible date
or local colour, this cannot be said of the later tales,
some of which, like the Little Novels of Italy ^ Richard^
Queen's ^uair^ and the Fool Errant^ are dated to a
year, or a decade, and have very vivid and exact
painting both of place and race. One of the inter-
esting gifts of this writer is his power to take us first
into a fairy world full of goblins, wonders, and
mysteries, and then to whirl us into scenes alive with
the historical fidelity of Macaulay or Carlyle. And
these two worlds are never far apart. The vein of
weird fantasy and historical realism runs through all
the tales. The yokels who heckle the god Pan
over their ale might have come out of Thomas
Hardy's Wessex. Brother Bon-Accord in Morgraunt
tells another Canterbury Tale in perfect good faith.
When Hewlett leaves fairies, sorceresses, and knights-
errant, he can be as grim and sanguinary as the
Nibelungen Lied or the Elizabethan dramatists. He
calls his hearers round him, crying :
180 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings :
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed :
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd.
The fierce passions and catastrophes of kings and
queens, lords and ladies, captains, dare-devil swords-
men, lovely beggar-maids whom King Cophetua raises
to a throne and generally strangles these are the
puppets of the show. They are almost all from the
south ; Italians, Provencals, or French usually living
in Italy itself never in our own England in any
modern era. Hewlett is ever Inglese italianato^ even if
he is painting an English man or woman.
His special field is Italian life in the age of the
Renascence. He has painted its beauty, its intense
life, its poetry, its delirium of lust and blood, with
a colour and a glow that we hardly get from the
laborious learning of Symonds, Sismondi, and Burck-
hardt all together. It has the fascinating vitality of
Cellini's Memoirs. I take the Little Novels of Italy
to be as true a tableau of the quattrocento as an oil
painting by Pinturicchio or a fresco by Signorelli.
Indeed, I hold the "Madonna of the Peach Tree" to
be as perfect a short story as we have had in our time.
Its local colouring charms all who love Verona and
have lingered in the moonlight round the tombs of the
Scalas, or chaffered for fruit in the market-place. It
has humour, poetry, pathos, mystery, imaginative
history, and a pure humanity. In Hewlett's gallery of
portraits I remember no woman so sweet as the lowly
Vanna Dardicozzo, nor do I know a more finished
tale in contemporary romance.
Hewlett knows Italy, and its story from Dante
down to Tasso and Alfieri, as hardly another English-
man since Symonds does. Each Italian city and
MAURICE HEWLETT 181
province, nay, each castle, cathedral, or palace, seems to
him to have its own history, temperament, patriotism.
Each kindles in him a new dominant note. Verona,
Padua, Romagna, Pistoja, Ferrara, are to him as
different as Oxford, York, and Edinburgh to us.
Each has its proper record. The tyranny of the
Despot, the intrigues of Monks, the affectation of
Academics, the ruffianism of the Condottieri, the
conceits of the Sonneteer, the pomp of the Palace
furnish in turn the themes of a novel which may be
far too gruesome to suit the lovers in the Decameron,
but which paints to the life the times of Sforzas,
Baglionis, and Borgias.
There was so much of historical insight, antiquarian
realism, in Hewlett's earlier legends that it was in-
evitable but that he should set himself the task of
reproducing an elaborate picture of a past epoch.
This he has done twice on a great scale with, perhaps,
over-much elaboration. I said so much about Richard
Tea-and-Nay when it first appeared (Fortnightly
Review, January 1901) that I need not discuss it again.
Five years have only deepened my conviction that it is
a fine and original romance in the great style. It is
a true historical picture of a wonderful epoch, with
archaeological realism, with learning sound and wide,
and insight into the nature of its typical men and
women. As I said, "such historic imagination, such
glowing colour, such crashing speed, set forth in such
pregnant form, carry us away." It pictures to us the
wild times, and the wilder heroes of the twelfth
century, with more living force than we find in con-
temporary chronicles, or in " standard " histories. It
makes us understand the glamour which for seven
centuries has hung round the memory of the Lion-
Heart, in spite of the savage vices with which sober
history has stamped him.
1 82 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
I need not enlarge on matters wherein I could not
follow the method employed the incessant change of
scene, country, type of society, manners, and religion ;
the fantastic improbabilities in the action ; the bewil-
dering adventures of knights-errant, troubadours, and
disguised damsels. Nor am I a convert to all the
archaisms, conceits, and tropes which make some
passages as hard to read as a chorus of ./Eschylus.
Much as I enjoy quaint old words, the toothsome
phrase, the classicalisms, medievalisms, italianisms,
which bestar the page (it is a catching trick of speech !),
I draw the line at such Osricism as an altar lamp
" that hinted at the Son of God," " flying flags " for
blushing ; the "sun putting the air to the sword," e.g.
a hot day. Not only are these forced conundrums of
speech impertinent in a long narrative, but they disturb
the attention from the story, and make it halt and
limp.
The second great historical novel, The Queen's
j^W/r, has the same features as the Richard the
same historical elaboration, the same vivid realism, the
same ingenuity of phrase. I shall say less about it,
for it is less to my taste, perhaps because Mary Stuart
has always been to me an odious minx, interesting
only in the moment of her death. The story seems
to me more complicated, crowded, and bewildering
than that of Richard whilst the age is far less
romantic, and the persons far more coarse. The
Hewlettisms of phrase, if rather less profuse, are not so
much in keeping as they seem in the chronicle of
Abbot Milo. The story of the Queen of Scots has
had a splendid success with the public, and if I find
her less romantic than Richard it is my own fault.
But Hewlett is at his best in the Middle Ages and the
Italian Renascence. His imagination is so singularly
hot and fanciful that the banality of modern life repels
MAURICE HEWLETT 183
him. For that reason I wish the fascinating adven-
tures of the Fool Errant had befallen an ancestor of
Francis Strelley in 1521 rather than a young squire in
1721. The Georgian age, even in Italy, had but a
languid turn for extravagant peregrinations ; and there
is incongruity in an English gentleman of the times
of Swift leading the life of Benvenuto Cellini. But
all the same, no living Englishman could have
painted such a Fool as Francis or such a Queen as
Mary.
Now that I am in a warning mood, I would advise
him to stick to the age of Plantagenets, the Cinque-
centists, and the Humanists to indulge his genius for
the legendary and fantastic to produce " Fabliaux "
rather than histories. His short stories are perfect :
his simpler style inimitable. In romantic colouring of
Italian Humanism he has no living rival even if he
ever had an equal. He should choose no canvas of an
encyclopaedic scale no world-history, no panorama of
whole epochs. Some day he will give us the picture
of an adorable woman, who is neither' a beggar-maid
bred in a hovel, nor a high-born dame who defies all
the decencies of her station. It has become almost a
mannerism of our troubadour that his heroines are
starvelings in rags, who follow the hero about like lap-
dogs, and are never happy till their lover brutalises
them. It is then discovered that these Cinderellas
and Griseldas are noble ladies ready to die for "their
masters."
His theme is ever spasmodic Love and homicidal
Death as conceived in the Italian Renascence. It is
high time to give us some less passionate and less
sanguinary scenes. The Hypnerotomachia of the
fifteenth century alarms too many readers in the
twentieth. Mudie's subscribers must have books that
they can read without a dictionary, and will not ask
1 84 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
for books of which the very titles puzzle them. They
read him with avidity, as it is. But how few of them
know that English literature has now a writer who
may yet reach a place in the front rank of that
illustrious band which for five centuries has carried on
the torch from age to age.
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA
1901
IF you would fully grasp all that the geographical
conditions of the American continent imply, you
should cross the Atlantic in its winter gales, and
travel far to the west with the thermometer sinking
down towards zero. No imagination can bring
home to you this vast isolation and this boundless
expanse, until, for some eight days, you have watched
your great ship as it ploughs across these inexhaustible
waters at the rate of a South-Eastern Railway train,
seeing nothing but waves, clouds and sky, so that the
lonely monotony of this enormous ocean seems to try
the nerves at last. And then, when the express train
thunders on, day and night, across the Allegheny
mountains to the west, a journey that would suffice
to cross Europe just brings you over but a moiety of
the space that divides the Atlantic from the Pacific.
Make this voyage and try to conceive what it
must mean to the ordinary emigrant rather than to
the luxurious tourist, and you will begin to under-
stand how far outside of Europe is this American
continent ; how completely it offers a new life, a
fresh start, a world detached, on a virgin soil un-
encumbered with our antique civilisation and its
burdens. Again, make this westward journey by
185
1 86 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
rail, and watch how the emigrant has to make it,
and you feel an awakening sense of the boundless area,
the inexhaustible resources, the infinite varieties of
the transatlantic hemisphere, which for practical pur-
poses has only just begun to take its place in these
latter days in the secular life of humanity as a
whole.
America is detached from Europe by a gulf which,
however trivial it seems to the summer tourist in his
luxurious state-room and saloon, has been a veritable
"middle passage" to millions and millions of
American citizens and their parents a gulf which
the " Upper Ten thousand " cross backwards and
forwards as we go to Paris or Rome, but which
seventy millions of American citizens never cross or
recross. To them our Europe is a far-away world,
of which but faint echoes reach them, which they
will never see more, which can never directly touch
their lives ; whilst the vast expanses and inexhaustible
resources of their own continent are brought home
to them, day by day, in a thousand practical and
visible ways.
And yet the paradox strikes my mind that
American life, such as a passing visitor finds it in
the great cities, is essentially the same as our own ;
that, in spite of the geographical isolation and the
physical conditions, the citizen of the United States
is at heart much the same man as the subject of
King Edward ; that life is the same, mutatis mutandis ;
that the intellectual, social, and religious tone is
nearly identical ; that the proverbial differences we
hear of have been absurdly exaggerated. Put aside
trivial peculiarities of language, manners, habit or
climate, admit a certain air of Paris in New York,
and a certain European tone in Washington and
these only concern small sections in both cities for
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 187
my part I noticed no radical difference between
Americans and Englishmen. Physically, they are
the same race, with the same strength, energy, and
beauty ; except for superficial things, they live the
same lives, have the same interests, aims, and
standards of opinion j and in literature, science, art
and philosophy, the Atlantic is no more a barrier
between our two peoples than is St. George's Channel
or the Tweed in the British Isles. The citizen of
the United States seems to me very much what the
citizen of the United Kingdom is only rather more
accentuated. The differences are really on the
surface, or in mere form.
I do not forget all that we are told about the vast
proportion of non-American people in the United
States : that New York and Chicago contain " more
Germans than any city but Berlin, more Irishmen
than Dublin, more Italians than Venice, more
Scandinavians than Stockholm, and " (they some-
times add) "more sinners than any place on earth."
Statistics give us the facts, and of course there is no
sort of doubt about the immense degree in which the
States are peopled by a race of foreign birth or origin.
In the eastern slums of New York, in the yards and
docks of the great cities, one sees them by myriads :
Germans, Irish, Italians, Swedes, Russians, Orientals,
and negroes. But those who direct the State, who
administer the cities, control the legislatures, the
financiers, merchants, professors, journalists, men of
letters those whom I met in society were nearly
all of American birth, and all of marked American
type. I rarely heard a foreign accent or saw a foreign
countenance. The American world is practically
" run " by genuine Americans. Foreigners are more
en evidence in London or Manchester, it seemed to
me, than they are in New York, Philadelphia, or
1 88 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Boston. The reason is that foreigners are not so
easily assimilated here.
It is my own impression (of course, I can pretend
to nothing but an impression at a first glance) that in
spite of the vast proportion of immigrant population,
the language, character, habits of native Americans
rapidly absorb and incorporate all foreign elements.
In the second or third generation all exotic differences
are merged. In one sense the United States seemed
to me more homogeneous than the United Kingdom.
There is no State, city, or large area which has a
distinct race of its own, as Ireland, Wales, and
Scotland have, and of course there is nothing analogous
to the diverse nationalities of the British Empire.
From Long Island to San Francisco, from Florida
Bay to Vancouver's Island, there is one dominant race
and civilisation, one language, one type of law, one
sense of nationality. That race, that nationality, is
American to the core. And the consciousness of its
vast expansion and collective force fills the mind of
American citizens, as nothing can do to this degree
in the nations of western Europe.
Vast expansion, collective force, inexhaustible energy
these are the impressions forced on the visitor, beyond
all that he could have conceived or had expected to
find. It is borne in on him that he has come, not so
much to another nation as to a new continent, in-
habited by a people soon to be more numerous than
any two of the greater nations of western Europe,
having within their own limits every climate and
product between the Tropics and the Pole, with
natural resources superior to those of all Europe put
together, and an almost boundless field for development
in the future. Europeans, being in touch with the
eastern seaboard, do not easily grasp the idea how fast
the population, wealth, and energy of the United
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 189
States are ever sweeping to the west. It is an amus-
ing " catch " when one is told that the central point
of population of the United States is now at Indiana-
polis, nearly a thousand miles west of Boston ; that
the geographical centre of the United States since the
acquisition of Alaska is now west of San Francisco.
It is [1901] long since an Eastern State man has been
elected President, and we are told that there will never
be another. The political centre of gravity is now
said to lie in the Mississippi Valley. And the destined
metropolis of the United States will soon be Chicago
or St. Louis. Chicago, with its unlimited area for
expansion north, west, and south, and its marvellous
site on the vast inland seas, may prove to be, in a
generation, the largest, richest, and most powerful
city in the world.
CHICAGO
Chicago, to which I was invited to give the annual
address in commemoration of George Washington,
was the first city in the United States in which I
sojourned ; and it naturally interested me much. It
did so, amongst other things, because I am older than
the city itself. At my own birth, I learn, it was a
village in a swamp with 100 inhabitants, and I heard
of a man now living who has killed bear on the site of
the Central Lake Park. Although it is said to extend
over a space of some thirty miles, it has vast edifices
of twenty stories, and its banks, offices, public build-
ings and halls show a lavish profusion of marbles,
granite, and carved stone. It is not a beautiful city,
though it has great natural opportunities on its level
lake shore ; and perhaps, as whole streets have been
bodily raised upwards by machinery many feet, it is
conceivable that it may be made a fine city in time.
190 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Chicago struck me as being somewhat unfairly
condemned as devoted to nothing but Mammon and
pork. Certainly, during my visit, I heard of nothing
but the progress of education, university endowments,
people's institutes, libraries, museums, art schools,
workmen's model dwellings and farms, literary culture,
and scientific foundations. I saw there one of the
best equipped and most vigorous art schools in
America, one of the best Toynbee Hall settlements
in the world, and perhaps the most rapidly developed
university in existence. My friends of the Union
League, themselves men of business proud of their
city, strongly urged me to dispense with the usual
visit to the grain elevators and the stockyards, where
hogs and oxen are slaughtered by millions and con-
signed to Europe, but to spend my time in inspecting
libraries, schools, and museums. No city in the world
can show such enormous endowments for educational,
scientific, and charitable purposes lavished within ten
years, and still unlimited in supply.
In a country like the United States, where every
principal city is struggling to become the first, and
every second-rate town is struggling to reach the front
rank, there is much jealousy between the competing
cities. And Chicago, the youngest of the great
cities of the world, is the butt of the wits of
New York and Washington. I was, no doubt,
fortunate in the conditions under which I saw
it, but the impression left on my mind was that the
citizens of Chicago were bringing their extraordinary
enterprise to bear quite as much on social, intel-
lectual, and artistic interests as they confessedly do
on grain, ham, steel, and lumber. They will have
to dispel and outlive the evil character their food
" rings " and syndicates have acquired, if they are
to hold their own in the future of civilisation. For
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 191
the manifest destiny of Chicago is to be the heart of
the American continent.
For energy, audacity, and enterprise, the Chicago
people are famous even in the Western States of
America. "When I come to London," said a leading
man of business, " I find your bankers and merchants
stroll into their offices between ten and eleven in the
morning. I am at my desk at seven," said he,
"and by noon I have completed fifty transactions by
telephone." Telegrams, in fact, are no longer up to
date in the United States, and few busy men ever use
a pen except to sign their names. They do not even
dictate their letters. They speak into a phonograph,
and have their message type-written from the instru-
ment. Life in the States is one perpetual whirl of
telephones, telesemes, phonographs, electric bells, motors,
lifts, and automatic instruments. To me such a life
would not be worth living, and the mere sight of it is
incompatible with continuous thought. But business
seems to be done in that way. And I did not learn
that the percentage of suicide or insanity was very
seriously increased by these truly maddening inventions.
No competent observer can doubt that in wealth,
manufactures, material progress of all kinds, the
United States, in a very few years, must hold the first
place in the world without dispute. Its population
will soon double that of any nation of western Europe.
That population will have an education second only
to that of Germany and Switzerland, and superior to
that of any other European nation. The natural
resources of their country exceed those of all Europe
put together. Their energy exceeds that of the
British ; their intelligence is hardly second to that of
Germany and France. And their social and political
system is more favourable to material development
than any other society ever devised by man. This
192 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS .
extraordinary combination of national and social
qualities, with vast numbers and unbounded physical
resources, cannot fail to give America the undisputed
lead in all material things. It is a curious instance of
the power of national egotism that Europe fails to
grasp this truth that Germans, with their wretchedly
poor country, narrow seaboard, and scanty rivers, ports,
and minerals, still aspire to the first place ; that
Frenchmen fail to see how their passion for art, rest,
and home has handicapped them in the race for
supremacy in things material ; that Britons, in their
narrow island and their comfortable traditions, will
not recognise that the industrial prizes must ultimately
go to numbers, national unity, physical resources,
geographical oppor.tunities, trained intelligence, and
restless ambition.
Enormous material triumphs obviously have their
moral and intellectual evils. And one is constantly
led to fancy some parallels between modern America
and old Rome at the close of the Republic and the
rise of the Empire. The sudden possession of vast
areas to be exploited, the control of enormous masses
of skilled workers, the rapid acquisition of all the
resources the world can offer by men bred in hard
work and having unbounded energy and ambition
these are common to the Rome of Cicero and Julius,
and to the United States of Grover Cleveland and
William M'Kinley. Paradox as it sounds, I was
constantly reminded of the old stories of Crassus,
Lucullus, and the Caesars when I saw the lavish pro-
fusion of marbles, carvings, and mosaics in public
and private buildings so many a portlcus metata
decempedis the wanton luxury which seems inspired
by a mania of rapidly squandering the riches that have
been so rapidly acquired. Wealth is acquired in
Europe by slow stages and usually in more than one
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 193
generation. In America it comes in a few years to
men whose boyhood was usually passed in hardship
or severe effort. The sudden mastery of enormous
sources of power is the peculiar fact of American
society and its special form of temptation. It is
often said, " From shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves needs
only three generations." Such power is not seldom
used well, generously, and with public spirit. Very
often it is used ill, with vulgarity, cruelty, folly, and
selfishness. In any case, it knows nothing of the
social conventions, habits, and traditions which, for
good and for evil, control the use of wealth in modern
Europe.
DEMOCRACY
The characteristic note of the United States is to
be found in this freedom of the individual the carriers
ouverte aux talents in a sense which is unknown to
Europeans and can hardly be conceived by them.
Every one of these seventy millions at least of
whites has an "equal chance " in life. A first-rate
education, comfort, and " betterment " are within the
reach of every youth and girl of average capacity and
industry. Most of the men eminent in business,
politics, or literature began life by " teaching school."
Every messenger boy or machine-hand may be an
embryo President of the United States, of a railroad,
or a bank, a powerful journalist, or a millionaire.
Every lad seems conscious that this is open to him,
and most of them live and work as if they meant to
try for this end. Every girl at a type- desk or a
telegraph office may live to reside in Fifth Avenue,
or who knows ? in the White House. And the
ease with which the youth and girl adapt themselves
to new careers and wider functions is one of the
i 9 4 MEMORIES AND .THOUGHTS
wonders of American life. Europe, even France, is
organised more or less on the caste system, where only
the rare exceptions pass from one social rank or office
to another from time to time. America is the only
land on earth where caste has never had a footing, nor
has left a trace. But this (be it said) is true of the
white race alone.
Rare as the prizes are, though the chances are
millions to one against the winning, the possibility is
ever before man, woman, and child. And this
infinitesimal chance, this not absolutely impossible
hope, colours life in the New World ; so that, in spite
of all the slum horrors of New York and Chicago,
and all the industrial pressure of this furious com-
petition, populist agitation, and anarchist outbreaks,
the proletariat of Europe has good ground for looking
to the United States as the paradise of Labour. New
York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia may
swarm with the disinherited of other continents, but
the standard of material well-being in the United
States for highly-trained artisans reaches a far higher
point than has ever yet been attained by the labouring
mass of civilised men.
The ease with which men can pass from one
locality to another, from one climate to another, from
one business to another, the entire absence of social
barriers or class distinctions, the abundant means of
technical and scientific education, leave it open to
each man and woman to make their own lives.
The vast continent, with its varieties of climate and
soil, produces almost everything except champagne,
diamonds, and ancient buildings. With New York
and San Francisco, the two grandest natural ports in
the world, open to the ships of the Atlantic and the
Pacific, with Chicago or St. Louis as the centre of
traffic, the clearing-house of this boundless trade, the
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 195
material prosperity of the American continent must
reach in the twentieth century a height of which the
nineteen centuries before it never dreamed. When
the Englishman talks about the evils of Protection and
the benefits of Free Trade, he is reminded that the
United States occupies a continent self-sufficing, except
for a few luxuries, which has its own Free Trade on a
gigantic scale, over an area far larger than all Western
Europe. It seems impertinent to lecture men about
their neglect of Free Trade, when in their own
country they can travel in every direction thousands
of miles without ever meeting a Customs frontier.
They insist that they are the greatest Free Trade
people on earth.
Of course, for the American citizen and the
thoughtful visitor, the real problem is whether this
vast prosperity, this boundless future of theirs, rests
upon an equal expansion in the social, intellectual, and
moral sphere. They would be bold critics who should
maintain it, and few thinking men in the United
States do so without qualifications and misgivings.
As to the universal diffusion of education, the energy
which is thrown into it, and the wealth lavished on it
from sources public and private, no doubt can exist.
Universities, richly endowed, exist by scores, colleges
by many hundreds, in every part of the Union. Art
schools, training colleges, technical schools, laboratories,
polytechnics, and libraries are met with in every thriving
town. The impression left on my mind is that the
whole educational machinery must be at least tenfold
that of the United Kingdom. That open to women
must be at least twentyfold greater than with us, and
it is rapidly advancing to meet that of men, both in
numbers and in quality. Nor can I resist the im-
pression that the education in all grades is less per-
functory, amateurish, and casual than is too often our
196 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
own experience at home. The libraries, laboratories,
museums, and gymnasia of the best universities and
colleges are models of equipment and organisation.
The "pious founder" has long died out in Europe.
He is alive in America, and seems to possess some
magic source of inexhaustible munificence.
Libraries, of course, are not learning ; museums
and laboratories are not knowledge ; much less is an
enormous reading public literature. And, however
much libraries may be crowded with readers, however
spacious and lavish are the mountings of technical
schools, and though seventy millions of articulate men
and women can pass the seventh standard of a board
school, the question of the fruit of all this remains to
be answered. The passing visitor to the United States
forms his own impression as to the bulk and the diffusion
of the instruments of education ; but he is in no better
position than any one else to measure the product.
The sight of such a vast apparatus of education, such
demand for education, and that emphatically by both
sexes, must create a profound impression. The Cooper
Institute of New York, one of the earliest of these
popular endowments, still managed and developed by
three generations of the family descended from its
venerable founder, the Jeremy Bentham of New York,
is a typical example of a people's palace where science,
art, and literature are offered absolutely free to all
comers. But what is the result ? Few Americans
pretend that, with all the immense diffusion of ele-
mentary knowledge of science in the United States,
the higher science is quite abreast of that of Europe.
Of scholarship, in the technical sense of the word, in
spite of the vast numbers of "graduates," the same
thing may be said. And no one pretends that
American literature rivals that of France in its finer
forms or indeed that of England.
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 197
The reason for this is not obscure, and it is hardly
covered by the ordinary suggestion that the American
people are absorbed in the pursuit of gain and material
improvement. However much this may react on the
intellectual world, the numbers of the American
people are so great that numerically, if not proportion-
ately, those who are devoted to science, art, and
literature are at least as many as they are in England.
The vast development of material interest is rather a
stimulus to the pursuit of science than a hindrance,
as the vast multiplication of books is a stimulus to
authorship. But why suppose that a general interest
in practical science conduces to high scientific culture,
or that millions of readers tend to foster a pure taste
in letters ? The contrary result would be natural.
Practical mechanics is not the same thing as scientific
genius. And the wider the reading public becomes,
the lower is the average of literary culture.
But other things combine to the same result. The
absence of any capital city, any acknowledged literary
centre, in a country of vast area with scattered towns,
the want of a large society exclusively occupied with
culture and forming a world of its own, the uniformity
of American life, and the little scope it gives to the
refined ease and the graceful dolce far nlente of European
beaux mondes^ all these have something to do with a
low average of lettered genius.
The lighter American literature has little of the
charm and sparkle that mark the best writing of
France, because, apart from national gifts of esprit^
American society does not lend itself to the daily
practice of polished conversation. After all, it is con-
versation^ the spoken thought of groups of men and
women in familiar and easy intercourse, which gives
the aroma of literature to written ideas. And where
the arts of conversation have but a moderate scope
198 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
and value, the literature will be solid but seldom
brilliant.
But all these conditions, if they tend in the same
direction, are perhaps of minor importance. The
essential point is that literature of a high order is the
product of long tradition and of a definite social
environment. Millions of readers do not make it,
nor myriads of writers, though they read the same
books and use the same language and think the same
thoughts. A distinctive literature is the typical ex-
pression of some organised society, cultivated by long
user and moulded on accepted standards. It would
be as unreasonable to look for a formed and classical
style in a young, inorganic, and fluid society, however
large it may be and however voracious of printed
matter, as to look in such a land for Westminster
Abbeys and Windsor Castles. America will no doubt
in the centuries to come produce a national literature
of its own, when it has had time to create a typical
society of its own, and intellectual traditions of its own.
Literature, politics, manners and habits, all bear the
same impress of the dominant idea of American society
the sense of equality. It has its great side, its con-
spicuous advantages, and it has also its limitations and
its weakness. It struck me that the sense of equality
is far more national and universal in America than it
is in France, for all the paeans to equality that the
French pour forth and their fierce protestations to
claim it. " Liberty, equality, and fraternity " is not
inscribed on public edifices in the United States,
because no American citizen or, rather, no white
citizen can conceive of anything else. The shoe-
black shakes hands with the President, and (in the
absence of a Pullman) travels in the same car with the
millionaire. The millionaire has a very restricted
household of servants, and they are more or less his
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 199
masters, because the true-born American will not
accept domestic service on any wages, and the Irish
" helps " are the despair of the housekeeper. The
owner of a splendid mansion has to ascend ten steps to
his own door, because all Americans, and even Irish
helps, decline to live in rooms below the level of the
street. Thus the ground floor belongs to the domestic
"auxiliaries." The middle-class American citizen
has to black his own boots or walk out to a blacking
stand, because white American citizens will not perform
so menial an office. All this has its fine side, though
perhaps the reaction from European servility is carried
to needless lengths. Is it natural, they say, that a lad
who may live to be a senator or a President, to found
a university, or to control a railroad, should black
another citizen's boots ? Should a cookmaid who
may live to drive her own carriage in Central Park
put up with a cellar-kitchen below the level of the
street ? Every soldier of Napoleon carried a marshal's
baton in his knapsack. And every American citizen
has a Fortunatus' cap in his pocket, if he only knew
how to fit it on his head. And this he is perpetually
trying to do.
But this ingrained sense of the absolute equality of
all white citizens reacts on all things. The Congress-
man is, at Washington, a successful politician ; but,
outside Congress, he is one of seventy millions. A
senator, a cabinet minister, or a President, is merely a
prominent citizen raised by ballot from the ranks, to
return to the ranks when his term of office is up.
The reaction from the divine right and hereditary
privileges of the monarchies and aristocracies of Europe
has led to slipshod habits in public affairs which
scandalise the Old World and go much deeper than
mere outsides.
Men who manage affairs of state in their shirt-sleeves
200 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
are too apt to take a rough and ready view of life and
of that which is becoming and right. The dominant
social maxim seems to be caveat emptor. The para-
mount political maxim is quod populus vult Deus vult,
or it may be populus vult declpi, et decipiatur. As Mr.
Bryce has so well said, the sense of noblesse oblige, which
still survives in Europe as a force constraining men in
high office or in great social position, has hardly any
equivalent in American life. The want of command-
ing social influence by men of great reputation and
acknowledged standing makes itself felt in national
and municipal affairs, in manners, in business, and in
literature. A certain French philosopher who comes
to England is wont to say at once, " You have an
organised society ; our society is inorganic, and no
class or group exercises any social influence." All
this has its bad side as well as its good side. So, in
crossing the Atlantic, the observer finds that he has
left a world more or less "organised" for good or for
ill, and has come to a society which, for good or for
evil, is organised only as a huge electoral machine.
Public men in America are commonly accused of
accepting the moral standards of the mass and of tamely
yielding to the voice of majorities. Their excuse is
that their fellow-citizens would resent their setting up
superior standards of their own, and flatly refuse to
accept any leadership from them. Where in England
a man of ambition is constantly aiming to gain "influ-
ence," and is constantly considering " what is due to
his own position," in America he has little need to
consider anything but what will satisfy the electors,
and what is the average conscience of the larger
number. He has no " position " to maintain.
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 201
THE CAPITOL
The ceremony of the Inauguration of the President
and Vice- President at Washington on the 4th of
March is, indeed, a characteristic and suggestive func-
tion. I had the good fortune to witness it this year
[1901] under the most favourable conditions, and I
was deeply impressed with all it represented. It
summed up the vast extent and power of the United
States, its absolute democracy, the simplicity, ease, and
homeliness of its government, its contempt of forms,
its entire confidence in itself and perfect satisfaction
with its own ways. In the grand Capitol of the noble
city of Washington, than which no finer edifice or
city exists in the Old World, were gathered the men
chosen by the adult citizens of a nation of some
seventy millions, scattered over a vast continent. The
President, Vice-President, senators, and representatives
elected on this enormous ballot, entrusted with this
stupendous power and wealth, sate indistinguishable
from the ordinary citizens around them clerks, secre-
taries, journalists, and casual friends, who were crowded
pell-mell on the floor of the Senate House itself.
To this miscellaneous body, which might be any
average county council or borough board, there entered
a long file of ambassadors and Ministers in all the finery
of European and Oriental courts ; uniforms blazing
with gold lace, plumes, velvet or fur, swords, sabres,
and helmets; the Austro- Hungarian magnate, the
stately ambassadors of Great Britain, Germany, France,
and Russia, in their court uniforms, stars, crosses, and
ribbons; Mr. Wu Ting-fang, the accomplished
Minister of China, in his buttoned head-dress and em-
broidered silks ; the Japanese Minister, in European
court uniform ; the envoys of the smaller Powers of
202 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Europe, and then the diplomatists of the South Ameri-
can and Central American and West Indian States ;
black men, brown men, whity-brown men, in various
gaudy uniforms ; the Minister of the Sultan in his
fez, those of Siam and Korea in their national dress
more than thirty in all, in every colour, adornment,
and style representing men of every race, from every
part of the planet.
This brilliant and motley group may be seen at St.
Stephen's, or at the functions of Berlin and St. Peters-
burg, where it is only a natural part of similar bravery
and feudal splendour. But here, in a hall crowded
with sober citizens in broadcloth, without a star, a
ribbon, or a sword between them, the effect was almost
comic. Siam, Korea, Hungary, and Portugal as gay
as butterflies ! M'Kinley and Roosevelt matter-of-fact
civilians, as if they were Chairman and Vice-Chairman
of the London County Council ! And around them
were the chosen delegates of the great Republic, jostled
in their own hall by pressmen, secretaries, and curious
strangers like myself. The shirt-sleeve theory of
government could hardly go farther, and, perhaps, need
not go quite so far. My own republican soul was
stirred when I set myself to think which of the two
forms would prevail in the centuries to come. I
thought first of the Roman Senate (according to the
old myth), sitting immovable as statues in their white
togas, when the Gauls of Brennus, in their torques
and war-paint, dashed into the Senate House ; and then
I began to think, Were these quiet citizens seated
there to see a comic opera at the Savoy Theatre ?
Not that the representatives of the Republic are
wanting in personal bearing. The President sate
through the ceremonies with placid dignity, his fine
features, in their stern repose, looking like a bronze
figure of the Elder Brutus or Cato the Censor. At a
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 203
personal reception in the White House Mr. M'Kinley
will show as much grace and courtesy of demeanour
as any Sovereign by divine right, and his smile and his
voice are pronounced (not only by women) to be
perfectly winning. The diplomatists of Europe agree
in assuring us that nothing can exceed the tact and
" correctness " which distinguish Mr. Hay, the accom-
plished Secretary of State. It is true that Congress-
men (in their shirt-sleeves) have not that repose of
manner which marks the caste of Vere de Vere. But
the men who are charged to speak in the name of the
State will usually be found to rise to the occasion with
that facility which enables every genuine American to
adapt himself to play a new part, and to fulfil an un-
accustomed duty.
It is no easy task to combine the conduct of vast
interests, the representation of enormous power with
the ultra-democratic traditions of the absolute equality
of all citizens. No sooner had the President summoned
before him the splendiferous envoys of the whole world,
than he passed out to the historic steps of the Capitol,
to pronounce his Inaugural Address. As I stood near
him and listened to the clear and keenly -balanced
sentences, which the cables and telegraphs of the
civilised world were carrying to expectant nations, I
noticed how the crowd, a few feet only below him,
was a miscellaneous gathering from the streets, like a
knot in the Park listening to a Salvation preacher or a
socialist orator on a Sunday, negroes and lads not the
least vociferous in their applause, whilst on a platform
fifty yards off there were mounted a dozen batteries of
photographers, from kodaks to life-size lenses. The
American public man even the private man and
woman has always to reckon with the man in the
street, journalists, and kodaks.
It is needless to point the moral of the difference
204 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
between the Inaugural Address of a President, delivered
in the open air to a miscellaneous crowd, and the
speech of an European Sovereign opening Parliament.
The one is an elaborate State paper, spoken by a citizen
in frock-coat to a mob of his fellow-citizens in the
street ; the other is usually conventional platitudes,
pronounced in a gorgeous palace with a scene of
mediaeval pageantry. It is the contrast between the
monarchical survival and Republican realism. Kodaks,
mobs, and vociferous negroes are not a necessary part
of the government of a State. But the Presidential
address from the steps of the Capitol is certainly more
like that of Pericles on the Pnyx, or of Scipio and
Marius on the Rostra, than our House of Lords ; and
it is conceivable that it may prove more agreeable to
the practice of future republics in the ages to come.
The President of the United States expounds his policy
in a reasoned argument to all citizens who choose to
hear him. The European monarch performs a tradi-
tional ceremonial to a crowd of stage courtiers who
possess office without power and honour without
responsibility.
The White House, as the executive mansion is
called, is interesting for its historic associations, which
exactly cover the nineteenth century, with its portraits
and reminiscences of Presidents and statesmen, and its
characteristic simplicity and modest appointments. It
is not a convenient residence for a President with such
great responsibilities. But, as a term of residence is
usually so short, and the associations of the house are
so rich, it would be a pity to change it for a pretentious
modern palace. In the meantime the quiet old
mansion, merely a fine Georgian country house in a
pleasant park, serves to remind the American citizen
of the democratic origin of his Chief Magistrate, who
is certainly not yet an emperor. The White House
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 205
was a residence suitable for men like Jefferson, Lincoln,
and Grant ; and it seems a not unfitting office for
their successors.
The Capitol at Washington struck me as being the
most effective mass of public buildings in the world,
especially when viewed at some distance, and from the
park in which it stands. I am well aware of certain
constructive defects which have been insisted on by
Fergusson and other critics ; and no one pretends that
it is a perfect design of the highest order either in
originality or style. It will have one day to be entirely
refaced with white stone. But as an effective public
edifice of a grandiose kind, I doubt if any capital city
can show its equal. This is largely due to the admir-
able proportions of its central dome group, which I
hold to be, from the pictorial point of view, more suc-
cessful than those of St. Peter's, the Cathedral of
Florence, Agia Sophia, St. Isaac's, the Pantheon, St.
Paul's, or the new Cathedral of Berlin. But the
unique effect is still more due to the magnificent site
which the Capitol at Washington enjoys. I have no
hesitation in saying that the site of the Capitol is the
noblest in the world, if we exclude that of the
Parthenon in its pristine glory. Neither Rome nor
Constantinople, nor Florence, nor Paris, nor Berlin,
nor London possesses any central eminence with broad
open spaces on all sides, crowned by a vast pile covering
nearly four acres and rising to a height of nearly three
hundred feet, which seems to dominate the whole city.
Washington is the only capital city which has this
colossal centre or crown. And Londoners can imagine
the effect if their St. Paul's stood in an open park
reaching from the Temple to Finsbury Circus, and
the great creation of Wren were dazzling white
marble, and soared into an atmosphere of sunny light.
Washington, the youngest capital city of the world,
206 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
bids fair to become, before the twentieth century is
ended, the most beautiful and certainly the most com-
modious. It is the only capital which has been laid
out from the first entirely on modern lines, with
organic unity of plan, unencumbered with any antique
limitations and confusions. The spacious avenues,
intersected by very broad streets, all lined with maple
and elm, and radiating from a multitude of ''circles,"
its numerous parks and squares, with fountains, monu-
ments, and equestrian statues at each available junction,
its semi-tropical climate, for it is in the latitude of
Lisbon and Palermo, its freedom from the disfigure-
ments of smoke, trade, and manufactures, its singular
form of government under a State autocracy without
any municipal representation, give it unique oppor-
tunities to develop. As yet it is but half completed,
owing to local difficulties as to rights of property ; and
it still has the air of an artificial experiment in city
architecture. But within two or three generations,
when its vacant sites are filled up, and public buildings,
monuments, and statues continue to be raised with all
the wealth, resources, and energy of the Republic, if
the artists of the future can be restrained within the
limits of good sense and fine taste, Washington may
look more like the Rome of the Antonines than any
city of the old world.
MOUNT VERNON
Of all that I saw in America, I look back with
most emotion to my visit to Mount Vernon, the home
and burial-place of George Washington. I saw it on
a lovely spring day, amidst thousands of pilgrims, in
the Inauguration week. On a finely-wooded bluff,
rising above the grand Potomac river, stands the plain
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 207
but spacious wooden house of the Founder of the
Republic. It has been preserved and partly restored
with perfect taste, the original furniture, pictures, and
ornaments supplemented by fit contemporary pieces.
It enables one perfectly to conjure up an image of the
homely, large, and generous life of the President before
the war called him to the field, and after he had retired
from all cares of state. We fancy him sitting under
the spacious eastern portico, with its eight tall columns,
looking out over the broad landscape of forest and river,
or lying in his last sleep in the simple bed, with its
dimity coverlet, and then laid to rest in the rural tomb
below the house, which he ordered himself, and in
which his descendants have insisted on keeping his
remains. General Grant lies beside the Hudson at
New York, in a magnificent mausoleum palpably
imitated from the tomb of Napoleon in the Invalides.
How infinitely more fitting and more touching is the
Spartan simplicity of Washington's burial-place an
austere cell within his own ancestral ground ; yet not
a morning's drive from the splendid capital which the
nation has named after its heroic founder how much
more fitting and more touching is this than is the
pompous mausoleum to which they have carried the
bones of the tyrant who ruined France ! It has been
frequently attempted to remove from Mount Vernon,
his home, the sarcophagus in which Washington lies,
in order to place it under the dome of the Capitol.
But as yet it has been wisely decided to do nothing
which can impair the unique legend which has gathered
round the memory of the western Cincinnatus.
In a country so flagrantly new as America, with
every town and building striving to show its intense
modernity, the few remnants even of eighteenth-
century antiquity have a rare charm and a special
value. They awaken an interest far beyond that of
208 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
their actual beauty or quaintness, for they represent
the only history of a country which has grown to be
so vast and so different. Such relics as Mount Vernon,
Independence Hall and Carpenter's Hall at Phila-
delphia, the Common of Boston, the Green at New-
haven, and a few bits at Baltimore and old New York
may still attract a traveller sated with the most
picturesque corners of Europe. The history of the
American soil is a very short record. But, such as it
is, the American people seem very keen to cherish it
in perpetuity. If the preservation of Mount Vernon
and of Independence Hall as national monuments is
the finest example of this, the most amusing instance
is the rescue of the wooden cottage of Betsy Ross in
Arch Street, Philadelphia, where the original "star-
spangled banner" was constructed in 1777 and
approved by General Washington.
Few Englishmen seem to know the history of the
"Stars and Stripes." In its original form it was a
not ungainly device, adapted from the undoubted
arms of the English family of Washington. These
were : argent^ two bars gules^ on a chief azure three
mullets [stars] of the first [argent]. When the thirteen
States of the Union resolved to adapt a national flag
from the ancestral coat of their chief, this became
" barry of thirteen, gules and argent^ on a chief azure
thirteen mullets of the second arranged in circlet."
But when the other States were added, the "stars"
began to be increased, until to-day the flag displays,
on a canton azure^ forty-five mullets argent in
monotonous rows. Nothing more artless, confused,
and unheraldic can be conceived.
An unlucky question was once put to me by a
patriot, whether the " Star-spangled banner " was not
beautiful as a work of art. I was obliged to answer that,
with all my veneration for the banner of the Republic,
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 209
in my humble judgment it was (heraldically speaking)
both awkward and ugly, unbalanced, undecipherable,
and mechanical. It may be well to distinguish the
Republican emblem from the feudal heraldry of the
Old World, but it is a pity that the invention of
the New World could not have devised an emblem
with some claim to be clearly read and to look
graceful. The thirteen bars^ or stripes, have now
lost their significance, and might in time disappear.
A plain field, semee of " stars," would not be unsightly
nor too difficult to distinguish. Forty-five mullets on
a canton (i.e. a corner) in six regular rows are not
easily visible at all, and, when perceived, are hardly
elegant.
PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED
America is making violent efforts to evolve a
national architecture ; but as yet it has produced little
but miscellaneous imitations of European types and
some wonderful constructive devices. A walk along
the Broadway and Fifth Avenue of New York leaves
the impression of an extraordinary medley of in-
congruous styles, highly ingenious adaptations, admir-
able artistic workmanship, triumphs of mechanics, the
lavish use of splendid materials, and an architectural
pot pourrl which almost rivals the Rue des Nations at
the Paris exhibition of 1900. There are some
excellent copies of European buildings, such as the
Giralda of Seville, Venetian palaces, Chateaux from
Touraine, Palladian loggie^ and here and there a
German schloss. There are some beautiful revivals
of fine art, such as the thirteenth-century Gothic of
St. Patrick's, the Italian palaces of the Metropolitan
and University Clubs, the Renaissance palaces of
the Vanderbilts. Facing the Central Park, each
P
210 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
millionaire seems to have commissioned his architect
to build him a mansion of any ancient style from
Byzantine to the last French Empire, provided only
it was in contrast to the style of his neighbours. So
commissioned, the artist has lavished skilful carving,
singular ingenuity, and noble material in stone,
marble, and mosaic. Many of these are interesting
experiments and some are beautiful ; but the general
effect of such rampant eclecticism is rather bewildering.
In constructive novelties the American builder is
consummate. Amongst these are the Brobding-
nagian piles of twenty stories, the substitution of lifts
for staircases, the construction of edifices of steel,
the profuse use of stone and marble as ornaments
rather than as material, the multiplication of baths,
heating apparatus, electric and other mechanical
devices, and the intensely modern and up-to-date
contrivances which put to shame the clumsy con-
servatism of the Old World. Nothing in Europe
since the fall of old Rome and Byzantium, not even
Genoa in its prime, has equalled the lavish use of
magnificent marble columns, granite blocks, and
ornamental stone as we see it to-day in the United
States. The Illinois Trust Bank of Chicago a vast
marble palace is, I suppose, the most sumptuous and
one of the most beautiful commercial edifices in the
world, and its safety deposit vaults are among the
sights of that city magically opening as with an
" Open Sesame."
The reckless use of precious marbles seems to
threaten exhaustion of the quarries, but one is assured
that they are ample for all demands. Why more use
is not made in Europe of the magnificent marbles of
America is not very obvious. But we certainly
might easily adopt some of the constructive devices
of their builders. Not, one trusts, the outrageous
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 211
towers of Babel, in twenty or twenty-four floors and
five hundred rooms, built of steel, and faced with
granite as a veneer, which are seen in New York
and Chicago, and hopelessly disfigure both cities. If
these became general, the streets would become dark
and windy canons, and human nature would call out
for their suppression. But the British architect has
much to learn from modern American builders. In
matters of construction, contrivance, the free use of
new kinds of stone and wood, of plumbing, heating,
and the minor arts of fitting, the belated European in
America feels himself a Rip Van Winkle, whirled
into a new century and a later civilisation.
As to the two burning problems of American
society the Labour question, and the Negro question
it would be idle for a passing tourist to pretend to
an opinion of his own. Certainly, there is not visible
in the United States, even in the slums of New
York, Chicago, or Philadelphia, anything approaching
the acuteness and extent of the destitution to be seen
in London, Liverpool, or Glasgow. The slums of
American cities are filled, it is true, with the waifs
and strays, failures and outcasts from Europe, and are
not of native American origin. But those who have
made a comparative study of the life of the poor
assure us that nowhere in the United States are the
general conditions of the workman so threatening
as they are too often in Europe, and the evils are
certainly less difficult to cure. An influx of cosmo-
politan misery has filled America with embarrassing
problems, but the enormous resources of its continent,
and the vast opportunities which its development
affords, give Industry a free hand such as is elsewhere
impossible and unknown.
The future of the Negro has always seemed to us
in Europe the gravest of all American problems. And
212 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
though I saw nothing to justify the extravagant
stories we are told as to race antipathy and the
ostracism of the negro, I was surprised and shocked
to hear from men of great cultivation and humanity
such sweeping condemnation of the negro race, such
cool indifference to the continual reports of barbarous
lynchings which appear almost daily in the public
prints, and that in other than old Slave States. I
should come to look on the race problem as incapable
of any satisfactory solution were it not for such
examples as that of Tuskagee and similar foundations.
The life of Booker Washington, as told in his auto-
biography called Up from Slavery^ is one of the most
wonderful of our age. The story of the success in
the education of the Negro achieved by this ex-slave,
one of the most remarkable of living men, and by the
white and coloured friends by whom he was assisted,
may serve to convince us that the negro problem may
yet find a happy end.
About the prodigious luxury, extravagance, and
money-making of the United States, of which we
hear so much, a passing visitor has no right to
dogmatise. America is a very rich country, where
everything but raw material is very dear, where
fortunes are made very rapidly, and where the scale
of everything is raised in proportion. The sudden
acquisition of wealth is more often the result of the
vast numbers of those who deal in any market or buy
any commodity, rather than of any abnormal develop-
ment of the acquisitive instinct. The railroad, or
corn, or oil "boss" becomes a multi-millionaire in a
decade owing to the colossal scale of the railroad,
corn, and oil trades. There are perhaps more rich
men in America than there are in Europe, but then
there are not so many poor men. There are costly
mansions in New York city, though none on the
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 213
scale of Stafford House, Bridgewater House, and Dor-
chester House. And there are no such royal palaces
as Arundel Castle, Castle Howard, Longleat, and
Mentmore. American millionaires do not own
spacious parks, racing-studs, and deer-forests, nor are
they surrounded by armies of tenants, dependents,
servants, and equipages as are described in Lot hair.
They roll up fortunes, often automatically, owing to
the wealth and numbers of the population in which
their capital operates. And they lavish their rapid
gains sometimes in houses, paintings, yachts, and
banquets, and not seldom in schools, observatories,
and museums. But I saw nothing to suggest that
wealth in America is worse acquired or worse applied
than it is in Europe.
I must repeat that I am giving nothing but the
first impressions of a passing visitor who spent two
months in the United States for the first time in his
life. Though I had special opportunities to see from
the central point the official world, the universities, the
literary and the commercial society, I am well aware
that I brought away nothing more than the thumb-
nail sketches of an impressionist. But my impression
is that the accounts we too often get of American
life are ridiculous exaggerations. English journalism
distorts and magnifies the caricatures it presents, just
as American journalism distorts and magnifies the
traits of English life.
There are, no doubt, vices, blots, follies, and social
diseases on both sides of the Atlantic, but the pro-
portion these bear to the nation is grossly overstated
by sensational literature. As to the worship of the
" Almighty Dollar," I neither saw it nor heard of it ;
hardly as much as we do at home. I may say the
same as to official corruption and political intrigue.
Congress, ministers, magistrates in the United States
214 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
seemed to me to be a good deal of the same stuff as
parliaments, cabinets, and judges with us. There are
a few good journals ; but the average Press seemed to
me dull, trivial, provincial, and harmless, however
insipid. The yellow Press, the brutal and gutter
Press, I never saw nor heard of, nor did I meet any
one who read it. New York, of course, has the
vices of great cities, but they are not visible to the
eye, and they are a drop in the ocean of the American
people. Even the passing tourist must note the
entire freedom of American towns from the indecencies
that are paraded in European cities. The youngest
girls go about the streets of New York alone ; and
a lady travels unattended from San Francisco to
Washington. I received a deep impression that in
America the relations of the sexes are in a state far
more sound and pure than they are in the Old
World ; that the original feeling of the Pilgrim
Fathers about woman and about man has sufficed to
colour the mental and moral atmosphere, and to give
all sexual problems a new and clear field to develop
in normal ways.
I close my impressions with a sense that the New
World offers a great field, both moral and intellectual, to
the peaceful development of an industrial society ; that
this society is in the main sound, honest, and whole-
some ; that vast numbers and the passion of equality
tend to low averages in thought, in manners, and in
public opinion, which the zeal of the devoted minority
tends gradually to raise to higher planes of thought and
conduct ; that manners, if more boisterous, are more
hearty than with us, and, if less refined, are free from
some conventional morgue and hypocrisy ; that in
casting off many of the bonds of European tradition
and feudal survivals, the American democracy has cast
off also much of the aesthetic and moral inheritance
215
left in the Old World ; that the zeal for learning,
justice, and humanity lies so deep in the American
heart that it will in the end solve the two grave
problems which face the future of their citizens the
eternal struggle between capital and labour the gulf
between people of colour and the people of European
blood.
THE TRUE COSMOPOLIS
1896
THOUGHTFUL and patriotic men in all parts of Europe
and America have welcomed various attempts to found
some inter-communion of ideas between the nations of
the West. All the chief tongues of Europe and all
the leading minds of both continents may one day
find a common ground for interchange of thought.
Italian and Spanish are closely akin. As to Russia,
so few of us read the Russian language, and educated
Russians themselves read and write the chief European
languages so freely, that they are always at home.
The Hollander, the Dane, the Scandinavian, are usually
familiar with German, French, or English if not
with all three. And much the same is true of the
cultured world of South-Eastern Europe. For practical
purposes, then, an ideal COSMOPOLIS should from time
to time unite the five chief languages of Western
Europe.
There have been found some to doubt if there is
any room or need for an international organ in these
days of incessant travel and rapid diffusion over the
civilised world of everything produced by the press,
whether permanent or fugitive. Of course, in this
age of telegraphs, accelerated post, " trains rapides,"
"trains express," and the myriad-tongued journalism
216
THE TRUE COSMOPOLIS 217
that circulates in every village, we know more of what
is being done and said in European countries than
our ancestors knew. Do we understand each other as
well, do we feel the same joy in the art, literature,
movements, and aspirations of foreign nations as was
common enough in the age of Shakespeare, or the age
of Voltaire, or of Hume, or of Goethe ? It is no
paradox to say that we do not. We hear about our
neighbours far more than ever. We have less sympathy
with foreign thought, we have far less of the Cosmo-
politan genius than was common in the most fertile
epochs of the human mind.
One need not go back to the Middle Ages, when
there was a learned language, a religion, a church, a
system of education common to Europe, so that all
men of superior culture were citizens of an intellectual
commonwealth apart from any national distinctions.
The great Universities had their " nations " who
sometimes proceeded to contests even keener than our
own inter- University "Sports"; but the superior
minds could pass from one school to another and find
themselves perfectly at home, irrespective of country.
Let us recall for a moment what the University of
Paris contained when the famous Dr. Sigier taught in
the Rue du Fouarre^ and a haggard Italian exile from
Florence, whom we call Dante, listened to his lectures.
When Albert the Great, Aquinas, John of Salisbury,
Alighieri, Roger Bacon, Alexander of Hales, Ockham,
Bonaventura, Raymond Lully, met, taught, or ex-
changed ideas, no man dreamed of asking if the
professor or the pupil were German, or French, or
English, or Italian, or Spaniard. That was a detail as
unimportant as his native county or his local patois.
They all talked and wrote in Latin, pronouncing it
in the same way, and they accepted one type of culture,
regarding their civil allegiance to any sovereign lord
218 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
at home as subordinate to their spiritual allegiance
to Church and School. And so, when Petrarch left
Florence for the valley of the Rhone or the valley of
the Po ; or when Chaucer travelled in Italy and came
home with the glow of the Decameron colouring his
soul ; or when Froissart travelled from castle to abbey
round Europe, and was at home in every hall amongst
knights, ladies, squires, and men-at-arms, wherever
chivalry was a bond of intimacy, from the Grampians
to the Pyrenees and the Apennines j when the
Troubadours in Western or Meistersingers in Central
Europe were welcomed in every barony ; when the
same Romances, the same Legends, the same Miracle
Plays enchanted the audiences throughout all Europe
in hall, town, abbey, or court there was a fellowship
of Thought and of Art that we have lost to-day.
We know very well that all this is dead and buried,
and we know why it is gone, and that none but a few
codini and Jesuits want to restore it. But we need
not accentuate the national jealousies which make
such an inter-citizenship impossible to-day. It was a
vast gain to intellectual progress, to philosophy, and
to art, to have a common language intelligible and
familiar to all educated men. A great jurist remarked
recently that the crucial difficulty in the way of a
Code of English Law lay in the want of a strict legal
tongue, and in the indistinct and various senses with
which the same phrase was used in English decisions
and commentaries. This is true of philosophy, of
theology, of art amongst us now, especially for the
English and the Teutonic races. A common language
to-day is impossible, if for no other reason than that each
of the great nations of Europe thinks its own national
tongue ought to prevail, and in any case declines to
admit the primacy of any other tongue. So we learn
to read each others' languages, though we suffer
THE TRUE COSMOPOLIS 219
grievously from wanting the precision and scientific
terminology of Latin. Anyway, the cosmopolitan
citizenship of the Mediaeval University is gone for
ever, for the same reasons that Mediaeval Churchman-
ship and manners are gone. We cannot help it, and
we cannot have it back. Since the age of Louis XI.
and Charles V., the Emperor, we have been settling
into national^ and not European lines, and in the
present age more than ever. The enormous increase
of inter-communication due to steam, electricity, rail-
ways, and the press, does not at all counterbalance the
great increase of national pride, jealousy, and self-
assertion fanned by patriotic dreams of Empire,
Victory, and Leadership of the World. This is the
ideal Culture of our martial and aggressive age, and it
is ex hypothesi a national and not an European culture.
Then let such of us as do not care to be for ever
bowing down the knee in the Temple of Nike Apteros,
or of the Athene Pandemos of our own national tribe,
offer up a prayer from time to time before the altar of
the true and general Athene, Goddess of Wisdom and
of healthy Knowledge, above all tribes or tongues. We
are as true patriots as any : we will suffer no man's
hand to be raised against our Fatherland, nor endure a
word against its honour. But there is something more
than Fatherland and wider than Patriotism. The
supreme development of Humanity in all forms of
civilisation needs the joint co-operation of many coun-
tries, and would languish under any narrow type of
national self-sufficiency. The civilisation of Europe
was assuredly not made by one nation, and it cannot
be developed by one nation alone. It knows nothing
of nations, of national tongues, of national schools. In
one department of thought this is abundantly recog-
nised. The physical sciences are European. A
Darwin, a Helmholtz, a Pasteur, are of all nations, all
220 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
schools, all languages. With the moral sciences, with
philosophy, with politics, with criticism, with art, it is
far otherwise. We have a philosophy far too local in
its language and in its methods and aims ; a theology
and an ethic which are full of mere tribal antagonisms ;
a literature, an art, a romance which are often so hide-
bound in sectional and not human conventions and
interests that they are either unintelligible, insipid,
or grotesque to readers belonging to some other party,
school, or sect, and seem to come from another race
familiar with different types.
THE RENASCENCE
When the Mediaeval Church, language, education,
had passed away, there arose a new general movement
of ideas ; the Renascence of the sixteenth century,
which is so absurdly known by the French form of its
name, though it was Italian in origin and European in
result. Shakespeare and his contemporaries were
saturated with Italian romance. Marlowe and Faustus^
Spenser and Ariosto, Rabelais and Cervantes, remind
us how far into modern times extended the freemasonry
of the common genius of Europe. Benvenuto Cellini,
the very much spoilt child of the Renascence, was as
free of every great house in Europe as a German fiddler
or an American globe-trotter is to-day. No doubt
Shakespeare knew far less of Italian than an average
girl in a high school, and even Erasmus or the Admir-
able Crichton nay, Milton himself were infants in
cosmopolitan information when compared with Doctor
Garnett or the editors of The Athenceum and the Revue
des Deux Mondes. That is a very different thing.
We are crammed with special erudition. We have
on our library tables the Transactions of a hundred
THE TRUE COSMOPOLIS 221
learned associations in eight or ten different languages.
But I doubt if any living man to-day, whatever his
genius or his learning, feels within his veins the throb
of the European life-blood as did Shakespeare or
Rubens, Cellini, Columbus, or Raleigh.
In spite of all the national and religious wars of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, philosophy at any
rate managed to be neither national nor sectarian, and
Bruno, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Grotius, and
Leibnitz rose into the empyrean of an European point
of view. The intellectual commerce between Voltaire
and his eminent countrymen, with England on the
one hand and Germany on the other hand, is one of
the great landmarks in the history of modern progress.
Trace the way in which the ideas of Hume, Gibbon,
Adam Smith, and Bentham were received in France ;
the effect upon England of the ideas of Montesquieu,
of Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Buffon ; the union
between Germany and Italy accomplished by Winckel-
mann, Lessing, and Goethe ; the effect upon Italy
and Greece of Byron and his fellow-enthusiasts ; the
effect upon Europe in general of Newton, of Pascal, of
Kant, of Vico, of Leibnitz, of Hegel, of Comte and
we must admit that, with infinitely less knowledge of
each others' books and discoveries, our forefathers in
great epochs of human progress had a greater effective
communion of ideas, a greater intellectual solidarity than
we see to-day in Europe.
One department of thought we must certainly
except from this judgment that of the exact and
physical sciences. The European influence of a
Darwin, a Helmholtz, a Pasteur is in its way almost
equal to that of a Newton, a Leibnitz, a Lagrange.
Physical science has now no native country, and the
true European communion of ideas is paramount in
that sphere of thought. There may be rivalry of
222 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
persons, of schools, of methods in physical science ;
this is at times most shamefully noisy and bitter ; but
there is practically in physical science, no antagonism
of nationality. The solidarity of work is almost per-
fect. Every man of exact science is bound to read the
principal European tongues, and to follow the records
of advance in all the chief European Transactions,
The Rontgen rays of physical science pierce the
boundaries of nations as easily as they pass through the
flesh of the hand or a wooden box. Exact science has
gained enormously by the diffusion of books, papers,
and instruments, and all the cosmopolitan appliances
of the Press. This alone of all the departments of
modern thought has won great success from our
material civilisation, and yet has lost nothing by our
national rivalries.
Now, why is it that in philosophy, in the moral
and social sciences, in art, we fail to find the same
solidarity, the same European consensus of thought ?
The answer is plain. Philosophy, moral and social
science, even art, touch our pride, our passions, our
ideals of life in a manner that exact science does not.
Exact science, with its dry light, does not stir emotions,
disturb habits of conduct and standards of judgment,
appeal to national ambitions or foibles. The discovery
of the cholera bacillus or the geography of Mars cannot
possibly kindle the fires of theological and political
animosity. But a new theory of the Synoptic Gospels,
an original view in the philosophy of Economics, a
history of the French Revolution, or of Europe in the
Nineteenth Century, instantly appeals either to odium
theologicwn, to the claims of the Churches and the
hopes of their rivals, to the perennial war between
Labour and Capital, or to the rancour of parties and
the glorification of national triumphs. Take Mr.
Ruskin to the Salon in Paris, and show him the colossal
THE TRUE COSMOPOLIS 223
" Massacres," " Slave Markets," " Temptations of St.
Anthony," and similar canvasses with acres of gore
and nudity, and we should have him deliver a prophetic
homily worthy of Jeremiah at the Court of Jehoiakim.
Ask Mr. Lecky to write us a review of Karl Marx, or
the Bishop of Peterborough to write the history of
the Papacy during the last half-century, or beg the
Academic Francaise to explain why they did not elect
M. Zola we should then have something that would
be highly entertaining, but would not tend to consoli-
date opinions in any European eirenicon of the higher
criticism. We think, we teach, we write, we paint
too much on sectional lines ; and in our very philosophy,
our history, our art, we are thinking first of our
national Flag, and only secondly of the vanguard of
human civilisation.
There can be as little doubt that this is so to-day,
in a measure which some fortunate ages have been
without, as there can be doubt to what it may be
ascribed as a cause. The tremendous national wars
that have been waged in Europe in the last forty-three
years were on a scale more vast than anything known
in Europe except in the age of Napoleon. It is true
that most of these wars have been comparatively short.
But they have called to arms so large a proportion of
the entire population ; they have led to such vast
material efforts and changes ; they have caused such
intense spasms of patriotism and humiliation down to
the very depths of the national feeling, that they have
affected the temper of the nations of Europe perhaps
in a degree hardly ever before known. The fact of
war is far the least part of the phenomenon. The
wars have not been long ; and even the material losses
and ravages of war have been replaced in five or ten
years at the most. But they have led, even in time
of unbroken peace and entente cordiale^ to such huge
224 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
and increasing armaments, they have stimulated
national ambitions so fiercely, and they have so
deeply infected the minds of all citizens alike with
ideas of national aggrandisement or defence as the
primary concern of a patriot, that they have inevitably
tended to accentuate the national point of view and
to weaken the European consensus of ideas always,
as I have said, with the exception of physical science.
I am old enough to remember the time when
influential schools of opinion and eminent men in
England were deeply influenced by French thought,
especially in things social, historical, political, and
critical. They were the days of Guizot, De
Tocqueville, Hugo, and Sainte Beuve. In those
days there still was a similar movement in France
towards England, and many men of great mark were
foolishly nicknamed " Anglomanes." I remember
dear old M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire telling me in
1895 the last year of his long life that he now stood
alone in his desire for cordial relations and common
sympathies between our two peoples. In the time
when Bismarck was carving, not the map of Europe,
but his fellow-students' cheeks and noses, there were
" Gallomanes " in the Fatherland, where now no
German can eat his dinner with a menu in French.
Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans of course still
read each others' books ; correspond, meet, and discuss
as much as ever, and perhaps more. But the English-
man who is in admiring sympathy with French ideas,
or the Frenchman who loves to steep his spirit in
German ideas, or the German who is " Gallomane "
or "Anglomane," or the educated Englishman, or
Frenchman, or German whose intellectual Alma Mater
is the "Cosmopolis" of European thought is, I
firmly believe, far more rare than ever he was.
This is not the place to suggest any doubts as to
THE TRUE COSMOPOLIS 225
the necessity for our mighty armaments on land and
sea ; and I for one claim to be as fervent a patriot as
any of my neighbours. To pretend to be " Cos-
mopolitan," and superior to Country, is a puerile
affectation for which I have neither sympathy nor
mercy. As a Nationalist by conviction, I hold that
Governments and States cannot be too entirely national
for all political purposes, or too absolutely capable of
defending their own nationality. But the interests of
intellectual Progress are not confined within any
boundaries of nation, and will assuredly be atrophied
by any such narrow limitations. It deeply concerns
all those who have at heart the true interests of intel-
lectual Progress -to strive to counteract the tendencies
towards national jealousy and depreciation fomented
by an age of gigantic preparations for war and the
passion for commercial and political supremacy. Our
knowledge of the literature of Europe, and our elaborate
study of the last new work of the foreign press, have
too much of the character expressed by the old saying
that " Familiarity breeds contempt." We need some-
what more of that sacred light of sympathy which
inspired Diderot, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, and
made them more than Frenchmen ; which inspired
Locke, Hume, and Gibbon, and made them more
than Englishmen ; which inspired Leibnitz, Lessing,
and Goethe, and made them more than Germans.
It is true that very great mistakes were made in
former ages by hollow or premature enthusiasms, and
we do not wish to have them repeated. We want
no "Anglomanes" nor " Gallomanes," nor "Inglesi
Italianati," nor Teutonic "Welt-Geist" of any kind.
The spurious and spasmodic fashion which suddenly
discovers in another country a man of genius or a new
school of thought or art is a very short-lived thing ; it
does nothing but harm to the country whence it is
Q
226 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
imported as to the country which adopts it. Ibsen,
Tolstoi, and Zola are undoubtedly men of genius ;
but their reputation would be both more solid and
more enduring if they had not been acclaimed by
fanatical schools of followers as the evangelists of some
new gospel that was to revolutionise human art.
Ibsen suffers from his Ibsenites, Zola from his Zolaists,
and Tolstoi from Tolstoyans.
We are often told that the wonderful development
of travel in these days is a sovereign specific to make
people of different nations understand each other better,
and that the multiplication of railways, telegraphs,
excursion tours, and postal facilities must end in
establishing a family feeling the true solidarity and
fraternity of peoples. It is a pleasing hope ; but after
a generation of Cooke's and Gaze's and other tourist
companies, after " World Exhibitions " and " Cos-
mopolitan Fairs " in every capital of the East and
the West, and a series of the " Greatest Shows on
Earth" in every ambitious town of Europe and
America, the jaded excursionist comes home rather to
grumble than to praise ; and, somewhat poorer both
in purse and good nature, he is just in the mood to
increase his armaments at home. The American
globe-trotter who bragged that, in his voyage round
the Mediterranean, "he had given seven hours to the
Eternal City," brought away but few new ideas as
to the Quirinal or the Vatican. And the English
millionaire who reminded his courier " that they must
not leave Rome without seeing the Colosseum " did
not really assimilate much of the true genius of Italy.
It is no paradox to maintain that the great labour
and slow course of travel in former ages really promoted
a more thorough and intimate knowledge of the coun-
try and the people where the traveller as distinct
from the tourist chose to wend his way. Travelling
THE TRUE COSMOPOLIS 227
went out with railways. We are all tourists now, and
tourists who come home with tales of the chef at
the "Metropole" and the rifling of one's boxes on
those Mediterranean lines. When Dante and Chaucer,
Froissart or Cellini, travelled in Europe, they had a
far harder task \ but they really lived amongst the
people they visited. Milton travelled only once in
Italy, and Voltaire came only once to England ; and
Goethe, Byron, and Shelley never saw a tenth part of
the countries that any Oxford tutor scampers across in
a few vacations. But these men took time, took pains,
found means to be admitted into the societies they
met, and lived long enough in each place to saturate
themselves with its spirit. Nowadays we have jour-
nalists, diplomats, book-makers (in both senses of the
word), miscellaneous men -about- town, who live in
railway trains, like the stokers or the guards, and who
know as much of the countries they " travel in " as
if they had crossed them in balloons, getting up
" Baedeker " as they sailed along.
When we read an old book of real " travels," such
as Goethe's Italian Journey, or Gibbon's Memoir of
my Life, or even, of our own age, those exquisite
pictures of foreign life in Ruskin's Praterita and his
Modern Painters or Stones of Venice, we see how the
incessant whirl of locomotion that we absurdly call
" travelling " has actually robbed us of all real inter-
course with foreign nations. Parcels forwarded by the
post do not " travel." An active man of means and
leisure (some of them even without either means or
leisure) will make twenty, thirty, or forty "tours
abroad " of a month or two at a time, yet he will know
less of other nations at the end of his life than if, with
fit introductions, he had spent one six months rationally
in any European centre. He will know less ; but
what is worse, he will come back with feelings more
228 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
akin to antipathy than sympathy a more violent Jingo
than he went forth. He has seen enough to despise,
to pity, or to dislike. He has not seen enough to
know, to understand, to enjoy. He likes mountains,
pictures, promenades, and casinos. " He never took
to the queer ways of the natives \ "
We have just been celebrating (with trumpets
attuned to a somewhat minor key) the Jubilee of Free
Trade ; and the rare foreign Abdiels, still faithful to
that great economic cause, have crossed the Channel
to record their loyalty to the faith. Rational English-
men are as staunch to the creed as ever. But they
mournfully admit that they stand alone. They have,
with pain, to confess how strange were the illusions
that floated before Richard Cobden and his fellow-
apostles when they looked to an increase in trade rela-
tions as certain to reduce armaments and diminish
international animosities. It was a dream from the
ivory gate. Commerce, trade, and international inter-
course have been multiplied threefold ; but they have
brought neither Free Trade nor Peace into the world.
Yet by all the rules of logic, of common sense, and
of obvious interests, they should have brought both.
Cobden and Bright were right in their facts and
correct in their reasoning. Free Trade is our true
interest the true interest of all settled peoples. And
common material interests infallibly favour a policy of
peace and of friendship. It is as certain and universal
as the Law of Gravitation. Yet the predicted result
did not follow.
Cobden and Bright and the apostles of Free Trade
did not foresee no man could foresee other and
stronger forces which neutralised the influence of
material interests and overrode the communion of
business relations. Charles Kingsley, and some men
of greater genius, have gravely informed us that the
THE TRUE COSMOPOLIS 229
Law of Gravitation is at times "suspended " by some
occult power that desires to impress us. The advent
of Free Trade and its beneficial issue in a millennium
of Peace was not indeed "suspended," but it really was
adjourned by the direct operation of a higher and
stronger law. That law was the passion of national
ascendancy and the glory of military triumphs. Man-
kind are governed more by their passions, sentiments,
traditions, than by their interests and even their well-
being. The great cause of International Free Trade,
the far greater cause of International Sympathy, has
been postponed into the centuries to come by a
recrudescence of the warlike energies and the fierce
race for primacy amongst the nations. The interests
of Trade are even become the bar to Peace, the
stimulus to War.
IMPERIALISM
It would be a long story to trace the rise, growth,
and culmination of this mighty power over a period
now of some fifty years, till it led to a renewal of
European wars after a long peace of nearly forty years.
The revival of material prosperity that the era of Free
Trade opened did not a little to stimulate the growth
of military and national ambition. The revolutionary
upheaval of 1848-49 was at bottom the uprising of
wealth and of labour against the worm-eaten absolut-
isms of Europe. Free Trade, no doubt, saved England
from the violent struggles which went round Europe.
The monarchies, the aristocracies, the governments of
the Continent made a desperate rally, and entirely
recast their civil and military organisation. The arts,
and even the engines and machinery of war by land
and sea, took a fresh departure soon after the revolu-
tionary epoch and the reorganisation of governments
230 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
and armaments which was represented by the Third
Empire in France. Rifled guns, breech-loading guns,
large and small, the concentration of armies by railways,
rapid " mobilisation," steamships of battle, armoured
vessels, the marine screw-propeller, big cannon, shell
projectiles, machine guns, and all the scientific appli-
ances of modern fortresses and modern ships of war,
began to be in use soon after this epoch. Those of us
who can remember Brown Bess^ the old solid column
of attack, men-of-war propelled by sails, having seventy-
four guns muzzle -loading with round shot, these
have seen, as compared with the armies and fleets of
to-day, perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most
sudden, change in the arts of war that the world has
ever witnessed, at any rate since the introduction of
gunpowder. A single first-rate ship to-day would sink
in an hour the entire fleet commanded in the Crimean
War by Napier or Lord Lyons, and Napier and Lyons
would be less able to command such a ship than the
lowest lieutenant in the navy.
From the middle of the nineteenth century the
reorganisation of civil administration and the adop-
tion of modern scientific methods went on nearly
as fast, so that at the date of the Crimean War the
Powers of Western Europe, with Italy added to their
circle, found themselves in possession of vast organised
forces, military, marine, and civil, which had been
rusting in store, as it were, for the long peace of
forty years from the fall of the First Napoleon. The
command of such tremendous armies, fleets, and
budgets, and the knitting up of the nerves of national
cohesion everywhere, roused new ambitions and led
to distant adventures. The formidable mutiny and
resettlement of India, the opening of Burmah, China,
and Japan to Western arms and commerce, gave a
warlike turn to commercial enterprise. The revival
231
of Imperialism and the splendid armies of France led
directly to the war with Austria and kindled the
natural jealousies and ambition of Prussia. The
Danish war, the Austrian war, the French war,
followed in the next decade. And throughout the
generation that succeeded the Franco-German war
of 1870-1871 the nations of Europe have been
industriously augmenting their already tremendous
military resources, whilst fiercely competing in a
race with each other, half military, half commercial,
to extend their Empires and their markets in Asia, in
Africa, and in the seas of both Hemispheres. It is
little cause for wonder, then, if, in the array of such
rival forces, the cause of Free Trade stagnates, the
cause of International Friendship wanes.
The key to all rational estimate of European, and
even domestic politics, is to recognise that the
dominant factor in politics to-day is the passion of
national self-assertion, the struggle for national
primacy. For right or for wrong, the great nations
were all resolved to make themselves, without more
delay, as big as they can be made ; as formidable, as
extensive, as rich as science or energy can make
them ; or at least to tolerate no other nation bigger
than themselves. For this they are ready to sacrifice
everything at home or abroad their traditions, their
safety, their credit, and almost their honour. This,
and this alone, has planted in England the most
powerful Conservative Government ever seen in our
age. This has made the Republic in France frantic-
ally acclaim the fleets and servants of a despotic
Tsar. This has made Prussia aspire to be a great
naval power a great African power. This has
made Italy the enemy of France, Austria the friend
of the Turk, and Russia the indifferent witness to the
massacre of Armenian Christians. The private seeker
232 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
of fortune may say, Rem^ quocunque modo rem. The
cry of the Nations is rather, "Empire, at whatever
cost, at whatever risk, by whatever folly ! "
There are, therefore, deep down in the heart of
the great nations of Europe, overwhelming national
tendencies which foster international jealousies and
neutralise cordial relations, even in matters of in-
tellect and taste. Physical science alone, with its
appeal to material fact, is exempt from the effect of
prejudice. The moral sciences, opinions, art, are far
too liable to suffer from the contamination of political
rivalry. And it behoves all those who (apart from
the strife of politics) devote their lives to the moral
sciences, to history, philosophy, criticism, or art, to
clear their own field, their own minds, from the
narrow prejudices of national chauvinism. Philosophy,
social and moral science, the pursuit of truth, the
creation of the beautiful, have no exclusive country ;
and they are often conspicuously fostered in the
smallest countries, as far removed as possible from the
roar of big capitals and the passions of dominant
empires. How many of the best minds, how much
of the immortal work of the world, came from solitary
retreats into which no passion of national vainglory
and jealousy was suffered to enter. Dante, Petrarch,
Tasso, Byron, Shelley, were exiles, or sojourners in
homes not their own. Erasmus, Descartes, Hobbes,
Locke, Diderot, Voltaire, Priestley, Gibbon, did much
of their best work in foreign lands or in distant retreats.
The philosopher, the historian, the poet, the romancer,
the artist, need always to have before them an ideal of
the best the best that ever has been the best that they
can give. And this best never is, never can be, in a
narrow sense, national. This is the true COSMOPOLIS !
THE REGRETS OF A VETERAN
TRAVELLER
1887
WE are wont to smile over the fantastic but ex-
quisite egoism with which Mr. Ruskin in Presterlta
records his boyish reminiscences of travel ; but to any
one who can remember what Europe was some forty
years ago there come similar hours of despondency and
keen regret. Railways, telegraphs, and circular tours
in twenty days have opened to the million the wonders
of foreign parts. But have they not sown broadcast
disfigurement, vulgarity, stupidity, demoralisation ?
Europe is changed indeed since the unprogressive
forties ! Is it all for the better ? I have no theories,
no parable to take up, as Mr. Ruskin has ; nor do 1
doubt that Watt, Stephenson, and Wheatstone were
benefactors of mankind. But as I sit here, penned
in my Alpine nest by a snowstorm, a few vain regrets
will thrust themselves on the mind.
It is a moral change no less than a material change.
True, one goes by steam in place of coach or boat ;
and lovers of the beautiful and the characteristic may
well regret all that they lose thereby. But this loss
is not a moral evil, nor is it compulsory. Mr. Ruskin
can still drive (if it pleases him) in his own carriage
from Calais to Venice. I go myself not unwillingly
233
234 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
by rail ; even though I can remember how delight-
fully one used to drive by the high road into Rouen,
Geneva, Milan, or Florence. Ah ! for the crack of
the whip as one galloped down those Norman glades
that shelve into the Seine, and for the sight of the
sun rising in gorgeous wrath over the chain of Mont
Blanc, as we toiled up the crest of the Jura in the
twilight ; for the white oxen who tugged as leaders
up the steep slopes of the Apennines, and the chat
with the village gossips at each post station ; the mid-
day halt, where one dived into castle, church, or
old courtyard, the postillion lore of many countries,
the chaffering for some local trifle, the queer but not
untoothsome supper, the antique furniture of the
salon^ the early walk before the horses were harnessed,
the local colour at every turn from morn till night
it is all gone. And we are carried now to Geneva or
Milan like a box of game from Aberdeen to London.
But there are changes far more profound.
Those who remember Europe before the Third
Empire and the great wars of the last five-and-thirty
years know how deeply the outward intercourse of
nations has been altered by all that has happened since
'48. The Englishman who travelled then did not
feel himself as in a mere time of truce in the midst of
a war of races. The frenchman was chatty, gay,
outwardly courteous to all, and inwardly full of
bright views of himself and his great nation. The
German gave himself no airs, being perfectly happy
if he could save some thalers by his superior informa-
tion, and willing at all times to impart to all he met
his inexhaustible stores of erudition and original views
on things human and divine. The Italian was not
a traveller. But the Italian or the Russian, if
we met him, was the easiest and most versatile of
travelling companions. Time was when travellers
REGRETS OF A TRAVELLER 235
who supped at the same table could talk quite
naturally to each other in any language that served
best, when Englishmen did not stare at their country-
men much as undergraduates stare at "an out-college
man " ; when Frenchmen and Germans discussed the
beauties of the Rhine, and when it was not an
impertinence to address to a stranger a remark about
the weather. All that is over. Wars, annexations,
revolutions, race jealousies, railways, circular tours,
Harry and Betsy Jane, have made an end of that.
We consort with those of our own nation only, and
with much hesitation and doubt even with them.
Germans, Frenchmen, English, Russians, or Italians
take their pleasure sadly in foreign parts, and in strict
national lines. There are English, German, and
French resorts ; English, German, and French hotels
in the same place ; English, German, and French
tables in the same room. You may see English,
German, and French families pass many weeks
together in the same house, eat thrice a day at the
same table, and sit for hours in the same salons with-
out ever exchanging a chance word. This is not
from want of a common language ; for, as we all
know, Germans are usually as much at home in our
language as in any other, and most people who travel
habitually speak at least some French. No, it is
national and political jealousy, a deep consciousness
that neither sympathy nor fair judgment exists any
longer between the nations of Europe. Forty years
ago an Englishman, a German, a Frenchman, and a
Russian, who passed twelve hours together in the
same carriage or inn, were rather willing than other-
wise to exchange a few impressions. And such to
this day is the tone of the average American. While
all his European contemporaries have good reasons
for keeping their own counsel, our American fellow-
236 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
traveller is as good-tempered as ever ; affable, self-
satisfied, and buoyantly at home. He has no disasters
in wars or in diplomacy to forget, no pretensions to
assert, and no enemies to fear. He has annexed no
provinces, paid no milliards^ fought no battles except
with his own dear brothers at home ; he is building
no fortresses, forging no guns, nor running amuck
through the Press of Europe. He is perfectly satisfied
with his own national position, nor does he doubt a
moment that any one can misunderstand it. He is
consequently as completely at his ease with foreigners
of every nation as a rational traveller ought to be, and
as forty years ago an English traveller used to be ;
and, as far as his meagre linguistic attainments carry
him, he is, nationally and socially, open to converse
with all whom he meets.
It is hardly in human nature to expect such ease
from a Frenchman. Sedan, Metz, Strasburg, and
milliards are eternally on his soul ; revolutions,
communes, proscriptions, and party animosities make
him as silent with his own nation as with others.
Political causes have led to a singular change. The
average Frenchman has lost his manners, and with
his manners his liveliness, his happy opinion of himself,
and his flow of speech. Out of his own set or party
he is morose, taciturn, uneasy, and ill-bred. Hazard
a few words about the weather, and his second
sentence will relate to the fogs of London (of which
he has read in his pet feuilleton) ; ask him to pass you
the mustard, and he will inquire if the favourite dish
of the English is still raw beef. If a German sits
down at the same table, you are almost glad to
observe that the knives and forks abroad are so blunt.
In short, the Frenchman conducts himself generally
like a man who has been declared a defaulter at his
club. The consequence is that the Frenchman abroad
REGRETS OF A TRAVELLER 237
is too often a melancholy, silent, uncompanionable
man.
The German abroad is almost as reserved as the
Frenchman ; but it is not, at any rate, from wounded
pride. He is aware that by many he is not loved,
and he gently enjoys the sensation. He is quite sure
that intellectually, materially, and artistically he
stands before all the nations on earth, and, as he
knows that his claims are beyond dispute, he needs no
pretensions of his to assert them. The inexplicable
verve of the Frenchman, the versatile energy of the
Englishman, are very well in their way, but as
nations they are both second-rate. If they decline
to associate with him on this understanding he
declines to associate at all. The war with France
and the reconstitution of the German social economy
have produced a great change in German society.
The German middle class is no longer poor, and not
at all disposed to put up with anything second best.
It is more enterprising, more lavish, more cultivated
than the corresponding class in France j and if not
quite so numerous, or. so wealthy, or so restless as
that of England, it has far more real education, taste,
and industry.
The Germans, therefore, with their newly-acquired
wealth, their skill and general enterprise, are in
neutral countries like the Alps almost the rivals in
travel of the English. They spend nearly as much,
they are almost as numerous, they have everything
almost as good, and they are far more really accom-
plished travellers. It must be admitted that their
manners are not yet equal to their essential culture.
The German of the higher class is poor, he travels
little, and he does not form the manners of the
mercantile and professional class. The middle-class
Englishman, whose horror is the knife to the mouth,
238 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
the spittoon in the salon^ and sundry eccentricities of
habit and dress, is too often disposed to undervalue
his German fellow-traveller, though in knowledge,
culture, and just self-respect the German is much his
superior. Now the middle-class German is far too
acute not to feel that, in refinement of manner and
person, both he and she have still something to learn,
but as a member of the nation which leads the van
of European civilisation he and she are far too proud
to acknowledge it. On the other hand, the English-
man of the middle class, who is apt to take the con-
ventional habits of his own aristocracy for real good
breeding, very much exaggerates such superiority in
refinement as he may happen to possess with respect
to his German neighbour. Wealth, power, know-
ledge of all sorts the German knows that he has. He
is not at all disposed to be snubbed by living man or
woman, nor in any place or way will he now be
relegated to the second class. The Englishman too
often has silly schoolboy prejudices about what he
calls " Continental habits," sometimes things perfectly
innocent and natural in themselves. Very properly,
Continentals decline to recognise the schoolboy
standard of manners, and the general code of what
is, and what is not, "swagger." Hence comes it that
travelling is very much less sociable and cheerful than
it was. Germans, French, and English practically
hold no intercourse. The Frenchman's tongue is
tied ; the German no longer instructs us with his
vast erudition and complacent affability ; the English-
man no longer comports himself as if every one were
glad to meet him, and as if it were every one's duty
to answer his questions and supply his wants.
Frenchmen, Germans, and English live side by side
in the same house, walk in the same paths, lounge in
the same verandah, and sit round the same fire as
REGRETS OF A TRAVELLER 239
though utterly unconscious of the presence of each
other, without betraying by a word, look, or gesture
that they observe fellow - creatures around them.
When we travel now we all put " invisible caps " in
our bags, caps which make, not us invisible to others,
but all our fellow-travellers invisible to us. At any
rate, all persons of different nationality are not in
focus at all. We walk, talk, eat, and drink as if they
were mere Banquo's ghosts, invisible to the company
generally. A British peer at a racecourse could not
seem more absolutely unconscious of the presence
of his fellow-beings.
The Italian used to be, if one met him out of
Italy, the prince of travelling companions. He was
usually a very superior type of his nation, and his
urbanity, grace, and sweetness of temper were a
constant consolation and charm. The better speci-
mens of Italian gentlemen are still, perhaps, the most
agreeable of the European races. But one may have
too much of a good thing ; and the hordes of Italian
middle class who now pour across the Alps are not
always beautiful or good. The great Alpine railway
tunnels have opened a new world to the untravelled
millions of Northern Italy. No people in Europe
have felt the opening more certainly, as none are so
close to it ; and week after week the middle classes
of Milan, Genoa, Turin, Lombardy, and Piedmont
pour across the Alpine passes and through the tunnels
by tens of thousands. The districts bordering on the
great Alpine railways are now the main haunts of
Italian villeggiatura^ and the neighbourhood of
Lucerne and St. Gothard is an Italian summer colony.
It could hardly be expected that, with such a vast
increase in numbers, Italy could maintain the high
standard of the Italian traveller of old. Italianissimo^
as I always profess myself, I confess that I am a little
240 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
tried by the vacuous garrulity of these Milanese
burghers, their taste for colour in costume, now,
alas ! descended to the level of a Jamaica negress,
and the vapid insouciance of man, woman, and
child. As on the deck of the Lucerne steam-
boats, amid scenes perhaps the most exquisite and
sublime in Europe, I listen to the eternal grass-
hopper's chirrup of these bulbous, plain, black-eyed
signorine^ perpetually sucking caramels and lozenges,
with their oleaginous mamma, a bundle of ill-assorted
chiffons^ their obese papa with a big bad cigar in his
blackened teeth, and the faineant young men with
gewgaw jewelry, vile tobacco, and almost every
accessory of a tourist, except books, information,
enthusiasm, and interest, I confess I wonder if the
" Administration of Italian Railways " have really
benefited their countrymen by organising "no less
than fifty-one circular tours." But these Milanese
and Turinese happy families, if they carry little out
of the Alps either in mind or body, do no more harm
that the grasshoppers ; and one can only trust that
here and there in their crowds there yet lingers the
charming Italian fellow-traveller of our youth, with
far finer manner than the Frenchman, far more grace
than the German, and far more repose than the
Englishman, who was not without enthusiasm, know-
ledge, and energy, all infused with a certain sym-
pathetic sweetness which was his own peculiar note.
And our own dear countrymen, have they, in
these thirty or forty years, gained as much intellectu-
ally and morally as they certainly have in material
opportunity ? Let us trust so. Foreign, and especi-
ally Alpine, touring has become a highly organised
institution, brought to perfection by everything that
administrative genius, capital, and science can give.
Steam, electricity, human energy and ambition can
REGRETS OF A TRAVELLER 241
hardly add another touch to the mechanism of travel.
The development of the circular tour system, of the
pension system, of the coupon system, the patience and
genius which now transport all the joys of Scar-
borough, Trouville, or Homburg up to the snow level,
have indeed transformed the Continent to the tourist.
Morally, we Britons plant the British flag on every
peak and pass ; and wherever the Union Jack floats
there we place the cardinal British institutions tea,
tubs, sanitary appliances, lawn tennis, and churches ;
all of them excellent things in season. But the
missionary zeal of our people is not always according
to knowledge and discretion. We are now planting
also in these foreign pensions that other English
institution, of which we are so justly proud our
beautiful family life. Thousands of charming British
children now make gay the foreign pension with their
innocent prattle and engaging frolics. But a word in
season to the judicious parent. The pension^ comfort"
able as it is, is not absolutely home ; the foreign
visitors who surround us there, though by a fiction
of international comity invisible to each other, really
have human eyes and ears. The innocence of youth
is but too apt to mistake conventional fictions for
facts ; and encouraged by the social attitude of their
elders, the children and youth of both sexes are ready
to treat the pension as their own particular home, and
themselves as its sole inmates. They romp, shout,
giggle, sing, and indulge in every sweet domestic
gambol with as much spirit as if they were really in
the dear old rectory or grange in Loamshire nay,
they add an extra touch of abandon and dash to their
romps. A family party who have been a week or
two in a pension are apt to take themselves to be the
little masters and mistresses of the whole establish-
ment, and any recent arrivals as mere intruders.
R
242 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
They "go on,", as children say, not wholly un-
conscious perhaps of our presence, but sweetly
indifferent to our observant eyes. In these Alpine
chalets the floors are mere decks and the chambers
simple cabins. Every giggle, scream, or laugh is
audible from stem to stern, and the whole house rings
with these young voices and the merry thumps of
those young limbs. A particularly engaging family
of girls lodged exactly over my head would play
leapfrog with their brothers every morning from
5 to 7 A.M. and every evening from 9 to 1 1 P.M.
with many a shriek of delight and much rough-and-
tumble tussling, like a scrimmage "at the wall."
Perhaps it a little shortened our night's rest ; some
of us had just arrived straight from London ; others
were busy with letters j and some were to start at
daybreak. But what mattered it so long as the sweet
things had a good romp and a loud laugh ? And
then how engaging it is to hear them chuckling
and screaming till the salon de lecture rings with
their innocent mirth, or to watch them purloin the
English newspapers for papa and mamma, and to
listen to them by the hour strumming their exercises
in B flat or variations on the " Carnival de Venise."
And such is the artless confidence of childhood, such
its naive unconsciousness, that these dear babes will
rattle off their simple waltzes and marches in presence
of a score of Germans, of whom each third man and
woman is a trained musician. I confess that, when
after some hours of this schoolroom banging of the
keys the piano is at last free, and I have heard a
German virtuoso sit down, and with a few subtle
touches of a master-hand, even on that ill-used pension
instrument, remind us of what music really is, I feel
some patriotic shame at this practice of carrying the
whole schoolroom abroad.
REGRETS OF A TRAVELLER 243
And how refreshing it is to see our British lads
stalking about with their ice-axes like conquerors in a
subject race, for all the world looking like young
Goths at Rome in one of the colossal historical
tableaux in the Paris Salon, or the Varangians at
Byzantium in Count Robert of Paris. What lofty
scorn gleams from their young calves for man, woman,
and child not British by birth, and for every man who
has never carried an ice-axe. The bowler in the great
school match is not a more superb sight at Lord's nor
the stroke of a winning eight at Henley. In this
matter of ice-axes perhaps the glorious practice of
glacier-walking is being a little discredited. An
English lad nowadays can no more venture to be seen
in Switzerland without an axe than he could show at
Henley without flannels, or at Cowes without his deck
shoes and yachting cap. But of the thousands of
striplings who now carry about these cumbrous and
murderous- looking weapons not all know how to use
them properly, and perhaps not one in three has ever
seriously tried them. Those who have tried it know
well that it takes no little practice before the axe is
anything but a danger and a nuisance to the young
climber. There is, we may be sure, a certain amount
of u swagger " about this ice-axe shop. Mere lads call
themselves " mountaineers " and chatter about " aretes "
and " couloirs " as if they were each Melchior Anderegg
or Christian Aimer. At evening and in bad weather
they stalk and lounge about the hotel terrace, moody,
terrible, and statuesque as " Red Shirt " and " Yellow
Tail " at the Wild West camp. They speak to none
but to other young braves, with whom they perpetually
mutter dark things about bad places, bergschrunds^ and
cutting the record by seventeen minutes. To call
raw lads out for a month's walk " mountaineers " is a
misuse of terms. The instinctive foothold on rock or
244 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
ice acquired by real mountaineers is the education of a
lifetime begun in childhood. Not one Englishman in
fifty ever attains to it, even after long training j but
not one in a hundred comes near to it without a good
season or two. Real skill on a glacier or a peak, such
as every decent guide possesses, is only acquired now
and then by an Englishman after long years of labour
and practice. A good many English climbers come
in time to be nearly as steady as a third-rate " porter."
But the mere beginner, who sees a bad arete for the
first time, is about as helpful as a "sleeping-bag."
Nay, he is no more a " mountaineer " than his own
boots are. Good guides and stout porters take him
up peaks and passes fairly well, and usually bring him
safely down. An average healthy English lad, with
his four limbs well exercised, a sound constitution, a
perfectly steady head, and the nerve and handiness
which most English lads have got, can usually be
trained in a season or two to go safely over most places
with a good guide to lead and another good guide in
rear. It is a glorious and healthful exercise, by all
means to be encouraged. But to call them " moun-
taineers " is an abuse of terms. The common cowherd
boy on the pastures is an expert in comparison to
them, and they would break down in a few hours if
they tried to do the work of their own porters. The
mountaineer's instinct on rock and ice is an art quite
as subtle and complex as the art of the seaman or the
horseman. From the nature of the case an ordinary
English lad cannot have made, in his season or two,
more than a score or so of difficult ice expeditions.
To call oneself a mountaineer on the strength of
twenty days' practice is as ludicrous as it would be to
call oneself a seaman after a month's yachting in the
Channel, or to call oneself a horseman after twenty or
thirty mounts in one's whole life. How would our
REGRETS OF A TRAVELLER 245
tennis-players and cricketers smile at a young French-
man who wished to enter himself in a county match
because " he had practised for six weeks last season at
Wimbledon or Lord's." Punch once gave us a portrait
of the foreign sportsman who had never caught a fox,
" but would try, mon ami^ would try." I think of it as
I see some of our young heroes crossing the Channel
with unsullied axe to face a glacier peak for the first
time in their lives and to try if they also are not
mountaineers.
A very melancholy abuse of a splendid pastime is
the common practice of forcing the pace. Climbing
mountains is perhaps of all forms of exercise the one
most closely associated with the sublime impressions of
nature, and with majestic and inspiring ideas. To
degrade it to mere muscular exercise, like boating on
the Cam, or running on the measured track, is the part
of a simpleton. Morally, poetically, and intellectually
a great Alpine expedition stands far above all other
forms of athletic enterprise. To think about " cutting
the record " is to show that one has no soul for any
but its lowest and most animal accompaniments. If
we go on thus we shall have gate-money and handi-
caps introduced into this most noble of pastimes. The
young athlete who is sweating upon a snow slope in
hopes of beating " Tomkins's time " has not a glance
for one of the noblest visions this earth contains. On
the summit of his peak he is gasping for breath, or else
he is fretting to be back at the hut ten minutes before
Brown. It is a wretched affair to waste poetry,
beauty, and nature in a common race which is far
more in place at Lillie Bridge racing-ground. In the
glorious days of old, when we carried our axes and did
our passes and peaks, we took our own time, stayed as
long as we could see anything, and drained to the last
drop the cup of inspiration which the Witch of the
246 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Alps holds forth to him who seeks her humbly on her
topmost throne. But it is only now, as I potter about
slowly with a walking-stick, and no expeditions or
passes more, to the infinite contempt of my young ice-
axe friends it is only now, in the late autumn of my
travelling life, that I come to see all the infinite glories
of these Alpine crests, the untrodden regions of poetry
that yet lie round them to be known, the mystery of
these heaven-descending veils of cloud and mist, the
majesty of these towering masses, the unfolding drama
which is played round us night and day of man and
nature, for ever in contrast, for ever at war, for ever in
alliance.
Another wonderful development of the pension
system is the vast multiplication of English churches.
Forty years ago there were English churches in some
principal towns, and an impromptu service was often
arranged for a clergyman who chanced to be present
on a Sunday morning. Now the chapel or church is
almost as much a requisite of an hotel as a table d'hote.
Nay, every mountain chalet inn pretends to its "chapel"
and its "chaplain." It is very natural that English
tourists should desire a regular service on Sunday ; and
no one could blame Church people for seeking to
secure it. But, like all other things, this laudable
desire has its own dangers of being spoiled by over-
organisation. The congregations do not always re-
member the very peculiar conditions under which they
exist. They are not a real " congregation " at all
they have no corporate existence, no local duties or
interests, no social cohesion, no poor, no charities, no
parish. They are mere chance visitors, unknown to
each other, and with no common sentiment or interest.
The "chaplain" is not a real priest of a real parish. He
is merely a tourist out for a holiday, who gets his board
and lodging for his Sunday services. He knows nothing
REGRETS OF A TRAVELLER 247
of his flock, has no parochial duties, no poor to help,
and no local interests. Any attempt to plant a sort of
quasi- congregational system, any tendency of the
" chaplain " to regard the hotel and its inmates as the
parish of which he is the spiritual pastor, any effort on
the part of the habitues and pemionnaires to make
themselves a society for the guarantee of moral and
religious order in the pension^ would rest upon a
thoroughly false basis and lead to nothing but dis-
appointment. It is to be hoped that the bishops who
license these chapels make stringent inquiries as to the
feeling of the people among whom they are placed.
To the natives and to the civil and spiritual authorities
of the country these chapels are too often centres of
schism and heresy, and not seldom are symbols of
bitterness and offence. The irritation of the local
churches and congregations is often stifled by the
eagerness of the landlord to secure British custom.
But we must hope that the bishops in licensing these
prima facie schismatical chapels will carefully remove
every cause of offence, and will satisfy themselves that
they do nothing to add a new anti-Christian feud. At
all times congregation and chaplain should remember
that they exist on sufferance, and that their raison d'etre
is peculiar. They ought certainly to be centres of
good works and charity to the poor and to the parish
in which they stand, and in all things seek the good
will of the Churches against which their mere existence
is a protest. It would carry orie very far if one tried
to explain how it comes that the Church of England
alone of all religious bodies in Europe fills almost every
village on the Continent and crowns every Alp with
its own rite and place of worship. Tourists of all
other nations can exist without their national service.
Catholics in a Protestant canton, Americans in Europe,
Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Orthodox Greeks wor-
248 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
ship God in their own way without special chapels.
But where there is an English pension there beside it is
an English church. Is it that we English are the
only religious people in Europe ?
In things spiritual and things temporal alike our
modern mania abroad is to carry with us our own life,
instead of accepting that which we find on the spot.
The generation which planted London-on-the-Sea is
succeeded by the generation which has planted Paris-
on-the-Alps, Paris-on-the-Riviera, and Paris-on-the-
Bay-of-Naples. Long lines of mules file up the Alps,
carrying Saratoga trunks and cases of Veuve-Clicquot
to the level of the eternal snows. In every little village
inn we expect to be supplied with five courses at the
table d'hote tinned salmon, bottled peas, preserved
soups, and all the other horrors of the dear-and-nasty
sham Paris menu. It was pleasant of old, when one
reached a mountain chalet after a day's walk, to see
how the good-humoured host welcomed one to his
quaint salon^ with pictures of Napoleon, Tell, and
Winkelried, and his wife prepared a potage bonne femme^
a kalbsbraten with potatoes, a mehl-speise^ or the like,
and a bottle of vtn du pays. One touched at those
moments on the native life of the place, one tasted the
local fare, and saw the homes of the people. It is all
over now. At 7000 feet above the sea, or in some
village of 500 thrifty peasants, we sit down in Grand
Hotels to a dinner which is a poor imitation of the
Palais Royal cuisine. What is the good of these
mirrors, gilt cornices, and plated centre-pieces, filled
with paste-board flowers, on the top of a mountain, or
in a valley swept twice a year by avalanches ? What
mortal can care for cotelettes d'agneau a la jardiniere
when he knows that lamb, sauce, vegetables, cook, and
dish are all sent in by contract from a foreign country
hundreds of miles off? After a month of foreign
REGRETS OF A TRAVELLER 249
hotels we sicken of tinned vegetables, bottled sauces,
packed meat, spurious wines, canned fruits, gaudy
mentis^ and the whole apparatus of pretending to mimic
the Cafe Riche on the tops of the Alps or the shores
of the Mediterranean. We were far better off when
we had to put up every now and then with the over-
dose of oil of the Italian albergo or the rough-and-ready
roast veal of the Swiss gasthaus. Nowadays it is the
horrid sameness of one bad standard which haunts us
from Calais to Palermo. Ccelutn non vitam mutant qui
trans mare currunt. We go abroad, but we travel no
longer. We see nothing really of the people among
whom we sojourn. We never touch their lives.
They are not even our caterers or our servants. We
lodge in sham Grand Hotels, we take our meals of
sham Paris dishes, our food is a foreign import, we are
served by sham French waiters, and supplied by sham
French cooks. Everything we touch, or see, or eat is
a horrid kind of patent " notion " for making a thing
look what it is not. And all this fraud, pretence, and
artificiality in the midst of scenes the most lovely and
sublime which earth contains, among a people who
can barely keep off hunger, cold, and want by incessant
labour and unsparing self-denial. In a month or two
we shall have returned home to the weary round of
our cfitelettes a la financiere, and these frugal peasants
will be battling for life with the elements and their
ungenial soil, huddled in dark and fetid huts, watching
the rare visits of the sun above their gorge, fearing the
avalanche and the storm, wending through the wreaths
of snow to the village mass, wearing out their hard,
dull, dark lives, which we travellers no longer care to
touch even with the tips of our fingers.
THE RIVIERA DI LEVANTE
1898
I OFTEN wonder how people of taste and sense can
continue to crowd into the Frenchified, vulgarised,-
and stuffy western end of the Riviera, when they can
find health, beauty, and quiet in the Riviera east
of Genoa, from which I write a few stray notes. It
is true that, on this side, there are no spots so warm
and sheltered as are many to be found between Nice
and San Remo. Nor are there the promenades,
hotels, gardens, and villas of Cannes, Monte Carlo,
and Menton. Invalids and votaries of society and
fashion keep strictly to the brilliant modern Baise,
which within the last forty years has spread itself
out from the Gulf of La Napoule to the Capo Verde
that screens San Remo. Those who have delicate
lungs, or who cannot live without the luxuries of
Paris and the gaieties of New York, naturally keep
westward of the Green Headland. But some people
are rather bored by Metropole Caravanserais of the
latest pattern, and find no charm in cosmopolitan
gamblers and bedizened mondaines from all parts of
the world, rolling along dusty boulevards in showy
barouches. We can see all this in the season in the
Champs Elysees, and it brings us no abiding joy.
Those who have sound lungs, good legs, and an eye
250
THE RIVIERA DI LEV ANTE 251
for history and art should seek a little rest and enjoy-
ment in the true Italian* Riviera, east of Genoa,
which is still what Italy was in the days of our grand-
fathers picturesque, historic, old-world, sunny, and
natural.
Forty or fifty years ago, before the great trans-
formation took place on the French Riviera, when
Nizza, Villafranca, and Mentone were antique Italian
towns, and when it was one of the eccentricities of
Lord Brougham to like Cannes, all that seaboard
was a delightful land. Only a hundred years ago
Arthur Young had trouble to get an old woman and
a donkey to carry his portmanteau from Cannes to
Antibes. I can myself remember Cannes in 1853,
a small fishing village with a quiet beach, and
Mentone, a walled town with mediaeval gates and a
castle, a few humble villas, and the old Posta to give
supper to any passing traveller. It was one of the
loveliest bits of Italy, and the road from Nizza to
Genoa was one long procession for four days of
glorious scenery, historic remnants, Italian colour, and
picturesque ports. From the Estrelles to San Remo
this has all been ruined by the horde of northern
barbarians who have made it a sort of Trouville,
Brighton, or Biarritz, with American hotels and
Parisian boulevards on every headland and bay. First
came the half-underground railway, a long tunnel
with lucid intervals, which destroyed the road, by
blocking up its finest views and making it practically
useless. Then miles of unsightly caravanserais, high
walls, pompous villas, and Parisian grandes rues^
crushed out every trace of Italy, of history, and
pictorial charm. No vulgarity of modern luxury can
wholly destroy the loveliness of the country itself;
and there are still to be found some bits round
Menton, Bordighera, and San Remo where the old
252 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Italian charm survives. But these have to be sought
out and detached from the sea of pompous common-
place, as it is understood by the smart managers of
French and American hotels.
Those who care to know what the Riviera was
once must come east of Genoa ; where, though
something of the same process is beginning, the old
Italian character is still to be seen. I quite admit
that forty years ago the road from Nice to Bordighera
was the most beautiful and romantic in Italy, perhaps
in Europe. Since that coast has been Frenchified
and Americanised, it is so no more. The seaboard
from Nervi to Sestri di Levante (or, to put narrower
limits, from Camogli to Chiavari) has now taken the
first rank. I have known Italy now for five-and-
forty years, and have seen every part of it from
Bellinzona to Syracuse. But I know no district
which in natural loveliness, variety, and Italian local
colouring surpasses the country which lies round the
promontory of Porto Fino say that between Camogli
and Zoagli. Here are no " Metropoles " and " Con-
tinentals," with " electric lights, lifts, and 600 beds,"
no circular boulevards, clubs, concerts, or races. But,
in a rocky seaboard clothed with profuse vegetation
and rising up into fine mountains, one finds a
succession of quaint old-world Italian ports and
townships, strewn with remnants of antiquity,
Roman, Saracenic, Mediaeval and Renascence, every
hamlet glowing with colour and luxuriant vegetation,
winding streets with arcades, loggias, and sanctuaries
at every turn, Genoese forts and Lombard campanili,
and all the picturesque confusion and luscious glow of
an ancient Italian town that has hardly changed for
a century or two.
The contrast between the climate of Menton or
San Remo and that of the Eastern Riviera is some-
THE RIVIERA DI LEVANTE 253
thing extraordinary. Pulmonary cases are, of course,
more safe in the west. Yet for an active man in
good health almost every "health resort" between
Saint Raphael and Alassio has a somewhat enervating
effect. But the hillsides between Genoa and Spezia,
though much more open to cold winds, have a
thoroughly bracing air. I have walked over the
Highlands and the Alps, and I know almost every part
of the coast from the Estrelles to Spezia ; but no air
that I have ever tried surpasses in its dry briskness
the winter climate of the rocky promontories that
abut on the great Porto Fino headland. The climate
in good seasons has the double quality of singular
dryness with perfect lucidity and buoyancy. It has
that elastic effervescent tone which is so common on
the Grampians and the Alps, combined with entire
absence of moisture and a far more blazing and
continuous sun. Those who know the top of a
snow mountain in a hot summer noon have ex-
perienced the same union of radiant heat with cool
draughts of pellucid air. And for an active man in
sound health this combination of sunlight and ozone
is not only the most health-giving of all climates, but
one of the balmiest sensations that Nature offers to
the human frame.
From Porto Maurizio round to Spezia a distance
of nearly 130 miles the Italian Riviera exists still,
not seriously modernised by the fin de s'lecle^ but as
it was seen by " Doctor Antonio," by Ruskin, Byron,
and Shelley, and our forefathers in the last century. It
has the Italian colour, the free-and-easy, disorderly,
picturesque grouping of outline, still innocent of
modern " improvements " and the geometric archi-
tecture of the grande rue. The irregular narrow
streets, with no two houses of the same shape, height,
or colour ; the portici, or arcades, with their mediaeval
254 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
columns and dark cellarage ; the frescoes on the walls,
the shrines and pictures of saints at every corner, lit
with lamps and decorated with flowers ; the chapels,
belfries, piazze, palazzi, and loggie ; the balconies
and terraces, adorned with aloes, myrtle, roses,
oranges, and cactus ; the brown fisherfolk in red
berette, the bare-legged vendors of maccaroni and
fruit all that makes Italy so dear to the painter and
the man of taste may still be found at its best in this
Eastern Riviera. The cosmopolitan luxury which wor-
ships at Monte Carlo has practically improved away
all this in the Western Riviera between Cannes and
San Remo.
' The broad and lofty headland of Porto Fino is far
the most important promontory between Nice and
Spezia ; it stands many miles due south into the sea,
and, with the headland beyond Sestri, about ten or
twelves miles to the east, it forms a bay which has
much the look of a lake. The scenery both east and
west of Porto Fino has thus very much the sky out-
line of the fiords of Norway, or the western coast of
Scotland, not that of the open sea, as seen from
Monaco or Cap Martin. And, as the larger bays are
broken with a series of innumerable coves, the variety
of view is endless. Nor does any heavy sea, even in
tempestuous weather, break into these sheltered nooks.
There are few weeks, even in winter, when it is not
perfectly easy to boat about Porto Fino, but when
boating would be quite impracticable between Monaco
and San Remo. The famous Dolphin Harbour, which
gives its ancient name to the lofty promontory, still
confers a special character on the Riviera around it,
by varying the scenery, forming a vast natural break-
water, and multiplying the points of access both by
land and water.
In the extreme cove at the end of the eastern bay
THE RIVIERA DI LEV ANTE 255
lies Rapallo, once a walled republic with an ancient
history, which is pronounced by Mr. Augustus Hare
now to be " incontestably by far the most beautiful
place on either Riviera. It is thoroughly Italian in
the character of its campaniles, cypresses, and little
rocky bays. Its natives are kind, civil, and respect-
able. Its walks are inexhaustible." Every word of
this description is strictly accurate. In the town,
and in the walks and drives within an hour or two
around it, are certainly to be found the most interest-
ing and lovely views on the entire Riviera, since the
ruin of the French side after annexation. The old
road from Nice to Mentone doubtless once surpassed
it, with the " Trophy " of Augustus, Eza, and
mediaeval Monaco ; but the charm of that wonderful
district has been boulevarded and casinoed out of all
memory ; and the genius loci has fled before the
horde of unclean punters and the painted fribbles who
represent the upper crust of Europe.
Jam pridem in Tiberim Syrius defluxit Orontes.
East of Genoa, as we approach towards Tuscany
and Rome, the historic record is more deeply graven
on rock, city, and tower, and it has been far less
obliterated and disfigured by the rage of vulgar luxury
and display. Here, for more than 2000 years, a long
succession of ages have left the marks of their civilisa-
tion, their religion, and their art ; and there are few
out of all those twenty centuries which have not left
visible traces. All along the coast we come on
continual fragments of the Roman Via Aurelia,
which was the highway from Rome to the Rhone.
The lines of this long and important road, with here
and there a bit of bridge, of embankment, of pave-
ment, are continually cropping up, often for only a few
yards, sometimes for half a mile or more.
256 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
The great road was kept up all through the Middle
Ages, and it may be said never to have been abandoned
even for a century since the first construction. The
configuration of the seaboard, where mountains leave
hardly a ledge of ground between them and the sea,
made it practically impossible to change its course,
or to make a new road, as was the case with so many
of the Roman roads in other parts of Europe. The
necessities of the day compelled many repairs and
renewals. And he would be a bold man who could
assign precise dates to these antique and foot-worn
fragments of black limestone and marble. But for
essential purposes the patches of old road which
are seen so often are the actual remnants of the
memorable track, along which for 2000 years have
tramped consuls, cohorts, and armies of Rome,
Spaniards, Gauls, and Britons to the Eternal City,
pilgrims from the Far West to the tombs of the
Apostles, the Northern invaders of Italy, Lombards,
Saracens, Byzantines, and Normans, Petrarch and
Dante, and the wayfarers from Provence to Tuscany
all through the Middle Ages, and so on throughout
the French and Italian wars down to the age of
Napoleon. The noble road from Nice to Spezia,
along which we used to travel in the present century,
until the amphibious railroad in turn superseded it,
made havoc of the old Aurelian road of Roman and
mediaeval times, has crushed out much of it, and has
thrust more of it into olive grounds and vineyards out
of sight. But here and there bits of it crop up still.
Oh that those black stones could speak, and tell us
what they have seen.
All round the headland of Porto Fino the rocks are
studded with remains of Genoese towers, which have
defied Saracens, Pisans, and Normans, and almost every
bay in the last 2000 years must have been the scene
THE RIVIERA DI LEV ANTE 257
of a sea-fight, a raid of pirates, or a border tussle.
The most picturesque of these forts is that which
defends Rapallo on the east, which " still has its
dungeons and its prisoners and guards. The ancient
republic of Rapallo has left some remnants of its
mediaeval structure even in the busy, cheerful, and
orderly little port into which it has shrunk. Frag-
ments of the city gate, transformed into a rococo
sanctuary, the base of the old Palazzo Publico,
monasteries and nunneries, an old palace or two, the
arcades with the earliest pointed arch, and four
campanili of renascence style, which, however horrific
to the' whole Seven Lamps of Architecture, make up
a group that only Turner could paint. Over the
portal of the principal church is a long inscription of
the sixteenth century, recording the finding of an
older inscription, which records the conversion of the
people in the first century, and the founding of the
church on the site of a temple of Pallas. The in-
scription, like most of such things, can as little be held
worthy of a place in a genuine Corpus Inscriptionum
as we can believe that the great Carthaginian led his
army over " Hannibal's Bridge," a mile orF, though
they serve to suggest to a simple and imaginative
people the vast layers of antiquity upon which their
lives are cast.
Every mile or two on this historic ground may
be found traces of the growth and battles of nations,
creeds, and rival civilisations. Hill-forts built by
Romans when they garrisoned their Chitrals and Ali
Musjids to curb the Afridis of old Liguria rocky
fastnesses which sought to stem the Lombard in-
vaders mountain strongholds wherein the scared
population of the seaboard took refuge on the sight
of Saracen and Turkish pirates the arsenals of petty
republics which fought first against Genoa and then
258 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
as members of the Genoese Empire. Again, it is
some ancient monastery or hospice, sanatorium or
refuge, of an order of monks, mendicant or military
some secluded convent of early Lombardic structure
in a woody glen now and then a fragment of quaint
Byzantine work or the pilgrimage sanctuary on a
mountain spur that commemorates a gracious visit
of the Mother of God. And on each commanding
point a rococo Jesuit church in the debased manner
of the seventeenth century, or a palace of a Genoese
noble, built in the days of Rubens and Vandyke. Of
all these remnants of past glory and strife none can
compare in pathos with the ancient cloister of San
Fruttuoso, where lie in their solemn sarcophagi
centuries of Dorias, facing the city they served,
surrounded by the waters they were wont to sweep,
and guarded by tremendous precipices, deep in the
recesses of a wooded glen.
Here around Genoa, itself one of the grandest and
most fascinating cities of Europe, are spread out in
one of the richest and loveliest landscapes in the
world a series of historic remnants which suggest a
thousand memories and a crowd of problems yet
unsolved. And though the monumental record of
the Riviera is almost continuous from palaeolithic
times to Victor Emmanuel, there is no confusion or
discord in it ; nor has it yet been submerged by
modern hotels, villas, and boulevards. The only inns
are old-fashioned houses of a century or two ago.
The people are hardy, laborious, courteous, and
honest. What vital religion survives in Italy may be
seen here at its best. Cleanliness, comfort, and
decency are the rule and not the exception. It
knows not the penury of Lombard rice grounds, the
horrors of Sicilian mines, nor the mendicity and
thievery of the Neapolitan slums. Poor as is all kind of
THE RIVIERA DI LEVANTE 259
classical music in Italy, one feels that the gift of vocal
melody is still not dead, but dormant and hibernating
in the mass of the people. And however vulgar are
the more pretentious forms of Italian art, and garish
as is the modern taste with its bourgeois thirst for
colour still, one can see that of the Western nations
of Europe, the soil of Italy is yet the true and natural
nidus of fruitful and spontaneous Art.
POSTSCRIPT, 1906
Alas ! alas ! this corner, too, of old Italy is going
the way of all else that was lovely, sacred, and historic
in Europe. American Grand Hotels, Monte Carlo
villas, Parisian boulevards have already invaded this
peaceful retreat of our old age ; and I am told that
my own praises of it have helped to swell the incursion
of our Northern barbarians. And now that new
disease, the pestilent motoritis^ has begun to make the
Riviera di Levante as foul, as noisy, and as dusty as is
the Riviera di Ponente at the height of its orgies.
ECCO LA TOSCANA!
1904
A FASCINATING book has just appeared which has
stirred in me a thousand memories of pleasure, such as
can be but little known to men and women of the
present generation. The delights of the old Italian
vettura as a method of travelling are an experience
only possessed by those who are far past middle life.
Yet Mr. Maurice Hewlett, in his new book, The Road
in Tuscany^- though not a veteran, has given us a set
of vivid pictures of what real travelling was before rail-
roads, trams, Metropole hotels, and Mr. Cook's tours
had modernised, barbarised, and cockneyfied Central
Italy. In a delicious passage in one of his sweetest
books (Prcsterita, ch. vi.) John Ruskin describes the
joys of travelling by road exactly seventy years ago :
in the glorious times before "the poor modern slaves
and simpletons let themselves be dragged like cattle, or
felled timber, through the countries they imagine
themselves visiting."
Sono ancW io vetturino. At least I have descended
upon Italy along every one of the great Alpine roads
have driven along the Riviera from Cannes to Spezia
1 The Road in Tuscany . a Commentary. By Maurice
Hewlett. 2 vols., 8vo, profusely illustrated by Joseph Pennell.
London : Macmillan and Co. 2 is.
260
ECCO LA TOSCANA ! 261
long before the railway blocked out the view from the
road when Cannes was a sleepy fishing village, Men-
tone a machicolated, gated, and walled city with a
mediaeval castle, and Genoa the most romantic of sea-
ports. I have driven over the Simplon to Milan and
thence to Verona ; from Bologna to Florence ; from
Parma to Ravenna ; from Leghorn to Rome, across
that weird Maremma. Ah ! it was fifty years ago and
more before you were born or thought of, my friend
Maurice and yet you have brought back to me the
full sense of glorious exaltation in the Italian travel by
road trasumanar significar per verba non si porrla.
I remember how a dear old lady said to me when I
was about to start on the most memorable tour of my
whole life, "Take care," she said, "to go by road.
There is no happiness in life to compare with an Italian
vettura^ drawn by four horses, and the one you love
best by your side ! " I was more modest in my
equipage. But I remember, as we crossed the Simplon
and opened on the valley of Domo D'Ossola, how our
vetturino sprang up on his box, cracked his whip, and
shouted " Ecco r Italia ! "
I had thought the supreme joy of the Italian vettura,
as Ruskin says, that which was "virtually one's home,"
day after day, was an irrecoverable sensation, to be
reckoned with the few memories which only threescore
years and ten can give such as those other memories,
to have heard in their prime Rachel, Grisi, and
Lablache ; to have read David Gopperfield and Vanity
Fair month by month in their early shilling numbers ;
to have seen the British fleet under sails ; to have seen
French cathedrals yet unrestored ; and Rome as it was
seen by Byron, as it was drawn by Piranesi. Yet
Maurice Hewlett now shows us how, if we care and
are not "pressed for time," nor slaves to Baedeker or
Cook, we may see Tuscany still in the way that Milton
262 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
and Goethe, Rogers and Turner, Shelley and Ruskin,
saw it : when men travelled to see the country and the
people, and were not shot like luggage through tunnels
from one museum to another, from one Grand Hotel
to the next, with hardly anything to remind them that
they had quitted Charing Cross. There are the
Tuscan roads, the hill villages, the towns of the plain,
the vetture still more likely now with two horses than
four or five but the vetturino is there, the Tuscan
folk are there still. And Maurice Hewlett will show
you how to find them.
Hewlett has some special qualifications for a book
like this. Ten years ago he published his first books
upon Tuscany. Ever since he has been a close student
of Italian history, poetry, art, topography, and national
character. And he is one of the first living masters of
the entire Dantesque cycle in all its breadth and its
depth. He calls his book The Road. It is a whim of
Maurice to give us conceits on his title-page, and
sometimes, I fear, inside as well. But there is a great
deal more than the Road in this book. First, there is
history not drum and trumpet or Heralds' College
history but the memories which have moulded races,
families, cities, and lands. Then there is very acute
and searching race history, what they call anthropology
or demology, ingenious musing upon local and generic
types, often, we fancy, too ingenious and fine-spun, as
the demology of local types usually becomes. Then
there is topographical realism about what you see and
do and hear on the road, as you may find it in Horace
Walpole, Boswell, Eustace, and Laurence Sterne.
Our "carriage-gentleman" has the same horror of
railroads as Ruskin himself. Pierre Loti wrote an
elaborate book about India from Benares to Ceylon
without having met a trace of anything British. And
Maurice Hewlett trots leisurely along the highways
ECCO LA TOSCANA ! 263
and byways of Italy, from Ventimiglia to Orbetello,
without once having seen or heard of a railroad in those
parts. This is how some of us saw Italy fifty years
ago. But it can be done to-day " in the mind's eye,"
Maurizio ! Dante and the Dantesque legend meets us
in almost every page. Though he rails at museums,
galleries, and art critics in general, Hewlett has a good
deal to say about pictures, statues, tombs, and more about
baptistries, campanili, and cloisters. But the essential
aim of the book is to paint for us the roads, the way-
side humours, the hostelries, the calvaries, the gardens,
the rivers, bridges, castles, and abbeys, the old-world
stories of romance and crime, the garrulous peasants,
and the bathycolpous glaucopid Tuscan girls who make
our roadster amorous and poetic. What is the authority
for giving to Dante's Beatrice green eyes ? The only
green-eyed charmer we ever heard of was Becky Sharp
in Vanity Fair. But by these green eyes hangs a tale.
Hewlett seizes, reiterates, and illustrates that which
is no doubt the true key of Italian character, the real
explanation of Italian history the fierce local patriotism,
that flame of pride, jealousy, egoism, that politico, del
campanile, which from the age of Boethius to that of
Pio X. has coloured the art, the manners, the language,
and the annals of the Peninsula. No observer has ever
gone more truly home to the intense burgher jealousy
of the Italian townsman than does Hewlett. And I
know no other witness who can testify to the same
municipal pride in a petty hill village, and in the wards
of a decaying city. Few travellers can tell such
experiences in centres so small and insignificant. We
all know how the possession of a single picture made
one ward of Florence to be called the Gay Borough.
I remember the scorn of the true Trasteverini for the
populace of the Left Bank, in days before modern
Rome had again become a new colluvies gentium. And
264 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
I have heard a Syracusan, proud of his ruins, call the
people of Palermo quei Saraceni. But few of us have
witnessed the feuds of Siena between Giraffa and the
Goose : the Snail and the Dragon. But then few of
us have ever known Livia, " The most vividly beautiful
girl I have ever seen," says this enthusiast after beauty,
whose effect " was that of a moonlight night, compact
as that is, of ivory pallors and velvet darks, at once
clear and cold, severe and calm." This is poetic but
vague : all about a girl in the streets of Siena, who
may have been clear and calm, but was certainly neither
cold nor severe, who had no hat, white stockings with
loose slippers, a green skirt, and green eyes. Well !
if she had green eyes, I should not care a fig for her
myself. And Dante's Beatrice, I know, had dark eyes
not green.
The history in this book is continuous and masterly.
It is history of the right sort the unlocking of social
and intellectual movements, the unearthing the roots
of that which we can see to-day, that compound of
languor and passion ; of love of beauty and tolerance
of squalor ; that intellectual subtlety and that proneness
to grovel in the petty, the childish, and the mean.
How often Hewlett's tales of mediaeval Tuscany
remind us of Greek life in our old classics, of the
scuffles between rival towns in Thucydides, the wild
games in Aristophanes, the religious festivals, the
materialist worship, the local deities, the poetry, the
fissiparous and dispersive genius, the restlessness and
the sloth, the desperate burgher passion, the incapacity
for national cohesion.
The appendices resume in a more regular and con-
tinuous form the flashes of historical insight which
scintillate along every page of Hewlett's book, touching
as with deep sunset glow the ruined tower, the smoke-
stained and bedaubed tomb of a saint, the mediaeval
ECCO LA TOSCANA ! 265
ioj the gloomy and ordurous lane in a rotting
hill town. In smaller type at the end of the chapter
it has pleased our author to paint many an episode of
the old times, and here and there a new " Little Novel
of Italy." Especially to be noted are the following :
the history of Florence, of Siena, of Arezzo ; the
biographies of Castruccio Castracane, of Ser Martino
and Donna Berta, types of the mediaeval tyrant and
the Florentine burgher. But it is not history as we
find it in Guicciardini, Sismondi, Roscoe, Ranke,
Symonds, or Creighton. It is history according to
Maurice Hewlett, which is a different thing, a singu-
larly idiosyncratic thing, very fascinating and very
edifying I find it.
The distinctive and rare note of this book is its
intensely personal point of view. No writer, unless it
be Ruskin, has ever taken us to a country, so bent on
making us see what he sees, knowing what he knows,
enjoying what he enjoys, scorning what he scorns.
The two volumes are saturated with personal tastes,
fancies, dreams, loves, and whimsies. That is what a
book of travel ought to be, as were the Sentimental
Journey^ Child e Harold^ Corinne^ Relsebilde^ Pr&terita.
Else we had better have a mere gazetteer or Herr
Baedeker's truly exact, careful, and useful handbooks. It
is all very well to sneer at Baedeker ; but I am certain
that Hewlett has carried a red book at some time or
other. I can remember the days before Baedeker, and
how many a sight we missed, how much time we lost
for want of knowing distances, times, and where to
find the key. It is this personal note in every line of
this book which makes it so delightful to read so
troublesome to " review." He puzzles his critics, just
as Ruskin did. They "don't know where to have
him." Exactly so ! It is not a history of Tuscany ;
nor a guide-book to Tuscany ; nor a Tuscan romance ;
266 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
nor a study of Tuscan art j it is simply Maurice
Hewlett in Tuscany.
This personal note reaches its acme in the two
chapters, " The World is a Garden " and " Thoughts
in Church," devoted to the passionate humanism of
the quattrocento and to the gross paganism in the wor-
ship of the Renascence and ever since. Why Hewlett
should go out of his way to describe the Renascence
as " the theory that the world is a garden " we will
not inquire. The Renascence is simply Humanism
i.e. the sense, or the discovery, that the proper business
of mankind is man ; the essential knowledge is to
know himself and the world in which he finds himself;
the true aim of human life is to make the best of man
and of the world. That is a perfectly reasonable creed,
leading, by its emancipating force, to glorious results,
and ending, for want of a true philosophy and an
adequate faith, in horrible corruptions. But why use
the weak French term Renaissance for a movement
which was essentially European, but began in Italy,
and was promulgated by Italians ? Years ago I insisted
that Renascence is the proper term nearer to the Italian
origin, and free from the suggestion of outlandish,
petty, and affected meaning which a French word
implies.
It is a welcome relief to find this book almost free
from the excessive Hewlettism that modern variant
of euphuism of which we were getting somewhat
weary. The intensely vivid and pictorial speech which
has made him one of the very first prose writers of this
age is now being mellowed and refined. Nothing is
lost in brilliancy by softening the more violent tropes.
Santa Maria Novella has a facade " bitingly personal " ;
San Michele is "a church of delirium"; Orvieto is
" naked " ; Siena is " a tiger-moth swooning on a rock."
How a church can bite, can swoon, strip, and go mad.,
ECCO LA TOSCANA! 267
we have to imagine. I know these venerable fanes
pretty well ; but I never saw them at these gambols,
nor do I see the analogy between one of the vastest
cathedrals in Italy and a moth. They were all rather
unsuccessful attempts of Italians to acclimatise an
architecture for which they had no real genius. And
so, I gather, does Hewlett think. But where does the
mad dog or the tiger-moth come in ? My dear
Maurice, if you would only be a little less cryptic,
you would be the finest writer of English prose of
this age.
One of the most charming most important
chapters is the last, " The Heart of the Country." It
is concerned with the folk songs, the people's poetry,
still as pure, as native, as pathetic as ever. The
people's poetry of Tuscany is not only one of the most
beautiful forms of living art, but by its union of delicacy
and tenderness it is one of the most piercing revelations
of national character. Alone it serves to redeem the
taint of so much blood, lust, treachery, affectation,
meanness, which stain Italian annals and manners.
These rispetti 1 have known and loved ever since I
first read Dante with Aurelio Saffi once Triumvir in
Rome, in the year 1850. Hewlett is right in finding
in this truly indigenous poetry " the heart of the
country."
One must not overlook the wonderful realism and
vitality of the illustrations by Joseph Pennell. Their
profusion illumines and explains almost every page.
Every aspect of Tuscany is recorded here cities, towers,
churches, roads, rivers, bridges, gardens, villas, foliage,
landscapes, ruins, lanes, and porticoes. I know not
which to admire most, the refined pen-and-ink sketches
of buildings, gardens, and hill-crests, or the powerful
chalk drawings of vaulted interiors and sombre alleys.
They have the gift of truly depicting the architecture,
268 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
a gift which so few painters, not even Turner, chose
to cultivate, which they leave to scientific architects
such as Ruskin. To my eye, these drawings, with all
their photographic truth of form, too often magnify
the scale, by Prout's artifice of diminishing the figures
which measure the buildings. But on the whole they
reproduce Tuscan sights with marvellous truth and
force.
A PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES
1896
AFTER my visit in last September to Paris and to
Monsieur Laffitte at Cadillac, I went on to Pau to
perform a pilgrimage at the birthplace and ancestral
home of Henri IV. ; and thence to Lourdes, which I
saw on two occasions during the autumn pilgrimages.
A visit to Lourdes is very much to be recommended
to those who care to understand France of to-day and
Catholicism as it is. I cannot pretend to have studied
the matter very deeply I do not believe that there is
anything deep to study. I give my impressions of a
coup tfceil for what they may be worth premising
only that I have known the French peasant for fifty
years, and I think I am entirely clear of any Protestant
or anti-Catholic bias.
Any one who goes to Lourdes expecting to see
anything like what M. Zola saw, or, at least, what
he paints in his sensational book, will be rudely dis-
illusioned. I saw no trains loaded with the sick and
the dying, the halt and the blind, the ecstatic and the
paralytic : I saw no spasmodic emotion, and heard no
agonising prayers and hymns. The priests and monks,
the "sisters" and "mothers" of whom there were
thousands, were very much the same quiet and
businesslike people we see in any Catholic country,
269
270 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
or even in the Isle of Thanet or round Arundel in
Sussex. The great mass of the " pilgrims " were
ordinary holiday-makers in their best suits, enjoying a
few days' trip in a lovely country, and steadily working
round the various devotional functions with entire
satisfaction, with a determination to do it all thoroughly,
and see all that was to be seen, and hear all that was
to be heard.
I do not at all mean that there were no sick, no
lame, no excitement, no ecstatic prostrations, no
church-going, no hymn-singing. The various churches
were crammed ; the services were continual ; the
congregations heartily and reverently joined. But the
sight-seeing, the booths, the shows of the fair were
quite as well attended ; the picnics were as gay and
as many as the booths ; and the prevailing air was that
of a Bank-holiday crowd enjoying a very pretty scene
in an exquisite spot. Some sick, halt, and afflicted I
saw, but they were rare exceptions. Out of 20,000
happy and healthy people whom I noticed, I could not
count more than ten visibly marked with disease, and
about as many who could not walk without crutches
or help. Out of some thousand or so seated in quiet
meditation round the grotto of the Madonna, but two
or three behaved otherwise than as reverent persons
ordinarily behave in Church. One group interested
me much.
Two brothers and two sisters all in deep mourning,
the girls very young in a paroxysm of distress and
spiritual exaltation, flung themselves on the pavement,
fervently praying with arms extended in the form of a
cross, until the exhausted body fell forward prostrate in
the dust which they kissed with passionate veneration.
The worshippers round the grotto, bright with a gilt
image of Mary, but itself blackened with the smoke
of a thousand candles, and hung round with votive
A PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES 271
offerings, seemed like ordinary worshippers in any
Catholic church. Nearly a thousand crutches were
hung upon the miracle -haunted rock, which the
resident physician assured a friend of mine to his
certain knowledge were the crutches of lame persons
who had been healed at the grotto. We visited the
sacred spots and duly drank of the healing water, in
spite of a somewhat sinister smell of carbolic round
the well. Some pilgrims duly bathed in the bath
where "swimming was strictly forbidden " and one
young girl, ecstatically declaring herself healed as she
came out, was fervently kissed by those present in
spite of her dripping gown.
It was a delightful scene. Lourdes itself is a spot
exquisitely beautiful, standing at the mouth of two
grand valleys which run up to the Pyrenean mountains,
and crowned by the donjon keep of an ancient feudal
castle. The rushing Gave, in two lucent torrents,
sweeps round the precipitous rocks on which stand
village and churches ; and all round are fine hills
clothed with green pasture and woods, and topped
with craggy pinnacles. Beyond the grotto are delicious
avenues of shady chestnut trees beside the swift river,
with grassy banks and mossy knolls, wherein were
hundreds of picnic parties, who having done the round
of churches and holy places were refreshing themselves
with wine and cold meat. The whole town and the
country round it were bright and gay with summer
visitors and pleasure parties. The streets were lined
with thousands of shops, booths, open-air stands and
sheds for the sale of relics, mementoes, images, models
of the grotto and the churches, copies of the Madonna,
rosaries, photographs of Bernadette, and all the myriad
trumpery of a religious fair. I am bound to say that
more tasteless trash was never collected together. I
looked with a sinking heart in vain for a single article
272 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
that was other than mere conventional and machine-
made rubbish ; and I could not help remembering
that our word tawdry comes from the cheap finery
that used to be bought at the fair of St. Etheldreda.
A fair the whole thing was. Hotels, eating-houses,
wine- shops, drinking -gardens and saloons, lodging-
houses, stalls for confectionery or various viands and
drinks, itinerant vendors, toys, panoramas, dioramas,
vehicles, landaus, omnibuses and bath-chairs crowded
the streets and lanes. The whole scene was like
Margate or Brighton on Whit Monday, though very
much prettier and not quite so rowdy. I see nothing
to blame in this. If 20,000 hardworking men and
women are taken to a mountain village for forty-eight
hours, they must eat and drink and be housed. They
can't be in church or grotto the whole time. They
will naturally need to be occupied and amused, and
they will wish to carry home some trifling record of
their visit.
Protestants to whom religion means silent com-
muning of the Soul with its Maker, are wont to
treat scenes like this as somewhat profane, or, at
least, unspiritual. But Catholics, we know, take a
much more genial, sociable, spectacular, and all-in-the-
day's work conception of religion as they certainly
did in the Ages of Faith. The scene at Lourdes
recalled to me the mediaeval pilgrimages and sacred
fairs at which trade, society, amusement, art, and
literature made up quite half of the attraction. So it
is with the pilgrimages to Benares, and so it was with
the festival at Olympia. The dioramas, panoramas,
shows, and trinkets at Lourdes vividly reproduce the
miracle-plays, the gaieties, gossip, and fairings of
Canterbury, Reims, Loretto, or Rome. The interest
of Lourdes lies in a spontaneous revival of a mediaeval
pilgrimage of course without the heroic enthusiasm
A PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES 273
and unreasoning passion of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem
or Rome in the eleventh century, but far less worldly
and unholy than pilgrimages were wont to be about
the sixteenth century.
The pilgrims had come from every part of France,
almost of Europe from the farthest coast of Brittany,
from the seafaring people of Normandy, Belgium, and
Holland, from the plains of Lombardy, and the
mountains of Auvergne, from the Basque seaboard,
and the valleys of Northern Spain. Huge caravans in
four heavy trains came from Tours and the Loire ;
others from Lyons and the Rhone ; others from
Toulouse, Carcassonne and the Mediterranean coast.
Fishermen, shepherds, ploughmen, vine-dressers, with
the miscellaneous crowds of towns big and small.
Nineteen out of twenty were peasants, most of them
from very rude districts ; and not one man and
woman in a hundred seemed to belong to the cultivated
classes. It was the most motley, picturesque, and old-
world gathering I ever beheld, even in Italy or the
Tyrol of thirty years ago.
The three memorial churches were crowded to
suffocation, and the various functions were continued
hour by hour. Each excursion party had its own
hours ; sometimes the church was reserved for men,
sometimes for women ; at other times for all comers
alike. The worshippers showed great zeal and
devoutness ; and the hymns and chants were shouted
out from a thousand throats with pious but unmusical
energy. Every fourth or fifth man or woman seemed
to have some ecclesiastical function, or to belong to
some sacerdotal or monastic order ; and all the parties
and groups were carefully piloted by religious guides.
The pilgrimage to Lourdes has now become an
institution of a very mixed kind organised on business
and professional lines, and naturally becoming more
T
274 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
and more a summer holiday. To a great extent it is
a gigantic Cook's Tour, admirably managed and
carried on with immense energy by cures and devout
persons in every corner of France. We have seen
our Anglican canons and priests get up successful
religious holiday-tours and turn their clerical societies
into excursion agencies. The French priesthood has
done this on a far larger scale. From every corner
of France they send up excursion trains of parishioners,
whom the railways convey at fabulously low rates,
and whom the canny Bearnais are delighted to house,
feed, and supply. The Bishop of Tarbes has poured
a veritable Pactolus through his simple diocese with
the usual results ; and the Lourdes pilgrimage has
now become one of the biggest excursion businesses
on record.
But it is far from being even yet a mere Crystal
Palace or Margate at holiday time. It has given an
immense stimulus to Catholic ceremonial throughout
France ; and it has been a real fillip to the Church.
It is evidently quite spontaneous and has worked up
from below. The higher ecclesiastical authorities did
their best to damp it down, and for nearly twenty years
they succeeded in doing so. The present generation
has seen in France a recrudescence of theological
ardour, and it has forced the Church to give official
sanction to the pilgrim business at Lourdes. Those
who fancy France to be utterly Voltairean would be
rudely undeceived if they saw Lourdes. At least half
the excursionists are visibly believers ; and the fisher-
men of Brittany and Belgium and the herdsmen of the
Cevennes and the Pyrenees are fervent and devoted
Churchmen. About half of the excursionists are no
doubt ordinary holiday trippers, most of them having
no objection to wear an emblem or to listen to a
mass. Here and there are scattered a few fanatical
A PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES 275
pilgrims who expect to be cured or who believe in a
cure. And here and there are a few tourists on cycles
or a few curious observers as I was myself. Altogether,
I came away with the impression that a pilgrimage
to Lourdes was a sight from which one might learn
many things, both of the past and the present ; and
that he who thinks the Catholic Church to be
decrepit or the Catholic Faith to be moribund in
France is very much in error. As to one half, Lourdes
is a glorified Cook's excursion office for rural France.
As to the other half, it is a very solid and thriving
phase of the revived Catholic Church.
L'ESPRIT FRANCJAIS
[Reply to a request from the Gaulois of Paris to classify the writers
test express the French esprit.]
LONDRES, Janvier 1899.
MONSIEUR En recevant votre gracieuse invitation
je rponds a la question : Quels sont les ecrivains
du passe qui ont le mieux exprime le vrai esprit
francais ? Je m'amuse a compiler une Academic de
trente " Immortels" veritables, ranges en trois decades.
Les auteurs du premier ordre sont deja couronnes par
le jugement des siecles, et 1'opinion e*clairee en Angle-
terre est en pleine harmonic avec celle de la France.
I
i. Moliere. 2. Voltaire. 3. Corneille. 4.
Racine. 5. Rabelais. 6. Buffbn. 7. Bossuet. 8.
Montesquieu. 9. Diderot. 10. Pascal.
II
i. Fabliaux du Moyen-Age. 2. Froissart. 3.
Montaigne. 4. Vauvenargues. 5. F6nelon. 6.
Madame de SeVigne". 7. La Fontaine. 8. Le
Sage. 9. Rousseau. 10. Balzac.
Ill
i. Victor Hugo. 2. BeVanger. 3. Due de Saint-
Simon. 4. P.-L. Courrier. 5. A. de Musset. 6.
George Sand. 7. Th^ophile Gautier. 8. Alexandre
Dumas pere. 9. Sainte-Beuve. 10. Jules Michelet.
Agreez, Monsieur, mes meilleures salutations.
FREDERIC HARRISON.
276
A WORD FOR ENGLAND
1898
As a real patriot, I grieve to see how the ancient and
beloved name of my Fatherland is being driven out of
use by the incessant advance of Imperial ideas. A
politician nowadays hardly ventures to speak of his own
country by its historic name. When Mr. Morley, or
Sir William Harcourt, or Mr. Asquith true English-
men if any men are go down to address their con-
stituents, they are corrected by an angry roar if they
chance to speak of England or of Englishmen. And
they hasten to apologise to the electors who send them
to Parliament for the slip of the tongue which led them
into the blunder of calling our country "England,"
and of referring with pride to the deeds of our country-
men by the style of " Englishmen." It has come then
to this. It is a " slip of the tongue " a " blunder "
to speak of our country by the name which it has made
glorious for a thousand years, or to call oneself a
countryman of Cromwell, Shakespeare, Elizabeth, the
Henrys, the Edwards, of Harold, of Alfred. One of
the curious results of the late schism has been the
driving of Liberal politicians out of England, with the
melancholy consequence that they are warned off
calling themselves Englishmen at all. Lord Rosebery,
Sir H. Campbell -Bannerman, and Mr. Bryce, were
277
278 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
brought up as Scots, in the habit of calling themselves
"Britons"; though why Home- Rulers should call
the United Kingdom " Britain," I fail to see. One
always expects Scots to call themselves " Britons," if
they cannot well say " Scots." They can hardly apply
the term " Briton " to Nelson and Wellington, to the
two Pitts, to Walpole, Cromwell, and Wolsey. If
they think it finer to talk of " Britain " rather than
England, they must do so. They cannot help being
Scots, as Dr. Johnson said. I should think the term
"Scot" was better than "Briton," if they must assert
the race tradition. But I very much object to their
forcing us to drop the venerable name of " England,"
and the proud title of " Englishmen." England is my
native land, and the name is good enough for me.
Irishmen and Scots can call themselves what they like.
So may Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and
Rhodesians. But, in spite of all temptations to belong
to these mighty nations, I remain an Englishman. I
am proud of the name and of its 1300 years of record.
And I pity the Englishman who is ready to drop it,
like a Smith or a Brown who has inherited a family
estate, and takes on a name which suggests broader
acres and more baronial pretensions.
What are we, citizens of no mean country, to call
ourselves, if we give up the style of Englishmen ? I
object most positively to " Briton." I am not willing
to call my native land " Britain." Why " Briton "
and " Britain " ? These terms are wrong on every
ground whether of history, of constitutional right, of
language, or of justice. They deliberately exclude
Ireland and Irishmen. They are even used in order
to exclude Ireland and Irishmen. The style
" England " no more excludes Ireland than it excludes
Scotland, or Canada, or Australia. The use of the
style "Great Britain" a truly silly and almost comic
A WORD FOR ENGLAND 279
compound name of our small island was invented to
appease the jealousy of Scots when they accepted the
Union. And it was acquiesced in by Englishmen in a
spirit of good-nature and almost as a joke. It was used
in diplomacy, in Georgian poetry, and in tall kinds of
rhetoric. But we Englishmen never seriously took to
"Britain" great or small in the stress of life.
Nelson would have scorned to signal " Great Britain
expects every man to do his duty." The poet never
said " Britain, with all thy faults I love thee well ! "
Let us imagine the bathos of correcting the "slips of
tongue " in the Laureate's " Ode to Wellington."
Try this : " The last great Briton is low." " For this
is Britain's greatest son." If the Wesleys were Irish,
this would be ridiculous. But " Englishman " and
"England" may properly describe every subject of our
Oueen, and every part of her dominions.
Ever since the Union of Ireland, through the whole
of this century, the use of the style " Britain " to
describe the United Kingdom has been a misnomer.
It has been bad in law, false in history, unjust to one
of the three nations, and utterly anomalous in any point
of view. Scots have insisted on it, because it gratifies
Scotch pride and snubs Irish pride. It is a real offence
in a politician, whether he be Home-Ruler or Unionist,
to allow Scotch pawkiness to jockey both England and
Ireland out of the running. One cannot say whether
Home -Rulers or Unionists are the greater sinners
against their own principles, when they use the terms
"Britain" and "Britons," though they mean the
United Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Ireland,
and all the subjects of Her Majesty. "Britain,"
which is supposed to include both Wales and Scotland,
most distinctly shuts out Ireland ; and every time they
use the term " Britain " to denote the Three Kingdoms,
politicians are giving fresh offence and just offence
280 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
to Irishmen, and justify the claim for a full recognition
of Irish nationality. If English Home-Rulers do this,
they are plainly minimising the claim of Ireland to be
an equal member of the composite State. If Unionists
do this, they are treating as a nullity the Act of Union
with Ireland. Irishmen may very fairly say " Whilst
politicians, whether Liberal or Conservative, combine
to ignore Ireland in speaking of the United Kingdom,
we shall continue to cry out that Ireland is treated
as a dependency, and not as a constituent part of the
Crown ! " There is no answer to this. And it is a
great deal more than an accident of speech. It is too
true that not a few of those who talk about Britain,
when they mean the United Kingdom, deliberately
choose to give a prerogative vote to England and
Scotland. But that Mr. A. J. Balfour, or Mr. John
Morley, should talk of " Britain " when they mean
the Queen's Realm, is enough to make the blood of a
patriotic Irishman tingle in his veins. ,
It makes my blood tingle, as a patriotic Englishman,
when I see the silly, unhistoric, and bombastic term
" Briton " supplanting the ancient and grand name of
" Englishman." All that is truly great in our poetry,
in our history, in our language, and our household
words centres in "England." England is the home
of our Monarchy, our Parliament, our Government.
In England is the centre of finance, commerce, army,
navy, art, and literature, almost as much as Paris is
the centre of France, far more than Prussia is the
centre of Germany, or Rome the centre of Italy. I
do not assert that this fact is enough to compel other
nations under the Crown to accept " England " as their
common title, if they refuse to do so. But it shows
how absurdly inadequate is " Britain " to give that
common title. If "England" is to be tabooed, what
are we going to call our country ? It is ridiculous to
A WORD FOR ENGLAND 281
say "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland," every time we wish to describe the Queen's
Realm. It is a pitiful case for a people if they cannot
agree upon a handy name for their own Fatherland.
Frenchmen can speak of France, Germans of Germany,
Italians of Italy, Russians of Russia. It is a sound
and noble form of national pride. Are we to be
forbidden to speak of " England," or else to be driven
to the cumbrous periphrasis of the " United Kingdom,
and so forth " ? Germany, Italy, and Russia are made
up of many composite states and nationalities, having
different histories, habits, and even dialects and laws.
But they can all consent to be known by the common
style of Germany, Italy, or Russia. If the subjects
of our Queen cannot accept a common style, there
must be something ominously wrong in our aggregate
realm.
Even if we could use in practice the preposterous
sentence which is the legal and formal style of the
Three Kingdoms, what about England over the
ocean ? We have lately been told how important and
vast a part of the whole nation is Canada, Australia,
South Africa, and scores of lands in both hemispheres.
Great Britain is a speck on the vast area of the lands
which acknowledge Victoria. Why are these little
islands to give their name to the huge congeries of
lands and peoples which obey our Queen? If Scots
cannot accept " England " as the national style, just as
Welshmen have done, and Canadians and Australians
have done, by what right can Scots force on Canadians,
Australians, and the rest a new-fangled name which
exclusively belongs to these islands ? The hundred
nations, races, and tongues which formed the Roman
Empire, all called themselves Romans, and were proud
of that name. It was a perpetual source of strength.
Even Byzantine Greeks for ten centuries called them-
282 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
selves Romans, and Mussulmans still call Constantinople
"Roum." That was a real Empire, and a signal
example of a national nucleus giving its historic name
to a composite realm. If our Empire refuses to do
the same, I shall doubt its reality and its vitality.
There is in Europe a very ominous type. The
subjects of the Emperor who sits so uneasily in Vienna
refuse to call themselves "Austrians." The Dual
Monarchy has no common name. And publicists are
now discussing "the breaking-up of the Austrian
Empire." An empire, to which its own subjects
cannot agree to give a national name, is not in a
sound and abiding state.
Of course the Imperialists of the Forward school
desire to sink "England" in "Empire." But what
is the national name of this Empire to be ? Why
British any more than Pictish or Jutish ? It is a thing
like Napoleon's Empire or that of Philip II., an
accident, a passing anomaly. How does one feel a
common patriotism with Klondike and Mashonaland ?
England has had a thousand years of organic life and
glorious record. The Empire of Pathans, Klondikes,
Mashonalands, and Ugandas is a thing of yesterday.
Who can say where it will be to-morrow ? I want
something more definite, more organic, more per-
manent to satisfy my ideas of a Fatherland. I have
that in England, in my birthright as Englishman. I
will let no Scot, no Australian, no Rhodesian swagger
me out of that name Who says " Little England " ?
I say Great England. It is great enough for me, and
for all true Englishmen,
ON A SCOTCH REPLY
1898
ON returning from Italy I have been amused to learn
that a sect of Scotch patriots have taken seriously to
heart a little plea for England which I shot off home-
wards one day when I felt unusually exhilarated by
the glow of the Southern Sun. I was indulging in a
gentle jest at some of my Sassenach friends ; but the
last thing I expected was to be charged with want of
sympathy for Scottish nationality. It has always
nlled me with the liveliest interest and affection. I
am myself Scottis ipsis Scottior, Ever since, as a
schoolboy fifty years ago, I spent some months in the
Highlands and every part of Scotland, I have felt the
most hearty enthusiasm for Scottish history, poetry,
nature, and traditions ; I know every corner of
Scotland, I have dear Scottish friends, and have entire
faith in the indestructibility of Scottish nationality.
If blood had anything to do with sentiments, it so
happens that I am anything but a mere "Saxon
churl." On the father's side I descend from Angles
of the Midlands : by women I happen to have Welsh,
Irish, and Scotch blood in my veins. I am a nationalist
pur sang. And the Positivist Review in which I wrote
is in a special sense the advocate of true nationalist
patriotism ; and its Editor, Professor Beesly, like my-
283
284 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
self, is continually insisting that Patriotism is one of
the first of public virtues, and that real patriotism must
be national, local, and historic. My "Word for
England " was a protest against swamping our ancient
fatherland in a congeries of boundless tracts without
any national cohesion. And one might as well call
Mr. Chamberlain a "Little Englander" as think me
to be afflicted with any English arrogance.
I fear that it was imprudent on my part to drop
a little friendly banter into a discussion which arouses
such heat, but of course there is a very serious and
complicated question underlying the point which I
raised, perhaps in too light a heart. The constant
use of the name " Britain," I said, is ending in robbing
us of the name of " England." But, quite apart from
that, " Britain," as now used, is both inaccurate and
inadequate. It is inaccurate because it displaces the
legal, official, and constitutional title of these realms.
And it is inadequate because it ignores and not
seldom purposely ignores the other constituent
nations and peoples of the Queen's dominions. I
am the last man living to wish to force on these
nations and peoples the style of " Englishman " and
" England," if they object to it. But in like manner
I protest against forcing on them the style of " Briton "
and " Britain." I should have thought that my
" Word for England " would entirely appeal to such
hearty Scots as the Reverend David Macrae and his
friends. We both plead that England should be
English and Scotland should be Scottish. I have the
warmest sympathy with these excellent patriots in
their gallant efforts to keep alive the sentiment of
Scottish nationality, Scottish individuality, and Scottish
sentiment. Our cause is the same. But when they
seek to sink both Scotland and England in " Britain,"
when they wish to swamp this island in traditions of
ON A SCOTCH REPLY 285
mere savages, when they clamour to impose this bar-
barous style on the English-speaking subjects of our
Queen all over the globe then I say that national
patriotism is carrying them too far into what is both
offensive and absurd.
I have seen the use of " Britain " defended by
arguments which are false in history, bad in law,
wrong in philosophy, and ridiculous in common-sense.
It is said that by Treaty and Act of Parliament this
Realm is properly described as " Great Britain."
That is untrue. It was true from A.D. 1707 until
1801. Since 1801, the proper title of this Realm is
the " United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."
That is by Article i of the Act of Union, 39 & 40
Geo. III. c. 67. For ninety-eight years this latter
style has been the legal title of Her Majesty's dominion.
The style " Great Britain " had a shorter currency,
and it was legally surrendered by the Scottish repre-
sentatives in the two Houses at the Union with
Ireland. Having by the Act of Union with Ireland
in 1801 surrendered the title assumed in the Act of
Union with Scotland in 1707, the Scottish people
have no claim whatever to impose the obsolete style
on England and on Ireland. Those who appeal to
international Treaties and Acts of Parliament are
flagrantly defying the last Treaty and Act which is
still in full vigour. The people of Wessex or Strath-
clyde might as well appeal to their ancient history,
and ask us to tear up the latest great Constitutional
settlement.
It is said that " Great Britain " includes Ireland.
That is untrue. Every single article of the Act of
Union with Ireland (1800) speaks of the "United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland," of the
t; Parliament of the United Kingdom," of his
"Majesty's subjects in Ireland" and his "Majesty's
286 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
subjects in Great Britain." In no single article does
this Act use the term " Great Britain " to include
Ireland. And the Act of Union with Scotland, 1706,
in no single article uses " Great Britain " to include
Ireland. The Act 9 Anne, c. 6, speaks of "exports
from Great Britain into Ireland." The official title
of the Sovereign after the union with Scotland was
"Oueen (or King) of Great Britain, France, and
Ireland." Ever since the union with Ireland in
1801, it has been "King (or Queen) of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." It may be
said that this is official, legal, constitutional language.
But the plea for " Great Britain " is itself official,
legal, and constitutional, or rather it pretends to be.
If we turn to scientific nomenclature we may read in
Dr. Murray's New Dictionary that " Britain " is the
proper name for "the whole island containing England,
Wales, and Scotland with their dependencies."
Neither in law nor in correct language does " Great
Britain " include Ireland. And my point is that it
is too often used to exclude Ireland.
We have been told that the ancients included
Ireland in " Britain." That is untrue. The Greeks
and the Romans called Ireland lerne and Hibernia ;
and the whole current of ancient geography limited
" Britain " to our own island and often opposed it to
Caledonia, as any one can see who will turn to Sir E.
Bunbury's History of Ancient Geography or W. Smith's
Dictionary of Geography. But the true question is,
not what style is used by the Greeks and Romans, by
poets, or in popular talk, but what is the legal, official,
and Parliamentary title of our country. Most certainly
it is not " Britain " nor " Great Britain," for which
there is no basis except in loose habits of speech. To
appeal to Treaties and to Acts of Parliament is absurd,
for they tell the other way. By what Treaty, by
ON A SCOTCH REPLY 287
what Act, by what international or public agreement
did Englishmen, Welshmen, Scots, and Irishmen ever
agree that the formal style of their country should be
" Britain," or agree to call themselves " Britons " ?
Yet the Petitioners talk of Treaties, Acts, and
Rights !
What is so laughable is that this appeal to formal
styles, rights, and laws comes from those who are
habitually violating all these at once. Mr. Macrae
says that " the proper title of the United Kingdom is
Britain." He might just as well say that "the proper
title of Edinburgh is 4 Auld Reekie.' " The proper
title of the United Kingdom is stated in 39 & 40
Geo. III. c. 67, and it is not " Britain." Even before
that Act, from 1707 until 1801, it was not " Britain "
but " Great Britain," and these sticklers for official
titles should not clip the Queen's English. If we are
always to speak by the card and any equivocation in
national titles is to undo us, we ought to talk of the
"Great British Army," which our foreign rivals
would find rather comical, and always refer to Mr.
Balfour as the " Leader of the House of Commons of
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."
That is a mouthful, but it is strictly official, and
these gentlemen appeal to Acts of Parliament. If it
is to be a matter of loose talk, who made the term
" British " the " proper title " ? We Englishmen,
Welshmen, and Irishmen have never agreed to it ;
and even Scots, if they insist on using it, ought to
say " Great British," and not British. They can use
any cant nickname they like, but " British " to my
ear is a silly nickname. It suggests painted savages,
scythed chariots, and Queen Boadicea.
Happily, the mass of sensible Scots in 1800 con-
sented to surrender the term " Great Britain," or
rather to merge it in a new title, the legal and official
288 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS . ...
authority of which is unimpeachable. Unluckily,
that legal title is rather awkward and cumbrous for
ordinary use. It is no doubt true that a convenient
common name for our vast Empire is rather a want,
and my object when I first wrote was to point this
out. Whether all the peoples within it across the
seas can agree to call it " English," as all our neigh-
bours do and will do, I am not greatly concerned.
But with the most lively sympathy for Scottish nation-
ality, and hearty approval of its patriotic champions,
I cannot consent to their forcing on us Englishmen
and on all the many millions of subjects of our Oueen
the term " British," which to my ear connotes some-
thing barbarous, something tribal and local, and which
at times has an almost comic suggestion.
THE SCOTTISH PETITION TO THE
QUEEN
1898
I HAVE been favoured with sundry copies of a Petition
to the Queen from her Scottish subjects, dated I3th
November last, signed by David Macrae and others.
I had not previously heard of this document nor of its
signatories ; but as I suppose the first name to it is
that of the reverend gentleman who has recently
mistaken a few words of my own in so curious a way,
I venture to submit to him some remarks thereon.
I need not repeat that with the wish of patriotic
Scotsmen to cherish their ancient nationality, to
be extremely jealous that the historic name and
individuality of Scotland should not be merged and
smothered in any other nationality and name, I am
in most hearty sympathy. And my simple " Word
for England " was put forth in a kindred sense ; and,
without wishing to impose the name of England on
others, I asked merely that it should not be merged
and smothered by Englishmen at home.
The Petition to the Queen relates to a formal
title as defined by public law, and consequently must
be worthless if it be itself inaccurate and loose in its
own language and references. Now English publicists
are amazed to find how little this Petition corresponds
280 u
290 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
with the legal learning, the precision, the common
sense which we always expect from public men in
Scotland. The Petition asserts that in 1707 the
official title of the Sovereign and the Realm was
changed by law, and was settled for ever ; and it
prays that this official title may now be strictly
observed. It calmly ignores the notorious fact that
in 1 80 1 by the same law, and in the same constitutional
way, the official title of the Sovereign and the Realm
was again changed by law and was settled for ever in
a new way. Do the Petitioners mean to tell us that
the Act of Union of 1801 was mere waste-paper?
They demand the revival of an official title which
was superseded 98 years ago, and pray for the abroga-
tion of that title which has never been challenged
during the present century ? Queen Anne is dead :
and a good many things have happened since so that
the Titles and Acts of Her Sacred Majesty have been
somewhat amended and modified.
The first sentence of the Petition professes to cite
the Union of 1707. I turn to the Revised Statutes
(2nd edition, 1888) i. 787, for we have nothing to do
with Preliminaries and Treaties : the Act of Union
of 1707, as amended and now in force, to the under-
standing of a lawyer, governs the whole, and, so for
as official titles extend, is final and decisive. Now, I
find that the first sentence of the Petition is a slovenly
arid quite inaccurate paraphrase of the First Article
of the Act of Union of 1707. That Act was amended
and modified so far as the official title of the Sovereign
and the Realm is concerned by the Act of Union of
1 80 1. I have both Acts and the Petition before me
as I write. And I assert that the Petition wholly
ignores the later Act and wholly misquotes the earlier
Act. It is a pity that, in approaching the Throne on
so solemn an occasion, the reverend gentleman and
SCOTCH PETITION TO THE QUEEN 291
his friends could not have secured the help of that
accurate learning and scrupulous precision for which
Scottish jurisprudence is justly famous.
The petitioners are wont to claim the Act of
Union of 1707 for the official use of the term
" Britain " and " British." It so happens that the
Act, even supposing that it had not been superseded
on this head by the Act of 1801, does not once
contain the term " British " from beginning to end,
nor does it use the term " Britain " apart from " Great
Britain." "Oh, but," they say, "we use the terms
4 Britain ' and ' British ' for short in everyday speech,
and every one knows what we mean ! " Yes, but
the Petition is not dealing with short names or every-
day speech, but with formal titles as strictly defined
by constitutional law. That is just the slipshod way
in which the whole Petition is drawn. It cites an
Act of Parliament without noticing another Act by
which it was modified and superseded ; and it mis-
quotes the language of the Act itself, though the sole
point in dispute is a matter of strict language.
I come to a point on which I will try to be
serious, though it is too funny for words. The
Petition as sent to me bears on the cover a grand
woodcut that professes to be a new and improved
version of the Royal Coat of Arms and so forth. I
am no herald, but I have had, in pursuit of history,
to dabble a little in that abstruse science. Anything
more comic than this work of art I never saw. It
blazons "over all, on an Inescutcheon of Pretence,"
the Arms of Hanover ! Prodigious ! as Dominie
Sampson would shout. Do the Petitioners assert that
Her Majesty is now Queen of Hanover ? Have they
not heard that, from June 1837, the Arms of Hanover
were (very naturally) removed from the Royal Shield ?
Do they pretend that our Sovereign is to this day a
292 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
feudatory of the German Emperor, or a Pretender to
the Crown of Hanover ? What do they mean ? Do
they know the elementary rule of Heraldry that all
minor titles are merged in Royalty, and that no
subordinate arms can be quartered or mingled with
Arms of Dominion ? And these sticklers for Heraldic
titles perpetrate a blunder which makes the very
Unicorn turn round and grin "like a Cheshire cat" !
I come to the chief point of the whole Coat as
amended, on which I confess that I tread as if incedens
per ignes suppositosl. mean the grand coat of Scotland
<?r, the lion rampant gules^ within a double tressure
flory counter-flory of the last. I have such genuine
admiration for this beautiful creation of the herald's
art, and such a fascination for its historic traditions,
that I would not seem to smile at that noble beast,
caged as he is in a double tressure flory counter-flory.
But what on earth do the Petitioners mean by
doubling this royal carnivore, by setting him in the
first and fourth quarters, and by kicking the poor,
half-starved lions of England into a back seat in the
second quarter ? No doubt it is meant to assert that
Scotland is the " predominant partner " in the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. I shall not
attempt to dispute it. But heraldry in the art of
quartering has to deal with legal inheritances and not
with the wealth, acreage, or achievements of families.
What then is meant by the claim of the double Lion
rampant gules ? And what is meant by setting the
Scottish Unicorn as dexter supporter and banishing to
the sinister side the English lion, who looks grumpy
enough ? One can only suppose, from the herald's
point of view, that it means that the Sovereign
represents primarily and directly a Scottish family,
and tacks on the coats of her English and Irish
inheritances as subordinate quarterings.
SCOTCH PETITION TO THE QUEEN 293
Was there ever such childish nonsense in a school-
boy's caricature ? Does it mean that Her Majesty
represents the House of Stuart and not the House of
Hanover ? Let the Reverend David Macrae take care.
He is dabbling in treason. Does he mean to lead the
Clan Macrae again to Derby ? Does he mean to
chuck over the Act of Settlement as well as the Act
of Union with Ireland ? Is this Petition another
phase of that tomfoolery about the rightful heir to the
throne being a foreign Prince who claims Stuart
descent ? The throne of these realms is settled upon
the descendants of the Electress Sophia. The Electress
Sophia was the daughter of the King of Bohemia, and
the wife of the Elector of Hanover. She was not a
Stuart, except in blood, as were scores of men and
women. In law, in heraldry, and in common sense,
a woman who marries, and certainly one who marries
a foreign prince, cannot represent the family from
which she descends, but only the family into which she
marries. The Electress Sophia was not, legally and
heraldically, a Stuart, either by birth or by marriage.
The Crown has been settled on her descendants, and
consequently is not settled on a Stuart.
Supposing that she had been a Stuart by birth,
would that make Queen Victoria a Stuart, or chief of
the House of Stuart ? How came James Stuart to
have any claim to the throne of England ? Well,
because his great-grandmother was a Tudor daughter
of Henry VII., and descended from Plantagenets,
Kings of England. The throne of these islands has
descended since the Conquest to one House after
another through married women, who on entering a
new House have entered a new family and borne a
new name. The same devolution which took the
royal title to the Scottish Stuarts, took it from them
to the Hanoverian House (vulgarly called Guelph)
294 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
just as the Scottish Stuarts took it through women
from Welsh Tudors, and they from English Plan-
tagenets, and they from Normans and Angevins.
There is therefore not the smallest reason to pretend
that Her Majesty represents Stuarts or any Scottish
family more than she represents Welsh Tudors, or
English Plantagenets, Normans and Angevins. By
descent she traces her family through them all ; but
by law and the constitution she represents the House
of Hanover. And if Mr. Macrae attempts to dispute
it, he may end yet, like some of his Highland cousins,
on Tower Hill.
They died for Scotland, true to the memories of
that ancient kingdom. He will die for " Britain," and
with his last gasp will forswear the land of his fathers,
and claim allegiance to a lot of painted savages. We
are the true patriots. We stand up for England and
its ancient name and glorious memories. I am sorry
to learn that Scotsmen can be found who wish to sink
Scotland and its grand traditions in a style which is
too often used in the way of swagger or the way of
mockery.
IDEAL LONDON
ADDRESS GIVEN AT LONDON UNIVERSITY, 1898
Now that you have heard so much of London in the
past and in the present, of London a thousand years
ago, and of London and its new County Council, of
the art, the science, the poetry, the schools, the
churches of London, I am bidden to speak to you of
" Ideal London," which I understand is London as
it might be, as it should be, as it shall be.
Neither the subject nor the title of this lecture is of
my choosing, but I willingly accept the task. And
I can imagine that some of you may be saying
Ideal London is an impossible London ; an unpractical,
unreal, visionary thing ; of no use to man or woman ;
an idle day-dream, which need not be intruded on
serious students and laborious research. Do not be
too sure of that. An ideal is a standard at which we
aim, the hope of things not seen, that which we yearn
to make ourselves and our lives, for the things we see
are temporal (saith the Apostle), the things not seen are
eternal. Without ideals we grow into fossils, drones,
brutes. What is the good of study, what is the need
of research, unless it be to know, in order to improve,
to leave the world better than we found it, to attain
to a true and well-grounded progress ? And can there
be progress unless we see clearly some goal at which
we ought to arrive, however slow be our course, how-
295
296 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
ever laborious the study with which we prepare it and
forecast it. As the poet says :
We live by admiration, hope, and love.
Morality, religion are based on ideals. Without ideals
there would be no hope, and without hope, neither re-
ligion, nor aspiration, nor energy, nor good work. A true
ideal is no dream, no idle fantasy. It is the justifica-
tion of study, and the motive of all useful endeavour.
If I am asked to speak of London as it might be,
my only claim to occupy your attention may be that
London is my birthplace, and for nearly sixty years
has been my home ; that I have watched the growth
and rebuilding of London for two generations, whilst
it has increased its area four or five times and its popu-
lation two or three times. I have seen the rise of the
Houses of Parliament, the Royal Exchange, the
National Gallery, the British Museum, the whole of
the new towns at Paddington, Kensington, Chelsea,
and Maida and Netting Hills, the covering with houses
of the vast area west of Belgrave Square and the Edg-
ware Road and the area north of the Euston Road. I
have seen begun the embankment of the Thames and
the whole of the railway system out of London. My
memory of London goes back to the time of the first
epoch of policemen, omnibuses, and cabs, to a time
when Tyburnia, Chelsea, and South Kensington were
market-gardens, when there was not a single railroad
out of London, no penny post or telegraph, when no
man or woman in working-clothes was admitted into
Kensington Gardens, and when the people were still
buried in city churches and in urban graveyards. May
I add that for some years I worked hard in the service
of the government of London, as a member of the first
and second County Councils, an experience which
brought home to me the incessant needs of London
IDEAL LONDON 297
reorganisation and the enormous difficulties which in
practice it has to overcome ? I come before you,
therefore, as a rather " old London hand," who knows
something of the greatest city on this earth, who longs
to see it live up to its marvellous history, and one, too,
who knows something of the practical difficulties that
beset its reform.
Now, in speaking to you of Ideal London, or rather
of London as it might be made, I shall keep within
the limits of practical statesmanship and possible reform.
I put aside any fancy picture of an unsubstantial city
in the air what the Greek dramatist called a Cloud-
cuckoo-land. I know something of the difficulties
which await the Municipal Reformer difficulties of
the legislature, of finance, of vested interests, of law,
of opinion, of habit, and indifference. I know these
obstacles, and I shall not pretend to ignore them. But
I am not bound by limits of time, or by the legislation
of this or that Parliament, the prejudices of the present
generation, or the tone and customs of to-day, no, nor
of to-morrow. London is far older than the Empire,
or the monarchy, or the constitution, or the Church,
or our actual stage of civilisation in any form and I
think it will outlive them all. And Ideal London is not
to be " cribb'd, cabin'd, and confin'd " within this or
that generation, this or that habit of life, this or that
social organisation. It should be a city that develops
all that ever was good in city life, and all that we can
imagine to belong to pure and perfect citizenship.
It is the weak side of modern civilisation that it has
failed to carry on some of the fine elements of city life
as known to the ancient and mediaeval world ; and, of
all Europeans, we English of to-day take the least pride
in our cities, and receive from them the least of
inspiration and culture. The historic cities of the
world Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, Byzantium sum
298 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
up entire epochs of civilisation in themselves. To the
ancients, the very idea of a nation, with a national
system of life, implied a mother-city as its home and
type. And in the modern world the citizens of
Florence, Venice, Paris, Seville, Bern, Nuremberg,
Cologne, and Ghent have all had far deeper sympathy
with their native cities than the Londoner has with
his city, at least within the last two or three centuries
of its life. This is a definite loss to London and to
England. For if we truly estimate the indispensable
need to a nation of a great capital worthy of itself, as a
seat of its highest culture, energy, organisation, and
capacity for the multiform sides of civic organism, we
shall see that England and the British race is all the
poorer in that it still fails to inspire the Englishman
with that sense of sympathy, pride, and example which
Rome gave to the Roman world and which Paris gives
to the French and the whole Latin race.
To the poor countryman London is too often a
place where he may get bare life, variety, and cheap
amusement. To the rich countryman it is a place
where he goes to buy all things that money can
furnish ; where Vanity Fair lasts for some three
months ; and from which he rushes off when his
purchases are made, and when the Fair is over. To
the dull provincial it is a place where he hopes to pick
up " the last thing out " in the peculiar vernacular
he affects. To the ambitious man of business and the
aspiring professional it is a place where toil and energy
and skill may enable him to make a fortune, and in
old age to retire to a rural retreat with an adequate
"pile." And the city suffers, both within and with-
out, from these unworthy aims ; and it has the aspect
of a place which is valued mainly as a market, an
exchange, a warehouse, an office, and a playground.
It was not thus that Athens, Rome, Florence, and
IDEAL LONDON 299
Venice were looked on by their citizens nor was
London so looked on in the age of Norman and
Plantagenet, of Tudors and Stuarts.
Now "Ideal London," to which I personally
conduct you, covers in buildings barely one-third of
the London we know a city which measures on an
average some ten miles across, and covers 120 square
miles of houses, with streets which end on end would
reach straight across Europe, from the centre of which
you must walk for many hours before you can see a
green field this is not a city, but a wilderness of
houses. It is an old saying that "one cannot see the
forest for the trees." So we may say, " in London we
cannot see the city for the houses." City life is im-
possible for a crowd of four or five millions of people,
and with a hundred square miles of buildings. The
city of Edward I.'s time, the legal "city," still occupied
about one square mile ; and twenty or thirty such
cities is surely the utmost possible area for continuous
buildings to cover if true life is to be lived within them.
No inventions in locomotion, trams, railways, or
bicycles can do away with legs and feet for ordinary
use. And, until science has invented wings to fly with,
or seven-leagued boots to jump with, men, women,
and children will have to walk on their ten toes. And,
unless their ten toes can carry them in an hour out
into the open, where they may hear the lark, and smell
the hay, and feel the open sky above them the town
is no city ; it is a prison.
So I hold that the London that is to be will not
exceed two million of inhabitants, and would be a
happier city if it did not exceed one million, and if its
area was less than one-third of what it is to-day. You
may ask me, what arbitrary limits are there to put
bounds to a city ? I reply, the arbitrary limits are
those which Creation has imposed on ordinary men and
300 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
women who cannot comfortably walk more than three
miles in an hour, not more than three hours at a stretch,
and children, old and delicate persons, not half of that.
Whilst our size is limited to some five or six feet, and
our powers of physical exertion to a few hours out of
the twenty-four, any ideal city life for men must be
limited by the physical conditions of human nature ;
and if men are to live in cities with the highest con-
ditions of civic life, those cities must be controlled by
limits of numbers and area.
You may ask me by what means can so vast a
change be effected. And I answer that this involves a
big set of practical problems which neither time nor
my own powers enable me to deal with. I am not
here to enter on a series of political and economic
problems, nor have I a patented body of devices, bills,
and projects to effect such change. As I said at the
outset, an " Ideal " is not bound by time, nor by the
legislation, prejudices, habits of to-day. It is bound
only by the possibilities of human nature and the wide
laws of English civilisation. All I maintain is, that
this change is possible, practicable, within the con-
ditions of modern civilised habits. The population of
London at the opening of this century was under one
million. At my birth it did not exceed a million and
a half. At that date its area was barely one quarter of
what it is to-day. Why need I think these limits are
impossible in the future ? Such cities as Rome,
Athens, Milan, Marseilles, Lyons, Paris, and London
have lived through enormous changes in their popula-
tion and their area in some cases exceeding changes
of increase by tenfold and of decrease to one-tenth.
Why need we regard as hopeless in an unknown
future a state of things which existed in London at
my own lifetime ?
Those who have studied the topography and history
IDEAL LONDON 301
of such cities as Paris, London, Rome, Constantinople,
Chicago, Vienna, Alexandria, and Cairo those who
can remember, as I can, the London, the Paris, the
Rome, the Florence, of some forty or even fifty years
ago can hardly see what bounds need be placed on
the physical transformation of great cities under
adequate efforts. We have witnessed the densest
hives of the mediaeval cities of London, Paris, Rome,
and Florence swept away to make magnificent avenues
or vast open sites, or huge palaces, or public structures.
We have seen in London and elsewhere over-crowded
centres rapidly depleted, and straggling quarters of
small houses replaced by vast blocks of aggregate
tenements. This radical series of changes the
emptying of the old effete cores of our cities and the
gathering of the population into immense blocks of
tenements is going on at a great pace, and is already
beginning to transform London. I am no lover of
the "flat" system in itself; I am a warm lover of the
old private house system as the normal home of a
family. But I see this that if millions of persons
insist on living together in a city, and if they are to
live there in a high state of civilised life, some form
of the tenement system must be adopted. It is
universal in all great European and American cities,
and it is unavoidable in all great cities unless they are
to grow to unmanageable bulk. It is being done here
rapidly. I am far from saying that our actual tene-
ments are what they should be London, indeed, has
no " ideal " tenements. I do not like tenements ; I
regret the necessity. But if persons will live in a city
of some millions and desire to live a civilised life, to
the tenement system they must come. Those who
cannot endure a tenement life must be content with
the country, and with smaller towns. As it is, nine-
tenths of the dwellers in London do to-day live in
302 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
tenements only the lodgings they have are in small,
rotten, ill-kept, unwholesome, old houses. On an
average there are ten persons to a house, whilst there
might well be fifty or a hundred. Ideal London will
give the mass of its citizens spacious, airy, lofty, clean,
and healthy blocks, provided with common baths,
kitchens, lifts, libraries, play-rooms, sick-rooms, and
even mortuaries. All that the few now provide for
themselves in their private mansions will be available
for the many by the aid of wise co-operation.
London properly housed on a scientific system of
tenements would occupy one-third or one-quarter of
the area now loosely covered with small houses. And
this would give an enormous area of new room for
gardens, parks, boulevards, and playgrounds, even if
the population continued to exceed four millions of
souls. But the causes which within this century have
raised the population from one to four or five millions,
and the area of buildings from 5 square miles to
1 2O square miles, are really temporary and incidental.
Political, economic, and international changes will
react in another way within measurable time ; and if
this fabulous and unnatural growth has taken place in
a single century, it will need but a few centuries to
undo it. I wholly repudiate the dismal forecast that
London is to go on increasing in size and numbers at
the rate of the last fifty years ; I will not believe
Mother Shipton's prophecy that Hampstead Heath is
to be the centre of London, or that its population at
the end of the next century is to be ten millions of
souls. But if its population is to be even two or
three millions, and these are to live a human life, the
present parks, avenues, and open places ought at least
to be doubled or trebled. With a park, a playground,
and a great open ground within one mile at
most of every citizen's home, civic life of a high
IDEAL LONDON 303
order is possible. Without these things it is im-
possible.
We have done much in the way of parks within
twenty years j but it is only a corner of what we have
to do. In the four or five miles of dreary streets
which separate Regent's Park from Victoria Park, and
in those four or five miles of blackened streets which
separate Battersea Park from Rotherhithe, there is a
cruel want of fresh air, trees, greenery, and free space.
One of the greatest of all wants is good playgrounds,
I mean such turf and space as are to be seen at Lord's
and at the Oval. A city is not habitable by highly
civilised men unless it can offer adequate playgrounds
to men, children, and young women within an easy
walk of their own homes. The last few years have
witnessed a great move in that direction, and what
has already been done in Battersea, Regent's, and
Victoria Parks, as well as the more outlying greens,
is enough to show what we can do. But we do not
half use our actual opportunities. No man values
more than I do the peace and freedom of Kensington
Gardens, few men resort to it more. But I still
demand that in all the Royal parks and all possible
public spaces there should be regularly opened play-
grounds, with proper regulations and conditions to
keep the youth of our citizens in health until such
time at least as it shall be possible to provide even
better playgrounds within a mile or two of every
man's doorstep. A city fails to fulfil its functions
completely unless it has as much fresh air as Edinburgh,
and playgrounds, walks, and gardens as plentiful and
close at hand as Oxford or Cambridge.
In those good days the Thames will again run as
clear and fresh as it does now at Henley, and it will
be, as of old, the great highway of passage from east
to west. The bridges over it and the tunnels under
304 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
it will be just double of what they are now, and the
railway viaducts and termini which disfigure it will
be suitably treated. The embankment, finely wooded,
will be carried along both sides of the river for the
whole length of the city ; and where it is necessary to
have wharves for unloading, these will be carried into
docks, whilst leaving the embankment clear for traffic,
and our noble river at London will be as much in
use for healthy exercises by men and women as the
Thames is to-day at Richmond and Maidenhead. No
doubt we shall be carried up and down the river in
electric launches not in smoky, noisome, puffing, and
snorting steamboats. Steam engines of all kinds will
be excluded from the City power being obtained
from electric and other non-infecting sources. I need
hardly say that in the good time to come no smoke
will pollute the air and ruin the vegetation of London.
That some millions of house chimneys and ten
thousand factory chimneys should be suffered to pour
out into the pure air of heaven their poisonous fumes,
so that we are all to be choked with soot, our flowers
and shrubs stunted, our public buildings, statues, and
carvings begrimed with a sulphurous deposit this to
our descendants will seem an abomination and a public
crime, to be sternly suppressed by law and opinion.
They will hardly believe what they read in history
that such things were in the nineteenth century. It
will seem to them as strange as it does to us when we
read that our savage ancestors ate their dinners with
their fingers, wore sheepskin clothes for a lifetime, and
went to bed between foul rugs, without any clothes
at all.
No doubt the reformers of those days were asked
with sneers how the people were to procure so many
forks and nightgowns, just as we are asked to-day
how we are going to abolish smoking chimneys. Our
IDEAL LONDON 305
answer is that it can be done it can be done by
science, labour, economy, and public opinion. And
therefore it must be done, and the sooner the better.
When we stand on the Capitol or the Pincian Hill at
Rome, or look down over Florence from the Boboli
Terrace ; when we survey Paris from Notre Dame,
or Genoa from the Church of Carignans ; when we
see how glorious and happy is the look of a smokeless
city in a bright sky, how refreshing are the terraces,
housetops, and balconies bright with flowers and laid
out with summer arbours and garden retreats it
makes one boil with indignation to think that in our
own cities at home neither house gardens nor arbours
are possible, from the gross indifference with which
we suffer preventible nuisances to choke us.
In the good time coming rivers of pure mountain
water will be carried into London by gigantic
aqueducts, as at ancient Rome. We shall no longer
run the risk of poison from polluted drains, or of a
water famine from the shrinking of a petty river.
Our water-supply will come from inexhaustible lakes
and reservoirs. Ancient Rome, with its fourteen
aqueducts, is the true type ; it has never yet been
surpassed, or even equalled. Already some northern
cities are fairly supplied in a similar way. It would
have been done for London long ago, but for
commercial self-interest, political intrigue, and ad-
ministrative jealousy and confusion. It is a blot on
our modern civilisation that the water-supply of
London is still so scanty, so impure, so uncertain, and
so dear.
In the good time coming we shall not buy water
of money-making speculators any more than we now
buy fresh air, or a ticket for Hyde Park, or a pass
across London Bridge. Water, like air, highways,
and parks, is a prime necessity of civilised life, and it
x
306 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
is the business of the State to supply it to citizens
freely, in absolute purity and unlimited abundance.
I can remember a time when several bridges over
the Thames exacted tolls, and when London was
surrounded with turnpikes. It sounds incredible to
us that our fathers could endure such a drag on
civilisation. And it will sound incredible to our
descendants that we suffered water to be bought and
sold and haggled for in the market. We must go
back to the standard of Rome with free and unlimited
water, with baths and public wash-houses in every
main thoroughfare.
Pure water, unlimited in quantity, accessible to all,
fresh air, spacious highways, ample recreation grounds
these things are a necessity of health, and the health
of the citizens is a primary public concern. It has
been the pride of the last half-century that vast sanitary
reform has been accomplished. And the proof of it
is found in the diminishing death-rate of most great
cities, and in the highest degree of London. There
are cities in Europe to-day where the death-rate is
double that of London nay, where it is three times
what the death-rate of London has been for whole
months within the last year. The normal death-rate
of Cairo is nearly three times that of London ; 80,000
lives per annum at least are saved in London which
would be sacrificed but for the advance of sanitary
science and municipal reform. But we are only at
the beginning of our task. The rate in London may
now be said to be brought well below 20 per 1000.
In the good time to come it will be brought down to
10. At this moment there are squares and terraces
in the West where the rate is not so high as this.
The death-rate of Derby this very week is under 10.
And to this ideal limit it must be brought before
sanitary reform has said its last word.
IDEAL LONDON 307
That word will not be said until every sewer is as
free from poisonous gas and deadly ferments as a
scullery sink in a well-found house, until the suspicion
of preventible infection and contagion is entirely
removed, until the infants of the poor are no more
destroyed by unintentional infanticide than are the
infants of the rich, until birth, measles, whooping-
cough, and scarlatina have ceased to decimate the
homes of the careless, the ignorant, and the indigent.
As it is, at least a quarter of our present death-rate is
due to conditions which if those responsible were not
so helpless and so ignorant would amount to man-
slaughter and even murder. And perhaps a fifth of
the death-rate over and above this is due to conditions
which are distinctly preventible by science and by
organisation. In the good time to come the 50,000
or 60,000 lives we slaughter annually in London
alone by our stupidity and mismanagement will be
told by our descendants as an abnormal barbarism such
as caused the Plague and the Black Death of old.
I am speaking, I trust you will believe, by no
means at random and by a vague guess, but from long
and careful comparison of various statistics. I will
give you one striking example. Rome, having be-
come the capital of Italy, set about a vigorous reform
of its sanitary condition. Now, the climate around
Rome is one of the most dangerous and uncertain in
Europe, and the physical conditions of Rome, except
for its grand water supply, offer many peculiar diffi-
culties. Yet in twenty years Rome has reduced its
death-rate by one- third, in spite of doubling its
population. In 100 years the death-rate of London
has been reduced by one-half, in spite of its enormous
increase. Within the last ten years the deaths in
many great cities of North Europe, even under the
very difficult conditions of such countries as Holland
3 o8 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
and Belgium, have been reduced by 10 and 20 per
cent. It is a question entirely of science, organisa-
tion, education. There are spots even now where a
death-rate of 8 per thousand has been known.
London, when it has a clean Thames and abundant
and pure water, will be naturally one of the healthiest
places in Europe. Why should its death-rate be 18
instead of 8 ? For no reason but for bad government,
ignorance, and indifference, public as well as private.
The problem of health will take a foremost place
in the municipal organisation of the future ; and a
large part of the problem concerns the treatment of
disease and death. The hospitals of Ideal London
will not be imposing palaces, filling the best sites and
endangering the health of the city. All that is a
mediaeval tradition, maintained for the convenience of
the doctors in large practice, and with the advertising
aim of being always in public view. Small accident
and emergency wards will be multiplied at convenient
spots. But the great standing hospitals will be
removed to airy suburbs, reached by special rail and
tram lines with ambulance cars of wonderful ingenuity,
the hospitals themselves being constantly disinfected,
pulled to pieces, and rebuilt, so as at last to get rid of
hospital pyaemia and the melancholy death-rate of our
actual clumsy pest-houses.
The disposal of the dead is an even more urgent
problem. I am old enough to remember the dark
ages when the population of London was interred in
graveyards within the City itself. One of my
memories as a child was that of occasional residence
in a house which actually abutted on such a burial-
ground, and my leisure hours were much absorbed in
watching the funerals hour by hour. I am one of
those who survived this atrocious custom, which still
endangers the health of our city, and for generations
IDEAL LONDON 309
to come will continue to be a source of infection.
Some fifty years ago the intra-mural graveyards were
closed and the suburban cemeteries were formed.
But, alas ! they are suburban no longer. The ever-
advancing city has begun to encircle them, and they
are again becoming a new source of infection and
nuisance. They are driving us to more and more
outlying cemeteries, which can only be reached by
a long railway journey, and are to all of us difficult
to visit.
The result is this. A city which requires its
80,000 interments year by year is compelled to bury
its dead either in cemeteries, over -crowded and
practically within the city of the living, or else in
cemeteries so far from its city that each funeral
involves a fatiguing and costly journey, and visits to
the tomb of the departed loved ones become rare or
impracticable. If the population of London continues
to increase it will soon need year by year 100,000
burials equal to the whole population of famous
cities in old times. Where can these be disposed of
with safety, so as not to be put away from us for
ever, and that only after a wearisome and expensive
travel ? In this dilemma I do not doubt that London
will largely return to the ancient and honoured
practice of cremation. Cremation affords to the
living absolute protection from infection and poison ;
to the survivors it spares them the horrible associa-
tions of the decaying remains ; it solves the problem
which awaits us the appalling accumulation of some
millions of corpses in one city in each decade ; and it
enables the family to place the inurned ashes of those
they cherish in a church, or in a cloister, or in a city
graveyard, or in any spot, above ground or under
ground, public or private, close at hand, and yet
entirely void of offence, where the sacred remains
310 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
may be visited from time to time with perfect ease
and peace. It is too much forgotten that cremation
is a scientific process for preparing the remains of the
dead for such permanent disposal as we please to
select, and whether by interment or not. The
calcined residuum of the body is no longer a horror
and pollution to the living, but may be preserved for
ages either in a visible urn in some consecrated spot, or
buried in a grave or vault precisely like a coffin. All
the sacred associations of the tomb, all the genius loci of
the grave are retained when the purified ashes are
shrined in their urn and set up in monument or
niche. So in my visions Isee the London that is to
be filled with mausoleums and chapels and cloisters,
wherein the dust of generations will lie in perfect
peace yet in the midst of the living, far from all
possible danger or offence, yet always before their
sight and present to their memory, be it in some
consecrated urn, or beneath the sod in their midst, or
underneath the pavement that is trodden by genera-
tions to come.
The problem of reorganising London has taken a
new phase since the division into sixty parliamentary
boroughs. London is being gradually broken up into
manageable parts, each of which is a large and rich
municipality with its own administration and local
institutions and buildings. Some of these, such as
Battersea, Chelsea, Poplar, and Westminster, are
beginning to show real municipal life. The move-
ment is still in formation. But it opens a vision of
the future when, with an adequate central govern-
ment and a real unity of London as a whole, its
component parts may have their own local institutions,
life, and character j their own halls, libraries, schools,
museums, playgrounds, parks, and public centres, so
that the life of a great city may be offered to all
IDEAL LONDON 311
citizens within a mile of their own homes and within
reach of their own influence.
The London that is to be, if, indeed, it is to
remain with a population counted by millions, will
be an aggregate of many cities, each equal in area to
Nottingham or Edinburgh, and each possessing a
complete city organisation of its own, but all uniting
in one central civic constitution. The great arteries
of communication will be broad and stately boulevards,
without the artificial monotony of the new avenues
in Paris, and without the makeshift meanness of
Shaftesbury Avenue and the Charing Cross Road.
The traveller who lingers with delight round the
Hotel de Ville and the Fountain of the Innocents in
Paris ; in the Via Balbi and round San Lorenzo at
Genoa ; in the old Piazzas of Florence and Venice ;
who strolls along the Corso at Rome, feels his heart
sink within him as he returns to the biggest and
richest city of the world, and marks how grimy, and
filthy, and inconvenient are the streets and open
spaces and public buildings of London. Neither
breadth, nor dignity, nor permanence, nor self-
respect (to say nothing of art and beauty) seem ever
to have suggested themselves to the tasteless tradesmen
who (we suppose) ordered from ignorant carpenters
the cheapest and commonest sort of road or hall which
contractors could erect. But it is not to last for
ever. Ideal London will far surpass actual Paris in
natural conditions, and I think in free play of thought
and aim. The race which built the Abbey, and
Westminster Hall, St. Paul's, the Banqueting Hall,
and laid out Piccadilly and the parks cannot be wholly
incapable of a noble building. Even now the energy
and individuality of our character is asserting itself
through the pall of convention and frivolity which,
since the Reformation and the civil wars, has afflicted
312 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
us as a nation. London has magnificent opportunities,
and carries within it the germs of noble art. The
Ideal London of our dreams nay, of our descendants
will be one of the noblest cities of Europe, a model
of health fulness, dignity, and convenience.
We want no Haussmanns and emperors here to
drive uniform boulevards or rectangular squares
through the old City, on the plan of a chess-board or
a figure in geometry. The mechanical planning of a
city, so dear to Transatlantic fancy and to the vanity
of an autocrat in Europe, does not fall in with English
habits and our secular traditions. I hope that the
historic streets of London will ever be maintained,
and the associations of the Strand, Ludgate Hill,
Charing Cross, Bishopsgate and Aldgate, Holborn
and Piccadilly may live for centuries yet. I incline
to think that it is as well that Wren's magnificent,
but too geometric and revolutionary, scheme for
rebuilding London after the Fire was never carried
out. It was magnificent, but it was not practical. It
was not practical, in that it would have swept away
the history and traditions of London, just as the history
and traditions of the old City of Paris in the Island
have been swept away by the Imperial demolitions.
No ! let us keep the history and the traditions of
London, even at the cost of some irregularity, narrow-
ness, and inconveniences in the old streets, retaining
infinite variety in the form and style of the buildings
along them. Tradition and variety in an ancient city
outweigh all the regularity and symmetry of modern
reconstruction.
If any one desires to see what has been done of
late years, and what it was hoped to do in London
improvements, let him study an important new work
issued by the London County Council, and prepared
by Mr. Percy Edwards, the able clerk of the Improve-
IDEAL LONDON 313
ments Committee. They will see what Wren desired
to make of London in 1666, what London was in
1855, what it is to-day, and all the changes made in it
these forty-three years. It is a record of many im-
provements, not a few blunders, many fine schemes
ruined by a cheese-paring economy, by political conflicts,
by interested intrigues, by local jealousies, stupidity,
bad taste, and lethargy. But, as we study that record
of the edility of London for forty-three years, we need
not despair of the London that is to be.
We shall not destroy the old historic lines and
landmarks of London, which, as an organised city, has
an unbroken record of a thousand years since Alfred
rebuilt it after rescuing it from the Danes. We shall
not sweep away the great lines and landmarks of
mediaeval London ; but the hopelessly rotten and
festering slums of the old crowded areas will have to be
purified and rebuilt, and the inhabitants replaced in
airy and commodious dwellings, at least half of them
in fresh and healthy suburbs. But the old lines and
lanes of mediaeval London are hopelessly congested and
need a vigorous treatment. We shall not abolish
Fleet Street and the Strand, Cornhill, Gracechurch
Street, Holborn, and Chancery Lane ; but we shall
add on new lines of communication that will relieve
the arterial traffic. The heavy traffic of merchandise,
stores, and plant passing across London, or along it
from line to line, will be carried by deep electric rail-
ways underground, and also some light conveyance
will be effected by new aerostatic modes of transit.
It will be considered ridiculous to send machinery,
coals, or heavy goods by the ordinary streets, which
will be immensely relieved by the almost universal
adoption of automobile cars in place of horse-carriages.
I do not mean the horrid, stinking, rattling motor-cars
we see to-day, but beautiful and elegant vehicles,
3 14 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
which will run quietly and silently by mechanical
power. The main needs of London are easy and open
avenues of communication from north to south, and
across the Thames from Middlesex to Surrey. These
in the good times to come will be doubled or trebled,
partly by new bridges across our noble river and partly
by sub-aqueous tunnels, fit alike for rail, horse, and
foot traffic. Especially there will be adequate avenues
from the main northern, or Middlesex, railway termini
to the main termini on the south, or Surrey side. Of
these the proposed street from Holborn to the Strand
(the most urgent of all the London problems) will
form but a part. It is a most cheering and curious
fact that this indispensable improvement can now be
carried out, when treated on lines sufficiently bold and
thorough, at a positive profit to the ratepayer, and
without any ultimate expense to him at all. This also
was done when Northumberland Avenue was made.
And these examples prove that a wise and bold improve-
ment in our city is a commercial success, and not a
burden to the public purse. The great triumph of
war, said the Conqueror, is to make war support itself.
And the triumph of the City aedile, who wars on decay
and obstruction, is so to make his improvements that,
whilst they immensely promote the health and comfort
of the citizen, they shall actually fill his budget instead
of laying on him burdens.
In the good days to come, then, our Ideal London,
our glorious city of Alfred and the Conqueror, of
Chaucer and Milton, of Inigo Jones and Wren, of
Johnson and Goldsmith, of Dickens and Lamb and
Thackeray, will be as bright and gay, as full of foliage
and flowers, fountains and statues, as Paris or Florence,
but without the monotony and the conventional
boulevard-driving which ruined Paris and have begun
to ruin both Florence and Rome. Our vast city will
IDEAL LONDON 315
then raise up its towers and steeples into a sky as
bright and pure as that of Richmond Park. Coal
smoke will be abolished as an intolerable nuisance,
as unpardonable as a cess-pit or an open sewer. And
I dream in my dreams that Science in the good days
to come will invent a new tobacco, which, whilst
appeasing the craving of the smoker, will not be
poisonous and offensive to those about him. In these
days we should need no smoking cars in the trains,
and could even sit on the garden seat of an omnibus
without the risk of being choked by a very foul pipe.
It would be ridiculous, if we abolish the nuisance of
chimneys, that we should retain the still more noxious
effluvia of the pipe. Women, who, I suppose, in
those days will form the working majority of Parlia-
ment, if not of the Ministry, will, no doubt, in good
time see to all this.
Be this as it may, in the good time to come our
city will be as pleasant to live in as is Oxford or
Leamington or Bath to-day. The Tower of London,
the most impressive and most venerable civic building
in Europe, will be cleared and freed from intrusive
and dangerous lodgers, and will be occupied only by
a military guard. Wren's glorious temple at St.
Paul's will rise, white and majestic as the St. Peter's of
Michael Angelo, and much more beautiful, thrusting
its radiant colonnade and dome into a blue sky, where
the golden cross will glitter in the pure air like the
spires of Chichester and Salisbury to-day. The pile
of shops and ignoble warehouses around it will have
disappeared like a bad dream, and the great Cathedral
will stand in a vast open space, approached on four
sides by stately avenues. So with the British Museum
and our few other fine buildings.
The silver Thames, without a trace of sewage or
of mud, will flow brightly between its double line of
316 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
embankments, covered with shady trees and adorned
with statues and fountains. The vast concave curve
of the Middlesex side of the River, from Chelsea to
the Tower, will give scope to new and varied forms
of architectural development. The old intra- mural
graveyards will serve as sites for lovely cloisters
wherein will rest in graceful urns the ashes of the
City ancestors. And around the venerable Abbey
when its thousandth anniversary comes to pass in the
twenty- third century will be a new consecrated
temple of peace, reconciliation, and honour, where a
grateful people will enshrine the remains of the great
dead ones whom it resolves to bury " to the noise of
the mourning of a mighty nation."
POSTSCRIPT, 1906
In these last eight years not a little has been done
on the long upward march towards an Ideal London
a good deal too in the lines adumbrated above.
Sanitation in all its forms, water-supply, parks,
museums, libraries, playgrounds, open spaces, arterial
new streets, flats and tenement lodgings, removal of
hospitals schools prisons, mechanical locomotives,
smoke abatement, cremation all are beginning to
stir in the dry bones of old-world London.
MUSIC IN GREAT CITIES
1898
ONE of the leading features of the reorganisation of
London, as I can conceive it in the future, will be the
formation of permanent centres of musical culture.
Music is the most social, the most affecting, the
purest of the arts ; the one most deeply connected
with the moral side of civilisation. It stands alone
in the arts as hardly capable of being distorted to
minister to luxury, evil, or ostentation. One can
hardly imagine vicious music, or purse-proud music, or
selfish music. It is by its very nature social, emotional,
and humanising. Hence I hold music to be the art
which specially concerns all social reformers and popular
teachers. And, as we have pointed out to Mr. Ruskin
and the aesthetic pessimists, these latter ages cannot
be called deficient in art, since they have immensely
magnified the most human of all the arts of sense.
I am no musician, and do not pretend to say a
word about music as an art. But, as one who delights
in music, and who has long sought to bring out its
social and civilising mission, I have been very much
struck with the fact that music is dependent in a
curious degree on the material conditions of our civic
life. Pictures, statues, poems, can be sent about and
multiplied in various forms ad infinitum. The poorest
home can contain a Shakespeare, a cast, or an
engraving. A great cathedral may impress the spirit
of millions, even as they walk to their business under
3i8 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
its shadow. But music of a high kind, though it
knows no limitations of country, age, or material
though it is free of time, space, and matter does need
trained powers of execution, the combination of
suitable hearers and performers, and above all, a place
exactly corresponding to the kind of art performed.
Music is peculiarly dependent, both for its artistic
and social value, on the material conditions of social
organisation. Tt needs three things : ( i ) highly
trained executants ; (2) a permanent and duly-trained
audience; (3) a place of performance, convenient to
the audience, and suitable to the artistic conditions.
Now London easily gives us the first. But by its
enormous inorganic bulk it makes the second condition
very rare and difficult. And strangely enough, in
spite of its wealth and energy, perhaps by reason of its
wealth and energy, it does not give us the third. I
have been from my youth a diligent attendant at many
of our best series of concerts ; and in days when I had
more leisure, I made great sacrifices and underwent
great trouble to do so. But the huge floating mobs
of London, and the rage of " undertakers " to collect
mobs, have almost driven me out and make me nearly
hopeless. I have watched scores of times how all
serious music and all serious artists have to educate
their audience gradually by a long and conscientious
work of cultivation. A great musician has, I hold,
more to do to train his audience than to train his
orchestra. No audience can become worthy to listen
to great music fitly performed unless it is a permanent
and painstaking audience ; unless it labours honestly
to understand the master and his interpreters. And it
is just this permanence and this self-educating spirit
that the floating mob of London chokes. Just as the
audience is pulling itself together and becoming fit to
be played to, the series of concerts becomes fashionable,
MUSIC IN GREAT CITIES 319
or the season begins ; the mob breaks in, and all goes
wrong. How delightful the day concerts used to
be till fine people took them up, and till the balls
began. Who can listen to a chaconne whilst a bare-
shouldered dowager and her three daughters are
hurrying past one to the first dance ! No, a permanent
self-respecting, art-respecting audience must consist of
quiet people, living within a moderate distance of each
other and of the concert-hall. And this we cannot
have till London is grouped into smaller social units.
Besides, London with all its wealth and size does
not give us suitable concert-halls. They are all either
too big, ill-shaped for musical purposes, inconveniently
placed, or repulsively like a schoolroom. I cannot call
to mind one concert-hall in London which does not
sin in one or other of these four conditions. To ask
us to listen to a great violin in company with 3000
others (some of them talking German, American, or
Cockney ; some of them hurrying out to a " crush ")
is mere torment. No, I will no longer go to hear
the finest violin solo on earth with more than four or
five hundred of my fellow- beings ; and I should
greatly prefer three hundred. To give what is
facetiously called " a concert " in a Colosseum which
holds fifteen thousand people is an impertinence.
Time was when I never missed an oratorio. But I
have never heard one yet, in an arena which seems
designed for a bull-fight or a hippodrome. And much
as I honour Mr. Manns, I cannot now spend a day in
going to Sydenham in order to hear three pieces, the
utmost that I care for at the same sitting. There is
not one perfect concert-hall in London. The
and the - - are only fit for public meetings ; the
will do for a symphony, but it is too big for a
solo or a quartet. The - - is pretty ; but its proper
purpose is a fancy ball. In the - - and the
320 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
one can hear a quartet to advantage ; but then they
look like a class-room in a Board-school, and the seats
are as bad as a third-class box on the South-Eastern
Railway. The ideal concert- hall should hold 500
persons comfortably j it should be within an easy walk
of their homes ; it should have ample passages, exits,
cloak-rooms, artists' and committee-rooms ; it should
have pure air, cool temperature, no gas, no noise, and
no suggestions either of Mohawk Minstrels or fried
fish. Lastly, it should be beautiful : architecture,
decoration, and fittings should' be of an art worthy to %
invite us to the high art we meet to cultivate. London
has no such concert-hall ; and it is a burning shame.
Mobs, money-seeking managers, fashionable people,
and the wilderness of a city that we live in, make all
this as yet impossible. Musical art, more than other
art, needs an organised social life, within permanent and
moderate limits. Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, the
Crystal Palace, and other provincial centres teach us
the same lesson. Even in Germany, where the capitals
are not so vast and inorganic as London, the true life of
music is in the lesser towns. Music absolutely needs an
organised civic society, neither too vast nor too petty.
For the Rubinsteins, Joachims, Pattis, and Reeveses,
for the highest typical examples of what voice and
hand can reach in art, whole populations and conti-
nents may be ransacked for an audience. But the
blubbery immensity of London adds nothing, even to
them. The great social and civilising uses of music can
be built up but slowly out of many local centres of art.
POSTSCRIPT, 1906
Things, they say, are even worse now. The very
Minstrels and fish are gone. London prefers to have
its music while it is eating.
HISTORIC PARIS
1894
OF all the millions of visitors who throng into Paris,
how few attempt to learn anything about the history
of the venerable city, which they treat as if it were a
summer watering-place or a fashionable lounge.
These very same people, when they go on to Venice,
Florence, or Rome, devote themselves with zeal to
the ancient buildings, to the historical associations,
and to the local art of these beautiful remnants of
antiquity. At least, the more cultivated section of
travellers ransack the churches, dive into ruins, listen
to learned disquisitions, and profess for a time quite a
passion for antiquarian research, and for any fragment
of historic survival which their guides, ciceroni, and
books of travel can point out. There is for Paris no
Ruskin, no Browning, no Lanciani or Hawthorne.
Yet Paris was a famous and cultivated city ages
before Venice ; its history is far richer and older and
more instructive than that of Florence ; it has more
remnants of mediaeval art, and even a deeper mediaeval
interest than Rome itself. And if we search for them
we may find in it historical associations that may vie
with those of any city in the world except Rome and
Constantinople j and even its antiquarian and artistic
remains are seldom equalled or surpassed. At Rome,
321 y
322
Florence, or Venice, the tourist talks of old churches,,
palaces, and remains : at Paris he gives himself up to
the boulevards, the theatres, shops, and races. The
profoundly instructive history, the profuse antiquarian
remains of the great city, are forgotten carent quia
vate sacra.
No doubt there is fascination on the boulevards ;
and the miles of luxurious places that the Vanity Fair
of Europe offers to the pilgrim form a huge screen
behind which the busy pleasure-seeker has no inclina-
tion to penetrate. He stares at Notre Dame and the
Sainte Chapelle, plods through the long gallery of the
Louvre, sees the tomb of Napoleon and Versailles, and
is then ready for the Bois, the opera, or Durand. But
any cultivated traveller, who chose to make a study of
Paris with the same historical interest and love of art
that he takes to the cities of Italy, would find
inexhaustible material for thought. The minor
historical remains of Paris do not lie so much en
evidence as the Ducal Palace, the Palazzo Vecchio, or
the Coliseum, and no one pretends that any of them
have the charm and eternal interest of these. But
they are easy enough to find, and not very difficult to
disentangle from later accretions. On the other hand,
the books, drawings, and illustrations, by the help of
which they may be studied, are more complete and
numerous than they are for any other city but Rome.
It is true that old Paris is not so imposing a city as
old Rome. It has suffered much more mutilation,
disfigurement, and modernisation than old Venice or
old Florence. But then it is a much more accessible
and familiar place : and, Rome and Constantinople
apart, its historical associations are second to none in
Europe.
It is worth noting that Paris is now, in 1894, at
last complete and practically uniform as a city, and
HISTORIC PARIS 323
this can hardly be said of it at any moment before, in
all the four hundred years since Louis XII. Down
to the reign of this gallant king, Paris remained very
much what it had been since Charles V. and the
English wars, a vast feudal fortress with walls, moats,
gate-towers, and drawbridges, immense castles within
the city having lofty machicolated towers, narrow,
winding, gloomy lanes, and one or two bridges
crowded with wooden houses. There were two or
three enormous royal castles, on the scale and in the
general plan of the Tower of London, an almost
countless number of beautiful Gothic churches,
chapels, and oratories, one moderate-sized open place,
the Place de Greve, and two or three very small and
irregular open spaces, such as the Parvis de Notre
Dame or the Place Maubert, some cemeteries,
markets, and fountains, of a kind to make the sanitary
reformer shudder, in the most densely crowded
quarters ; and then, all over the packed area within
the walls, rose huge fortresses of great lords, and
monastic domains, each covering many acres with
gardens, cemeteries, halls, and sick-houses, all strongly
defended by crenellated towers, portcullis, and bartizan.
A miniature city of the kind may still be seen entire
in some of the remote mountain districts of Italy and
Germany.
But about the time of Louis XII., and early in the
sixteenth century, the Renascence arose, and architec-
ture and all the habits and arts of modern life began
to take the place of the mediaeval life. Castles were
transmuted into palaces, towers and battlemented walls
began to fall, the Italian taste for terraces, colonnades,
domes, and square courts slowly drove out the Gothic
fortress, and first the Hotel de-Ville, then the original
part of the Louvre, then the Tuileries, then the
Luxembourg, arose in the course of a century ; until,
324 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
in the middle of the seventeenth century, Louis XIV.,
the great destroyer, builder, transformer of Paris, began
to make the city something like what it was within
the memory of living men. But during the two
hundred years that separate Francois I. from Louis
XIV. the transformation went on very gradually,
so that even when Henri IV. had completed his
work on the Louvre and the Tuileries, lofty feudal
towers still frowned down on Palladian palaces, and
gigantic mediaeval convents or fortresses crowded out
the new streets, the Italian hotels, and even the royal
mansions.
For three centuries the battle raged between the
old castellated buildings and the modern palatial style,
and the result was a strange and unsightly confusion.
By the end of the last century Paris had almost
acquired a modern aspect, but Louis XVI., and then
Napoleon, and after him the Restoration, undertook
new works on a vast scale, which none of them ever
completed. The second Empire, in 1852, began the
most gigantic and ruthless schemes of transformation
ever attempted in any great city. Mighty boulevards
were driven backwards and forwards from barrier to
barrier ; whole quarters of the old city were cleared ;
and Haussmann ruled supreme, like Satan in Pande-
monium, thirsting for new worlds to conquer, and
resolute to storm Heaven itself. The Empire fell in
the great war of 1870, whilst many of these ambitious
schemes were half-finished, and whilst Paris was still
covered with the dust of the insatiable demolisseur.
After the war of 1870 came the Commune and
second Siege of Paris in 1871 ; and in this perished
Tuileries Palace, Hotel de Ville, many ministries and
public buildings, with "whole streets and blocks of
houses. The havoc of 1871, and the gigantic
schemes bequeathed to the Republic by the Empire,
HISTORIC PARIS 325
have only just now been made good, after some
twenty- three years of incessant work. Few new
schemes of reconstruction have been undertaken by
the Republic, which has had enough to do to repair
the ravages of civil war and to complete the grandiose
avenues of Haussmann. The result is that Paris at
last looks like a city finished by its builders and built
on an organic, consistent, harmonious, and modern
scheme. For some four hundred years it has always
looked more or less like a city in the act of building,
or in course of transformation.
Those who will go and look at M. Hoffbauer's
ingenious panoramic picture of Paris, as it appeared in
1588, now in the Musee Carnavalet, and will study
his other drawings there, or in his great work, Paris
a trovers les ages^ who will follow out the series of
contemporary views of old Paris from the sixteenth
to the nineteenth centuries, now in the Municipal
Museum, may easily get a clear idea of this prolonged
and extraordinary process of transformation, by which,
throughout Europe, the cities of the mediaeval world
very slowly, and bit by bit, arrayed themselves in the
forms and arts of the modern world. This study must
have peculiar interest for American travellers, because
their own continent presents them with hardly any
examples of this process. Their magnificent cities
have been built direct from the prairie with modern
conceptions of art and of life, and with no other
conceptions. But in Europe this very laborious and
complex evolution has required four stormy centuries
to work through. Now it is true that the mediaeval
plan, type, and architecture are not so visible in Paris
as in London, Rouen, Cologne, Prague, or Florence ;
yet in Paris the modernisation of the mediaeval plan
has been far more trenchant and is more instructive to
the Transatlantic student.
326 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
To the antiquarian it is painful to reflect how
many beautiful and historic remnants of old Paris have
been swept away within living memory, or at least
within the present century. The two Empires have
been perhaps the most cruel enemies of mediaeval
architecture. In M. Guilhermy's pleasant book,
Itin&raire Archeologique de Paris^ 1855, there is a plan
of Paris showing the ancient monuments by Roguet,
in which some two hundred buildings, anterior to
Louis XIV., are marked. How many of these have
disappeared: a large proportion of them since 1852!
The new Boulevard St. Germain is a magnificent
thoroughfare ; so is the Boulevard St. Michel, and the
Rue Monge, and the Rue de 1'Ecole de Medecine, but
what a holocaust of old churches, and convents,
historic colleges, refectories, halls, towers, and gate-
ways has been made in the forming them ! What
exquisite traceries of the thirteenth century, what
pathetic ruins of statues and portals have been carted
away to make a Boulevard de Sebastopol, a Rue de
Rivoli, and the new edifices in the island cite \
In my own memory, St. Jean, St. Benoit, the
Bernardins, the College de Beauvais, have gone, and
the tower of St Jacques, and the facade of Notre
Dame, have been " restored " out of all knowledge.
It is quite true that Paris required new streets, new
halls, new colleges, hospitals, barracks, and open
spaces. These had to be ; but it must be admitted
that the dtmolisseur has been a little rough and
unsympathetic.
It is an idle occupation for the aesthetic foreigner
to grumble when he knows nothing of the practical
necessities and the every-day facts which are thrust
into the face of the inhabitant. A much more
sensible line is open to the tourist to-day, if he will
try and find out for himself what still remains to be
HISTORIC PARIS 327
seen. Not one traveller in a hundred ever goes near
the beautiful Hotel Carnavalet or has explored all the
vaults, traceries, and columns of the Conciergerie, or
has unearthed that curious and noble fragment of the
twelfth century, the Church of St. Julien le Pauvre,
formerly attached to the Hotel Dieu, and now buried
in some back streets. It may compare with the
Chapel of St. John in our Tower of London, though
it is somewhat later in date. Few care to search for
the Hotel de Sens, and the old staircase and tower of
the Hotel de Bourgogne. Fragments of two famous
convents remain embedded in modern structures.
The Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, in the Rue
St. Martin, occupies the site of the venerable and vast
abbey of St. Martin des Champs ; and it has incor-
porated within its immense range of buildings both
the church and the Refectory of the Abbey, beautiful
remains of the best thirteenth century work. And so
the Refectory of the Cordeliers monks, the scene of
the Cordelier Club in the Revolution, which has rung
with the big voice of Danton and the eager periods of
Camille Desmoulins, is still visible as the Musee
Dupuytren, attached to the Ecole de Medecine. Its
gruesome contents need not deter men from visiting
one of the most interesting historical remains in Paris.
A real history of the city of Paris would prove to
be one of the most instructive episodes to which the
student of manners and art in Europe from the time
of the Crusades could possibly devote his attention.
And although some cities in Italy present more vivid
and fascinating periods or examples, there is perhaps
no other city in Europe where the continuity of modern
civilisation for at least seven centuries can be traced
so fully in its visible record. From the time of Louis
the Stout, A.D. 1 1 08, Paris has been the rich and
powerful metropolis of a rich and enlarging State ;
328 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
and from that day to this there is hardly a single
decade which has not left some fragment or other of
its work for our eyes. The history of each of its
great foundations, civil and ecclesiastical, would fill a
volume, and indeed almost every one of them has had
many volumes devoted to its gradual development,
final disappearance or transformation to modern uses.
The history of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, from
the laying of the first stone by Pope Alexander III.,
in the age of our Henry II. and Becket, down to the
final "restoration" by M. Viollet-le-Duc, and the
history of all its annexes and dependences^ Archeveche,
Hotel Dieu, together with an exact account of all its
carvings, glass, reliefs, etc., etc., would be a history of
art in itself. The same would be true if one followed
out the history of the foundations of St. Germain des
Pres, of St. Victor, of St. Martin des Champs, of the
Temple, and of St. Genevieve. Two or three of these
enormous domains would together occupy a space equal
to the whole area of the original cite. They contained
magnificent churches, halls, libraries, refectories, and
other buildings, and down to the last century were
more or less in a state of fair preservation or active
existence. Of them all it seems that St. Victor, on
the site of the Halle aux Vins, and the Temple, on
the site of the square of that name, have entirely
disappeared. But of the others interesting parts still
remain. Of the eleven great abbeys and twenty
minor convents which Paris still had at the Revolution
none remain complete, and the great majority have
left nothing but names for the new streets.
It would be no less instructive to follow up the
history of the great civil edifices, the Hotel de Ville,
the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Hotel de Cluny, the
Luxembourg, the Palais Royal, the Palais de Justice.
Of these, of course the most notable are the trans-
HISTORIC PARIS 329
formation and gradual enlargement of the Hotel de
Ville, the Louvre and Tuileries, and the Palais de
Justice, including in that the Conciergerie and all the
subordinate buildings of the old Palace of the Kings,
which occupied the western end of the original island
cite. The learning, the ingenuity, the art which
have gone to build up the Hotel de Ville of to-day
out of the exquisite pavilion that was designed under
Franfois I., form a real chapter in the history of
European architecture; as the story of the Town Hall
for nearly four centuries is the heart of the history
of Paris. But even this is surpassed by the history
of the Louvre and its final consolidation with the
Tuileries, an operation of which the difficulties were
much less successfully overcome. The entire mass of
buildings, the most elaborate and ambitious of modern
construction in Europe, is an extraordinary tour de
force which provokes incessant study, even when it
fails to satisfy very critical examination.
Those of us who can remember Paris before the
second Empire of 1852 have seen not a few quarters
of the city much in the state in which they were at
the Revolution, and even in the days of the Grand
Monarque. The sky-line was infinitely broken and
varied, instead of being a geometric and uniform line
of cornice, as we now for the most part observe it.
And the streets had a frontage- line as irregular as
the sky-line ; they went meandering about or gently
swaying to and fro, in a highly picturesque and
inconvenient way. There was hardly a single street
with a strictly geometric straight line in all Paris
down to the first Empire. Now the ground plan of
Paris looks as if an autocrat had laid it out in equal
parallelograms from an open plain. What old Paris
was down to the end of the last century we may
gather from bits of Silvestre, Chastillon, Meryon,
330 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Martial, Gavarni, and others ; but not much of it
can still be seen extant.
If the curious traveller would follow up the Rue
St. Denis or the Rue St. Martin, two of the oldest
streets in Europe, from their intersection by the Rue
de Rivoli to the circular boulevard, where they are
terminated by the Porte St. Denis and the Porte
St. Martin respectively, he would get some idea of the
look of Paris at the Revolution of 1789. The grand
new Boulevard de Sebastopol, one of Haussmann's
boldest, and perhaps most useful, creations, opens a
vast thoroughfare between the old streets of St. Denis
and St. Martin, and by diverting the traffic, has no
doubt prevented or delayed their transformation.
Hence these two streets, which date from the earliest
age of the city, have partially retained their original
lines, when they were country lanes through woods
and meadows, and to some extent they keep their old
sky-line and faade. There are corners in them still
where the old street aspect of Paris may be seen
almost intact. And the student of antiquities who
cared to follow up the remnants of these mediaeval
thoroughfares in the spirit in which he explores the
canals of Venice and the vicoli of Florence, who would
trace back the history of St. Jacques and St. Merri,
St. Leu, St. Nicolas des Champs, the Place des
Innocents, and the vast convent of St. Martin, all of
which he would meet in his walk, would have a most
suggestive insight into the mediaeval state of the city.
And it would be well to add to the walk by following
up such streets as those of Rue Vieille du Temple,
Rue des Francs Bourgeois, and its collateral streets,
with the Hotels Barbette, de Bethune, de Soubise, and
Carnavalet, ending with the old Place Royale. A
few days thus spent, with adequate histories such
as those of Guilhermy, Fournier, Viollet-le-Duc,
HISTORIC PARIS 331
Dulaure, Hamerton, Lacroix, Hoffbauer, or the
popular guides of Miss Beale, Hare, or Joanne, would
be rewarded by pleasure and instruction.
Xo the thoughtful traveller the question is continu-
ally presenting itself, if the wonderful transformation
which Paris has undergone in three centuries, and
especially in the last half of the present century, has
been a success on the balance of loss and gain ; if it
might have been better done ; if it could not have
been done without such evident signs of autocratic
imperialism and gigantic jobbery. The enthusiastic
admirers of Paris as it is, and the irreconcilable
mourners over Paris as it was, are alike somewhat
unreasonable. One need hardly waste a thought upon
the triflers to whom the great city is a mere centre of
luxury, excitement, and pleasure, given up to clothes,
food, and spectacles. But the superior spirits whom
the modernisation of Paris in the present century
afflicts or disgusts are hardly less open to a charge of
impracticable pedantry. The Revolution found Paris
as unwholesome, as inconvenient, as ill-ordered, as
obsolete, as inorganic a survival from mediaeval confu-
sion as any city in Europe. It boasts to-day that it is
the most brilliant, the best ordered, the most artistic
city of men, and one of the most sanitary and con-
venient for civilised life. And no reasonable man
can deny that the substantial part of this boast is just.
The primary business of great cities is to be centres
where masses of men can live healthy and pleasant
lives, where their day's work can be carried on with
the minimum of waste and friction, and where their
spirits may be constantly stirred by grand and en-
nobling monuments. Now a mediaeval city, though
crowded with beautiful and impressive objects at every
corner, was charged with disease, discomfort, and
impediments. It choked and oppressed men's daily
332 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
life to such a point that, about the sixteenth century,
a violent reaction against the mediaeval type set in.
And when this began the civil and religious institu-
tions of the Middle Ages had fallen into decay, had
ceased to be of use or to command respect, whilst
their ruins or their disfigured carcases encumbered the
ground. The Monarchy led the way in the revolt
and the inauguration of the new city ; and the
Revolution and the Empire added to the work of
destruction and renovation with tremendous rapidity
and resistless force. If modern Frenchmen were to
live in Paris, to feel at home in it, to love it, then the
transformation must take place. And one cannot
deny that it has been done with consummate energy,
skill, and artistic invention.
But a city which deliberately effaces its own past,
which mutilates its ancient masterpieces, and carts
away exquisite works of art wholesale, which is filled
with hatred, not only of what is unwholesome and
troublesome, but of what is venerable and ancient, is
committing suicide of its own noblest traditions. It
is sacrificing the most powerful influences it possesses
to kindle that sense of its own dignity and love for its
own history, which is really the basis of all civic
patriotism. A great city which has no past must do
its best to look modern. But an ancient city which
deliberately seeks to appear as if it had not known
more than two generations of inhabitants is depriving
itself of its own noblest title to respect. Now, too
much of modern Paris looks as if its principal object
had been to hide away old Paris, as some mischievous
remnant of the Anc'ien Regime^ unworthy to exist in
the nineteenth century. It is true that Notre Dame,
the Sainte Chapelle, St. Germain, and a few remnants
of Gothic art have been " restored." But one of the
leading ideas of the Haussmannic renovation has
HISTORIC PARIS 333
evidently been this to produce the effect of a bran-
new city as completely "up to date" and with as little
of the antique about it as San Francisco or Chicago.
It cannot be denied that, however gay, airy, spacious,
and convenient are the new boulevards, they have been
immensely overdone in numbers, and are now become
a new source of monotony in themselves. We see
that, at last, boulevard -constructing became a trade:
these vast avenues were made first and foremost for
speculative builders, enterprising tradesmen, and am-
bitious architects. It is not so much that Paris
needed the boulevards, as that certain syndicates
thirsted for the job. Assuming that such main
arteries as the Boulevards de Sebastopol and St.
Michel, such streets as the R. de Rivoli, 4 Septembre,
and Turbigo were indispensable, it does not appear
certain that the Boulevards Haussmann or St. Germain
were inevitable, or even the latest of all, the Avenue
de 1'OpeYa. These streets are convenient, of course,
very "handsome," and profitable to those who knew
how to profit by them ; but the question is whether
they were worth the enormous burdens on the city
budget, the tremendous disturbance and destruction
involved, and the wholesale demolition of interesting
old structures which could never be replaced. As the
royal and imperial palaces of Paris bear on them
indelible marks of autocratic tyranny and pride, so the
new municipal works of the city too often betray their
origin in the syndicates of the Bourse and Municipal
Council.
It seems to be a natural law that an evil moral
taint in the constructors of great buildings or great
cities shows itself on the face of them for ever, just as
it is impossible to study the facade of a mediaeval
cathedral without seeing by what devout spirits and
by what faithful and honest labour it was raised.
334 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
The domineering and inflated temper of a great
autocrat breaks out in the monotony and rigidity of
his palaces, and in his manifest desire to display power
rather than life, and vastness rather than beauty.
The palace of a tyrant is made to look like an inter-
minable line of troops in uniform mechanically dressed
for a review. The master of big battalions must have
a big palace, and then a bigger palace, a copy and an
extension of the former one. If his predecessor built
a beautiful palace he must crush it with something
that dwarfs and overpowers it, for is he not an even
grander potentate than the " grand mcnarque " de-
ceased ? The Louvre is a perfect study in stone of
moral degeneration on the throne. Franfois I., who,
with all his faults, loved France and loved beauty,
began the Italianised Louvre of Pierre Lescot : it is
one of the most lovely conceptions of the Renascence,
and has no superior of its order in Europe. We see
it in the south-western angle of the inner quadrangle.
The inner quadrangle was not completed for more
than a hundred years each king caring more for
power than he did for art, and adding a less and less
beautiful piece ; until at last, under Louis XIV., the
exquisite design of the early Renascence has sunk into
a dull and pompous classicalism.
But the crown of false taste was placed when, in
1665, Louis XIV. was seduced by the ingenious
amateur, Dr. Perrault, to reface the Louvre of Levau,
and to set up the huge sham screen, known as the
famous Colonnade, on the eastern facade facing St.
Germain 1'Auxerrois. Its twenty -eight immense
Corinthian columns, carrying nothing but a common
balustrade, are a monument of imbecile pomp. Directly
the trained eye perceives that this vast and stately
facade consists of two parallel faces within a few feet
of each other, the mind turns from such a senseless
HISTORIC PARIS 335
parade of magnificence. It is quite true that the
facade is itself very imposing, well-proportioned, and
certain to impress itself as noble on those who do not
perceive its fraudulent construction. It was just the
thing to inflame the imagination of the brilliant young
Roi-Soleil: it debauched the courtly taste and ruined
the architecture of Paris. It was more or less imitated
in the grand public offices flanking the Rue Royale,
which face the Place de la Concorde. Thenceforward
splendour took the place of grace ; and interminable
orders of columns and windows in long regiments
took the place of art.
The first Empire, which had a genius of its own,
and even an imitated art that at times was pleasing
and usually intellectual, adopted and even exaggerated
the passion of the Grand Monarque for the grandiose
and the uniform. And the second Empire, which
had more ambition than genius, and more brilliancy
than taste, adopted and even exaggerated the designs
of the first Napoleon but alas ! without the refined
learning and the massive dignity which marked his
best work. Louis, accordingly, mauled about the old
Louvre and set up some singularly ingenious but
rather inartistic adjuncts to the Tuileries. He made
the disastrous mistake of prolonging the Rue de
Rivoli with a monotonous rigidity which has positively
discredited French taste in the eyes of all Europe.
He insisted on sweeping away the old citl of the
island, in order to make sites for the enormous barrack
and the vast hospital neither of which would be
required on that particular spot by a wisely organised
Government.
Nor did Louis stop here ; for his courtly, clerical,
and Bourse influences drove him to turn the Cathedral
of Notre Dame into a detached show, standing by
itself in a bare clearing, to set up more boulevards,
336 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
more monotonous Rues de Rivoli in every part, and
to gut the interesting old quarter of the University,
the Schools, and Colleges, teeming with historical
associations and mediaeval relics, in order to make it
as close a copy of the Boulevard des Italiens as it was
possible to produce on the south side of the Seine.
Even more than all the sovereigns of France, from
Louis XIV. downwards, Louis Napoleon seemed bent
on hiding away or carting away the ancient Paris, and
turning the whole of the vast and venerable city into
a monotonous copy of the Anglo-American quarter
round the Madeleine and the Grand Opera.
The Republic succeeded in 1870 to a number of
unfinished schemes and to the awful ravages of civil
war. And, after almost a quarter of a century of
indefatigable effort, it has at length brought the
reorganisation of the city to a practical close and has
repaired the ruin of the two sieges. Happily, the
Republic, with such fearful trials and cruel lessons,
has had no desire to plan new schemes for eviscerating
the city, and has had other things to do instead of
building pompous palaces. It has wisely declined to
rebuild the Tuileries, and has made perhaps the best
that it could have made of the vast constructions that
connected Louvre and Tuileries. In spite of the
ambitious and offensive failure in the midst the noisy
monument to a great patriot who deserved something
nobler the palatial pile has not been surpassed in
modern Europe ; and by consent of the world the
spacious area between the Champs-Elyses and the
Pont Neuf contains the most brilliant city prospect
in Northern Europe. But the glory of the Republic
is the renewed Hotel de Ville, the most beautiful
building that has been raised in Paris since the original
Louvre of Pierre Lescot. The trade of the building
speculator and the mania of a despotic uniformity have
HISTORIC PARIS 337
now received a death-blow. The ingenuity and
artistic instinct of France are acquiring again a free
hand ; the Revolutionary hatred of antiquity is dying
out, and the historic spirit is enlarging its scope.
When the Eiffel folly has come down, and the
mesquinerie and chlnoherie of sundry big works of the
fin de siecle has been replaced, Paris may face the
twentieth century with the proud consciousness not
only of being the most brilliant and pleasant of cities,
but also that she bears on her the record of twenty
memorable centuries of the Past.
OUR CATHEDRALS
1895
I SHOULD like to support the plea for some national
control over local Restoration Committees by my own
reminiscences of French cathedrals and the cruel
mangling they have suffered in the last forty-five
years. I am old enough to remember some of the
noblest of them before the advent of Napoleon III. in
1851. One of the disasters of the Third Empire was
the buying the support of the Church by enabling it
to " restore " the cathedrals and churches of the Middle
Ages. The result has been to ruin, disguise, and
travesty almost every fragment of the thirteenth and
fourteenth century work throughout France. To
those who knew the great cathedrals of PVance, before
the murderous hand of the restorer had been at work
on them, they look like that ghastly picture of Murillo
"St. Bonaventura writing the Memoirs of St.
Francis after his own death." The Seraphic Doctor
is a corpse, who sits stiffly in his chair, holding the
pen in his blue-cold fingers and tracing the words
with his mummy-like limbs. The seraphic churches
of mediaeval France are to-day such corpses, " restored "
to life for a space, and pretending to be alive with a
rigid mockery of health. Men might as well drag
from their graves Robert de Luzarches and Pierre de
338
OUR CATHEDRALS 339
Montereau and show us their skeletons adorned with
brand-new robes designed by a learned antiquarian as
present to us their churches transformed into modern
machine-cut stone.
I can remember the profound impression produced
on me as a school-boy when I first saw the great
buildings of Rouen and the churches and castles of
Normandy and along the Seine in the distant days of
Louis Philippe fifty years ago. What the cathedral
of Rouen was then may be faintly imagined by those
who know the fragments of it which Ruskin drew for
his "Seven Lamps." It was a mountain of crumbling
and pathetic imagery which perhaps in all those
centuries had never looked so truly grand and produced
so deep an impression. Time and decay had amal-
gamated the styles and harmonised all that was incon-
gruous or corrupt. One after another almost every
great church in the pointed style throughout France
has undergone the same transformation, until now it
is rather their skeletons or their mummies which
remain, and not the living work of the great mediaeval
artists.
No man now dreams of "restoring" i.e. repaint-
ing a famous picture, or an antique statue, or the lost
books of a great poem ; nor of bringing the Twelfth
Mass up to date. Nobody proposes to "restore" the
Parthenon, or to put a new nose on the Sphinx, or new
arms to the Melian Aphrodite, and it would be absurd
to talk of " restoring " the Colosseum with strict
attention to the Flavian " period," or the Pantheon
according to the canons of Vitruvius. But a church
is considered fair game for all ecclesiastical personages
of aesthetic proclivities, and every type of local busy-
body, " munificent donor," or archaeological prig.
They revel in it. They fall upon the poor crumbling
ruin like vultures on a dying camel in the desert.
340 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
They form rival committees and bitter cliques about
it ; they wrangle, sneer, and foam at the mouth in
savage pamphlets and letters to the Press. We know
how all aesthetic persons of leisure and culture interpret
the great motto de gustibus non est disputandum ;
and we all know that there are no controversies so
ferocious as those of the odium theologicum. But the
" restoration " of a church combines the ferocity of
the aesthete with that of the theologian, and the poor
corpus vile of mediaeval sculpture has to suffer the
knives of a double army of vivisectionists.
The Church cannot be safely entrusted with the
sole care of the great remnants of mediaeval architecture.
The clergy are their most dangerous destroyers. And
the example of France, where the Church has had a
free hand, is really decisive. Not, of course, that
clergymen are either indifferent to the state of their
churches, or have any wish to injure them. Quite
the contrary. It is that trap de zele which is so mis-
chievous in diplomacy and in archaeology. The
clergy very naturally wish to see their churches look
smart, new, zealously cared for, and handsomely
furnished. To the clergy the church is a place for
daily worship, preaching, and teaching, and it is as
natural for the rector to like a " bright " church as to
like a bright rectory house and garden. But to the
mass of the public these ancient churches are primarily
public monuments, sacred relics, national glories ; and
it is of infinitely more moment to the great public to
preserve their ancient sanctity in its original truth
(even in decay) than it is to have them warm, comfort-
able, bright, and spick-and-span. The clergy, in their
natural and almost excusable zeal to show the people
that Anglicanism is very much alive, active, cultured,
and up-to-date, have really ruined and mauled almost
every fine old church in this country with their con-
OUR CATHEDRALS 341
tractors' machine mason work, their horrid Birmingham
mediaevalisms, and all the intensely-pointed (and silly)
gimcrackery which is thought to bring down the
peculiar blessing of Heaven.
The rectors and munificent squires have ruined our
churches. But the Dean and Chapter have not yet
ruined our cathedrals or not all of them. And I see
no chance of saving our English cathedrals from the
catholic vandalism which has ruined the French,
except by placing them under a national administration
with strictly limited funds, and legislative restriction
to preserve^ but never to restore^ to shore up buildings
which are actually falling, to replace plain stone where
it is inevitable, but never under any pretext to copy,
imitate, or modify ornamental work. That is to say,
to keep old work of all kinds from falling to pieces if
possible, but never to try and replace old carving by
new, or make a mediaeval edifice look as if it had been
finished in our own generation.
As to replacing old figures by new, they might as
well tell us that the plaster cast of the " Hermes " of
Praxiteles in the British Museum is quite as good a
statue as the original at Olympia I dare say they will
tell us that it is better, for it is not so dingy, and
altogether "smarter." I have no doubt that a servant-
girl going out for her Sunday walk with her young
man thinks herself much " smarter " in Mr. Whiteley's
clean net veil at nfd. than she would be in her
mistress's real Venice point collar which has been
exhibited at the New Gallery, and looks "as if it had
been dipped in coffee," says Mary Jane. And perhaps
the parsons think their new church looks " smarter "
than anything the fourteenth century could turn out
especially as they have got to pay for their last
"spring cleaning."
But I have a practical suggestion to make. When
342 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
an old building gets shaky call in an engineer not an
architect. Let no architect offer an opinion, touch
it, or come near it. An architect will naturally want
to renew. We don't want any renewing we want
preservation. An architect will have " taste," " ideas
of beauty," and, above all, theories about " epochs "
and " styles." Now we don't want taste or epochs or
styles not even if the eminent F.R.LB.A. were Sir
Christopher Wren, Ictinus, and Anthemius of Tralles
all in one. We want nothing but the building as it
is, the stones as they are, the carvings as time has left
them scarred, blurred, worn to mere blocks it may
be, but the original stones as ages have made them.
All we want is to keep them together, to prop them
up, to prevent their falling nothing else. This is
often an exceedingly difficult job, requiring all the
delicacy of an American dentist saving an old tooth,
and all the ingenuity that goes to make a railway-
bridge. But it is the task of the Engineer, not of the
Architect.
It is not a question of Art ; it is a question of
mechanical skill. An artist is out of place ; is worse
than de trap ; he is the most dangerous man you could
consult. He wants to be trying "variations" on the
old blocks, just as ambitious fiddlers want to show off
their own variations on the Carnival de Venise. I re-
member a famous poet, who could often use strong
language, noticing how a beautiful English girl, just
arrived in Florence, was stared at by a notorious old
flower-woman, whose reputation for intrigue was evil.
" Why ! " cried our poet, " she looks at the girl as a
butcher stares at a calf! " Well, I say, the architect
who respects himself looks at a Gothic building in bad
repair "as a butcher stares at a calf." He is quite
right ; his trade is butchering, and to serve the gentry
with the best new meat. He sees all the mistakes
OUR CATHEDRALS 343
made by Wren or Gibbs two centuries ago ; he knows
what the old thirteenth-century masonry really meant
or ought to have meant. And as he gazes wistfully
at the beautiful old wreck he sees what lovely veal
the calf will make.
There is no paradox in my maxim that the work
is that of an engineer, that an artist is out of place.
It is not an affair of art it is an affair of mechanics, it
we honestly mean conservation not renovation.
Take any kindred matter. Suppose that Nelson's
coat were tumbling to pieces should we give it to a
Court tailor to " renovate," or to a mere workman to
darn ? If we gave it to a Court tailor, he would
furbish it up with new facings and fresh gold lace, as
if it were going to be worn at the next levee. If we
heard that Domesday Book were falling to fragments,
should we hand it over to Lord Acton to repair, with
instructions "to bring it up to date," or would the
sacred leaves be handed over to a mere palaeographic
expert ? If Raffaelle's cartoons were coming to bits
in strips and rents, should we call in Sir Everett Millais
and beg him to repaint the damaged parts ? No ; we
should send for a picture -cleaner, and tell him he
would be crucified if he dared to add a brushful of
fresh colour.
Ah, we cannot crucify Deans and Chapters, and
Restoration Committees ! As Sydney Smith said, they
have neither souls to be damned, nor (worse luck to
them) anything that we can kick. We cannot crucify,
nor damn, nor kick them, except in a metaphorical
and Pickwickian sense. But we still have the privilege
of every freeborn Briton to summon them to stop in
their career of vulgarity, ignorance, and outrage.
There is one infallible test. If, when an ancient
monument, delivered into their mercy, needs repair,
they call in an engineer to do what is mechanically
344 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
inevitable, they mean preservation and they mean
right. If they call in an architect, an artist, or any one
with " taste," or esthetic views, they mean renovation
and they mean wrong. Half of the repairs of our
old cathedrals are needed underground ; perhaps two-
thirds of it. Architects are not wanted underground.
Engineers are and engineers are the only people to
be trusted for repairs above ground. Call in the ablest
engineers we have, the men who build Forth Bridges
and Blackwall Tunnels, and limit them strictly to
preservation of the old, with absolute veto on adding
anything new. Let us avoid architects, artists, and
aesthetes as the very Devil. "Some demon whispers
Dean, now show your taste ! "
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS
1888
IN spring-time we are all much occupied with galleries,
exhibitions, and high art in many forms ; and we hear
incessant discourse, from men and women more or less
competent to direct our taste, as to the merits of
painters, schools, and styles, as to good and bad
technique^ as to the true and the false, the " precious "
and the " foul " in art. I sometimes ask myself, a
plain layman who presumes not to have an opinion
in these difficult matters, whether we reflect enough
upon the limits, sphere, and subjects of painting, on
the relations of painting to life, to thought, to religion ;
whether our painters are as clear as they ought to be
on these great antecedent problems : What can be
painted, what ought to be the end of a picture, what,
in great ages of art, did the artist regard as his
business and function ?
Is it clear, to begin with, that the custom of
holding Exhibitions of paintings really tends to the
advancement of art ? With very few exceptions, all
modern pictures are painted on the assumption that
they will be, or may be, ultimately exhibited. An
immense number of modern works seem painted solely
in order to be exhibited : and one hopes at the close of
the Exhibition they are at once painted out. We are
345
346 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
so familiar with the institution of art exhibitions that
we take them to be as necessary to the painter's
art as his canvas and brush. And we seldom reflect
that in no great epoch of art were Exhibitions ever
imagined.
Can we conceive of Pheidias and Lysippus, Zeuxis
and Apelles carting their works into a gallery, as the
month of April came round, and all the young aes-
thetes in town, in new cheiton and chlamys, noisily
criticising the folds of "Nike's" drapery, the curves
of " Ilissus' " ribs, the soft limbs of " Aphrodite," and
the proud glances of " Athene " ? Fancy Giotto,
Angelico, Bellini, and Giorgione closely crammed
into long galleries, numbered 3785 and so forth, and
catalogued with little snippets from Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio ! And did ingenious youths in the
Gazetta di Firenze, or the Giornale dl Roma, publish
vehement attacks or insidious puffs of the School
that each affected ? Was the " Sposalizio " skied by
the Hanging Committee; was the "Madonna di
San Sisto " jammed between a " Storm at Sea " and
a " Portrait of a Gentleman " ? Were Titian's
" Assumption " and Tintoretto's " Paradiso " ever
rejected by the Academy of Venice as unsuited for
exhibition and difficult to hang ?
A picture, like every work of visual art, is, or
ought to be, designed to fill some suitable space and
to be seen with harmonious surroundings. An altar-
piece has to fill and dignify a chapel. A battle-piece
may be in place in a public hall. A portrait, according
to its scale and style, may suit an ancestral corridor
or a domestic parlour. A vignette from the "West
Coast " or " Kittens at Play " may give sweetness and
light to the cottage boudoir. But an A'nnual Exhi-
bition is almost the only spot conceivable where no
picture ever can be in its place, where the local
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 347
environment of every picture is turned upside down,
where every note in the gamut of art is sounded in
discord. Suppose an Exhibition of musical instruments
where from eight till dusk the makers continuously
played on their own instruments such airs as each
thought best to bring out the tone of the piece ! To
one who had studied painting only in the Campo
Santo of Pisa, in the Arena Chapel, in Santa Maria
Novella and Santa Croce, in the Sistine and the
Vatican, in the School of San Rocco and the Doge's
Palace, to be thrust into a modern exhibition and told
to judge the works there, would seem as strange and
as painful as to be asked to judge of musical instruments
when all were being played upon together in the same
room but with different airs.
How vastly does genius loci, the placing and the
setting of a picture, deepen the impression, when we
gaze on the portraits of Titian, Veronese, and Tintor-
etto in the Doge's Palace, or on the Vandykes in the
Genoese palaces, or on the prophets and Sibyls who
keep eternal watch in the vaults of the Sistine, or on
the " Mantegna " in San Zenone, or the last rays of
the " Cenacolo " in the Refectory of San Lorenzo !
How utterly different are Pisano's " Pulpit " or
Michael Angelo's "Notte," or Ghiberti's "Gates,"
as we see them in Pisa or in San Lorenzo or the
Baptistery, and as we see them in the Crystal Palace
at Sydenham, or the South Kensington Museum !
And yet year by year we cram side by side, as close as
frames can be set, in a wild pot-pourri of pictorial
discord, Holy Virgins, washerwomen, rapes of the
Sabines, scenes from Pickwick, Ledas, Dr. Johnson
with Boswell, and Lord Mayors in robes of office.
And on the first Monday in May we rush to Burling-
ton House and expect to find new Titians and
Raphaels cheek by jowl with a crowd of works which
348 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
deliberately aim at the kind of success attained by a
popular music-hall song or a penny dreadful.
No really great picture can be seen in an Exhi-
bition, and the greater the picture the more it loses.
Nearly all pictures are nowadays painted with a view
to possible exhibition. But some are not ; and we
all know how much in these very rare instances the
painter gains. A large part of Rossetti's reputation
was no doubt due to the fact that he never exhibited ;
and promiscuous exhibitions of his works, even in the
absence of discordant surroundings, have hardly en-
hanced his peculiar vogue. Those who have seen
the pensive fancies of Burne- Jones or Leighton's
bright visions of Greek poetry in the studios or
saloons where they are at home, or for which they
were designed, can hardly believe that they are the
same works when they are seen jammed into a gallery
between a portrait of" His Royal Highness and an
" arrangement in ultra-marine." We might as well
expect to find Andromache, Phryne, and Galatea
looking natural, goddess -like, and Greek if they
mixed with the public on a crowded Saturday afternoon.
But it is more the moral effect on the painter's
mind than the discordant effect on his exhibited work
which is the real evil of Exhibitions. Some painters
are strong enough and honest enough to withstand
temptation. But the tempter is always at work. An
Exhibition is necessarily more or less a competition,
and a competition where for the most part the
conspicuous alone catches the public eye. // faut
sauter aux yeux y and that in the eyes of the silly, the
careless, the vulgar, in order to be popular. And the
painter who never becomes popular runs great risk of
ceasing to paint at all. The diapason tends always to
grow higher, and unless an air is given at concert
pitch, and something more, it is in danger of sounding
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 349
somewhat flat. Every device that colour, size, form,
title, subject, frame, can give to attract the eye, has
been exhausted by the ingenious painter, and not
always by the worst. No man who respects his art
stoops to such an artifice, and the honourable artist
rejects it with scorn. But it is unworthy of us to
subject men to competition with such degraded rivals,
and to expect that we can make new Titians and
Raphaels by a process which, like that of Exhibitions,
smothers the great qualities by discordant surroundings
and stimulates the activity of the vulgar qualities.
In far other modes were works of art "exhibited "
to the public in all great ages of art. They were
shown in the studio in which they were produced, or
in the place for which they were designed ; in the
first to the few whom the artist chose to admit, in the
second on the public and ceremonial completion of
the work. Were Pheidias' Athene of the Parthenon,
the gods and heroes of the pediments, and the Pana-
thenaic procession, Centaurs and Lapithae, sent about
from gallery to gallery, and jammed between "Scenes
from Aristophanes," "Geese on a Common," and a
presentation portrait of the Right Worshipful the
Archon Basileus ? When the chryselephantine Athene
was finally set up in her Parthenon a great festival was
made, and the citizens, magistrates, and priests, with
youths and maidens in procession, went up to the
Acropolis and gazed on the Goddess ; and there,
amidst hymns, sacrifices, and solemn offerings, the
whole city rejoiced and wondered at the marvellous
handiwork of the god -like sculptor. And when
Cimabue had finished his "Madonna" all Florence
attended the ceremony wherewith it was set up above
the altar as we see it still ; and Florence that day kept
holiday as at the Feast of the Annunciation. And
when Raphael lay dead in state, his "Transfiguration"
350 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
stood above the bier ; and all Rome came and gazed
in wonder and reverence at the dead painter and at
his last work on earth. Such were Art Exhibitions
in the great ages of art.
This brings us to what is really the key of the
matter. The discordant hubbub of modern Picture
Exhibitions is the least part of the evil. It is the
divorce of art from the highest religious, social,
intellectual movement of the age which is the root of
decadence in art. It is the substitution of democratic
license and personal caprice for grand traditions and
loyal service in the larger forces of life. Here is the
root of feebleness, far more than in deficient training,
crude technique^ and picture Barnums. In all great
epochs of art the painter frankly accepted certain great
canons of religious, social, or artistic convention. He
thoroughly felt his art to be the expression of the
religious, social, and intellectual movement of his time.
He took it to be his business to give to that movement
colour and form. His art was not at all self-sufficing
and detached. It was simply one of the artistic modes
of expressing what was deepest and most commanding
in the spiritual world. The painter was the servant ;
the free, willing, creative servant, but the servant of"
the priest, the thinker, the poet and the statesman.
Pericles, Ictinus,and Pheidias laboured at the Parthenon
in one common conception : a work by Leucippus,
Polycleitus, or Zeuxis was an affair of State : a great
statesman of Rome, it was supposed, identified his
name with the Pantheon, one of the most original
conceptions in the history of art. Giotto worked in
the Arena Chapel under the eye of Dante, and ap-
parently under his inspiration. Ghiberti, Brunelleschi,
and Mantegna lived on the topmost wave of one of the
most wonderful outbursts of the human intellect.
Leonardo and Michael Angelo were two of its
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 351
mightiest forces, even had neither ever touched a
pencil. Raphael, Benvenuto, Titian, Velasquez, Jean
Goujon, Rubens, Reynolds were the intimates and
the equals of all that their ages possessed of brain, of
knowledge, of force.
Painting, which is a secondary and not a primary
form of human skill, cannot sever itself from power,
from religion, from thought, without becoming at
once feeble and wayward. The note of too much of
modern painting is to be at once silly and bizarre. It
has flung off all guides, teachers, and traditions ;
repudiates any sort of connection with religion,
thought, or rule ; decides everything out of its own
head ; and regards everything and anything a proper
subject for a picture, from the Day of Judgment to a
mushroom. Individual whims, any crude hobby, is
thought to be quite enough to enable a man to choose
a good subject for a painting, and to emancipate him
from the conventions which condemned Raphael to
eternal " Madonnas," Titian to perpetual " Europas,"
" Ariadnes," and " Aphrodites," and Murillo to
innumerable cherubs. The modern painter holds
himself to be as absolutely free to invent his own
subject, to improvise his own canons of art, to humour
his own fancy, as Mr. Gilbert when he makes a new
burlesque, or Mr. Rider Haggard when he sketches a
new novel.
But a picture is not a novel ; for the painter's art
is immeasurably less fertile and elastic than the written
art of the poet or romancer. No genius can enable
the painter to compete with the story-teller in versa-
tility, in subtlety, in profusion and continuity of effect.
The painter has his own resources in vividness, in
colour, in harmony, in suddenness and unity of his
blow on the imagination it may be also in beauty.
But of course he buys these resources at the price that
352 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
he cannot, by the conditions of his art, touch anything
but what is seen, that he is rigorously limited to one
moment of time, that he cannot possibly impart anything
which is not known, that he can never explain, never
continue a story, tell nothing which it requires words to
tell, and by the very instrument he uses he is forbidden,
except in partial and exceptional ways, to touch the
loathsome, the horrible, and the spasmodic.
These obvious truisms are trampled under foot in
our modern Exhibitions, where half the figure subjects
are painted novelettes, whereas these conditions were
strictly respected in all great ages of art. The
necessity for respecting them, and the instinctive
sense that the painter's art is a corollary of larger
forms of human power, and not a substantive and
self-sufficing force, compelled the painter, in all great
ages of art, to limit himself to a definite range of
subjects, to follow loyally the current ideals in religion,
in poetry, and in manners, to use perfectly simple
and familiar motifs, to shun whims, conundrums,
eccentricities and fantasias, very seldom indeed to be
comic, and almost never to be disgusting. The
great painters painted only a few score of subjects
absolutely familiar to all who saw them and these
almost without exception grand, ennobling, obvious
types of religious, mythological, and social ideals.
Nine-tenths of the painter's aim was, as it should be,
beauty.
Nowadays a large part of the modern Exhibition
seems to have no other end but to raise a laugh, to
invent a rebus, to puzzle, to disgust, or, mainly in
France, to excite the animal taste for blood and lust.
When we walk through a gallery of fine old masters,
we need no catalogue to describe to us the subjects.
We do not require to read half a page from Boswell's
Johnson or Macaulay's History of England, it may be
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 353
from Coventry Patmore or Ouida, before we can
conceive what it all means. No ancient master
would have tried to paint Shelley's Skylark or Swin-
burne's Songs before Sunrise. In the whole gallery of
old masters there are perhaps not more than a score
of different subjects, and all of these obvious to every
eye at a glance. Titian and Holbein painted portraits
as their sitters were, and did not turn them into ladies
and gentlemen dressed up for a fancy ball. Although
the subjects are so few, so obvious, so conventional,
there is no monotony. All looks noble, solemn,
beautiful ; for the aim of the painter then was to
show how much beauty could be shed over the old
ideals of faith, poetry, and manners.
It is quite true that the old ideals in faith, poetry,
and manners have proved insufficient. They have
failed us ; and we must make new ones. No sensible
man wishes to recall them ; nor does he wish to bind
art again in limits so narrow. Three centuries ago
modern Europe got rid of its old standards. The
faith which inspired Madonnas and Saints, the poetry
which was limited to a crude mythology and a few
romances, the manners which were essentially based
on aristocratic display, indolence, battle, and luxury,
were too narrow, too shallow, and too anti-social to
be permanent. Art, like modern civilisation, has
cast them off. And it is idle to dream that they can
ever return.
But it does not follow at all, because the old ideals
and sources of art are gone, that painting is to have
no ideals, no sources, no guide : that every painter is
to be a law to himself; and that every hobby, every
accident of any painter's life, can equally supply a
subject for a picture. What has happened is this.
So far as modern art is concerned, religion has almost
disappeared ; every tradition of great art has been
2 A
354 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
wiped out ; and the old subordination of painting to
intellect and poetry is put aside. The reign of
universal democracy has set in for painting with
greater virulence even than in politics and in manners.
Painters, apparently by their fondness for the Stuarts,
Marie Antoinette, and the Royal Family, ought, one
would think, to be Tories and loyalists. But in the
practice of their art they recognise the wildest licence
of individual judgment, the entire equality of all men
to lay down the law in art, and the trenchant abolition
of every great and historic tradition.
In all great ages of art the artist's subject was
expected to conform to given conditions. It must
be simple, familiar, noble, traditional, and beautiful.
Nowadays it is too often enigmatical, eccentric, mean,
whimsical, or disgusting. Pheidias and the great
Greeks represented the gods and heroes of whom
Homer sang, the great memories of national history,
the beings in whom centred the worship, reverence,
and admiration of men, the loveliest women known to
the city, the finest champions in the games. Raphael
and his fellows painted the great types of religious
adoration, the familiar mythologies, great men and
great events in history. But in all cases, whether
the subject was sacred or secular, old or new, it
was always simple, familiar, noble, traditional, and
beautiful. Nowadays a painter seems to consider that
his business is to invent something absolutely new, if
possible queer, accidental, personal, comic, namby-
pamby, or bizarre. He seems to imagine that his
duty is to compose a mild original sonnet, a snippety
original novel, or a watery anecdote, grave or gay.
Now painters are not poets, romancers, nor literary
craftsmen. The result is that, when they try to
paint sonnets, stories, or essays, the work is, intel-
lectually, too often on a level of that which goes into
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 355
the columns of a county newspaper, and is headed
" Our Poets' Corner," and " Curious or Entertaining."
How can painters suppose that cultivated men and
women care for their japes, their puns, their snippings
from stale Elegant Extracts^ or for their own poetical
and moral maunderings on canvas ? A painter who
invents a new subject is almost certain to insert some-
thing that is either silly or bizarre. Almost all the
anecdotes which fill half a page of the Academy
catalogues, as subjects of so-called historical pictures,
scandal about Queen Elizabeth, the gallantries of
some Stuart prince (understanding gallantry in all its
various senses), the oddities of Swift, Johnson, or
Walter Scott, anecdotes of the Reign of Terror, etc.,
are either quite unauthentic or utterly trivial ; nay,
not seldom they are grossly libellous and horribly
mean. So long as a subject offers a medium for
sheeny stuffs, quaint costume, and Wardour Street
bric-a-brac^ none seems to be too silly, too scurrilous,
or too petty for some painters. It is not the
business of painters to become very minor poets and
tenth-rate serial novelists. They have, as we say, to
paint the simple, the familiar, the noble, the traditional,
the beautiful so as to put new beauty into the old
types of our deepest adoration, love, reverence, and
delight. Their business is to add glow, intensity,
charm, to what is best in the faith, in the memory, in
the intellect of their age : not to puzzle, to startle,
much less to sicken us.
It is the honour of our older Academicians steadily
to uphold the great traditions of the noble style, as to
the subjects proper for painting. First and foremost
in this matter comes Leighton himself. And in
nothing does his culture, taste, and training in the
great schools tell more than in the example he sets his
contemporaries as to the field, limits, and aim of their
356 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
art. Never was this shown more finely than in the
subject of the first picture with which he came upon
the world, "The Procession at Florence" to escort
Cimabue's Madonna to Santa Maria Novella. Here
was an almost perfect subject for a modern painter.
It was simple, obvious, noble, and beautiful. Though
the idea was new, it presented a touching and dignified
incident in the history of art, in a form familiar and
interesting to all cultivated people. It was like a
chapter out of Modern Painters in colour and form.
I confine myself strictly to the subject, to the painter's
motifo and do not touch upon any point in the execu-
tion. As a subject it was perfect. For some forty
years he has continued to present a series of subjects,
almost equally happy Greek, mythological, or
historical but all simple, familiar, noble, traditional,
and beautiful. To understand such pictures as the
"Daphnephoria," Phryne," " Cimon," or the Hemi-
cycle " at Kensington, it is not necessary to read a
page out of some historian, or to consult Dictionaries
of Antiquities. Every cultivated man at once re-
cognises the subject, and sees at a glance that it is
simple, impressive, beautiful. So, too, the Andromache
is equally happy in its subject. Every cultivated man,
without reading the lines from the Iliad^ can recognise
the incident ; can see its beauty, its pathos, its tragic
and lyric dignity ; and so he is drawn on to study in
detail the Hellenicism, the refinement of knowledge
and taste, the subtle convolutions of grace, with which
the painter illustrates the poet. We are dealing now
solely with the subject of a painting. And here surely
is the painter's art seeking to express the grandest
poetry, in high and pure traditional types.
So, too, Mr. Watts has maintained a noble choice
of subject in the grand and true vein of the old schools.
In his Dawn," Death," Love," " Hope," " Faith,"
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 357
and like symbolical fancies, he is usually within the
limits of the simple and the intelligible. At times he,
too, wanders off into the abstruse and the fantastic
never into that of the trivial or the repulsive. A poet
may be mystical, obscure, even wild for a space ; but
a painter cannot be so without infinite risk. The
definiteness, the fixity, the simplicity of his instrument
bind him. No man less than Michael Angelo can
venture to be Apocalyptic ; nor can painter born of
woman be mystical without ceasing to be intelligible ;
and an unintelligible picture is a rebus.
These sound traditions as to subject for the most
part are sufficiently preserved by such men as Mr.
Poynter, Mr. Armitage, Mr. Long, Mr. Richmond
to mention no others. For the most part the subjects
they paint are simple, familiar, dignified, and beautiful.
So far as Mr. Long shows a tendency to plunge into
learned antiquities, and oddities of archaeology, needing,
to explain them, long passages from Diodorus Siculus
apparently his favourite author so far he is leaving
the ground of familiar and simple art. Of Mr. Alma-
Tadema and Sir John Millais a few words must be said.
Sir John is only on rare occasions a painter of historical
and imaginative incidents ; and his greatest admirers
will hardly think that he best displays in them his
wonderful gifts as a painter. A man who tries to
write the chapters of a novel on a canvas three feet by
two is on perilous ground. The " Huguenot," the
" Order for Release " achieved that feat. It may be
doubted if the " Fireman " and some others did not
overstep the line. The business of a painter is not to
tell a thrilling story, or to paint spasms we cannot
bear thrilling moments eternally prolonged in one
strain. His business is to present a subject which is
simple, familiar, noble, and beautiful.
Still less can it be the business of a painter elabor-
358 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
ately, lovingly, and learnedly to paint a childish
practical joke. From the point of view of subject and
motif^ Mr. Alma-Tadema's " Heliogabalus," in spite of
its pictorial skill, is itself a bad joke. The subject
has every vice that a subject can have. It is at once
silly, bizarre^ incomprehensible, whimsical, and mean.
It is bad enough to commemorate at all one of the
most pitiful animals whom accident ever thrust into a
throne ; but to choose a childish anecdote out of some
chronique scabreuse^ and one which it is physically im-
possible to paint, is really to sin against art and sense.
This is all the more to be regretted because Mr. Alma-
Tadema's astonishing powers as a painter have been
long united with real learning, singular instinct for
antique life, and a delightful zest for the aroma of
classical ages. Mr. Alma-Tadema is one of the few
living men who can don the cheiton and the toga with
the air of a true ancient. But he has too often shown
a dangerous turn for archaeological eccentricities, and
trivial bypaths and alleys of the antique world ; when,
with all his mastery of hand and stores of knowledge,
his business is to show us its temples, palaces, life, and
thought, its power, its splendour, its beauty it may be its
vices and its weakness, but not its tricks and tomfooleries.
No painter in any age has ever shown more loyal
regard for noble traditions in selecting his subjects
than has Mr. Burne- Jones. A certain field of
romantic mythology he has made all his own the
old tales of Hellas conceived in the spirit of a Renais-
sance mystic. Burne-Jones' studio, full of a long
mythological series, looks as if Sir Thomas Malory had
made us a volume of Greek myths, " translated out of
the Greke boke." These solemn fugues on the
theme of " Penseroso " are simple, noble, traditional,
and beautiful. It is a question if they are familiar, if
they do not verge on the mystical, if they are not at
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 359
times occult and cryptogrammic. A man who dwells
so much alone in a dreamland of his own is necessarily
appealing to a select audience. And it has been
Burne-Jones' noble aim through life to pray ever for
"audience fit, though few." As to Rossetti, he with-
drew into a dreamland infinitely less accessible to the
public, a dreamland almost confined to one great poet
and to one set of types. It required a special study in
itself to know what Rossetti was dreaming about at
all. No painter ever took such pains to dream for
himself, by himself, and within himself alone. To
the poet and Rossetti was certainly a poet the
claim is legitimate enough. But a painter, as he quits
the simple and the familiar, is making for the enig-
matical and the artificial. And in any case he is
deliberately restricting the power of his work to a
special circle of cognoscenti and illuminati.
It is of course in the Salon at Paris that conspicuous
examples are seen of the modern craving for new and
startling subjects. Not that there is any real " French
school," as some persons fancy. For the Salon
contains examples of fifty schools, the works of painters
from almost every civilised nation, representing a
score of very different ideals of art. But in the Salon,
with the audacity, licence, versatility, and power it
collects, are seen examples of the best and worst types
of modern aim in art. Humanity, pathos, imagina-
tion, tenderness, bestiality, lust, ferocity, impudence,
and tomfoolery jostle each other in the fierce struggle
to attract the notice of the public. All is wild
democratic licence. Filth, disease, death, carnage,
torture, prurient prying into things which decency
and self-respect keep covered, the secrets of the dis-
secting-room, of the consulting-room, of the studio,
of the dressing-room, of the slums and the sewers,
form the inspiration of pictures equally with devotion,
360 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
poetry, sympathy, and dignity. Every man rights for
his own hand, paints in his own method, chooses his
own subject, and tells his own story. And the result
is an unimaginable pot-pourri. Huge canvases seem
designed solely on the principle so well understood by
the vendors of " Pears' soap." They are not pictures,
but gigantic posters^ to let the world know that there
is such a painter as M. Tel much at your service.
No human being could buy, much less live beside,
these enormities. And the greater the enormity, the
more is the public forced to stare.
Of all infamies on canvas I ever saw the worst is
"The Maniac." Here, in a bare room, with every
sign of a recent struggle, the furniture smashed to
fragments, stove, mirror, chairs, door, and crockery in
bits, on the edge of a deal table, sits, in his shirt, a
wretched maniac, grinning in ghastly triumph. At
his feet lies extended, in a pool of blood, with clothes
torn to shreds, the dead body of a woman, common,
coarse, and prosaic. Even had the picture power and
terror, which it has not, it would be loathsome. But
the cold, hard, dry, photographic presentment of a
vulgar madman committing a brutal murder is as foul a
subject as ever painter imagined. Zolaism is indeed
rampant in art when this is possible. But in literature
even a ghastly murder does not stand out in such
visible crude brutality. And no one is obliged to read
Zola unless he deliberately choose. To expose on a
life-size canvas to the public gaze Zolaism in its
crudest shape is an offence against civilisation, which
every decent man and woman ought to treat as an
unpardonable outrage.
Or what shall we say to a "Rape in the Stone
Age," by Jamin ? Here a sort of naked Polyphemus
has seized and is carrying off a nude, very white studio
model, who is posed as the female of the Stone Age.
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 361
In her fury this elegant nymph has rammed her
thumb into Polyphemus' right eye, which she is just
gouging out. Polyphemus, howling with pain,
clutches the graceful girl in his huge fist, and is just
crushing in her ribs, she yelling in agony. To them
comes Polyphemus No. 2, a sort of Porte St. Martin
torturer ; who, seizing his rival behind, is garotting
him by strangling him round the throat. Conceive
the man who shall purchase this work of art, and sit
down to dinner daily in presence of the last yells of
palaeolithic man and pre-metallic woman.
A new motif for art has also been discovered in
death, disease, and lechery, treated in its most prosaic,
photographic, and vulgar side. Some dozen corpses
laid out with candles, wreaths, and satin pillows, a
surgeon examining a girl's bared chest, the painter's
model playing pranks without any clothing, everything
put on to canvas which Zola puts into print. One
picture indeed is a melancholy sight, for it has power,
skill, even pathos of a certain kind : on a long, stiff
bench, in the ante-room of a hospital, sit a row of
women, waiting for their turn to be admitted disease
in all its shapes stamped on their faces and forms. All
of them are dull, commonplace, colourless, and weary.
No one of them tells her story ; no ray of grace,
cheerfulness, or imagination lights the composition.
No canvas can tell such a story. They sit there tired,
faint, and sickly and that is all. It is a simple study
of disease of disease apparently hopeless ; for not a
touch is there to show us humanity, goodness, science,
or love. There is not even tragedy ; for the poor
creatures are simply a-weary, without dignity, without
strength to suffer even with each other. It is a bald
study of disease. But disease is not a subject for the
painter's skill. Such is the truly infernal influence of
Zola upon modern art.
362 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Happily amidst these horrors start up, like flowers
blooming among the grinning skulls of a charnel-
house, here and there a noble subject nobly conceived.
Cheek by jowl with bestialities such as "L'esclave
blanche," "Elle ralait en sanglots sourds . . .," "Le
repos du modele," "Turpe senilis amor," "The Duel
between Women," etc. etc., stand such fine concep-
tions as Detaille's " Dream," J. Lefebvre's " Orphan
Girl with her Grandmother at Prayer," Humbert's
" Three Stages of Motherhood," Bouguereau's " First
Death Abel," Henner's "Saint Sebastian," Aime
Ferret's "Golden Wedding," Hubert's "Nameless
Heroes." We are dealing now with these pictures,
as throughout this paper with all pictures, solely from
the point of view of their subject, as it might be
understood from description and a rough sketch.
The composition, colour, execution, and the like belong
to another field. But these, with some splendid
portraits and excellent landscapes, are enough to prove
that modern art has yet before it a great future, when
it shall have cleared itself from filth, bombast, putre-
faction and gore ; and shall have settled the primary
problem What can be painted, what cannot be
painted, and what is the painter's function ?
The resources open to modern art can be no better
seen than in the scheme of Detaille's "Dream." A
regiment in mid campaign is bivouacked by night on
the open field, in the first streaks of the dawn which
are to bring in a few hours the day of battle, glory,
and death. Young and old, veteran and conscript,
officer and soldier, lie stretched in long lines beside
their piled arms watchfulness, hope, eagerness, anxiety,
indifference, bull -dog courage, and young ambition
seem to quiver over the upturned faces and the
prostrate limbs. Dimly in the driving clouds over-
head may be traced a dreamlike and cloudy army in
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 363
the air, the ghost or vision of some imperial host,
with eagles and arms waving mistily in the sky, filling
the heavens with the weird and silent clang of the
charge, the rally, and the crash of the heroes of the
Grande Armee. Now here is a motif wholly new and
inconceivable by ancient master, which yet is simple,
obvious, imaginative, noble, and solemn. Here for
once is a subject wholly within the reach of the
painter and yet full of modern poetry. All things are
yet possible to an art which can so strike forth a new
and noble strain.
J. Lefebvre's solemn and fine picture of the aged
"Widow with her Orphan Grandchild in Church,"
and Humbert's "Mother in Three Ages," belong to
a school in which the French are still almost supreme
the majestic simple pathos of the humblest, saddest
life without elegances, without weakness, without
puerile sentimentalism ; not without a certain severe
and restrained beauty, but with no trace of concession
to prettiness. In this form of massive tenderness, in
this profound simplicity of the human, the Salon stands
forth unrivalled. And yet why, alas ! in so rare an
example ? How in the same gallery with works so
nobly conceived, beside such exquisite refinement as
we see in Bouguereau's " Bather," and Henner's
" Daphne," such grand landscape subjects as J. Breton's
"Shepherd's Star," such pure and touching scenes of
peasant life, such verve everywhere, such knowledge
of antiquity, of the East and the South, such invention,
such diabolical cleverness and enterprise, how there
can be painted year by year monstrous grotesques,
rampant idiocies, satanic obscenities, huge follies, such
as "St. Denis," calmly walking along a high road
with his decapitated head in his hands, bleeding down
his headless trunk, to the terror of the very dull
peasants at work, the "Titans tumbling out of Heaven,"
364 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
" The Milky Way " (or " Milk Street," as the official
catalogue Englishes it), "Pluto and Proserpine,"
abominations like " The Minotaur in the Labyrinth,"
and the like this is indeed barely intelligible. Perhaps
Maignan's " Voices of the Tocsin " may be said to
touch the border-line. In a mediaeval belfry we see a
huge bell swinging madly in the alarum ; burning
roofs, smoke, and flame in the streets below. And,
as the vast bell roars out its awakening peal, weird
forms of terror, havoc, despair, courage, hate, and
death, whirl -like vultures through the air, clutching
and tearing the bell-ropes in their mad dance, and
rocking the very tower to its foundations in their fury.
It is a strange Victor Hugoish conception, not with-
out grandeur and poetry ; pairitable perhaps by an
artist who combined in himself Michael Angelo,
Tintoretto, and Turner. As it is, though in one way
still a striking picture, it is too much of a "salmi of
frogs' legs," as they said of Correggio's famous dome
at Parma. It is plain that at the root of modern art
lies the primary question : which is this. All canons,
and limits, and subjects, of the painter, as understood
of old, being gone, what new canons, what new limits,
and what new subjects can we find to replace them ?
Now this is not an artist's problem, or at least not
a problem for the artist to solve alone. It is a
problem for the best philosophy and judgment of our
age. It is for the best brains amongst us to settle
some practical canons of the limits of the art of
painting, to indicate the barrier between paintable and
unpaintable things, to tell us, and to tell our painters,
what is their relation to religion, to poetry, to thought.
Our art critics have perhaps too much neglected this
all-important field. They have been too apt to repeat
the technical jargon of the studios, and to omit the
primary question, What can the painter paint ? Mr.
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 365
Ruskin, who in so many wonderful ways has rekindled
the torch of art for our whole Victorian age, in
architecture, in painting, even in dress, nay, almost in
literature, has done much to weaken the control of
good sense over the subjects of art. Intent on his
central idea of good work, he lavishes extravagant
praise on mere enfantillage^ goes into raptures over a
baby and white kitten, systematically dwells on the
painted surface, and not the painted mind. Indeed,
almost the one thing about which he rarely utters a
word is the human form in reality, nine-tenths of
the highest art. Following him, the art-mentors of
our time will discourse largely about schemes of
colour, truth in a brocade, and successful impasto^
but they have little to say about that which precedes
all these and governs the whole how should the
painter choose his subject ? If the prevailing vices of
the foreign schools are lewdness and bombast, the
prevailing vices of the English schools are triviality and
vulgarity. Our English painters, with some splendid
exceptions, do not seem to live sufficiently with the
higher intelligence of the time, seem to be inadequately
cultivated as men, and have little access to the best
religious and poetic standards of our age.
It is the object of these pages to invite some
competent authority to clear the ground of this
question. In the meantime, if a simple member of
the shilling public may offer a suggestion at all, the
following points are submitted as a rough and tentative
sketch. Exhibitions of paintings in crowded galleries
are a real incubus on art ; they swamp the merits of
the good and stimulate the faults of the worse. The
twelve rooms at Burlington House, which have more
than 2000 works, cannot properly show more than
200 ; indeed, 100 would be a far wiser limit. And
even 100 would be strangely and cruelly out of place
366 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
in any mere gallery, if they were works of real
imagination and power. All pictures should be
exhibited under a simple title : every word of poetry,
extract, Diodorus Siculus, Macaulay's History, puns,
sentiments, and ejaculations, should be strictly for-
bidden, as at Paris. Picture galleries are not comic
annuals, nor are they Methodist pulpits, and fun of all
sorts, literary dribble, and sermonising are horribly
out of place in a picture. Next, Art Academies are
not International Exhibitions ; and we do not want
Japanneries, Colinderies, and laborious costumeries
from foreign lands thrust upon us simply to prove
how well the painter has got up his lesson. Still less
are Art Academies schools for impressing on the
public mind Layard's Nineveh, Smith's Dictionary of
Antiquities, Rawlinson's Herodotus, and all the learning
of the Egyptians, the Ninevites, and Phenicians.
The business of painting is to vivify and beautify
what we do know, and not to cram into us a know-
ledge of facts which we do not know. The business
of the painter is not to compose small romances, but
to clothe with life and grace the sights and conceptions
which are familiar to us. It is not the function of
art to produce a photographic resemblance of the
common, simply that men may say, " It is almost as
good as a photograph." It is not the duty of the
painter to put into elaborate form what is uncommon,
droll, and unintelligible ; he has to put into permanent
shape the beautiful, the noble, the suggestive.
The nineteenth -century mania for Exhibitions
seems to blind the painter, the critic, the public to
some of the simplest truisms in the philosophy of art.
A picture, by the nature of the case, is always en
evidence in the place where it is, acquires or creates a
certain genius loci, and becomes therefore part of the
instinctive life of those who dwell in its presence.
PICTURE EXHIBITIONS 367
We cannot shut up a picture and put it away in our
shelves as we do a book ; we cannot play it over again
as the mood takes us, just as we can with a piece of
music. There it stands for ever opposite to us like a
Palace or Cathedral, continually reiterating the same
impression. For this reason, drollery, riddles, anec-
dotes, novelettes, sentimentalities on canvas, are so
horribly irritating. Does the painter of "Two of a
Pair," "Her Favourite Flower," "How happy I could
be with either," "Sterne and the Dead Jackass,"
" Bugs in a Rug," " Satan addressing the Fallen
Spirits in Pandemonium," "The Drunkard's Home,"
" Pharaoh's Daughter at Five o'clock Tea " do the
authors of' these very quaint, moral, tearful, or learned
compositions ever ask themselves this question
" When the Exhibition is over, will the buyer like
to sit down day by day and listen to the same jest, the
same story, the same bit of sapient morality, or curious
bit of learning ? " A slight tale, a good anecdote, an
odd incident, are all very well once in a way ; in a
book, over the dinner-table, in an idle hour. But to
have them eternally dinned into us is maddening.
" Evil communications corrupt good manners " is a
grand and true saying. But who could bear to have
it always staring at one over the fireplace, or shouted
into our ears by the public bellman ? Falstaff himself
would drive one crazy, if we had to listen to Henry
IV. every time we took a seat at the dinner-table. If
a comic picture is good art, why not a comic building,
a droll town-hall, a laughable palace, with " surprise "
windows and doors, and a labyrinth or " maze " in the
basement ? And, if the queer and the sentimental be
the weakness of our English friends, what shall we say
to the French painter who eternises on canvas some
rhodomontade fat for an anarchist orator, or a double
entendre that would cause a blush at a cafe chantant ?
368 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
A silly, tedious, vicious picture is infinitely worse than
a silly, tedious, vicious song. The song, if it chance
to pollute or weary our ears, is gone in an hour, and
never need offend us again. The picture, like the
poor, we have always with us for ever jesting,
weeping, moralising, it may be screaming or blasphem-
ing, on the one monotonous note.
Perpetual picture exhibitions, picture competitions,
and the gabble about "art for art," are making us
forget these simple, eternal truths. In all great ages
of art the painter was guided by the poet, the thinker,
the spiritual and temporal chiefs of the society he
lived in. In all great ages of art, the painter was
guided by serious canons in his choice of subject ; and
his work was an affair of religious and public concern.
In no great age of art were there ever art competitions
or May picture-hunts. The painter felt that he had
to dignify, beautify, purify human life, to give form
and colour to the deepest ideals of his time. His
subjects were made for him by an organised public
opinion, expressed and enforced by the best minds of
the age. And his subjects were always simple, familiar,
noble, traditional, and beautiful.
NUDE STUDIES
1885
THIS question raises some of the most subtle problems
in manners and in art, the difficulties of which
have hardly yet been grasped by public controversy.
Much is due to the prejudices of well-meaning but
uncultured people, in whose name the " British
Matron " is privileged to talk nonsense. But she
will hardly be convinced by such crude pleas for " the
natural" as those of a "British Girl"; and the
petulant retorts of the art world do not quite satisfy
the thoughtful mind. I venture to think that the
outcries of worthy ignorant women deserve respectful
attention and some sincere attempt to put this matter
on a sounder footing. And I perceive a tendency in
modern art to assert its liberty in a violent way and to
claim what, by canons of true art, is illegitimate
ground.
It is certain that in this matter of clothes there
may be found in art, on the stage, and in society cases
of licence which are bad by deliberate intention. It
is the duty of high art to clear itself of any such
miserable association, and it is the task of morality to
place the canons of purity on a rational and sure
foundation. Because, in the matter of the draped and
the undraped there is a very real abuse, it does not
369 2 B
370 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
follow that all modes of the undraped are bad ; neither
does it follow that all modes are good. Let me try, if
it be possible, to make the matter clear in language
fitting pueris virginibusque.
What is it that constitutes decency in dress ?
Clearly nothing but habit ; the custom of the par-
ticular society or subject-matter concerned in
ordinary language, convention. This seems strange
to some people ; but it is most certainly true that
there is no absolute rule as to what drapery is or is
not decent. Even in the same society the conditions
vary enormously. Use and custom alone determine
the becoming. A Turkish lady is shocked if a
strange man sees her without a yashmak and a
monstrous bundle of wraps. So conventional is this
covering of the face that a Mussulman peasant woman
surprised in the field will often veil it with her only
petticoat. Travellers tell us that a well-bred African
woman blushes to be seen for the first time in clothes.
The unusual use of clothing appears to her scarcely
decent. Custom, habit, and convention decide the
matter among ourselves. A pure cottage girl in
Connemara, who sleeps in a room with men and
never owned stockings, would feel uneasy in the ball
dress of a princess. The princess would almost suffer
death rather than share her cottage for a week. If
the daughters of Leonidas went to a Drawing Room
at Buckingham Palace in their Spartan tunics they
would probably cause as great a flutter as they would
feel themselves. No one would expect a hospital
nurse to do what hundreds of innocent girls do in a
pantomime ; but the danseuse, again, would hardly
submit to the unsparing revelations of a surgical ward.
Honi soit is the sole and paramount rule ; but then
this depends on certain conventional practices being
respected.
NUDE STUDIES 371
Now, is it a custom of civilised society to admit
in art an absence of drapery which would now be
intolerable in life ? Most certainly it is ; the practice
of the best men, of the purest genius, agreeing with
the good sense of the cultivated world, has sanctioned
it for centuries in ancient and in modern times. But,
just as certainly, it is sanctioned under definite con-
ventional terms. The true question is, Have these
conventional terms been uniformly respected by
modern art ? I venture to think they have not been
perfectly observed ; and it is on this ground that I
wish to speak. The terms upon which the undraped
is a noble subject of art are these (i) a manifest
appeal to the love of beauty, and not to appetite ; (2)
an ideal presentation, and not a literal transcript of
individual fact ; a generalisation in the imagination,
and not a photographic record of the particular ; (3)
the observance of certain special artistic conventions
as old as Praxiteles.
The representation of the bare limbs and skin of
man is not only a worthy subject of art, but is im-
measurably above any other form of art whatever.
Not only is the human form and complexion the most
exquisitely lovely thing in nature, but the subtle diffi-
culties of painting it are so great, and the delight
which it gives us when successful is so intense, that
every other kind of art is distinctly humbler in aim.
Much of the irritation which a " study " produces in
the ignorant is due to the fact that the noble painting
of the form is an almost extinct art. If we compare
a gallery of ancient masters with Burlington House
we shall see in the ancients infinitely more careful
painting of the flesh. I do not mean that we see so
many Venuses, Eves, and nymphs, but we see figures
partly undraped, an arm or a foot absolutely true and
living, the blood coursing beneath the quivering skin,
372 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
the glow of health and purity with inimitable life
before our eyes. The difference is this : In a
modern gallery, with half-a-dozen adventurous
"studies," the like of which are not to be found in
the National Gallery or the Louvre from end to end,
we have a waxy, conventional painting of the skin
wherever an arm, a bust, or a foot protrudes from
those masses of " Liberty " costumes whereon the
serious attention of the painter is bestowed. There
seem hardly ten men in England who can draw the
figure, and not one who can paint flesh, with entire
mastery. Now, it needs a veritable master to paint a
Venus or a Phryne emerging from the bath. Even
the President himself dipped his magnificent creature
in walnut juice ; and Mr. Poynter's bather is a fine,
firm, true, but not a magnificent creature. A Venus,
an Eve, or a bather of life size is like an epic poem
it is either a sublime success, or nothing. Would
that we saw in our galleries more of that marvellous
texture and modelling of limb which, if it reach its
highest point in Titian's Venus of the Tribune and
his Flora, is perpetually present in a St. Sebastian or a
Bacchus, in the portrait of a Venetian lady, or it may
be in the feet of a Madonna in glory.
Perhaps our painters would educate the public
better if they devoted themselves to the more constant
painting of the form, and presented it in somewhat
less ambitious modes. When a man can paint feet
and hands like Raphael, or the bust like Titian, or
the limbs of a Sebastian like Francia, he may adventure
on a tour de force of bathers and dancers ; but he had
better wait till then. And always let him remember
his limits of " ideal beauty " and " conventional
practice." It is laughable enough to see a poor, dear
old " goody " supposing that painters present the form
as they see it. It is nearly as laughable to see a young
NUDE STUDIES 373
girl supposing there is no harm in anything " natural."
Why, my dear " goody " and my dear young lady, if
painters were photographers and not painters, neither
you nor any decent man or woman could stay in
Burlington House ten minutes. But I am far from
clear that our painters are quite as careful as they
might be to observe the conditions of " ideal beauty "
and "conventional practice." Abroad it is perfectly
certain that neither condition is respected. The
Haidees, Nanas, " le modele qui se gratte " of a French
Salon deliberately violate every one of the three canons
of true art. And much work of the Van Beers and
their school belongs to the class of art against which a
late Lord Chancellor directed a useful Act. In the
face of such tendencies in modern art it is the duty of
all honourable men who love art truly to reject the
smallest concession to the accursed thing.
Convention, and convention alone, is the measure
of the decent where motive and intention are perfectly
pure. Neither painters nor critics recognise this quite
as patiently as they should. An artist, burning often
with pure love of his art, defies the conventions, and
he outrages worthy people. It is quite true that
conventions may need to be altered ; but they must
be altered slowly and by imperceptible degrees, or
morality itself will suffer. It is also true that the
ignorant and the inexperienced are often shocked by
habits which to the experienced are mere conventions.
A modest person who had been brought up by a
Quaker aunt, and had never been in a ballroom, a
theatre, or a picture gallery, would be pained by what
to persons quite as modest, who were familiar with
them, would seem innocent and proper conventions.
Hence when an artist introduces a new practice he
does it at his own peril. Consummate art will
probably justify him ; but, as the conventions of
374 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
artistic morality are not his to make, but are the
product of society itself and public opinion, his novelty
may justly offend ; and not the ignorant alone, for
wantonly to offend the ignorant is justly to offend the
wise.
It was the practice of the great masters to paint
the male form quite as much as the female, to resort
to the wholly undraped very sparingly, and rarely to
paint a picture at all without the most exquisite
modelling of some uncovered limbs. Under the
baneful influence of the French Salon our painters
are forsaking these time-honoured habits. The male
torso is wholly out of fashion, though there are some
who hold that Adam was hardly inferior to Eve in
beauty. The hands, neck, and uncovered limbs in
subject-pieces are daily becoming more and more
accessories. The undraped pieces are always "studies,"
and usually simple baigneuses. Did he of " the silver-
pointed pencil " paint " studies " on canvas ? Did the
greatest master of flesh-painting that ever lived occupy
his time with a succession of baigneuses ? I trow the
Ariadne in Trafalgar Square is worth a wilderness of
" studies " ; it belongs to a wholly different domain
of art.
There is one specific convention on which I must
be precise, however reserved be the words I shall use.
From Giotto down to Ingres I venture to assert that
the mysteries of the form were never displayed in
painting as definitely as they were in Greek sculpture.
I know nearly every gallery in Europe, and I cannot
recall a single work of a grand scale and of the best
time in which this is done. The art of the painter
was lavished in bathing the undraped form with a
subtle reserve of shadow, girdle, or tress. Even when
such mighty masters of flesh tones as Titian, Correggio,
or Rubens revelled in the full luxuriance of their
NUDE STUDIES 375
imagination, in the Venus of the Tribune, of the
National Gallery, or in the Judgment of Paris, they
respected this condition. Within a generation the
French school have rejected it. They treated the
form in painting as the Greeks treated it in sculpture,
and a nymph stood forth on canvas in the statuesque
simplicity of a marble Venus. I believe that the first
picture of European repute in which this was done
was the exquisite "Source" of Ingres. The virginal
purity of that ethereal creation created a new type in
art, which in the hands of weaker men violated the
old conventions while it attempted to introduce a new
one. The reserve which Titian had obtained by
purely pictorial resources the new school of Ingres
sought by exaggerating the convention of the Greek
sculptors. I take the Diadumene, a masterly, a pure
"study," but in its flesh tints not a very beautiful
work, and I compare it with the Venus of the
Tribune. Now the Venus, besides being beautiful
beyond the dreams of poetry, is as absolutely true as
it is mysterious in its grace. The Diadumene is not
mysterious at all, and yet is not real. Realism carried
to that point, and yet blurred by a convention violent
in itself and comparatively new in the art of painting,
has a weak spot somewhere. When painters attempt
violently to alter recognised conventions they will
cause irritation in the public. Convention is the
prosody of art. And while the ignorant must be
taught to accept convention, the artists must learn to
respect it.
A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES
1905
Now that I have retired to a quiet life in a beautiful
country I am occupied with Nature more than with
Art ; and it is only with a wrench that I can leave
the roses and lilies for the smoke of town. But, as I
do not wish to fall quite out of the modern movement,
I take a look in now and then at the May shows, and
had asked my friend Van Dyke, one of the young
lions of the New Gallery, to point out what was best
to be seen. He took me straight up to the Lycidas^
the great sensation of the year, "There," said he,
eagerly, " there is true Art. What a noble form !
What a grand pose ! What subtle grace in those
curves of the leg ! What dignity in those uplifted
arms ! It might be the young athlete who sat to
Pheidias for the Parthenon metopes. And those old
Philistines at Burlington House made a 'record' in
stupidity when they rejected actually rejected one
of the purest masterpieces of our time ! "
" But is it beautiful ? " I asked in my innocence.
" Beautiful ? " he said quite warmly, " we don't go
in for beauty nowadays. We want truth, not beauty.
Art has nothing to do with beauty. The aim of Art
is to be real. If you want to see a real spinal column,
an honest iliac muscle, a genuine biceps, and all ten
376
A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES 377
tendons of the extensor frankly displayed, there you
have them."
"Well!" I said, humbly, "I am no anatomist,
and I daresay this is all as it looks on the dissecting
table. But what puzzles me are those ten ringers
all held up in a row. What does it mean ? Is
Lycidas a Neapolitan lazzarone playing at mora ?
What is the story ? "
" Oh ! " said he, " a great piece of truth in Art
does not need any story. It is its own meaning.
Perhaps Lycidas is what the Boers call a Hands-upper ;
he seems to be saying c Don't shoot, I give in.' He
looks rather down on his luck, as if he has had enough.
But see how truly Greek is the vitality of those limbs !
How daring is the realism of those tendons ! How
defiant of conventions is the frankness of the pose ! "
" Thank you," I said, " for your lesson in Art. If
I had come here alone 1 should have taken it for a
scraggy youth in an ungainly attitude a sort of
naked man ' Friday,' startled by the footprints of
cannibals on the shore."
As I spoke we were joined by an old friend of my
own, a certain Sir Visto, rather a testy amateur of the
old school, who had seen all the galleries in Europe
and often dined with the R.A.'s.
" You call that scare-crow Art ? " he said. "Why,
it is a mere cast from a very ill-shapen pugilist. And
the attitude is only fit for a Fiji Islander's wooden
idol."
" My young friend here," I said, " has been telling
me of the magnificent modelling of the back, the ribs,
and the thighs. Isn't there great merit in the way
these muscles stand out clean and taut ? "
" Well ? " said Visto, " I grant him there is good
modelling in the trunk. The pectoral muscles are
well marked, and the scapula shows power, crude as
378 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
it looks. But just look at those saucers above the
collar-bones. The arms are those of an Egyptian
mummy, and can anything be more spidery than
those skinny thighs and calves ? "
"Truth, fact, realism," cried Van Dyke with
warmth. " Lycidas is not intended to be pretty. He
is not one of your androgynous hermaphrodites, but a
man in fighting condition, trained to the last ounce,
and no girls' fancy man."
" Oh ! I grant you he is a man, plain enough and
no mistake ; he would serve on a stand for a lesson in
anatomy at a hospital."
" Is not that the highest praise ? " asked Van
Dyke. " He is meant to teach, to display, to exhibit
fact, not to be a type of prettiness."
"Oh ! dear no ! he is a type of ugliness. He is a
mere cast, or facsimile, of an emaciated bruiser, with
his four limbs stuck apart like a child's doll undressed.
Look at his flat splay feet, the corns on his long toes,
and the bunion of the right foot joint. Look at him
from behind, and you will see a big letter W stuck
upon a pair of tongs."
" Well ! " said Van Dyke rather peevishly, " we
have happily got rid of the conventional Pyramid in a
work of sculpture, and all the stale nonsense about
symmetry in composition, a right arm to balance a
left leg, and the centre of gravity to fall in the middle
of the base."
" I grant you," said Visto, " there is neither
symmetry, nor balance, nor centre of gravity about
Lycidas. I was always taught that the first condition
of a statue is, that it has to be viewed all round in
every position. It should have at least eight character-
istic points of view and all eight ought to be at once
impressive and graceful. But in Lycidas all points of
view are equally ugly, ungainly, and unmeaning."
A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES 379
"Ugly, ungainly, as you please," cried Van Dyke,
"but true to fact. Art needs no meaning. It does
not mean anything, except ' So it is / see it so ! ' :
" Ho ! ho ! " laughed Visto, " truth, fact, realism !
How does Lycidas stand ? You know, dear boy, that
it is only a doll, a wax model, with wooden supports
inside. Lycidas could not be executed in marble, or
even in bronze, or any permanent material. It is only
that it is a patchwork of wood and wax that he can
stand steady on his big feet. I suppose that is why
they are made so long and ugly. Show me a work of
Pheidias, Polyclitus, Lysippus, Praxiteles, or Agasias
marble or bronze where a whole figure stands un-
supported on its feet alone. Look at any Apollo,
Aphrodite, Hermes, the Diadumenos, Doryphoros,
Apoxyomenos, Niobid, Artemis, Satyr, Antinous,
Heracles they all have leg supports, or they would
not stand. Why, even the ' Borghese warrior ' of the
Louvre, with its outstretched legs apart, has to rest
upon a tree stump. Your Lycidas may look more
natural, just because it is a doll a toy. Talk about
truth. It is a fraud ; a thing stuck together to look
like bronze, when we all know it could not be really
made in bronze at all."
But here I thought the discussion was getting
rather warm, for this sally had knocked Van Dyke
out of time. So I proposed that we should all walk
round to Piccadilry and see what the R.A.s had to
show us.
"We have got rid of all these antiquated conventions
about Greek types," muttered Van Dyke doggedly ;
" what matters what Lysippus and Praxiteles did ?
Art is free, and makes its own laws as it grows with
new ideas and younger men."
" Stay for five minutes," cried Visto, " and have a
look at a bit of real Art, in that group named Venus
380 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
at her Toilette with Cupid. Now there is beauty,
grace, symmetry, truth all together. It has the subtle
secret of the Renascence, the joy of life, ideal charm ! "
"Ah ! " I said, " by the Grand Old Man of Italian
art, who has done more to keep alive the flame of
Tuscan glory than any living amateur. It is a
wonderful tour de force ; but Michael Angelo and
Titian continued to work to an even greater age.
Art is the most vivifying force in Nature, and makes
the healthy and the happy old ever young ! "
"Yes!" said Visto, "my old friend, Wemyss, I
remember, was the contemporary of John Ruskin at
Christ Church, and he is still carrying on some of the
best traditions of art judgment, which Ruskin has
long ceased to inspire. But let me tell you that the
Venus here is not only an astonishing tour de force, but
is in itself a fine, pure, and original composition,
harmoniously conceived ; lovely in all its parts, and
as a whole."
" Oh ! I grant you it is pretty, refined ; well, say,
beautiful, if you like," grumbled Van Dyke, " for those
who care for beauty in Art. I daresay it reminds
people of the old artists' idea about grace and that
sort of thing."
" Can anything be more useful to-day than such a
reminder ? " asked Visto.
"Come to Burlington House," said I, "and as we
walk along, Van Dyke shall tell us why these young
fellows make such a dead set at Beauty, and why they
will have it that the business of Art is to hold up the
mirror to ugliness, to portray nothing that is not
common, queer, or even grotesque."
" Why ! " broke out Van Dyke, " we are all sick
of these tea-tray prettinesses of 'The Thames at
Dawn,' c Pine Woods at Sunset,' c Meadows in May,'
'June Blossoms,' and all the namby-pamby goddesses,
A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES 381
nymphs, c blue eyes ' and c golden locks,' which are
very well on a bonbon box for a girl, but disgust
grown men in a picture gallery. Art should be real,
not conventional ; and of all things the most fatal to
Art is rhat which pleases the eye. The painter has
to show people what they never saw and never could
see what he sees, and as he sees it. It does not matter
what it is a brick wall, a blind beggar, a hog, a
dunghill all are equally the subject of Art, when the
artist has looked at them till his soul has grown into
them, and they have grown into his soul. The new
rule is Paint just what you see, but take care that
it is what nobody sees but yourself, and what nobody
could like if he did see it. The business of Art is to
shake up your Philistines, your Bottles, and Mrs.
Grundys out of their humdrum lives, to teach them
how queer and how nasty the world can be, and often is."
" You want us all to go c slumming ' in a picture
gallery ? " said Visto. " You can't all be Bernard Shaws,
my dear boy, and paint paradoxes and dirt all day long.
Is there no alternative between weak prettiness and
coarse realism ? Because some painters are finikin,
some babyish, and some academic, is High Art to be
limited to ditchwater and rags ? If we are sick of
strawberry cream and truffles, we don't want to be
stuffed with garlic and tripe."
"It does not matter what you paint," said Van
Dyke, " the only thing that matters is, how you paint.
A picture is not intended to please ought not to
please the person looking at it. It is intended to show
what clever things the painter could do with his
brush. Brush-work is the beginning, middle and end
of a picture. If a picture interests the public by its
subject, or is beautiful as an object to view, so far it
draws off attention from the cleverness of the painter,
and thereby ceases to be sincere Art."
382 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
" One would think a painter was an acrobat," said
Visto, "and his only aim was to show you what
astonishing tricks he could play with his fingers. For
my part, I don't care, as the old Duke used to say,
1 a twopenny d n ' for a painter's tricks. What I
want is a beautiful work and fine imagination."
"Imagination!" said Van Dyke. "We don't
want to imagine things. We want to reproduce them
show them just as we see them. Imagination is
the ruin of Art ! We painters have to make things
look just as they are."
" Why, that is what photographers have to do !
And they beat you realists hollow at it ! Is a Kodak
snap-shot of a kitchenmaid taken in my backyard,
Art ? It certainly reproduces faithfully the look of a
very commonplace object."
" It would be Art if the painter could make the
backyard as absolutely true to fact as the photograph,
adding colour, chiaroscuro, and tone. Let him get
his * values ' right and all is right ! "
"Surely," I murmured, "it would be a dull piece
to hang over one's dinner-table."
"This cursed photography," Sir Visto broke in,
"has been the death of Art. It has shown artists
how infinitely subtle and various are the facts in the
simplest and commonest object. A bootmaker puts
his own ugly mug on his trade card. Soaps, cigars,
whiskies, and corsets, drench us with photographs till
life has become a sort of revolving panorama of
commonplace, crudely realised in all its naked
vulgarity and dulness. We live in a photographic
inferno ; and now Art thinks it chic to be equally
literal and tedious."
By this time we had reached Burlington House,
and I hoped to have a less lively debate. Sir Visto
took us straight into the large room and stood before
A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES 383
The Finding of Moses^ by Sir L. Alma-Tadema.
"There," said he, "is a fine subject finely treated.
We want no catalogue to tell us what it represents.
Any one who has ever read or heard of the delightful
idyll in 2nd of Exodus sees at once that it is
Pharaoh's daughter returning from the bath, and
bringing the baby in his ark. The composition, the
local colouring, the archaic c properties ' and costumes,
are all those of a master. How ridiculous it was of
Ruskin to tell us Alma-Tadema always painted
twilight ! Is not this sunlight, and sunlight in
Egypt A fine picture ! a fine conception ! "
" It has too much beauty, elegance, and harmony
for me," growled Van Dyke. " Why are all the girls
so pretty, and so fair of skin ? There is nothing
prehistoric, barbaric, cruel, ghastly about the scene
nothing to remind you of the ferocious edict of
Pharaoh and the leader who was one day to drown
him in the Red Sea. I admit it is beautiful, if that is
what you want. It is too smooth, too refined, too
idyllic for me."
" Well ! " I said, " the story is an Idyll, you know.
Pharaoh's daughter was a gracious Princess, not a
bloodthirsty tyrant, and Moses at four months had not
grown to be the Prophet of Israel. The Plagues of
Egypt had not yet begun. And we may imagine an
Idyll if we please by way of contrast."
" Imagination is the foe of truth," said he.
Sir Visto then led us up to the President's Cup
of Tantalus^ which he called on us to admire.
" Poynter," he said, " is always graceful, learned,
correct, classical "
"Conventional " interrupted Van Dyke.
"See how thoughtfully every detail is studied,"
said Visto, not noticing his young friend, "the
drawing firm, true, natural ; the composition
384 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
subtle ; the whole atmosphere one of harmony and
charm."
"Why does the child in the transparent shift
stretch up on her toes when it is plain she can't reach
the other's hand by twelve inches at least ? And why
doesn't the long girl, in the dark robe with a palm-
branch fan, step down to the fountain herself?"
grumbled Van Dyke.
"My dear boy," said I, "you might as well ask
why did Keats see charm in a ' Grecian urn,' you
don't forget how it ends, do you ?
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
" I can see neither beauty nor truth," said the
painter, " in these Hebes, Ariadnes, Nymphs, Sapphos,
Pindars, and other machine-made Hellenisms which
the Academy seems to encourage. They are crude
'academies,' as the French say, and the local colour
and staging is cheap enough."
" Good work too often leads to poor imitation," I
suggested, "as we saw with Raphael himself; but
weak copies do not spoil the value of a true master's
work."
" Come, now, let us look at the portraits," said I,
" we shall not be troubled about ideals there."
" I don't know that," said Van Dyke ; " some of
these smart women look as if their portraits had been
commissioned, not by their husbands, but by their
dressmakers as trade advertisements to puff their
c creations.' "
" There is a portrait, indeed," cried Sir Visto
with enthusiasm, taking us to Sargent's Signior Garcia^
power, truth, character, in every line. That is a
portrait which Velasquez might have owned."
" Agreed, agreed, we shan't quarrel over that," said
A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES 385
Van Dyke ; " Sargent is the one man to-day who
dominates both Academy and New Gallery at once,
the man who unites mastery of his brush to originality
of conception for sheer skill of hand he is matchless
and unerring."
" A really great painter," said Visto, " when he
chooses, and does not play tricks, or is not poking fun
at his sitters."
" When does he not choose ? " asked the painter.
"When he dashes off a satin gown in an hour, and
flings in a lace furbelow with three dabs of his brush."
" And if he does," retorted the painter, " who
could do it as well in a week's work ? Besides, the
gown and the furbelow have to be looked at at least
fifty feet away."
"That is scene-painting, not portraiture," said
Visto ; " I quite agree that he has a marvellous gift of
technique^ but why does he dab his shadows in with
vermilion, and why are his women rouged on the lips ?
Hung on a gallery wall twenty yards off, the effect is
brilliant, but I call it a trick, when you look close into
the handling."
" You don't mean to say that he makes game of
his own sitter ? " I asked quite simply.
" Well ! " said Visto, " you remember the old
dealer with the thick red lips and the dog putting out
his tongue to mimic his master. And see how he
bedizens his other multi-millionaire sitters as if he
said with his tongue in his cheek what figures of
fun they are ! But just come across to the grand
Blenheim group."
" Surely," I said, " that is a superb piece for a great
historic palace. It reminds me of the Vandykes at
Genoa. What a grandiose group ! The mighty
Marlbrook, with the conquered banners of lilies and
his descendants to the tenth generation. What life
2,c
386 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
in the two boys, in the spaniels ; what bravura in the
whole composition ! "
" Oh ! bravura indeed," said Van Dyke, " perhaps
a trifle overdone, rather too pompously majestic."
" Why do you say making game of his sitters ? "
I asked simply.
"Well," said Sir Visto, "you see that, by the
artifice of placing the Duchess on the step and the
Duke below it, the impression is produced that she is
about ten inches taller than her husband. I have not
the honour of their acquaintance, but I doubt if the
difference is as much as that. The Duke seems rather
embarrassed by the weight of his robes, and the beauti-
ful head of her Grace is stuck upon an elongated neck
which reminds one of the new saurian, Diplodocus
Carnegii"
" Yes ! " said Van Dyke, " he has the defects
of his qualities. He can't resist a sensation j and the
millionaires with their big prices are leading him to
scamp it. But when he tries his best, as in his c Mrs.
Raphael,' he is as serious as Rembrandt himself."
" It's a fatal snare to a painter to become the rage
in the smart world," said I, "especially when the
smart world is vulgar and tasteless. Even Vandyke
and Reynolds had too many sitters, though their sitters
had beauty, manners, and refinement."
"The worst of it is," said Visto, "that Sargent,
like every man of original genius and splendid success,
is teaching two or three other good men to imitate his
bravura and his scene-painting legerdemain. Sargent
can make a satin gown dazzling bright with fifteen
sweeps of a thick brush. But when other men try to
do it, they seem to be using a mop or a broom."
" He is the greatest master of portrait we have had
since Millais stormed the town," said Van Dyke, " and
has an even subtler eye for character."
A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES 387
" Yes ? " said Visto ; " but the genius he has for
characteristic points is so keen that it betrays him now
and then to make an actual caricature I daresay quite
unconsciously. He sees a trait in a sitter's face or
figure, and in his eagerness to catch it he makes it
almost ridiculous."
" Come and look at the Burghers of Landsberg" .
said I ; " there is a solid piece of work indeed. Look
at it across the Central Hall, and you might fancy at
a first glance the R.A.'s were sitting in council. One
feels that there are the very Bavarian citizens, simple,
serious, thoughtful men of business full of character,
and composed with skill and truth. It is no bad
revival of the old Dutch Corporation groups to be seen
at Haarlem, the Hague, and Amsterdam. It is a real
success in a difficult subject."
" Not much of the ideal, not quite high art," said
the Connoisseur.
"The ideal be d d," laughed the painter; "the
Von has scored this time. All his portraits are first-
rate. A good many of the old gang seem to have
been waked up. Why, old Leader has broken out in
a new place ; and, after fifty years of Surrey pine-
woods and commons, silvery Thames, and such sereni-
ties, he has found his way to the coast and the crags of
the Cornish bays."
" A very good way it is," I added ; " I know the
cove well ; and it has never been painted with greater
truth and force. I rejoice to see a veteran, who has
been too often undervalued, turn in his old age to a
grand subject like the cliffs of Cornwall in a breezy
sea."
And so we wandered through the galleries, each of
us throwing in a word from time to time.
" How tedious it must be for those poor royalties,"
I said, " to have to stand year after year for official
388 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
portraits whilst the artist is piling on velvet robes,
gold lace, ribbons, garters, crosses, sword-tassels, and
jack-boots ! It's just making tailors' dummies and
modistes' blocks of the poor things. How they must
hate it ! but royaute oblige"
" There's a fine thing, indeed," said Visto, " what
life, manliness, vigour, and breezy air," taking us
up to Furse's cub-hunting group ; " what a loss
to art ! "
Heu, miserande puer, si qua fata aspera rumpas,
Tu Marcellus eris !
" Yes ! indeed, a cruel loss," we all said.
"There are some good portraits, too, as well as
Sargent's!" said Visto, "Ouless, Shannon, Cope,
Solomon, Fildes, Dicksee, and other less-known men.
But the only man who can hold it with the great
Frenchmen of to-day is plainly Sargent, and let us
trust he will not spoil the rest."
" He won't spoil Ouless," said I ; "he is as steady,
and solid, and thorough as ever."
Nor did we neglect the ladies. Lady Butler, true
and vigorous as always ; Lucy Kemp- Welch, with her
inimitable feeling for a horse, and the rest.
" One of the most striking facts in modern art," I
said, " is the immense addition of women as painters.
I can remember in the 'forties, or even in the 'fifties,
no woman exhibited an oil picture. You will now
see every third name is that of a woman, and in the
water-colours they have it all to themselves. Why is
Lady Butler not R.A., I wonder ! "
" Perhaps she declines the honour," said the young
rebel.
Some of us lingered beside the Peter Grahams, the
David Murrays, the H. W. B. Davis, MacWhirters,
Arnesly Browns, Alfred Easts, and the quiet English
A MORNING IN THE GALLERIES 389
rural bits which are not behind their usual form. But
Van Dyke was all for Stanhope Forbes, La Thangue,
and Clausen.
"All good men, and sound, pure, manly work,"
said Visto ; " but you need not suppose that this is
the last word in modern art, dear boy. A picture has
not only to be painted well, it must be a thing that
is worth painting interesting, original, beautiful,
imaginative. As Tennyson said, you might write a
very correct Wordsworthian line A Mister Wilkinson,
a clergyman but this is not poetry. An old man
with sticks, a sailor boy in a boat, a girl feeding a
bird, are honest facts, which you may honestly paint
but they don't make a picture. Millet's Angelus
has gone round the world, because it is more than an
old peasant and his wife. It is a solemn and pathetic
poem. To make a work of art something more than
'values' is wanted."
" It seems to me that the essential point to insist
upon nowadays is the subject of a work of art," said I.
" Many of these subjects that one can see on a road or
a farm any day may be worth painting in small, on a
canvas 16 x 10 inches. When it comes to life-size,
on a canvas 60 x 48 inches, as a great gallery work, it
is taking it all too seriously. Everything you see,
painted as you see it, true to nature in lights, values,
and surfaces, may be an honest piece of handiwork,
but it is not art. Your ' Mister Wilkinsons,' in or
out of the pulpit, bore us. Your beggar-boys, and
sheep-cots, and sandhills may be perfectly true, but
utterly tedious. Unless you can show us some
memorable thing, some impressive trait in your
beggar, your sheep, or your sand, we do not want you
to labour the matter further. And then, how sadly
the habit of exhibitions reacts upon the painter. He
thinks what will amuse the summer visitor, not what
390 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
will rejoice the heart to be upon our walls. One of
the cleverest pictures of the year, which attracts a
crowd all day by its admirable life, its ingenious
telling a complex story, by its intense 'modernity,'
as the slang goes, would hardly be a pleasant work to
hang over one's dinner-table, on so large a scale, to be
looked at day after day, day and night. One's guests
would ask, as they sat down to dinner 'Well ! who
is she ? ' And there would be whispers all round.
The curse of exhibitions is that they encourage
painters to labour out silly japes of their own,
incidents picked out of Tit-bits^ to attract mammas by
some baby nonsense, and to attract girls by mawkish
sentiment. There will always be a lot of poor stuff
whilst painters think only of their palettes, and not of
their minds ; whilst they get their ideas out of trashy
novels, comic plays, and watery poems. Painters
want cultivated brains as well as nimble fingers.
Come, let us walk round the National Gallery before
we go to luncheon."
AT BURLINGTON HOUSE
ANCIENT MASTERS
1906
As I stroll round the pictures shown winter after
winter by the Royal Academy, many questions hard
to solve are wont to rise in my mind. Why is a visit
to these galleries in January " a thing of beauty " a
joy for the hour, if not " for ever " whilst the visit
in May, however exciting, amusing, tantalising, is
always a bit of a scramble, leaving one at dinner-time
with a slight sense of fatigue, of rattle, of discord
too often of disappointment ? In January I go home
soothed and fresh, as if I had been listening to a
symphony of Mozart. In May I struggle into
Piccadilly with a feeling as if I had been stunned by
a new piece of Brahms which I could not half follow,
or had been to an overcrowded room where every one
talked in a loud voice together, and I had missed
those I wished to hear. If any one could answer these
questions, he would throw some light on the mystery
of modern Art its aims, its defects, its future.
It cannot be simply that in the winter we find
Old Masters and in the spring we have the Living,
who are not all Masters. This year, with nearly a
hundred painters, I do not see more than five or six
392 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
real Old Masters. No ! This year we have the
English school ! for, except Frank Hals, even those
foreign born almost belong to us. The show includes
scores of good men of our own generation some,
indeed, whom we have quite lately buried and
mourned. And there are very few pictures more
than 150 years old. Yet, withal, there is an air of
mellowness, of sobriety, of tone, about the collection
which will be sadly to seek in May next.
Of course, the painters admitted are all men
eminent in their time, and many of the pictures here
are first-rate examples of their powers. But, allowing
for all that in their favour, the charm of the gallery
lies in the sense of its recalling the great traditions
of art, in a tone of harmony and quiet mastery, in a
sense of the ideal. There is less of the machine, of
advertising sensationalism, of those grotesque novelties,
which will set our teeth on edge in May. As I am
no expert, and as I go to the galleries to enjoy myself,
not to detect spurious names in the catalogue, I am
not going to criticise this or that picture, but simply
note down a few thoughts. No one can look at the
Reynoldses and the Gainsboroughs without feeling
how powerful and how inspiring was still the tradition
of Titian, Rubens, and Van Dyck in all that century.
The love of colour, of nature, of harmonious tone,
was their passion not the mania for astonishing us
with something new and bizarre. These were the
men who said when dying they were "going to
Heaven, and Van Dyck was of the company ! "
They were not afraid to be numbered in the great
family of ancient masters. Nor can one see Reynolds'
"Venus and Piping Boy," Gainsborough's landscapes,
and Turner's incredible " Venus and Adonis," without
feeling that at least down to the Victorian era the art
of painting, like dress and manners, rested on a basis
AT BURLINGTON HOUSE 393
of tradition and "form." No doubt both Reynolds
and Turner had better have left Venus and Cupids
alone. It was not their line, and they could do much
better things. But the hold over their souls of
Titian, and what Mat Arnold would call the Grand
Style, enabled them to put ideal beauty into their best
work. Nowadays, of course, the aim is to be common-
place, realistic, photographic, if you are to be "con-
vincing " to the man in the street and the woman at
the " Private View." You can't play it too low down
in the democratic Go-as-you-please. I think I prefer
even an echo of Titian and Rubens.
No doubt the Old Boys had the great advantage
of noble sitters for their portraits. The dress, at any
rate of men, gave them opportunities denied to Watts
and Millais. Van Dyck and Lely, Reynolds and
Gainsborough printed grands seigneurs and grandes
dames^ who did not come to their studios dressed as
gamekeepers or as actresses in a Paris fashion plate.
Hands, it is said, " went out with ruffles," and perhaps
the quiet dignity of heads went out with Court dress
and hair powder. When Reynolds and Raeburn
painted a soldier they made us look at his eyes and
mouth, not at his shiny boots, epaulettes, and stars
and garters. Whether gallant generals can have
grown less manly to look at than they were in the
eighteenth century, whether fine ladies now veil the
fire of their eyes and the witchery of their smiles so
as not to distract our attention from the creations of
Worth and Paquin which they bid us admire, I will
not pretend to decide. But somehow the formal
clothes of old Queen Charlotte's Court seem to give a
noble air to beautiful women better than the iridescent
satins and the multi-millionaire jewelry with which
our professional beauties and our American peeresses
amaze the groundlings as they stare at the walls
394 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
of Burlington House in the flowery month of
May.
I called Turner's " Adonis " incredible ; and so it
is. Here is a large picture, five feet by four, with an
adipose Venus, a boyish Adonis, Cupids, dogs, and a
leafy landscape, in flagrant imitation of Titian, but
signed by "J. M. W. Turner." As you walk across
the room from a distance you might think it a Titian.
Ruskin always said that Turner could paint figures if
he wished. And though this is certainly not a Titian,
I think the nudities are as good as Etty's, and as a
picture I much prefer it to the " Homeric Dance."
We knew that Turner in his early days imitated
Claude, Poussin, Vandervelde, Cuyp, and some others.
Here he is trying his hand at a Titian. And so did
Reynolds in his "Venus and Boy," as perhaps did
Van Dyck in his " St. Sebastian." Alas ! that is
the sad thing with our English school. They are
always imitating some one. And even the so-called
Pre-Raphaelites, whose troubled story has been told
us by Mr. Holman Hunt, just promoted to dear old
Watts' O.M., they started with ideas about "the
Primitives," whom they did not half understand, and
certainly did not really follow.
Half the delight of these ancient masters lies in
the memories they stir in us. One versed in the
family histories of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries sees on every side in this gallery the grand-
sires and grandmothers of countless persons whom he
may meet to-day. How quaint are the two lovely
Stanhope children, whom many living can remember
as old men. What a crowd of reminiscences rise
up before the Reynoldses, Gainsboroughs, Hogarths,
Romneys, Raeburns, Hoppners ! Who can forget
the cruel tragedy of Gainsborough's bright young girl,
Martha Ray ? How strange to be reminded of a man
AT BURLINGTON HOUSE 395
who was officer in King George's army, a clergyman,
a rake, and a murderer ! How singular to see a
picture by one who was a beneficed parson and also a
Royal Academician ! How many men have been
"The Reverend - , R.A." ? What lessons of
labour and learning in the eighty drawings by Watts !
What classical refinement, what scholarship, what
grace in Leighton's " Cleoboulos and Cleobouline "-
" too waxy and mawkish," you say ? Ah ! well ! but
how lovely in line, how pure in ideal. "Caviare to
the general," perhaps. Can the " general " pronounce
the girl's name aright, I wonder ? But a grand subject
for a picture, as Leighton's subjects always were.
And then to see the Rossetti and Burne-Jones imagin-
ings all in a line, like lovely phantoms of unearthly,
bloodless, supernatural beings, found more often in
poetry than in canvas. Go again and again, and try
to think it out !
TOBACCO
1905
WHEN the other day The Young Man begged me
to say how I had managed to retain my health and
powers of work to what he called my advanced age,
my reason was imprimis, by avoiding tobacco in all its
forms. I was quite serious, for I am a determined
Misonicotinist ; one of the few men of the world who
have never touched the filthy weed in their lives j one
who looks on smoking as a disease, to be shunned on
grounds moral, social, aesthetic, medical, and sexual.
The weed was first introduced into Europe at the
Court of one of the most infamous women in an age
of poisoners. In an old book of the time of Charles L,
I find tobacco described as " the spirits' Incubus, that
begets many ugly and deformed phantasies in the brain."
Nicotine is described by chemists as "highly poisonous,
forming acrid and pungent salts." I would not have
it supposed that my aversion to tobacco is solely due, or
even mainly due, to its deleterious effect upon health.
A sour friend of mine grumbles that it does not kill
its votaries fast enough. Nor do I protest against
excess in smoking merely. I protest against tobacco
altogether as a nasty appetite, hardly worthy of a
gentleman.
I sometimes tell my young friends that smoking is
396
TOBACCO 397
the only vice that inevitably annoys and injures the
innocent neighbour. A man may be as vicious, as
coarse, as gluttonous, as drunken as he likes to be, but
he does no harm to others who do not choose to share
his orgies. But your smoker infects every one near
him with the reek of his personal indulgence, and
pollutes every place he enters with his stale fumes.
The habitual smoker habitually stinks. His clothes,
his hair, his breath, are tainted ; to some nostrils, quite
sickening. The newspaper, the book, the letter he
has touched have the malodorous taint. Woollen
clothes, curtains, carpets, retain the stench for days ; and
stale tobacco fume is disgusting even to your habitual
smoker. That it nauseates women and children, and
not a few men, does not at all trouble your smoker.
He finds it a source of pride and distinction. It is the
only occasion on which men, otherwise well bred, care
to obtrude themselves on general society when in a
state that makes them personally offensive. A gentle-
man, who from violent exertion was bathed in sweat,
would not calmly seat himself in a lady's drawing-room
till he had taken a bath and changed his shirt ; nor, if
in the hunting field he had been pitched into a fetid
ditch, would he sit down in his filthy state. But when
the men "join the ladies " after a dinner-party, when
at the theatre the bell rings up the third act, the
drawing-room and the stalls reek with stale fumes. It
is merely an insolent convention to pretend that people
who do not smoke themselves do not dislike the stale
fumes. To many women, and to some men, they are
the most repulsive of all stinks.
The stock excuse for this licence to be offensive to
others is the cowardly reply that it is "commonly done."
In the eighteenth century it was " common enough "
to be drunk in public. In the seventeenth century
it was bon ton to be debauched. Tournaments, bear-
398 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
baiting, cock-fighting, prize-fights, masquerades, street-
brawls, and other brutalities, once common and affected
by gentlemen, have been condemned by our improved
sense of decency, and have ceased to be fashionable.
" Fashion " has been answerable for almost every vice
and for many abominations. The test is not what
smart people do, but what is due to others, and what is
fitting for a gentleman. The question to be asked is,
by what title do you gratify a corporeal appetite in a
way that makes you offensive to people you come
near ? A cross old man in a non-smoking railway
carriage was rudely addressed by some young sparks,
as they lit their cigars : " You don't object to our
smoking, sir?" "Oh !" said he, "you won't object
to my vomiting ? " Spitting in public, snuff, and
sundry brutalities of the kind, are slowly dying out
under improved standards of social decorum. But one
appetite, it seems, has leave to be indulged in mixed
society, whatever the personal nausea produced by it
in others.
The stock excuses that " everybody does it," that it
is a "settled habit," are not true. Mr. Gladstone
never smoked, and no one ever smoked in his presence.
The same thing is true, I believe, of the late Lord
Salisbury, and many very eminent men. At one of
the most beautiful castles in these islands smoking is
allowed to a " house party " only in a remote smoking-
room. In my young days, gentlemen never smoked
tobacco at a dinner-table, in a theatre, at a ball, in any
drawing-room, or, indeed, in public at all. Any such
thing would have been treated as an outrage which
ladies would resent. Nowadays, the dinner is hardly
swallowed before the rooms are heavy with smoke ;
the party is broken up ; after a few minutes of formality
the sexes are kept separate. At a house party in the
country, at the theatre, even at a ball, the craving for
TOBACCO 399
nicotine poison divides the men from the women, the
moment that freedom can be obtained with decency.
Tobacco has destroyed the society of the sexes, more
than ever alcohol did in the days of our great-grand-
fathers. It has corrupted and undermined even life in
the family as well. Brothers and sisters, cousins and
relatives of both sexes, may dwell under the same
roof. They meet at meals, but before the repast is
over, the sons and their male companions are itching
to be off. They slink into their own quarters. The
sisters and girls gossip, knit, play waltzes or bridge,
talk chiffons or small scandal and pretend that they
like it so.
I am not going to say anything about the injury
to health caused by tobacco. More men, to my
knowledge, have died of nicotine than have died of
drink. Over and over again I have seen young
fellows troubled with heart and throat ailments from
indulging in cigarettes. I knew a very eminent man
who could not eat his dinner without smoking a
cigarette between each course, and who fell asleep in
bed with a lighted cigarette between his teeth.
Naturally he died of it young. One of the most
famous throat specialists told me that quite half the
cancerous cases he treated were caused, or aggravated,
by tobacco. He was himself an inveterate smoker,
and spoke with a big Havannah in his mouth. He,
too, died soon afterwards of the same complaint.
You will say these are cases of excessive smoking,
and prove nothing as to moderate use of tobacco.
Quite true ; but my complaint is about the anti-social,
anti- feminine, anti- human habit of smoking. It
disgusts nearly all women, and hurts not a few men.
When I have been forced to sit in a cloud of rancid
tobacco for hours, I have had a headache for twenty-
four hours, and my clothes offend me for forty-eight
400 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
hours more. If men crave for the stimulus, let them
take care to have it in private, and so as not to infect
others. If fellows must smoke, let them retire into a
remote smoking-den ; wash, be shampooed, and change
all their clothes, before they dare to mix in general
society.
Of course, the smoking tribe will call me a
milksop, an old " crank," with abnormal olfactories,
and so forth. Well ! I remember when I was a bowler
to our eleven of " Non-smokers," we won in an
innings ; and no wonder. That is fifty-five years
ago, but I can bowl a good ball still. I have been a
member of the Alpine Club and two famous smoking
clubs ; and I founded one of them not to smoke, but
to talk. I have been about in London society and in
London clubs any time these fifty years. So far from
being abnormal in my sense of smell, I will not deny
that the scent of a very fine Havannah in the open air
on a frosty night, smoked by a pleasant friend a few
yards ofF me, is not so offensive. It is the nasty
cigarette, the stinking pipe, the rotten garbage of
cheap stuff, the stale, clammy reek where smoke has
been every night, which is intolerable. If I am a
" crank," I can only say that fifty years ago gentle-
men, as a rule, must have been " cranks," for they
used to regard a man who habitually smoked every-
where and anywhere, in mixed society, and in associa-
tion with ladies, as a dirty brute. As to women
smoking, I cannot bring myself to speak. I cannot
get over the feeling that they do not as they should
do. I will just end with the words of two illustrious
men. William Morris wrote : " Tobacco seems to
me a more dangerous intoxicant than liquors." John
Ruskin scorns the men " who would put the filth of
tobacco into the first breeze of a May morning."
Yes ! and into the golden curls of a child.
CARD-PLAYING
1905
THOUGH I detest the sight of cards, I am well aware
that the habit of card-playing does not offend and
injure the innocent bystander as the habit of smoking
tobacco does. I do not call it a vice, unless it ends in
reckless gambling, which it often does. But it is an
anti-social, debilitating form of folly, which encourages
mean kinds of excitement. "Jeune homme," said
that decrepit scoundrel, Talleyrand, to a young man
who declined to play with him, "quelle triste veiellesse
vous vous preparez ! " The old age of Talleyrand
and of all such hoary sinners could not be anything
but triste. Cards may have enabled him to forget his
evil ways, but opium would have done better. " Life
would be tolerable," said a great and good man, " if it
were not for its amusements." He was no doubt
thinking mainly of cards which bored him. Cards
bore me, the sight of them, the sight of men and
women playing cards bores me. The long gasping
silences bore me. The clatter when they count the
points, the quarrels, the snarls, the sneers, the chuckles,
the "Why did you lead that spade ? " "I knew you
had the ace ! " Can any jabber be more wearisome,
more inane ? Men and women, who are too dull to
take pleasure in talk, too ignorant to read, too lazy to
401 2 D
402 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
dance, deaf to music, blind to art, unable to keep
awake, betake them to cards, as peasants in Italy make
night hideous with incessant mora.
The noodles who brag that smoking is manly, like
shopboys over their first penny smoke, tell us that
cards are sociable and promote friendly intercourse.
It is just the contrary. Cards strangle society, and
are the death of any graceful amusement, be it talk,
music, play-acting, dancing, or charades. They will
say I am an old curmudgeon, and so on. Not at all !
I am a particularly sociable fellow, who can always
make myself at home in any company, be it a London
crush, or a Pall Mall club, a big country house, or a
village inn, a garden party, or a farmer's "ordinary."
Homo sum, etc. etc. At college I played whist,
"Boston," as we named bridge, and Van John, like
anybody else, though I always found it poor fun. My
father and his brothers and sisters were first-rate
whist-players. I knew an old couple who sat half the
night playing "double-dummy " together, and quarrel-
ling over it like butcher's dogs. They were both
very clever, very rich, with society at their call. But
they were so soaked in cards that they could not read
even a newspaper ; they had nothing to say to one
another or to any one else ; they had no interest in
anything on earth, except the " odd trick " and " my
last trump." When they shall hear the Last Trump,
what sort of figure will they cut ? The old Puritans
and Quakers firmly believed that Satan had invented
cards. I firmly believe there are people, who if they
were offered their choice of going to heaven to sing
hymns, or going to hell where cards are allowed,
would follow the game, even if they had to play
dummy with little devils.
Of course, my tirade against cards is called out by
the modern mania for Bridge. A family game of
CARD- PLAYING 403
whist or Vingt-et-Un is silly, but I cannot call it vice,
hardly a nuisance, if it is not incessant and too irritat-
ing. But "Bridge" has become a public nuisance.
It is poisoning society, desolating homes, and corrupt-
ing women. Drawing-rooms, where a graceful woman
gave you five-o'clock tea, have become gloomy gambling
hells. House parties have become intolerable to those
who are not bitten with the fashionable tarantula.
Women of cultivation, who have lived in the best
society, will not accept invitations to dinner until they
know they are not to be asked to sit down to Bridge.
Many a man and woman leaves a country house with
the sense that they have been bored and plundered.
Horrid tales reach us of the straits to which girls have
been put when some old harridan has got them to sit
down to a game. What happened to Elizabeth at the
country places she visited is by no means fiction, but
revolting fact. I have heard a real grande dame of the
old school say to a mother "My dear, let me warn
you, never you let your daughter go to a smart country
house." " Bridge " has become a vice as rampant as
ever was loo in the days of Lord Hervey and Bubb
Doddington.
A great many men and women hate Bridge, as
many do not like tobacco. They are dragged into
both, against their tastes, because it is "the thing,"
what "they all do now." Some women pretend to
like a cigarette, because they fondly trust it will
recommend them to men. In the old days such
women affected a love of drink, as in our days they
haunt the paddock and the betting ring. They little
know what their male companions think of them.
Both tobacco and cards are new habits, the " fashion
of the day " quite recent, a craze grown up in living
memory. I can remember the day when smoking
was the exception not the rule, and never indulged
404 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
in public, and in the society of ladies. I have said all
this, because it seems to me a typical instance of the
curse of our age conventional habits. The modern
craze to do " what fellows do," to wear the latest
pattern of shirt collar, to vote the ticket of the " best
people " which means the richest or the most showy
people " to do the right thing," all this has become
the sole religion of the shallow, commonplace man
"in our street," or "in the next villa," the whole
duty of man to the average man and woman of the
comfortable class. When men and women will have
the spirit to live their own lives, and not to copy the
lives, or rather the ways, of their neighbours, they will
not think it manly to pester their neighbours with
the foul odours of their own appetites, or to ruin
society by forcing their friends to take a hand in their
own sordid games.
GAME PRESERVING AND BATTUES
1905
I AM all for active exercise in the air, in the open
country as far as possible, the wilder the better. I
have been a rider nearly all my life, and was once
caught in the hunting field by Anthony Trollope,
who seemed to think it very funny to meet me there.
I have been a mountaineer and have done the principal
peaks and passes of the Alps. I know the Pyrennees,
the Apennines, and the mountains of Tyrol and of
Greece. I have often climbed Ben Nevis, Ben
Lomond, Helvellyn, Snowdon, and have tramped any
time these sixty years over the finest moors in
England, Wales, and Scotland ; nor did I ever feel a
more glorious sense of life than when this last autumn
I was taking my solitary rambles over the deer forests
of Ross-shire and Skye. And withal, knowing more
of mountains, moors, and forests than most professed
sportsmen, I make bold to say that "game-preserv-
ing," as now practised in England, is a social nuisance
and a public curse, and that " battue-shooting," as now
developed, is a stupid, idle, snobbish form of sport.
The man who delivers himself over to shooting as the
end of life becomes a tiresome boor, intellectually
below the head game-keeper, a lump of brutal selfish-
ness and vulgar swagger. He knows nothing really
405
406 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
of Nature : the glories of the country are lost to him :
he is blind to them ; he is unworthy of enjoying them,
even if he had senses to perceive them.
Now, I am neither vegetarian nor humanitarian.
I can enjoy the leg of a pheasant or half a grouse. I
am sometimes called a Jacobin, which is a shame ; for
I am a stout Conservative in many things. I see that
life is being taken all round us, and indeed has to be
taken in self-defence. I see a painful necessity for a
lethal chamber for the superfluous or unnecessary
quadruped, and I sometimes feel sorry there is no
lethal chamber for the unnecessary biped. I am no
mawkish sentimentalist. If my horse had broken his
leg and there was no one to save him or to kill him,
I could put the pistol to his brain myself. Or I
could cut a lamb's throat, if meat must be had and
no butcher could be got. A man has to do such
things, just as in battle he has to use his weapon.
But as to amusing myself by wantonly killing an
exquisite bird such as a pheasant, or a noble beast such
as an antlered stag I should prefer to lose my own
little finger. It won't do to tell me I don't know
what "sport" is. I have been out on the glaciers
with chamois-hunters and have seen more chamois on
rock and snow than half the sportsmen of Norfolk.
I have been with the hunt of wild deer in Fontaine-
bleau Forest. I have lived for many years in Surrey,
Sussex, and Kent surrounded by big preserves : the
pheasants troop across my lawn here all day long (I
prefer them to peacocks) and all my life my holidays
have been passed in the moors, woods, and hills. And
I say your modern battue is a vulgar and ignoble
butchery and as for a " big drive " being the type of
country enjoyment, I say it is the ruin of the country,
and the occupation of those who know nothing of the
country.
GAME PRESERVING AND BATTUES 407
No one ever hears a confirmed battue-man show
the smallest interest in the country as Nature. He is
blind to its loveliness ; deaf to the endless chirp, call,
and notes of the songsters, the "moan of doves in
immemorial elms," the sough of the pine wood ; he
has no scent for the fragrance of earth, and bank, and
heath. He drowns the wild thyme with tobacco
smoke the only songster he cares for is the croak
and screech of the pheasant. All he wants are plenty
of stolen eggs and a crack place in the firing line.
For this he pays in bank-notes, and swaggers about it
at his club for a week. When you meet him at a
country house or even at a town dinner-party, he can
talk of nothing but his last " bag " " Sir George can
show you better sport than Lord S." and when he
dies, the only truthful epitaph that could be graven on
his tomb is that of Graf von Zahdarm's in Sartor
Resartus, "quinquies mille perdrices plumbo confecit."
An evening spent with Sir George's game-keeper would
be more amusing and far more instructive. He does
know something about the secrets of nature and the
ways of animals. He rears hundreds for every one he
kills, and whatever he kills is in the way of trade and
not for amusement. To a man who really loves
nature, sucks in its infinite forms at every pore of his
body, and watches it hour by hour and night and day,
what is called "sport" is a vulgar disturbance, as if
fellows handed round bottled stout whilst we were
trying to listen to a symphony of Beethoven. Few
sportsmen have seen as many moors as I have, for I
have been on the tramp for sixty years. But nothing
would induce me to carry a gun, or anything but a
good stick, possibly a map and a field-glass; nor
would I lie half the morning concealed behind a peat
bank as if I were a gypsy tinker.
There is no room in this little crowded island for
408 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
extensive " preserves," which are the ruin of agriculture
and the source of endless social mischiefs. Woods
swarming with birds close to a great town breed
poachers. The country lad who takes to poaching,
would not dream of stealing ducks off a pond, or hens
from a farmyard. He is the fine " young blood " of
the place, who has a taste for a gentlemanly amuse-
ment. The rotten system of county magistracies
rests much on the game interest. Farming law, and
the practice of leasing land, is built up on game
questions. English rural society with all its old
feudal restrictions and divisions has been evolved out
of the innocent bird. He has avenged the massacre
of his race by ruining British agriculture. Partridge
shooting over dogs in the old way was a simple thing,
and when the population of our island was one fourth
what it is to-day harmless enough, however vapid.
But nowadays, with hundreds of thousands of rich
men ready to spend any money to be " in the fashion,"
it is found more profitable in many counties to leave
large tracts of lands more or less in a state of nature
than to cultivate them in a regular way. Forestry is
an unknown art. The woods are best left in their
native tangle. Pheasants grow constantly in price,
and timber falls. High-class farmers with capital will
not take your game conditions. So farms go to the
thriftless and more squeezable tenants ; and if these
are defaulters and have to quit, the birds stay on, all
the more, if the land lies waste.
The idea that landlords shoot on their own lands is
an old-world convention. The great proportion of
"preserves" are let to outsiders, like furnished houses
in Brighton or Belgravia during the season. The
outsiders are men with money, usually from a big
trading centre. The demand for "shootings" grows
like that for motor-cars, as the luxury of the rich and
GAME PRESERVING AND BATTUES 409
a passport to "society." The Kaffir millionaire, the
Colonial boss, who wants to offer to royalty a bag of
5000 per week, will give sums that run into six figures
for a first-class shooting property. From him down-
wards, to the syndicates of sporting butchers and smart
bill-brokers, there is an unlimited market for sporting
rents. Distressed owners have discovered not gold
mines on their estates but game, which, one way
with another, will bring in better returns than low-
class farms. So that in large tracts of English land,
and still more in Scotch land, agriculture goes out of
fashion and game takes its place. In the home
counties, one may see miles of land quickly sinking
into prairie condition, where the profits of wild things
exceed those of laborious cultivation. The woods
drop into swampy thickets ; forestry costs money and
disturbs the game : hedge-rows and fences are left to
decay in gaps and fragments ; gates, barns, and byres
are suffered to rot. The syndicate of tradesmen from
town pays regularly, and does not ask for new drain-
age works, repairs, and reductions, as troublesome
farmers are fond of doing.
I have seen an estate where two or three small
houses with suitable gardens are let to respectable
tenants retired soldiers and professional men, who
keep their own places trimly cared for. But
thousands of acres round them have been allowed to
go waste for years, being leased for "sport" to a
syndicate from the City. The woods are pathless
jungles overgrown with brushwood and worthless.
The pastures are masses of thistles, brambles, gorse
and dock-weed, wherein thickets of young saplings
have sown themselves and are forming little copses of
their own. Ant-heaps weighing many cwts. stud the
soil and afford ample food for the birds. Miles of
fencing, hedge-rows, and hurdling are going to wrack
410 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
and ruin, and no longer would enclose a cow or a
sheep, even if the pasture allowed them to feed. The
casuals who are called the beaters break in wherever
it suits them : so big gaps and broken gates invite the
tramp or the gypsy to come along night and day for
anything he can pick up. The unlucky tenants who
have taken farms and residences on the property find
their holding covered with thistle-down, overrun with
rabbits, birds, vermin of every kind with which the
lands round them swarm. No care can keep their
gardens and meadows in good order in the neighbour-
hood of such a plague. No wonder the "landed
interest is distressed."
We need not fear that the means of healthy
exercise are cut off, if this small island ever ceases to
be a collection of shooting-boxes. The world is still
wide enough for big game for those who crave for it.
There is good sport and dangerous too in the
Rockies and Africa is a big continent and far from
exhausted. Let us encourage these gentry who
cannot live without killing to take a turn at tigers.
I don't mean in a howdah on an elephant which is
not a very noble sport but real tiger-hunting on
foot, or killing leopard from a tree. That they tell
me is exciting and far from easy. But there is a form
of sport which might really be practised with great
benefit to the community, and would call out great
qualities in the hunter. India and many other parts
of the East, as of South America, suffer continually
from venomous snakes and other reptiles. A man
who could bring home 1000 skins of rattle-snakes
would really have something to boast of. Good sport
may still be had with the larger saurians though it is
a beggarly game to lie on a bank and shoot a crocodile
asleep with an explosive bullet. All that need be said
is this. There are still upon this planet masses of
GAME PRESERVING AND BATTUES 411
powerful and very noxious creatures whose numbers
it would be a service to mankind to reduce. And the
reducing them, without taking the unfair advantage
of modern fire-arms, would be a real test of skill and
pluck.
The world is wide enough for fifty forms of active
exertion, with or without special risks, if that is all
that is wanted. Even our island has room for plenty
of healthy sport, which can be indulged in without
ruining the country and without outrageous expense.
The fashionable craze for drives and battues is vulgar
swagger to air one's purse and one's fine friends.
There is neither active exercise nor enjoyment of
nature in waiting on a seat about a damp cover for
hours till the beaters have done their task. The
" true sportsman " is the last man in the world to
notice the loveliness of the land or to care for it if he
did. If he says "he cares for a day's shooting because
it takes him on to the moors," he might as well say he
loves going to Church because it lets him see some
new pretty faces ! When I tramp over a Westmor-
land moor, or a Ross-shire deer-forest, I go alone with
a stout stick and a field-glass ; my course is directed
by the heights whence I get the most glorious views ;
what I hunt is a mountain burn to its rock fall or its
head spring ; I can watch the grouse, or the peewit,
or the heron, hour after hour without any wish to
kill : the black-nosed ram, the Highland cattle, or the
antlered stag, are alike a sight of joy and freshness.
I would as soon kill any one of the three. Or if I
had to spare one, it should be the buck.
'THE GLORIOUS TWELFTH'
AUGUST 1890
I AM amused (as I often am at this season) by the
ebullitions of the enthusiastic sportsman over the
return of " The Glorious Twelfth " the Feast of
Saint Grouse who has superseded all the saints in
the British calendar. Hear the other side of the
matter from one who loves the moors much too well
to carry a gun when he walks over them. I have
known the moors and the mountains for more than
fifty years j and I think few people have ever drawn
from them more health, happiness, and abiding
memories of beauty and peace. Ever since I was a
boy I have loved the heather and the wild fowl, and
the deer, and all feathered and furred things. Scores
and scores of times I have spent days in watching the
antlered bucks, and have traced the chamois in the
Alps as they troop down to drink ; I have heard the
grouse swirl up from almost every moor in Scotland,
from the Cheviots to Skye and from Arran to Dun-
robin. I have seen, perhaps, as much of the hills as
most sportsmen ; but I never thought it would add to
my enjoyment of them to kill anything. To us who
really love the moors for their loveliness and pathetic
rest, and their solitary simplicity, all this noisy
swagger about killing birds is mere cant. As "the
412
'THE GLORIOUS TWELFTH' 413
Twelfth " comes round we know that our peaceful
and lovely hills are being stormed by a crowd of
people who care nothing for nature, and whose talk
is of bags, and gillies, and luncheons. The effect is
as if, when we are taking a quiet walk in some
beloved nook in a well -known forest, we stumble
suddenly on a holiday party making picnic, and our
choice haunt is become like a corner of " the hill "
on a Derby Day. Some years ago I took my wife
and boys to visit a beautiful historic ruin which
poetry, art, and a long chain of glorious reminiscences
have made a place of pilgrimage to all who speak the
English language. As ill-luck would have it, that
very day and spot had been chosen for their annual
picnic by 2000 " trippers " on pleasure bent. They
seemed to be enjoying themselves ; and, as far as
nigger minstrelsy, steam roundabouts, and donkey-
races could give enjoyment, I trust they had it. But
we had little. For a short space we tried to admire
the magnificent ashlar masonry of the Donjon, the
exquisite tracery of the chapel windows, and to recall
the passages of our great writers which lingered in our
memory. But it was not to be. And I recommend
all who visit those venerable ruins of the piety of our
forefathers to avoid anniversaries dedicated to the
outing of the tripper.
I will not enter on the big question of game and
" sport," in other words, the slaughtering of harmless
animals for amusement. So long as I am not
expected to join I shall not interfere with the amuse-
ments of others. Personally, if I were compelled to
kill something, I would rather shoot a broken-down
cab-horse than a buck or a pheasant. I should at
least feel that I had put a poor thing out of its misery,
and that I had not wantonly destroyed a beautiful
creature. But on that wide topic I will not enlarge.
4H MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
If persons assure us that they are never really happy
unless when they are killing something, we must take
their word for it. What I complain of is, that they
should pretend their killing to be mere love of
nature, or that " sport " adds a fresh charm to the
glory of the hills. On the contrary, many of us
look on it as a stupid, noisy, vulgar desecration
of hill and moor, of loch and fell. Those who
really enjoy them love them for themselves, and
not for the " bag " and the " drive " and the
champagne luncheons and the company of gillies in
kilt and tartan. All that apparatus of the deer-forest
and the paraphernalia of sport can be hired by any
cockney with money in Pall Mall and Bond Street ;
these things are no more a proof of taste or of spirit
than are powdered footmen or a coach and fine team.
People who find all these costly appendages necessary
to enable them to enjoy a walk over a moor, do not
really enjoy the moor either with them or without
them. They might just as well tell us that they
only enjoy pictures when they are waltzing or
dancing a cotillon in the gallery, or that to enjoy
music you must be free to promenade in the concert-
room and chat with your friends.
The last time I went down to Perthshire I took
care to go in June. What will you do when you get
there ? my friends said ; there is nothing to kill.
No, I told them, that is why I am going now ; I am
going to see the moors. And they thought that sheer
midsummer madness. Would that sportsmen could
have seen the late snow on the caps of Ben More and
Schiehallion, as they rose in the distance over the
moors of Breadalbane, and heard the call of the
curlews, and watched the white gulls fishing in the
reaches of the Tay, or seen the blaze of gold from
gorse and broom on Murthly moor, or listened to the
'THE GLORIOUS TWELFTH' 415
roar of the Tummel and the Bran in spate. The
Highlands in June are full of glory and of peace.
The glens are resplendent with blossom and leaf; the
burns are bursting with their springtide floods ; the
moors are one broad home of calm and abounding life.
And it is all one's own ; it is all nature's, and theirs
who love nature, beauty, and natural life. Those
sportsmen who pant for the freedom of the hillside
are talking scandal in Hyde Park or sweltering in
stuffy ball-rooms. Bond Street tradesmen are puffing
their patent guns, boots, luncheon luxuries, and
wonderful inventions to enable ladies and gentlemen
to turn Sutherlandshire into Mayfair. The year
draws on ; half the summer is gone ; the Minister,
for the seventeenth time, really does hope that the
House will rise next week. The sacred day arrives,
and all peace and beauty are gone. Gangs of smart
people pour over the country of Rob Roy, with Hyde
Park barouches and Belgravian footmen. Lord's,
Hurlingham, Henley, and Ascot are played over
again amid the heather and the tarns. A compound
essence of Monte Carlo, Wiesbaden, and Royat is
dished up on the desolate solitudes of the Grampians.
It's all "awfully jolly," very smart indeed, and every-
thing is really the last thing out. The Glorious
Twelfth has come back.
We who love the mountains for themselves, and
the grouse, the deer, and the salmon, as the natural
inmates of the mountains and the lochs, look with
mixed feelings on all this hullabaloo about killing
animals as Society's Bank Holiday trip. One is
pleased that any fellow -mortal should be pleased ;
and we are not disturbed if they who live to kill
regard all who enjoy the moor without killing as
milksops. But to any mountaineer accustomed to the
peaks and passes of the Oberland or the Bernina, these
416 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
feats of the grouse-killer do not seem quite so heroic.
To a traveller who has sought for beauty, and drank in
health on a thousand hillsides throughout Europe, it
seems a bit of cockney swagger to turn the Highlands
into one big Hurlingham where the killing of birds
is the excuse for gowns, luncheon baskets, and pony
phaetons. When a short Act is passed making it
penal to kill a vertebrate animal except in the way of
trade, it will be possible to enjoy the hills, the moors,
forests, and copses of this beautiful island all the year
round. Till that day arrives, let those who love the
Highlands go there before the " Glorious Twelfth of
August " comes round.
THE JOLLY GIRL
1882
I WAS not a little confused the other day by the
question of a brilliant French lady, who knows
English homes to the core, "What has come to your
girls of late ?" said she. "The ravissante Miss, who
used to be our idol, has taken to cigarettes and New-
market coats." I begged her not to take so seriously
the passing whims of fashion. I urged that our girls
are as beautiful as ever, and in this callisthenic age
both healthier in body and freer in mind. "I say
nothing against their looks and their spirits," said she ;
" the hunting and boating and tennis for which you
all seem to live, will, I daresay, improve their figures,
if it does not ruin their health. What I cannot
endure in a girl is a taste for the ways of men, and
not of the best men what your Charivari calls the
awfully jolly girl." My national pride was wounded
by this, for I had always believed that if there was
anything of which England possessed the secret, it
was how to produce the English girl. Long had I
dreamed of "the not impossible she" ; and years and
years ago I had wooed and won her at last. Can it
be true, methought, that we are breeding a kind of
girl of whom such things can be said ? This new and
engaging freedom of theirs, is it all as it should be ?
417 2E
4i 8 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
I fell a-thinking about our new manners and resolved
to use my eyes. The philosophy of clothes is
complete ; and no philosophic mind overlooks the
subtle correlations of clothes and soul. Nor am I
hard to please in the fashions of the day. I often
think I see some of the creations of Reynolds and
Romney step down from the frame and move amongst
us all glowing with life. Nay, I have only a good-
natured smile for those passionate figures in faded
green who give couleur locale to the " private view."
The beauty of dress, I protest, is no longer an extinct
art. But what are we to say to the clothes of the
jolly girl ? An epicene slip of a thing does she love
to make of herself ! At fifty yards off you would
think she was still in the school-room ; the slim Kate
Greenaway costume-bebe suggests the playground and a
game of romps. No ! she has seen twenty, and has
had her offers. Were I a marrying man I should
wait, I think, till she grew to be more like a woman.
A style of the day, which I find even harder to
bear than that of the grown-up baby, is the lady's
version of the horsey youth. She has borrowed his
billycock hat, his dog's-ear collar, his knowing breast-
pocket, his gloves, his buttons, and his boots. Her
hair is cut short, like a curly boy's ; her jacket is
made by a London tailor ; Newmarket has given its
fiat to her horseman's overcoat ; and the flower in the
button-hole is the last word of Piccadilly. Nor let
us forget the whip, for no family that respects itself
can live without collies all over the place. And a girl
of this persuasion could as little be seen without her
dog -whip as a Guardsman without a button -hole.
She has contrived, too, to spoil what I take to be as
pleasant a sight as the animated world affords a fine
woman sitting well on a fine horse. The poetry of
motion is dismally turned into prose by the habit cut
THE JOLLY GIRL 419
square at the ankle, the visible trousers and jockey
boots. The theory is, as we all know, that the fair
rider in Rotten Row is fresh from a run across
country. The melancholy fact is that she has some-
what the look of a stable-boy who has thrown on a
skirt. My French friend is so far right ; it is difficult,
indeed, to think of this female Tally-ho as entirely a
thing of beauty. The women who copy the ways of
men at best succeed in resembling boys. The special
habits and interests of men, their athletic and sporting
tastes, their melancholy experience of what is called
" life," can no more be appropriated by a girl than our
topboots and riding-breeches. She only approaches
that unnatural monster, the boy who is aping a man.
I am not so old or such a misanthrope but that I find
myself at times amongst young people at a dance or a
garden party. I see a handsome young fellow from
Aldershot talking to a fine girl, the picture of youth
and grace. "They are flirting, I hope, as they
should," says a match-making old thing. Flirting !
my dear lady ; he has been telling her about that
awfully jolly run with the Ouorn, don't you know.
And now she is asking him with an anxious look if it
is really true that No. 7 is not fit. For an hour, as I
sat within hearing on the bench, she has patiently
committed to memory the merits of barrack after
barrack and station after station a form of feminine
curiosity which he has but languidly satisfied, though
he has no other topic with which to entertain her.
" Aldershot," says he, " is such an awfully jolly place,
don't you know." " Is it really ? " says she, with
feeling. " I mean," says he, " such a jolly place to
get away from." And she knows who is bound to
win the mile race unless Jigger Mowbray can stand
the training, which is not to be thought of, don't you
know. And so they go on, from mere habit, talking
420 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
the talk of the smoking-room, or so much of it as can
be dribbled into the ears of a pure young girl. By
all that is sacred, I glow with shame when I see a
beautiful woman thus put off her sex, when she
certainly can never put on ours.
What are they to gain, these favourites of the
regiment and the hunt, that they thus humble them-
selves, that they so disfigure and weary themselves in
laboriously ceasing to be women ? It is not husbands,
assuredly, they are seeking. Our young friend from
Aldershot does not trouble himself to flirt with girls ;
he has not the remotest idea of marriage ; nor, indeed,
has his fair partner, at least with the like of him.
She is not thinking of fascinating him at all ; would,
indeed, that she were ! Marriage is an affair of
carriages and horses ; for these she must look to older
men, and she does not like older men. No ! she is
only filling her appointed part, the awfully jolly girl,
which her society expects her to be. Dolly and
Darling, Judy and Jo, have to do it, and so must she.
And so the poor child waits wearily in cold or rain,
through the interminable "sports," whilst hairy men
with bare legs pant round and round the ring ; and
she sits in a cloud of tobacco through the endless
cricket-match ; nor does she blench if she chance to
be spattered with blood and feathers at Hurlingham.
And all these long hours she has to listen to the
wonderful story, how the bay mare threw a splint,
how Tubby Talbot won the cup, and what came of
the row at the Rag and Famish. She is indeed weary
of it all ; but she will never be a jolly girl if she
cannot bear it. I wonder if she knows how little
men really care for this strange receptivity of hers.
To the young fellow this girl with her manly
acquirements just so far ceases to be woman without
advancing a step towards man. She listens to him as
THE JOLLY GIRL 421
the fag at school listens to the big fellow in the boat
or the eleven. It is pleasant to him that the young
'un wears skirts and has lips even ruddier than a fag.
It is pleasant to him ; but not wholly to us elders and
fathers. And then the young one is not really a boy,
in the way to be a man. The soft hands will never
hold bat or oar in earnest. Thus the talk goes loung-
ing on in that hollow way, much as we catch it across
a railway bar. The tones are perhaps more polite ;
but can any one say that the sense is better ?
I do not set up for a moralist ; it is no business of
mine to preach about frivolity and vice. My only
philosophy is to think nothing human as alien to me.
When I was a young fellow, if youths and maidens
met, silly as might be the talk, there was always a
lurking idea that we were still in the presence of
women. Girls in my time expected us to treat them
on the assumption that they were women, or that
they very soon would be. If you could not entertain
them, as women all the world over love to be enter-
tained, they turned to one another and amused them-
selves. When we sat with a sweet young thing in
the verandah as the band played the last notes of
" Kathleen Mavourneen " we had something, I vow,
to talk about beside cricket averages, the club cigars,
and the right cut of a bulldog's ears. And as we
never saw cigarettes in the lips of our partners, it
never occurred to us to smoke between the dances.
I have no turn for satire ; but I love to watch our
social moods and to trace them to their causes and
effects. And perhaps we may note three things at
least which have led to the changes we see. I suppose
the work began with that wave of athleticism which
of late has swept over the land, turning the heads of
not a few lads and importing some laughable customs j
but, if its effect upon men was more or less manly and
422 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
wholesome, its effect indirectly on women was perhaps
a more doubtful gain. When the gymnastic idol was
set up, and the muscular type of virtue became the
whole duty of man, there were found English girls to
suppose it the whole dUty of woman. Physically, it
may be, it strengthened those whom it did not
slaughter outright. But as the girl could after all
only join in the new worship as a proselyte of the
gate, she fell into the social position of the "lower
school " at a cricket match. The jolly girl, in fact,
became a fag. When athletics are the business of
life, the tone of society is naturally set by men. Was
not a second cause at work in the triumphs of the
famous American beauty ? This fascinating being, I
doubt not, on her own side of the Atlantic has planted
the germs of new feminine epochs. There was nothing
of the playground or hunt about her ; her important
discovery was the freedom of her sex. It may be
doubted if our ancient system on this side of the
ocean is duly prepared for such dash, such originality,
such angelic self-possession. The type, however
brilliant, is a perilous one to adopt. For the American
girl, who so startles us at home, has her own traditions
and habits. When she shook from her airy skirts the
conventions of the Old World, she founded the conven-
tions of the New. At home she reigns still, and imposes
her law on men, concerning herself but little about mess-
rooms and gun-clubs. Young ladies, you who think
of adopting her adorable freedom of manner, be sure
that you also adopt her shrewd and original spirit.
A word, too, as to another thing. It has been
thought the happiness of this kingdom that its throne
is girt about by a princely family, of high spirit and
singular popularity. Wherever our golden youth
most loves to congregate, there do we find our
princes in their midst. And the ideal of life which
THE JOLLY GIRL 423
these Royal soldiers and sailors have impressed on
our modern society, is an ideal perhaps more easily
attained by men than it ever can be by women. So
tremendous, indeed, is the pace in the new Imperial
sweepstakes that only the most jolly of their sex can
expect to attain a place. But be the causes three or
three hundred the result is a curious social inversion.
The relative place of men and women is reversed in
this rapid and dazzling world. Of old, the idea was
that in things social the woman was mistress, queen,
and leader. Men, in her presence, were to study her
tastes and submit to her law. If they could not exist
without tobacco they might go elsewhere ; if they
wanted to be killing something, to a shooting party ;
and the matches discussed in a drawing-room had
nothing to do with Lord's.
One is curious to know how these young bloods
and subalterns regard the women who have got by
heart their mess gossip, who have betting-books on
the garrison sports, and will sit half the day to see
pigeons mangled. Is such an one a girl we care to
think of as wife, as the mother of the children to be,
as all that woman should be and is in the world ? I
can imagine nothing more ruinous to womanly nature
than the ways and the talk of a rather precocious lad.
Is there not a bloom upon an English girl of the best
old type that the camp and cricket-ground will hardly
improve ? Purity, simplicity, health, courage, grace,
and goodness, attended, like the good fairy, to bless
her birth. Do mothers or fathers imagine that the
winners of cups and sweepstakes have better gifts to
impart ? I can remember what a keen old lady said
once to a mother who was mourning her lot in having
no daughter " Be thankful, my dear, you have none.
In these days, who knows ? she might have turned
out a jolly girl ! "
MAN AND THE BRUTES
1900
[Address to the Humanitarian League.]
IT was with all the more pleasure that I accepted your
invitation to speak on the relations of Man to the
Lower Animals, because I feel that sound views about
them go to the very root of a right understanding of
Humanity itself, and are of vital importance to the
future of our own race. We cannot understand, or
respect, or rightly educate Mankind, until we come
to understand, to respect, and to do our duty by the
Animal kind. And our whole ethical system, I will
add, must be undermined, perverted, poisoned, if we
cannot learn to put the relations of Man to the Lower
Animals on a healthy, scientific, social, and religious
basis. To me, human nature is unintelligible apart
from a right conception of animal nature in the sum ;
human duty involves and includes duty towards the
animal kingdom, of which we are only a part ; and
religion, as I understand it, implies religious reverence
and a sense of religious sympathy with the vast animal
world, of which we are the head.
I do not admit any contrast between Man and
Animals. Man is an Animal, and only the first
amongst the Animals, and that in no absolute sense.
424
MAN AND THE BRUTES 425
I do not know what the Rights of Man are much
less shall I talk about the Rights of Animals. The
only moral Right of Man that I recognise is the Right
to do his Duty. And the only Rights of Animals
that I know are the Mutual Duties of Man and the
Lower Animals.
I had better come to the point at once, even at the
risk of paining some who hear me, by saying that I
regard man's morality towards the Lower Animals
to be a vital, and indeed fundamental part of his
morality towards his fellowmen. I refuse to treat it
as an extra, an appendix, or finishing touch super-
added to our ethical creed. I do so, because I do not
know what Ethics can mean, if it be not the due
ordering of our own complex nature (a large and
indispensable part of which is animal] towards the
vast organic world in which we find ourselves. Of
that organic world, the Animal Kingdom is the pre-
dominant part, as Man is only the predominant
member of the Animal Kingdom. That is, Man
does not differ from Animals, in the same way that
Animals differ from Vegetables, or Vegetables differ
from Minerals or Rocks. Zoologically speaking, he
is classed amongst Primates^ as one of the highest
order of mammals. His physical, moral, intellectual,
and therefore his spiritual, nature does not organically
differ in kind from those of the highest mammals. It
differs only in degree, and by a vast hereditary and
secular evolution. And it does not differ in degree
absolutely and invariably.
Scientific Ethics are founded upon analysis of man's
composite qualities affective, practical, intellectual
and that harmony between all these and the organic
and inorganic world that environs us, which is best
fitted to secure the full development of our whole
nature. I know no other basis for Ethics but this.
426 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Well ! I say the higher mammals share with us, in
some perceptible degree, the various qualities qualities
of feeling, of action, of intelligence. They share all
of these qualities in some degree, and some of them
in a very high degree. And not only do the higher
mammals show them, but even some of the lower
mammals, even all vertebrates, show germs of these
qualities nay, some of them are occasionally trace-
able here and there in the invertebrate world.
Consider what are the essential instincts or pro-
pensities of man. They are the instincts of (i)
Nutrition, (2) Sex, (3) Parenthood, (4) Destruction,
(5) Construction, (6) Love of Power, (7) Love of
Praise, (8) Attachment, (9) Reverence, (10) Kindness
or Love. No one denies that all these instincts are
found in a marked degree in some or other of the
lower animals. Obviously all brutes have the instincts
of nutrition, sex, maternity, destruction. Many, of
course, have these qualities in far more energetic forms
than man. No one denies that some animals show
constructive instincts, love of power, and of praise
beavers, birds, ants, bees have the first ; elephants,
dogs, and monkeys certainly have the other two. As
to attachment, dogs often show it in a degree even
rare in man. Of reverence we can say the same.
Most domestic animals show the last kindness, good-
ness, love. Most of the nobler mammals show germs
of all our moral characteristics.
As to man's qualities of character : ( I ) Courage,
(2) Cautiousness, (3) Resolution, brutes have them
all. Many animals are as brave as man, so that the
natural man calls himself as brave as a lion, or a
leopard, or a game-cock, or an eagle. Dogs, horses,
foxes, elephants, rats, swallows, and trout, are exces-
sively wary in danger, and most of the same animals,
especially dogs, cats, foxes, pigs, and elephants exhibit
MAN AND THE BRUTES 427
wonderful resolution, perseverance, and the will not
to be beaten. It is only in the intellectual qualities
that doubt can exist. No one denies the powers of
observation of such brutes as dogs, cats, foxes, monkeys,
and elephants. Powers of abstraction, reflection,
generalisation, are often denied to brutes. But all of
these can be found distinctly marked in some dogs,
monkeys, and elephants. They have shown faint
germs of the power to count, to reason, to classify.
And no one denies to brutes the power of expression
by gesture, by mimicry, and by sounds.
Here, then, we have all the affective, active, and
intellectual qualities of man traceable in other mammals,
although of course the higher qualities are only trace-
able in germ, and no mammal exhibits anything like
the completeness and due co-ordination of qualities
found in man. Not only are all the qualities of man
traceable in brutes, but all the institutions and habits
consequent on these qualities are traceable in brutes
that is, in faint germ, in a few species, or in rare
specimens of the species. Brutes have a marked and
sometimes a beautiful family life ; they are capable of
tribal life ; monkeys, beavers, bees, and ants, are
capable of organised activities and industries. Many
brutes provide for a distant future ; many amuse them-
selves in play ; many are highly inquisitive ; many
are exceedingly sociable and communicative. I believe
that some tribes of apes and some dogs can talk, at
least can communicate ideas and wants. Some have
instituted systems of education ; and we can even
trace the germs of conscience and of worship.
The result of all this is, that the lower animals are
not separated from us by any absolute gulf, but are our
feebler, undeveloped, younger brothers, as it were ;
below us in degree, in development, in education, in
educable capacity, but not below us absolutely in kind.
428 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
Some very rare examples of animals are superior in
intellect to some very degraded human beings ; some
depraved men are much more brutal than some brutes.
Neither morally, nor intellectually, nor by character
are men as far above dogs as dogs are above reptiles or
fishes. In some of the lower stages of civilisation, to
a great extent in Southern Europe to-day, man
regards himself as absolute Lord and Master of the
whole world round him, and he lumps the organic and
inorganic kingdoms in one, and considers himself
entitled to treat all " brutes " with the same absolute
authority and want of sympathy that he shows to a
forest of trees or a mine of coal. He claims the right
to cut, carve, burn all alike mineral, wood, or beast.
None of these, he says, have souls. Non sono Crhtiani
says the Neapolitan driver.
No rational Ethic or general philosophy can be
built upon such a huge and monstrous sophism. Truly
considered, the highest mammals, certainly what we
call the domestic animals, form a part of Humanity, or
are an appendix to Humanity, are the willing slaves or
camp-followers of Humanity, and are its auxiliaries in
the colossal task of ruling, improving, and utilising
the vast world external to man man's organic and
inorganic environment and kingdom. These noble
brutes share man's glorious duty, and they immensely
aid his triumphs over Nature, for, without them, many
of his best creations would be paralysed or impossible.
These noble brutes share too in his moral qualities,
and not seldom they set him most beautiful examples
which nothing human but the tenderest mother and
the most heroic martyr can display. The best of the
brutes most familiar to us, most useful to us, most dear
to us, were it only a pet bird, form a part of our
household, are members of our homes, are inmates of
our family, and they occupy such a place as the wisest
MAN AND THE BRUTES 429
of the Greek philosophers assigned to the slave in the
ancient world. There can be no State, they said,
without Family, and no Family without Slaves. We
may say, far more truly, there can be no Humanity,
in the highest sense, without the Brutes, and no real
Humanity that has not in part incorporated the noblest
and most serviceable of the animal friends and help-
mates of Man.
Some of the earliest and most splendid triumphs of
human civilisation turned on the subjugation, civilisa-
tion, domestication, of the brutes. Until man had
secured the dog, the cat, the ox and the cow, the
horse and the ass, the cock and the pigeon, the sheep
and the pig, the goat and the deer, the camel and the
elephant his final kingdom of this earth was not
secure. Imagine man absolutely cut off from the
service and help of all of these animals, that is, that
they are all wild beasts we see him at once reduced
to the level of the Australian bushman. *
Our relation to the animals, at least to the nobler
mammals, does not form an appendix to our human
morality, much less does it form a distinct branch of
Ethics, or an independent morality by itself. No !
it is part and parcel of our human morality, and is
inwoven with it and inseparable from it. Our duties
towards our lower helpmates form part of our duties
towards our fellow-beings. The highest <c brutes " are
our fellow-beings. Man can only regard himself as
the advance guard, or as the commanding officer and
leader of a vast army of living, sentient, and moral
beings, whose natural function is to use, improve, and
make the best of this wondrous and complex earth.
Not, of course, that this indivisible human morality
requires us to treat in the same way all animals, even
all domestic animals, or to treat any in the same way
as we treat men. Therein lies the sophism and the
430 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
distorted view of some excellent people who forbid
man to do anything to a cow or a sheep that he does
not feel it right to do to his neighbour. In that case
he may not eat an egg, nor drink a cup of milk, which
involves killing or stinting the poor calf; nor could
he shear a sheep to make his coat, and leave the poor
wether to shiver ; nor could he geld a horse or a bull,
in which case the usefulness of the equine and bovine
races would be reduced to a minimum, and involve
much sacrifice of human life. Nor, indeed, could he
drown a kitten or a mouse, in which case mankind
would soon have to retreat to another planet. Human
morality does not require us to treat an infant in arms
as we treat our grown-up sons, or to treat a child as
we treat husband or wife, father or mother, or a Red
Indian as we treat a fellow-citizen, or to behave to a
rude Hottentot exactly as we behave to a cultivated
Frenchman or German. All that scientific and
humane morality teaches and demands is to deal with
the sentient, and in part the sympathetic, animal
world as the living instruments, and to a great extent
as the conscious allies, of Humanity, in its vast and
arduous task of developing its own highest nature, and
also the fair planet whereon its life is cast and its
mighty destiny has to be evolved.
This view of humane Ethics in relation to the
lower animals involves an immense body of derivative
details and practical applications, on which it is im-
possible to enter on this occasion. Every one of
them implies for its right treatment a great mass of
special knowledge and of very cautious deduction
from facts. What I regret, is to see how often
violent doctrines are preached, and furious invectives
are launched without knowledge, without care, and
with complete indifference to any coherent philosophy
or science. I do not intend to imitate such hasty
MAN AND THE BRUTES 431
decision of intricate details, or such vehement con-
clusions from crude and unproven hypotheses. I
came here to speak on Ethical principles, and I keep
to this general issue.
Humane and scientific morality involves our re-
garding ourselves as akin to the whole animal world,
and as fellow- workers with the higher animals and
the domesticated species in the common task of
developing on the planet the noblest type of animal
life. That noblest type is not exclusively human life
in any absolute sense. Man, in his vast secular
evolution, has incorporated a portion of the lower
world so inextricably with himself, that it would be
impossible to separate them, or even to replace the
animals in their native condition. Man has trans-
formed the physical shape, the habits, the needs, the
moral and emotional nature of many animals in a
manner so irrevocable and to a degree so marvellous,
that they could not be put back to their natural state.
To do so, would be to degrade their, and to ruin our
civilisation.
Does this humane and scientific morality absolutely
debar us from doing anything to destroy life, to maim,
or give pain to brutes, even to the higher brutes, to
the domesticated animals ? Certainly not ! To lay
down such an absolute rule would be to put an end to
the domestic species, and thus to the civilisation of
animals, their sympathy and alliance with Man ; and
furthermore to throw man back into the lowest
savagery. Civilisation has been slowly built up after
secular and terrific combat with the other animal races.
It is even possible that Man has only just won the
long battle by the skin of his teeth or the joints of
his hand, and has crushed and kept down some species
that were once his dangerous rivals. In any case, it
is certain that Man's victory has involved enormous
432 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS
slaughter, incessant combat, and incalculable and
indescribable agony.
The maintenance and the development of human
civilisation and in human civilisation is involved
animal civilisation inevitably requires a continuance
of combat, the perpetuation of enormous slaughter,
the infliction of much unavoidable pain. It is the lot
of Humanity, and we have no talisman to exempt the
lower animals, not even those which serve us, much
less those which war against us, plague us, or destroy
us. Countless animal species useless to Man, and
alas ! not a few useful to Man, have disappeared from
the Planet in the long warfare between Man and
Brute ; and, doubtless, many troublesome and noxious
species will have to disappear in the future. Nature
means one vast whirlpool of war, death, and agony
and Man, who did not create it, and cannot control it,
is powerless to vary this law.
What we can do, what we are bound to do, is to
reduce to a minimum this inevitable pain, to stop all
needless slaughter, to avoid waste, and wanton in-
difference to suffering. What death and pain we
inflict must be in strict accord with the necessities
of civilisation, and to the ultimate protection and
amelioration of the vanguard of the animal world as a
whole, of which Man is only the guardian. Above
all, if we deal out death and suffering to the animal
world around us, it behoves us to test our souls most
keenly, that there lurk therein no trace of enjoyment
in the infliction, no brutal insensibility to our action,
no wanton curiosity, no diabolical passion of vanity or
ambition. This is to turn into a curse one of man's
noblest prerogatives and duties.
There is no space here to deal with all the practical
questions that flow from these principles questions
enormously complicated and subtle questions of food,
MAN AND THE BRUTES 433
clothing, labour, science, and amusement. I reserve
them all ; each of them is big enough and difficult
enough to occupy a separate lecture, or rather a whole
work, a night of discussion we may say a lifetime.
And I will only ask you, in conclusion, to consider
how greatly the best poetry and thought of the world
has been strengthened and inspired by due sense of
the claims of brutes, the sympathy and intellect of
animals, and Man's communion with the animals
from Homer's noble picture of Ulysses and his dog
Argus to Cowper's hares, and Burns's field-mouse, and
Matthew Arnold's pets : all the legends about the
Animal World from /Esop to Kipling all the fine
lessons of our literature from Chaucer to Walter Scott.
THE END
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