MEMORIES BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. ReviMd and enlarged Edition (1914). 4J. 6d. net. THE CHILDHOOD OF RELIGIONS. 5*. Edition for Schools, is. 6d. THE STORY OF CREATION. y.ed.ntU A PRIMER OF EVOLUTION. is.6d. PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION FROM THALES TO HUXLEY. 5J.net. {Out 0/ print.) Rationalist Press Association, is. net. STORY OF PRIMITIVE MAN. is. net. STORY OF THE ALPHABET, u. net. MYTHS AND DREAMS. 3J. (>d. TOM TIT TOT : an Essay on Savage Philosophy in FoDc- Tale. 5J. net. (Out 0/ print.) ANIMISM : The Seed of Religion, is. net. JESUS OF NAZARETH : Embracing a Sketch of Jewish History, is. — — Edition for Schools, in two parts, is. 6d. each. — — Rationalist Press Association, is. net. GIBBON AND CHRISTIANITY (Moncure Conway Memorial Lecture), is. net. GRANT ALLEN: a Memoir. 6j. (Out 0/ print.) THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, w. &/. MEMOIR OF HENRY WALTER BATES: Prefaced to Reprint of the Naturalist on the AmoMons. iSf. MEMORIES BY EDWARD CLODD " A friend is a chap what you knows everything about but you hkes him all the same." ^Smith Minor. WITH PORTRAITS THIRD EDITION LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd, 1916 <> ^ <.'>^ V* Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, brunswick st., stamford st., 8.e., and bunoay suffolk. TO MY COMRADE-WIFE 355270 PREFATORY NOTE Friends whose judgment I value have said that a duty lies upon me to set down impressions of some men and women whom it has been my privilege to know more or less intimately. Otherwise, I should not have put pen to paper. If I can make the reader who cares to dip into these pages feel that he and I are having a fireside talk about those of whom portrayal is attempted, my purpose will be achieved. Two reasons prompt me to add a good many letters, (1) because they contain matters of varied interest with which the writers deal familiarly, and (2) because they give me warrant to say with York Powell : " I have met men I am proud to think about," and, I would add with him, that *' if they have cared for me half as much as I have cared for them, I have not been badly loved." E. C. Strafford House, Aldeburgh, September 1916. CONTENTS I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY GRANT ALLEN W. K. CLIFFORD T. H. HUXLEY SIR HENRY THOMPSON HERBERT SPENCER SIR WILLIAM HUGGINS R. A. PROCTOR H. W. BATES . JOSEPH THOMSON PAUL B. DU CHAILLU MARY HENRIETTA KINGSLEY EDWARD WHYMPER WILLIAM SIMPSON EDWARD FITZGERALD . SIR ALFRED COMYN LYALL J. COTTER MORISON F. YORK POWELL . SIR JOHN RH^S . SIR LAURENCE GOMME XIV GEORGE MEREDITH PAQS 1 21 37 40 46 50 54 50 63 60 71 75 83 86 92 90 111 122 131 134 138 XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII CONTENTS OEOROE 0I8SING . W. HOLMAN-BUNT ANDREW LANG F. HINDE8 GROOME J. A. PICTON . . . . MONCURE D. CONWAY . REV. CHARLES VOYSEY . REV. CHARLES ANDERSON SAMUEL BUTLER . ELIZA LYNN LINTON DR. GEORGE BIRD SIR RICHARD AND LADY BURTON SIR B. W. RICHARDSON . PAUL BLOUfiT GEORGE W. CABLE L. P. AUSTIN XXIV PROFESSOR A. VAN MILLINGEN INDEX PAOK 165 196 207 217 227 237 243 248 254 264 270 271 271 278 274 276 278 288 LIST OF PORTRAITS To face page GRANT ALLEN . . . . . . . .20 T. H. HUXLEY ........ 40 P. B. DU CHAILLU ....... 70 MARY H. KINGSLEY 74 SIR ALFRED LYALL ....... 98 J. COTTER MORISON 110 A NATIVE AUSTRALIAN CHRISTIAN .... 124 GEORGE MEREDITH 138 GEORGE GISSING 164 ANDREW LANG ....... 206 SAMUEL BUTLER 254 ELIZA LYNN LINTON 264 MEMORIES A Fragment of Autobiography I WAS born at Margate on the first of July 1840. The brig of which my father was captain traded between that port and the North. My parents hved in Queen Street, Margate, till my early childhood, when they re- moved to Aldeburgh, of which town both were natives. I come of sailor and farmer stock. The ancestors on my fathei^'s side lived, some at Parham and some at Fram- lingham; my maternal grandfather was a Greenland whaler. Among the scanty memories of boyhood I recall one item of interest. In May 1845 Sir John Franklin's ships, the Erebus and Terror, anchored in Aldeburgh Bay. My father went on board the Erebus, and talking with Sir John about the difficulties to be met when he reached the vast ice region, the " heroic sailor soul " said, " If I can't cut through it, I'll bite it." Tables whether of long or short descent have never greatly interested me ; compared to the time of man's ^ tenure of the earth they are all so recent ! To trace his divergence, and that of the ape, from a common stem through an ageless past, and to learn the story of the tribulation through which man has entered into his kingdom, is to me a more fascinating subject than search after pedigrees.^ ^ Writing to a friend on the like matter, Huxley says : " My own genealogical inquiries have taken me so far back that I confess the later stages do not interest me." — Life arid Letters, Vol. II. p. 5. B MEMORIES ^**> .♦_ •« But* I iriu^t corifess to a certain quickening of interest in my ancestry when I learnt that my earthborn name is as old as it is rare. Staying with the late Felix Cobbold, he said to me, " Your name goes a long while back in Suffolk." In proof of this he showed me an entry — Subsidy Returns of the County of Suffolk in 1327. Villata de Otteleye (Otley) Carlford Hundred. Johanne Clod, XII pence. Also, with a leap of more than three centuries, in the Hearth Tax Rates for Suffolk in 1674, one Charles Clod of Debenham, assessed. Enough. Under these dusty records let " The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." Seventy years ago, Aldeburgh, now the haunt of golfers and yachtsmen, retained many of the features of an old fishing and smuggling port which are described with the minuteness and fidelity of a Dutch painting in Crabbe's Borough, The nearest station on the Eastern Counties Railway, as it was then named, was at Ipswich, twenty-four miles distant; hence pas- sengers, parcels and newspapers were dependent on the coach that plied daily between the two places. My memory recalls how, in 1854, when the Crimean War was raging, we schoolboys used to assemble at the Reading Room to await the arrival of The TimeSy from which the Vicar read the news to our excited ears. When, many years later, taking a trip up the Gulf of Finland, I saw the fortresses of Svcaborg and Cronstadt, the past came back to me with a strange vividness. As for books, they were far to seek in any number. The Bible, Pilgrim's Progress and the Holy War, Baxter's Saints* Everlasting Rest, Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs and some odd missionary magazines, com- plete the serious list. I consider myself fortunate that A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 3 it did not include the Lives of Eminent Christians in twelve volumes and the series of death-bed scenes entitled The Family Sepulchre which my friend Nevinson tells us, in his delightful Between the Acts, were among the Sunday books of his boyhood. But then Hervey was a host in himself ! As for the secular, there were, to the joy of a boy avid for reading, some volumes of the Penny Encyclopcedia, Peter Parley^s Annual, a small edition of Buffon's Natural History and a few school prizes, among which were Scenes and Sketches from the Bible and Maria Hack's (she was a sister of Bernard Barton, whose daughter Edward FitzGerald married) Lectures at Home. I have heard my mother say that she was one of the crowd of girls who cried over Pamela, or Virtue Re- warded ; but that ponderous novel had disappeared from our shelves, and neither fiction nor fairy tales found a place on them. Nor was there a Shakespeare. Of course, all worldly books and toys were tabu on Sunday. That day was filled by morning and evening attendances at chapel, and afternoons at the Sunday school, where we sang, among other hymns, one whose unintended effect is the manufacture of prigs. " I thank the goodness and the grace Which on my birth has smiled. And made me in this Christian land A happy English child. I was not born as thousands are Where God is never known, And taught to pray a useless prayer, To blocks of wood and stone. My God, I thank Thee, who hast planned A better lot for me. And placed me in this happy land Where I can hear of Thee." 4 MEMORIES But the priggish and the pitiful were blended. The missionary box was always under our eyes, and in our cars the lesson of our debt to heathen countries for all the nice things which came from them. What better could we do than imitate the pattern set in a recent American hymn-book for Young Helpers ? *' Now, thought little Jack, What can I send back To these lands for their presents to me ? The Bible, indeed, Is all that they need, So that shall go over the sea." The religion taught me was in truth " the fear of the Lord " ; the object being to frighten me into being good through threat, even for venial sins, of an eternal hell " Where sinners must with devils dwell In darkness, fire and chains.'* As for heaven the attractive prospect to a high-spirited boy was of a place " Where congregations ne'er break up, And Sabbaths have no end," while his wholesome zest in life, feeling " it in every limb," was to be stifled by the maudlin wish in the Sunday school hymn — " I want to be an angel, And with the angels stand, A crown upon my forehead. And a harp within my hand." Happily, once challenged, a spurious religion of that sort yields to revolt of the reason and to the sense of justice which is strong in a child. I cannot remember that the creed I was taught was ever very real to me. A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 5 Strict as was the discipline, and narrow as was the teaching, both were begotten of anxious care for the spiritual well-being of the child. Looking back, one sees that there was compensation in the knowledge gained of the contents of the Bible and in the committal of large portions of it to memory. For that I cannot be too thankful. But it was not until the time of my escape in early manhood from the theory (nowadays confined to the illiterate) that the Bible is inspired in every word and letter — an inspiration which would be worthless if it did not include all the translations — ^that I realized the supreme value of that miscellaneous col- lection of writings of unsettled authorships and often of uncertain meaning.^ Those who may have read what I have written else- where will not suspect me of any recantation when I say that the neglect into which the study of the Bible ^ There are scarcely any two great branches of the Christian Church which are even agreed as to what constitutes the Bible. — The Bible, its Meaning and Supremacy, by F. W. Farrar, Dean of Canterbury. ' ' Explain it how we may, there was something in the Hebrew genius which enabled it to express the moral and spiritual experiences of successive ages in forms which had a singular attractiveness for the mixed races with whom lay the moulding of the future world. That its history was false, its morality often imperfect, and in its earlier records repugnant, i.3 now extensively admitted. My final word is that the Bible is not dead but has an indefinite if not immortal life before it; for the entire abandonment of supernatural claims, so far from lessening its influence, will confirm and extend it." — Man and the Bible, J. A. Picton, p. 315. What will be the attitude of mind towards the Bible on the part of boys and girls who are asked to explain such fatuities as the reforms in religion made by Jehu and Joash; who are Baruch, Huldah and Necho; and how Athaliah and Josiah died? These questions are copied from a list set by a fool of an examiner whose folly, though he were *' brayed in a mortar,'* could not be squeezed out of him. *Tis pedants of this type that cause their pupils to associate the Bible with all that is arid and repellent and to throw it aside when they leave school. 6 MEMORIES has fallen nowadays is matter for grave concern. AVhere used at all in schools, it is made a vehicle of dogmatic teaching, while in most families it is never read at all. If you quote it, people look puzzled as to whether your quotation comes from it, or from Sterne or Shakespeare. So the generation is growing up the poorer in remaining ignorant, to cite Huxley (whom none can charge with Bibliolatry), " of a book that has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English History; that is written in the noblest and purest English and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form." ^ I was first sent to a dame school, where the lesson- books were well-nigh as primitive as the horn-books which they had not wholly superseded. For as late as 1845 these were in use in schools in the Midlands. Shenstone thus describes them in the School-mistress : " Eftsoons the Urchins to their Tasks repair. Their Books of Stature small they take in hand, Which with pellucid horn secured are To save from Fingers wet the Letters lair.** In due time I passed to the Aldeburgh Grammar school, of which Mr. Buck was master. " A dominie man ! — an auld dominie, wha keepit a schule and caa'ed it an acaademy ! " Long gathered to his fathers, there remains a debt of abiding gratitude to Joseph Buck. He caned us, but we were none the worse for that. He was of the class of teachers, always rare, who instilled into his scholars a love of learning for its own sake. He practised the motto Non multa sed multum. Outside the three R's, the subjects included only Geography, Grammar, English and Roman History and Latin, in all of which the boys were well groimded. Any idea I Collected Essays, Vol. III. p. 398. A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 7 of teaching science was yet unborn. Athletics played a small part in school life in those days. Bathing in the sea or the river, baseball and fights between the boys of the " acaademy " and the National School — ^these, fanned by the rivalries between the Up-Towners and Down-Towners, into which factions the small town was divided — completed the list of amusements, for amuse- ment there was in fisticuffs with result of bloody noses. To my schoolmaster and to my mother — of blessed memory — keen-witted and herself eager to know what- ever can be known, I owe, in Gibbon's oft-quoted words, " that early and invincible love of reading which I would not exchange for the treasures of India." As I have spoken of my training in a narrow orthodoxy, I am moved to say that my mother's receptive and elastic mind gave her escape from the creed of early years, and, as showing what broad sympathies moved her to the last, among her dying words were those of regret that she could not live to know that the innocence of Dreyfus, of which she had no doubt, would be estab- lished. I rejoice that, living to a great age, she came to know many of my friends ; I treasure the letters which some of them wrote to me when she died; these paying tribute to her intelligence and charm. It was my parents' hope, I may add of that devo- tional age, their prayer, that I should become a minister of the Gospel, as the phrase went. Their wish was the deeper because, as the only surviving child of seven, they desired to dedicate me to the service of their Master. The Baptist preacher whose chapel we at- tended fostered the idea. He set me to write Httle sermons on given texts, which he read and corrected. 8 MEMORIES and whatever trend towards scribbling I then had was further encouraged by him in setting me papers on such ambitious subjects as the " AboHtion of Slavery " and the " Character of Oliver Cromwell." The Baptists were among the active sects in sending anti-slavery missionaries to America, and the fact that our minister's brother had been nearly killed by a mob of slave-owners only added to a zeal which he infused into us to free the negro from his fetters. We meant business ! We boys of the Sunday school read and solemnly discussed our several essays at an " improvement class " held weekly in the chapel schoolroom, when the minister presided. But, all unwittingly, the hopes of parents and parson were dashed to pieces when my mother took me to see the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. To a boy of eleven, whose farthest jaunts had been on holidays to relatives at Framlingham, this was to enter a wonder- land which surpassed all that his mind could conceive. It made me secretly resolve, whatever might block the way, to get to London when I left school. Paying a visit there to an uncle and aunt in the spring of 1855, I seized a chance to offer myself as clerk to an accountant in Cornhill. Laying stress on my rawness, he stipulated that I should serve him six months for nothing. Hence, needful draft on the family purse, and, what was still more needful, my parents' consent to my sitting on a stool instead of standing in a pulpit. This they reluctantly gave. It is easy to be tedious and brief at the same time, and perchance I may avoid the former if I skip altogether some dry details as to the three employers whom I served between 1855 and 1862, when I obtained a clerkship in the London Joint Stock Bank. Ten years A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 9 after that I was promoted to the Secretaryship, from which position I retired in June 1915. Life in London brought the gain of another and far wider outlook and especially supplemented the defici- encies of boyhood by putting me in touch with good libraries. Among these, that of the Birkbeck Institute gave welcome opportunity for study in various branches. I devoured books on science and history, and read on a heap of miscellaneous subjects. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Past and Present were tonics to me. But I did not care, and never have cared, for metaphysics. They were to me, to quote the Book of Job, as " the filling of the belly with the east wind." Jowett said that " we should learn enough about them as will enable the mind to get rid of them." ... " They destroy the power of observation and of acquiring knowledge." ^ Lectures were more the order of the day than they now are, and the town was rich in preachers round whom congregations thronged. As a rule, amusements were too costly for frequent indulgence, but now and again the purse did allow a whole or a half evening ^ at the Haymarket or Sadler's Wells or the Adelphi. At the Haymarket, Buckstone was the great draw; at the Adelphi I saw Madame Celeste, then an old woman, in The Green Bushes. At Sadler's Wells, The Hunch- back, The Love Chase and other plays by James Sheridan Knowles were often performed. He afterwards became a Baptist preacher and wrote books against Popery ! I heard him preach in Cross Street Chapel, Islington, 1 Life and Letters, Vol. II. p. 109. - In those days one was admitted to the theatre at nine o^clock, when the play was half over, by paying half price. Horace Walpole speaks of the riots at Covent Garden and Drury Lane theatres because of the refusal of the managers to admit spectators at half price after the third act.— Letter 863, Vol. I. p. 289 (Toynbee's Edition). 10 MEMORIES and can recall his vivid and dramatic reading of tlLe parable of the Prodigal Son as the lesson before the sermon. The actor survived in the reader. In the matter of church and chapel going my Sundays were usually " well spent." I heard, one after another, preachers now for the most part forgotten, who were a power in their day. Among these were Thomas Binney, Newman Hall, Alexander Raleigh, Canon Liddon, James Martineau (of whom more anon) and, not least of the company, Frederick Denison Maurice and Dr. Jowett, whose heresies incited the bolder clergy to invite him to their pulpits. Among these were Dean Stanley and the Rev. William Rogers of Bishopsgate, known as " Hang Theology Rogers." Later on, friendship with Mark Wilks, Allanson Picton, Moncure Conway and Charles Voysey drew me, as the phrase goes, to " sit under '* them occasionally. To tell of this is to recall a time when the spacious Non- conformist chapels of London were crowded with eager hearers. There was then no need of posters on hoard- ings or of limelight shows to draw men and women to places of worship now kept going by these and other artificial attractions. Not long before his death, Mark Wilks — staunchest of friends, most lovable of men and most eloquent and broad-minded of preachers — said to me : " We Nonconformists are getting flabby. We have no grievances left ; our political and religious disabilities are removed, and there is nothing left about which to fight. Any troubles we may have are from within and not from without. So the one excitement we have left us is when some daring brother preaches doctrines other than those that are set down in the trust deed of the chapel of which he is pastor. Then the trustees, if they arc orthodox, try to eject him. And with the A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 11 advance of the younger generation of Dissenters in the social scale there is, on the one hand, drifting towards the Church of England as more respectable, or, on the other hand, blank indifferentism." Books, more than all; next to these, sermons and lectures, started me on lines of reflection which, ulti- mately, were fatal to the creed taught in boyhood. But the approach to the terminus reached in later years was very slow. The boy must be dull of eye who, living in a flat country, is not impressed by the spectacle of the rising and movements of the stars, and the succession of their constellations which these afford. I loved to watch them and learn their names. Hence an early interest in astronomy. Maria Hack's book set me on the mak- ing of a rude telescope with cardboard tubes, the lenses for which I bought from the local watchmaker. When, later on, Chalmer's Astronomical Discourses came into my hands, I revelled in the book. To this, some time after, followed the reading of the Bridgewater Treatises and other books whose titles I cannot recall. But all of them had, as their main theme, " The power, wisdom and goodness of God manifested in the Creation.'* They started certain lines of thought, and were a sort of sliding scale towards unorthodox views. As I have just said, the arrival was slow. Even Darwin's Origin of Species, which came out when I was reading Bell On the Hand, was not a greatly disturbing force, be- cause, after only hinting that his theory " would throw light on the origin of man and his history," he added that " there is grandeur in the view of life with its several powers having originally been breathed by the Creator into a few forms or only one." Only those who were on the threshold of full manhood 12 MEMORIES in the sixties of the last century can reahze through what a Sturm und Drang period they passed. It was good, and, more than that, it was a glorious thing to be alive. It was an epoch not of Reform, but of Revolu- tion : old things were passing away ; all things were becoming new. 1859 — Annus mirabilis — saw the publication of Dar- win's book, about which everybody knows nowadays, and of Kirchoff's and Bunsen's Spectrum Analysis, not so well known, but a book revealing the story of the same stuff of which all things in heaven and earth are spun. It is interesting to note, by the way, that the same year gave us The Ordeal of Richard Feverel and Adam Bede. In June 1860, at the meeting of the British Associa- tion at Oxford, there was a memorable duel between Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce on the question of man's fundamental relationship to the great apes. Of course the bishop knew nothing about the subject, but he had been coached by Sir Richard Owen, who had contended that there are marked differences between* the brains of man and ape. Owen was proved by Huxley to be in the wrong, but he never admitted it.* Huxley had an easy task in demolishing the specious arguments of the bishop, but the excitement in theological circles caused by the discussion remained at fever heat until another shock diverted attention elsewhere. This was delivered by no foe outside the camp, but by six clergymen and one lay member of the Church of England — septem contra Christum, as they were labelled. Under the innocent title of Essays and Reviews, these seven published a series of papers of so heterodox a character — as heterodoxy then went — as to create an ^ See p. 129. A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 18 agitation of whose force and fury the present genera- tion can have no conception. From Archbishop to pew-opener every Churchman lost his head. Oddly enough, the warning note as to the dangerous tendencies of the book was sounded by Mr. Frederic Harrison, a disciple of Comte, in an article on " Neo- Christianity " in the Westminster Review of October 1860. The heavy guns of the orthodox Reviews and the lighter artillery of the religious papers were levelled on the Essayists. Two of them, Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson, were haled before the ecclesiastical courts and suspended from their livings for a year. But these sentences were reversed on appeal by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, when the Lord Chancellor, Baron Westbury, delivered his famous judgment that it was not heretical for a clergyman to deny the doctrine of eternal punish- ment. Mr. Bo wen, afterwards Lord Bo wen, wrote on the margin of his copy of the Chancellor's deliverance : " Hell dismissed with costs." ^ The addition to this laconic comment was that the judgment had deprived the British Churchman of his sure and certain hope of the everlasting damnation of the wicked. This was in 1864. But in 1862 there was still " Woe to them that are at ease in Zion," since a troubler came this time in the person of a Bishop. Colenso's Critical Examination of the Pentateuch challenged the historical accuracy of those documents, bringing upon its author a sentence of deposition from his see of Natal by his Metropolitan, an act which the Privy Council declared to be null and void. But the commotion made by the Essayists and the Bishop was mild compared with that which was stirred by the publication of Ecce Homo in 1865. It came out 1 Jowett's Life and Letters, Vol. I. p. 302. 14 MEMORIES anonymously, and, drolly enough, its authorship was attributed to persons as different as the Archbishop of York, Napoleon the Third, the Poet Laureate, George Eliot, and the Master of Trinity ! As is now known, it was written by the late Sir John Seeley, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. No ecclesiastical court could touch him ! Ecce Homo sent a shudder through every sect in Christendom; through Nonconformists as well as Churchmen, for these had also proved themselves eager heresy-hunters in expelling one of their Professors for " unsound " views about the Old Testament. That the Incarnate God the Son, the Saviour of Mankind, should be de- scribed as " a young man of promise, popular with those who knew him and appearing to enjoy the Divine favour " ^ so infuriated the orthodox that, refutation lacking, the only weapons hurled at the head of the blasphemous author were the usual expletives. That gentlest of men and most unselfish philanthropist, the Earl of Shaftesbury, was moved to denounce Ecce Homo as " the most pestilential volume ever vomited from the jaws of hell." Yes, they were indeed stirring times, and if the Church has survived these and other blows dealt at her creeds and dogmas by the hands of friends and foes, it is be- cause she has, with an adaptability which marks her earlier history, when she wisely adopted pagan rites and sacraments and transformed the old gods into Christian saints, silently abandoned certain beliefs as no longer ** necessary to salvation.'* So, after all, the essayists, the bishop and the professor did not fail in their purpose of liberalizing a venerable institution whose existence, on the whole, has been more for good than for evil. * Prefaco to Ecce Homo. A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 15 To take up Essays and Reviews nowadays is only to beget surprise that so mildly heterodox a book could have evoked anger and dismay. As for Colenso, his book recalls, not his ingenious calculations on the fecundity of Hebrew matrons and on the number of pigeons which the Hebrew priests had to eat daily, so much as the " Limericks " which his Examination of the earlier documents of the Bible provoked. " A Bishop there was named Colenso, Who counted from one up to ten so, That the writings Levitical He found were uncritical. And went out to tell the black men so. A Bishop there was of Natal, Who had a Zulu for a pal. Said the Zulu : ' Look here. Ain't the Pentateuch queer ? ^ Which converted my Lord of Natal." A cogent example of the change of outlook wrought within the last two generations is supplied by the late Sir Francis Gait on. In his Memoirs of My Life ^ he says : " When I was at Cambridge the horizon of the anti- quarians was so narrow that the whole history of the early world was literally believed by many of the best informed men to be contained in the Pentateuch. It was also practically supposed that nothing more of importance could be learnt of the origins of civilization during classical times than was to be found definitely stated in classical authors." In his obituary notice of Dean Milman,^ the late Dean Stanley speaks of the horror created by the Dean's History of the Jews, one reason being that Abraham, " the friend of God," was 1 p. 66. ^ MacmillaTi's Magazine, January 1869. 16 MEMORIES described as a " sheik ! " ^ In Oxford the book was denounced from the University pulpit. In a volume of Essays entitled Authority and Archceology, the late Canon Driver says that " there is no tittle of monumental evidence whatever that the HebreW patriarchs lived in Palestine." He adds, " not one of the many facts adduced by Professor Sayce is independent evidence that the patriarchs visited Palestine or even that they existed at all." ^ And nobody turns a hair ! My waning belief in the Bible as in any sense a Reve- lation was shattered by reading Jowett's article on the ** Interpretation of Scripture " in Essays and Reviews, " Interpret it like any other book," was the counsel. But the two books, through which, ultimately, I was to grasp the force of the ancient words : " Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," were Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, published in 1863, and Sir E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture : Researches into the development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Customs, published in 1871. Darwin's hesita- tion to apply his theory to man was due, he tells us, to a desire " not to add to the prejudices against his views." Huxley forced his hand. In 1860 he delivered a course of lectures to working-men, which, three years after- wards, were published under the title above-named. Their purport was to prove, as prove they did to the hilt, that no barrier exists, either in body or mind, between man and animal, and that " even the highest ^ "The monarch [i.e. of Egypt] possessed a numerous aeraglio which was supplied by any means, however lawless or violent. This was so notorious that Abraham, though an independent Sheik or Emir, if his fair-complexioned Mesopotamian wife should excite the cupidity of the swarthy Egyptian, might apprehend the worst consequences."— Vol. I. p. 9 (1829). » p. 149. A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY IT faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life." In Primitive Culture, as its sub-title indicates, Tylor applied the theory of evolution to every branch of knowledge. Within its limits that book remains a classic of Anthropology — ^the youngest and most im- portant of all the sciences. The discoveries which are classed under that general term have acted as powerful solvents on every opinion of the past. They have proved on what mythical foundation the story of the fall of man rests, thereby demolishing the raison d'Hre of the doctrine of his redemption. They have pene- trated the mists of the past and traced the legends of Paradise, Creation, the Deluge and other stories to their birthplaces in the valley of the Euphrates or the uplands of Persia. The record of man's slow, tortuous advance in material things has its parallel in his spiritual advance from naturalism, or belief in impersonal powers, through animism, or belief in spirit indwelling in every- thing, to the higher conception of deity. Satisfied, by study of these, and other books bearing on the subject, as to Man being both in body and soul no exception in the processes of evolution, and as to his history being one of advance from savagery to civiliza- tion, there followed concern as to what should be taught to my children. Were they to learn a mass of fiction, with the cost and pain of unlearning it afterwards, dis- covering that what I had taught them or allowed them to be taught was not the truth, the truth which alone can make us " free " ? Were they to be taught that the Almighty Maker of all things visible and invisible left his throne in heaven from time to time, and came to this earth to do things of which man, at his lowest, would be ashamed ? Were 18 MEMORIES they to be taught that all that is set down in the Bible about God actually happened ? That he put the first man and woman in a garden and threatened them that if they ate of the fruit of a certain tree they would be punished with death, and not only this, but that their sin would be visited on all mankind, whose everlasting fate would be determined at the Judgment Day ? Were they to be taught that this Almighty One played the part of " Peeping Tom " to see what Adam and Eve would do, knowing all the time what would happen? Were they to be taught that all the people who were afterwards born (how any could be born seems a puzzler, since no mention is made of Cain's wife) would, save eight persons, act so wickedly as to cause God to drown them ? Were they to be taught that he walked and talked as man; that he was fond of the smell of roast meats; that he showed his " back parts " to the leader of a small tribe whom he made his " chosen people " ; that he be- came their War Lord, aiding them as best he could ? As best, for is it not related in the Book of Judges (ch. i. 19) that while he helped the Hebrews to conquer their mountain enemies, he could not help them to victory over their enemies in the valley because these had chariots of iron ! He commanded that of his chosen people fifty thousand and seventy men should be put to death because they had been so curious and so wicked as to look into a sacred box called the ark, wherein he was believed to dwell ! And so on ; all through the repellent stories of meannesses and mas- sacres, of blessings on liars and tricksters, filling writings of which I was taught to believe God himself was the author — a God thus made his own libeller ! At what level of barbarism must the people have been who could thus conceive of their God 1 A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 19 On this matter the words of a friend, the ever-lamented Professor Clifford, may be quoted. He bids us consider the " frightful loss and disappointment which is pre- pared for the child who, on growing up, discovers that what he has been taught is based on insufficient evidence. It is not merely that you have brought him up as a prince to find himself a pauper at eighteen. He may have allowed the teaching to get inextricably inter- twined with his feelings of right and wrong. Then the overthrow of one will, at least for a time, endanger the other. You leave him the sad task of gathering to- gether the wrecks of a life broken by disappointment and wondering whether honour itself is left to him among them." 1 Perhaps I have said enough to explain how I came to write the Childhood of the World (to which what is already set down is designed to lead). I do not regret that this was done while I was still a Theist, because \ this secured the book a hearing which it would certainly have lacked had it been written from an Agnostic stand- point. As it was, it " caught on." It found a large public, not only here, but in America, where several pirate publishers captured it. Applications for permis- sion to translate it into Continental languages — French, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish and Finnish followed ; then into some " heathen " tongues ; and what gave me special satisfaction, a request to allow it to be embossed for the blind, " because," so the letter ran, " it had given occasion for so many intelligent questions on the part of the boys, and for the blind above all others it is necessary to have books that make them think. They say it is something different from what they have ever seen {sic) before." ^ Lectures and Essays, Vol. II. p. 321. 20 MEMORIES All this, adding thereto many letters from unknown correspondents which the reading of the book evoked, was gratifying to an unknown author, but more than this were the friendships which it brought me and but for which these pages could not have been written. Of the immediate personal little more need be said. The point is reached for such record as memory and fugitive notes supply concerning those with whom one can no longer take deep draughts of the " wine of life." There is temptation to tell what debts are owing to many friends, happily, still living, which can never be discharged. But to that temptation I must only rarely yield. » * o » Photo, Elliott you had told me about his desire for crystal-gazing cannibals, and I had an amusing letter from him that I will show you. Unfortunately he seems to take it as a matter of course that I sort of believe in ghosts, as he does in a sort of a way, whereas I don't. I believe in space and atoms and Darwinism and all that sort of Ju-ju, like I fancy you do, for I was brought up among an agnostic set of the Huxley school. So there will have to be some painful explanations between me and Mr. L. some day, but this is between ourselves. I am just about to publish an article on Africans which will bring me into quite as many rows as I shall be able to deal with for some time. " I suppose it would be useless to ask you to come and see me some afternoon? I should be very glad, but I do not feel justified in doing so. I live up so many stairs in such an old marine store of a place that I am not worthy of being called on by the civilized, but if you were charitably disposed I would show you some queer things ^ and you could go home from Uxbridge Road Station; only I pray you, if you do, send me a line of warning, so I may be in. Thursday and Friday are the only days I ought to be out this week, though I am at the mercy of Major Lugard, for he and I are at war with each other and we have now and then, behind the scenes, to arrange details of the next fight. " I remain, " Yours truly, " M. H. KiNGSLEY." ^ And she did. One was a hideous human-shaped idol, with a rope of coagulated human blood round its neck. Nails had been driven into every part of its body to "rivet** the god's attention. See on this, Frazer's Golden Bough, ix. p. 70. 80 MEMORIES " 100, Addifion Road, " February 16, 1898. " Dear Mr. Clodd, " I can come any day you like except the 25th and 26th of this month ; next month I have no engage- ments whatsoever, so please let me know which day will suit you. Please forgive me for not writing more promptly; it has been from two things, one my lazy state, and the other the liquor traffic with West Africa. This subject has been a perfect curse to me ever since I said the mission party exaggerated about it and attribute to it things that arose from different causes. I honestly believe I am right. I have not that blind belief in everything that comes out of a bottle that caused one of my white West Coast friends to drink a lot of water containing leeches which a black lady friend of mine had just put down in the parlour for a moment. I merely think from what I know, having said this once, and having published analysis of the liquor they call poison [see Travels, p. 664], I should have been content, for my own part, to let them say what they liked, but then in comes another affair. Liverpool, as I dare say you know, hates the Royal Niger Company like the devil. The R.N.C. has got its back against a door, fighting France. I, from my statements over this liquor traffic, Liverpool's trade backbone, have a certain influence with L. and that influence I threw into getting the Liverpool merchants not to harry the company while it was in this French row. I had succeeded beautifully, Liverpool was behaving like ten saints rolled into one, when down in the middle of it comes Major Lugard's article praising the Company up to the skies for its anti-liquor policy — pitching into me and Liverpool right and left. My flock broke away at this, and I have M. H. KINGSLEY 81 had a pretty scratching time of it, getting them into the fold again, and have only done it by saying I will answer Lugard. This I have only just got through and sent in to the printer. It is fire and brimstone for me when it comes out, and all Liverpool can do is to put up a memorial window to me. It would be a friendly thing of you to do to think out a suitable design. I fear Liver- pool in its devotion to me might select a West African Ju-ju hung round with square-faced gin bottles. I need not say I shall only be too glad to see you any day you can spare time to come. Whenever you feel like doing it send me a postcard and I will be in. It is a great treat to me to have some one, who like myself, wants praying for, according to Mr. Lang, to talk over Fetish with. Excuse this yarn. " Yours very truly, " Mary H. Kingsley.'* " 32, St. M^^ry Abbots Terrace, Kensington, W., -^ ''August 30, 1898. " Dear Mr. Clodd, " Thank you most sincerely. I have written to Dr. Blyden, but if you would send him a note to say which place really suits you best I am sure he will come. I have, in duty bound, in the interests of truth, in- formed him that you, Lyall and Tylor are our three best men. Lyall is in Kent, Tylor in Somerset, both willing enough to see him, but too far off for him, with his slender means, to go to, so if you will see him it will be a boon. " I do not know whether I told you he was as black as the ace of spades. If this will alarm the Savile you had better have him elsewhere, but his manners are perfect and he is a perfect type of the kindly, thoughtful, 82 MEMORIES true Negro. I had a specimen of the other type here this afternoon. A man I Hke and well educated, but who is ready for a war dance any time and who alarms my household, who choose to think that while he dances round me gesticulating, battle, murder and sudden death are in the air, whereas we are only arguing like anything. " But, of course, Blyden is quite out of the ordinary, a man a head and shoulders above all the other educated Africans, and I enjoy his company immensely. I know so well the sure slow way that form of mind moves and the absolute reality of belief it holds. I really want you to see a big black man's mind as I know you will if you see Blyden. I have to say if, because if he is — you cannot say frightened, because in his way you cannot frighten a negro — but if he don't take to a person, he is silent, civil, but to put it mildly, uninteresting. " I have so often seen that sort of thing with them out there. Man after man who has lived on the coast for years will tell you these natives will never tell you any- thing. Well, I always found them quite willing to tell me, when we were alone together, what their wife's mother's aunt's deceased second cousin's cat died of, or anything else. *' I shall be home Friday night, so if you have an afternoon next week to fritter away please let me know. " Yours very truly, " Mary H. Kingsley." VIII Edward Whymper (1840-1911) Bates introduced me to Whymper at a dinner of the Geographical Society about 1890. But not till three years after that, when he came to Aldeburgh, did we approach into nearer relation. There he met Grant Allen, York Powell, Henry Moore, R.A., and James S. Cotton (of these four, only the last named, my oldest friend, survives). Of course talk fell on Whymper's scaling of famous peaks — both in the Old World and the New — in Switzerland and the Andes. And, of course, he told the story of the tragedy of the Matterhorn. The grim, tightly-drawn face, the set lips, the metallic voice, all gave force to the story related in calm tones as if it was of small import and not a notable event in a man's life. There was never a semblance of emotion noticeable in him, yet, underneath the dry crust, there was a soft- ness of nature which, speaking from my own experience, showed itself in thoughtful little acts. The first time he came he brought me his Scrambles amongst the Alps in the Years 1860-1869 — a valued addition to the gifts I have received from many authors. His humour was sardonic. On this first visit, when called to breakfast and asked if he took porridge, there came an answer, through clouds of tobacco smoke — for Whymper smoked in bed as well as out of it — " Porridge ! I would rather leave the house ! " And I believe he meant it ! 83 84 MEMORIES In the following year he met Thomas Hardy at Aldeburgh, and never was the man of letters more delighted to hear the oft-told story of the man of adventure. Whymper gave more of detail ; he told all that can ever be known about the mystery of the rope which, breaking on the descent of the party on the fateful July 14, 1865, caused the death of three climbers and one guide. In Whymper' s words : " They passed from our sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from precipice to precipice on to the Matterhorn gletscher below, a depth of nearly 4000 feet. From the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them." Whymper had to undergo no light torture of suspicion based on rumours that he had cut the rope to save his own skin. But the explanation that he gave concerning the unwitting selection of a Manilla rope that seemed the strongest, and proved so tragically to be the weakest, of three, should have silenced the slanders. The ex- planation left no doubt as to his integrity in the minds of those who heard it verbally, however much or little that doubt may linger among those who read the story in the twenty-second chapter of the Scrambles, It deeply impressed Mr. Hardy, and inspired him when, in 1897, he looked on the Matterhorn from Zermatt, to compose a sonnet published in his Wessex Poems, which I have his permission to quote here. Thirty-two years since, up against the sun, Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight, Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height; And four lives paid for what the seven had won. They were the first by whom the deed was done. And when I look at thee my mind takes flight To that day's tragic feat of manly might As though, till then of history thou hadat none. EDWARD WHYMPER 85 Yet ages ere man topped thee, late and soon Thou watch'dst each night the planets lift and lower, Thou gleam'dst to Joshua's pausing sun and moon, And brav'dst the tokening sky when Caesar's power Approached its bloody end ; yea, saw'st that noon When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour." Should the story of Whymper's career ever be fully told, it will include record of his contributions to geology and entomology, evidencing that he was something more than a daring climber of perilous peaks. It will also include the story of his efforts to keep alive the exquisite, but seemingly nowadays doomed, art of the wood engraver. In droll contrast to the foregoing, my last reminiscence of him is an incoming with a bag of shrimps and a small jug of cream, a passage to the kitchen to shell the shrimps, and then return with a plate of them smothered in the cream. And an excellent mixture it proved. His departure was followed by a letter in which occurs this commendation of another mixture. " I send herewith for your acceptance a pinch of sulphate of quinine. A few grains of it in a tumbler of whisky and water improves the quality of the drink." I have not yet put this to the test. In the spring of 1910 the Wessex poet read his sonnet to the Conqueror of the Matterhorn. It was at Mr. Hardy's desire that, after an interval of sixteen years, the two met again at Aldeburgh. Mr. Hardy brought with him a copy of the Ascent, and, at his request, Whymper traced in red ink on the map the track taken by the party in 1865, and I know that the little volume, thus enriched, is one of the treasures of Max Gate, Dorchester. In the autumn of the next year he passed away at the age of seventy-one, at Chamonix — fitly closing his eyes in the presence of the snow-clad mountains. IX William Simpson (1823-1899) The work of another man whose friendship, through the introduction of Mark Wilks, I enjoyed for many years, should have place in the history of wood engrav- ing, and of much else. The career of William Simpson, known among his circle as " Crimean Simpson," was in its variety and interest one of the most remarkable that can fall to the lot of man. Starting as a lithographer — " Clyde-built," as he loved to say — he was a native of Glasgow. He came to London in 1851, and three years afterwards, on the outbreak of the Crimean War, accepted a commission from the Colnaghis to go as their artist to make sketches of the war. He witnessed, and to some extent shared in, the horrors of Balaclava and followed the campaign to the fall of Sebastopol. One indirect result of our wars is to Anglicize the menu, and he told me how, on his return to Constantinople, entering a dining-shop, he saw " Ouarsh-too " on the list. Curious as to the strange dish, he ordered it, and found that it was the homely " Irish stew ! " His admirable sketches brought him under Royal notice, with commissions from the Queen for drawings which, for aught that I know, hang on the walls of, or rest in portfolios in, Windsor Castle. Up to the time of his marriage, which was late in life, he had rooms at 64, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and many a good time we had with him there on his return from WILLIAM SIMPSON 8T Abyssinia, or India, or China, or America, as the case might be. One day a Royal command compelled a postponement of the evening's junketing. Simpson was summoned to Windsor. Of course, he had to hear the old joke about Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sergeant- surgeon to Her Majesty. The students to whom he was to lecture read on the blackboard the announcement that Sir Benjamin had to postpone the engagement " being commanded to attend upon the Queen." One of the students chalked underneath : " God save the Queen ! " Landing at Dover after one of his many travels, Simp- son heard the following dialogue between a lady and a Customs House officer. " Have you anything to declare, madam ? " " No, there is only wearing apparel in my trunk." " I must ask you to open it." The examina- tion disclosed a row of bottles of brandy. " Do you call these wearing apparel, madam ? " " Oh ! yes, they are my husband's nightcaps." The story of Simpson's life-work is largely the story of our own times. It may be said, with a touch of exaggeration, that he saw every one of note and every place of interest. There was not any event of importance, from the Crimean War to the Franco-German War, which was not depicted by his pencil or described by his pen. And he was so much more than an artist. His interest in the history, and his knowledge, of ancient architecture, has evidence in many valuable, and now rare, papers. He was keenly interested in research into the origin of primitive cults. He took advantage of his travels to make a series of remarkable drawings of phallic symbols copied from the temples of the East and other parts, the unknown fate of which is to be deplored. The worship of the emblems of 88 MEMORIES fertility is the outward and visible sign of man's sense of the mystery of generation and the lewdness which is associated with that worship must not blind us to its deep religious significance. Simpson's book on The Buddhist Praying Wheel : Circular movements in Custom and Religious Ritual is a valuable contribution to the history of symbolic ritual. A hymn learned in my boy- hood says that " The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone." But if he genuflects in person, he sings his hymns by deputy, since, as Simpson shows, the praying-wheel is really a praising-wheel, having sacred words written on it. Evading the jealously-guarded frontier of Tibet, he secured a fine specimen of the " wheel," the use of which, he tells us, is a wise economy of the devotee, who sometimes puts it into running water to turn it. He was not fortunate enough to see a Mahatma, he told me. Here is a characteristic letter from him. " Hotel Golden Ship, Eisleben, ** Novembers, 1883. " My Dear Clodd, *' I learn this morning that you have sent an invitation to No. 19 [i, e, to his house at Willesden]. I believe that will be officially answered by the Authori- ties at that place, but it seems to me that it will interest you to get a note at this time from Luther's birthplace. *' I went to Worms and saw the Luther Drama there. [The occasion was the quadricentennial of Luther's birth.] And then I got to Wittenberg and saw the anniversary ceremony at that place of nailing the thesis on the Church door. I came here last Sunday and hope to leave on Saturday as soon as the ceremony is WILLIAM SIMPSON 89 over. So I may get the material in the Strand [he was acting as artist of the Illustrated London News] in time to be out on the Saturday following. " I sent a long letter yesterday to the Daily News and it may appear on Saturday. If you see it, you will learn a good deal about Luther's birthplace, and about what is going on here. " I have thrown away Brahminism and Buddhism for the time being. Nirvana is nothing, and as for the Noble Eightfold Path, I renounce it. Justification by Faith is all in all. I feel Protestant to the backbone, and should like to have a few Papal Bulls to destroy, I am bringing home some acorns from the oak at Witten- berg and I hope to have a tree at Willesden of my own. Should the Scarlet Thingummybob send any Bulls there we will be prepared. " The way the people here get up their costume processions has quite delighted me. " From yours very truly, " William Simpson." Whether from the acorns there sprang oaks at Willes- den I cannot say. Tempus edacc rerum : what would I not do to keep the memory of William Simpson fresh and lasting ! Despite all that he did, one fears that his name is among those " writ in water." He is remem- bered only by a few — a vanishing number — as the enthusiast, who, when acting as special artist of the Illustrated London News on the Afghan Boundary Com- mission in 1884, rode to Naishapur to make a drawing of the tomb of Omar Khayyam and to gather hips from the rose bushes growing near it. These were fittingly sent to Bernard Quaritch, the publisher of FitzGerald's " mashed-up Omar," as he called his translation. From 90 MEMORIES the letter, too long to be fully printed here, I quote the salient part. " Naishapur, "Octo6er27, 1884. " Dear Mr. Quaritch, " From the association of your name with that of Omar Khayydm I feel sure that what I enclose in this letter will be acceptable. The rose-leaves I gathered to-day, growing beside the tomb of the poet at this place, and the seeds are from the same bushes on which the leaves grew. In all probability they are the par- ticular kind of roses Omar Khayyam was so fond of watching as he pondered and composed his verses. . . . I hope you will be able to grow them in England. . . . " Yours very truly, " William Simpson." How, by happy chance, he told me of this some years afterwards, and wondered at the fate of the seeds ; how this put me on the quest, with result of hearing that they had been sent to Kew; how, with the help of Sir Thiselton Dyer, there were found puny plants which had sprung from them; how, by his directions, these were grafted on a sweet-briar bush, cuttings from which were in due time taken to be planted by the grave of Edward FitzGerald; are not these things faithfully recorded in the Book of the Omar Khayydm Club ? The rarity of that Book warrants the insertion of two poems written on the occasion of the pilgrimage of some members of the Club to plant the, now lusty, bushes. One is by Mr. Edmund Gosse, C.B., " volunteer laureate," as he described himself; the other is by a second " volunteer," Grant Allen. WILLIAM SIMPSON 91 *' Reign here, triumphant Rose from Omar's grave, Borne by a fakir o'er the Persian wave j Reign with fresh pride, since here a heart is sleeping That double glory to your Master gave. Hither let many a pilgrim-step be bent To greet the Rose re-risen in banishment ; Here richer crimsons may its cup be keeping That brimmed it ere from Naishapur it went." E. G. " Here, on FitzGerald's grave, from Omar's tomb, To lay fit tribute pilgrim singers flock : Long with a double fragrance may it bloom, This Rose of Iran on an English stock." G. A. In connection with the function of the planting a protest came from the then Rector of Boulge. " His body is buried in peace, but his name Hveth for ever- more " among Omarians. " I "personally,'^ he wrote to me, " cannot object to your proposal of planting a rose tree with a fence or rail for its protection at the head of Mr. Edward FitzGerald's grave in Boulge churchyard, though I should much prefer the proposed plate of inscription having no reference to a heathen philosopher which I cannot but think out of place in a Christian Churchy ardy The letter has as many italics as a lady's. Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) Virgilium vidi tantum. The quotation is not inapt, for did not FitzGerald say, " Horace never made my eyes wet as dear old Virgil does " ? One June morning, many years ago — the exact date is forgotten — walking near my house with a fellow townsman, there approached, with slow gait, a tall, sea-bronzed man wrapped in a big cloak and wearing a slouch hat kept on with a handkerchief tied under the chin. " Don't you know who that is coming along? *' said my friend, adding, " That's FitzGerald. He has written some poetry : you know they say he's . . ." and my friend tapped finger on forehead. He introduced me, and there passed between " Old Fitz " and myself a few commonplaces about the weather and the fishing. He was often at Aldeburgh ^ — " There is no sea like the Aldeburgh sea," he said, but as I was for some years able to go there only at week- ends and holidays this was my first and last sight of him. I cannot make the tame incident interesting. So much has been written by many pens about him that there is nothing new to be said, and but for this brief personal description of him, there is small warrant for reference in these pages. But I had the privilege of knowing a venerable and cultured lady, now deceased, 1 He usually sailed from the Deben to the Aide in his little yacht the Scandal, so named, he said, because '* that was the staple product of Woodbridge.'* 92 EDWARD FITZGERALD D8 for whom, all through his life, there was a warm corner in his heart. Of her he writes, in a letter to Fanny Kemble three years before his death, as follows — " Mary Lynn ^ — a. pretty name — who is of our age and played with me when we both were children at that very same Aldeburgh — is gone over to those mountains which you are so fond of, having the same passion for them as you have. I have asked her to meet me at that Aldeburgh — ^that we might ramble together along that beach where once we played, but she was gone." There is another delightful letter in which he says — " I have been again to Aldeburgh when my contem- porary old Beauty, Mary Lynn, was staying there, and pleasant evenings enough we had talking of other days, and she reading to me some of her Mudie Books, finishing with a nice little supper and some hot grog for me which I carried back to the fire, and set on the carpet.'* Miss Lynn was a niece of Major Moor of Bealings, an authority on Hindu mythology and allied subjects. He is more widely known as the writer of a book entitled Bealings Bells, wherein he records the mysterious ringing of his housebells, at intervals, for fifty-three days. He was satisfied that this was "by no human agency." But, on his own showing, a more incompetent witness was not possible. However, the ever-credulous spiritual- ists accepted his testimony as unchallengeable, and added the ringing to the stock of horseplay indulged in by spirits, probably as diversion from the boredom of ^ Her portrait is given in Thomas Wright's Life of Edward Fitz- Oerald, Vol. II, p. 203« 94 MEMORIES their surroundings. Miss Lynn's relations with the Major brought her into Hterary circles which made her society interesting. I was selfishly glad to lend her books from time to time, because this gave me excuse, when taking them, for getting talks with her. These, occasionally, fell upon " Edward," as she always called him. She told me that the letters between them were too familiar for her to accede to a request from Mr. Aldis Wright to include them in his collection. I was per- mitted to see a few, and, of her courtesy, was allowed to make a copy of the following — " Woodbridge, " December 9, 1868. " I can't find any copy of Sir Thomas Browne which you write about. Two of his works you would read or read as much of as any one does read : the Urn Burial and Religio Medici. They are both quaint^ but both have their fine passages, and the Urn Burial has a last chapter or two not to be paralleled in our language. There may be things as fine — or finer — but nothing as fine in their way : which is a fine way. It is exactly like the most solenm organ playing one out of cathedral at dusk. I enclose you my yearly note from Carlyle (which I do not want again). You see that it is growing dusk with him too, and the organ beginning to play out. There is a capital — ^not long — book on America by Mr. Zincke, vicar of Wherstead, near Ipswich. It is called, I think, Last Winter in America — with table- talk of what he heard and saw there. It is quite unaffected, simple and I think impartial, praising country and people on the whole, but not believing they will pay their debt. " I have seen the bridegroom with a new coat and sub-cerulean necktie; alert, loud, long striding and EDWARD FITZGERALD 95 debonair as before marriage. No one could have carried off the whole business with better grace, hold- ing his own and going his way gallantly, but the Wood- bridge heathen fret and wonder ever so much. " Yours truly, " E. F. G." Here is Carlyle's letter — " Chelsea, " December 7, 1868. " Dear FitzGerald, " Thanks for enquiring after me again. I am in my usual weak state of bodily health, not much worse I imagine and not even expecting to be better. I study to be solitary, in general; to be silent, as the state that suits me best, my thoughts then are infinitely sad, indeed, but capable, too, of being solemn, mourn- fully beautiful, useful ; and as for ' happiness ' I have that of employment more or less befitting the years I have arrived at, and the long journey that cannot now be far off. " Your letter has really entertained me : I could willingly accept twelve of that kind in the year — twelve, I say, or even fifty-two, if they could be content with an answer of silent thanks and friendly thoughts and remembrances. But, within the last three or four years my right hand has become captious, taken to shaking as you see, and all writing is a thing I require compulsion and close necessity to drive me into. Why not call when you come to Town ? I again assure you it will give me pleasure and be a welcome and wholesome solace to me. With many thanks and regards, " I am always, dear FitzGerald, " Sincerely yours, "T. Carlyle." 96 MEMORIES In Froude*s Carlyle ^ there is a letter written by Carlyle to his wife from FitzGerald*s house, Farlingay Hall, a farmhouse near Woodbridge. He says ; " Fitz- Gerald took me yesterday to Aldeburgh ... a beautiful little sea town, one of the best bathing-places I have seen. . . . My notion is, if you have yet gone nowhere, you should think of Aldeburgh." The late Charles Eliot Norton's Letters (published in 1913) include one to Lady Burne- Jones in which he reminds her that in 1868 he had asked her about the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, and that she had told him that " the translator was a certain Rev. Edward FitzGerald, who lived somewhere in Norfolk and was fond of boating." In 1873, Carlyle told him that Fitz- Gerald was no " Reverend " and had never named the translation to him. Whereupon Norton sent him a copy, which evoked this reply : " I think that my old friend FitzGerald might have spent his time better than in busying himself with the verses of that old Moham- medan blackguard." ^ We owe the " old blackguard " a good deal as the unwitting eponymous founder of a Club which has added to " the publick stock of harmless pleasure." In Great Thoughts of January 23, 1897, my friend Clement Shorter has narrated the story of the origin of the Omar Khayyam Club. He tells how, inspired by common enthusiasm for the marvellous translation — it is both more and less that — of the Ruhaiyat, and by a desire to come into nearer fellowship with the like- minded, a triumvirate, namely, himself, George Whale and Frederic Hudson, asked a few kindred spirits to dinner at Paganis on October 14, 1892. Then and there the Club " came into being." Never did a Club, thus 1 Vol. n. p. 177. * Vol. I. pp. 42a-4. EDWARD FITZGERALD 97 quietly created, leap into such sudden fame or justify the boast that age has not withered, nor custom staled its infinite variety. At its table, in obedience to the command of the Master, " O, my friends, when I am sped, appoint a Meeting, and when ye have met together be ye glad thereof, and when the cup-bearer holds in her 1 hand a flagon of old wine, then think upon Old Khayyam and drink to his memory," there has gathered from time to time a company of the Great Known and the Greater Unknown. With no rules to restrain an irresponsible Committee (apparently formed on the model of the Tyrants of Athens), with no official archives whence a future chronicler could have drawn materials for its history, the Omar Khayyam Club proudly rests on unsullied traditions. Speeches, record of which, in their wit and wisdom, would have carried the name of more than one orator along the stream of Time to the admiration of genera- tions yet unborn ; poems whose place in the most select of Anthologies would have been unchallenged, have added to the joy of the Club's convivia. What variety was infused into the gatherings when it was our good fortune to have the late Walter Emanuel, with his " telegrams from absent guests," of the com- pany ! Lloyd George " refusing to have anything to do with a man who speculated in futures " ; the Kaiser " not going out just now " ; Marie Corelli : " Thanks, but I and Shakespeare are particular as to where we dine. He never goes out, and I very seldom " ; Hall Caine wiring, " Why boom a dead Master ? Is it not ^ Only on one memorable occasion has the fair sex been admitted to the Club's revels. From its start it has followed the custom of certain meetings at the now defunct Exeter Hall, whose rule was " For Men Only." H 98 MEMORIES rather our duty, my dear brethren, to advertise a living one ? " and so forth, as the fun ran fast and furious. In one matter which it had at heart, the Club has to admit failure. The report on the dilapidated state of Omar's tomb at Naishapur which, after his visit there, was made by William Simpson, caused the Club to solicit the good offices of Sir Mortimer Durand, then British Minister at Teheran, with the Shah, to put the tomb — an uninscribed plaster structure — ^into decent repair. Sir Mortimer, who, in this year of grace 1916, is President of the Club, has told the story of his interview. " The Shah said, ' Do you mean to tell me that there is a society in London connected with Omar Khayydm ? * When answered in the affirmative. His Majesty leant back in his big chair, laughed loudly and at last said : ' Why, he has been dead a thousand years.* I replied, * Yes, but surely that is all the more reason for doing honour to his memory.' The Shah retorted : ' No, I cannot order the tomb to be repaired. We have got many better poets than Omar Khayyam. Indeed, I myself ' and then he stopped." Nor could the presence of the Persian Minister, which was secured at one of the Club dinners through the sagacity of a President who shall be nameless, effect the desired object. His Excellency drank only sherbet, and, consequently, said little. The Club had suspicions that the President was diplomatically manoeuvring to obtain the Persian Order of the Lion and the Sun ! It was never bestowed upon him nor on any other President. There was aggravation to the disappointed in my bringing as guest a friend (G. W. Thomson) to whom it had been accorded. Photo, Elliott & Fry.] [To face page 98. XI Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall (1835-1911) I FIRST met Sir Alfred Lyall at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on November 30, 1890, when he delivered a lecture on the Natural Growth of Religion in India before the now defunct Sunday Lecture Society. To this meeting followed invitations to his house and Whitsuntides spent by him at Aldeburgh — for myself ever " times of refreshing." A faithful and fascinating portrait of Sir Alfred's many-sided career as soldier, diplomatist, essayist and poet, has been given by his comrade. Sir Henry Mortimer Durand. There is here no need to sketch in kitcat what is there drawn at full length. His table talk would make a brilliant book, fit company with Coleridge's and with Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann. No printed record can convey the in- effable charm of Sir Alfred Lyall in the intimacy of social intercourse. It was marked by an old-world courtesy which is becoming a lost art. This, and all the kindred graces that attract a man to his fellows, were his de- lightful endowment. Naturally, the talk would more often be of the East, of whose beliefs and customs there has never been a more accurate, incisive and sympathetic interpreter. His bent of mind, reflective, tinged with melancholy and deeply coloured by scepticism, found congenial employment, when leisure from official work permitted, in the study of the great religions which remain living forces; factors so potent in India that a 99 100 MEMORIES man is labelled by his creed and not by his race. It has always to be borne in mind that there is not one India, but many Indias, and that the various religions are their main boundaries.^ In the districts where some of his work was centred it was his fortune not only to come into specially near contact with ancient faiths, but to observe the con- tinuous merging of the lower belief in the higher. No hard-and-fast dogmas, as in Western creeds, insulate the old from the new ; there goes on to-day the absorption of barbaric conceptions by Brahmanism; the passage of dead, sometimes of living, men, into the ranks of the deified; of ghosts into godlings, to whom a venerable faith accords a place in its pantheon, which thereby retains its own vitality. All this Sir Alfred Lyall has described in the brilliant essays composing the two volumes of Asiatic Studies, Every page of these reveals what appeal the magic and mystery of the East made to a man of contemplative and speculative temperament, with a resulting hesitation to theorize ; the more so as the complexity and tangle of the materials were borne in upon him. Whatever comprehension of alien faiths and tem- peraments he secured was the outcome of a spirit of sympathy. What Sir Hugh Clifford says about the "brown humanity" which he loves is appHcable to LyalFs attitude. He strove throughout " to appreciate the native point of view and to judge the people and their actions by their own standards, rather than by those of a white man living in their midst.' *2 It should be needless to refer to his Verses Written in ^ See Lyall's Asiatic Studies^ Chap. I. paaaimy and Sir Mortimer Durand's Life of F. M. Sir George White, Vol. 1. pp. 49-67. * In Court and Kampong, p. 9. SIR ALFRED COMYN LYAJX 101 India, Thin in bulk, they are pregnant in thought, charged with their recurrent question, " And what do the wisest know ? " " Que seals je ? '' he asked, with Montaigne, and herein is the key to all that he has said and written. As some inadequate contribution to in- sight into the mind of a remarkable man, his mitis sapientia, here are a few disconnected notes of his talk at various times. " I sigh for the old pantheistic belief with its toleration and creedlessness. Missionary work is good only in the degree that it is undogmatic. The old religions are only to some small extent reformed by it. The Hindu mind is not impressed when it hears of the Christian Trinity ; Hindu triads are older than that. You talk to a Brah- man about miracles and resurrections ; he retorts that miracles are always happening in India, and as for a man being buried and rising again, there are undoubted cases of fakirs being entombed and remaining by some means for some time in a state of suspended animation." " So the Hindu has already what you bring him ; inspired scriptures with their stock of myths and wonders, all of which go into the melting-pot of pantheism. " Why, you will find even the doctrine of grace in the Vedas. " The puzzle the theologians can't solve is at what stage in man's evolution the soul comes into him. Spencer's dream-theory doesn't account for it : the ever-present facts of death and resurrection may : all we can say is that you can't draw a line between the man and the animal. " But the gods are our trouble. If you bind them within time and space they are done for; if you keep them outside, then they are useless. " Yes, ethics are man-made, but there is always J(p2 MEMORIES the problem to find some authority, because you must appeal to the masses on that basis. And the authority seemingly has to be an invisible one. So you can't put religion into liquidation." Apropos of this, he wrote in a letter to me : " Religion is an instinct and aspira- tion, and even as a social institution of high utility is not to be easily or safely uprooted and will long be a mighty force among mankind." " What the Anglican parsons can't stomach is the refusal of the Catholics to admit the validity of their ' orders ' ; they want to get on the main line and are kept on a siding. That riles them. " I think it is Horace Walpole who says that the Catholics give us too little to eat and too much to swallow.^ ** Purgatory was described by a Protestant school- boy as * a place where Roman Catholics stop on their way to hell ; it smells badly, but they use incense.' " Alexandria was a clearing-house for all the creeds. '* By the way, I did not like that story which our friend told us about his sending home some hundreds of skulls from Egypt for measurement as a clue to race. I was tempted to tell him that when Sir George Campbell was Governor of Bengal he sent home two cases of skulls for the same purpose. His orthodox wife promptly had them buried in consecrated ground ! " You can't treat art, any more than you can treat language, as any test of race. The employment of cunning workmen by foreign rulers explains a good deal. " The origin of caste remains obscure : no one factor explains it : religion, trade, race, all count. 1 " Damn it," said Winnington to Ix)rd Stafford, *' what a religion is yours I They let you eat nothing and yet make you swallow every- thing ! "— H. W. to Horace Mann, Vol. I. p. 368, Letter 126 (Toynbee's Edition). SIR ALFRED COMYN LYALL 108 " The wisest scientific men have given up search after origins : the doctrines of Evolution and of the Conservation of Energy give them enough scope for work. Of course, you remember what Bacon says about that." (The reference is : " The inquisition of Final Causes ^ is barren and like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing.") " They have enough to do with the mysteries of Science in the realm of causation to which, as Huxley says, the mysteries of the Church are child's play. By the bye, I was much amused to see the announcement of a book ; The Mystery of Creation, revised and enlarged ! " (I said that an entertaining essay could be written on "A certain absence of humour in professing Christians." It was suggested when, passing a Con- gregational chapel in the North of London, I saw posters advertising a series of Sunday evening Lectures. The subject of the last was " The World's Final Conflagra- tion " and immediately under this was the announcement that " Collections will be made for Repairs.") All through his talk ran the sceptical note, " I don't know : but, then, who does know ? " " Whereof the priests for all they say and sing, Know none the more, nor help in anything." " Pragmatism assumes relativity of truth. It is better to say that the actual, not the true, is justified because it is found to work. " Trevelyan said that ' force is no remedy.' Had he lived in the East, he would have learned that sometimes it is the only remedy. " I grow more interested in the past the older I live. I want to know so much more about those old fellows ^ Which reminds me of a story told me by Sir Leslie Stephen. A freshman, asked to define " Final Causes," replied, " It's the last straw that breaks the camel's back." 104 MEMORIES the Cretans and the pre-Mycenaeans. I want to meet Ulysses and talk to him. Herodotus is far and away the best of the ancients ; he had travelled. He comes well out of criticism. You should read Jebb on Sayce, but Butcher told me he was reluctant to republish it. Xenophon runs Herodotus hard; and what he says of the march, etc., applies through the East to-day. " Yes, there are Solons still in India. I remember hearing of a case in which a man who had deserted his wife for some time came back to claim her. In the meanwhile she had taken up with another man. The judge decided that the runaway husband should have his wife for six months in each year and the paramour the other six months." (Not wholly analogous, but suggestive, is the story of the American who advertised : "If John Robinson, with whose wife I eloped six months go, will take her back, all will be forgiven.") " Max MUller invented what he did not know ; all research tends to prove that the heroes and kings of so-called legend — Arthur and the rest of them — really lived. So I am not with the school which denies the historicity of Jesus. But how much stronger is the evidence for the existence of Buddha who lived five hundred years before him." It will be gathered from the foregoing how often his talk fell upon religious and allied subjects. So with the letters between us, as the following show. " 18, Queen's Gate, S.W. " February 27, 1902. " My dear Clodd, " We must endeavour to meet again some day for the purpose of discussing the Controversial chapter SIR ALFRED COMYN LYALL 105 in your book. {Thomas Henry Huxley,) My ideas on the subject are hardly worth expounding in a letter and I doubt whether I could put them down briefly and clearly. I am certainly in agreement with those who suggested with regard to the dispute between Huxley and Gladstone over the story of the Gadarene swine that the disputants might have been better occupied, and I think that no important controversialist now thinks himself bound to adopt the demonology of the first century. I doubt whether even the patristic writers of the third or fourth centuries took it literally, and I imagine that the whole question, so treated, is practically obsolete. " Huxley seems to me to have taken it too seriously. There is to me something ridiculous about his charge against Jesus as ' wantonly destroying other people's property.' Just as it was absurd in Gladstone to try to prove that the Jews were partly punished for a breach of the Mosaic law in keeping pigs. These are nineteenth -century arguments imported into the re- ligious atmosphere of the first century which have an air of incongruity that makes them futile and irrelevant to my mind. " I myself believe the most miraculous legends, as this one, are always attached to the traditions of a great spiritual teacher who probably had nothing to do with them and would have disowned them if he could have done so. They invariably gather round the figure of some founder of a new faith or worship, however past, in India. I admit that, as Huxley says, if this view be admitted it follows that all other miraculous stories in the Gospels are discredited; but from the earlier ages there has been a tendency not to take these stories literally, and at the present time I don't think that 106 MEMORIES the literal interpretation was worth an acrimonious controversy. " You think (p. 184) that if miracles were needed to remove unbelief, they are just as much or more wanted now as formerly. Miracles were quoted, in the old days, I think, not so much to remove unbelief as to accredit a new message. Our theologians might reply to you that when a new message comes, the miracles will reappear, as, in fact, they always do in Asia. Of course, I myself do not believe in the miracles, but I confess that Huxley's peremptory demand for scientific proof of these antique religions seems to me to imply deficient apprehension of their nature and spirit. I conceive his view to be hardly what I should call philosophical. " Always yours sincerely, " A. C. Lyall." To quote Sydney Smith's pun, the dispute seemed to Lyall like that of two women wrangling across the road from their respective doorsteps, agreement being im- possible because they were arguing from opposite premises ! Huxley anticipated Lyall's objection as to the undue importance of the Gadarene story. He said : "If these too -famous swine were the only parties to the suit I, for my part, should fully admit the justice of the rebuke. But, under the beneficent rule of the Court of Chancery, in, former times, it was not uncommon that a quarrel about a few perches of worthless land ended in the ruin of ancient families and the engulfing of great estates. And I think that our admonitor failed to observe the analogy — ^to note the momentous consequences of the judgment which may be accorded in the present appar- SIR ALFRED COMYN LYALL 107 ently insignificant action in re the swineherds of Gadara." ^ That was the point at issue. Behef in demonology was rife in Judaea in the time of Jesus. According to the record, he shared a beHef which we know has no vahdity. Hence what value can be attached to any statement that he is reported to have made about a spiritual world ? " On the whole," says the present Bishop of Oxford, " it is impossible to treat His (i. e. Jesus's) language about spirits as ' economical ' without giving profound unreality to His teaching as a whole." ^ " 18, Queen's Gate, S.W. " February 14, 1906. " My dear Clodd, " Many thanks for Animism, a closely reasoned demonstration of a genealogical tree which strikes its roots into primitive earth. " I see that, like myself, you are a close reader of old Hobbes, who was very much in advance of his age, and has a very luminous glance backward into origins. On page 24 Mr. Risley says that the idea of power lies at the root of the religion in Chota Nagpore folk. But the same idea is in the highest religious minds as well as in poor savages. Hobbes, in Leviathan, says, ' God is worshipped for His irresistible power.* Berkeley and Sir Isaac Newton may be quoted to the same effect. A god that had no power was never worshipped in any country or by any people. In short, the lowest and the highest religion and worship have the same roots; but cultivation and refinement of centuries have marked the differences between first and last stages. ^ Collected Essays, V. p. 414. ^ Dissertation on the Incarnation. 108 MEMORIES " At page 17 you write about the dog. It is not snobbishness ; that, it may be, is not the reason why he barks at shabby clothes, but the same experience that your servant is guarded by when he will or will not show you [? a stranger] into the front parlour. As to the difference in sagacity between a puppy and a full- grown dog, some animals from their birth have great sagacity. You must not banish hereditary instincts, though experience has great influence over an animal's education. " In England there are no wild animals; the tame beast is a poor stupid dull slave in comparison. " Yours sincerely, " A. C. Lyall." The last time that I saw him was at Aldworth, in September 1910. I shall not forget an evening when, a glorious sunset flooding the Weald, we stood for a few moments watching the mass of illumined and dissolving clouds. Then he put one hand on my shoulder and pointing the other hand southwards, said, " A great artist." After dinner, talk fell on the psychology of dreams and, Aldworth being an isolated spot, also about burglars, of whom Lady Lyall had a chronic fear. The next morning he told me that he had had an odd dream. It was of burglars invading the house and of his hurrying downstairs, revolver in hand, to meet them. Suddenly the front door burst into flames, the heat was awful. *' I woke up," he said, " and found that my feet were being scorched by my hot- water bottle ! " The late Henry Dakyn came to lunch. As an intimate friend of Henry Sidgwick, letters from whom form a SIR ALFRED COMYN LYALL 109 large part of the correspondence in Sidg wick's biography, there was pleasure in meeting him, because he talked freely about Sidgwick's scepticism, which psychical research only deepened. Some capital has been made out of his supposed belief in the validity of occult phenomena. Among Lyall's latest undertakings, Sir Mortimer Durand says, was that of " preparing to write, at the request of Lord Tennyson, a paper upon the relations between Alfred Tennyson and Edward FitzGerald, which paper was to have been published in a new edition of Lord Tennyson's Memoir of his father." ^ Upon this matter two letters came from him. " 18, Queen's Gate, S.W. " February 15, 1911. " My dear Clodd, " I have under consideration some writing, by request, about FitzGerald, of Omar Khayyam fame. It will be very helpful if you can tell me whether any biography of him has ever been published from which I can ascertain facts about his life or whether there are any articles or notes touching upon his ways and characteristics. Possibly you yourself have written something of the sort, or the O.K. Club may have papers contributed. Of course, his Letters are the best illustra- tion of his mind and habits, but I have nothing else. " If you have been reading Keary^ you will find much to which you will probably demur, and the concluding chapters of his book appear to me weak, but the general line of his argument is, I think, effective. " Yours very sincerely, " A. C. Lyall." 1 Life of Sir A. C. Lyall, p. 450. 2 The Pursuit of Reason, by C. F. Keary. 110 MEMORIES *' The Athenaeum, Pall Mall, S.W. February 17, 1911. *' My dear Clodd, " Many thanks for your reply about FitzGerald. I have taken out of the London Library Wright's big biography of him, so I won't trouble you to send it. And A. C. Benson's monograph I can easily find. If you will kindly send me some day your magazine article on him, I shall be thankful, but there is no hurry, as I shall not begin on the subject for some time to come. " As for Keary, I commended him to you merely for his chapter on Anthropology. His metaphysical speculations are of very small import. " Yours very sincerely, " A. C. Lyall." Dis aliter visum. The paper on FitzGerald was never written. What Lyall has said about him is in whole-hearted praise of the Letters in an article on " English Letter- Writing in the Nineteenth Century," which appeared in the Edinburgh Review of April 1896, and is reprinted in the posthumous volume entitled Studies in Literature and History, pp. 66-70. This extract may send the reader thereto. " Here is a man to whom correspondence was a real solace and a vehicle of thought and feeling, not a mere notebook of travel, not a conduit of confidential small talk. A faint odour of the seasons hangs round some of these letters, of the sunshine and rain, of dark days, and roads blocked with snow, of the first spring crocus and the faded autumnal garden plots." On the 8th of the following April, Lyall went to Farringford on a visit to Lord Tennyson. " Early next morning, there was the sound of a fall, and when the door was opened he was found lying on the floor dead. The weak heart had failed." XII James Cotter Morison (1832-1888) Their common interest in historical studies was sufficing bond between York Powell and Cotter Morison. I have spoken on a later page of Powell as having scattered his energies over too many fields to cultivate any single one to profit. In like manner Morison pro- duced little which is adequately representative of his exceptional powers. He was well-to-do; he had great conversational charm, and gave too willingly to society " what was meant for mankind." In the case of both men, the promise of life was never fulfilled, hence the high estimate formed by their private friends can never be shared by the public. Brilliant talker, and none the less good listener, it is no mean loss to the world's stock of table-talk that there survives no record of things said by Morison. I remember an epigram or two ; his calling a prominent Liberal Oxford don " a bitter olive " ; a still living novelist " a straw fire " i; while his laconic comment when reading some letters which I had received from Ruskin was, " insolent capon." From what Holman-Hunt told me, the noun had no warrant. Like his intimate and lifelong friend. Lord Morley, Morison passed through his Oxford career without ^ Opinions differ. The late Sir Walter Besant said, in Morison's hearing, that, in his judgment (which was ever a kindly one), the writer in question had " the greatest imagination since Shakespeare." Pulling his beard, as was his habit, Morison's comment was, " The rest is silence.'' Ill 112 MEMORIES university distinction. They were among the founders — Morison was one of the financial backers — of the Fortnightly Review. When Lewes retired from the editorship, the influence of Morison secured the post for Lord (then Mr. John) Morley. Morison told me, laugh- ingly, " Why, I used to mend Morley' s quills for him when he was writing in the Review'' Morison was also a contributor, his articles being anticipatory portions of a history of France, more particularly of its institutions from the reign of Charlemagne to the fall of the ancien rigime which he had intended to write. For some years he made his home in Paris. His house was the meeting- place of men of note in politics and letters; in his affectionate nature, his sympathetic charm, he breathed the spirit of Abou ben Adhem : " Write me as one who loves his fellow men." There he enjoyed the friendship of the leader of the French Positivists, M. Pierre Laffitte. Their intimacy is shown in this letter — " Clairvaux, 30, FitzJohn's Avenue, N.W. " May 19, 1887. " My dear Clodd, " I am much vexed to have to tell you that I shall not be able to form one of your party at Whitsun- tide. The reason is that a body of French Positivists, headed by our chief, Laffitte, is coming over here during those holidays, and both old friendship and duty require that I should remain at home to do what I can to make the visit agreeable to the strangers. I shall have to do a deal of interpreting, as few of the Frenchmen know any English. " I need not tell you, my dear Clodd, how disappointed I am at this sudden and unexpected interference with our proposed holiday together in your pleasant seaside JAMES COTTER MORISON 118 home, the delights of which I know so well, together with the benefit both to mind and body which I always derive from an outing with you. But you see I have no option. To go away from London just when Laffitte came here would be almost base on my part. He is an old man, and will in all probability never come here again. I have been for eighteen years on terms of the greatest intimacy with him and I am sure you would be the last to wish me to do anything unkind to an old friend. I was most annoyed to miss you both on Saturday and Sunday last. You had only just left the Club. " Ever yours lovingly, " Jas. Cotter Morison." I first met him at the Savile. The attractive feature of that Club, whose motto is Sodalitas convivium, is that members mix together without formal introduction. During more than thirty years of membership, one came to know a large number, especially through the Saturday afternoon gatherings in the smoking-room. There I frequently met Thomas Hardy, Edmund Gosse, Walter Pollock, Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Lang, Dr. Harley and others, the bare recital of whose names would have the dryness of a catalogue. For the interest in such matters lies not in whom you met, but in what manner of man he was, and in what he said. Morison was in Paris at the time of the Commune. The fury of the mob had pulled down the Napoleon Column in the Place Vendome, and the little bronze statue of Victory which capped it was carried off by a young man and, for safe keeping, taken to Morison' s rooms, where he hid it under a bed on which Mr. Frederic Harrison slept as its guardian. But the thing was too risky to keep, so it was handed back to the Communists. 114 MEMORIES Morison told me that it was dropped into the Seine, but, according to the story in Mr. Harrison's Auto- biographic Memoirs,^ it was thrown on a dung-heap. Of its real fate " no man knoweth to this day." Ad- mirable as are Morison's monographs on Gibbon and Macaulay (in the " English Men of Letters Series *') they do not reach the high standard of his less-known Life and Times of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, It is his masterpiece : he brought the sympathy of a deeply religious nature to his work. It gives a vivid picture of the Catholic Church in the twelfth century and of the great spiritual, and, be it added, fanatical, teacher who rendered her such brilliant service. He told me an amusing story about the book. Like the conscientious amateur actor of Othello who, for the adequate performance of that part, blacked himself all over, Morison, before starting on the writing of Saint Bernard's life, obtained, through the influence of Cardinal Manning, the privilege of admission for some weeks to a Cistercian monastery, where he went through the severe discipline imposed on the brotherhood. Only those who remember how he enjoyed good living can appreciate the humour of his self-imposed asceticism. The earlier editions of the book were dedicated to Thomas Carlyle " with deep reverence and gratitude " ; this was deleted in later issues because of his revulsion against the dedicatee on reading the Reminiscences, Morison's last book — never completed by the issue of a promised second part — was entitled The Service of Man : an Essay towards the Religion of the Future, Its aim was the substitution of service of the Known for that of the Unknown — of Man instead of God, " For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how 1 Vol. II. p. 27. JAMES COTTER MORISON 115 can he love God whom he hath not seen? *' That he was not in entire sympathy with Positivism, a creed which Huxley defined as " Catholicism minus Chris- tianity," is evident in the following letter. When the book was finished, his days, practically, were numbered, and he entrusted me with arrangements for its publication. " Clairvaux, 30, FitzJohn's Avenue, N.W. " May 16, 1886. " My dear Clodd, " The book which I wish to publish is entitled the ' Service of Man, or an Essay towards the Religion of the Future.' It is, of course, largely founded on Positivist principles, but by no means exclusively so. And as a matter of fact Comte is never referred to or even named. Great harm has been done to Positivism by forcing Comte crude and simple down people's throats and winding up every paragraph in the Liturgy with a ' Through Auguste Comte our Lord.' But that is not the chief reason why I have chosen this course. I differ often so deeply and completely from Comte that I cannot take him as my sole authority, and, on the other hand, to controvert him was not desirable or needed. The object of this book is to show how the Service of God or of Gods leads by natural evolution to the Service of Man, from Theolatry to Anthropolatry. " Always yours most sincerely, " Jas. Cotter Morison." This letter followed the publication of the book — " Clairvaux, " January 20, 1887. " My dear Clodd, " I have not been often more grateful for a letter than I was for yours, for to tell you the truth, I have 116 MEMORIES been a ready somewhat sharply chidden for my book by honest, sincere friends whose opinion and esteem I highly value. And I was getting a little crestfallen, when you picked me up, and gave me a real comforting. I admit entirely the mistake of the Preface. It is wholly out of place and should have been at the end of the book and not at the beginning. Also, as you say, such a gloomy forecast tends to blunt the appetite for what follows. If I get a chance in consequence of a second edition I will try and alter that. My intention was to add three more chapters on politics, economics, and socialistics which would have made the book better balanced, but one cannot help such breakdowns. " Always, dear Clodd, " Affectionately yours, " Jas. Cotter Morison." . On the first of March, 1888, a day so bleak that a tent was pitched over the grave to protect the mourners, Morison was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. Among the sparse company, which included Lord Morley, was George Meredith, who took me, after the ceremony, to lunch at the Garrick Club. He talked of the mockery of the Burial Service which had been read in full over the remains of a man who lived and died an unbeliever, and whose last book was a trenchant attack on Chris- tianity. And he said that if we did not give directions to the contrary, words, all unmeaning to those who die outside the Christian pale, will be spoken at our grave- side. These directions he himself omitted to give. Shortly after Morison' s death, it was announced that Mr. John (now Lord) Morley was preparing for the press a volume of essays — reprints and unpublished MSS. (chiefly connected with Morison' s projected history of JAMES COTTER MORISON 117 France). And it was hoped that a memoir of their author would be prefixed. But for some reason the project fell through; the disjecta membra were never collected and the Memoir was never written. I know that Morison expected that his papers would take book form, for, during his last illness, he said to me that he wished that his article on " History " in the Encyclo- pcedia Britannica should be excluded, because he was not satisfied with it. Among his privately-printed miscel- lanies is a Lecture on the Paston Letters ; the correspond- ence of a family of that name living in Norfolk in the fifteenth century. This extract therefrom will show what historical literature has lost in the death in the prime of manhood, of James Cotter Morison. (I recall the enjoyment with which he paid a visit to Framlingham Castle — ^the " Due of Norfolk's Castell of Framingham," thus described in the Paston Letters. It was there that, on the death of Edward VI, Mary took refuge on her way to London when the " nine days Queen " was proclaimed. The castle has long been a mere shell, but its walls, flanked with thirteen square towers, make it one of the most imposing ruins in the country. " Clairvaux, " June 23, 1887. " My dear Clodd, " I send you Lecture on the Paston Letters, see page 25 — ^three lines from top — ^for the reference to Framlingham. "You were quite right about 'salarium' after aU. I find in Lewis and Short, the last and best Latin diction- ary, this definition — '''Solarium — ^the money given to the soldiers for salt : salt-money : hence, a pension, stipend, allowance, 118 MEMORIES salary. It is a lower Latin word and has several con- geners, as Calcearium, shoe-money. Congiarium^ a gift divided among the people of the measure of a congius (nearly six pints English). Originally this present was in food, as in oil or wine. Afterwards congiarium was also used for a largess in money of undefined amount divided among the soldiers.' " There appears to be no reason to suppose that salt was particularly precious. The soldiers' pay was divided under several heads and salt was one. " Keene only left this morning for the Isle of Wight. " Ever yours lovingly, " Jas. Cotter Morison.**) " On looking back and taking a summary view of the whole correspondence, we must confess, I think, that the picture it offers of the lives of our ancestors is in many respects an unattractive one. A sordid greediness for gain is a too predominant note. Those who are inclined to think that an inordinate pursuit of wealth is a specially modern vice unknown to the good old times will change their opinion on reading the Paston Letters. Persons more engrossed with the pursuit of gain than these Pastons and their numerous correspondents, who belong to all grades of society, it would be difficult to conceive — and the love of gain in those days, owing to the economic conditions of the time, took a particularly harsh and repulsive form. The love of gain is a pretty constant factor in populations of the Teutonic race, but in the fifteenth century it could be satisfied in one way — ^that is mutual aggression and spoliation. Industry and commerce were in their infancy, and the satisfaction they now afford to the acquisitive instincts did not exist. A man then could hardly become wealthy with- JAMES COTTER MORISON 119 out depriving some other man of his wealth. The creation of new wealth by working up the raw materials supplied by nature was comparatively unknown. If Peter got rich it was generally at the expense of Paul, who was made poor. There was, consequently, a directness of collision of the selfish passions which our manufacturing epoch with all its evils, and they are many, does not reproduce. Neither does religion throw a softer light on the harsher features of the age. Religion is found to consist merely in mechanical forms and cere- monies and stereotyped phrases, in which sacred names are freely used or abused, but of the higher spiritual life there is scarcely a trace. The fifteenth century is not one of the ages of faith, as the Crusades was. The single-hearted and sublime piety of a St. Bernard or St. Anselm has disappeared, but the forms and cere- monies which a previous age had vivified with devotion were still preserved, and followed with a sterile and dull routine. An amusing instance of this is shown in a letter of John Paston, the younger, who discovered, much to his disgust, that by a mistake of somebody's, a priest had run him a bill for singing masses for the soul of Sir John Fastolf, which far exceeded any outlay for that purpose which he had expected. ' By St. Mary,' he says, ' he is owing more money than I had supposed 1 ' He evidently looks on the matter as a piece of rather sharp practice on the part of the priest, as we might object to charges in a lawyer's bill which might be legal but were scarcely just. He says that he has given orders to the priest to stop singing. We feel we are not far from the Reformation. When another half century or so has passed, facts of this kind will not excite a mere vexation of having been imposed upon, but a spirit of righteous anger, which will purify the Temple from the presence 120 MEMORIES of those who sell and buy therein. The Middle Ages are drawing to a close. " But they have not ended yet. Outwardly they seem as fair and vigorous as ever. Dimly as in a dis- solving view which has hardly begun to change, we can trace the outline of the coming time behind the actual time. Other institutions, other manners, another architecture, are just ready to advance, as it were, and displace the Catholic-feudal policy under which Eng- land has lived for four centuries. But little visible change as yet can be seen. The Middle Age, like a flower full-blown, still stands in that perfection of bloom which immediately precedes rapid decay. The keen air of science will shortly nip its gorgeous blossoms, the rude hand of industry will loosen its roots, and it wiU disappear. But this is not yet. We are still in the dim dawn of the modern era, when, as it has been well said by a German author, the broad moon of Romance still hangs in the sky, and only a faint light in the east betokens the rising sun of exact science. Whatever men might be, the earth was then exceeding fair to look upon, for it was adorned with a jewelled robe of art which three centuries since have done their best to destroy. Cathedrals, castles, manor-houses, civic and religious buildings of all kinds, still stood in the perfection of Gothic beauty, with not a pane knocked out of the painted windows, or a carved oak stall burnt or muti- lated. The castle-keeps still frowned over their encir- cling moats, spanned by the drawbridge and defended by the portcullis. The England of that age was per- haps not a very pleasant country to travel in. The roads were very bad, and often far from safe. Still, with all the drawbacks, I fancy that there are not a few of us who would be willing to encounter the risks of a ride JAMES COTTER MORISON 121 across country in those days if we could only do it, and see the deep forests and spacious moors, and the strange large birds that hovered over them. Yes, indeed, many of us would take to the saddle, and join a party of pilgrims or travellers, and listen to their Chaucer English, unheeding the chances of the road as we spurred forward to reach the hospitable monastery before nightfall. The pure air, unpolluted by a factory chimney and scarcely by a coal fire, and the novelty of the scene, would brace our nerves and kindle our curiosity. We might have to ford or swim a river now and then, but the water would be sweet, as it descends from the hills without a trace of sewage or chemical poison to make it deadly to man and beast. With what wonder should we gaze on the quaint picturesque costumes of our fellow travellers, the astonishing head-dresses of the women, and the gorgeous apparel of the men. We should meet archers with their bows, and knights on their war horses glitter- ing with armour. We should be struck with the various habits of the numerous orders of monks and nuns, the splendour of religious processions, the richness of the shrines, and the crowds of pilgrims wending their way to them. Many of us would like to see with our own eyes that distant epoch of our country, which to do would be vastly more instructive and interesting than an hour's lecture like this on the Paston Letters " (pp. 33-37). We generally snatched a day from Whitsuntide to drive to Framlingham, and I recall a witticism by Pro- fessor Flinders Petrie when he and Thomas Hardy were of the party. The "Crown and Castle" is faced by a large shop across the front of which is (or was then) affixed in bold gilt letters GEORGE JUDE three times. *' Well," said Petrie to Hardy, " you wouldn't call that Jude the Obscure." XIII Frederick York Powell (1850-1904). Right Hon. Sir John Rnts (1840-1915). Sir G. Laurence Gomme (1853-1916). It was at Cotter Morison*s that I first met York Powell. One look was enough to impress you that you were in the presence of no ordinary man. Tall, well-knit, stalwart, handsome, blue -eyed, curly-haired, and with full, cheery voice, he was the embodiment of all that was attractive. He ought to have lived to a hundred; he died of a worn-out heart at fifty-four.^ Unlike Froude and other predecessors in the Chair of Modern History at Oxford, Powell has left only brief and scattered writings behind him. A History of Early England up to the Roman Conquest and a History of England for the use of Middle Forms in Schools to the Death of Henry VII : these are the only substantive books from his own pen ; the rest of the list is made up of miscellanea. His versatility beguiled him into rapid traversing of fields lying outside his true province. The work by which he will be remembered is the Corpus Poeticum Boreale. As his biographer. Professor Oliver Elton, says in his Memoir and Letters of Frederick York Powell : " Powell loved heathendom, being himself a heathen." So, in collaboration with Dr. Vigfusson, he plunged with eagerness into the task of preparing a * There is a skilful portrayal of him from the sympathetic pen of Dr. George Haven Putnam in his Memories of a Publisher, pp. 209-214. 122 FREDERICK YORK POWELL 123 definitive text and translation of the great body of Icelandic legends and lays in the thirteenth century, enriching these with introduction, excursuses and ap- pendices easy to one who was a master in knowledge of Scandinavian history. The monumental work, issued in two volumes, came out in 1883, and in 1889 the brave tender-souled man lost his comrade : " the wise, good and kindly." There must have been a dash of Drake and Frobisher in Powell's blood. He would have made a typical Viking, and, since a life of adventure was denied him, his delight was to mix with men of the romantic sort, Paul du Chaillu and Louis Becke, to wit. Becke was a character with a wild career. Born in New South Wales in 1848,^ his youth was spent in an office which he loathed. Then he started in a small way as a trader and joined an old captain as supercargo on a schooner, these two being the only white men on board. The old man took to drinking hard and had delirium tremens, so it was left to Becke to navigate the vessel through perilous seas. For years he lived on various islands of the Pacific, enduring all sorts of hardships and revelling in exciting adventures. He came to England and my friend Massingham (then editor of the Daily Chronicle), acutely marked him as the man to sift the genuineness of the extraordinary story with which Mr. de Rougemont startled the town in 1898. I was invited to be present as " honest broker." All that I can do is to refer the curious enquirer to the reports on the interview in the Daily Chronicle issues of September 20 and October 15, 1898. I read some time back a story of a widow of a prominent townsman in Wisconsin who recovered damages against the editor of the local paper because, ^ He died at Sydney in March 1913, 124 MEMORIES in the obituary notice, he said that her husband " had gone to a better home." Such a story makes one careful. No wonder, therefore, that on hearing that I knew him, Powell asked me to bring Becke up to Oxford for a week-end. With what zest did he listen to the stories, some of them more " broad '* than long, of beach- combers and more disreputable rascals. How he roared when Becke showed him a photograph of a *' converted " Australian black fellow which, with the descriptive comment, faces this page. I shall not forget the astonishment of Canon Taylor, who was to meet Powell for the first time, when Powell, having, as usual, missed the train by which he had promised to come, rushed into the study with a bundle of papers comprising Tit-Bits, Answers and the Pink 'Un, under his arm, shouting, " Sorry, old chap, I am so late." The Canon had not met that type of Professor before and looked at me suspiciously as if I had brought in the " Man from Blankley's." One night, when staying with me at Easter, an offer came to my party to join the crew of the Aldeburgh lifeboat, who were going out for their quarterly practice. There was a high wind and a heavy sea, but Powell jumped at the chance and came back about 2 a.m. drenched and radiant, telling what fun it had been to don a cork jacket and have his dole of grog. Professor Elton tells a story how Powell's scout, accustomed to his master's disregard of bills, thrust out of sight a letter which looked like a final demand for payment. It contained an offer of the Regius Professorship of Modern History from Lord Rosebery ! ^ Powell often acted on the principle that if letters are left unanswered they at last answer themselves, but this » Vol. I. p. 174. [To face page 124. This authentic photograph, recently taken by a Sydney amateur on behalf of the Sydney Bulletin — a journal deeply interested in mis- sionary enterprise in the South Seas — will, it is hoped, supply a long- felt want to those who desire to know what the raging heathen looks like after he has given up his debasing superstitions and no longer bows down to wood and stone. This picture will enable the pious ladies who supply funds for the conversion of the heathen to perceive that all their money is not spent in waistcoats. His Reverence is a real parson, and has got 'em all on : holy hat, sacred gamp, orthodox coat, and carries under his arm seven or eight pounds of the Word. Also he is an unsophisticated shepherd and evidently possesses most rudimentary ideas as to the proper manner of wearing his white neck- tie. He is gazing with chastened sorrow at some heathen English sailors belonging to a trading schooner who are violating the Lord's Day by bathing their toil -stained bodies in a river of the Vineyard. f^mSi^y-wjA FREDERICK YORK POWELL 125 did not save him from turning up at a house to dine, only to find that the invitation was a year old. Prob- ably he shared the philosophy of the Irishman who, losing his train, said, " Better late than never." To stay in his rooms at Christ Church was to meet the oddest mixture of company, and to stumble over the most miscellaneous contents. His dress, his demeanour and outspokenness were all protests against the stiffness and exclusiveness of University and clerical coteries, to whom a don who wore a pea jacket and yachting cap was anathema. " Omniscience was his foible " ; he passed without hitch or effort from praise of Henry James (whose novels he told me, not long before his death, he read with increasing delight), and Meredith; to vivid narrative of famous fights, as of that between Sayers and Heenan; from enthusiasms over Japanese prints to talk on the scientific treatment of history. Communist refugees had been sheltered by him. Step- niak was one of his closest friends. Born to be a man of action, but fated to be a man of letters, his hand would eagerly clasp his who had done some brave or notable thing, especially if the man had not been advertised as the latest sensation. Powell would feast him at the "high table" in the historic hall of Christ Church, and then, with brief look-in at the " common room," leave his fellow dons to their port, and carry his guest off to his den, whence would resound laughter that shook the walls within and sobriety without. Better than any portrait I can attempt are a few letters in proof of what manner of man he was. Meredith wrote to me about him : " I had a fond corner for him as well as an admira- tion for his work without acquiescing in his literary opinions." Here are a few of them. " Froude's style is journalistic and slip-shod. Browning I cannot away 126 MEMORIES with." He begged his friend, Professor Tout, "not to be mealy-mouthed over Rousseau, Le prophete du faux, the eighteenth-century Mahdi, the begetter of more folHes than can be counted." " Bunyan's prose intoxicates me with pleasure." " Bernard Shaw is silly to sneer at Science which has given us everything that raises us from the ape.^ But he is much more in earnest than he seems." " Meredith is a prophet as well as an artist ; he has something to tell us : ' We bid you to hope.' " " Tolstoy, good God ! a miserable Nonconformist set of silly preachments." " In Hardy's verse there are material efforts both new and beautiful." " Ibsen's Ghosts is the greatest play on Heredity since iEschylus and Sophocles." " Omar is a plain, down- right man and his ' Message ' is only a friendly whisper to them that care to sit near him, bidding them trust to the real and front life squarely. [Powell translated a few stanzas of the Rubdiydt which appeared in the Pageant, 1897^]. Rabelais and Whitman are of the company. Whitman is the only man I would cross the water to see." Characteristic of Powell as a " heathen " was his reply when asked to join the newly-formed Primrose League. " No : there's been too much made already of one dead Jew to fuss about another." " Bedford Park, " Apnl 4, 1895. " My dear Clodd, " I haven't had such a loss as Sime since Vig- fusson died. A fine, delicate, sympathetic man. A ^ The measure of Mr. Bernard Shaw*s capacity for judgment on Darwin is shown in his calling him " muddle-headed " and a " pigeon fancier." The sciolist whose stuff will continue to be read "when Homer and Shakespeare are forgotten — but not till then " — gete a well- deserved trouncing in Richard Whiteing*8 My Harvest. « Republished by H. W. Bell, Oxford, 1901. FREDERICK YORK POWELL 127 man both pleasant and comforting to his friends and full of charity to all. I never heard him speak ill to any man. I miss him terribly. I used to go round to him once a week at least, when I was at home and we talked on till the small hours. It was good to be with such a man. He drew the best out of one, saw the best possibilities in one, and heartened one up. Death's busy dropping shots and somehow picks the best out of our little company first. " The Book of Enoch keep till its use is fulfilled to you. The Book of Jubilees is coming and there is a good book on the origins of monachism, Philo's treatise de Vita Contemplativa (a beautiful example of keen English scholarship) by Conybeare just out. You will find good pickings in it, but of course the bulk of the book is for professional specialists, and discussions of textual criticism. The purport of the book is striking. Eusebius got round it by a bold assumption. The modern apologists can't do that now. Have you read Ho worth's excellent letter on the Septuagint? He has made some discoveries over Ezra and the later prophets that are of lasting moment. " Isn't ' argon ' and ' helium ' fine ? We can make our German friends sit up now and then. You can't help being patriotic and hopeful over such things. So much German work is sham and insincere whenever one tests it, and they brag so over their work. They sicken me as the Americans do. I am getting more and more jingo. " Is Allen still frightened over his book ? ^ I tried to reassure him. There is nothing new or startling in it, but he has managed to catch the Philistine's ear. It is silly to bother about answering his critics and he does not do it well. ^ The Woman who Did, by Grant Allen- 128 MEMORIES " He is such a good fellow and so earnest, and so deaf to the comic side of things that he has always an open place to be attacked in — and it hurts him. " Have you read Emerson's Birds, Beasts and Fishes of the Broads ? It is excellent. What days are you at the Savile? " Yours faithfully, " F. York Powell." " Bedford Park, ''March 2^, 1900. " My dear Clodd, " I have knocked it about shameful, but it won't want any more mending.^ It does not seem quite so poor and inadequate to its purpose as it did when I sent it to you, and I hope it reflects in its blurred way the real Allen I knew and loved. When I think of him and Shute and Sime ^ and Gleeson and my dear master Vigfusson and Charles and Henry Stone and Walter Ferrier, all gone, I feel that though the noble fellowship of the Round Table where I had an unworthy seat is broken up and only one or two of us left on the quest of the Grail in following the bite glapissante like Pelli- nore, yet I have had good friends, I have met men I am proud to think about, and if they have cared for me half as much as I have cared for them, I have not been badly loved. " But these gaps in the ring of our lives are too many, Clodd, and I tremble now when I hear of a friend's illness. I know how short a time one has to pass with those one loves, so few years, such a brief tale of days, opportunities snatched from the daily business and the * This refers to his " appreciation " of Grant Allen in my Memoir. ^ James Sime, author of Lives of Gbetho, Schiller, Leasing and other works. FREDERICK YORK POWELL 129 daily cares, but the only gold beads in the chequered necklace of one's life. I am so glad I never had the slightest even momentary feeling of coldness in the course of my friendship with any of these men. The hours I passed with them were sunny and unclouded. That is much to remember. But it was to their gentle- ness, not to mine, that I owe the pleasant memory. They were patient and generous and gave me credit for more than one was worth. But I really loved them all the time and I think they must have felt that. " You have got some nice bits from Lang. What a good creature he is, how generous he is, and how fair. It was Allen that made me know him first. " Yours faithfully, " F. York Powell." " Christ Church, Oxford, " February 25, 1902. " My dear Clodd, " I have finished the book.^ I like it very much. I think it gives both the work and the man properly and briefly. " The ' pig ' controversy you have handled excellently, I think. It wanted stating as you have stated it and the Gladstone attitude needed exposing in its true light. What an extraordinary thing it is that a man with such brains for finance shouldn't be able to throw off the superstitious absurdities of the past. He was never really honest with his own mind. He meant to be honest, but ... he was a terrific self-deceiver. " Owen was a liar, simply. He lied for God and for malice : a bad case. " I hope Becke is better. I wish I could come to you ^ Thomas Henry Huxley, by E. C. 130 MEMORIES at Easter and see him and you and have walks and talks. They are quiet times of refreshing for me and do me real good. I learn and I rest and have a good time. I have to be in Ireland on April 7 and I have four big lectures to write and all of them to be printed, I expect, besides my regular work. I wish for the sun and mild S.W. again. It is this raw weather with melting snow on the hills when one always gets cold. " I am so glad Cotton's happily suited for some years.^ What a brick he is. " I am sick over this damned flunky thing of a Royal [ Y. P. meant British] Academy ; pure rot : another obstacle to every one who wishes to do some- thing. Gratuitous red tape. How Bryce can join it I can't make out. It's a job of Jebb's, I hear. " I hope your book will sell as well as it deserves, for then you will be able to buy a large piece of Aldeburgh and will then roost there as a beneficent Dictator (the best form of government, I fancy, after all). FitzG/s last batch of letters is excellent, as good as ever, surely. *' Yours very faithfully, " F. York Powell." There is pathos in this letter written four days after a report of his death appeared in the papers. " He was startled," says Professor Elton, " but laughed, and begged that any obituary notice might be sent for his entertainment." " Staverton Grange, " Banbury Road, Oxford, ** April 21, 1904. " My dear Clodd, " I can't make out how the report arose. I am slowly getting better. It is kindly of you to speak so ^ Ab editor of the revised edition of The Imperial Qazetteer of India, SIR JOHN RHtS 131 warmly of my work and me. I had a sort of ' set back * owing to want of sleep, but opium in tiny doses cured that, and my heart seems to be getting better (the mitral valve leaks) steadily. I hope Nauheim will right me altogether as it has many others. I am still in bed and can't write much. Take care of yourself. " Yours faithfully, " F. York Powell." He never reached Nauheim : he died on the 5th of May following. He was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery. A large company, dignitaries of the Church and of men in secular ranks of life were present ; " men who had not met for long and found each other older, men who did not know, or know of, one another." He was buried, by his own instructions, without any rite, and in silence. Sir John Rhys (1840-1915). " Come to Jesus " was not a call to me to obtain salvation, but an invitation to the College of that name from its Principal when I complained of the doleful dulness of the Common Room of another College. Acceptance of the invitation gained me a friend the news of whose sudden death reached me while writing these pages. The numerous public and patriotic duties which Sir John Rhys discharged sadly lessened chances of intercourse with him in later years, but there was no decay of a friendship which, in its warmth of greeting and largeness of hospitality, can never be excelled. Open house was the " Lodgings " ; the host, hostess and daughters made you feel at home ere you had crossed its threshold. Other pens will tell of the romantic career of the farmer's son to whom English was almost a foreign 132 MEMORIES tongue; who, entering Jesus College, rose by power of brain and force of high character to become its Principal and to receive a much more coveted distinction than his knighthood in elevation to the rank of Privy Councillor. They will tell of a deep and wide scholarship which, on the creation of a Chair of Celtic in the University of Oxford, marked him as the only possible first occupier. But Rh^s was never wholly at ease in his surroundings. Liberal in politics and heterodox in creed, he made few intimates. When Sir Edward Tylor's health compelled him to leave Oxford, and when Professor Morfill died, he spoke pathetically of growing isolation. As far back as 1898, he says in a letter to me : " My wife wishes to be kindly remembered to you ; she is still suffering from rheumatism and I am unable to ' suffer fools gladly * : there are so many of them let loose in Oxford this time of the year. So neither of us is quite happy.'* As a piece of fun, I recall when, on a week-end visit, he said to me : "...'* naming a man prominent, if not eminent, in science, " is coming. He sent me his latest book, and I haven't cut the leaves, one reason being that I know 'tis full of cranky stuff." " Well," I said, " I have reviewed it, pitching into it, but the review isn't yet published ; so we mustn't give each other away." " But," said he, " we shall be dosed with it after dinner." And dosed we were. Rh^s made non- committal comments, and I was all the time in a funk, having before me the possible appearance of my review in Monday's issue of the paper, because my fellow-guest and I were to return to London together. The review came out some days later. Talking of reviewing reminds me how Professor Max Muller " went for " Andrew Lang as the supposed writer of an adverse notice of the last volume of Chips from a German Work- shop, whereas I was the culprit. Lang was too amused SIR JOHN RHtS 138 to be angry, and only reproached me with his vicarious suffering as a part of the human lot. Nearly all RhJ's's letters to me deal with philological subjects, Ogams, Runes and all their kin. But he had a wide variety of interest, as these will show. ** Jesus College, Oxford, ** December 24, 1897. "... [The reference is to a review of mine of Grant Allen's Evolution of the Idea of God.] I am quite with you. I believe in the animistic origin of some gods and the ghostly origin of others ; it is significant that no ghost man has ever been able to appropriate any great members of the Greek or Indo-European Pantheon, such as Zeus or Apollo. Allen has my sympathy also : he has found a good key, but he unreasonably expects it to open every lock, and that it won't he may be sure." " Jesus College, Oxford, *' October n, 1890. " My dear Clodd, " I read your book [Tom Tit Tot ; an Essay on Savage Philosophy in Folk Tale] at once, but I have delayed inexcusably writing to thank you most cordially for it. I have marked slices here and there which I am going to steal. I am not satisfied that my conclusion as to name, soul and breath is sufficiently definite, so I have been trying to analyse the matter a little further and I have come to the conclusion that the Aryans must have at a very early date associated the name with the breath. " But why did they do that ? Is there any savage race that pronounces the name, or breathes it in a whisper over the new-born babe to make it breathe or in order to facilitate its breathing ? Or is it owing to the breath being the breath of life ; a sign of life, etc., they 184 MEMORIES would associate the name with the breath? What do you think ? *' This time I see you have gone in for laying your folklorist hands on the Ark again. This time baptism is made to fall into line : you will come to a bad end, though there is no Gladstone ^ to be set at you now ! " Yours very truly, " J. Rnts." ** Gwalia Hotel, Uandrindod, " September 5, 1899. ** [After dealing with the distinction between Ogams and Runes.] Have you seen a long and pathetic letter from Mrs. Ward in The Times to-day ? She is longing to see all who cannot believe in Virgin births — ^that is apparently the first difficulty present to her mind — duly acknowledged members of the Church of England. If they were only called by the same name of Christians it matters naught that they are ritualists and agnostics : the name is the great thing which would enable them to enjoy the Eucharist together. Somebody ought to present her with a copy of the Australian book ^ reviewed in one of the Reviews by Frazer; it appears that to the Australian natives every birth is due to an im- maculate conception. The whole letter affords a curious study in psychology to me and my wife. " Yours very truly, " J. RHtS.** Sir Laurence Gomme (1858-1916). The pen is scarcely dry ere it has to be re-dipped to mourn the loss of a friendship of nearly forty years in the death of Sir Laurence Gomme. 1 P. 210 {infra). 2 The reference is to Spencer and Qillen's Naiive Tribes of Central Australiat p. 124. SIR LAURENCE GOMME 135 The formation of the Folk Lore Society, in which he took a leading part, brought us together, community of interest cementing intercourse. The Society came, none too soon, to the rescue of a mass of oral tradition whose value became more apparent as survivals of primitive ideas, beliefs and customs, when the doctrine of evolution was extended to man's spiritual and intellectual development. What had been more or less a dilettante pursuit became a serious study. Old wives' sayings, fables, folk and fairy tales; in brief, the vast body of superstitions, were shown to have their roots deep down in the primitive soul. While anthropology, on its physical side, is concerned with skull-measure- ments and human anatomy generally as a key to race; on its psychical side, as folklore, it teems with interest as " the proper study of mankind." It was especially to the collection of quaint and archaic customs, and their survival in our midst, that Gomme gave of the leisure which he snatched from time not claimed by official duties. I remember his keen interest when I told him that in this manor of Aldeburgh the custom of what is known in law as " Borough English " prevails. That is, if the owner of copyhold estates or tenements dies intestate, his youngest son inherits. In some rare cases elsewhere the youngest daughter inherits. And this custom of ultimogeniture overrides the law of the land. It is widely, but sporadically, distributed, being found in various parts of England, and westwards across Eurasia to the confines of China. There are traces of it among the New Zealanders and various other lower races, and that a like system of inheritance may have been in vogue among the Hebrews is shown in the cases of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and others. The origin of the custom has long puzzled the wits of antiquarians and jurists, and 186 MEMORIES many explanations have been offered in solution of a difficult problem. The researches of a distinguished lawyer, the late Charles Elton, led him to the conclusion that the oldest customs of inheritance were in their remote beginnings based on the worship of ancestors, whose shrine and altar were essentially the family hearth. The father and elder sons would pursue war and hunting and the youngest son would remain at home as hearth- guardian; with charge to perform certain funeral rites on the death of his father. Hence, by gradations easy to follow, his succession to the hearth and homestead.^ Not less interested was Gomme when talk fell on the custom, in cases of private partnerships in vessels, of dividing the shares into sixty-fourths. He told me that among village communities in India the land is held by the original settlers in the same way, which suggested as probable the explanation that the ships of our roving sea-ancestors were, like the lands of these Indian com- munities, originally tribal. In the old Viking ship, preserved in Christiania, there are sixteen tholes on each side. If the crew worked in double shifts, this would give sixty-four rowers. So we had jolly talks, whetted by the fascination of the manifold vistas which these and other subjects opened. To these, both in books and fugitive papers in scientific journals, Gomme was constantly con- tributing, and when warnings of a breakdown compelled his retirement from the Clerkship of the London County Council, he had planned more than one addition to his treatises on tribal customs. There was a touch of sad- ness in the reply to my letter wishing him health for the tasks that he loved. * Origins of English History, Chapter on " Borough English." SIR LAURENCE GOMME 187 ** Long Crendon, Bucks. *♦ March 1, 1914. " My dear Clodd, " Alas ! I am no longer a youngster as you suggest, and hence the necessity. Your cheer onwards is delightful, reminding one of the old days, and making one hope to have more time to cultivate one's friends and turn to matters which need doing. Thanks and again thanks for your letter. *' Yours truly, " Laurence Gomme." XIV George Meredith (1828-1909) My first meeting with George Meredith was at Cotter Morison's house in May 1884. Meredith had a sobriquet, wherein drollery was an element, for his intimates. As the author of a life of the saintly Abbot of Cluny, Morison, to whom the term ascetic was the last to be applied, was dubbed " St. Bernard." Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth was dedicated to him — Antistans mihi milihus trecentis was the modest quotation that followed the name — and when Morison died in 1888 Meredith expressed in brief threnody what loss a circle of loving friends had sustained — " A fountain of our sweetest, quick to spring In fellowship abounding, here subsides ; And never passage of a cloud on wing To gladden blue forgets him ; near he hides." Mr. Lionel Robinson was " Poco " (poco cur ante) : Sir William Hardman was " Friar Tuck '* ; I was " Sir Reynard." Keen is my memory of the anticipation with which each number of Once a Week was looked for, because a novel — Evan Harrington — by the author of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel was running through that serial. But in my acquaintance with the writings of Meredith his verse, small as was then the quantity, had for me a special attraction, and when Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, with its magic " Woods of Westermain " (the quickening inspiration to which was 138 [To face page 138. y,KX