LORD BOWEN
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
BY SIR HENRY STEWART CUNNINGHAM
\S
K.C.I.E.
PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION
1896
PREFACE.
I HAVE to acknowledge my obligation to
several of Lord Bowen's friends who have
helped me in the compilation of this sketch
notably, to the Hon. George Brodrick, Sir
Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant- Duff, Lord
Justice Fry, Lord Davey, Mr. Justice Mathew,
Mr. Bullock Hall, the Dean of Westminster,
Professor Robinson Ellis, the Rev. E. Cole,
and the Rev. A. Austen Leigh, who have been
good enough to furnish personal recollections
or letters.
These communications, too long to be con-
veniently embodied in the sketch, and too
valuable to be curtailed, are collected in a
separate volume ; but I have taken advantage
IV PREFACE.
of the writer's permission to make free use
of them whenever it seemed desirable for the
purposes of the memoir. As I am writing
for Charles Bowen's family, I have not
attempted to delineate phases of domestic life
with which they are far better acquainted than
I, and of which they will, probably, prefer to
treasure the recollection undisturbed by any
record coming from without the home-circle.
On the same ground, I have sometimes
inserted letters which, from their familiarity,
might seem scarcely fitted, as they were
certainly not intended, for the eyes of any but
intimate friends.
H. S. C.
November 12, 1895.
LORD BOWEN.
WHEN a friend, loved and admired, passes
away from us, there is a natural desire for
something which may serve to give distinct-
ness and permanence to the impression which
he made upon us in his lifetime. Such a
desire is reasonable. When nothing of the
sort is done, we become more than ever
conscious of a loss which, in one sense, grows
with the lapse of time. The definite outline
becomes blurred ; year by year the figure
stands out in less bold and clear relief; the
colours fade ; recollections, however affection-
ately cherished, become vague, faint, and in-
accurate. So the dull processes of oblivion
B
LORD BOWEN.
begin. Natural, however, as such a wish may
be, its fulfilment presents grave difficulties to
him who attempts it. It is no easy task to
delineate or analyze the qualities which have
combined to form an impressive and delight-
ful personality. So much, in such cases, is
indescribable, or describable only by reference
to those inner and subtle phases of character
which cannot be dragged into publicity. We
know by melancholy experience how perilous
is the attempt to portray, through the cold
medium of written description, the influence
of personal charm. The pen, however, con-
scientiously handled is, as a hundred ambitious
failures remind us but a coarse and feeble
instrument for the appreciation of the name-
less magic, the infection of intellectual or
spiritual mood, the moral magnetism, the
indefinable influence on heart and nerve, which
give some favoured natures so powerful a hold
upon the affections of their fellow-men. The
volatile essence escapes while we examine it.
INTRODUCTION.
The residuum is always disappointing. How
vapid, trivial, and overstrained seems often the
recorded eloquence which, we know, stirred
great assemblies to the quick, "shook the
arsenal, and fulmined over Greece " ! How
commonplace the treasured sayings of his-
torical conversationalists! What less exhila-
rating than the array of witticisms with which
too faithful chroniclers justify the reputation of
accomplished members of Society ! Whence,
we wonder, came the magic which gave
phrases such as these their potency over the
hearts and intellects of mankind ? As well ask
whence comes the magic of music, or the
charm of the landscape which fades from our
view before we have drunk our fill of its
delight.
The difficulty of adequate portraiture is en-
hanced in the case of men whose energies have
been concentred on an absorbing profession.
Such a man's real work, the serious efforts
and successes of his career, his intellectual
LORD BOWEN.
idiosyncrasies, his moral gifts, are known to a
comparatively narrow circle of observers, who
watch him from day to day at his task, and
are competent to form a just estimate of his
achievements. The outside world must take
him largely on trust. It sees the result in
his successes, his rise to eminent position, his
selection for important and difficult duties, the
professional ascendency which the verdict of
his contemporaries accords. But the real
nature of these successes it knows only by
hearsay. The distinguished judge leaves no
adequate monument but his judgments ; and
these are accessible and intelligible to none but
the few who possess the requisite knowledge,
skill, and assiduity to study them understand-
ingly. Outside his Court and the Reports in
which his utterances are recorded, he is so
far as any real appreciation of his powers goes
almost unknown. If he lapses into literature,
or amuses himself with Society, it is in leisure
moments when his real business is, perforce, at
INTRODUCTION.
a standstill ; when an exhausted brain or
shattered bodily powers warn him from con-
tinued intellectual strain ; when his doctor has
insisted on an interval of idleness, and bade
him, if he wishes to escape from an impending
collapse, to devote himself strenuously to being
amused. The world, accordingly, never sees
him at his best never knows the real man, in
the full vigour of body and mind, in the full
swing of unimpaired energies, the delightful
consciousness of intellectual prowess. When
he writes, it is probably? for the purpose of
diverting his thoughts from topics whose too
engrossing interest has overtaxed nerve and
brain, or, as a tour de force, in some rare
moment of leisure snatched from the turmoil
of a professional career. When he shines in
drawing-rooms, it is often because he feels
incapable of shining with his proper lustre in
Court. He is trifling because Nature has
rebelled against too protracted seriousness.
The bow is unstrung that it may recover its
LORD BOWEN.
elasticity. Such men's relaxation is likely to
be more edifying than the strenuous activity of
less-gifted natures ; and Society, dazzled and
delighted, forgets that the performance which
it admires is not the measure of what the man
can do, but the pastime with which he has
been ordered to refresh himself as the penalty
of overtaxed energies and the condition of
possible return to the serious business of
existence.
But there are graver difficulties than these
in the way of such a sketch as that which I
am now attempting. Some natures, perhaps
the happiest, possess the convenient attribute
of transparency. Their thoughts, their tastes,
their struggles, each step in their mental and
moral development, are open to all who care
to know about them. They are inspired by
a frankness not wholly untinged, perhaps, by
vanity which disposes them to talk about
themselves. They break out in autobio-
graphies and persona,! recollections. As regards
INTRODUCTION.
their own mental history, such persons have
no private life, nor wish to have it. The
first-comer is welcome to enter and make
himself at home. The biographers of such
persons have an easy task. The difficulty
begins with natures of less simple texture, and
temperaments less unreserved. There are
minds which are dominated by an instinctive
reserve. They have intellectual and moral
recesses, the gloom of which they themselves
hardly venture to explore, problems which
they give up as insoluble, depths which no
plummet may sound, obstinate questionings
to which no answer is forthcoming, mysteries
of their own consciousness before which they
stand in mute bewilderment. The last thing
which natures so constituted can endure is
the idea of the prying eye and officious
tongue, which would destroy the privacy of
existence, invade the recesses of thought and
feeling, and make their inner life the theme
of common talk. To invite the public to walk
8 LORD BOWEN.
in, observe, and criticize, seems to them a sort
of desecration of holy places, which should be
guarded in obscurity. If they have a strong
emotion, their first impulse is to shroud it
from notoriety. Some friendly ear may, in
some especially confidential moment, catch a
hint of that which lies beneath ; but such
flashes of outspokenness are few and far
between. To the world at large the man
remains inscrutable. To the acquaintances of
Society he shows in abundance all that Society
demands brilliancy, affability, sympathetic
good-nature, amusement. His inner his real
self is shrouded in impenetrable reserve. His
fun is often the unconscious artifice of Nature
guarding itself against unwelcome invasion.
With a dexterous hand he guides conversation
away from topics which may aid the invader's
movements. He is an adept in the arts of
polite but effectual resistance to the too eager
familiarity which is inquisitive, and may soon
become impertinent. If he ever unlocks the
INTRODUCTION.
secret chambers of his soul, it is under con-
ditions which impose an eternal silence on
those who are allowed to enter. How, without
betrayal of sacred confidence, can any attempt
at the portraiture of such a character be made ?
In Lord Bowen's case the difficulty is
enhanced by the circumstance that the two
persons best qualified from long and intimate
friendship to form a judgment on his life and
character passed from the scene within a few
weeks of his death. The late Master of Balliol,
exercising a discretion which, without question-
ing, we may be allowed to deplore, directed a
holocaust of his papers, and among them
perished, it is certain, much that would have
exhibited Charles Bowen in one of the most
interesting phases of his character his warm
affection and unswerving loyalty to a teacher
whom he revered. Lord Coleridge, who early
appreciated his brilliant junior's endowments,
and who remained on terms of confidential and
affectionate intimacy to the end, survived just
IO LORD BO WEN. [1835.
long enough to learn and mourn his friend's
death. He is no longer here to give as he
would, one knows, have given in a delightful
form the result of his lifelong friendship.
The loss in either case is irreparable.
No adequate account of Charles Bowen's life
and character can, accordingly, be given. None
the less, those who loved him and who knew
how truly lovable he was, cannot but crave
for some lasting embodiment of their remem-
brance. Little or much as we may have known,
or may know, an impression remains, too dear
to be allowed to fade. Some definite portrait
we must have however inadequate and un-
worthy round which our thoughts may rally,
and which may give precision, reality, and life
to the floating images which memory treach-
erous and wayward servant at the best brings
fitfully before the mind's eye. The physical
portrait, faulty and insufficient as the eye of
affection feels it to be, is, nevertheless, not
without its value. It cannot fill the void it
EARLY YEARS. II
cannot lessen the sense of loss ; it falls short
in a hundred ways of all that we remember of
the living man. None the less we prize it.
Some such value may, it is hoped, attach to
the attempt to group into a consistent whole,
and embody in a permanent form, some
scattered recollections, which no one who knew
Lord Bowen would willingly let die.
Charles Synge Christopher Bowen was born
January i, 1835, at Woolaston, a village near
Chepstow, in Gloucestershire, of which his
/<"-' b
father, the Rev. Christopher Bowen, had at that
time the curacy. Mr. Bowen came of an Irish
family from County Mayo. In theology he
was a pronounced member of the Evangelical
school. He was a man of exceptional vigour
both in mind and body, of natural gentleness
and calm, and of considerable gifts. He
abounded in amusing stories of the Ireland of
former days. He had a fine voice, was an
excellent reader, and his children enjoyed no
/
greater treat than to lie on the hearthrug and
12 LORD BOWEN. [1845.
listen to his rendering of one of Shakespeare's
plays. Mr. Bo wen was subsequently for some
years curate of the Abbey Church at Bath.
Thence he was transferred to the Rectory of
Southwark, and, subsequently, to St. Thomas's,
Winchester. Later in life he settled at
Totland, near Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight.
Mr. Bowen, as an Irish proprietor, had suffered
from the famine years, and the family, in its
various homes, lived in frugal fashion. He
died, in a very hale old age, when on a visit to
the Riviera in 1890.
Charles Bowen's maternal grandmother, Lady
Steele, was a daughter of Count d'Alton, an
Austrian officer of distinction, one of the
Imperial chamberlains at the Court of Joseph
II. He fell in the trenches of Dunkirk, while
co-operating with an English force against a
French Revolutionary army. His widow, an
Irish Clancarty by descent, was a fervent
adherent of Marie Antoinette, and much
esteemed in Royalist circles. She migrated to
SCHOOL DAYS AT LILLE. 13
England, where her second daughter, Charles
Bowen's grandmother, married Sir R. Steele,
an Irish baronet, and an officer in the 4th
Dragoon Guards, then quartered near Dublin.
Lady Steele moved for a while in the society
of Dublin and its little court ; but gradually
withdrew into a small circle of congenial
religious friends, and devoted herself to a life
of study and benevolence. She was not slow
to recognize her grandson's brilliant promise,
and took a lively interest in his school and
college career. To her intelligence, serious-
ness, and strength of will, it is probable that
Charles Bowen was indebted for some of his
most characteristic gifts.
At ten years of age Charles Bowen was
sent to school at Lille, along with his younger
brother, Edward. Here the two lads spent
a year, learning French and laying the founda-
tion of a polite education. This period of
expatriation necessitated by the mother's
broken health was not altogether a happy
14 LORD BOWEN. [1845.
one for the little exiles. The regime was
strict, and Charles underwent some harsh
treatment. There are letters monthly pro-
ductions, apparently from Charles to his
father and mother, the phenomenal propriety
and laboured caligraphy of which suggest the
superintendence of a friendly critic's eye.
Charles writes that he has begun Latin, and is
in the second book of the ^Eneid. He was
evidently a precocious child. " I should like,"
he says, " to begin Greek again, for I have
forgotten all but a few words." Strange utter-
ance for a ten-years-old scholar, which sounds
as if no time had been lost at home in starting
the prize-man of the future on his career of
letters. He is learning French fables, he tells
his mother, and is progressing favourably in
le dessin. " I hope that when I shall see you
again, I shall be able to draw pretty well."
The little learners were hard-worked indeed.
" We have ten hours of lessons in the day, and
we have begun geometry, though not in our
LIFE AT LILLE. 15
own but in another French book, which I do
not like half as well as Euclid. We are obliged
to pronounce the Latin just as we would pro-
nounce our French, which improves it very
much, I think, and which is much better for us,
for it teaches us to read French as well as the
Latin."
There are happily some lighter touches,
more consonant with childhood's wants and
tastes. " On Thursday last," Charles writes,
"we walked to Menin, which is sixteen miles
off; there I bought some skates, and we came
back in a little voiture when it was quite dark,
and they did not give us a lantern ; therefore
we were nearly upset twice. There is a great
difference between the towns of France and
England, for the towns of France, at least
those of the frontier, are all fortified ; and in
England there is no need of all this fortification,
for the sea is enough defence for it."
In a more natural vein is an account of
Madame Marzials'/2te, which is duly celebrated
1 6 LORD BOWEN. [1850.
by holiday-making, presentation of presents and
flowers, a state dinner at half-past three, and a
" party " at seven, at which were " all our boys,
the professors, and six or seven young ladies.
We played blind-man's buff, and a French game
called 'Toilette,' which I am just going to ex-
plain to you. . . . Thus ended the birthday of
Madame Marzials."
" As a child," writes his brother, " he was
a great reader, and a very fast one. Our
books were few, but very well read. Two
volumes of Johnson's complete works were a
great treasure, and the ' Rambler ' and ' Idler ' ;
of course all Scott, and as much Shakespeare
and Spenser as he could understand. But
games were, also, never out of his thoughts or
his ambitions. He was physically strong and
active then and for several years after ; in fact,
till his law work began. He is the only person
I have ever known to jump a cow as it stood."
From Lille, Charles Bowen was sent to
Blackheath Proprietary School, where he
BLACKHEATH SCHOOL. IJ
remained for three years, learning, amongst
other good things, to be an excellent cricketer.
Here the character and powers of the young
student made themselves distinctly apparent.
In September, 1850, we find the Rev. E. J.
Selwyn, the head-master, writing to Dr.
Goulburn, head-master of Rugby, with refer-
ence to Charles's entrance at a public school.
He speaks of his appetite for knowledge in
every branch of learning, and " his capability
for acquiring and digesting and retaining it
as of a very remarkable order." His capa-
bilities had, it would seem, been severely
tested. " Among the subjects he has read
with me," says Mr. Selwyn, "are the ' Hecuba,'
the ' Medea,' and the ' Ajax/ the first book of
Herodotus, a good deal of the ' Cyropsedia/
some of the orations of Demosthenes, several
books of Homer, a good many Idylls of
Theocritus, and the first book of Thucydides ;
and, in Latin, most of Horace, a good many
Orations of Cicero, the third book of the
c
1 8 LORD BOWEN. [1850.
' De Officiis,' nearly the whole of the ' De
Oratore,' and, I think, the Georgics. As far as
my recollection serves me, this is a tolerably
accurate account of his reading, though it does
not include all. In composition he is quite
as successful as I have ever found boys of his
age, and in Latin Elegiacs his advance has
been lately rather remarkable : a fatal facility
is sometimes his bane in this particular.
Indeed, his chief defect is an occasional
tendency to inaccuracy, but not at all remark-
able in a boy so young and so advanced."
He had suffered, Mr. Selwyn thought, "from
the absence of the kind of support which the
society of active and honourable rivals always
furnishes to boys of an aspiring disposition.
His temperament is very nervous and excitable:
a harsh word will easily disconcert him, and
he readily forms attachments to those who are
set over him, and will take pride in pleasing
them."
"In respect of moral character," Mr. Selwyn
HIS CHARACTER AS A SCHOOLBOY. 1 9
goes on to say, " I would willingly believe that
he is even a pious boy ; or, if that be a quality
beyond the range of our power to certify with
perfect security, he is, at least, all that a boy
may be short of that. Of the soundness of
his principles and the genuineness and sincerity
of his motives, I have never had the shadow
of a doubt. Of his truthfulness and love of
truth in others I have the highest opinion, and
I can bear strong testimony to his unflinching
adherence to the truth under all circumstances.
The excellent manner in which he has been
brought up under the immediate and unfailing
care of his parents manifests itself in him most
conspicuously. I dare not say that he has
been tested yet as he will be tested at Rugby,
where the temptations and other incentives
to err are probably so much greater than at
Blackheath. When, however, the time comes
that shall try him, I shall indeed be surprised
if he be found not to stand the test."
Amply indeed did Charles Bowen justify this
20 LORD BOWEN. [1850-52.
agreeable prophecy. In 1850 he was entered
at Rugby in the School House, then presided
over by Dr. Goulburn, who had, some months
previously, become head-master of the school.
Bowen and several other clever new-comers
amongst them Robinson Ellis, now Professor
of Latin at Oxford, and T. H. Green, the well-
known tutor at Balliol, were placed in the
Upper Fifth, the highest Form in which the
rules of the school permitted a new boy to
begin his Rugby career. The master of this
Form was Mr. Bradley, the present Dean of
Westminster. Besides his master in Form,
each boy had a private tutor, and the tutor, in
the first instance, selected for Charles Bowen
was the Rev. G. E. L. Cotton, subsequently
Head-master of Marlborough and Bishop of
Calcutta. Mr. Bradley was not long in dis-
covering that it was no ordinary pupil with
whom he had to deal. He describes him as a
boy to whom his heart at once went out full
of life, energy, and interest in all things, quick
ENTRANCE AT RUGBY. 21
in intellectual movement, voracious in literary
appetite altogether delightfully clever.
" I remember," says Mr. H. T. Rhoades,
one of Charles Bowen's school - fellows at
Rugby, " his arrival at school. He came in
the middle of the term, the evening before the
whole holiday, on which nearly every boy
made some excursion for the day. I was
living in the town, and, as our families were
acquainted, I went to the School House
to get him to spend the day with us ; and,
much to my surprise, I found him in the
dormitory, reading ' Alcestis ' for his amuse-
ment."
At the end of the first half-year, Charles
Bowen's and Robinson Ellis's names appeared
at the head of the list. This involved their
promotion to the " Twenty," a Form which
intervened between the Fifth and Sixth.
Charles Bowen thus passed from Mr. Bradley's
Form instruction. In 1852, however, on Mr.
Cotton's appointment to Marlborough, Bowen
22 LORD BOWEN. [1853.
became Mr. Bradley 's private pupil, and con-
tinued to be so for the rest of his Rugby career.
He and seven or eight other pupils were
constantly in their tutor's study. A close and
intimate friendship was cemented between the
two, and Mr. Bradley obtained a fuller insight
into the young scholar's extraordinary gifts.
"There was," writes Dean Bradley, "a great
power in him of covering quickly a large and
varied field of work. In this, I have had no
pupil at Rugby who could be compared with
him. I remember well how, in his last year
and a half, he would bring me his ' Corpus
Poetarum/ and I would suggest to him large
portions of Lucretius, as well as of later poets
Juvenal, Martial, Lucan, and even Claudian
for private reading ; and I remember the
surprise with which I have received his
request for more, showing me how much he
had contrived to read since he had last con-
sulted me."
Such powers and such diligence produced
FIRST SUCCESSES. 23
the natural result. Honours soon began to
rain apace. In 1853 C. Bowen was successful
in gaining the prize for the Parker Theological
Essay, by a disquisition on " The Several
Parts of Public Worship, and their relation to
each other as illustrated by the Morning and
Evening Services of the Church." Opinions
will differ, probably, as to the wisdom of invit-
ing lads of seventeen to enter upon a grave
theological disquisition, and to display a famili-
arity with a host of Fathers, Divines, and
other ecclesiastical magnates, which it would
be equally impossible and undesirable that they
should really enjoy. Charles Bowen's essay
was, however, a remarkable performance. The
extraordinary diligence which characterized all
his work was apparent in an imposing array
of authorities ; grave opinions are enumerated
with the solemnity which the occasion de-
manded, and a rich profusion of theological
lore, skilfully thrown into artistic form, reaped
its appropriate reward in the eulogium of a
24 LORD BOWEN. [1853-4*
learned prelate, the Bishop of Winchester,
who wrote to congratulate Mr. Bowen on a
son of such fine theological promise.
Other successes were soon to come. In
1854 C. Bowen won the Queen's Medal for
Modern History and the prize for a Latin
essay. In November, 1853, he went up to
Oxford as a candidate for the Balliol Scholar-
ship, and came back to school having achieved
this great distinction. " I never before or
since," says Dean Bradley, "in my long
experience as a schoolmaster, wrote the usual
formal testimonial for a pupil of whose success
I felt so absolutely certain. He remained at
Rugby till the following summer, and was, I
need hardly say, quite the heroic figure in the
society of his contemporaries. His high spirit,
his high principles, his great humour, his
prominence in all outdoor school amusements
and pursuits, secured him the affection of his
friends, and the homage (for it almost amounted
to that) of the mass of his school-fellows."
A SCHOOL CHAMPION. 25
This hero-worship was, no doubt, intensified
by an episode which, about this time, pre-
sented the young scholar to an admiring world
in an attitude which all could appreciate the
physical champion of an injured cause. It was
the fashion of that day to call in question the
Monitorial System, which Dr. Arnold had
established with such marked success at Rugby,
and which the other great English schools
were hastening to introduce. Prominent
among the assailants was the Daily News, and
a representative of that journal happened to
be at Rugby when an incident of common
enough occurrence in school-life seemed to
offer excellent material for a fresh assault.
Three little boys none of them within measur-
able distance of the Sixth Form got into a
quarrel while out jumping. The quarrel
ended in two of them pushing the third into
a brook which he could not summon up
courage to jump. A grotesque misrepresenta-
tion of this childish squabble appeared in the
26 LORD BOWEN. [1854.
Daily News, with an appropriate denunciation
of the system under which such oppression
could occur. Boyish indignation is quickly
kindled, and Rugby was very indignant. As
ill-luck would have it, Charles Bowen and the.
guilty newspaper correspondent crossed each
other's paths. The school - hero promptly
called the calumniator to account. An alterca-
tion ensued ; and how easy and natural the
lapse from words to blows ! The man of
letters succumbed to the youthful prowess of
his assailant, and was forced to retreat, worsted,
from the field worsted, but not resourceless ;
for the strong arm of the law was invoked,
and Charles Bowen's joy of victory was sobered
by the arrival of a summons to answer a
charge of assault before a bench of Warwick-
shire magistrates. Things were beginning to
look serious ; there is extant a letter of Charles
Bowen's to his brother, in which he sets out
his case with studied moderation, and is
evidently anxious as to the impression which
RUGBY GAMES. 27
the story might make upon his parents.
Happily the Bench rose to the occasion, appre-
ciated the excessive provocation which had
betrayed the young Rugbeian to a deed of
violence, and imposed a fine so nominal as to
leave no doubt that the defendant's behaviour
was more than half approved. The hero of
the occasion returned to his co-mates more
heroic than ever.
There was, however, plenty of scope at
Rugby for athletic distinctions of a less
equivocal order. Charles Bowen had thrown
himself with ardour into the games of the
place, attained the distinction dearest of
earthly honours to the schoolboy heart of a
place in the school Eleven, and become a
redoubtable champion of the football field.
Rugby football was then, as it is now, a some-
what rough form of amusement to those who
took a prominent part in it, well calculated
to stir the combatant to an angry mood.
Nothing, however not even the heat of
28 LORD BOWEN. [1854.
physical encounter could ruffle Bowen's
urbanity, the sweetness of his temper. One
of the combatants in those Homeric struggles
still recalls the " angelic smile " with which
Bowen, after carrying discomfiture into the
enemy's ranks, and being himself the object
of many rude assaults, would emerge from the
fiercest football scrimmage.
About this time Charles Bowen was within
measurable distance of becoming a soldier, a
profession in which throughout life he took a
lively interest, and for which he always felt a
strong predilection. The war with Russia
the tragic excitements of Crimean battle-fields
were firing the blood of the youth of England,
and Dean Bradley relates how, when a certain
number of commissions were placed by the
War Office at the disposal of the head-master,
Bowen was sorely exercised in mind by the
temptation of a military career. Some over-
tures to his father on the subject encountered,
we may believe, a discouraging reception, for
RUGBY HONOURS. 2Q
the idea was ultimately abandoned. Bowen
was now too hard at work to indulge in day-
dreams, military or other. His teachers, how-
ever, appear sometimes to have tried his
temper. In a book of notes, taken under Dr.
Goulburn's instruction, occurs a little outbreak
of impatience. " I protest," writes the young
student, "against taking these notes, and
solemnly declare that I take them only under
physical compulsion." Despite such occasional
lapses, Charles Bowen proved himself a model
scholar. In June, 1854, he left Rugby, his
honours thick upon him. His crowning
achievement was to win the First Exhibition,
the examiners adding " Facile Princeps " to
his name. His fame still lives in Rugby
tradition. " What impressed his contempo-
raries," says Mr. H. T. Rhoades, " was the
union of brilliance and sound qualities with
great athletic powers. He gained the cup
held by the winner of the greatest number of
"events" in the athletic games, and he was,
3O LORD BOWEN. [1854.
without exception, the finest football-player I
remember."
Professor Robinson Ellis, Charles Bowen's
friend and most formidable competitor at
Rugby, furnishes some interesting remini-
scences of their careers of struggles in which
victory fell sometimes to one, sometimes to
the other; of the resolution of each suc-
cessfully accomplished to break the spell
which for seven years had denied to Rugby
the honour of a Balliol Scholarship ; and of
tragic vicissitudes which shook the calm of
schoolboy life : such, for instance, as Bowen's
failure to win a Latin poem prize, which public
opinion had accorded to him, owing to a critical
objection taken by the composition master to
the expression " auratum Oriona," which Bowen
had coined out of the Virgilian line
" Armatum que auro circumspicit Oriona,"
an abbreviation which his critic denounced as
" unclassical and impossible," and which was
TRACTARIANISM AT RUGBY. 3!
instrumental in transferring the prize to a
candidate of whom no one had ever thought.
"A wave of High Church sentiment was,"
Professor Ellis says, " at this time passing over
Rugby School." Goulburn, who succeeded Dr.
Tait, in 1850, had introduced many of the
ritualistic innovations, which were then the
symbols of Tractarianism. A Roman Catholic
Church had recently been raised in a con-
spicuous spot adjoining the playing-fields ;
three Rugby boys were believed to have " gone
over," and sixth-form enthusiasts began to
dream of possible reunion with Rome. Bowen
showed but slight sympathy with the prevailing
mood ; nor was he impressed by the miracles
recorded by William of Malmesbury, and Bede,
whose chronicles had been admitted for study
in the Sixth Form in lieu of the ordinary Greek
or Latin history. "In 1852," says Professor
Ellis, "table-turning became all the rage, and
, a passion for magnetic experiments invaded
Rugby. We turned tables in our studies, and
32 LORD BOWEN. [1854.
even in our bedrooms, and tried our magnetiz-
ing powers on each other. In this Bowen was
remarkably successful. His eyes were strong
and penetrating, and he succeeded in putting
many of the boys on whom he experimented
into a state of coma." Happily for the nerves
of all parties, the head-master intervened, and
put an end to this dangerous form of excitement.
Charles Bowen went up to Oxford with all
the prestige of a Balliol Scholarship, a first-rate
school reputation for ability, and still dearer
dignity in schoolboys' eyes a well-established
fame in the athletic world. The boyish
traditions, which grow so generously around a
successful and popular comrade, heralded his
advent. Oxford received him with open arms.
At Balliol he was especially welcome. The
student set rejoiced in an accession which
was certain to confer lustre on the College
and the University. Cricketers hailed a
valuable reinforcement to the ranks. The
devotees of football, which the Rugby game
OXFORD. 33
was helping to bring into fashion, had heard of
his prowess, and knew that a mighty man had
come amongst them. All alike found in the
new-comer a delightful acquisition for every
gathering, where the charm of companionship
could be quickened by high spirits, geniality,
wit that played but never wounded, and fun
that knew no touch of coarseness.
There was a prejudice in those days against
a somewhat pretentious superiority, which the
Rugby system was supposed to engender, and
which did not tend to conciliate outsiders. The
Rugby monitor was supposed to pride himself
on his " moral thoughtfulness ; " a scoffing world
denounced him as a prig. There were those
who thought that they discovered in Charles
Bowen, on his first arrival at Oxford, a touch
of this Rugbeian temper, lurking under an
almost deferential urbanity of manner. If it
were so, it speedily disappeared under the
wholesome influences of the larger world to
which he now belonged. No one was ever
D
34 LORD BOWEN. [1854.
less anxious to pose as superior. His aim
seemed rather to keep his superiority well out
of sight.
Life at the University, to those who enter
upon it with Charles Bowen's advantages, is
among the halcyon periods of human existence!
Its freedom alike from the petty discipline
of school, and the anxieties of after-life, its
absorbing interests, its varied enjoyments,
its wide and unexplored fields of intellectual
adventure, as the serious aims and pursuits of
life break gradually into view ; the oppor-
tunities for friendship which present themselves
on every hand, and the capacity for hero-
worship which such opportunities enkindle ;
last, and not least, the inspiring genius of the
place, its solemn beauty and charm, make up
a whole which, to a sensitive and congenial
temperament, scarcely falls short of fascination.
Charles Bowen entered with avidity upon the
new and delightful chapter of his life. It was
an exciting atmosphere for so ardent a nature
SPIRIT OF REFORM AT OXFORD. 35
to breathe. The old Conservative tastes and
traditions of Oxford and the new spirit of
Liberalism were meeting, like two opposing
currents, and seething in conflict. Reform
was in the air, but there were many to whom
Reform implied the shock of all that was
dearest and most sacred. The great theo-
logical movement, which had stirred the pre-
ceding generation, had sunk into comparative
quiescence. John Henry Newman no longer
entranced an audience at Littlemore. The
last of the distinguished Oxford converts had
passed the uncertain frontier which separated
the domains of the Roman and Anglican
Churches. Religious controversy was no
longer the topic of the hour, and was tabooed
at social gatherings. The affectation of
Roman modes of thought and Roman cere-
monial had ceased to be in vogue, and was
even liable to a little contemptuous persecu-
tion. The Reform movement of the earlier
years of the century, which the High Church
36 LORD BOWEN. [1854.
reaction for a while superseded, had resumed
its course. To the theological movement had
succeeded another, with as serious a spirit and
an even wider scope. There were leading
spirits at Oxford, who saw that the English
Universities had fallen from their original
ideal, and were missing their true function as
national centres of education. They were
courageous innovators. They had resolved
not only that Oxford should open her gates to
the nation at large ; but that her teaching and
system should be brought into touch with the
wants, convictions, and difficulties of modern
England. She should no longer continue to
be the stronghold of obsolete methods, the
rallying-point of respectable abuses, the home,
as Mr. Bright said, of dead languages and
undying prejudices, but should become a
great instrument for moulding the character
and guiding the lives of the on-coming genera-
tion, and, through it, of the nation at large.
Her sons were to be sent out not mere
BALLIOL COLLEGE. 37
Churchmen or scholars but fully equipped for
the struggle to which their age would commit
them in intelligent sympathy with their
fellow-strugglers, fitted to appreciate and to
co-operate with all that was best, truest, and
highest in modern life. Among the centres,
where the spirit of reform made itself especially
felt, was Balliol College. Dr. Jenkyns, the
Master, a vigorous and far-sighted adminis-
trator despite some foibles and eccentricities
with which his contemporaries were accustomed
to make merry had been laying, deep and
strong, the foundations of the future greatness
of the College. He was insistent in improving
wherever improvement seemed possible, in
perfecting the discipline and education of the
place, and in collecting, for the purpose, a
group of tutors whose zeal and abilities were
'destined, at no distant date, to carry Balliol
to the foremost rank as a seat of learning.
Prominent among them was Benjamin Jowett,
whose influence on those who came within his
38 LORD BOWEN. [1854.
reach had been felt, year by year, in an ever-
widening circle, though still narrow as com-
pared with that of later times. At present he
was chiefly known to the outside world as a
courageous and original thinker, and as the
advocate of views on various theological topics,
which were regarded in orthodox circles as
dangerous innovations. His Commentary on
Three Pauline Epistles seemed to the general
English reader whom, in those days, the
research and learned speculations of Germany
had scarcely reached to mark the initiative of
a revolutionary epoch in Biblical interpretation.
Such a man makes his influence felt on friend
and foe. The upholders of plenary and literal
inspiration and they were neither few nor
uninfluential were scandalized and alarmed.
The echoes of the controversy fluttered the
dovecots of many a snug common-room and
quiet country parsonage. A few years later,
Jowett emphasized his position as a reformer
by his participation in a collection of " Essays
BALLIOL TUTORS. 39
and Reviews," which speedily became notorious
as a quasi-authoritative announcement of a
progressive propaganda in matters theological.
The frightened champions of orthodoxy are
not apt to be too scrupulous in their attacks
on a supposed heresiarch. Some of the
attacks on Jowett were, to say the best of
them, ungenerous, and aroused the sympathetic
indignation of his friends. The well-meaning
combatants, who flocked up to Oxford from
country parishes to vote against the endow-
ment of Jowett's Chair, forgot that to curtail
an author's salary is not an effectual method
of refuting him. The attempted persecution
of Jowett, at any rate, appealed to all that was
generous in the undergraduate mind. Bowen
early became, and remained throughout, his
warm ally. It was inevitable that the two
men should become close friends. Jowett
found in Bowen the ideal student of his hopes
and vows. Bowen became, year by year, more
impressed with the Master's excellence, wisdom,
4O LORD BOWEN. [1854.
and far-reaching kindness. His friendship for
Jowett, and the sincere loyalty and devotion
with which he regarded him, were, I believe,
among the one or two most powerful external
influences which moulded Charles Bowen's
tastes and sympathies and shaped the course
of his life.
Another of the tutors was Lake, the present
Dean of Durham, an accomplished scholar
of a different caste of thought from that of
Jowett, and exercising a less active personal
influence on undergraduates. Among the
junior tutors were Riddell, a bright, charming,
saintly character, well equipped with the
refined scholarship for which Shrewsbury
School was justly famed ; and Edwin Palmer,
the late Archdeacon of Oxford, younger
brother of the late Lord Selbourne one of a
trio of brothers of whose attainments Oxford
is justly proud. Henry Smith was lecturer
in mathematics, and was loyally devoting his
extraordinary powers to the task of education.
BALLIOL CONTEMPORARIES. 4!
Bowen at a later date became his pupil, and,
at the time of his death, bore testimony in
language of fitting beauty to the almost unique
combination of moral and intellectual excel-
lencies which presented itself in this splendidly
endowed nature.*
It was no small privilege, certainly, which
the members of Balliol at this period enjoyed.
It had become the custom to invite such of the
unsuccessful candidates as had attracted notice
in the Scholarship Examinations, to enter
the college as commoners ; and Balliol thus
gathered to itself the flower of the public
schools, and contained a class of men dis-
tinctly above the average of undergraduate
ability.
Amongst the Balliol men of Bowen's own
standing were Newman, a serious and profound
student, the promise of whose early career was,
* The article in the Spectator, reprinted as " Recollections
by Lord Bowen" among the " Biographical Sketches of Henry
J. S. Smith " (Oxford : Clarendon Press), is an excellent specimen
of Bowen's style in journalism.
42 LORD BOWEN. [1854.
unhappily, clouded by a breakdown of health ;
Merry, 6p0a><s eVoWjuo9, whose lot at a much
later stage it was, as Public Orator, to com-
memorate Charles Bowen's death among the
losses of the year ; Blomfield, a son of the
Bishop of London, himself in later years a
bishop, endowed with an hereditary aptitude
for classical niceties, and a dry and caustic wit ;
Warre, the present Head-master of Eton, in
those days much renowned as a sturdy oarsman
and cricketer ; E. Herbert, a young man of
rare charm and promise, who became political
attacht at Athens, and met a tragic fate at the
hands of brigands at Marathon.
Among Charles Bowen's more intimate
college friends were Austen Leigh, now Rector
of Wargrave ; Alexander Craig Sellar, of
whose services in and out of Parliament the
Liberal Unionist party has so grateful a
recollection ; and Bullock-Hall, now the hospit-
able lord of Six Mile Bottom, who had formed
on the Rugby cricket-ground a friendship with
OXFORD FRIENDS. 43
Bowen, which became confirmed at college,
and lasted, in undiminished vigour, to the end.
W. G. Cole, now Rector of Newbold Verdun,
in Leicestershire, was at this time a scholar of
Trinity ; the separation of colleges, however,
had done nothing to impair the warm affection
which had grown up between the two at
Rugby, and which continued unabated through-
out life. Of senior men outside the college,
who formed a part of Charles Bowen's sur-
roundings there were, besides Henry Smith,
Sir Alexander Grant, renowned as an expositor
of Aristotelian philosophy ; T. C. Sandars, an
expert in Roman law, who was on several occa-
sions Bowen's tutor, one of the men of whose
rare gifts of wit, learning, and wisdom the
world never knows, but who for many years
contributed to enrich the periodical literature
of his country ; George Brodrick, the genial
and accomplished Warden of Merton, who
had known Bowen from childhood, and to
whose recollections of his friend I have been
44 LORD BOWEN. [1854.
largely indebted in the preparation of the
present sketch. Horace Davey had already
established a reputation, which his profes-
sional career has not belied, and was dis-
playing in the schools the intellectual prowess
which has carried him to the House of
Lords. John Conington, though much of a
recluse, was widely known and admired as
among the most accomplished Latinists of his
day ; and Goldwin Smith, master of a style
of unsurpassed brilliancy and force, was warring
fiercely upon all friend or foe who had the
misfortune to provoke his somewhat indis-
criminate combativeness. Arthur Butler, no
unworthy member of a family of scholars, was
widely esteemed for culture and geniality ;
George Goschen, leader of distinguished
Rugbeians, was hurried away from academic
triumphs to no less pronounced eminence in
the world of politics and finance ; and Charles
Pearson, an Oriel Fellow of distinction, whose
failing health, a few years later, drove him to
OXFORD ESSAYS. 45
Australia, where he rose high in the sphere of
education and politics, and gathered, it must
be feared, from a somewhat gruesome experi-
ence, the materials for the gloomy vaticinations
of the future of humanity with which he startled
Society a year or two ago. At Wadham
Richard Congreve had for years been making
his presence felt as a man of courageous
thought, strong grasp, and intellectual acumen.
He was an acknowledged authority on historical
subjects, and had gathered around him a small
but distinguished circle of admirers, who be-
came in later years the interpreters to their
country of the doctrines of Comte, and the
protagonists of Positivism.
An atmosphere charged with intellectual
and spiritual forces so powerful and so con-
flicting, was not likely to remain long undis-
turbed. The new ideas craved expression.
The series of " Oxford Essays," edited by T. C.
Sandars, made its first appearance in 1854, and
struck a new note of literary activity. Henry
46 LORD BO WEN. [1854-60.
Smith, in his essay on the plurality of worlds,
boldly challenged the great authority of Whe well,
and gave the world a foretaste of his extra-
ordinary gifts. A few years later the plan of
the " Oxford Essays " was abandoned ; but in
" Essays and Reviews " a' more systematic
attempt was made to liberalize English theology,
to enlarge the limits of the freedom which
clergymen of the English Church might law-
fully enjoy, and, especially, to place Biblical
criticism and the whole theory of Biblical
interpretation on a sounder and more intelligent
basis. A writer in the Edinburgh Review
himself a redoubtable champion of any cause in
which religious freedom was concerned has
given a graphic account of the fierce controversy
which ensued, and the sort of panic which spread
through the ranks of the more conservative
order of Churchmen. It gradually became
apparent that much which the authors of
"Essays and Reviews" alleged however
startling to the uninformed had long been
ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. 47
familiar to erudite theologians, and had even
been avowed by them, though in language less
aggressively crude. Some needlessly offensive
phrases demanded apology ; but when these
had been condoned, the result was found not
to transcend the liberty of judgment accorded
by the Church of England to her ministers.
While these high combats shook the upper
air, the tide of practical reform was flowing in
lower regions with a force and rapidity which
struck timorous obstructives with consternation.
One by one, in rapid succession, the traditional
safeguards began to totter, to crumble, to
disappear. A Royal Commission threw wide
the gates of the University to all who wished
to enter, irrespective of creed. The obligation
of celibacy, which had given to the tutorial
body something of a conventual character, was
treated as an obsolete survival of monasticism.
The monopolizing supremacy of classics and
philosophy as topics of education was success-
fully disputed. Logic, and the refinements of
48 LORD BOWEN. [1864.
the School-men began to wear a pedantic and
mediaeval air. Physical science, in all the
audacity and self-confidence of youth, boldly
asserted her claims, and the Aristophanic
sarcasm, AiVos /SaenXeuei rov At* e^eX^Xa/cws,
seemed in course of realization. There was,
naturally, much alarm, and something of the
indiscriminating antagonism which alarm en-
genders. Fierce assaults were delivered at
any point which seemed assailable. Stanley
and Jowett stood out as obvious objects of
attack. "Jowett- baiting," writes Sir Mount-
Stuart Grant-Duff, " was, indeed, the favourite
amusement of the united forces of Anglo-
Catholic, High and Dry Anglican, and Evan-
gelical Parsondom. I remember that, on one
occasion, I think in 1864, we were all sum-
moned to go down to vote in Convocation
about some changes in the curriculum. Shortly
afterwards we were again summoned, as a
grand Jowett-bait was impending in the same
august assembly. Some one in the train, on
OLD WAYS AND NEW. 49
the way to Oxford, said, ' I really think that
we may win to-day about Jowett's salary. The
country clergy came up in such numbers to
vote about that educational question, that they
will hardly go to the trouble and expense of
coming again.' ' Won't they ? ' said Bowen ;
' they will think that education is a bad thing,
but that justice is a worse, and they will come
in hundreds/ which was precisely what they
did."
This story, though belonging to a some-
what later stage of Charles Bowen's career,
well illustrates the influences which were
acting on him from the outset of his University
life. He found around him, on all hands,
men bent on improvement, eager to remove
inequalities and disabilities, anxious to throw
open to the nation at large the advantages
which had hitherto been the monopoly of a
privileged class. In another sphere he saw
new aspects of theological opinion presented
with all the force of research, ability, and
E
5O LORD BOWEN. [1854.
insight, and confronted by an opposition
which if it may be said without disrespect
was not always intelligent, generous, or well
informed. Opinion has marched so fast the
last forty years, that it is not easy to realize
the position from the standpoint of the
oncoming generation of that day, and the
alternatives which presented themselves for
acceptance. I remember, for instance, hearing
a distinguished member of his party, preaching
to the University in St. Mary's Church,
advance with vehemence the proposition that
the Christian religion, indeed all religious
belief, would be fatally undermined if the
authority or authenticity of a single word,
"a jot or tittle," of the accepted canon were
allowed to be called in question. Another
leader, justly eminent as orator and scholar,
devoted his fine powers to explaining to the
undergraduate conscience the grounds on
which the Athanasian Creed must be regarded
as an essential part of the Christian's panoply,
STANLEY AND JOWETT. 51
and an unfailing source of peace and joy to
the reflective mind. On another occasion a
much-esteemed prelate enforced the wavering
orthodoxy of his audience by the stern truth
that errors of opinion were, if sin was to be
weighed against sin, sins of a deeper dye and
involving graver consequences to the sinner
than mere peccadillos against morality.
Compare views such as these with Professor
Jowett's erudite and deeply considered essays
on Biblical authority, and on the true purport
of " Inspiration," or with the generous ap-
preciation of excellence and nobility which
breathes through every line that Stanley
wrote, and can it be a matter of surprise that
undergraduates of Charles Bowen's tempera-
ment should have espoused with enthusiasm
the cause, as it seemed to them, of justice,
truth, and common sense ? Charles Bowen
became and remained for life a reformer ;
remained, too, the affectionate disciple and
friend of the man who bore the main brunt
52 LORD BOWEN. [1855.
of the encounters, and enjoyed the chief
honours of the persecution Benjamin Jowett.
Bowen's list of academical successes was
a long one. In 1855 he succeeded, at his
first trial, in winning the " Hertford," the blue
ribbon of Latin scholarship at Oxford. Two
years later he won the " Ireland," the other
great classical distinction of the University.
His letter to his friend Cole, in reply to a
letter of congratulation on this achievement,
will be appreciated by Balliol men, who re-
member the College jokes to which it refers.
" DEAR COLE,
"Many thanks for your very acceptable
letter of congratulation, which made good fortune
itself more agreeable. It is these little tokens of
epistolary intercourse which set the seal of heaven
upon the sea of life. I was, of course, much pleased
to hear of the result of the examination, which I
did as I was a-playing rackets with M. Pattison, in
the identical court where I was fortunate enough to
hear of the Hertford. It was after a brilliant and
extraordinary manoeuvre of that learned individual,
resembling in all important particulars a series of
THE "IRELAND. 53
charges of the heaviest cavalry, that Palmer appeared
at the door with gladness in his gaze. The following
conversation of the most exciting and intense nature
then ensued, strictly resembling that which used
actually to occur at the most important crises of
Greek life.
Palmer. avS/oec ^t'Xot TO Trp&TOV ayyttXat 0eXw
Bowen. TE^VJJKE ; TOUTO fiov\ofj.ai naOiiv.
Palmer. OVK ' aXXa aaKKOvg altv ap^aiovg * vepti '
Bowen. /xwv XEVKOC toX(oXi> cuXoVjOOc "\povty ;
Palmer. aXXavrOTrwXot Zwvra 7rpoo-j3X7row<rt vfv*
Bowen. ri 8* ouv, (Ta0? /lot /ZTJKOC ejcretvov Xoyou.
Palmer. Bi\eig UKOIXIV irdvO' a/*' t&tprifjLiva. '
Bowen. ri /*TJ OtXovai 0' qrepov Tr/oojSaXXtrat.
Palmer. ?<uf av lic/JidO^ TTOT' ^au^we ^X^tv.
" Here followed two or three pages of beautiful and
polished Greek dialogue, at the end of which Palmer
observed
' EtjSf/ovtav avviaOi ctoi Kficrrj/ilvy.'
" Chorus of animated M.Pattisons, in slightly inferior
Greek to that which formed the medium of communi-
cation between the celebrated individuals above.
'loO, lov, lov /J.d\a Si'i '
rl fff irpocrdir, rl 8 <roi A.'{w ;
& cvtial/jiwv aoi ffvyx^P 01 '
lov, lov ayopevwv, K.r.A.
* Ancient bags, i.e. trousers.
54 LORD BOWEN. [1857.
"I should at once/belovyed partnier of myyeuthfule
jeoys and seorrows/ have written to you, but had no
time, and made sure you would see it in the papers.
However, I never looked for a note from you in
return. I hope you will be at the O. R. match.
"Ever yours affectionately,
" C. BOWEN.
" P.S. Are you coming to the Lakes ? If you don't,
I shall simply stay at Oxford all the Long, with my
scout and the porter's boy."
In the same year Bowen was the successful
competitor for the Chancellor's Prize for Latin
verse. The poem, for the composition of
which Bowen had with characteristic diligence
equipped himself by specially reading through
six books of the " ^neid," was pronounced by
competent judges to rank among the most
brilliant of its class. It achieved, at any rate,
the honour of being attentively listened to
and much appreciated by the undergraduate
portion of the audience in the Sheldonian
Theatre. Its subject was " Sebastopolis."
The episodes of the Crimean War were still
LATIN PRIZE POEM. 55
fresh in the minds of all. Its grave anxieties,
its mishaps, its sorrows, still ached in the
national recollection. Its successes had flushed
the country with a martial joy unknown since
the days of Waterloo. Bowen instinctively
made the most of an interesting theme. No
one who was present will have forgotten the
frequent bursts of applause which interrupted
the recital. Among the passages thus
honoured was a spirited description of the
battle of Inkerman.
" O patria, O fluctu procul Anglia tuta marino,
Ter crebro numerosa phalanx pede, certa triumphi,
Irruerat : ter succurrit tua dulcis imago,
Firmavitque tuos, victum et vi reppulit hostem."
Great, too, was the enthusiasm aroused by
the allusion to Miss Nightingale and her
beneficent labours in the hospitals of Scutari.
" Quale melos, vergente die, languentibus olim
Pectoribus venit atque oculos componit inertes,
Talis, ubi siccos ardens sitis hauserat artus,
Adfuit, en, voluit que viris succurrere virgo.
Ut placidum tulit alma pedem, fugere tenebrse,
56 LORD BO WEN. [1857.
Fugit ibi dolor omnis, et irritus avolat angor.
Ilia refert somnos et temperat arida labra,
Aut iter extremum submota nocte serenat,
Atque mori docet exceptatque novissima verba."
Among the circles where Bowen was most
welcome was a small literary club, which had
been founded in 1852, with the object of
bringing together congenial spirits and pro-
moting more serious and interesting talk than
was easy in the ordinary intercourse of Oxford
life. The original members were three Rug-
beians, G. J. Goschen, C. Pearson, and A. G.
Butler ; three Etonians, C. S. Parker, W. H.
Fremantle, and G. Brodrick ; and one
Harrovian, H. N. Oxenham. We met after
Hall at each other's rooms, enjoyed the
temperate festivities of an Oxford Common
Room, listened to each other's essays with
patience, and discussed them with animation.
Though the club's life was longer than the
Fates usually accord in such cases, it never
found a name to its liking. It rejected with
scorn the depreciatory sobriquet of " Mutual
.<j THE ESSAY SOCIETY. 57
Improvement Society," which its enemies
suggested ; it hesitated before the Bacchic
significance of "Sublime Port," proposed, I
think, by Mr. G. Goschen, as inadequate and
misleading. Name or no name, it fostered a
pleasant freemasonry among its members, and
was the pretext for many agreeable gatherings.
Bowen in the best possible spirits, interested
in everything and longing to discuss it, in-
genious, subtle, ironical, vivacious, and quick
as lightning in retort, was an invaluable
ingredient for such symposia, and was seen
there in his happiest vein. His fun would
sometimes recall us from a sphere too tremen-
dously metaphysical for mortal intellect. But
no one soared into those empyrean heights
on bolder wing, or bent a keener gaze on each
new range of thought as it opened before us.
In a set of Alcaics, sent to Cole in 1857,
Bowen laments with mock pathos a symposium
of the Essay Society at his rooms, which
interfered with a projected visit to his friend.
58 LORD BOWEN.
The phrase, " Mutui Sapientes," refers, of
course, to the mutual improvement which the
enemies of the Society declared to be its proper
function.
" O Cole, Coli progenies patris !
O melle multo suavior, et tamen
Ventis magis velox acerbis,
Sollicitos cruciare amicos !
" Diu dolentem spes recreaverat,
Favoris aurd jam viduum tui,
Dum fata eras spero benigna,
Care, tuas aditurus aedes.
" Eheu ! caducae spes hominum nimis,
Et spreta ventis vota furentibus !
Quam saepe crudelis voluntas
Dissociat pia corda Divum.
" Cras est bibendum cum Sapientibus
Et danda Bacchi munera Mutuis,
Cras quicquid Intellectuale est
Conveniet mea tecta noctu.
" vEnigma vitas eras meditantibus
Solvetur : et, cum Tempore, Veritas
Vanescet Objectiva tandem
Et Spatii ratio fugacis.
" Ignosce amico, tu tamen, Ah, tuo,
Fesso perenni jam sapientia
Qua? poena tarn crudelis ulla est,
Quanta tuo caruisse visu ? "
DEBATES AT THE UNION. 59
Bowen used occasionally to speak at the
Union Debating Society, and in 1858 was
its President. I do not remember, however,
that he ever took it quite seriously enough to
become a distinguished debater. The Warden
of Merton recalls an occasion on which, not
altogether to the taste of his hearers, he
inveighed indignantly against the courtesies
interchanged between Queen Victoria and
Napoleon III. during the Crimean War.
" Among those who were contemporaries of
the late Lord Justice at Oxford, and also took
part in the Debates," writes Mr. H. A. Morrah,
" were John Oakley, of Brasenose, afterwards
Dean of Manchester ; King Smith of the same
college, a man held in some esteem as a speaker ;
Mitchinson, of Pembroke, now Assistant-
Bishop of Peterborough ; Elliot, now Dean of
Windsor, who supplied the earnest and solemn
element. But it was A. V. Dicey, of Balliol,
who shared with Bowen the honour of debate
in the opinion of the critical. Dicey, however,
60 LORD BOWEN. [1858.
was hard to hear and difficult to follow, and his
methods were different in the extreme from the
lucid and mellifluous flow of Bowen's argument."
Bowen, it appears, formed one of several
Rugby Presidents whose unbroken succession
to this dignified post excited the jealousy of
the other great schools. "His portrait hangs
in the fine new hall built some thirty years
after he left Oxford among those of many
predecessors and successors honoured in Church
and State."
In the year 1857 an unexpected honour
awaited him. " You will be glad to hear," he
writes to his mother, " that I have been in, on
the sly, for our Fellowship examination without
telling you, . . . and am elected Fellow of
Balliol. Fancy my being a Fellow ! Ellis, an
old Rugby friend of mine, was my antagonist.
I found that I had a legal right to stand, having
been elected Scholar before the new Act passed."
The same distinction had been conferred on
Jowett, while still an undergraduate, in 1838.
FINAL "SCHOOLS." 6 1
In the Class List of Easter Term, 1858,
Charles Bowen's name appeared in the First
Class, some of his compeers being A. Dicey,
now Vinerian Professor of English Law, and a
justly valued champion of the Unionist party;
John Percival, now Bishop of Hereford ; T. E.
Holland, Chichele Professor of International
Law ; and E. Wodehouse, the much-esteemed
member for Bath. The examination had not
been without its anxieties. At the outset,
Bowen had the misfortune to disable his right
hand by a fall from his horse, and it was feared
that his inability to write would interfere
seriously with his paper work in the schools.
The difficulty was got over by permission
being accorded to Mr. A. Austen Leigh to write
Bowen's answers at his dictation, a friendly
office which was not, apparently, without its
attendant difficulties. " He and I and one
examiner," writes Mr. A. Austen Leigh, "sat in a
School by ourselves the School generally used
for vivd voce examinations and for hour after
62 LORD BOWEN. [1858.
X
hour 1 wrote till my hand ached. It was up-
hill work for him, who wrote as quickly as he
thought, and was not accustomed to dictate his
thoughts ; and what made it worse for him, was
the terrible hash which I made of his many
quotations from Greek and Latin authors.
Again and again he had to stop and repeat
them until I understood them, and sometimes
he would dash a finger or a pencil across one
which I could not make come right. In spite
of much provocation, he never lost his temper.
Writing out his answers was certainly a revela-
tion to me, and it showed me, at any rate, what
should be aimed at when my own time should
come."
" Bowen was already a scholar of Balliol,"
writes Austen Leigh, " when I went up in
1855, and it was not till the next year that my
friendship with him dates. My steering the
1 Torpid ' boat, in which he rowed, and playing
in the eleven with him, brought us together,
and during 1857, 1858, and 1859 we were close
CRAIG SELLAR. 63
friends. He was a many-sided man, and his
striking abilities and his interest in purely
intellectual matters did not prevent him caring
for and loving one who was more to the front
in games than in the Schools.
" Perhaps Alexander Sellar was the connect-
ing-link. He and Bowen were as brothers, or
closer than brothers ; and Sellar and I were
friends. To hear Bowen and Sellar together
in those days was a treat never to be forgotten.
Sellar, humorous, hard-headed, good-tempered,
but sometimes a little crusty, and with thoughts
full of brightness, but, perhaps, now and then
moving somewhat clumsily ; and Bowen, quick,
bright, playful, darting round him and striking
in, as it were, sharp pins of chaff and fun, till
he made him roar, half in anger and half in
enjoyment ; delighted if he could trip him up
or make him flounder in rejoinder, and yet
never carrying a joke too far, or provoking
loss of temper. That was a distinguishing
trait of Bowen's character his unfailing
64 LORD BOWEN. [1857.
kindness and consideration. He never lost his
own temper, and was never the cause of others
losing theirs."
Bowen's series of academic successes was
concluded in 1859 by the Arnold Historical
Prize. The competition for this honour is
open to a later stage of University life than is
permitted in the generality of cases, and the
essays are, as a rule, no longer the " declama-
tions" of schoolboys, but the riper reflections
of scholars who have completed the University
curriculum, and have been able to approach
their subject with some degree of leisure and
research. Charles Bowen's prize essay on
" Delphi, considered locally, morally, and politi-
cally," was no exception to the rule. It
attracted much attention by beauty of language,
wide and varied learning, poetic feeling, and
keen historical instinct. It showed how great
a space the famous shrine occupied in con-
temporary society how it was " to the Hellenic
world what Rome was to the Middle Ages
ARNOLD HISTORICAL PRIZE. 65
the heart of its religion, the source of its
culture, the nucleus of its politics. There the
influence was enshrined which educated Greek
thought, moulded Greek manners, and animated
Greek art. The introduction of the faith of
the Pythian Apollo was an epoch, a revolution.
With that faith Greece grew, and, it may be,
the same causes which led to its decline paved
the way also for the fall of Greece."
The origin of the shrine is next delineated,
the civilizing stream of Dorian migration
forcing its way southwards across the plain
of Thessaly, carrying with it the worship
of the bright god Apollo, and coming into
fierce conflict with a primitive religion, whose
ascendency it threatened. It was at Delphi
that the battle was hottest and most protracted ;
the legendary lore of Greece is coloured with
the traces of the fight. As the mists of legend
melt into the daylight of history, we find
Delphi no little city, struggling for existence,
but "the Mecca, the Jerusalem of a great
66 LORD BOWEN. [1857.
kingdom, the Holy City where the tribes go
up to worship." We have next a picturesque
description of the locale of the sanctuary,
standing on the highest of a series of terraces
in an amphitheatre between the ridges of the
Parnassus range as they slope seawards. Here
a Dorian priestly aristocracy established itself,
armed with despotic powers of life and death,
levying a splendid revenue from the tenants of
the Temple, and, like the wealthy monasteries
of a later age, provoking an occasional scandal
by their luxury and the tribe of idle mendicants
whom their promiscuous bounty attracted. We
are carried through each stage of the world-
famed oracle, till it reaches its culminating
point as the most powerful moral influence of
the age. Then comes the period of decay.
The world has outgrown the stage at which
prophecy was necessary for the conveyance
of religious dogma and consolation. Its place
was being filled by philosophy. Solon and
Lycurgus had sat at the feet of Apollo, but
DELPHI. 67
the modern statesman looked to his own good
sense for guidance. Suspicions of the purity
of the oracle began to be generally entertained.
The splendid donation of Croesus was fatal to
the Pythia's reputation. The oracle became less
and less of a moral force, more and more a
political expedient. When the great trial with
Persia arrived, the oracle spoke only to dis-
courage patriotic resistance ; and it was the
glory of the Athenians that they "regarded
not the tempting prophecies which emanated
from Delphi, but, swearing to be free, repulsed
the barbarian." Other causes of degradation
were at work. A class of professional sooth-
sayers brought the art of divination into
popular disrepute, and Aristophanes held up
the wandering mendicant to the laughter of
the Athenians. The temples began to be
deserted. There was a general conviction
that Delphi sold its favours to the highest
bidder.
When the next great crisis arrived, it was
68 LORD BOWEN. [1857.
found that the Macedonian upstart had secured
the good-will of the oracle. A whisper of
indignation breathed the conviction that the
Python had been " be-Philipped." Philip,
having used the oracle for his own purposes,
showed it the same scanty reverence that
Napoleon showed the Pope, and the darkness
gathered thicker upon the expiring shrine. The
Pythia's utterances grew rare. After the Roman
conquest she became, on all national topics,
mute. Successive invaders pillaged her
treasury. When Nero ransacked it, it had
undergone the same fate eleven times before.
Fitfully, from time to time, its voice is heard
amid the din of flatterers and soothsayers. It
spoke after honour bade it cease. " The last
blow fell when the sacred tripod was taken
to adorn the hippodrome of the new metropolis
of the East. From that time forth the oracle
was dumb."
Studious as Charles Bowen could be, he had
no touch of the book-worm. No man was ever
OXFORD ENJOYMENTS. 69
more alive to the pleasures which are to be
enjoyed outside of schools and libraries. His
prowess in athletics, his robust frame, his
correct eye, his firm hand, made games a
delight. The light-heartedness of youth, health,
and success broke out in healthy good-fellow-
ship. At his college there still live traditions
of whist-parties, whose long-drawn-out sweet-
ness stretched far into the night, and rendered
the conventional attendance at chapel next
morning an achievement of difficulty ; and of
an unsuccessful attempt on the part of some
joyful spirits to secure the desired result by
sitting up all night. Virtuous attempt, defeated,
alas ! in Charles Bowen's case, by the infirmity
of Nature, which betrayed him into a nap at
the very moment when it was necessary to
put in an appearance.
The earlier portion of Bowen's Oxford life
was largely devoted to enjoyment. But as
time went on, and the final struggle of University
life loomed in the near horizon, he began to
7O LORD BOWEN. [1857.
labour more and more assiduously to equip
himself for the great ordeal. In no one,
assuredly, was the definition of genius as " the
faculty of taking pains," more strikingly ex-
emplified. At school, at college, and, after-
wards, in professional life, the pains which
Bowen took about everything to which he set
his hand were infinite. Some of his note-
books, still extant, are miracles of diligence
and exactness. The veriest drudge that ever
plodded a laborious path to mediocrity could
not have recorded his knowledge in more con-
sidered form, or systematized it with more
elaborate precision. Page after page of minute
and exquisite handwriting attest the thorough-
ness of his mastery of every subject which he
came across, and the splendid equipment which
carried him to victory in so many intellectual
encounters. No toil was spared in arranging,
co-ordinating, and setting forth everything that
had to be learnt and remembered, in its con-
cisest and most lucid form. A well-worn set
VACATION AT OXFORD. 71
of cards, covered with an analysis of " leading
cases," while he was a law-student in London,
remains as evidence of the indefatigable diligence
with which his mind, working at a rate which
filled his companions with wonder, could yet
stop to make sure of each new step, and to lay
the foundation of that varied and extensive
knowledge of Law which the Master of the
Rolls, in the panegyric pronounced after Lord
Bowen's death, described as so remarkable.
His note-books at college appear to have been
kept on a similar system, and with the same
indefatigable exactness.
A letter written by Charles Bowen, in January
of this year (185 7), to his friend A. Austen Leigh,
gives an amusing account of his life at Oxford
during the Vacation, when he was staying up
to read with Mark Pattison, and of the im-
pressions made upon him by Jowett at an early
stage of their acquaintance.
" I have been staying up here diligently reading the
Ethics. Of course I went down for Christmas Day,
72 LORD BOWEN. [1857.
and returned the day after, finding nobody left in
college but J. King, the white cat, and the coal-heaver,
all, I am happy to say, in tolerable health and spirits.
I am coaching with M. Pattison, and also play
rackets with him. In the one pursuit he throws cold
water on my genius, and in the other he makes blue
marks all over my body with a racket-ball ; so that,
between the two, I shall not be sorry when our
connection terminates. New Year's Eve was rather
slow. However, J. King and myself, with Lightfoot,
who had by that time arrived, kept it in the most
solemn way with oysters in my room. As the New
Year rang in from the peal of bells in the old clock-
tower opposite you may easily imagine the thoughts
which came crowding to the brain of each. I con-
tented myself with wishing you a happy New Year
and all the good fortune attending thereupon. J.
King saw rise in a long line before him all the ghosts
of the Joe Miller jokes which he had made during
the last twelve months ; and Lightfoot silently com-
posed the three verses of an appropriate hymn, which
he was with great difficulty prevented from reciting
on the spot.
" On the 6th, the Master found it necessary to retire
for change of air to the country, and insisted on our
leaving the college while he was away. Jowett, who
was staying at Cowley in a little farmhouse, asked me
to go and stay with him. It was dreadfully cold and
dreadfully windy, and only two very back bedrooms,
LETTER TO AUSTEN LEIGH. 73
and one sitting-room, with a miserable fireplace.
One might hear the wintry wind howling in the
turrets and the pine-tops, had there been either
turrets or pine trees within several miles, which,
unfortunately, there were not. It was, however, very
instructive to see the great Professor of Greek
inventing more than Arian errors on the other side
of the table. Having been able to discover, by a
close contact with that remarkable individual, the
chief sine qud nons for a heretic, you may expect to
see me coming out strong in that line. One is to
hum very melancholy airs during breakfast ; another
is always to fill up the teapot before you have put in
any tea ; thirdly, to have no watch, and to lie asleep
till twelve o'clock.
" I think with application I shall be able to master
all these requisites except the last, which my regular
habits completely prevent me from accomplishing.
I go in every day to my coach. . . . The roads
about Oxford are becoming dreadfully insecure.
Garrotting is setting in with a virulence only equalled
by the inclemency of the weather. Accordingly, as
no one, in such a state of things, is safe, should you
in the next three or four days see in any of the daily
papers a paragraph headed ' Extraordinary Heroism ! '
I should advise you to read it. Besides reading the
Ethics, I have been writing for the Latin verse; a
poem which, though I say it who should not say it,
is perhaps the very fittest which, etc., etc."
74 LORD BOWEN. [1858 ET SQQ.
No part of University life is more delightful
than the reading-parties with which under-
graduates, who are going in for honours, or
otherwise bent on study, are accustomed to
occupy a portion of the Long Vacation. Con- .
genial companions, a common object, common
tastes, freedom from every sort of restraint or
disturbance, delightful rambles on some neigh-
bouring moor or mountain-side all tend to
make the weeks flow gaily by. Nowhere does
greater intimacy prevail, or intimacy ripen
more quickly into friendship. Several of
Charles Bowen's summers were thus employed.
In 1858 he spent some weeks in Borrowdale
with his friends Craig Sellar and Austen Leigh,
" coaching " them for their final examination ; a
labour of love, which, his pupils gratefully
remembered, was performed with all the pains-
taking assiduity which had characterized the
preparation for his own degree. Another
autumn we spent at Goslar, in the Hartz
Mountains, and afterwards at Heidelberg ;
VACATION READING PARTIES. 75
another at Portinscale, on the shores of
Derwentwater ; another at Aberfeldy ; another
in South Wales, at Bethgellert. On these
occasions, unless I am deceived by the mirage
which hangs over the scenery of forty years
ago, Charles Bowen was seen in his most
charming aspect His gaiety of spirit broke
out in every sort of fun ; his sweetness of
disposition threw a charm over the common
details of daily existence. His brightness made
it impossible to be dull. None of us, indeed,
thought of dulness. Life lay open before us,
fair with gracious promises. With boyish
enthusiasm we read, we talked, we argued, we
let speculation take a daring flight. Sometimes
Newman, putting a finishing touch to the
intellectual panoply with which he was presently
to face the examiners, would recall us to a
serious mood, and sober our too exuberant
mirth with an historical disquisition. Sometimes
Craig Sellar would give a foretaste of the meta-
physical prowess which was to secure him a
LORD BOWEX.
First Class in the schools ; or Cordery, graceful
and accomplished scholar, conspicuous amongst
the first-fruits of the then recently opened
competitive system for the Indian Civil Service,
would exhibit the fine scholarship which subse-
quently graced his translation of the " Iliad."
Those of us who remember those days may be
forgiven for investing our recollection with some
of the romance which belongs to the days of
long ago. We seemed to be wandering through
" Lands where not a leaT was dumb ;
But an the lavish hffls would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan :
" When each by turns was guide to each,
Afid FjUlCY nnt tfOfP f 3BC1T OHIBHt *
And thought leapt out to wed with thought,
Ere thought could wed itself with speech.
- And all we met was fair and good,
And aU was good that Time could bring ;
And aU the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood.
And many an old philosophy
On Arghre hills divinely sang ;
And round us aU the thicket rang
To many a note of Arcady. 8
OXFORD VACATIONS. 77
So sounds the far-off music of that pleasant
retrospect, with some enchantment, perhaps, lent
by distance, but still recalling a delightful time.
One of Charles Bowen's brother scholars
W. W. Merry, gayest and most mercurial of
the sons of learning, whom forty years have
sobered into a Public Orator and the Rector of
a College sends me a memento of their college
days, and the learned pastimes with which the
Balliol scholars of that day beguiled their
leisure. " It was," he writes, " a joint attempt
to translate Charles Kingsley's ' Sands of
Dee' into something which should resemble
a Virgilian eclogue. Bowen and I spent a
fireside evening over it, when we were lodging
at Mason's; and we were not highly critical
I think that the result pleased us."
THE SANDS OF DEE.
' ' I, revoca pastas, rev-oca, Galatea, ittvencas :
I, <^fafa, modo et (aox ingraft) ipsa redito.'
Surgebat madidis hunaescens flatibos Aoster,
Aoster, triste sonans et multa spnmens nada.
Sola per iocertas virgo incedebat arenas.
78 LORD BOWEN.
" I, revoca pastas, revoca, Galatea, iuvencas.
Interea lento repens allabitur aestu
Pontus, et occiduo pronus se littore fundit,
Includitque tegens late, atque intercipit unda.
Deinde vapor glomerat caecoque volumine nubes,
Prospectum eripiens oculis : nee rursus ademptam
Cara domus notique lares videre puellam.
" I, revoca pastas, revoca, Galatea, iuvencas.
Nescio quid raris in summo marmore Devae
Retibus interlucet, hiemps quod forte revulsum,
Summisit pelago, et palis infinit acutis
Mobile ; seu foret alga puellaresve capilli,
Nam neque tarn pulcher nee tarn spectabilis auro,
Deva, tuis unquam salmo se sustulit undis.
" I, revoca pastas, revoca, Galatea, iuvencas.
Ilia quidem exigua nabat iam frigida cymba,
Triste onus, at multo sulcati remige fluctus
Ingluvie circum horrebant fremituque minaci.
Advexere pii tandem ad sua littora nautae,
Littoreoque locant iuvenilia membra sepulcro.
Atque aliquis pastas etiamnum forte iuvencas
Audierit revocantem, et remo acclinis inanes
Excipit ad Devae fatalia littora voces."
Charles Bowen's taste of classical versifica-
tion remained undiminished to the end of his
life. The art is no longer, I believe, held
in the high esteem which it enjoyed in the
days when it was regarded as the crowning
TRANSLATIONS. 79
accomplishment of good scholarship. But
Bowen found amusement and interest in it,
and would often while away a leisure afternoon
with his brother Edward, or some other
congenial companion, in playing with the
subtleties of a difficult translation. The follow-
ing few specimens belong to quite his latest
years. His friends will value them.
CROSSING THE BAR.
(TENNYSON.)
" Vesper adest, tandem nitet Hesperus ; in mare magnum
Vox me ccelicolum, clarior aere, ciet.
Nulla tamen circa portum freinat unda reluctans,
Funibus ut scissis in vada caeca feror.
Agmine me pleno fluctus trahat, absit amico
Spuma salo, tacitas unda serenet aquas,
Dum pars immensi fueram qui marmoris olim
jEquoreas repeto, quae genuere, domos.
" Certa monent me signa, vocat lux ultima navim ;
Imminet in vasto nox obeunda rnari.
Digressu at nostro lacrimas compescite, amici ;
Non ego deflendas cogor inire vias.
Namque licet rerum metas ac tempora linquens
Vel procul hinc, fluctu me retrahente, vehar,
Praesentem inveniam, portuque egressus habebo
Recturum cursus par freta vasta Deum."
8o LORD BOWEN. [1857.
"I STROVE WITH NONE."
(W. S. LANDOR.)
" 1 strove with none, for none was worthy strife ;
Nature I loved, and, after nature, Art.
I warmed both hands before the fire of life :
It sinks, and I am ready to depart."
(C. S. C. B.)
" Non contra indignos ingloria bella petebam ;
Semper erant silvae, musaque noster amor.
Hospes ut igne foci, vita sic largiter usus,
Discedo, flamma depereunte, libens."
REFRAIN.
(TENNYSON.)
" Mourning your losses, O Earth,
Heart-weary and overdone ?
But all's well that ends well ;
Arise and follow the sun."
" Quid gemis elapsos inconsolabilis annos
Assiduo, Tellus, fessa labore nimis ?
Fit bene, supremam bene quod finitur ad horam ;
Perfice volvendas, sole trahente, vices."
1893.
A letter which Charles Bowen wrote to
Arthur Austen Leigh in 1857, from Goslar, gives
a pleasant idea of his way of life and mood at
GOSLAR. 8 I
this time. It is full of affectionate nicknames.
His friend Bullock Hall is abbreviated into
" Bull." Austen Leigh himself is " Dear
Amyas."
" Herr Battenstadt, Goslar.
"Am Hartz, Hanover.
" DEAR AMYAS,
" Were it not for the intense heat of the
weather, and the swarms of confounded flies that
compel one to expend all one's extra indignation
upon them, I should treat in the severest possible
way your suggestion that I have been too lazy to
write. The- author of the present to borrow for
one brief moment the dignified style of some of our
best letter- writers has been up this morning at five
o'clock, partly, I will confess it, owing to the aforesaid
flies, partly from a strong sense of duty, which sum-
moned him to Herodotus. From five to eight he
read, took a crust of bread from eight to nine, and
then till past two o'clock again employed himself in
the study of history and of literature. All the shoot-
ing he does is with Dowe's Greek canon ; all the
riding or driving with his Aristotle cab. After this
eloquent defence of one so deserving, I will now
relate to you what has happened since I wrote to
console you under your affliction. On arriving, with
my usual punctuality, at the steamer at least one
G
82 LORD BOWEN. [1857.
hour and a half before the time, I found no Bull
on board, and left, surrounded by a multitude of Ger-
mans and of Jews, in the best of possible spirits, and,
I feel bound to add, all in the dirtiest possible shirts.
A marine debility which often attends sea-voyages,
coupled with the extreme simplicity of my foreign
vocabulary, prevented me from either converting the
Jews or conversing with the Germans. Add to this
that I was unable to get a berth, and that at the
last crisis I had left behind my railway-wrapper a
new one and my overcoat, and that it rained pretty
heavily for twenty-four hours, and you will have a
picture of my sufferings.
" Before arriving at Hamburg, our captain thought
it advisable to run us ashore in the Elbe. However,
at last we reached land safely, and I explored the town
under the safe conduct of an English clergyman,
whose acquaintance I had made upon the voyage.
Late in the evening of the day after, I found myself
in Goslar, where for five days I amused myself as
best I could in the society of the natives, with whom
my chief connecting-link was that we both spoke
languages that were branches of the great Aryan
family. On the first morning, to my horror, I dis-
covered that I had managed to come in for the very
beginning of a festival which lasts eight days, called
the ' Free-shooters ' so named because they stand
in a plain and fire at a target in the distance, with
perfect indifference as to who happens to be walking
LIFE AT GOSLAR. 83
in the road between. In the evening the whole
population turn out to dance ; and as my bedroom
was not very far off, I had quite sufficient You will
naturally expect me to sketch in broad outline the
chief characteristics of the country and the natives.
The first thing, my dear Amyas, is that they are all
so like each other it is quite impossible to distinguish
between any of them ; the second that, obviously
from motives of economy, their toilette is unaccom-
panied with any process like washing ; the third is,
that they all shake hands with you, whether you
know them or not, and ask whether you remember
their name. The effort of memory requisite for the
latter feat is rendered less needful by the fact that, if
you did recollect it, it would be utterly impossible
to pronounce it. Bull, having been here last year,
is on terms of affection and intimacy with the whole
town, from the peer to the peasant. The clergyman
of the town, having been informed by him that I was
at Oxford, the next time we met, took the opportunity
of addressing me as Lieber Herr Doctor, evidently
completely taken in by my grave and reverential
demeanour during the German service, and the intelli-
gent way in which I joined in the hymn. There is a
German young fellow who has just come here from
some Hussar regiment for his health, who talks
English in the most beautiful way, and who, I am
dreadfully afraid, is going to pay us a visit at Oxford
in the autumn, unless he should be, providentially,
84 LORD BOWEN. [185 7-
shot in a duel which he has to fight first. Bull and
I are perfectly convinced he means to challenge us,
in which case I shall decline on the plea that I am
brought up for the Church. I need not say the very
affable manners of the Bull quite preclude the possi-
bility of his being called out.
"There is a celebrated quack-doctor here who fs
patronized by the King of Hanover. Crowds of
people flock here from Germany to him, and submit
to a six weeks' regimen for the benefit of their health.
When introduced to him, you are met by the startling
question whether you are quite sure you have not
got water on the chest, or a tendency towards
apoplexy ; and if you deny it, he immediately replies
that being ignorant of your disease is the very worst
symptom of the whole.
"Once a week we go a long expedition into the
country, which is really very beautiful. The other
days we go into the woods near, play at billiards,
drink coffee at the different places of resort, and in the
evening go up a neighbouring mountain called the
Catten-berg, to see the sun set, as a slight concession
to the sentimental disposition of Bullock. The little
dogs here are much nicer, and much better-behaved
and SUBMISSIVE, than the little dogs in England. We
have not yet been to the Brocken to see the spectre
we are waiting for Cunningham ; besides, Bullock is
so intensely poetical that I am quite afraid to be with
him in the dark. Every morning at half-past five a
LIFE AT GOSLAR. 85
long train of cows and goats wind past our house, on
their way up the mountains, and at about the same
hour in the evening return, all with bells round their
necks, making a noise which can be heard for miles.
Three times a week we have a gewitter that is, about
four or five hours of thunder and lightning, accom-
panied with rain after which the sky clears, and you
are roasted alive till the next gewitter.
"My brother, with a thoughtfulness seldom seen
in the younger brothers of great families, carefully
selects, about once a week, the daily paper that con-
tains least news in it about ten columns of adver-
tisements, and the gratifying telegraphic intelligence
that the India mail is in sight off Trieste and
forwards it to us, postage studiously left unpaid ; so
we have all the important dispatches never later than
a month after you have them in England.
" The other day we were startled by the arrival of a
policeman of the town, with two suspicious-looking
bits of paper, which we at once conceived to be
warrants of arrest for having assisted in putting out
a gigantic fire about a night or two before, at which
we laboured from eleven till four, to the intense
amusement of the population, who stood round and
watched. However, the two documents turned out
to be permissions to live here, signed by the most
despotic potentates of Goslar, and got up entirely
regardless of expense. As we had not asked any-
body's leave, or even thought of doing so, much less
86 LORD BOWEN. [1857.
signified our intention of residing here at all, we were
much gratified with the attention. We inhabit a little
house (detached from a larger one), holding two bed-
rooms and a sitting-room, a kind of stone-floored
apartment where we have our baths, and a little
summer-house or arbour, where we take our meals.
When Cunningham comes, I shall relinquish him my
room, and migrate to the larger house, where resides
a Russian baron and his little boy of about eight
years old, who is, without exception, the most appal-
lingly polite little creature I ever saw, and insists on
always bowing repeatedly when you meet him."
During the Christmas Vacation of 1857
Charles Bowen stayed up at Oxford, having
allowed himself only a few days' holiday at his
home, which was now at Winchester. On
December the 2Qth he writes to Austen Leigh,
giving him careful advice as to the selection
of a private tutor, and going on in a pleasant
vein of friendly banter. " I had occasion the
other day," he adds in a postscript, " to think
of an observation, which is as follows : Why
is Arthur Austen Leigh rightly called a good
bat ? Because a bat is a little creature, which
NEW YEAR'S DAY AT OXFORD. 87
goes in very early in the morning, and does
not come out till very late in the evening.
Of course, this answer does not apply to those
occasions on which I bowl on the opposite
side."
Two days later he writes to Austen Leigh
a bright, affectionate letter of good wishes for
the incoming year.
"To-night being the last night of the old year, I
am making preparations to see the new one in with
intellectual conviviality, and shall, accordingly, read
Thucydides till twelve o'clock, and, when the hour
strikes, begin the Fifth Book of the Ethics; so 1858
has every reason to feel gratified. . . . Last New
Year, I remember, Johnny King and I inaugurated
together, and I have no doubt that, as he is away, I
shall miss the air of accuracy and detail which he
threw over the proceedings. I have every reason to
believe that two ladies are occupying Sellar's rooms
during his absence, and am thinking of sending for
his cigars, lest they should use them all up. If they
were widows, I should do so at once, as the con-
nection between that portion of the fairer sex and
weeds is too obvious to require explanation. Jowett
is away, elaborating heresy in the vicinity of London.
88 LORD BOWEN. [1858.
Really, I don't at all dislike the solitude of Oxford,
though I find difficulty in getting myself to go out
regularly. ... It is nine o'clock ; the Union is shut-
ting up. Good-bye for the last time in 1857.
" Your very affectionate friend,
" C. B."
In the spring of the following year (1858)
Bowen writes in high spirits from Eastbourne,
where he and Sellar were making their first
experiment in independent housekeeping.
" We wandered up and down looking for lodgings.
In the course of our search Sellar suddenly developed
the most wonderful arithmetical powers, hitherto,
except in Smalls, entirely undeveloped. He beat
down four lodginghouse-keepers in four successive
quarters of an hour, leaving one delicate woman in
tears and an infirm old lady in a paralytic fit. At
last we got some, in a very nice house, and after
Sellar had logically proved to the owner that she
ought to be thankful to take us in for nothing, we
came to terms. . . . We provide our own mainten-
ance. This, as you might expect, is a rather terrible
affair, and we have just had dinner upon the joint
results of our wasted minds. By-the-by, I ought to
say that we entered the house only five hours ago,
and Sellar has already let his fire out twice, and I
LIFE IN LONDON. 89
have let mine out once ; so the landlady, does not
think much of us.
" Now, my dear Amyas, if you have any regard
for your own health or our prosperity, you will take
a ticket at once, and come and read with us. ... If
you don't immediately come, I don't know what is
to become of us, as Sellar has all my money, and is
managing the accounts. I am anxious to take them
out of his hands, and put them into those of a steady
little animal like yourself. Sellar sends his love, and
you are to come and bring Jolly and a Latin dic-
tionary."
The first plunge of the Oxford scholar into
his new profession was not encountered without
some natural shudders of dislike. The con-
trast between London life and the familiar
pursuits and pleasant intercourse of the
University was, no doubt, more striking than
agreeable. The legal neophyte was depressed
by his uncongenial surroundings.
" I well recollect," he said, addressing the Birming-
ham Law Students' Society in after-years (January 8,
1884), "the dreary days with which my own experi-
ence of the law began, in the chambers of a once
famous Lincoln's Inn conveyancer; the gloom of a
9O LORD BOWEN. [1858.
London atmosphere without, the whitewashed misery
of the pupil's room within both rendered more
emphatic by what appeared to us 'to be the hopeless
dinginess of the occupations of the inhabitants. There
stood all our dismal text-books in rows the endless
Acts of Parliament, the cases and the authorities, the
piles of forms and of precedents calculated to ex-
tinguish all desire of knowledge, even in the most
thirsty soul. To use the language of the sacred text,
it seemed a barren and a dry land in which no water
was. And, with all this, no adequate method of
study, no sound and intelligent principle upon which
to collect and to assort our information. One felt
like Dante before he descended into the shades. ' In
the middle of the journey of our life,' says the great
Italian poet, ' I found myself in a dark wood, for the
straight way was lost. How hard it is to say what
a wild and rough and stubborn wood it was ! So
bitter is the thought thereof that death hardly can
be more bitter.' "
So deep was this impression that for years
after, as Bowen told one of his friends, he used
to make a d'etour in order to avoid passing
these chambers, so greatly did he detest the
very sight of them.
Charles Bowen, however little he liked the
LONDON LODGINGS. 9 1
surroundings of his new life, set himself
vigorously to work. Some of his letters at this
time sound as if his depression had soon given
way to a more cheerful mood. Here is one to
Craig Sellar, overflowing with high spirits.
"... Since I wrote last, I have been tried in the
fire of tribulation, only to emerge therefrom a brighter
jewel. You may be aware that, before Christmas, I
came to London, and took lodgings, to which I was
attracted by the pleasant look of the young landlady.
They were cheap, they were commodious, and they
were aristocratic. To one who believes in blood, it
could not go for nothing that my landlord was door-
keeper in the House of Lords, which, you know, is
next best to being doorkeeper in the House of the
Lord, and may be considered (judging from the shady
appearance of the species pew-opener) to be even
more remunerative. Nor was this the only privilege.
Underneath dwelt a French marchioness, whose race,
my landlord told me, was of the noblest. For her
sake, I may venture to express a hope that her
antiquity of family came anywhere near her antiquity
of years. And on the ground-floor resided a vendor
of that noxious weed, the use of which, I am happy
to say, is unknown in the social circles in which you
and I have mixed. The consequence of this con-
fluence of nobility was, as might be expected, a
9 2 LORD BOWEN. . [1858,
commercial crisis. The marchioness stopped pay-
ment ; the tobacco-merchant made his bright home,
all on a sudden, in the setting sun. You, perhaps, have
never been brought into contact suddenly with a bailiff.
The first occasion of meeting one is apt to give you
a slight shock. But the feeling soon blows over when
you have been in immediate communion, as I was,
for three days. On the whole, my bailiff was not a bad
fellow ; he had a deathlike appearance about the face,
like our common friend X., and I have reason, from
various circumstances, to conjecture that he fed
extensively on onions ; otherwise he was not a bad
kind of creature. He helped me down with my
boxes, and I emigrated from the scene of pecuniary
embarrassment to my present lodgings at an under-
taker's. Hearses run from here to all parts of
London. I myself am thinking of taking to the
mute line, which, if gloomy, is at least profitable.
The funeral service is performed at all hours of the
day, and you can be buried at a moment's notice. A
reduction is made when taking a quantity. Children
and schools half price. No connection with the
house over the way, which is likewise an under-
taker's. ..."
In April, Bowen entered the chambers of
Mr. Christie, one of the most distinguished
conveyancers of the day.
MR. CHRISTIES CHAMBERS. 93
"Yesterday morning," he writes, April 21, "I
wound up with Hawkins, and betook myself to
Christie's, 2, Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, where I
am at present endeavouring, as far as possible, to
disturb the peace of domestic circles throughout the
country by making blunders in marriage settlements
and creating irremediable flaws in titles. As yet I
have not been allowed to do much harm, but hope to
be permitted to do more as soon as I have learnt a
little about it We are a very intellectual circle at
Christie's. Only two Senior Wranglers at present,
but no doubt more are coming."
Here he found in his preceptor a companion
that could unbend to other and more congenial
themes than law. " When I was a half-hatched
student at Lincoln's Inn," he told an audience,
many years later, " I was the pupil of a dis-
tinguished conveyancer who loved works of
fiction, and many a half-hour have I spent with
him discussing Balzac, when his confidential
clerk was under the impression that we were
settling the draft of some marriage settle-
ment. . . ."
A letter written in 1860 to one of his cousins,
94 LORD BOWEN. [1860.
wife of a country clergyman, touches amus-
ingly on the alarm which Jowett's arrival in the
neighbourhood might occasion in clerical circles,
and smooths the way for a kindlier welcome
than he might otherwise have received.
" A cloud is gathering over Cliveden, and, indeed,
has perhaps already broken. The great Oxford
heretic has gone down to stay there for a few weeks,
and the atmosphere is probably charged with un-
orthodoxy at this very moment. I need hardly say
that I allude to Mr. Jowett. I wonder whether you
will come across him. He is gone to read with two
younger Balliol men during the Easter Vacation. If
George, in the course of his sermon, casts his eye
upon a small, delicate face, belonging to a little figure,
with a high forehead and whitening hair, and the look
of a saint, he may be sure that he is preaching to the
arch-heretic whose throne is on the banks of the Isis.
I do very much hope that some fortunate accident
may bring him in your way. I am sure that, theology
apart, you would like him excessively ; though he is
very silent and reserved, he is a man of such taste and
moral refinement, and I feel (as many other Balliol
men, scattered all over England, feel) that I owe
more to him than to any other man in the world."
In this year occurs the earliest indication of
TOUR IN FRANCE AND ITALY. 95
any serious failure in health. Bowen's doctors
were peremptory in insisting on a long and
complete holiday, and in the spring he set out
upon a tour in France and Italy. In France
he had the honour of making acquaintance with
Montalembert, who accorded the brilliant young
Oxonian a kindly welcome. In Italy, his
friendship with Saffi illustrious exile, for whom
Oxford had created a special Chair made the
traveller the object of general hospitality in
liberal circles. The holiday soon effected the
desired result, and in the autumn Bo wen was
again immersed in law.
"I am a reformed character," he writes to
Mr. Austen Leigh, in October, 1860 ; " I
have not smoked a pipe or a cigar for seven
weeks, rise early, and am reading law from six
to eight hours a day. I write this in chambers
at six, having arrived here and not left my
chair since ten. What do you say to that ? "
On January 27, 1861, Charles Bowen was
called to the Bar. He writes next day telling
96 LORD BOWEN. [1861.
Austen Leigh of the event, and referring to
the contest which had just taken place between
Mr. Max Muller and Mr. Monier Williams for
the Sanscrit Chair, which had, unfortunately,
been influenced more by the theological pre-
possessions of the electorate than by a strict
regard to the merits of the candidates.
" So Max MUller didn't get it. I have for ever
ruined my prospects at the Bar by not writing to
congratulate Mr. Monier Williams's brother, who is a
solicitor. But I really could not do it, though I have
no doubt you will jeer at what I consider a noble and
disinterested conscientiousness.
" N.B. I was yesterday called to the Bar. I have
already begun to keep a register of all my best and
most brilliant remarks for the benefit of some future
author of the Lives of the English Chancellors."
A great change in Charles Bowen's circum-
stances was now impending a change which
was to add greatly to the pleasures and
anxieties of existence. In February, 1861, he
became engaged to be married to Emily
Frances, eldest daughter of Mr. James
ENGAGEMENT. 97
Meadows Rendel, the distinguished civil
engineer. Never was there a happier or
more devoted lover, or one whose delight in
his good fortune overflowed with more spon-
taneous gaiety of heart among his friends. A
letter of congratulation upon this event from
Professor Jowett shows how strong a bond of
affection, at this time, existed between tutor
and pupil.
" February 10, 1861.
" I write a line to congratulate you and to assure
you that I have the most sincere pleasure in anything
that promises happiness to you. I should be the
most ungrateful of human beings not to feel deeply
your affection for me, which indeed I have never
been able to account for on any other principle than
Falstaff's, ' He has given me medicines to make him
love me.' It has been a great pleasure and good to
me in a life which of late years has not been quite
happily circumstanced, though I do not mean to
complain of it.
" When shall we give an entertainment in honour
of the young lady ? I think that it is all as well that
she has not ; 100,000 a year, as she will keep tugging
at your gown until you get briefs. I wonder whether
H
98 LORD BOWEN. [1861.
I shall live to see any of my old pupils a Chancellor
or Chief Justice?
" Ever yours affectionately,
"B. JOWETT."
In October, 1861, Bowen joined the Western
Circuit, and began the traditional routine of
the young barrister's career.
" I have just been on my first Sessions," he writes
to A. C. Sellar from Streatham the residence of A.
M. Rendel, who was soon to become his brother-in-
law "and have had ten little briefs, and a bad
abscess on it, which latter has confined me for some
time to an inn at Portsmouth. I have, however, at
last, managed to get back to a sofa in more civilized
regions, and bidden adieu to chambermaids and
waiters with considerable joy."
The young barrister's anxieties as to pro-
fessional success became, naturally, acuter when
a prospective wife was added to the topics
about which he had to be anxious. Charles
Bowen, always a hard worker, worked harder
than ever. Besides his legal studies, which
were pursued with more than average zeal, he
THE SATURDAY REVIEW. < 99
had been, since 1859, adding to his resources
by constant contributions to the Saturday
Review. This paper had been founded on the
ruins of the Morning Chronicle by several
leading members of its staff. Mr. A. J.
Beresford Hope was principal proprietor, Mr.
J. Douglas Cook the editor. Bo wen's Uni-
versity reputation had naturally attracted the
attention of its conductors on the look-out for
brilliant recruits, and, along with several young
Oxford contemporaries, he had come to form
one of its regular contributors.
The paper had attracted attention by its
ability, its audacity, its unsparing attacks, the
strong drop of acid that flavoured its outspoken-
ness. In controversy it was vigorous and not
too polite. The " Superfine Review " was the
sneer in which Thackeray, provoked by some
supposed affront, expressed his view of its
pretentious refinement. Other victims consoled
themselves with denouncing it as "The Saturday
Reviler." The paper, at any rate, was a force,
100 LORD BOWEN. [1861.
and no mean one, in the world of journalism.
The staff formed a group of men of real dis-
tinction : Sir H. Maine, G. S. Venables, Lord
Cranborne (Marquess of Salisbury), T. C.
Sandars, J. F. Stephen, Sir W. Harcourt,
Goldwin Smith, and Mr. T. Scott, a London
incumbent of strong High Church preposses-
sions, a copious vocabulary, and a reckless pen.
Though most of the influential writers were
pronounced Liberals in politics and theology,
the views of the chief proprietor, Mr. A. J.
Beresford Hope, tended strongly in the direction
of High Church Conservatism, and these views
were ably supported by more than one of the
most brilliant contributors.
The consequence was that there ran through
the paper a strong vein of Conservatism, which
occasionally bewildered its readers, and pro-
duced, before long, a schism in the staff.
For a time, Mr. J. D. Cook's tact, good
nature, and easy-going epicureanism prevented
the discordant elements from breaking into
SECESSION FROM THE "SATURDAY." IOI
open war. But the truce was of no long
duration. Two striking personages in the
Liberal ranks were at this time the objects of
attack by the champions of orthodox theology.
Jowett's influential position at the University,
his quiet but undisguisedly progressive tone,
frequently provoked his opponents to open war.
Arthur Stanley, charming all readers by a
delightful style, and challenging opposition by
courageous championship of unpopular causes,
was not Hkely to be ignored by polemical
writers, alarmed at inroads on accepted views.
The occurrence of such attacks in the columns
of the Saturday Review placed the Liberal
contributors, especially those who were bound
to Jowett and Stanley by the ties of personal
affection, in an awkward predicament. They
could not but recognize that their presence and
co-operation gave weight to attacks which,
appearing in less distinguished company, might
hardly have attracted attention, and that,
however little they sympathized with the
I
I O2 LORD BOWEN. [1861.
assailants, they incurred responsibility for
whatever pain or injury the newspaper, of
which they were the supporters, was capable
of inflicting.
In 1 86 1, an attack on Stanley in the Saturday
Review brought the latent antagonism to a head.
Charles Bowen, J. F. Stephen, and others of
the contributors seceded. Some efforts were
made to start a rival journal, which should be
exempt from such backslidings. Its editorship
was offered, it would appear from one of Charles
Bowen's letters, both to himself and Sir H.
Maine. Both, however, had the wisdom to
decline a dangerous and laborious post, which
would have practically involved the abandon-
ment of their profession.
The quarrel was ultimately adjusted by an
arrangement which the seceding contributors
considered as satisfactorily safeguarding them
from any participation in such attacks for the
future. Some letters on the subject, which
passed between Charles Bowen and his friends,
SECESSION FROM THE "SATURDAY. 10$
especially Professor Jowett and Stanley, throw
an interesting light upon the dispute.
"You may be sure," Charles Bowen, in one of
these, writes to Jowett, " that I never will write for
any paper in which it is possible that either you or
Stanley should be attacked, either directly or in-
directly, by innuendo or otherwise. So that, if I go
back to the Saturday Review (which I have not yet
determined to do) it will be in case I should feel that
there is no chance or possibility of a repetition of
such articles as these last."
Here is a letter of Jowett's to Charles
Bowen on the same subject.
SJ
"Stanley tells me that he wrote to urge you to
continue your connection with the Saturday Review.
I am sure I should wish you to do so, as far as I am
concerned, but it did not occur to me to say this
to you. And, depend upon it, it is really wiser to
remain and try to influence the Review, and not
allow to be its presiding genius. I am truly
grateful and sensible of the strong proof of affection
you showed to me, but I should not be at all the less
so if you went back to it again, and I hope you will
not be deterred by any considerations of this sort."
In another letter Jowett gives some excellent
IO4 LORD BOWEN. [1861.
counsel as to the spirit in which the project
of a new journal should be carried out.
" I hear with much interest that some adventurous
spirits are thinking of starting a new weekly review.
Is this so? I hope you will have the best editor
who can be found (no one occurs to me better than
Sandars). It will be foolish in such a venture not to
be liberal in the salary and in the payments to
contributors.
" It is easy to see what such a review should not
be ; it should not be ' young and curly ; ' it should
not inaugurate a new moral world ; it should not
carry on a warfare with the old Saturday; it
should not begin with a flourish of trumpets, or
announcement of principles, but creep into notice by
the ability of its articles.
" It should be Liberal in politics, yet with the aim
of making liberality palatable to the educated and
aristocratic ; it should be liberal in religion (not in
the sense of the Westminster) ; it should have a
distinct object (like the Edinburgh in old days)
which would, in fact, be the politics of five or ten
years hence. It should attach itself to some leading
politicians, Lord John, Gladstone, Sir G. Lewis, Lord
Stanley.
"It should not fanatically abuse the Emperor
Napoleon or John Bright, or competitive examina-
tions, or the Evangelical clergy. It should include
SCHEME OF A NEW PAPER. IO5
High Churchmen, and make religion one of its
leading topics ; it should have no ' isms,' no preten-
sions of superhuman virtue. Above all, it should be
amusing.
"Stanley takes a view of the subject which is
worth considering before you start, viz. that, after
all, the amalgamation of opposites in the Saturday
is more good than harm. But I think you might
still continue to unite them in the new review.
"The real reconcilement of classes in the world
and of parties in the Church ; the balance of foreign
and English interests in Europe; the working out
and application of political economy to the interests
of the lower classes, are fields in which a new review
might hope to do some service. These sorts of aims
look pompous when written down in this way ; to
do any good with them they should be concealed
though pursued. Foolish aspirations and self-con-
sciousness are, perhaps, the worst fault of taste a
newspaper can have."
Of his own view of the controversy Bowen
wrote to his friend, Craig Sellar, in a somewhat
less measured strain than was habitual to him.
" Talking of ' Essays and Reviews,' why on earth
is the Defence Fund not to publish the names of its
contributors? It is perfectly contemptible, a lot of
IO6 LORD BOWEN. [1862.
skulking creatures believing in their hearts that the
men are all right, and yet leaving them alone to bear
the brunt of the fight, and getting themselves under
cover. As for the conduct of all the semi-liberals on
the subject, it is simply damnable. Half have stood
by in the dark stabbing their own side, and the others
have stood by and let them be stabbed. Semi-
liberalism, by which I mean that dry polish of
literary refinement which innate Tories put on and
call it Liberalism, is getting so common that the
Conservatives can have everything their own way.
' Essays and Reviews ' are not, I suppose, the tip-top
work of all the genius of the century ; but they are
much better, on the whole, than the twaddle talked
on the other side. I dare say you will think my
language altered since I left (for I have left) the
Saturday Review ; and I do say the line the Satur-
day Review has taken about it has been dastardly in
the extreme."
In January, 1862, the marriage took place
a courageous step for a man who had still his
professional position to secure, and all the
more courageous, in the Bowens' case, from
the circumstance that neither husband nor wife
were as robust in health as the struggle of a
barrister's life renders essential. Charles
MARRIAGE. IO7
Bowen was probably in far more delicate
health than he imagined. He was, in fact,
in one important respect, an invalid. The
process which ultimately cut short his life had,
we must believe, already begun ; the strain
upon body and mind had been too severe.
The games and enjoyments of school and
college, though in one sense a refreshment,
may, at the same time, have contributed to
general exhaustion. He was now starting on
a career which makes large calls on a man's
physical and intellectual powers of endurance ;
which involves intense and protracted exertion ;
long days of watchfulness and concentration ;
short nights, or no nights ; work done at the
highest possible pressure, and, above all, done
at racing pace ; and he was doing this without
any reserve of health and strength on which,
in times of emergency, he might draw. The
remainder of Charles Bowen's life was, accord-
ingly, to a large extent, one long struggle
against the breakdown which was ever close
108 LORD BOWEN. [1862.
at hand. Only one result could be anticipated,
and that result ensued.
Those who had the opportunity of watching
him closely for the next few years, knew too
well how severe the struggle was, how
constant the interruptions from failing powers,
how serious the drain upon vital power. His
temperament and training alike conduced to
exhaustion.
It is sometimes urged as a complaint against
University education that it tends to produce
a superfine article, too subtle, too exquisite,
too highly strung for the commonplace pur-
poses of human life. These highly wrought
machines, it is suggested, actually lose power
in practical business from their very finish and
perfection. They do each piece of work
exquisitely more exquisitely than the occasion
requires or deserves ; and this superfluous
excellence is achieved at enormous cost of
nerve and brain power. The fires burn bright
and intense, but are apt too soon to burn
OXFORD CULTURE. I 09
themselves out. There is the waste, which,
as the proverb tells us, results, when razors
of fine temper are used to cut blocks, or
thoroughbred horses are put into sand-carts.
Many of such men, conscious of their unfit-
ness for the rude business of life, and shrinking
from contact with it, let their opportunities go
by, and never emerge from obscurity. Others,
more courageous and more ambitious, plunge
boldly into the conflict, "breast the blows of
circumstance," command the success which
they deserve, and achieve celebrity. None the
less the original impress remains. Such men
are, at heart, philosophers and poets. Their
quality shows itself in two directions. On the
one hand, there is a certain exquisiteness of
taste, a fastidiousness of judgment, a scrupulous
nicety which nothing, falling short of the highest
and most uncompromising standard of excellence,
will satisfy ; and which makes all work a pain-
ful and exhausting struggle after unattainable
perfection. On the other hand, there is a
I IO LORD BOWEN. [1862.
counter influence, the sadness of insight, a
besetting scepticism as to the interest and
worth of human things ; a haunting suspicion
that the struggles, excitements, and prizes of
existence are not worth the effort which they
involve, that human achievement is but a
troublesome illusion, and that, when all has
been said and done, our little life is rounded
with a sleep.
Some traces of such a habit of mind are, I
think, observable throughout each part of
Charles Bowen's career. His standard was
so high that it cost a life-struggle to attain it.
He attained it, or was nearer to doing so than
most of his fellow-men. But the effort was too
great. It undermined his constitution. It cost
him his health, his life. To the end he was
working with too fine an instrument, and it was
shattered in the using. On the other hand, he
never quite believed in life. Under a super-
ficial gaiety there ran a vein of melancholy.
Successes and honours rained thick upon him.
BREAKDOWN IN HEALTH. Ill
Under each lay the besetting suspicion that all
is vanity.
Charles Bowen had been but a few months
married when symptoms of delicacy began to
reveal themselves. He suffered from repeated
attacks of fever, the origin of which, when it
could not be traced to malaria, had to be found
in overstrain of powers and consequent nervous
prostration. His nerves were in a condition of
such morbid sensibility that the slightest noise
or movement in the room where he was at
work gave him acute distress. Nothing but a
complete and prolonged rest, the doctors pro-
nounced, would avail for the restoration of his
health. But how unwelcome a prescription for
the rising barrister ! Charles Bowen refused to
leave his work, and struggled on for two years
more, when further resistance became impos-
sible, and he was forced to acknowledge a
complete breakdown.
It was decided that he should take a year's
holiday. He went abroad with his wife,
112 LORD BOWEN. [1865.
travelled leisurely along the Riviera, and passed
the winter of 1865 and the following spring at
Rome. On their homeward journey the
Bowens spent some weeks in Switzerland.
They were joined by Mr. Bullock Hall at
Seelisberg. "There," says Mr. Hall, "we
spent several delightful weeks, wandering in
the woods, bathing in an upland lake near the
N icier Baum Rock. Charles Bowen's health
gradually re-established itself. Towards the
end of our stay he was able to join me in an
eight-hour walk from Engelsberg, over the
Sureneri Pass to Altdorf."
The travellers returned to England in July.
In the autumn Charles Bowen made a tour
with Mr. Archibald Milman and myself in
Norway. Bowen and I started together from
Hull. One interest of the voyage to us was
to test a specific for sea-sickness just then in
vogue, viz. a long bag of ice applied to the
spine. As the passage was a rough one, our
steamer a roller of the first order, and Bowen
TOUR IN NORWAY. 113
a wretched sailor, the supposed prophylactic
had an excellent opportunity of making its
merits known. The result was disappointing,
and we arrived at Christiansund in a somewhat
prostrate condition. Bowen, however, found
material for fun in this and every other mishap
of our journey then a much rougher business
than it has since become. We purchased
carrioles, and drove across to Dronheim,
stopping, as occasion offered, to walk, shoot, or
fish. At many of our stopping-places the
resources of our hosts did not go beyond beds
and hot water, and we depended on the tinned
provisions, which we carried with us, and our
own somewhat rudimentary cookery. One fact
was, I remember, borne in upon me, viz. that
a brilliant University scholar may be a very
indifferent hand at opening tins, or poaching
eggs. Now and again we unshipped the
wheels of our carrioles, and explored the silent
shores of lake or fiord. Our long drives were,
perforce, to a large extent, solitary, and it was,
I
1 14 LORD BOWEN. [1865.
doubtless, during some of these that Bowen's
mood found utterance in the lines which, under
the title, " Norway," he subsequently preserved
in the little volume of " Verses by the Wayside."
They form the best journal of his tour.
NORWAY.
" Down the still fiords, bay after shining bay,
We sailed under the hills, beneath whose breast
Sleeps the great sea inviolate alway,
Mountain-caressed.
" On either hand of us rose solitude,
Filling the sky with summits. Each vast height,
Snow-capped, cloud-mantled, like a giant stood,
Silent and infinite.
" Yet were not all things silent there were cries
Of more than mortal anguish and distress,
The sad wind, grieving down a precipice
Into a wilderness
" Of ruined pines and stormy water-rills,
Flashing with foam, which since the sun first shone,
Have thundered down unheeded, and shall still
Thunder unheeded on.
" And moans of 'wildered birds, and the great beat
Of the wanning and the lapping of the sea,
Like a cold lover wailing at the feet
Of one as cold as he.
NORWAY. I 1 5
" Sometimes a dusky porpoise slowly wheeled
Sunwards in the mid channel ; from his lair
Sometimes an eagle, royally revealed,
Swam down the fields of air.
" And underneath us, windless and serene,
The ocean forest lay,
Long fairy drifts of rainbow woodland scene,
Drowned in the purple bay ;
" Fair realms of fern, more exquisite than ours,
More delicate and bright,
And endless glades of glimmering seaweed bowers,
In golden water light.
" On such an afternoon to such a place
Came sad Undine, and from some mountain shelf,
With desolate eyes and melancholy grace,
A shadow of herself,
" Beheld in trance her youth return, the same
As when, one summer morn, a sister band
Knowledge and Love and Grief together came,
And took her by the hand.
" She felt white arms that waved, or seemed to wave,
And, waving, call her downwards to the deep,
Where all her friendly waters, cold and grave,
Lay mourning in their sleep,
" And sighed and rose, and turned her steps again
Along the rock-hewn ledge, where, far aloof,
The sunset reddened on a lonely pane
And a deserted roof."
Il6 LORD BOWEN. [1868.
We returned in October, to find a goodly
heap of letters, written throughout the tour,
waiting at the port of embarkation, to travel
homeward in our company. Bowen could not
face the Skager Rack again, and preferred a
long land journey by Denmark. He was
certainly much improved in health, and was
able to resume his professional work, though
still handicapped by occasional illnesses and
shattered nerves. He had now a further
object for professional success. He was a
father. The eldest son, William, was born in
November, 1862; the second, Maxwell, in
October, 1865.
In 1868 public attention was occupied by
the dispute between the United States and
England as to the responsibilities of the latter
power for the injuries inflicted by the Alabama
on American shipping, after her escape from
an English port where she had been built.
The quarrel had lingered on for years, and had
only become the more acute from ineffectual
THE "ALABAMA" DISPUTE. 117
attempts at adjustment English opinion
strongly tinctured, in some classes, with
sympathy with the Southern States' struggle
for independence was not prepared to admit
itself in the wrong. The United States, on
the other hand, deeply aggrieved at the
attitude of England, and naturally exasperated
at the losses inflicted by the Alabama, had
not the slightest intention of allowing the claim
to lapse for want of prosecution. The con-
troversy had drifted to a critical stage. Mr.
Seward's offer to submit the case to arbitration,
at first declined by Lord Russell, had been
accepted in principle by Lord Stanley, but
subject to conditions with which the American
Government felt unable to comply. Lord
Stanley insisted that the arbitration should
proceed on the assumption that, at the date
of the Queen's Proclamation, May 13, 1861,
recognizing the Confederate States as a
belligerent power, a state of war did actually
exist, and that the question for the arbiter
Il8 LORD BOWEN. [1868.
should be whether, on this assumption, there
had been any such failure on the part of Great
Britain in its duties, as a neutral, towards the
United States as to involve a moral responsi-
bility to make good any losses arising there-
from to American citizens. The Government
of the United States, on the other hand, had
throughout contended that the Queen's Pro-
clamation was unjustifiable, and now insisted
that this question, as well as that of subsequent
negligence on the part of Great Britain, in her
duties as a neutral, should be made part of
the reference. Charles Bowen had formed a
decided opinion on the subject, and formulated
his opinions in a pamphlet, which was at once
accepted, on both sides, as a learned, logical,
and weighty statement of the case. His main
object was to induce his countrymen to see
the reasonableness of the United States'
contention that the whole case should be sub-
mitted to arbitration. He believed that, on
the question as to the existence of a state of
THE "ALABAMA DISPUTE. 119
war at the date of the Queen's Proclamation,
the English Government were in the right ;
none the less, he urged, Mr. Seward's position
was an intelligible one, and in any case
England's .true policy would be to accept
the arbitration on Mr. Seward's conditions.
England had something to regret and to
repair in the matter of the Alabama, and it
did not become us "to approach in too
technical a spirit the terms of arbitration pro-
pounded by a nation which has suffered heavily
by our inadvertence." For the purpose of his
argument he had to controvert the doctrine
propounded by the well-known " Historicus,"
that a neutral nation is bound by no rule of
international law to enforce her own neutrality,
but is entitled, without ceasing to be a neutral,
to remit or assert, as it pleases, its neutral
rights in favour of one belligerent. Bowen
had little difficulty in demonstrating that this
contention was unsustainable, and was, in fact,
repudiated in the clearest terms, by the very
I2O LORD BOWEN. [1868.
writers on whom " Historicus " relied. His ex-
position of this part of the case is an excellent
example of the qualities which, in after-years,
rendered his judgments admired models of all
that a judicial utterance should be. Every
point, however minute, is considered with
scrupulous nicety ; on the other hand, there
is a constant tendency to rise above details,
and to carry the argument into the higher and
clearer atmosphere of first principles. The
author's account, for instance, of the growth
of that somewhat vague and nebulous entity
known as "international law," stripped the
subject of much of its ambiguity, and cleared
the ground for that and any subsequent con-
troversy in which international rights and
duties are in dispute. It is no longer the
mere lawyer who speaks, but the philosophic
historian, quickened with the lawyer's acumen.
Another branch of Bowen's argument was to
show that the circumstances of the Alabama's
escape were such as to raise a strong primd
THE "ALABAMA CLAIMS. 121
facie case of negligence against the British
authorities, a contention which, at the present
day, few would be found to dispute, but which,
at the time, it required some courage to main-
tain against the strong prepossessions of
English opinion. In claiming indemnity for
such negligence before the- arbitrator, the
United States might, the author went on to
urge, reasonably claim to show surrounding
facts indicative of the general intention of the
offending party. The Queen's Proclamation,
hasty, premature, and contrary to the inter-
national law as Americans regarded it, was
essentially such a fact. It showed animus, and
went to favour the inference that England had
not done her best to prevent the escape.
Though not alleged as a ground of damages,
it "was, Americans might urge, an unfriendly
and ungenerous step. And the friendliness or
unfriendliness of our behaviour, from the
summer of 1861 downwards, might be material
to the question whether, in the summer of 1862,
122 LORD BOWEN. [1868.
we dealt with the Alabama in a spirit of
scrupulous neutrality. " The animus displayed
in the one year might illustrate or support the
argument of negligence in the next."
Another ground of C. Bowen's argument in
favour of submitting the whole case to arbitra-
tion, rested on the consideration that it was
impolitic for England to stand out as the
champion of the extreme rights of neutrals, a
doctrine which might be inconveniently en-
forced against herself in case of a naval war.
Regard, too, must be had to the desirability of
terminating a dangerous estrangement between
England and the United States. In adopting
the basis of arbitration in cases where her own
interests were concerned, England would be
taking one step further towards a higher level
of civilization.
" Universal peace, sung of by poets, scoffed at by
cynics, dreamed of by good men, is still hidden far
beyond our sight, in the cloudland of the future ; but
if we cannot hope to reach it, we may, at least, desire
to move towards it. The Congress of Paris, which
PAMPHLET ON "THE ALABAMA. 123
closed the Crimean War, recognized the value of the
humane principle of arbitration put forward in the
first instance by England's envoys and recommended
it to Europe. It may be hoped that we are not going
to move backwards by all these years. For every
reason, for the sake of right and justice, as well as for
the sake of English interests, it is to be desired that
the protracted controversy should soon end."
The pamphlet excited great interest.
" On my way from the House last night," writes
Mr. T. Hughes, " I called at Lady Stanley's, where I
found Lord Russell sitting. He had read your
pamphlet, and was very much struck by its ability
and fairness. You will be pleased to hear this. For
myself, it seems to me as near .perfection as possible,
and if it does not decide the question in the right
sense, nothing will. It will, at any rate, furnish us
all with weapons for the debate next month."
Another congratulatory letter comes from
Professor Jowett, followed, unhappily, too soon
by another of condolence and encouragement
in the illness which followed the publication of
the pamphlet.
" I am very much grieved," Jowett writes, " to hear
124 LORD BO WEN. [1868.
about your illness. I hope that you will not lose
heart, and then all will be well. Unless you break
down in health altogether, I am confident of your
success. And if you do break down, which I don't
anticipate, I am sure that you may have another sort
of success in a distinguished literary life.
" Therefore Oappti, & flt\Tt<rri, and don't think much
of the loss of three weeks or a month as a piece taken
out of life. There is plenty of time to recover that."
"The pamphlet is talked about and makes its
way," Jowett writes later. " It came out at the right
time, and is not thought, in the present temper of
people's minds, to be un-English. There is a greater
sense of change of opinion going on in England
now than I ever remember. They don't know what
to think about Ireland, about the Church, about
classical education ; and anybody who would make
a row might get something done."
The illness proved more serious than Jowett
had anticipated. C. Bowen was for three
months confined to his bed, or sofa. He
underwent a severe operation, suffered greatly,
and made but a slow recovery.
A letter written early in this year, by Charles
Bowen to his cousin, Miss Frances Steel Graves,
is of interest, as being conceived in a more
LETTER TO A COUSIN. 125
serious vein than was habitual to him in his
communications with others, and giving an
insight into the graver side of his character.
It is the wise and sympathetic utterance of a
high-minded man to one whose esteem and
sympathy he valued, and for whose well-being
he felt a warm concern.
Speaking of religious opinions, he writes
" It is difficult to explain the position of any one
person about these things ; it generally stands by
itself; and at the present day most men who have
ever thought seriously on such matters are, perhaps,
in a very puzzling position, especially as regards the
freedom with which they ought to discuss or proclaim
their opinions to those whom they care for. I think
myself that the right course is, never (within certain
limits, which I need not now explain) to pretend
distinctly to think what one does not, but, if necessary,
to avoid all controversy. For the rest, a sincere wish
to learn what is true, however much it may conflict
with any of one's cherished ideas, and a resolution,
at all costs, to follow what seems to one (after hearing
as much of all sides as one can) to be true, is to my
mind the one thing to be aimed at in life. I am sure
that it is no easy task ; it frequently involves pain to
others and pain to one's self; often, as in the case of
126 LORD BOWEN. [1868.
some people whose course I daily am observing, it
involves the sacrifice of all social and worldly ambition
and success. I think that, if people, who are hurt and
grieved by finding those they care for following any
path of thought they dislike, would reflect on it, they
would see that loyalty to the cause of what one
soberly (after weighing all sides, to the best of one's
judgment) believes to represent truth, is the first
thing needful. What I wish for myself is more
fearlessness in holding to what I in my heart think,
than encouragement to disguise from myself what I
do think. If I was only as brave as some I know,
and long have known, I should be far more what I
should like. Not that I feel or value less, dear
Frances, your New Year's wish. I feel it very deeply ;
and my New Year's wish for you is in return, that
you may have as happy and noble a life as I think
you will have, being kept as far as may be from all
moods and phases of theological discussion or enquiry,
which are unnecessary ; but, with this, that you may
never, in the course of time, drift into a worldly way
of forgetting that life is too short for the world's ways
or opinions or distinctions to be of much consequence
to any one, and that the true heroes of life are often
to be found among those on whose fearless advocacy
of what they believe the world is making social war.
I am not one of such people myself, and don't profess
to be, but I know some of them ; and would rather
be amongst them than amongst their critics. I say
EARLY YEARS AT THE BAR. 127
this, because I neither should like you to go on mis-
understanding my views about theology, philosophy,
and politics, as I see that you have been paining
yourself, in an affectionate way, over them ; and
because I would rather you understood from myself
the reason why I abstain from professing before you
to like to discuss such subjects. I am glad to have
got your letter, and shall always keep it among my
most valued papers.
" Good-bye, and believe me, ever your very affec-
tionate cousin, dear Frances, and your faithful friend,
"CHARLES BOWEN."
Bowen's .early years at the Bar were not
without their anxieties and disappointments.
His reputation for ability was established, but
the question had yet to be solved whether his
ability was of that precise order which would
command success at the Bar. His extreme
youthfulness of appearance, his academic refine-
ment, his polished satire, his apologetic manner,
his deference to the opinions of others, his lack
of the comfortable air of self-assertion which
so largely commands the suffrages of mankind,
stood, no doubt, in the way of his early success.
128 LORD BOWEN. [1868.
Solicitors are a sceptical race, not easily im-
pressed by University distinctions. Bowen
was not, at the outset, a fluent or commanding
speaker, and the points which he was naturally
inclined to take were often too fine and too
subtle for the audience or the occasion. Even
in high quarters he did not immediately find
favour. Chief Justice Cockburn, on Bowen's
first appearance before him, listened at the
outset with interest and attention ; but, as the
argument proceeded, is said to have thrown
himself back in his chair with a gesture of
impatience and disappointment. Still less
were the common juries of the Western
Circuit likely to appreciate the delicate irony
of a Platonic orator. "If you consider, gentle-
men," Bowen is reported to have said, in
prosecuting a marauder, who was caught on
the roof of a house with the implements of his
trade in hand, " that the accused was on the
roof of the house for the purpose of enjoying
the midnight breeze, and, by pure accident,
A SCENE IN COURT.
129
happened to have about him the necessary tools
of a housebreaker, with no dishonest intention
of employing them, you will, of course, acquit
him " a recommendation which the jury pro-
ceeded to carry out by a verdict of acquittal.
Bowen's first appearance at Westminster
before the Court in Bane was a somewhat
trying ordeal to a junior's nerves. The
argument turned on an alleged misdirection
by Chief Baron Pollock. The Chief Baron
himself presided in the appellate tribunal, and
had a clear recollection of what his charge had
been. Bowen's remembrance was equally
distinct, and he had shorthand notes and other
corroborative evidence at his back. The
Chief Baron grew more and more positive ;
positiveness presently kindled into wrath.
Bowen, resolved on death or victory, was
pertinacious, insistent, unabashed. Prometheus
defying the Olympians was scarcely playing
a more audacious rfile than this neophyte in
the profession essaying to convince the Chief
I3O LORD BOWEN. [1868.
Baron, against his will, as to the language he
had used. The wrath was becoming very
Olympian indeed, and the consequences
threatened to be serious, when a friendly
missive from a member of the Court Sir
George Honeyman, if I remember rightly
warned the young combatant that there are
bounds to human temerity, and occasions on
which the assault should not be pressed too
far, and that the Chief Baron's health would
be imperilled by a prolongation of the en-
counter. I remember, as we walked home-
ward from Westminster that evening both of
us in great excitement at the events of the
afternoon, Bowen certain of his cause, but
doubtful as to his prudence and his skill how
we reassured ourselves by the reflection that
Chief Barons, after all, were mortals like our-
selves, must have once worn the stuff gown
and sighed for briefs, and would probably have
a latent sympathy for an advocate too zealous
to be easily abashed.
TOTNES COMMISSION. 13!
Bowen's first case of importance was an
arbitration case in which Fitzjames Stephen
and he were engaged on behalf of the firm of
Nettlefold and Chamberlain, of which Mr.
(the Right Honourable) Joseph Chamberlain
was then a member. The question was one
concerning patent rights, and involved much
technical detail as to intricate machinery and
an investigation of very elaborate accounts.
It was deferred for several months in order to
give time for Bowen's recovery to be suffi-
ciently complete to allow him to take an active
part in it. Mr. Chamberlain formed a last-
ing friendship with both the counsel in the
case.
Charles Bowen's abilities were now rapidly
forcing their way to recognition. In 1868 he
was appointed a member of the Totnes Bribery
Commission. It was found, however, that his
standing at the Bar disqualified him for the
post. The difficulty had to be got over
by his appointment as Secretary to the
132 LORD BO WEN. [1871.
Commission. In 1869 he was made a Revising
Barrister. In the winter of the following year
he was made a member of the Truck Com-
mission, and was appointed Recorder of
Penzance, an office which, before long, the
increase of his professional work rendered it
necessary for him to resign.
In November of this year (1869) the birth of
another child Ethel, now Mrs. Wedgwood
added another item to the list of life's pleasures
and anxieties. The necessity of success was
more than ever imperative.
In 1871 the Tichborne Claimant began to
figure in the courts. This celebrated case
occupied so important a place in Charles
Bowen's early professional career, and involved
such serious results to his health, that it may
be interesting to recall the outline of the two
great trials to which it gave rise, to explain
the inordinate length to which the proceedings
were protracted, and to show the excessive
demands which, from their special character,
THE TICHBORNE CASE. 133 .
they made on the powers, physical and mental,
of the counsel engaged.
The proceedings began in an ejectment suit
in Chancery on the part of the Claimant for
the purpose of asserting his claim to the
Tichborne Estate, as heir of Sir John Tichborne,
Bart., who died in 1862. It next came before
the Court of Common Pleas in the shape of an
issue, directed by the Court of Chancery, as to
whether the plaintiff was, or was not, heir to
Sir John Tichborne. The trial of this issue
began in June, 1871, and speedily attracted
public attention, partly from the strange and
romantic character of the plaintiffs story, partly
from exertions of the plaintiff and his supporters
to obtain notoriety. It was obvious from the
outset that the inquiry would be a protracted
one. The plaintiff's task would have daunted
all but a sort of bulldog audacity, strongly
reinforced by impudence. His case rested on
improbabilities so gross that it seems strange
that any one could have given it a moment's
134 LORD BOWEN. [1871.
credence. An explanation had to be given of
Sir Roger Tichborne's incomprehensible silence
from the date of his disappearance after the
foundering of the Bella, in 1854, to his produc-
tion by his Australian entrepreneurs in 1865,
and of the strange metamorphosis which, on the
assumption of identity, had befallen him in
physiognomy, style, habits, recollections, tastes,
language, education in short, every physical,
mental, and moral characteristic.
This huge fabric of lies had to be pieced
together as it could best be with every scrap
of evidence which could be collected for the
purpose. Some of this was supplied by accom-
plices, who gave the plaintiff information as to
the real Sir Roger Tichborne's earlier career,
and so enabled him to impose on the credulity of
other witnesses, who thereupon convinced them-
selves that they recognized in a coarse and obese
ruffian the features of the slight, half-French
gentleman of their recollections. The main
case for the defence assumed a twofold aspect,
THE CLAIMANT. 135
one negative, viz. that the plaintiff was not
Sir Roger Tichborne, the other positive, viz.
that he was Arthur Orton, the son of a Wapping
butcher. The case broke out, as it proceeded,
into numerous ramifications, each of which
extended almost indefinitely the area of the
inquiry. For instance, one of the plaintiff's
answers, like most of them, a reckless jump in
the dark, involved a brutal imputation on the
character of an honourable and spotless lady,
which it became necessary to refute. At a late
stage of the proceedings it became necessary
to send a commission to Australia to test the
truthfulness of the story of the alleged rescue
of Roger Tichborne after the foundering of the
Bella. It was the business of the counsel for the
defendant to test at every point the soundness
of the entire fabric of the plaintiff's story, to
follow out every clue, to bring to light every in-
consistency. For this purpose the smallest facts
were as important as the biggest. If a contradic-
tion could be shown between the details, it did
136 LORD BOWEN. [1872.
not matter, for the purpose in hand, how minute
these details were. There was not, probably, in
the entire mass of the evidence a single fact
which, except for the purposes of the trial, it would
have been worth while for any human being
to remember for five minutes. But for the
purposes of the trial it was essential that every
fact should be remembered with equal exact-
ness, and should be in readiness to be produced
at a moment's notice for the corroboration or
contradiction of some other item of the story.
When it is remembered that the plaintiff's case
occupied many weeks in the telling, and many
months in being pulled to pieces, it is easy to
appreciate how enormous a strain it must have
imposed on those whose business it was to
remember, arrange, and co-ordinate the various
pieces of this elaborately tesselated work, and
to appreciate the ultimate result as to the truth
or falsity of the whole. It was necessarily a
prolonged operation. The plaintiffs cross-
examination, for instance, lasted for twenty-two
THE TICHBORNE CASE. 137
days. After the Long Vacation of 1871, the
case was resumed in November. The exami-
nation and cross-examination of the witness
Baigent, a connection of the family, son of a
drawing-master at Winchester, who professed
himself satisfied of the Claimant's identity, and
had been active in promoting his claim, lasted
for thirteen days. It was not till the seventieth
day of the hearing that Sergeant Ballantine
concluded the plaintiff's case. The sittings
were resumed on the 1 5th of January, 1872, the
Attorney-General's opening speech for the
defendant lasting for a month. The absurdity
of the claim became too patent to justify further
investigation, and on the 4th of March the
jury intimated that they did not stand in need
of further evidence for the purpose of arriving
at their verdict. After a few days' deliberation,
Sergeant Ballantine, on the plaintiffs behalf,
elected to be non-suited.
Thus, after lasting for a year, the plaintiffs
claim collapsed. There remained the grave
138 LORD BOWEN. [1873.
question of his criminal liability for the fiction
which he had ventured to bring into court.
The Court directed a prosecution for perjury,
and on April 9, 1872, the Grand Jury found
a true bill against the Claimant on an indict-
ment for perjury, first, on his affidavits in
Chancery, and next for his statements in the
Court of Common Pleas. The trial was fixed
for November. On November 23rd, the
Attorney-General claimed to have a trial at
Bar, a trial, that is, by jury with two or more
judges sitting in bench a form of proceed-
ing provided by the English law for criminal
trials of especial importance. In April, 1873,
the trial commenced, before Chief Justice
Cockburn and Justices Mellor and Lush.
Hawkins, Q.C. (now Mr. Justice Hawkins),
Sergeant Parry, Chapman Barber of the Equity
Bar, J. C. (now Mr. Justice) Mathew, and
Bowen were counsel for the prosecution. The
counsel for the defence were Kenealy, Q.C.,
and MacMahon. The Claimant was charged
PROSECUTION OF THE CLAIMANT. 139
with perjury in the proceedings in Chancery
and in the civil action : (i) in asserting that he
was Sir Roger Tichborne ; and (2) in denying
that he was Arthur Orton.
Mr. Hawkins, in his opening speech, traced
Roger Tichborne's career, his life at home and
at Stoneyhurst ; his attachment to his cousin ;
his departure for America; his arrival at
Valparaiso in June, 1853; the sailing of the
Bella from Rio, bound for New York, on her
last fatal voyage in April, 1854 ; and, making
good use of the ample material afforded by the
Attorney- General's protracted cross-examina-
tion in the civil case, he called attention to the
innumerable mistakes and lapses of memory
into which the Claimant had been betrayed.
On the 2 ist of July, 1873, Dr. Kenealy
began to open the case for the defence. His
speech lasted till August 2ist. The case for
the accused was closed on October 27th. The
trial was then adjourned in order to give time
for the prosecution to secure evidence from
140 LORD BOWEN. [1874.
South America and Australia, to meet a certain
portion of the defendant's story which had
come to light only in the later stages of the
case.
On December 2nd, Dr. Kenealy began to
sum up the evidence for the defence. He was
still speaking when the year 1873 came to an
end. He concluded on January 14, 1874, and
the next day Hawkins, Q.C., began his reply
upon the whole case. Popular feeling had now
begun to run high in favour of the Claimant, and
Mr. Hawkins and Sergeant Parry had, on one
occasion, to be protected by the police against
the violence of a mob. Mr. Hawkins's reply
was not concluded till January 28, 1874, and
the following day Chief Justice began his sum-
ming up of the case. His charge to the jury
lasted for eighteen sittings, and the keen
interest with which the case was followed by
the public may be gathered from the fact that
the report of the charge in the Times occupied
no less than one hundred and eighty columns of
PROSECUTION OF THE CLAIMANT. 141
that paper. On February 28th the case closed,
having lasted through one hundred and eighty-
eight sittings. The jury found the accused
guilty, and Mellor, J., pronounced a sentence
of seven years' imprisonment on each count of
the indictment.
Thus, from the middle of 1871 till the end
of February, 1874, the burthen of this great
case was weighing upon Bowen's mind. He
devoted to it the whole of his powers, intel-
lectual and physical. His familiarity with every
fact in it was complete. He used to say that
he did not believe that there was a single fact
in the evidence of which he was not fully
cognizant, and of which he was not prepared on
the spur of the moment to give an immediate
and correct account a preparedness which his
leader frequently put to the test. During
the civil action it became an open secret that
the Attorney-General depended largely on his
junior's acumen and industry. The mental strain
was tremendous. The previous preparation
142 LORD BOWEN. [1874.
of the case, the consideration of how the
evidence, given each day through weeks and
months of examination and cross-examination,
affected the rest of the story. The long hours
day after day, of unremitting attention in the
oppressive atmosphere of a crowded court
three years of work done at the highest pos-
sible level of excellence, and frequently at
moments when physical ill health made all exer-
tion dangerous all this, no doubt, seriously
undermined Bowen's constitution, and did his
health irreparable injury.
Hard-worked as the junior counsel were,
they found leisure to poke a little good-natured
fun at one another, and to relieve the tedium
of the trial by an occasional outburst of
frivolity. The following Wordsworthian
narration is a skit of Charles Bowen's at
the loss of fees which his friend J. C.
Mathew was supposed to be sustaining
through his absorption in the Tichborne
Trial.
OLD MATHEW. 143
OLD MATHEW.
" Amid the case that never ends,
We sat and held a brief,
Mathew and I a pair of friends,
And one a withered leaf.
" ' And, Mathew,' said I, ' let us talk,
Amidst this noisy scene,
Of the old days in King's Bench Walk,
When you and I were green.'
" * My friend,' said Mathew, ' all is done
A withered leaf am I ;
Last Guildhall sittings there were none
Left so completely dry.
" ' The Serjeant in Red Lion Square
A modest pittance gleans ;
Hawkins and Barber do not care,
For they have ample means.
" ' But I, since first this case began,
Sit here for ever chained ;
No one consults me, and by none
Am I enough retained.
" ' My faithful clerk and I are short
Of cash ; he now foresees
A sad old age some County Court
Far from the Common Pleas.'
" ' And if Guildhall be lost to you,
Dear Mathew, that will be,
Since Johnny Gray is just and true,
Considered in the fee.
144 LORD BOWEN. [1872.
" ' And, Mathew, on yon Bench,' I cried,
' Thou yet shalt sit as chief.'
To this he gloomily replied,
' I am a withered leaf.'
" Meanwhile, about us and afar,
Again arose the storm :
Kenealy and the Chief at war,
Each in the best of form.
" Of virtue, science, letters, truth,
They talked till all was blue ;
Of Paul de Kock, the bane of youth,
Of Banfield Moore Carew.
" If fools are oftener fat or thin ;
Which first forget their tongue ;
Why all tobacco, mixed with gin,
Is poison to the young.
" And whether Fielding's better bred,
Or Sterne so full of fun ;
Poor Mathew sighed and shook his head,
1 The Will of God be done.'"
The following supposed address by the
Claimant, a " Baronet of the British Kingdom,"
to the leading Counsel for the Prosecution, also
from Charles Bo wen's pen, recalls pleasantly
some of the humours of the trial.
ATTORNEY-GENERALS DEVIL. 145
LINES ADDRESSED TO MR. HAWKINS, Q.C., BY
A. B. OF B. K.
" Though what you say of pore old Braine,
Hawk'ns, have give me serous pain,
Yet well she know, and i the same,
Them as instructs you is to blame.
So, 'Awkins, if the crowd is cross
And anchor round to seise your boss,
If Wicher cannot set you free,
Come in my Broom, and drive with me.
" I quite agree with what you say,
'Awkins, in Court the other day,
That pore Kenealy's sad disgrace
Ought not to pregudice my case ;
Bogle and i has always thought
He ain't a fought it as he ought ;
Why aggravate the Court and you,
When it's not nersessary to ?
" 1 lick the way you sets to work ;
Your highly paid, but does not shirk.
See how old Onslow catch it hot
About that pictur of the grot.
O, 'Awkins, had i had but you !
You knows what's what and does it too.
Onslow and Whalley both may be
'Awkins, you come and dine with me."
In 1872 Bowen was appointed, on Sir John
Coleridge's nomination, Junior Standing Counsel
146 LORD BOWEN. [1872.
to the Treasury, professionally known as
" Attorney-General's Devil," a post of much
labour and responsibility, and regarded as a
certain road to further professional achieve-
ment. Sir John Coleridge recognized the
services which his junior had rendered to
him in the Tichborne case, and on other
occasions, with generous and affectionate
enthusiasm.
"Will you," he writes in March, 1872, "put the
volumes I send herewith amongst your books for my
sake. I am in some degree responsible for their
publication, and they are dedicated to me. The copy
is a large paper one, so it has at least the merit of
rarity. But nothing I can give you can ever repay
my debt to you, not only in this case (in which I
desire to record the simple truth that you are the
main author of the success we have had), but for
many years past, during which you have been in all
ways of unspeakable service to me, and during which
my love and regard for you has deepened and
strengthened day by day till it has become part of
my nature, and can end only with my life.
" Your grateful and affectionate \
"J. D. COLERIDGE."
SUCCESS AT THE BAR. 147
Writing to Mrs. Bowen in April, 1872, he
says
" I am very sorry Charlie does not get on faster ;
at the same time, considering the strain upon him, and
the superhuman work he did for so long, and with
such anxious feeling, I am half inclined to wonder
sometimes he is no worse. Please God he will soon
come round again. I am sure if I had worked half
as hard as he did, or had cared as he did, I should
have been dead long ago. Get him to be lazy and
cold hearted, and you can't think how well he
will be."
From 1872 forward till his appointment to a
Judgeship in 1879, Charles Bowen was immersed
in his profession. He appeared on behalf of
the Government in all important common-law
and commercial cases, and his reputation was
now so high as to render it an object with
litigants to secure his services for cases in
which individual interests were concerned.
Some of these attracted much public attention,
a$, for instance, the prolonged inquiry into the
Competence of the Arches Court of Canterbury
148 LORD BOWEN. [1872-9.
to suspend Mr. Mackonochie ab officio et bene-
ficio, the trial of Mr. Wilson for his views on
the Inspiration of Scripture, and that of Mr.
Voysey on a similar topic. His argument in
Julius v. The Bishop of Oxford was the last,
and perhaps the most brilliant, of his achieve-
ments at the Bar.
Of Bowen's method in the practice of his
profession an interesting account is given by
Mr. H. H. Cunynghame, now Under-Secretary
at the Home Office, who was at one time as
also was Mr. Asquith a pupil in Lord Bowen's
chambers.
" Of all his characteristics perhaps none was more
striking than the extraordinary pains he took over
his work. His pleadings and opinions were revised
again and again, and I believe that, if he had had a
draft submitted to him every day of his life, he would
have altered it every day in some particular. This
habit was due not only to the conscientious and
anxious care he bestowed on whatever he did, but
also to the acuteness of his critical judgment, which
never could tolerate the smallest fault or even imper-
fection.
BOWENS METHOD AT THE BAR. 149
"To this thoroughness, as well as to the extra-
ordinary subtlety of his intellect, he owed, I think,
his success in those days. When I first joined his
chambers, he recommended me to read Blackstone in
the original edition, without the wholesale changes
which have so marred the symmetry of that work.
This recommendation was in pursuance of his favourite
maxim, to rely on general principles in law, and take,
as he used to express it, a bird's-eye view of a legal
subject
" Connected with this almost abnormal development
of the critical faculty was his distrust of himself. He
used, I really believe, to torment himself, even after
his success was assured, with fears that he would find
his chambers deserted, and get no more briefs. Every
case he did, however trivial, absorbed his whole
attention, and I am convinced that he often impaired
his efforts in great cases, by the fatigue induced by
his attention to small ones. ' Cases,' he said, ' are
won at chambers ; ' and the pains he took, and the
ingenuity he displayed in the preliminary steps of a
case are inconceivable.
" It is difficult to decide whether or no he was an
orator. If by an orator is meant one who can amuse
or convince an intellectual audience, then few men
had greater oratorical gifts. His keen sense of
humour and taste for satire came out, not merely at
the private dinner-table, but also on more public
occasions. In court he was rarely very successful
150 LORD BOWEN. [1875.
with juries, on account of the great difficulty he felt
in letting his mind run on the same line with theirs,
or in understanding the views and mode of reasoning
of an ordinary juryman. But in court or at chambers,
where the extraordinary originality of his reasoning
found scope, he compelled attention, and his good
humour, always ready on the slightest encouragement
to break out into fun, lightened the heaviest pro-
ceedings.
" During a part of his career he certainly overworked
his brain, but this I suppose is the inevitable fate of
barristers of pre-eminent ability and of a highly and
nervously organized temperament. But through all
his work, his kindness of heart never flagged. He
shrank, almost to a fault, from giving pain, and I am
by no means sure that it would not often have been
better for his pupils if we had had a sterner and even
rougher master. ,
" Although no one would have placed Lord Bowen
among the class of popular orators, it must by no
means be thought he was incapable of making a good
address on ordinary occasions. His addresses at the
opening of the Truck Commission, and of the
Featherstone Commission, are both models of a firm,
judicious, and conciliatory style.
" Those who knew him, believed that he had qualities
far greater than those of a mere lawyer, and that, if
his life had been spared, he would have played a part
in the wider arena, to which he was called when he
A COUNTRY HOME.
was made a peer, not less interesting and original
than that which he played as a barrister and
judge."
In 1875 the Bowens determined to have
a country home, to which they might send
their children, and whither they might them-
selves repair in the holiday intervals of London
life. They had, in 1872, purchased a cottage
on Slaugham Common with this object, and
they were now determined to migrate to Col-
wood, a pretty Sussex village between Cookfield
and Horsham, the scenery and quietness of which
were greatly to the taste of both. Here much
of their leisure time for the rest of Charles
Bowen's life was spent. The change from
London to a perfectly country scene was the
best of medicaments for an overworked body
and brain. In 1881 they partially rebuilt the
house, on a scale better suited to the require-
ments of later life, and Lady Bowen's taste
and care embellished it with lovely woodland.
The plan was congenial to them both. Its
152 LORD BO WEN. [1877.
agreeableness was enhanced by the circum-
stance of their much-esteemed friends, the
Dean of Westminster and Mrs. Bradley,
choosing a country retreat in the same neigh-
bourhood, an arrangement which allowed of
a renewal of the intimacy of old Rugby days.
" During all last year," C. Bowen wrote to a friend
in 1882, " my wife and I were building at our country
house or cottage in Sussex Col wood. We came to
the conclusion that the air was so fine, and suited so
well my wife and the children, that it would be a pity
to leave it Accordingly at Colwood we settled.
Last year we spent in building ; this in catching cold
in the rooms recently built ; next year in furnishing
and papering them ; the year after in paying our bills
the order in which everybody proceeds who occupies
a new house. This year, or the second of the series,
we have spent our summer holidays at Colwood.
Before doing so I went to Scotland to yacht, and in
passing saw the Sellars. Do you remember Ardtornish,
where you came to the conclusion that H. had a very
frivolous set of friends ? There it was, this summer,
just the same, and Mrs. Sellar waving her hand-
kerchief out of the window to the Sound of Mull."
Bowen's busy professional life at the Bar
SPEECH AT BALLIOL. 153
and on the Bench left but little leisure or
opportunity for speaking on non-professional
subjects. Nor did his genius play at ease in
its natural element at the commonplace level of
after-dinner oratory. On a congenial occasion,
however, he could speak with brilliancy and
effect. At Oxford, for instance, in the hall
of his old college and in the company of his
old companions, he was at his very best. In
1877 a great festival was held at Balliol on
the occasion of the opening of the new hall :
Bowen was called upon at a very late period
of the festivities to propose the master's health.
Such a theme inspired him. Writing of this,
Sir M. E. Grant Duff says
"In January, 1877, 1 saw him obtain a real triumph.
It was at the opening of the new hall of Balliol. The
Master presided, and spoke admirably, so did the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dean Stanley, Coleridge,
and several others. It was the very best after-dinner
speaking to which I ever listened, but there was a
great deal of it ; and when Bowen rose in the body
of the room to "make the last speech, somewhere
about midnight, he had, assuredly, no easy task. So
154 LORD BOWEN. [1877.
well, however, did he play his part that, in a very few
moments, the jaded audience was laughing with him,
and felt, when he ended, that the gathering had
received from him the final touch which made it
perfect"
At this dinner Bowen returned thanks,
on behalf of the fellows and scholars of the
college, for a toast proposed in their honour.
The speech abounds in characteristic touches
of seriousness, sentiment, and wit.
" I well remember the first time in my life that I
ever received a letter from a great man. I had gone
back to school, fresh from the fever of a Balliol
examination, and two days later one whose dis-
tinguished literary genius, whose fearless courage,
and generous devotion to his friends have made his
name a household word throughout the land, wrote
to congratulate an unknown schoolboy on having
been elected to a Balliol scholarship. It would be
impossible to forget the words in which he described
his own pride and pleasure in former times at having
been elected a Balliol scholar, or how he dwelt on the
golden opportunity afforded to those who are fortunate
enough to join so noble a company. And it was a
strange chance when I found on entering this room
SPEECH AT BALLIOL. 155
for the master of Balliol, with the forgetfulness of
genius, had omitted to tell me that I had to make a
speech to-night it was a strange chance by which I
have found myself chosen in the name of the Fellows
and Scholars of the present and the past to acknow-
ledge a toast given in their honour by the writer of
my first letter from a great man. Is there any one
in this hall who believes it to be an easy task to
stand here and speak in the name of the Fellows and
Scholars of Balliol past and present? I will not
allude to the historic past, on which the Dean of
Westminster has dwelt. I prefer to speak of the
Fellows of Balliol as my contemporaries, and as I
knew them when we entered on our Oxford course.
There was Jowett, the first tutor of the college, to
whom, at the risk of offending his delicacy, I cannot
refrain on an occasion such as this from openly
acknowledging the deep debt of gratitude I and
many others must always owe him. There was
Woolcomb, the most courteous of Oxford tutors;
Walrond, the modern Hercules, whose choice was
always the choice of virtue; Lonsdale, absent in
body to-night, but never absent from the recollection
of those who experienced his kindness. There was
Palmer, the best of friends ; Riddell, whose life was
all that is beautiful and good, the Sir Galahad of
Oxford ; Henry Smith, greater than Janus, whose
gates face three ways : towards classics, mathematics,
and philosophy. And next to the Fellows there
156 LORD BOWEN. [1878.
were the Scholars. The memories of great names
had descended to us at the Scholars' Table. Matthew
Arnold, the shy student of the Thames, who has
always been of the company of the poets ; Lord
Coleridge, the worthy inheritor of a name dear to
Oxford ; Grant, the lucid interpreter of the greatest
of ancient philosophers of whom I was once a barren
pupil. Holden and Hornby and Bradley, Freemantle,
and Henry Oxenham, the glory of the Oxford
Union, rivalled only by my friend George Brodrick.
I cannot say with what delight I have found myself
placed here between two brother-members, more
distinguished than myself, of my old boat behind
whom I rowed when, under the guidance of Walter
Morrison for the last time in many years, Balliol was
head of the river. I recollect a famous passage in
Chateaubriand where he describes his feelings on
revisiting Venice in later life. He had seen her in
his youth, and he saw her again when he was old.
In one sense she was still the same Venice, still St.
Mark's with its cupolas and its piazzas, still the
Rialto, still the blue lagoons and yet it was no
longer the old Venice. Something in its glory had
departed, and, reflecting on the loss, at last he came
sadly to the conclusion that the wind which blows
upon an older head blows no longer from a happy
shore. The associations of travel fade; but the
associations of our school and our University never
alter. Venice may change, but Oxford and Balliol
JOURNEY TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 157
are still the same ; and standing here to-night, I
desire to express our deep recognition of the fortune
that has enabled us to assemble once more within
the shadows of our college walls, to refresh ourselves
here in memory, the only fountain of perpetual youth,
and once again, if only for an evening, to dream that
we are young."
In the autumn of 1878 Charles Bowen's
health broke down too completely to allow
of any attempt to struggle on without a break.
It was obvious that nothing but a complete
change of life and scene would suffice to restore
him. He started, accordingly, on a protracted
tour. He went, in the first instance, to Stock-
holm, and thence travelled on to St. Petersburg,
Moscow, Kiev, and ultimately, Constantinople.
His letters to his wife from each place give
detailed and picturesque accounts of his ex-
periences ; but they were intended for a wife's
eye alone, and it is better not to quote them.
There is perceptible throughout a painful tone
of exhaustion. He was evidently so prostrate
with fatigue that the question of getting through
158 LORD BOWEN. [1879
the light labours of his tour was sometimes
oppressive.
In the following year an opportunity of relief
presented itself. On the retirement of Mr.
Justice Mellor from the Bench, a Judgeship
was offered to Charles Bowen. After some
hesitation and misgivings, he determined to
accept it. The decision was, in some senses,
a death-blow to his hopes his dreams of
ambition. It closed the door finally on the
possibility of a Parliamentary career. It forced
him to acknowledge to himself what he was
always anxious to ignore that health must be
a dominant factor in his scheme of life, and
that his failing physical powers made a con-
tinuance of the sort of life he had led for some
years past impossible. The change, though
it brought a welcome and salutary close to
intellectual toil for which Bowen's strength
had become wholly inadequate, was not without
its drawbacks. The transition from the excite-
ment of advocacy, and from the participation
A SEAT ON THE BENCH. 159
in a succession of important and interesting
cases to the uneventful tranquillity of the Bench,
produced a painful reaction ; Bowen had not
been in a great practice long enough to lose
a zest for it. He quitted it with regret, and
with a sense of a tyrannous necessity, which
over-rode his fondest wishes ; and he came
to his new duties, unfortunately, without any
such interval of rest as would have restored
his enfeebled powers, and enabled him to start
on the new chapter of his career with cheer-
fulness and satisfaction. He sank into great
depression of spirits. As the first sensation
of relief passed away, the surrender of ambitious
hopes left a sense of disappointment. Nor
were the duties of his new post sufficiently
congenial to reconcile him to the change.
The functions of a Judge, sitting at Nisi
Prius, are not of the character for which
Charles Bowen's faculties and temperament
were especially suited. His mind was too
rare, too subtle, too conscious of nice
I6O LORD BOWEN. [1880.
distinctions and refinements to make it easy
for him to range himself on a level with the
average Common Jury, and put an argument
in the way which they would find most lucid
and convincing. It is probable that both
Judge and Jury were conscious of the wide
interval which separated them.
In the autumn of 1880 he took a house
at Llantysilio, near Llangollen, in North Wales,
in the hope that the change of scene and air
might be beneficial; but the experiment was
not altogether successful. Bowen's habitual
gaiety was overclouded ; his general condition
remained unsatisfactory, his health wavering
and uncertain ; he was restless and melancholy.
The friends who visited him in Wales were
painfully impressed with the feeling that some-
thing was amiss. In the late autumn, when on
a visit to his brother-in-law, Mr. Stewart (now
Lord) Rendel, he had a very serious attack of
illness. As to this Jowett writes, October 16,
1880, a letter of encouragement.
LEISURE OF THE BENCH. l6l
" I am very sorry," he says, " to hear that you are
unwell, though, to say the truth, I am not very much
surprised at it For I thought, when I was with you,
that you had a great load of overwork from which to
recover, and you must expect during the next two
years a good deal of oscillation of mind and nerves
before you can regain a firm or settled state.
"I hope that you will be very quiet and sleepy,
and discharge your mind of care and anxiety. This
sort of philosophy or religion is a discipline which I
think that we can impress upon ourselves. You have
in all probability thirty years of life before you, and
can very well spare two of them for the recovery of
health."
In one sense the change of life was altogether
welcome. It promised the opportunity of
renewing friendships for which the stress of
professional work had left hardly any leisure.
In replying to his old friend, the Warden of
Merton, who had written to congratulate him
on his appointment, Charles Bowen dwells on
this pleasant prospect.
" I have always had to thank you for so much and
such generous friendship that another piece of thanks
M
1 62 LORD BOWEN. [1888.
does not add much to my obligation, though your
letter added greatly to my pleasure.
" I do not seriously believe that many men could
have gone through the physical fatigue I have for
nearly ten years. I know you could not have done
it ; and, if a Judgeship comes at the end of it, I don't
say that the honour is less appreciable ; but the price
paid has been heavy.
" I do delight to think that I shall get back to my
old friends, I hope, after my long exile, and that, of
all, you and I will meet much oftener, and live more
together.
" Thank you so much. I am now, as always,
" Your grateful and affectionate friend,
" C. B."
With reference to his appointment to a
Judgeship, Bowen writes to his old friend J. C,
now Mr. Justice Mathew, a graceful letter,
veiling under playfulness the desire to apologize
to a competitor, whom for the moment he was
leaving behind him in the race. The first para-
graph refers to the religious parties which a late
Lord Chancellor was in the habit of giving,
and which, so ran the joke, aspiring barristers at-
tended with a view to professional advancement.
A LORD JUSTICE OF APPEAL. 163
"MY DEAR J. C.,
" Thanks for your kind letter. My religious
character, I believe, was what ultimately brought the
Judgeship down. Perhaps you are not aware where
or how I spent last Sunday.
" Did you observe I had disappeared ?
" Where was I ?
"Echo pauses for a reply. I am afraid I am
beginning to mix my metaphors, so I (like echo) pause.
" My dear J. C., / know, and the profession knows,
that you are twenty times as fit to be a Judge as
anybody at the Bar ; and I can only feel what an
advantage it is to be the A.-G.'s devil.
" I- am always
" Yours faithfully,
"CHARLES BOWEN."
In June, 1888, Charles Bowen was appointed,
in succession to Lord Justice Holker, a member
of the Court of Appeal. Here he found him-
self in a congenial sphere, and engaged in the
sort of work for which his intellectual constitu-
tion and previous training had pre-eminently
qualified him.
" It is upon his work there," * says Lord Davey,
* Law Quarterly Review, July, 1894.
164 LORD BOWEN. [1888-94.
" that his judicial reputation will rest. Law, to
Bowen, was not a mere collection of rules, but was
the embodiment of the conscience of the nation. He
recognized the duty of endeavouring to apply legal
doctrines so as to meet, in his own words, the
broadening requirements of a growing country and
gradual illumination of the public conscience. He
was, therefore, the master, and not the servant, of his
knowledge. It might seem exaggerated if one said
that he combined the breadth of Lord Mansfield
with the accuracy of Lord Wensleydale ; but it would
give an idea of the truth. Lord Bowen will be re-
membered among the great judges who steered
the ship in the transition from the old system to
the new."
It was natural that a temperament and intel-
lect of this order should feel but scanty regard
for legal technicalities in comparison with the
intrinsic merits of the case. A famous English
Judge is reported to have observed complacently
that a plaintiff, who had been ruined by suing
in trespass, might have succeeded if he had
sued on the case, but that if trespass and case
ever came to be confounded, there would be an
end of English jurisprudence. Bowen's view
LORD DAVEY. 165
of the value of legal formalities was the very
opposite of this.
" Indeed," says Lord Davey, " a Judge of his
clearness of vision and accurate habits of thought
could safely dispense with the aid of pleadings. Lord
Bowen, in his anxiety that justice should be done,
was indulgent some of his colleagues thought, over-
indulgent to slips of practice and mistakes. He
would never let a client suffer, if he could help it,
from the ignorance or carelessness of his advisers, or
even his own obstinacy. One who sat with him for
many years speaks of the extent to which he would
' let a blundering or obstinate litigant turn round and
restate his case, or get his case tried, or do whatever
he wanted.' ' It arose,' he said, ' from his great fear
lest the litigant should not, in the end, get whatever
was his right in the beginning.' ' It may be asserted/
says Bowen, in 1887, 'without fear of contradiction,
that it is not possible in the year 1887 for an honest
client in the Supreme Court to be defeated by any
mere technicality, by any mistaken step in his litiga-
tion.' Some readers will, perhaps, think this boast a
little rose-coloured."
It is, at any rate, the boast of a mind wholly
free from that subservience to technicalities
which has cramped so many otherwise fine
1 66 LORD BO WEN. [1888-94.
judicial intellects, and has at times made the
procedure of English Courts more like some
intricate and bewildering game than a con-
trivance for finding out the truth and adminis-
tering justice.
Lord Justice Fry, one of the most intimate
of C. Bowen's friends on the Bench, and a
colleague who probably saw more of his work
from day to day than any other, has summed up
his estimate of his judicial character in the
following appreciative sketch, which, with his
permission, I transfer from the article in which
it first appeared.
" What impressed me almost most of all about him
was his intense sense of duty in the discharge of his
office. Both intellectually and morally he was keenly
sensitive to anything which appeared to him like the
enunciation of bad law, or still more to anything like
the slightest miscarriage of justice. Either of these
things seemed to inflict a personal almost a physical
wound on him : and the pains which he took both
to do his own part in the administration of justice to
the very best of his great abilities, and so far as he
could to secure the very best working of the machinery
LORD JUSTICE FRY. 167
of the law, were infinite. He never wearied of
investigating or discussing a point so long as he
thought that anything remained to be got at or
that there was any hope of bringing about an agree-
ment of opinion amongst colleagues who were inclin-
ing to differ : and anything like a suggestion to him
that he was worrying himself more than was necessary
he always gravely put aside. I doubt whether those
who listened to or read his brilliant judgments would
have the least notion of how much thought and
persistent effort he had given to them : and the
extreme rapidity of his intellectual operations made
this all the more remarkable to those who by daily
intercourse saw ' the very pulse of the machine.' If
Bowen had any personal ambition, it was entirely
subordinated by him to the sense of duty to which I
have referred so completely that I do not believe
that it was an efficient principle to any extent in
his actions or his thoughts. Furthermore, I do not
believe that he had any vanity. It is a very common
characteristic of men of great abilities ; but I never
detected a trace of it in him."
Lord Justice Fry has been good enough to
supplement the foregoing summary by a more
detailed description.
"When Bowen became a Judge of the Court of
Queen's Bench, a friendship began between us and
1 68 LORD BOWEN. [1888-94.
our families ; and after I followed him, by about a
year, into the Court of Appeal, my intercourse with
him was constant. We often sat in the same Court,
and for years may almost be said to have worked
shoulder to shoulder. In the last note I had from
him he described himself as a horse who had lost -his
stable-companion (by my retirement from the Bench).
"In the moral qualities which befit a Judge he
was, I think, perfect. I have already endeavoured
to express in a passage which you know what most
struck me about him in that respect ; nor do I know
that I can add much to it.
" Intellectually his very excellencies were, to some
extent, defects, and they were his only defects.
The rapidity and subtlety of his mind were so
greatly in excess of these qualities in most men,
and even of most able men, that they sometimes
produced want of harmony in the positions of his
mind and of those of the others, whether Judges
or Counsel, who were engaged in the discussion ;
and sometimes his most brilliant judgments were,
I believe, hardly appreciated by those who heard
them. The rapidity of his mental operations,
the suddenness with which he grasped the facts and
arguments of a case, were surprising. If, as of course
sometimes happened, he had made some omission or
error in his apprehension of the case, he was equally
rapid in his appreciation of the least suggestion of
his error, and in the rearrangement of the whole
LORD JUSTICE FRY. 169
subject in his mind. It was just the same in a game ;
he saw, as it were intuitively, the whole position of
the board and the relations of the pieces ; and I have
heard it said that if he were present on any occasion,
when some speech or event caused general amuse-
ment, a distinct interval of time could be perceived
between the first ripples from Bowen and the general
roar of laughter. The result of this great rapidity
was that the advocate, opening a case, was often
outrun by his hearer ; and that, whilst he was laying
the foundations of his argument, Bowen was engaged
in the critical examination of the details of the
ornaments of the top story. So, too, with regard to
the subtlety- of his mind. Details, distinctions, which
seemed to most minds subtle, refined, microscopic,
appeared, I believe, to his mental eye to stand out
broad and clear as the strong features of the matter.
What seemed molecular to most minds seemed
massive to him ; and this was not without its draw-
backs in a world where law is concerned with the
common affairs of common men ; and I believe that
it made him less successful in addressing juries both
from the Bar and from the Bench than many men of
lesser intellects.
" He held the highest possible views of the duties
of the judicial office, and he was very jealous of the
independence of the individual Judge ; very unwilling
to lay down or allow the laying down of any rules of
practice which should fetter the discretion or limit
I7O LORD BOWEN. [1888-94.
the power or responsibility of each man in the
discharge of that high office.
" It is impossible to think of Bowen in connection
with the Bench without recalling some of those
delightfully humorous accounts which he sometimes
gave of his sufferings there. One speech at a Middle
Temple dinner, in which he described his labours in
the search after 'an equity/ and illustrated it by a
story about Confucius and his disciples, must, I think,
survive in the memory of most of his hearers.
" Bowen was not incapable of just anger. No man
of a high and noble nature, such as his, could possibly
be so ; and he was acutely wounded by anything
which he thought to be deliberate unkindness towards
himself or others. But of sharpness or unkindness
he was as incapable as of stupidity ; and I can hardly
recall that I ever heard an impatient word from his
lips upon the Bench.
" To me the recollection of the days in which he
and I worked together in the duties of our office
lightened as they were to me by his constant kindness,
as well as by the aid of his great powers will ever
remain one of the brightest of my life. But even to
the casual observer it must have been apparent
that he
' Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office,'
that his loss to the country is no ordinary one."
MR. JUSTICE MATHEW.
Another of his colleagues, Mr. Justice
Mathew, whose friendship dated "from 1 the
days when they were both wandering in the
cold shades of brieflessness, bears a similar
testimony.
" My acquaintance with Bowen," he writes, " began
after his call. He had been ill, and had returned to
work somewhat anxious and despondent. Coleridge,
who was an early friend, and had a great admiration
for him, cheered him with an offer to share his
chambers. This helped to make him known, and
Coleridge, who was most faithful to those he liked,
was constant and confident in predictions, the speedy
fulfilment of which he was enabled in some measure
to secure.
" Bowen's first appearance in Court was not success-
ful. He was most graciously received in the Queen's
Bench by Cockburn, who had heard of him. Many
of us, as Juniors, had learned 'to trace the day's
disasters in the morning face ' of the C. J. ; but he
beamed upon Bowen. Alas! a weak voice and a
delivery hesitating and somewhat over-refined for
the rough and rapid work of the Bar, annoyed the
great man, and he ceased to listen. Bowen had to
bear the disappointment, with which most of us have
started ; but the incident did not occur again. Those
172 LORD BOWEN. [1888-94.
who succeed and those who don't, as a general rule,
fail only once.
" We became intimate friends. He soon got into
business, and we were often opposed to each other.
He was strenuous and adroit in controversy, but
he was always considerate, and never forgot that
his adversary was a comrade and a learned friend.
Through his whole career at the Bar and on the
Bench he remained the same. Time had not hurt
him. He was always kindly, bright, and youthful,
ready to discuss any subject, literary, political, or
professional. Even when he chose to be frivolous he
could be intellectual ; and his peculiar humour played
about and brightened all he said. He was altogether
free from affectation, and never was there a mind
clearer of cant. With a certain dignity that the
consciousness of his power gave him, he was never
dictatorial or self-important ; and he could listen,
sometimes under trying circumstances, without the
slightest appearance of effort Commonplace people
enjoyed his society as much as those of his own
scholarly kind. His courtesy made them for the
time his equals.
" While he was at the Bar, and, afterwards, on the
Bench, he was in the habit of discussing with great
eagerness the cases that came before him. He called
in a friend, less to assist him with advice than to
arbitrate between the conflicting views, which were
presented by him with extraordinary subtlety and
MR. JUSTICE MATHEW. 173
minuteness. He explored every corner and cranny
of the evidence, and turned over every small fact with
unwearied curiosity, lest anything should escape him
which might afford a clue to the right conclusion.
He was not often wrong.
" He was sensitive to a fault, as are so many of the
highly trained Oxford men as, notably, was Newman.
A strong opinion in confident language ruffled him ;
an incautious phrase wounded him ; a slight uneasi-
ness of manner, or a short interval of silence, showed
that something had gone wrong, and had to be set
right. He was as sensitive for others as for him-
self, and I have more than once heard him offer a
prolonged and embarrassing explanation, to some
solemn colleague or grave divine, of something he
had said that he thought might not have been
liked.
" His humour was his own, and was most difficult
of description. Something sparkling and original
might always be counted upon. His manner never
foreshadowed the good thing coming. His melan-
choly air diverted all suspicion. But a certain cheerful
gleam of his eye, and a kindly smile that hovered
about his lips, rescued many an excellent jest from
the peril of being overlooked.
" He was the most loyal and generous of friends.
Looking back over many years, I have known few
upon whom Heaven conferred so much genius, so
benevolent a disposition, and so manly a character.
174 LORD BOWEN. [1888-94.
In his fidelity to all the charities of life, great and
small, there never was a better Christian.
" He was strongly Liberal in his opinions, and the
profession is largely indebted to him for reforms in
the law, and for a better system of legal education.
Many of the Resolutions of the Judges on the subject
of procedure were prepared by him ; and his
colleagues were much influenced by his advice in the
proposal for the creation of a Court for the revision
of sentences a reform not likely to be carried in
these timid times, but with the necessity for which
he was profoundly impressed."
One other testimony from a brother Judge
may here be added that of the Master of the
Rolls, pronounced on the morning after Lord
Bowen's death, in the Court of Appeal, where
so large a portion of his judicial career had
been passed.
"He was," Lord Esher said, "one of the most
admirable Judges wEcThas sat on the Bench in my
time. His knowledge of the whole law was so perfect,
and was so entirely at his command, that I myself
have no doubt that he had studied every proposition
of law minutely, accurately, and carefully, in order to
learn it, long before he was called upon to bring it
THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS. 175
into practice. His knowledge was so complete that
it is almost beyond my powers of expression. His
reasoning was so extremely accurate and so beauti-
fully fine that what he said sometimes escaped my
mind, which is not so finely edged. His mind was
so beautifully and finely edged, and so subtle in its
nature, that he went further, and gave us perfect
essays in the form of his judgments, which can be
handed down to our successors as models of absolute
perfection."
It is to be regretted that Bo wen should not
have enriched the legal literature of his country
by any standard work. No one certainly of
our day was more qualified to raise any topic
out of the dreary level of text-books and
reports, to free it from the tangled and be-
wildering undergrowth of technicalities, and to
view law from the dignified standpoint of
philosophy.
Bowen's training in the Oxford schools, his
speculative turn of mind, his faculty of analysis,
his subtlety of thought, all tended to qualify
him in the highest degree for handling the
subject with the grasp and weight necessary to
176 LORD BOWEN. [1884.
a philosophic treatise. But his taste strongly
disinclined him from any such attempt. He
seems to have felt no ambition for, scarcely any
belief in, literary success in this direction.
" Is it worth having ? " he says in a letter to one of
his friends. " I think life is very well worth living.
I have no cynical views about it ; but I do not think
so very many things are worth having. Especially
does the desire to attain immortality by writing a
book on English law seem to me a doubtful passion.
You write a history of the law, or a treatise about it,
and then a puff of reform comes and alters it all, and
makes your history or treatise useless. If I were at
all able or disposed to write, I am sure that literary
art lives longer than mere literary bricks and mortar.
Poetry lives as long as most prose ; but, of all prose,
a book on English law strikes me as least readable,
and most certain to expire by an early death."
However little disposed to engage personally
in the scientific treatment of law, Charles
Bowen was as far as possible removed from
the school of thought which questions the
existence of legal science, or, at any rate, its
expediency. In January, 1884, he presided at
HISTORICAL METHOD IN LAW. 177
the annual meeting of the Birmingham Law
Students' Society, and took the opportunity of
enforcing the view which he himself, an
admiring student of Sir H. Maine, held strongly
of the value of the historical method as
applied to the Study of the Law. He drew a
vivid picture of the "dismal, boundless, unknown
land " which presents itself to the pilgrim steps
of the law student.
" Is it possible," he asked, " to introduce a gleam of
sunshine and 'to furnish a silver thread to guide the
law student through the tangled labyrinth of a law
library ? Wanted, then, a method of studying the
law pleasantly. Now,. I believe that there exists such
a method, absolutely scientific, full of interest, capable
of satisfying the finest intellect, because it affords
a scope for every power. Law is the application of
certain rules to a subject-matter which is constantly
shifting. What is it ? English life ! English business !
England in movement, advancing from a continuous
past to a continuous future. National life, national
business, like every other product of human intelli-
gence and culture, is a growth begins far away in
the dim past, advances slowly, shaping and forming
itself by the operation of purely natural causes."
N
LORD BOWEN. [1884.
To this changing subject-matter the rules of
law have to be applied some, mere rules of
common sense, fair play, and business con-
venience ; some, specific enactments designed
for special cases but all gradually changing,
undergoing an evolution, moving as human
intelligence moves, " and taking a colour, form,
and elasticity from the nature of transactions to
which they are applied."
"The chief difficulty is not so much to discover
the principles as to learn how they should be applied.
To do this the student has to look for the elements
of his art in successive strata, or layers, of authorities,
documents, and judicial decisions, each of which is
the product of its own particular time, and requires
to be studied with reference to it."
From this it follows that the only reasonable,
the only satisfactory, way of dealing with law
is to bring to bear upon it the historical
method.
" Mere legal terminology may seem to you a dead
thing. Mix history with it, and it clothes itself with
HISTORICAL METHOD IN LAW. 179
life. You have not even to travel far to find the
history to mix. Look for it in the legal material
itself; and the history, like water in a fertile soil, is
ready there at hand, and will well up into a spring.
There before your very eyes, in the fragmentary
decisions of the Law Courts, and in the glossaries of
Commentators, you will see consecutive chapters of
the narrative of the progress of the human race."
To a possible objection that such a view only
proved how impossible it is to be a lawyer,
Bowen explained that he was not putting
forward any Utopian scheme for mastering all
law at once, but a mode of arranging such
knowledge as we can acquire.
" English law can not be learned in a day. Yet
there is all the difference between attacking the study
of it on no method at all, and attacking it upon a
method which strews flowers over the student's path
as he pursues his pilgrimage."
Such a method gives new meaning to all the
busy processes of life which the student sees
around him, in every direction of human
enterprise.
l8o LORD BOWEN. [1886.
" A study of law so executed will become one full
of interest Its effect will be to make that study a
living thing, to put life into dead bones, to illuminate
with sunshine dusty books. I am astonished when I
hear at times the suggestion that our profession must
be dull. The truer view would be that our work- is
inordinately engrossing. Time runs by the lawyer
far too like the race in a mill-stream. ... Is the
occupation narrowing to the mind? Can it ever
narrow the mind to learn to perfection the story of
human life ? Will it tend to narrow, or to enlarge
the mind to construct for ourselves, in a connected
form, the knowledge of human life, as Englishmen
have pursued it since the memory of English justice ?
Science or Art, I care not which it be that challenges
us, I unhesitatingly aver that, followed on the lines
I have endeavoured to sketch out, there is not a
study in the world more exact, more liberal, more
elevating."
Bowen's sense of the dignity and scope of
law made itself apparent in his zealous support
of every scheme for improving the constitution
and procedure of the Courts, by which it is to be
expounded and enforced. No Judge devoted
himself with more assiduity to this branch of
his duties.
ESSAY ON LAW REFORM. l8l
In the January number for 1886 of the Law
Quarterly Review, C. Bowen published an
Essay, in which he described the effects of the
changes which had been of late effected in the
structure and procedure of the Law Courts,
and called attention to various points peculiar
to the development of the new system which
seemed to claim special consideration. The
supersession of the historic Courts of the
Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, Exchequer,
and Exchequer Chamber by a Supreme Court
of Judicature, was, no doubt, a wise and
necessary reform ; but it would, the writer
urges, " be a mistake to undervalue the merits
of the machinery that we have abandoned,
or to suppose that the superior machinery,
which has been substituted, is free from its own
elements of weakness." The defects of the
former system had, no doubt, been remedied
by recent reforms, but those very reforms had,
in their turn, produced evils which required to
be rectified or to be watched. One of the
1 82 LORD BOWEN. [1887.
points incidental to the new regime, which
called for consideration, was the serious ac-
cumulation of arrears in the Chancery and
Queen's Bench Divisions. The state of the
cause-list in the Queen's Bench in 1885 made it
obvious that either the number of Judges must
be increased, or that measures should be devised
for a more rapid administration of justice.
The arrears in the Chancery Division were
still more serious. The discussion as to the
most expedient manner of meeting the difficulty
is, necessarily, of a highly technical character,
and scarcely interesting except to those practi-
cally conversant with the subject. The article,
however, is interesting as an excellent specimen
of the conscientious thoroughness with which
Bowen thought out every detail of a tiresome
controversy, and of the zeal with which he
elaborated every available means of rendering
the administration of justice as efficient as
possible.
Two other contributions of a like character
FIFTY YEARS' RETROSPECT OF LAW. 183
may here conveniently be mentioned. In 1887
Mr. Humphrey Ward published, in honour of
the Queen's Jubilee, a collection of essays
illustrative of the course of development which
English Society science, trade, and the various
great Departments of State had undergone
during the preceding fifty years. Lord Justice
Bowen contributed a chapter on " The Adminis-
tration of the Law," which is an excellent
specimen of his style and method in dealing
with a professional subject. He gives a graphic
description of the technicalities, confusions, and
obscurities which beset litigation at the be-
ginning of Queen Victoria's reign, and of
the endless delays, ruinous expenditure, and
frequent miscarriages of justice to which they
conduced.
"From the beginning of the century," he says,
" the population, the wealth, the commerce of the
country had been advancing by great strides, and the
antient bottles were but imperfectly able to hold the
new wine. At a moment when the pecuniary enter-
prises of the country were covering the world, when
184 LORD BOWEN. [1892.
railways at home and steam on the seas were creating
everywhere new centres of industrial and commercial
life, the Common Law Courts of the country seemed
constantly occupied in the discussion of the merest
legal conundrums, which bore no relation to the
merits of any controversies except those of pedants,
and in the direction of a machinery that belonged
already to the past."
Bowen describes, with all the zest of a law-
reformer, the gradual course of improvement
till the great measure of 1873 gave the final
blow to the old system by the establishment of
a Supreme Court, every branch of which ad-
ministers the same principle of Equity and
Law, and is governed by a common and simple
procedure. No better summary could be
wished ; but the article is more than a summary.
It breathes throughout the spirit of a man who
shakes himself free from professional preposses-
sions and prejudice, rises naturally above the
level of the subjects amidst which his life is
passed, into that higher and more luminous
atmosphere where general views present
REPORT OF THE COUNCIL OF JUDGES. 185
themselves, the gradual processes of growth
and development become apparent, and general
tendencies and principles can be evolved.
In 1892, again, Bowen rendered an important
service to the Profession and the Public by
communicating to the Press a dissertation on
the scheme of Reform recently forwarded by
the Council of Judges to the Home Secretary.
The occasion was one of interesting novelty,
for it was, probably, " the first time in English
history that the entire body of the Judges of
the land have approached the Crown with a
report on the defects of the present administra-
tion of justice, and with a scheme which they
have prepared for its improvement." The
right so to report was conferred by the Judica-
ture Act upon the Council. At the opening
of 1892 the Council appointed a Committee ;
the Committee sat every day after Court for
four months, and its report, with some few
alterations, was, after a three days' debate,
adopted by the Council. The proposed reforms
1 86 LORD BOWEN. [1888-94.
were embodied in a string of resolutions number-
ing about a hundred. They dealt with the whole
subject of Civil Procedure, the arrangements of
the Courts, the Circuit System, the distribution
of Judicial Power, the Question of Appeal, the
undue burthen thrown on the Chancery Judges,
the creation of a special Court for speedy dis-
patch of commercial cases in London, the
procedure in administration suits, declaratory
decrees for the interpretation of deeds or other
documents, the regulation of costs, the review
and control of criminal proceedings and
sentences by appeal or otherwise. The task
of setting forth so wide-reaching, multifarious
and technical a project in language intelligible
to the lay community, and with sufficient light-
ness, and brevity to be endurable by the average
industry of mankind, was no easy one. It fell
to Charles Bowen's lot to perform it, and the
two articles communicated to the Times, 1872,
entitled, " The Judges' Reforms, by a Member
of the Bench," give an excellent idea of his
IN SOCIETY. 187
power of exposition, and of the indefatigable
diligence with which he had considered every
branch of a laborious and, in many respects,
unattractive topic. No man ever worked with
more conscientious assiduity at tasks which had
nothing in them of a nature to catch the popular
eye, or to bring their author into publicity, but
which, none the less, tended to render the
judicial machinery of the country more con-
ducive to the interests of justice and the con-
venience of the public.
For many years of his life Charles Bowen
was too much absorbed in his professional work
to have either leisure, strength, or inclination
for Society. His days, and too often his
nights, were occupied in the painful endeavour
to keep pace with ever-increasing demands for
his services either in Court, or as an adviser on
questions of legal difficulty. After his elevation
to the Bench, his failing health offered frequent
impediments to social intercourse, except within
a restricted circle. For some years, however,
1 88 LORD BOWEN. [1888-94.
after his elevation to the Bench, Bowen found
opportunities of enjoying the pleasures of
sociability. In 1878 he had been elected a
member of the Athenaeum, and in 1880 of the
Literary Society, and of Grillon's. He was
also a member of the " Dilettanti," and of
"The Club." Sir M. E. Grant Duff gives
us glimpses of many pleasant scenes which
Bowen's presence helped to make pleasanter
dinners at Grillon's and the Literary Society,
visits to Hampden, Sundays at York House,
afternoon gossips at the Athenaeum faint and
ghostly echoes of a world from which so many
who did most to enliven it have already passed
away ! Bowen's brilliant talk, ready sympathy,
playfulness, wit, and personal charm made him
a welcome guest in circles where his graver
intellectual powers would hardly have been
understood or appreciated. He could always
be amusing, and humanity is thankful to any
one who can and will amuse it. There is a
natural and laudable craving for something
IN SOCIETY. 189
better, brighter, more interesting than the
ordinary level of social intercourse. Of Charles
Bowen's charm no one who came within the
sphere of his attractions could have a doubt.
His witty sayings passed from mouth to mouth.
He became in great request. His presence
was supposed to ensure the brilliancy of an
entertainment. Accomplished hostesses, whose
business it is to organize brilliant entertain-
ments, marked him for their own. Bowen was
not insensible to such an appeal. His strain
of Irish blood disposed him to sociability. He
felt the interest and excitement of conversation.
He formed many agreeable acquaintances,
several much-valued friendships. Congenial
companionship is the best of all anodines for
harassing anxieties, the tedium of professional
work, and the depressing consciousness of an
impaired constitution and failing health. Bowen
enjoyed the society of his species with the zest
of a sensitive and sympathetic nature, unspoiled
by self-indulgence, and safe-guarded through its
LORD BO WEN. [1888-94.
perilous epoch by pure taste and an austere
standard ; but Society was with him but an
episode, not perhaps an important episode, in
a busy career ; it formed no part of his more
serious existence. From the outer world that
serious side was carefully concealed. Those
who knew him but superficially found it
difficult to believe that so much brilliancy and
such ever-ready fun could be combined with
gravity of thought, a profound philosophy of
life, and a deep undercurrent of melancholy.
But playfulness is oftentimes a natural precaution
against being tempted to reveal the bitterness
which each man's heart knows, and in which
he wishes no companionship. Charles Bowen
was, it may be, sometimes the victim of such a
mood. He shrank, even with his intimate
friends, from handling serious topics, and
sometimes, when conversation threatened to
invade the domain in which he preferred to
maintain an unbroken reticence, would divert
it into a less serious channel by a remark
THE LITERARY SOCIETY.
that seemed to disappointed listeners merely
frivolous. It was not frivolity, however, which
was the motive cause of his behaviour, but a
sense of the importance of such topics, the
magnitude and solemnity of the issues involved,
the superficial and inadequate treatment which
they must receive in any general gathering,
however carefully selected.
Some of the occasions on which Bowen's
gifts of sociability showed themselves to the
greatest advantage were the dinners of the
" Literary Society," at whose monthly dinners,
presided over by Lord Coleridge, many of
Bowen's intimate associates were accustomed
to assemble. Among its frequenters were Mr.
George S. Venables, himself a distinguished
proficient in the art of good conversation, Hon.
George Denman, a scholar of high traditional
fame, Mr. Spencer Walpole, who is now, as
was his father before him, president of the
Club, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Mr. Lecky,
Mr. Birrell, Sir M. E. Grant Duff, Canon
LORD BOWEN. [1879-94.
Liddon, Canon Ainger, the Dean of West-
minster, Sir A. Lyall, Mr. Henry James, Mr.
G. Du Maurier, and Mr. Sidney Colvin, whose
rights as arbiter bibendi entitled him to rule
the feast with despotic authority. Lord Cole-
ridge, certainly one of the best raconteurs of
his day, did full justice to the presidential
chair. Stimulated by congenial surroundings,
he would pour out his reminiscences of Bar
and Bench and Parliament in an unfailing and,
apparently, inexhaustible stream of graphic
narrative. When he and Bowen sat on
opposite sides of the table, and got to capping
each other's stories, the listeners were sure of
an interesting half-hour. Both had had some
curious experiences of Lord Westbury, which
lost nothing in the telling. I remember some-
times thinking that no single personage of his
generation can have afforded more amusement
to his species than that versatile and accom-
plished lawyer. But how to recall such scenes
or depict them ? Yesterday's unfinished bottle
IN CONVERSATION. 1 93
of champagne is but a feeble representation of
the staleness of the written record of transient
hilarity. The essence of fun is to be spon-
taneous, apposite, and instantaneous. Caught
between the solemn pages of a book, and stuck,
like a butterfly with a pin through its back in
a well-camphored tray for the purposes of
science or curiosity, it is but the dead sem-
blance of itself. Many of the good things
which sent Bowen's companions away with the
impression of having been infinitely amused,
require the setting of the bland, mock-modest
manner, and hesitating utterance with which
they were produced, and the smile of genuine
enjoyment by which they were accompanied.
Some of the Literary Society diners will
remember the gravity with which, some one
having mentioned a work, entitled " Defence
of the Church of England, By a beneficed
clergyman," Bowen suggested, " In other words,
a defence of the Thirty-nine Articles by a bond
fide holder for value." On another occasion
o
/
194
LORD BOWEN.
[1879-94-
reference was made to the fact that a publisher,
who was popularly credited with driving some-
what hard bargains with authors, had built a
church at his own expense. " Ah ! " Bowen
exclaimed, " the old story I Sanguis mar ty rum
semen Ecclesice." Sometimes his wit could
turn a dexterous compliment, as when he
assured some ladies, who had been climbing
to perilous eminence on an Alpine crag, that
they had solved the problem, which had per-
plexed the Schoolmen, as to how many angels
could stand on the point of a needle. Some-
times a satiric touch. Some of the pleasure-
hunting invalids at Homburg remember an
observation of Lord Bowen's that a little dog,
whose attendance on its Royal Master was
not as faithful as might have been wished, was
the only person at Homburg who did not run
after the Prince of Wales.
Bowen's vivacity, gaiety, and ready wit his
gentle irony never hardening into sarcasm
his flashes of humour, were naturally much
IN CONVERSATION.
195
appreciated in professional circles, and in
that judicial Olympus, whose sublimity, it is
not profane to imagine, may sometimes
stand in need of a little enlivenment. Many
such good stories live in the traditions of
the Bar. Bowen's contemporaries recall an
occasion on which the draft of an address to
Royalty was being considered by the Judges.
It contained the expression, " Conscious as
we are of our shortcomings." Exception was
taken to the phrase as pitched in too humble
a key. No such consciousness, it was urged,
besets the judicial mind. "Suppose," Bowen
demurely suggested, " that we substitute
' Conscious as we are of one another's short-
comings ' ? "
Equally amusing was Bowen's reply to one
of the Judges, who was complaining that another
member of the Bench had slept peacefully
through the afternoon, and, on waking up at
half-past three, had immediately adjourned the
Court. " It is as it should be," Bowen said.
S
196 LORD BOWEN. [1879-94.
He obeyed the hymn, " Shake off dull sloth,
and early rise." Of one of his colleagues,
whose temperament showed some want of
masculine robustness, Bowen observed, " I do
not know whether to speak of him as my
learned brother or my learned sister." On
another occasion, one of the Judges having
complained that he did not know what a
"Jurist" meant, Bowen proceeded to give a
; definition. "A Jurist," he said, "is a person
who knows a little about the laws of every
country except his own."
A flash of gentle fun shows itself occasionally
in Bowen's judgments. " Had I been left to
myself," he said, in dealing with a case in
which the Court below had shown a perverse
ingenuity in misconstruing a document, " I
should have thought the judgment of the
learned Judge shows me that I should have
been wrong that it was impossible to mis-
understand this letter." "Her Majesty's
Courts," he observed in a case, in which an
IN CONVERSATION. 197
attempt was made to defeat the plaintiff's
claim on the ground of an irregularity in pro-
cedure, " do not exist for the purposes of
discipline, but for the decision of disputes
between the subjects."
Recorded bons mots, however, are but the
mummies of wit records of the living man,
but with a sepulchral aroma. As he said of
Professor Henry Smith, " the brightest con-
versation is often the most evanescent, and the
finesse of wit, like a musical laugh, disappears
with the occasion, and cannot be reproduced
on paper or in print." The Bowen whom I
remember, and would fain delineate, sparkling
with genial and charming gaiety, lives better
in familiar letters, never intended for any
but the recipient's eye, or for any but an
ephemeral existence. Mr. Justice Mathew
kindly allows me to quote one or two, m
which Bowen's natural gaiety seems to play at
ease.
LORD BOWEN. [1879-94.
" Colwood, May 31, 1889.
" MY DEAR J. C.,
" I am convalescent, and shall be again at
the Owlary next term ; but, as usual, in low spirits.
Beef-tea such is my experience (I believe the liquid
was invented by your illustrious uncle) is a chastening
beverage. I return a sobered man ; and if I am at
Greenwich on the 2Oth I shall bring my own teapot,
and sit on the balcony (during dinner) by myself.
As for Politics the Parnell Commission the
Common Law Equity Literature Art Science
they are all very unimportant subjects of thought
and reflection to one who has had to live on beef-tea
and to think of his immortal soul. I will not, there-
fore, offer any observations to you upon these or any
other worldly topics.
"Remember me to Dasent, and to Lyall at the
Athenaeum ; and, as you will probably receive this
when you are on your way to the Courts, let me say
once for all that I am an Equity Lawyer, and that
jokes at the expense of Chitty, Cozens Hardy, or Mr.
Justice Kekewich, are all equally misplaced. Give
my love and esteem to Chitty. I do not call him a
sound Equity Lawyer, but a painstaking one. I will
play him a single-wicket match on Blackheath
Common before dinner on the 20th for a sovereign,
and let him have Manisty to field.
" It has turned very cold here. But it was delicious,
LETTERS. 199
all sorts of flowers blooming and smelling as sweet as
' anythink.'
" Good-bye. Bless you. Remember me to the
Chief. 'Be good, my lords, and let who will be
clever.' Take this for your and Grantham's motto
when you sit together, deciding questions of Habeas
Corpus.
" Yours always,
" C. B.
"Billaeus Rogerius writes that he has become a
Sheriffs Chaplain, and, as such, has got a box of first-
rate cigars. I shall be There betimes. Snuff and
smoke. Voila la vie ! Pulvis et Umbra sumus f "
The following request for a lift in his friend's
carriage to the Lord Chancellor's breakfast in
1883 sinks below the dignity of history. I
shall, I think, be forgiven for the lapse.
"Colwood, Hayward Heath, Sussex.
" My dear J. C,
Will you be free
To carry me
Beside of thee,
In your Buggee,
To Selborne's Tea ?
If breakfast He
2OO LORD BOWEN. D879-94-
Intends for we
On 2 November next, D.V.
Eighteen hundred Eighty Three
A. D.
For Lady B.
From Cornwall G.
Will absent Be,
And says that She
Would rather see
Her husband be
D dash dash D
Than send to London Her Buggee
For such a melancholy spree
As Selborne's Toast and Selborne's Tea."
" What a libel on me," is added in a feminine hand,
and signed " F. B."
The " Athenaeum " Club is popularly regarded
as a serious institution, but here are a couple
of letters, arranging symposia within its walls,
which have an agreeable ring of fun.
" Saturday night.
" MY DEAR J. C,
" Pax tecum, Archimagister bibendi ! Don't
forget you are WELBY'S and MY GUEST Tuesday 8
p.m., Athenaeum, to meet the G.O.M.
LETTERS. 2O I
" Other guests Archbishop of Canterbury, Ameri-
can Minister, F. Leveson-Gower, Millais, Burnand,
Du Maurier, Strong (a great Orientalist scholar ;
please talk to him, for he will know nobody), Alfred
Morrison (probably), Robert Herbert (possibly).
" I shall not be there. My doctor won't hear of it.
He has sent me to Colwood to-morrow (Sunday) by
midday train.
" You quite comprehend, it is not an ' Ouse ' dinner,
but Welby's and my dinner."
"MY DEAR J. C,
" Hope you are not in prison, but it looks
like it. I see" Dillon is.
" Is your throat better ? I got a ' casual ' to take
your place at the dinner, but who could adequately
fill it ! ! ! So you will have nothing to pay, which
may console you. We missed you much.
"C. BOWEN."
Here is a specimen of the sort of Latin in
which famous scholars correspond.
" BEATE SANCTE * MATTHIA/
" Tu es, quod dicunt, ' Trumpa,' et ego
gratias tibi ago. Cigarri sunt excellentissimi. At
non ego volo (nam ambo pauperes diaboli sumus)
accipere tu& expensd boxum tuum. Ergo si
2O2 LORD BOWEN. [1887.
tobacconistae tui mihi mittent duos alteros boxos, ego
remittem iis checkum pro tribus boxis ; et animum
meum liberavero ergo te.
" Accipe gratias meas mille tempora ; et, quanquam
Inquisitionem redoles, et Guyam Fawxum moribus
refers, nihilominus te multum diligo ; et tuus amicus
(salvd salute animi) semper remanebo.
" C B."
On another occasion a festive evening is
proposed. " Postquam dimidium maris transi-
tum," adds the writer, as he goes on to describe
what is to be the programme at this hilarious
stage of the proceedings.
Charles Bowen's translation of the "Eclogues"
of Virgil and the first six books of the " ^Eneid,"
published in 1887, took all but a very small
circle of intimate friends by surprise. It had
been the amusement of his leisure hours during
the Long Vacations and other intervals of
leisure for several years past the amusement,
the solace, sometimes, it must be feared, too
much of a burthen. It is certain that this, as
every other piece of work which Lord Bowen
TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL. 2O3
undertook, was performed with all the con-
scientious and exquisite diligence which was
his natural mood. No one, he confided to an
intimate friend, would ever have an idea of the
amount of toil which it had involved. Hours
had often been spent over a single line which
proved refractory against the process of trans-
lation.
Many of Virgil's most beautiful lines are
untranslatable. Some are more beautiful in
sound than in idea, and can not be made
melodious in English without betraying their
poverty of meaning. Others, lovely alike in
sense and sound, are too delicate to bear trans-
planting. Bowen himself was aware of the
perilous difficulty of the task. "A translator
of Virgil into English verse," he says, " finds
the road, along which he has undertaken to
travel, strewn with the bleaching bones of
unfortunate pilgrims who have preceded him."
He lays down, as axiomatic, that a translation
of the " ^neid," to be of any value, must be in
204 LORD BOWEN. [1887.
itself an English poem, and the English poem,
in its turn, must be a translation, not merely
a paraphrase. Tried by these tests "most
Virgilian versifiers have perished in the wilder-
ness." Dryden's rendering noblest and most
masculine of all scarcely gives us more than
a paraphrase. "He has taken Virgil into his
powerful grasp, crushed him to atoms, and
reproduced the fragments in a form which,
though not devoid of genius, is no longer Virgil's.
The silver trumpet has disappeared, and a manly
strain is breathed through bronze." Professor
Conington's translation scholar-like, accurate,
and skilful shocks the reader by the substi-
tution of a metre and manner as remote as
possible from that of Virgil. " The sweet and
solemn majesty of the ancient form is wholly
gone. All that is left is what Virgil might have
written if the '^neid' had been a poem of the
character of ' Marmion ' or ' The Lay of the
Last Minstrel.' "
But the translation, as Bowen conceived
TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL. 205
it, involved a further requirement. Educated
Englishmen have been fed upon Virgil from
boyhood upwards : " Hundreds of Virgil's lines
are familiar quotations, which linger in our
memory, and round which our literary associa-
tions cluster and hang, as religious sentiment
clings to well-known texts in the Bible." The
charm of association is lost, unless there be a
" corresponding English line, pointed and com-
plete in itself, containing, however imperfectly,
the plan of the original." The translation
should, therefore, be lineal as well as literal. In
what English metre can these requirements be
best satisfied ? The standard English metres
are too short for the purpose. The English
hexameter, with its final dissyllabic foot
shortened to a monosyllable, seemed to Bowen
the best solution. This admitted of rhyme,
in which habit has accustomed the English
ear to take pleasure. Of the merits of this
metre, as "susceptible of varied treatment,
full of flexibility, capable of rising to real
2O6 LORD BOWEN. [1887.
grandeur," Bowen was thoroughly convinced,
though he dared not claim for it that it pre-
served the orderly and majestic movement
of the Roman hexameter, or allowed of a con-
sistent imitation of the Latin cadence. - It
was the best, however, of which the English
language allowed. On this, and on the merits
of the translation, it is for scholars to pro-
nounce. Of all forms of foolish criticism, none
seems more futile and impertinent than the
offhand judgment, summarily pronounced on
literary workmanship of an elaborate and
exquisite order the result of long-sustained
intellectual effort. No one certainly is com-
petent to express an opinion on such a trans-
lation as this, who has not drunk deep of the
Pierian spring, and studied the original poem
in the reverential and appreciative spirit in
which Bowen addressed himself to the task.
Every line, it may be assumed, is as good
as skill, scholarship, the finest literary taste,
and a fervent spirit of literary endeavour could
TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL. 2O7
make it. No toil was spared, and no amount
of time. But, then, toil and time struggle in
vain with impossibility, and some lines of
Virgil are to a translator, with Lord Bowen's
aim and standard, impossible. The poem
fascinated him as it has fascinated so many
highly gifted natures at every stage of
European culture. It was fitting that
" Old Virgil, who would write ten lines, they say,
At dawn, and lavish all the golden day
To make them wealthier in his readers' eyes,"
should be rendered to a modern audience by
an interpreter who, with every other qualifica-
tion for the task, was ready to devote long
days, and burn the midnight oil, in giving every
detail of his work the necessary polish. A
highly gratified critic, Professor W. G. Sellar,
of Edinburgh,* expressed, in no hesitating
terms, his view of the degree in which Bowen
had achieved success.
* Classical Review, March, 1888.
LORD BOWEN. [1887.
" He combines in a higher degree than any of those
who have previously attempted the task, the two
requisites of finished scholarship, and of power, ver-
satility, and delicacy in the use of language and
metre. No one, however familiar with the language
of Virgil, can compare passages in this English version,
line by line, and phrase by phrase, with the original,
without apprehending much that was in the poet's
mind, which he had not perceived before, and without
feeling his power and charm with a new enjoyment.
The exact and refined scholarship of the translator
shows itself in the minute carefulness of his work-
manship, and his fidelity to the subtle suggestions
and shades of meaning in the original. But to
accurate scholarship and critical appreciation he adds
the lively susceptibility, the mobility of mind and
imagination, the affluence of language, and the power,
care, and tact in its employment, characteristic of a
literary artist ; and, with these gifts of an artistic
temperament, he combines acuteness and sound-
ness of judgment derived from the education of a
great practical career."
Professor Sellar, though not so ardent an
admirer as Bowen of a shortened rhyming
hexameter, yet considers that "it reproduces,
as well as any metre could, the simpler, more
lively, and buoyant movement of the "Eclogues."
PROFESSOR W. G. SELLAR. 2OQ
It can do justice not only to their softer cadences,
but to the deeper tones which :i!s sympathy
with the grander voices of Nature elicits from
the poet
" Neither the whispering breeze of the south wind, now on its
way,
Brings me a joy thus deep, nor the thunders of surf on the
shore,
Nor when the rock-strewn valley resounds to the torrent's
roar."
In regard to the "^neid," both metre and
manner are, Professor Sellar considered, " more
fitted to do justice to it as a poem of heroic
adventure, of human sensibility and passion,
of descriptive power, of great finish and detail,
than as the expression of the Imperial sentiment
and character of Rome 'the stateliness and
majesty/ as he elsewhere expresses it, 'of
some of the more " Imperial " passages. ..."
Let experts decide. Be the shortcomings of
the metre what they may, it will not, I think, be
denied that, in Lord Bowen's hands, it was sus-
ceptible, on occasion, of a solemn grandeur and
p
2IO LORD BOWEN. [1887.
pathos which well became the scene, on which
were displayed the destinies of an Imperial race.
Bowen himself was fully conscious of the key
in which the patriotic passages of the poem
must be pitched. They spoke to a Roman
audience with the meaning and significance
of a very personal interest. " To appreciate
the ^Eneid truly, it is necessary to think of
it always as written for the ears of a people
who had risen to be masters of the world, after
an internecine struggle, out of which Carthage,
long mistress of the seas, and redoubtable to
Rome even upon land, had at one time nearly
emerged triumphant, and in which Rome had
nearly perished." Dls aliter visum. The
hand of Heaven pointed unwaveringly, through
a long series of vicissitudes, to the predestined
climax the majestic and benign presidency of
Rome over a conquered and submissive world.
In the sixth book of the "^neid " this splendid
climax is kept constantly in sight. It is, says
the translator, the noblest passage in Latin
.ENEID. 211
literature. /Eneas, carrying in his person the
fortunes of his race, visits the ghostly world,
passes to the Elysian fields, discovers his
father among the ranks of the blest, and learns
from him the mystery of that second life, to
which the purified soul, after ages of purgation,
will return to live on earth. In a majestic
procession the projected shadows of kings and
warriors pass Caesar, Pompey, Augustus : the
gorgeousness of the scene melts in the pathos
of the boy Marcellus a nation's hope and love
- destined to die on the verge of manhood.
Amid the splendour of a court ceremonial
there breaks in the touch of Nature, and the
mother, Octavia, is carried away, fainting, from
the scene. The episode is among the most
striking, interesting, and pathetic of any which
classical history presents. Nor is the trans-
lation unworthy of the noble language in which
the original rises to a sublime occasion.
The first hours of the translation's existence
were not without their vicissitudes.
212 LORD BOWEN. [1877.
" Fancy what might have happened 1" Charles Bowen
writes to his wife, May, 24, 1884 ; " I was working in
the library at the Athenaeum, into a volume of my
Virgil, the ' Eclogues.' Going home, I forgot all about
it ; it was 1 1 p.m. ; nor did I think of my volume for
three days after, when suddenly I recollected that I
had not brought it home. What had I done with it ?
In a most melancholy frame of mind, I walked over
to the Athenaeum. There in the hall an advertise-
ment
' Found in the Library a MS. Quarto Book
containing poetry.'
What do you think of that for an extra humiliation
thrown in quite casually by Providence ? I had to
go and claim my beloved waif-and-stray with my tail
between my legs ; and now I feel that even the hall-
porter says to himself : ' That a Lord Justice ! why,
he writes poetry ! ' Good-bye, my dearest."
For any sustained effort in original poetry
Charles Bowen's busy life afforded no oppor-
tunity. But his keen poetical sense and perfect
mastery of language naturally prompted him,
as occasion offered and the inspiring mood came
on, to poetical composition. A small collection
of these scattered pieces was formed some
VERSES OF THE WAYSIDE. 213
years before his death, but he never allowed
them to pass into the hands of any but a few
intimate friends. To such they are of great
interest ; not, of course, as in any way adequate
representations of his literary power, but as
recalling the grace and sweetness the fas-
tidious taste, the fine ear for musical cadence,
the gay and melancholy moods, the playfulness
with its undercurrent of deep feeling, which
they remember as characteristic of him and
his work. They bear the impress of their
origin, fugitive, desultory, fragmentary, and,
it may be, of unequal merit ; but to the under-
standing ear especially to the ear of friend-
ship they have a music and a pathos of their
own. They are in no sense autobiographic ;
but none the less indicate various phases of
sentiment, to which Charles Bowen felt moved
from time to time to give poetic form.
In one he strikes the note of the ambitious
and aspiring mind, checked and abashed by the
fast-approaching end.
214 LORD BOWEN. [1877.
" Life and new life Give me the cup once more.
No need to crown for me its rim with flowers
These would but bring again the scent of hours
Too sweet to scorn, too fleeting to deplore.
Youth's triumphs revel joys in golden store
Rich love itself hath brought me poor content,
For the grey thought that, ere the wine be spent,
Night comes apace to close the festal door.
Let boys wreath fate with lilies ; I, aflame
To do what yet I know not, strive a strife,
Smite once in thunder at all doors of fame,
And make dull worlds re-echo ; ask but life,
To slake this thirst, and be what men have been,
Ere I go hence, and am no longer seen."
In another he drops the plummet into the
void, and shows human love in a gloomy but
not unheroic phase.
"TO HERMIONE.
" Hermione, you ask me if I love ;
And I do love you. But indeed we drift
Fast by the flying, fleeting banks of life
Towards the inevitable seas. It seems
But yesterday I saw, as in a dream,
Childhood a flame of glory come and go.
And, lo ! to-day these hairs are flecked with time
Already ; and all the silver minutes glide
More dreamily than ever for the love
I bear you : hand in hand, and hour by hour,
VERSES OF THE WAYSIDE. 215
Floating beside you to the sounding falls,
Whence we must leap together into night.
Are we not happy ? Is not life serene ?
We do but pass, you say, from one bright shore
Upon a brighter ! Dear Hermione,
Be glad there is no shadow on your eyes ;
But this I know, that all the world beside
Seems faint with pain ; the rose upon your breast
Is not more full of perfume than the world
Of pain. I hear it even at your side
By day and night the illimitable sigh
Breathed upward to the throne of the deaf skies
A cry of hollow-cheeked and hungry men
Burning away life's fire for little ends ;
And women with wan hearts and starving eyes
Waiting for those they love to come again
From strange embraces ruined womanhood
And barren manhood, fruitful but of pain.
Such is the shore we float from ; for the shore,
The brighter shore, we reach, I only know
That it is night, Hermione, mere night,
Unbroken, unillumined, unexplored.
Come closer, lay your hand in mine ; your love
Is the one sure possession that will last.
Let us be brave, and when the Shadow comes
To beckon us to the leap, rise lightly up
And follow with firm eyes and resolute soul
Whither he leads one heart, one hand, to live
Together, or, if Death be Death, to die."
In another, conceived in a very different
mood, but with equal charm and grace, we find
2l6 LORD BOWEN. [1877.
friendship reassuring its recipient, and protest-
ing with elaborate, perhaps not unnecessary,
emphasis, that it is not love.
" Go, Song, and fall at Silvia's feet, and say
Thou art not Love but from a frozen sky
That knows not of Love's name nor of Love's way,
Hast fluttered idly to her door to die.
Shake from thy plumes, before thou meet her eye,
All passion veil thy gaze, forget thy pain,
And, if she take thee on her heart to lie,
Become a thing of beauty a soft strain
Filling her dreams with music. Should she deign
To ask what bird, in what enchanted grove,
Taught thee a note so tender, swear again,
By all thou boldest dear, it was not Love ;
Else she will drive thee, Song, into the night,
And lost my toil will be and thy delight."
Some of the love-songs have a Tennysonian
ring, but are none the less charming for their
frankly imitative form. For instance
"GOOD NIGHT, GOOD MORNING.
" The Sun, a shining orb, descends
Behind the mountain wold ;
Gloom gathers fast, the daylight ends ;
Sheep journey to the fold.
VERSES OF THE WAYSIDE. 217
Peace and farewell, ye torrent rills
Good night to earth and sky.
So homeward from the silent hills
We went, my love and I.
Come, sweet night. Day, take thy flight :
My love will make the darkness light.
" Rest to the earth the weary earth
Sweet rest : till far away
Upon the hills we saw the birth
And triumph of the day.
Again the migh% sun arose,
And on each mountain lawn
Began the million golden glows
That usher in the dawn.
Go, dear night. Come, purple light ;
Rise, Love, and make the morning bright.
" At noon I found these violets blue
Where early morning lies,
And brought them fresh with light and dew
Not purer than her eyes
To her who was my morning flower,
As is my flower of noon.
Soon comes a duskier twilight hour,
And night will follow soon.
Sweet face, stay : life ebbs away,
Be thou thy lover's evening ray."
On rare occasions Bowen addressed a general
audience on topics which lay outside the domain
of law. One of them was in December, 1888,
2l8 LORD BOWEN. [1891.
when he distributed the prizes at the City
of London School, and took the opportunity
of remarking on a controversy which was
attracting attention the value of examinations
as an educational method, and of the crammer,
the object at the moment of somewhat un-
reasonable objurgation. He told a good story
of a complaint of Chief Justice Cockburn that
an aged charwoman, whose duty it was to light
the fires in the Judge's rooms, had been carried
off by the Treasury in her declining years to
undergo a Civil Service examination. There
is a natural feeling that "an Englishman's
ignorance, like his house, is his castle a kind
of South Africa which ought to be closed to
explorers." As matters stand, the crammer
though he does not come across the path
of the real student, the real artist, or the real
man of science is not without his uses.
" Cramming is the tribute which idleness pays
to the excellence of industry. The crammer
does his best for his pupil. He may over-
NOVEL- READING. 21Q
load him, but he produces him, after all, in the
condition desired by the market."
In 1891, again, Bowen addressed the Wal-
sall Literary Society, and selected novel-reading
as his topic. Some touches recall the sort of
talk with which Bowen would amuse a congenial
circle.
" Few writers," he says, " have painted the outside
and, so far as there is an inside, the inside of ordinary
insipid characters better than Mr. Trollope. . . ."
" Eugene Sue was not fit either "to serve in heaven
or reign in hell. His distinct mediocrity of taste was
redeemed by wit, and enlivened by a kindly epicurean
familiarity with the world. The least superficial
quality he possessed was his frivolity, which sinks
to a considerable depth, though his other powers are
more easily exhausted."
George Sand's self-consciousness is glanced
at as a shortcoming of genius.
"The authoress who wishes to outlive her con-
temporaries must first learn to outlive her own
malaise." " Love-making," he observes elsewhere,
" seems to have been a natural taste even in the
primitive days ; but our modern familiarity with its
220 LORD BOWEN. [1893.
phenomena is partly due to the continuous exertions
of novelists. Much of love has only been learnt
under the instruction of some woman who has herself
only learnt it from a book."
He combats the realistic theory that " the
literary workman is entitled to portray the
pigsties of Epicurus, provided that the colour-
ing is masterly, the composition skilful, and the
pigs true to nature."
"The end of scientific inquiry is, unquestionably,
truth ; but the literature of the imagination is an
art, not a science, and its object is not truth, but
the truthful presentation of beauty, and of other
conceptions, which are really suited for the pen.
Authors are not bound by any divine law of their
being to surprise truth in all her hiding-places. Nor
is it necessary that everything should be described
in romance, any more than in real life it is the duty
of everybody to be photographed ... It is not the
absence of costume, but the presence of innocence
which makes the Garden of Eden."
On another occasion, in 1893, Charles Bowen
addressed a gathering of students of the Work-
ing Men's College, Great Ormond Street, an
ADDRESS AT WORKING MEN S COLLEGE. 221
institution in which he had, thirty-two years
before, taken an active interest He now broke
a friendly lance with Professor Mahaffy, who
had been saying some gloomy and disrespectful
things about popular education. The address
sparkles with flashes of the fun which played,
like an electric flame, over Charles Bowen's
most serious mood. He gives the Dublin
Professor a little gentle satire on his undue
pessimism ; but he evidently is to a large
degree in sympathy with his views.
" The first result of a great educational movement
is a general diffusion of mediocre knowledge, and it
is idle to expect a literary millennium at once to set
in. Till recently intelligence ran in a restricted
channel between boundaries that were ungenerously
narrow. The river has broken its banks and over-
whelmed the land ; it sweeps in a sounding sea over
the plains, and one can not be surprised that it does
not flow everywhere at its old depth. At such
periods in the onward march, a great deal is said,
done, and written that is below the level of creditable
learning. The noise of newly emancipated tongues
drowns the still small voice of culture. High standards
are not recognized, or cease to be impressive ; the
222 LORD BOWEN. [1893.
quality of the supply is affected by the quantity of
the demand, since cheap thought, like light claret, can
be produced on an extensive scale. The highways
and byways of literature are given up, so to speak,
to the literary bicyclist. He travels in a costume
peculiar to himself, and he considers the landscape
as his own. Expressions of violence are employed
to describe commonplace emotions. Towards indi-
viduals we practise the same indistinctness of judgment,
the same indifference to proportion. We pursue
successful men and women to their down-setting
and uprising ; we enjoy descriptions of their house-
hold furniture. Memorials are erected to every one
who will only die in the odour of respectability. We
write long biographies of nobody, and we celebrate
the centenaries of nothing."
Culture is naturally alarmed at the inroad
of Gothic hordes into regions sacred to litera-
ture and art, and at the turmoil incidental to
the invasion.
" One can even conceive of the most brilliant pro-
fessors at our Universities, under the influence of
temporary disquietude, jealously and suspiciously
mounting guard over their own educational blessings,
as if they were keeping an eye on their luggage at a
crowded railway station."
TRUE EDUCATION. 223
It is unfair, however, to criticize the inevit-
able incompleteness of a new system with
microscopic exactness.
"The bystander will misjudge the significance of
the change, if he concentrates his attention on the
roughness and unsightliness of the rude building-plots
on which the edifices of the future have only begun
to be laid out Reforms have, as a rule, to be pur-
chased at some sacrifice of the luxurious quiet and
picturesque amenity to which the past has been
accustomed, just as a railway interferes with the
seclusion of the village or the beauty of the valley."
But the education from which real ennoble-
ment may be hoped must not be estimated from
the commercial and mechanical point of view.
" Instruction ladled out in a hurry is not education.
The cultivation for market purposes of brute brain
power has its uses, public and private ; but the
market advantages of education are not the criterion
of its value to individuals or the nation. To teach
the young generation to snatch greedily at mental
improvement, with the sole purpose of disposing at a
profit of what they learn, is to narrow and injure
education. Education must not be regarded as a
mere ladder of advancement and advertisement, as a
224 LORD BOWEN. [1888-93.
means of pushing, in front of others, into an inner
circle, where the good things of this life are being
given away. Egotism will spoil education as it spoils
religion and as it spoils ethics. All three lose their
virtue and medicinal efficacy when selfishness settles
down upon them like a fog. Education does not
mean the knowing a little more Latin or Greek than
one's neighbour, or the application, for pecuniary
purposes, of a superior polish to one's own brains.
Its true purport and mission were discovered by
those who conferred on learning the name of 'the
humanities,' based on the conception of universal
sympathy with mankind. Education, touched by
this principle, ceases to be a personal struggle, and
becomes an illumination a training based on the
sense of human fraternity. Thus conceived, it is
desired as the best means of sharing the great
thoughts of the past, and comprehending the hopes
of the future. The point at which it kindles and
ennobles is where we first reach the atmosphere of
great men, great deeds, great ideas. Up to this
moment knowledge may have been a delicate luxury,
the satisfaction of a taste, the indulgence of a curious
passion. From and after such a moment we live,
not in ourselves, but in the fellowship of the greatest
thinkers and the best men. The story of the world,
thereupon, lights up into a narrative of evolution a
story of the conflicts and triumphs of freedom,
heroism, and truth. And, whatever be the ultimate
VISIT TO AMERICA. 225
catastrophes of the universe, they will not have
obscured for us the spectacle, on this tiny and perish-
able planet, of an unwearying race, of which we
ourselves are part, still linked together in prospective
and retrospective sympathy, still pressing onward,
still nursing the sacred fire, still cherishing ideals, still
hoping for perfection."
From his appointment as a Lord Justice of
Appeal to his promotion to the House of
Lords, in 1893, Bowen's life was of the same
laborious and uneventful tenor as in its earlier
stages. The claims of the Court of Appeal
were imperative and continuous. The judg-
ments there delivered authoritative declara-
tions of English law sometimes clearing away
obscurities, sometimes correcting mistakes of
long standing, sometimes modifying an old rule
in its application to new and altered conditions,
necessitated the utmost care, erudition, and
research, and left but scanty leisure for other
interests. Occasionally, the chance of a holi-
day presented itself. In 1883 the Canadian
Pacific Railway Company invited a party of
Q
226 LORD BO WEN. [1890.
distinguished Englishmen to travel over its
line, and enjoy its splendid hospitality. Lord
Coleridge, Hannen, and Charles Bo wen were
of the party. The expedition was not, so
far as Bowen was concerned, altogether a
success. Everything that hospitality could
suggest for the comfort of the guests was, of
course, forthcoming. Unluckily, it was im-
possible to preclude accidents, and two acci-
dents occurred. On both occasions Bowen
underwent a shaking, for which his nerves
were very ill prepared ; on the second, the
train broke away from the engine and ran
down an incline, and the travellers had to save
themselves from an impending smash by jump-
ing off the train, as occasion offered. Not
feeling well enough for a journey diversified
by such vicissitudes, Bowen broke off from the
party, and travelled slowly home by himself, not
much the better, thanks to these mishaps, for
his two crossings of the Atlantic.
In February, 1885, Bowen received tidings
ALEXANDER CRAIG SELLAR. 227
of a compliment which, I believe, gave him
greater pleasure than any of the honours
which had fallen to his lot. The master of
Balliol wrote :
"Mv DEAR LORD JUSTICE,
" I have the pleasure of announcing to you
that the College, in the exercise of this singular
privilege, yesterday elected you Visitor, if you are
willing to undertake the duties of that, not very
troublesome, office.
" We are all very glad of the election (which was
unanimous) and no one more than I am.
" Ever yours affectionately,
" B. JOWETT."
Early in 1890 Charles Bowen sustained a
great sorrow in the death of Alexander Craig
Sellar, one of his oldest and most valued friends.
Few losses could have cost him more. Sellar's
cheery and genial temperament, which enabled
him to render such important services to his
party in the House of Commons, made him
in private life the best of companions. No
man could tell a story better, or had a more
228 LORD BOWEN. [1890.
unfailing supply on hand ; his Parliamentary
experience had brought him into contact with
many men, and his native shrewdness and
insight had turned his opportunities to the
best account. But, with him, mirth was ever
mellowed with kindliness, and those who knew
him most intimately had the strongest sense
of his goodness of heart, his chivalrous sense
of honour, and the sincere kindness of nature
which gave a charm to his society. His health
had for long been uncertain and failing, and
the strain of his Parliamentary life hastened
the collapse. In the summer of 1889, he went
to Homburg, but only to return a dying man.
Several months of suffering ensued, and in the
spring of 1890 the end came. Throughout the
illness Charles Bowen's continuous letters of
gossip and affection had done much to cheer
his friend. He was at this time himself in
extremely bad health. He had been attacked
by the prevailing epidemic of influenza, and
suffered a long and painful illness. The disease
VISIT TO VALESCURE. 22Q
affected the nerves of the eye, and gave him
many weeks of acute suffering. He was greatly
prostrated, and his general health received a
serious shock. When, at last, he was sufficiently
recovered to allow of his removal to Colwood,
the change seemed to work but little good.
At times he would brighten up, and talk with
something of his accustomed gaiety and zest ;
but he underwent frequent relapses. It was
at last resolved to try the experiment of a
sojourn on the Riviera. His old friend, Mr.
Bullock Hall, was residing at Valescure, and
offered him and Lady Bowen a cordial welcome.
Subsequently, the Bowens moved into another
villa, which the kindness of a friend placed at
their disposal, where, a little later, he heard
of his father's death, at Bordighera, the conse-
quence of an attack of influenza. Mr. Bowen
was now in his eighty-ninth year, and had, up
to the last, preserved his powers, mental and
physical, unimpaired.
In March, 1890, Professor Jowett writes
230 LORD BOWEN. [1892.
to Charles Bowen with reference to these
events.
" MY DEAR BOWEN,
" I was going to write to you, as I have
been any time during the last six weeks, when I saw
in the paper the death of your venerable father. I
fear that you have had a great deal of trouble lately ;
but I hardly count this as a trouble, for he was a most
excellent man, and lived beyond the usual term,
and he was very happy, and a great part of his happi-
ness was your distinction and success. And now he
is where we all shall be some day with God.
" Since we met, we have also lost another dear
friend, about whom I shall have much to say to you
when we see one another again. Your words were
the greatest comfort to him and to his family.
" What I am chiefly anxious about is your health.
You have had a very long and depressing illness, and
must have had the thoughts which usually accompany
such an illness. I suppose that resignation is an
alternative which has sometimes crossed your mind.
I hope that you will exhaust all the possibilities of
rest and vacation before you have recourse to this
dernier ressort. But, if you should be unable to go
on at present, do not look at the prospect as at all
desperate. You will have leisure for reading and
thinking, and probably the opportunity of using your
VISIT TO BRAEMAR. 231
great legal faculty in the House of Lords more
liberty, and, therefore, more force for any purpose.
" I fear that I must have seemed very negligent of
you in your trouble, when I think of all the regard
and affection which you have shown towards me for
so many years. I have really thought of you con-
stantly ; but the life which I lead during term-time
makes it difficult for me to write letters."
In 1892 Bowen was still suffering from the
troublesome consequences of his illness.
" I have had a bad time of it," he writes to Mr.
Justice Mathew, in February of this year ; " Last
week I certainly was much worse ; but I am once
again going forward. The terrible weakness that I
find the result of influenza, Butt, apparently, doesn't
experience. But some people do ; and one begins to
despair of ever getting off the sofa. In other respects
I am progressing well enough. I mean to sit next
term, coute que coute. Like Mrs. Chick, I think efforts
must be made."
In the autumn of 1892 Charles Bowen and
his wife passed some weeks at Braemar. His
companions there observed with pleasure a
marked improvement in his health and spirits.
232 LORD BOWEN. [1893.
"The shadow of his mortal illness," writes the
Warden of Merton, speaking of this period, "hung
over him long before its nature was acknowledged ;
but I, for one, was deceived by the wonderful re-
cuperative power which he exhibited in 1892. During
August of that year I was staying at Braemar, to
which he came, partly by my advice, and where he
settled with Lady Bo wen. . . . This was the last
time that I saw him at his best ; and when I remarked
his buoyancy of spirits and vigour in walking over
the hills, I became quite reassured as to the sound-
ness of his constitution. Judge Hughes and his wife,
together with other congenial friends, happened to
be there, and he was soon joined by his brother
Edward, who accompanied us on several mountain
excursions, amongst others in ascents of Lochnagar
and Ben M'Dhui, both of which involved several
hours' stiff climbing. Bowen declined riding on
Lochnagar, and dispensed with his pony for a great
part of the way on Ben M'Dhui. After my departure,
he made a second ascent of Ben M'Dhui, with other
long expeditions. On his return, he looked better
than I had seen him, but the effect did not last very
long."
Bowen returned to the South greatly
benefited by the sojourn at Braemar, but his
wife's health was now beginning to give him
A LORD OF APPEAL. 233
great anxiety. Matters grew worse as the
winter advanced, and for many months he was
haunted by the dread of impending calamity.
In the spring of 1893 it fell to his lot to go
upon Circuit, a duty which his wife's prolonged
illness rendered especially burthensome. Those
who were about him observed with pain the
load which was weighing upon his spirits, and
the serious effects of mental harassment upon
a physique which at the best was barely equal
to the calls upon it.
In August of this year Lord Hannen was
compelled by failing health to retire from his
duties as a Lord of Appeal, and Charles Bowen
succeeded to his post. The appointment was
heartily welcomed alike by the profession, the
public, and the intimate personal circle, who
hoped that the comparative lightness of the
work might conduce to a restoration of his
health, about which many were becoming
increasingly anxious. " You need do nothing,"
said one of his friends, in enjoining this aspect
234 LORD BOWEN. [1893.
of the case, "but assent to the judgments of
your colleagues." " In that case," said Bowen,
" I had better take the title of Lord Concurry."
He had, unhappily, no opportunity of showing
how impossible such a role would be to his
ardent and conscientious nature. Shortly after
his promotion, the Government requested Lord
Bowen to undertake a piece of work which
lay outside the regular scope of his new duties,
but which he did not, on public grounds, feel
justified in declining. This was to act on a
Commission nominated by the Home Secretary
for the purpose of inquiring into the circum-
stances of an unfortunate collision between a
small body of soldiers and a mob at the Ackton
Hall Colliery at Featherstone, the property of
Lord Marsham, in Yorkshire. In the summer
of 1893 the West Riding miners had gone out
on strike, and at the close of July some eighty
thousand had been thrown out of employment.
In September, the concentration of the Police
Force at Doncaster for the race week had left
FEATHERSTONE RIOT COMMITTEE. 235
the county in an abnormally undefended con-
dition in case of a breach of the peace. At
the Ackton Hall Colliery a party of twenty-
eight soldiers had found themselves confronted
with a mob of some two thousand persons, who
threatened to destroy the colliery works. The
officer in command ordered a volley, and two
persons were killed. The Committee Lord
Bowen, Sir A. K. Rollitt, and Mr. R. B.
Haldane were requested to inquire into the
circumstances. The Report is of interest as
containing a clear enunciation of the law not
previously free from obscurity defining the
duties of citizens, official and lay, civil and
military in giving aid against actual or appre-
hended violence at moments of public disturb-
ance. For Lord Bowen's friends, the Report
possesses a melancholy interest, for it was his
last public work.
He was not, when he undertook the task, in
a condition to justify that or any other intel-
lectual or physical effort. He performed it as
236 LORD BOWEN. [1893.
every piece of work which fell to his lot with
punctilious care. His address on opening the
Inquiry was observed as a type of dignified
and self-contained eloquence. The Report
itself bears the impress of thoroughness,
research, and unwearying solicitude to deal with
a grave question as its importance deserved.
But it was the work of a man who knew that
the close of his labours was near at hand.
His health had been declining throughout the
year. In the autumn he went to Braemar, the
air of which had done him so much good the
previous year. But the result was disappoint-
ing. He made several walking-expeditions,
and seemed for a while to be gaining strength ;
but the friends who were with him on both
occasions could not but observe a marked
deterioration of his bodily powers. He came
back ill, and was met by the news that the
Master of Balliol lay in a dying condition at
Headly Park, the residence of his old pupil,
Mr. Justice Wright. Thither Bowen hurried at
DEATH OF THE MASTER OF BALLIOL. 237
once, and arrived just in time for an affectionate
recognition during Jowett's last remaining
hours of consciousness.
The last occasion on which Charles Bowen
took an active part was one which I believe
that, if he had had the choice, he would have
chosen as the crowning act of his life. On
December 2, 1893, a meeting was held in
the theatre of the University of London, in
Burlington Gardens, to consider the forms
which could most appropriately be given to
memorials to the late Master of Balliol. The
Speaker presided. Lord Salisbury, as Chancellor
of the University, moved the first resolution,
expressing regret at the loss which the country
and the University had sustained in the late
Master's death. He was seconded by the
Lord Chancellor and Mr. Asquith, who pro-
nounced an eloquent and feeling eulogium
upon Jowett's character and work. Lord
Coleridge next moved a resolution to the effect
that the Master's memory should be perpetuated,
238 LORD BOWEN. [1893.
and his work carried on by raising a fund which
might from time to time be applied to maintain,
strengthen, and extend the educational work of
Balliol College. He spoke with all the grace
and charm of which he was so perfect a master,
of his friend of fifty years for he had become a
Scholar of Balliol on the same day as Jowett
became a Fellow " of the loss which any fast
and firm friend feels at the departure of another,
and feels not the less because he knows that
his own departure is at hand." Lord Bowen
seconded the Chief Justice in a speech chiefly
directed to explaining the form which it was
proposed that the memorial should assume.
" I do not propose," he said, " to add to by touching
to tarnish the tribute of affectionate and grateful
words which have been offered this afternoon to the
Master's memory by those in the State and in the
University, who knew him. I desire only to add a
few simple words by way of explanation, and, if
justification be needed, of justification of the form
which this Resolution has taken. This is a unique
occasion. When great men pass away, the public
retains a grateful sense of their services ; and few
THE JOWETT MEMORIAL. 239
great men pass away, like the late Master of Balliol,
surrounded by an atmosphere of affection which
enabled him, at the close of an honoured life, to
count his friends, not, as some happy people can, by
scores, but by hundreds and thousands. For I will
venture to say that there is no part of the British
empire in which he had not friends and lovers, who
heard of his death with the deepest regret, almost
amounting to dismay. This is a unique occasion,
because we have here amongst us a large body of
those who owe a debt which nothing can repay, and
no words describe, to the great College, the mainte-
nance of which was the life work of the late Master.
Beyond and outside there is a larger and still more
important portion of the world, composed of men of
every opinion, of every shade of thought, political and
theological, who, differing as they must from the late
Master in many respects, are all united in this : that
there never has been given in our generation a nobler
type of a beautiful and devoted life. To those of us
who were Balliol men, not much need be said in
favour of the Resolution which Lord Coleridge has
proposed. Nothing that we can do for our ancient
mother, Balliol College, can wipe out the debt of
gratitude we owe her. But of the larger portion of
the world outside who are interested in Balliol only
as one of the branches of a great University, perhaps
it is not too much to ask that they should trust us
with regard to this Resolution, as having been proposed
240 LORD BOWEN. [1894.
with the sole design of prospering the work to
which the late Master gave himself, and of selecting
that form of testimonial which would be most grateful
to himself, of which no better illustration can be
found than the perusal in the morning's papers of
the Will of the late Master, in which, after remem-
bering his friends and relations and dependents, he
devoted the whole residue of his modest fortune to
the advancement of learning in Balliol College. . . .
May I say that if the late Master can be touched at
all with knowledge of what is passing here, nothing
would give him a deeper sense of the affection and
sympathy of those friends and pupils and lovers
whom he has left behind than a proposal such as that
embodied in Lord Coleridge's resolution; that he
would feel that, in adopting it, we recognized and
understood the work which he has done, that the seed
which he had sown had fallen upon fertile soil, and
the labour of his long and devoted life had not been
in vain."
Those who heard Lord Bowen speak noticed
with sorrow his air of feebleness and distress.
It was his last public utterance and Lord Cole-
ridge's. In a few months both had followed
the friend whose loss was now their* common
sorrow, and whose merits their common theme.
DECLINING HEALTH. 241
Lord Bowen's health began rapidly to give
way. Early in the following year, symptoms of
the gravest order discovered themselves ; and,
though it was still possible to question their full
significance, it was scarcely more than a hope
against hope that those who knew all could
allow themselves to entertain. When the
dreadful surmise became a certainty, there
seemed still a chance the last straw for love
to catch at that the progress of the malady
might be retarded, and that some months of
life might still be spared to him. Lord Bowen
resolved that they could best be employed for
himself and for those to whom his life was
dearer than it was, probably, to himself by
continuing, so long as it was physically possible,
in the discharge of his public duties, and in the
social intercourse which his many friendships
brought naturally within his reach. For this it
was, of course, necessary that his real condition,
and its inevitable result, should not be known
beyond the narrow circle who could be trusted
R
242 LORD BOWEN. [1894.
not to let the dreadful secret become public
property. It soon, however, became obvious
that this programme a sad one at the best
was not destined to be realized. The disease
made progress too rapid to allow of a hope for
the shortest respite. When it became certain
that there was no room for hope, and that the
end was near at hand, Bowen bowed with
fortitude and submission to the overruling Will,
and devoted himself to making the period of
his suffering as little gloomy and painful as
possible to those around him. The bodily
distress incidental to his illness was endured
with unwavering serenity, His cheerfulness
remained to the last. " In my life," said Sir
W. Savory, who was consulted in the last
illness, " I have never seen anything so touch-
ing as the courteous consideration which that
dying man expresses in every word and
gesture."
The news of the extreme gravity of Lord
Bowen's illness, and of its near and certain
LETTER FROM MR. GLADSTONE. 243
issue, came with a painful surprise to many of
the friends who, though they knew him to be
in bad health, had witnessed his recovery on
former occasions, and now were venturing to
hope that the vitality of his constitution might
carry him through another trial. Only a few
weeks before his death did the terrible secret
escape, nor did it even then spread beyond a
very limited circle. Mr. Gladstone, with whose
recently published translation of " Horace "
Charles Bowen's last hours of study had been
employed, wrote to Lord Rendel a letter of
warm sympathy.
"Aprils, 1894.
" I cannot help troubling you with a line to say for
myself how deeply I feel for you all, and even, let me
add, how much more deeply I feel with you all, as to
the alarming illness of Lord Bowen and its probable,
though, I would fain hope, uncertain upshot. I can-
not help looking at such a man, with regard to the
interest which his country and his race have in him.
His great profession abounds with able and dis-
tinguished men. But I am not sure that there was
244 LORD BOWEN. [1894.
ever one among them from whom so much was to be
hoped as from him, with reference to all those highest
interests of mankind which are at stake in the con-
troversies and in the general movement of our unquiet,
though most deeply interesting, times. It so often
seems as if those were about to be taken early from
the world whom the world can least afford to lose.
But this is, after all, endeavouring to mend the
government of God, whose works and ways are so far
beyond our feeble grasp.
" I feel confident that he will look with a Christian
eye upon the prospect before him, and that the aid
will be found sufficient for him, which has been suffi-
cient for so many that have preceded us, and on
which alone we that remain have to rely. Through
his great trial may the grace and power of God
effectually carry him to the land of rest.
" It would be a satisfaction to learn that his suffer-
ing was abated, and I trust that Lady Bowen bears
up, and is borne up, under the heavy trial."
Among the letters which Lord Bowen re-
ceived at this time is one from Lord Coleridge,
which the friends of both men, each so close to
the end of his journey, will care to have pre-
served.
LETTER FROM LORD COLERIDGE. 245
" March 4, 1894. S
"Mv DEAR CHARLIE,
" I do not at all like the message you sent
me, though it was dear and good and like yourself to
send it. I shall not be back in London from Stafford,
where I go on Tuesday, till the I3th or I4th, and
then, if you see fit to see me, I shall make my way to
you at once. Meanwhile, though you do not need
me to tell you, I am constantly thinking of you, and
going back in thought to those days, when for years,
we almost lived together, and when you were a friend
such as I never had but one, and shall never have
again. I will not try to write out my heart You
know it already. God bless you, and give you back
to those who love you. My love to Lady Bowefi.
" Always most affectionately yours,
" COLERIDGE."
During the early days of April, Charles
Bowen's illness made rapid progress, and it
became obvious that a few more days must
bring the end.
Those for whom this memoir is compiled
know far better than I the incidents of those
jast solemn hours : the sweetness and serenity
246
LORD BOWEN.
[1894.
A t
with which suffering was endured ; the con-
sideration for others, which personal distress
seemed only to quicken ; the fortitude, and
resignation, and, to use his own almost dying
words, " profound humility " with which he met
his end. To their recollections they may best
be left, unspoilt by any attempt to shape them
into words. A few messages of affection to
some of his friends were the last that reached
the outer world. On the morning of April
loth he passed away.
He was buried at Colwood, near the country
home where so much of his leisure had been
passed. The spot is a lovely one. The church-
yard commands a wide sweep of undulating
country, studded with the familiar objects of
a typical English landscape. The sky was
flecked with the clouds and showers of early
spring as his friends gathered to his grave,
but presently the afternoon became lovely and
serene. His son, and his old and faithful friend,
the Dean of Westminster, performed the last
FUNERAL AT COLWOOD. 247
office of friendship and religion. As the
solemn rite proceeded, a skylark sprang into
the air, and, as if in unconscious derision
of human sorrow, poured out a flood of joyous
song, which still rang in our ears as we left
him to his long rest. How much brightness
and sweetness seemed to many of us to have
vanished out of life !
At the same hour, another service was held
in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, where a great gather-
ing of Charles Bowen's colleagues and friends
assembled to deplore their common loss. One
of the officiating clergy was Lord Bowen's
much-esteemed friend, the Rev. William Rogers,
whose companionship at the Athenaeum and
elsewhere had been among the pleasures of
later life. He too has passed from amongst
us. The Benchers of Lincoln's Inn resolved
on a permanent memorial, and an epitaph by
the polished pen of Mr. Justice Denman
perpetuates the testimony of Bowen's contem-
poraries,
248 LORD BOWEN. [1894.
In the vestibule of Lincoln's Inn Chapel a
marble tablet bears the following inscription :
"IN MEMORIAM VIRI DILECTISSIMI
CAROLI SYNGE CHRISTOPHERI
BARONIS BOWEN DE COLWOOD
HUIVSCE HOSPITII NUPER E CONSILIIS
GUI ^QUALES FERE OMNES
PUERO ADOLESCENTI ET ^TATE FLORENTI
SE IPSOS POSTPONENDOS SENSERUNT
RUGBEIA QUOD ILLUM IN LUDIS ET IN STUDIIS
PR^ESTANTEM INSTITUERIT ADHUC GLORIATUR
OXONIA ILLUM COLLEGIUMQUE SUUM BALLIOLENSE
INTER ALUMNOS LECTISSIMOS COMMEMORANT
ILLUM OMNES JURISPRUDENTIUM ORDINES
COLLEGAM SOCIUM AMICUM
NON MAGIS ELOQUENTIA DOCTRINA SAPIENTIA
QUAM MODESTIA COMITATE ET SALIBUS
EXIMIUM AGNOVERUNT
NULLI QUAM NOBIS FLEBILIOR OCCIDIT
CRUDELI HEV MORBO ABREPTUS
A. D. IV. ID. APRIL
A. S. MDCCCXCIV
^ETATIS SUJE LX."
Rugbeians, old and present, did similar
honour to the memory of their school-fellow.
Oxford, a few weeks later, added a fitting note
SPEECH BY THE PUBLIC ORATOR. 249
of sorrow to the general lament over one of
the choicest of her sons. At the Commemora-
tion in June of 1894, Dr. Merry, Rector of
Lincoln College, and Public Orator of the
University, discharging the traditional duty
of his office, mentioned, among other memorable
events of the year, his old college friend's
death in terms of graceful eulogy.
" Id quoque aegre ferimus, quod denuo Balliolensium
vicem dolere oporteat, quibus et Magistrum suum
deflere cohtigerit, et Visitatorem ; alterum plenum
annis ac laboribus paene defunctum, alterum tem-
pestivam modo maturitatem assecutum, et summis
honoribus ac titulis nuperrime cumulatum.
"Venit mihi in mentem jucundissima CAROLI
BOWEN recordatio, quocum ego ipse studiorum com-
munitate et hilari sodalicio quondam fui conjunctus.
Quantam spem in optimo illo juvene collocavimus
cequales ; quantum successum augarari, quanto
amore prosequi gaudebamus ! Lectissimo illi atque
ornatissimo adolescenti, omni lepore et venustate
affluent!, Musis amico doctrinaeque studiis dedito,
nihil fere aliud denegaverat Natura nisi longum
vitas spatium. Dederat sane miram ingenii per-
spicaciam ; dederat facundiam, urbanitatem, elegan-
250 LORD BOWEN. [1894.
tiam, ita ut nemo fere in judiciis aut causas melius
orare aut leges luculentius interpretari posset His
accedebat summa humanitas ac mores suavissimi ; nee
verborum gratia deerat nee sermonis festivitas, seii
scribendo vacaret, sive cum sodalibus colloqueretur.
Dulcem animam avere atque valere jubemus."
To Lord Coleridge, the loss of Charles
Bowen was a grievous personal sorrow.
"On the 20th of March," he writes to Sir M. E.
Grant Duff, " Bowen borrowed a Horace of me, and
spoke of a long sick-leave to get rest, and come back
to his work really refreshed. I knew he had not a
month to live, and that interview was hard work.
You, dear old friend, immensely over-rate what I did
for him. It was not a tenth, or a hundredth, part of
what he did for me; but I did love him with my
whole heart, and I thank God for the blessing of his
friendship. . . . Jowett might have given an estimate
of him, for no one has done so yet ; but he has gone
first. How Bowen was loved, and how he deserved it !
" Like clouds that rake the mountain summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother
From sunshine to the sunless land ! "
One other expression of affection from Lord
Coleridge, dictated during his last illness, and
LETTER FROM LORD COLERIDGE. 25!
signed with literally a dying hand, came to
Lady Bowen a few weeks after her husband's
death. Lord Coleridge himself died a few
days later.
"Do not suppose, my dear Lady Bowen, that I
have forgotten or neglected your very kind letter ;
it is useless to try to express what the loss of Charles
Bowen is to me. I will not attempt it : I will only
say that it is a loss which I feel every day if I said
every waking hour, I should not exaggerate the depth
of my feeling for him. For four weeks I have been
hovering between life and death ; they tell me now
that I shall recover, but if I do, I shall come back
into a poorer world, which never can be to me again
what it was a couple of months ago."
Here my task ends. Would that the por-
trait were more worthy of its theme ! I have
tried to picture Charles Bowen's temperament
sweet, joyous, affectionate ; instinct with
natural gaiety, but crossed with sombre strains
of thought and a melancholy mood. Conscious
of great powers, which a continued series of
successes forbade him to forget, and fired with
the ambition to play the part in life for which
252 LORD BOWEN.
he felt the capacity, he was haunted, through-
out, with the misgivings which are the heritage
of thoughtful natures misgivings as to the
scope and limitations of human existence, and
the real value of the prizes which life offers.
He was haunted, too, by sentiments and
motives alien to the sterner stuff of which
ambition should be made delicate considera-
tion for others courtesy, the outcome of a
generous soul nicety of moral judgment, a
fastidious taste. So it was that, in the struggles
and rivalries of professional life, he never made
an enemy, never provoked a grudge. So, too,
it was that in a wide circle of friends his death
was felt as one of the events which irreparably
dim the brightness of existence. It was, indeed,
to a "poorer world" poorer in all that stirs
the soul to admiration and love, that we re-
turned the day we laid Charles Bowen in his
grave.
INDEX
Ainger, Rev. Canon, Master of
the Temple, 192
"Alabama Claims," pamphlet on,
116
America, visit to, 225
Asquith, Rt. Hon., 148, 237
Athenaeum Club, 200, 212
Austen Leigh, Rev. A., 42, 61-
63 ; letter to, 95
Ballantine, Serjeant, 137
Bella, foundering of the, 135
Birrell, A., 191
Bowen, C. S. C., Lord, bom
1835, II ; school at Lille, 13 ;
at Blackheath, 16; at Rugby,
1850, 20; Parker Theological
Prize, 1853, 23 ; Latin Essay
and Queen's Medal for Modern
History, 1853, 24; Balliol
Scholarship, 24 ; Rugby Ath-
letics, 27 ; Oxford, 1854, 32 ;
Hertford Scholarship, 1855,52 ;
Ireland Scholarship, 1857, 52 ;
Chancellor's Prize for Latin
Verse, 54; Balliol Fellowship,
1857, 60; First Class, 1858,
6 1 ; Arnold Historical Prize,
1859, 64 ; Oxford amusements,
69; hard work at Oxford, 70;
letter to A. A. Leigh, 71, 81 ;
from Goslar to A. A. Leigh, 87,
88; translations, "Sands of Dee,"
77 ; " Crossing the Bar," 79 ;
address to Birmingham Law
Students' Society, 1884, 89;
letter to Craig Sellar, 91 ;
enters Mr. Christie's chambers,
93 ; travels in France and Italy,
95; called to the Bar, 1861,
95 ; engagement, 1861, first
sessions, 98 ; joins the Saturday
Review, 100 ; secedes from the
Saturday Review, 102 ; mar-
riage, 1862, 106; tour to the
Riviera, 112; tour to Nor-
way, 112 ; birth of eldest son,
William, 1862 ; Maxwell, 1865,
116; Ethel, 1869; early times
at the Bar, 129 ; appointed
Junior Standing Counsel to the
Treasury, 1872, 145 ; tour to
Stockholm, St. Petersburg,
Moscow, Kiev, Constantinople,
1878, 157 ; appointed a Judge,
1879, 157 ; declining health,
159 ; summer at Llantysilio,
1880, 160; letter to Hon. G.
Brodrick, 161 ; purchases cot-
tage at Slaugham Common,
1872, 151 ; settles at Colwood,
254
INDEX.
1 88 1, 151 ; speech at Balliol,
J 877 153; appointed a Lord
Justice of Appeal, 1888, 163 ;
disinclination for legal author-
ship, 176; address to Birming-
ham Law Students' Society,
historic method applied to Law,
1884, 177 ; essay in the Law
Quarterly on the effect of recent
Law Reforms, 181 ; essay in
Mr. Humphrey Ward's Jubilee
Volume on " Administration of
the Law," 1887, 183; Com-
mittee of Council of Judges,
185 ; articles epitomizing its
Report, 185 ; in Society, 187 ;
the "Dilettanti" Club, the
Athenaeum, the Literary
Society, "The Club," 188 ;
elected Visitor of Balliol Col-
lege, 227 ; Lord of Appeal,
233 ; death, 246
Bowen, Rev. Christopher, 1 1 ;
curate of Woolaston, curate of
Abbey Church, Bath, St.
Thomas, Winchester, 12; death,
229
Bowen, Edward, 13, 16
, William, 116
, Maxwell, born, 1865, 116
, William, born, 1862, 116
, Ethel, born 1869, 132
Bradley, Dean, 20
Braemar, visit to, 231
Brodrick, Hon. George, Warden
of Merton, 43
Bullock Hall, 42
Butler, Arthur G., 44, 56 ,
Chamberlain, Right Hon. J., 131
City of London School, address
to, 219
Classical Review, Professor Sellar
in, 207
Cockburn, Chief Justice, 138
Cole, Rev. W. C, 43. 52, 57
Coleridge, Lord, 9, 192 ; letters
from, 238, 245, 251
Colwood, burial at, 246
Congreve, Richard, 45
Conington, John, 44
Cook, J. Douglas, editor of the
Saturday Review, 99
Cotton, Rev. G. E. L., 20
Cunynghame, H. H., Under-
secretary at the Home Office,
148
D'Alton, Count, 12
Davey, Lord, 44; estimate of
Lord Bowen, 164
" Delphi " prize essay, 1858, 64
Denman, Hon. G., 191 ; epitaph
by, 247
Dicey, A. V., 59, 61
Du Maurier, George, 191
Durham, Dean of, 40
Edinburgh Review, on " Essays
and Reviews," 46
Ellis, Robinson, 20
Esher, Lord, estimate of Lord
Bowen, 175
" Essays and Reviews," 46
" Essay Society," 56
Featherstone Riot Commission,
235
Fry, Lord Justice, estimate of
Lord Bowen, 166
Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E.,
letter from, 243
Goschen, Right Hon. George J.,
44
Goslar, life at, 85
Goulburn, Rev., 29
Grant, Sir Alexander, 43
Grant-Duff, Sir M. E., 48, 153,
185, 191
Graves, Miss Frances Steel, 124
Green, T. H., 20
INDEX.
255
Harcourt, Sir W. Vernon, 100
Hawkins, Hon. Mr. Justice, 138
Hereford, Bishop of, J. Percival,
61
Hermione, lines to, 214
" Historicus," 119
Holland, T. E., Chichele Pro-
fessor of International Law, 61
Hope, Mr. A. J. Beresford, loo
Hughes, T., 123
James, Mr. II., 191
Jenkyns, Dr., 37
Jowett, tutor at Balliol, 9, 37 ;
Commentary on Pauline Epis-
tles, 38 ; attacks on, 39 ; essays
and reviews, 46; letter to C.
Bowen, on his marriage, 97 ;
letter from, 123, 230; death
of, 237 ; memorial meeting to,
237
Kenealy, 138
Lake, Dean of Durham, 40
Lecky, Mr. W. E. H., 191
Liddon, Canon, 191
Lincoln, Rector of, Merry, 42 ^
Lincoln's Inn Chapel, memorial
service at, 247 ; inscription on
tablet in vestibule of, 248
London, life in, 1858, 89
Lyall, Sir A., 191
Mackonochie Case, the, 148
Mahaflfy, Professor, on popular
education, 220
Maine, Sir H., 100
Mark Pattison, 71
Master of Balliol, 9
Mathew, J. C., Hon. Mr. Justice,
138 ; letters to, 163, 197, 202 ;
estimate of Lord Bowen, 171
Merry, 249
Merton, Warden of, 232
Nettlefold and Chamberlain, 131
Newman at Balliol, 41
Nightingale, Miss, 55
Norway, tour in, 113
Novel-reading, address on, 219
Oakley, John, Dean of Man-
chester, 59
Orator, Public, at Oxford, 249
" Old Mathew," a Wordsworthian
parody, 143
Oxford, Reform movement at, 35 ;
state of parties at, 35 ; Newman,
J. H., 35
" Oxford Essays," 45
Palmer, Rev. Archdeacon E., 40
Pattison, M., 53
Pearson, Charles, 44
Percival, Rev. J., Bishop of Here-
ford, 6 1
Pollock, Chief Baron, 129
Rhoades, H. T., 21 v
Riddell, tutor at Balliol, 40
Royal Commission, reforms at
Oxford, 47
Salisbury, Lord, 237
Sandars, T. C., 43
" Sebastopolis," Oxford Prize
Poem, 55
Sellar, A. Craig, 42, 63 ; letter
to, 91 ; death of, 227
, Professor W. G., 207
Selwyn, Rev. E., 17
Smith, Henry J., 40
, Goldwin, 100
Speaker, The, 237
Stanley, Arthur, Dean of West-
minster, 101
Stanley of Alderley, Lady, 123
Steele, Lady, 12
Stephen, Sir J. F., 131, 191
256
INDEX.
Tail, Dr., 31, 32
Tichborne Case, 132
, Sir John, 133
lotnes Bribery Commission, 131
Union Debating Society, Oxford,
59 ; Bowen, President of, 60
Valescure, visit to, 229
Venables, George S., 100
Verses of the Wayside, 114, 213 ;
Norway, 115
Virgil, Eclogues " and " ^neid,"
Translation of, 202
Walpole, Mr. Spencer, 191
Walsall Literary Society, Address
to, 219
Wedgwood, Mrs., 132
Westminster, Dean of, 20, 191
Wodehouse, E., M.P. for Bath, 61
Working Men's College, Address
to, 220
THE END.
BY WILLIAM CLOWES AMD SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLBS.
THE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Santa Barbara
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW.
Series 9482