ARLY VICTORIAN 
 .ND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 E. S. P. HAYNES
 
 EARLY VICTORIAN 
 AND OTHER PAPERS
 
 BY THE SAME WRITER 
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 with much interesting allusion, and always in such a way 
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 EARLY VICTORIAN 
 AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 BY 
 
 E. S. P. HAYNES 
 
 ELKIN MATHEWS 
 
 VIGO STREET LONDON 
 
 M CM VIII
 
 LONDON: 
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 H)e&fcate& 
 
 TO 
 
 H. BELLOC, ESQ., M.P.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 MY dedication of this little volume to my friend, 
 Mr. H. Belloc, seems to me particularly appro- 
 priate because he is a Liberal and a Catholic, 
 and in these capacities poignantly appeals to the 
 innate Toryism which is part of my heritage as 
 an Englishman. I once asked a great-uncle of 
 mine if church services had not improved since 
 the days of his infancy, and he only remarked in 
 feeling tones, " Give me back my old barn with 
 the barrel-organ inside it." He was not, as might 
 be surmised, an Evangelical, but a sceptic, who 
 yet yearned to resuscitate the things of his child- 
 hood. Most Englishmen share the same instinct. 
 It is either the past or the future that possesses 
 a glamour for men and women. It is the past 
 that appeals to me and the future that appals 
 me, and if anyone considers my attitude un- 
 reasonable let him spend a few weeks in 
 Chicago. 
 
 These little papers centre round the almost 
 intimate affection one feels, not for the past that
 
 Vlll PREFACE 
 
 is already dead, but for the past that is in process 
 of dying, for the old things that are broken up 
 and distributed when the parental home ceases 
 to exist, or that one tumbles upon in the course 
 of winding-up the estate of an ancient spinster 
 lady. 
 
 That my ancestors would have long tolerated 
 my society or have approved of my remarks on 
 many topics I scarcely venture to suppose, but 
 they would probably have been pleased at my 
 thinking them on the whole braver and honester 
 and more full of character than the type of 
 person who flourishes nowadays. And Mr. 
 Belloc, essentially laudator teniporis acti, no 
 doubt agrees with me, for it is in his writings 
 that I discern more clearly than elsewhere the 
 appreciation of the simple, honest, and kindly 
 folk of the Early and Middle Victorian period. 
 Perhaps also he will pardon me for explaining 
 that Liberalism appeals to all my Tory instincts 
 because it still conserves the jolly old dreams of 
 the sixties when everyone was, or was about to 
 be, good and great and free, and because his 
 party has seldom been allowed by the electorate 
 to reform any abuse of less than fifty years' 
 standing. For such is the Toryism of this 
 country that only those who profess and call 
 themselves Tories are allowed to introduce 
 modern reforms at short notice, while professed
 
 PREFACE IX 
 
 Liberals are compelled to fall back upon the 
 mature wisdom that distinguishes thinkers of 
 such respectable antiquity as Rousseau and 
 Cobden, not to mention Dr. Watts and Mr. 
 Martin Tupper. 
 
 But I must not be drawn into political dis- 
 putations, and, in conclusion, can only request 
 the indulgence of the reader and reviewer to the 
 trivialities which have amused me on Saturday 
 afternoons and Sunday mornings. My thanks 
 are due to Mr. Reginald Smith, K.C., for per- 
 mission to reprint "Lady Hamilton and Horatia" 
 and " Oxford and Cambridge, a Study in Types," 
 from the Corn/till, to the editor of the Morning 
 Post in respect of" Le Bonheur de ce Monde," to 
 Mr. C. R. Buxton in respect of " Early Victorian 
 Characteristics," and to Mr. C. R. Buxton and 
 Mr. Lane in respect of "A Romance of 1821 " 
 and " Old Humphrey's Walks in London." The 
 first appeared in the Independent Review, and the 
 other two in the Albany Review. 
 
 ST. JOHN'S WOOD, 
 August 1908.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Early Victorian Characteristics .... i 
 
 A Study in Bereavement 9 
 
 Lady Hamilton and " Horatia" . . . . 17 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge, a Study in Types . 26 
 
 A Romance of \%2\ 38 
 
 Le Bonheur de ce Monde 45 
 
 Old Humphrey's Walks in London . . .51 
 
 The "First Gaudy " 60 
 
 The Commercial Spirit 65 
 
 Pseudo- Intellectuals 74
 
 EARLY VICTORIAN 
 AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 Early Victorian Characteristics 
 
 OLD men so often tell us of the decadence of the 
 younger generation that it is perhaps sometimes 
 legitimate for young men to express their frank 
 opinion of their immediate predecessors, and in 
 essaying this apparently invidious task, none can 
 feel so well equipped as one who admires few 
 qualities more than those of the early Victorian 
 age, and who labours under the unpleasant con- 
 viction that this generation has probably lost in 
 singleness of purpose whatever it has gained in 
 enlightenment. Moreover, paradoxical as it may 
 seem, the young may be better able to see 
 certain characteristics in an age which has only 
 just passed away simply because they are not 
 personally concerned with it and possess some 
 detachment of view. 
 
 The most salient feature in the early Victorian 
 age which one may perhaps roughly define as 
 1840 to 1865 is the emergence of the middle 
 classes not only into a definite political conscious- 
 ness and force, but also into a keenly intellectual 
 
 B
 
 2 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 life. In other periods of history we do not seem 
 to see this stage of development very clearly ; 
 we only see the consummation of it, e.g., in the 
 Italian city states of the Middle Ages and 
 Renascence, the middle class is already highly 
 educated before it attracts the attention of 
 historians. 
 
 In this country, however, the middle class was, 
 as a whole, in the eighteenth century, compara- 
 tively inarticulate. The landed gentry are often 
 heard of, but the bulk of the professional and 
 trading classes are, in theory, as negligible in the 
 intellectual life of the nation as they are in the 
 statute book. One tends to forget that all but 
 a few very eminent writers of the eighteenth 
 century were mere hangers-on of the aristocracy, 
 and even a man like Johnson was probably 
 regarded, outside his own particular circle, chiefly 
 as a learned man who could be employed to 
 write on behalf of the Tories. But the Reform 
 Bill of 1832 made the middle classes a living 
 force, and the industrial changes of that period 
 gave them a chance of imposing their ideas on 
 the community at large. The study of a career 
 like that of Mr. Gladstone from start to finish 
 corroborates this impression in a very concrete 
 way. 
 
 The strain of the Napoleonic wars, the laxity 
 and irresponsibility of the Court and upper class 
 under George IV. and William IV., and con- 
 temporaneously the political upheavals and in- 
 tellectual ferment of the Continent all, to some 
 extent, explain the predominant characteristics of
 
 EARLY VICTORIAN CHARACTERISTICS 3 
 
 the earl}- Victorian age. The class that suddenly 
 found itself in power was primarily inclined to 
 be destructive, and had to clear away many 
 relics of the old regime before it could advance 
 to constructive measures. Hence there was a 
 certain negativity in early Victorian Liberalism 
 which later Liberalism has never quite lost. It 
 was anti-clerical, anti-monarchical, and above all 
 things, individualistic. It knew what it did not 
 want much better than what it did want. It 
 drew to itself rationalists, nonconformists, free 
 traders, republicans, teetotallers, universal suffra- 
 gists, and a whole host of philanthropists. Even 
 up to 1880 Liberalism seems to have attracted 
 the keenest intellects of the time, and was 
 probably the most characteristic expression of 
 early Victorian thought. Reading Mr. Bryce's 
 ' Studies in Contemporary Biography ' one is 
 impressed by the unexpectedly large number of 
 his eminent friends who were not only Liberals 
 but also Home Rulers long before 1886. 
 
 As might be expected from its origins, the 
 most marked characteristic of the period seems 
 to have been a curious simplicity not only of 
 thought, but also of character. It was a period 
 of good hard " brickbat and bludgeon " con- 
 troversy, of fixed ideas, of genial optimism and 
 confidence in the possibilities of human nature, 
 coupled with a devout belief in political panaceas 
 such as self-governing democracy, small nation- 
 alities, "religion without theology," pure indi- 
 vidualism, universal peace, an incessant " pro- 
 gress " in human affairs to " something better," 
 
 B 2
 
 4 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 and many more equally desirable though vague 
 ideals, the advent of which seemed as imminent 
 as did the millenium to the early Christians. 
 The mere mention of names as various as 
 Macaulay, Buckle, Mill, Spencer, Bright, Cobden, 
 and Palmerston, gives one a vivid realisation of 
 the intellectual atmosphere. 
 
 This vague idealism prevailed as much in 
 religion as in politics. Though Hume had 
 logically demolished much of the old fabric of 
 belief in the textual inspiration of the Bible, 
 Englishmen are practical, and the old creed was 
 indeed not greatly shaken till Colenso called 
 Scriptural arithmetic in question. The Oxford 
 movement had also tended to vague beliefs, and 
 seems now to be chiefly significant as showing 
 a certain growth of historic imagination and 
 aesthetic instinct for which the Napoleonic wars 
 had left neither time nor money in the earlier 
 decades of the century. 
 
 The Broad Church movement was, however, 
 in its origin perhaps more typical of the period. 
 The early Victorian was puzzled by the apparent 
 subsidence of the old landmarks, and his mind 
 was no less susceptible to the fallacies than to 
 the truths of physical science. For him, there- 
 fore, any reconciliation of scientific propositions 
 with cosmic verities was extremely difficult and 
 he was disposed to shirk discussion altogether. 
 The average early Victorian attitude to religion 
 rather resembled the reserve of a family in 
 alluding to the skeleton in the family cupboard. 
 It could only be mentioned by implication.
 
 EARLY VICTORIAN CHARACTERISTICS 5 
 
 " Dear George is picking up very nicely on the 
 South Coast " is often a happy way of expressing 
 the fact that " Dear George " is leading a placid 
 but edifying existence in a Home for Inebriates. 
 In a similar strain the early Victorian would say 
 that his religion was " the religion of all sensible 
 men." 
 
 The more educated classes seem to have 
 relapsed into a vague theism which necessitated 
 little more than a belief in a personal God and 
 personal immortality, together with a willingness 
 to accept the more important and plausible 
 miracles and to acquiesce in the rest as being 
 what Sir Leslie Stephen admirably calls "con- 
 genial incidents." Like Mr. Lecky, they were 
 inclined to " believe that the radii of a circle have 
 a tendency to be equal," though they did not 
 wish " to push the spirit of geometry too far." 
 
 Even those who most strongly denounced the 
 formula of the age were admired because they 
 were in some way congenial to it. Thus Carlyle 
 and Ruskin were admired as sturdy individualists 
 even when their utterances were most unpalat- 
 able ; for a fine, rude, irresponsible vigour in 
 speech and action was essentially an early 
 Victorian ideal, and an ideal like this was catholic 
 enough to comprehend men as diverse as Palmer- 
 ston, Carlyle and Garibaldi, though not perhaps 
 a highly complex genius like that of Mr. 
 Meredith. 
 
 I have alluded before to the simplicity of early 
 Victorian thought ; it found its complement in a 
 corresponding simplicity of character. Putting
 
 6 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 aside concrete examples of the past generation 
 within one's own knowledge, the Punches of the 
 period, the novels of Thackeray and Dickens, 
 and biographies like that of the late Master of 
 Balliol give the mere reader an excellent idea of 
 what the early Victorian did and did not 
 approve. 
 
 The early Victorian seems to have had gene- 
 rous impulses, coupled with a perilous tendency 
 to cant, a robust sense of humour tempered by a 
 somewhat barbaric prudery, and a profound con- 
 viction that no one " deserved " to be alive who 
 did not find life worth living. His attitude to 
 women (if I except one or two writers like John 
 Stuart Mill) was quite consistent with his attitude 
 towards life and had all the elements of a some- 
 what unenlightened chivalry. A woman ought 
 par excellence to be guileless, fragile, inconsequent, 
 loyal, and virtuous to the verge of imbecility, 
 though the dim recognition of a disproportionately 
 increasing female population allowed of obviously 
 unmarriageable women writing novels or looking 
 after the poor. But in no case did it seem proper 
 that a woman, except in quite exalted circles, 
 should possess, or at any rate show, a sense of 
 humour. Those lines of Kingsley which have 
 won an immortality in copy-books, beginning : 
 " Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be 
 clever," are more characteristic of the time than 
 one likes to think, and admirably illustrate the 
 early Victorian enthusiasm for the obvious and 
 for the " Nonconformist meat tea " style of 
 thought and expression.
 
 EARLY VICTORIAN CHARACTERISTICS / 
 
 This conception of women was, of course, 
 bound up with all the prudery of an imperfectly 
 civilised society. Most elderly people now alive 
 must have known in their youth of at least one 
 household where the bare mention of George 
 Eliot's name was tabooed, and young ladies 
 about to be married were often prevented from 
 looking at their marriage settlements because 
 these documents made provision for possible 
 children of the marriage. 
 
 Such eccentric reticence was quite in tune with 
 the pseudo-asceticism of the early Victorians, 
 which made a positive virtue of ignoring the 
 plain facts of physiology. A generation which 
 in all stages of life so plentifully consumed 
 muffins, pastry, and sweet wines, was certainly 
 not alive to the great ethical truth that a certain 
 discrimination in diet is a very essential part of 
 one's duty to one's neighbour. Comfort with 
 frugality seems to have been an idea quite as 
 incomprehensible to the past generation as com- 
 fort without luxury seems to the present 
 
 Major Pendennis's description of the early 
 Victorians is as concise as one could wish. In 
 the bitterness of his decline (which has perhaps 
 more real pathos than Colonel Newcome's) he 
 calls the then rising generation " a parcel of 
 damned cotton-spinners and utilitarians and 
 young sprigs of parsons, with their hair combed 
 down the backs of their heads." Yet, though 
 few ages appear so unattractive and unpicturesque 
 as the early Victorian age, it is impossible not 
 to recognise its sterling virtues, which were
 
 8 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 intimately bound up with its seriousness of 
 temperament. 
 
 The early Victorian had a keener sense of 
 honour than our generation ; he was readier to 
 resent imputations on his character, and much 
 less inclined to haggle over small gains. He 
 paid his doctor's and lawyer's bills like a man, 
 and was, in every sense of the word, more incor- 
 ruptible. He respected professional etiquette to 
 what we should now think a Quixotic extent ; 
 for instance, in the early forties, briefless barristers 
 often refused to take money from newspapers to 
 which they contributed. He took the trouble to 
 arrive at convictions on important subjects and 
 even to act on them. He would fight for a 
 principle even to the extent of spending money 
 on its behalf. He thought it his duty to read, 
 and often to buy, books purporting to deal with 
 serious subjects. And, above all, he really 
 wished to help the poor without allowing them 
 to be indirectly oppressed by the legislation of 
 faddists. We may well feel of the iQth century 
 what Mill said of the 1 8th that it was an age 
 of " strong and brave men."
 
 A Study in Bereavement 
 
 (WRITTEN IN 1954) 
 
 AN old man looking back on life usually remem- 
 bers a few scenes of really striking irony and 
 probably the most striking irony is that of almost 
 unconscious hypocrisy. There was more of this 
 in the unenlightened though eminently virtuous 
 generation of the first decade of this century, 
 than there is now. Perhaps this was due to 
 their not having seen, like ourselves, any really 
 practical application of medical science to what 
 was in those days called the " mystery " of life 
 and death. My readers may possibly remember 
 that it was not till 1904 that Lord Treadwell 
 discovered how life might be prolonged until 
 senile decay had set in, and in this way com- 
 pletely revolutionised the scientific aspect of 
 what is still called " death " a term which then 
 had a very different meaning. But the old 
 ideas lived on, and it was not until 1915 that the 
 community began to adapt itself to the altered 
 requirements of a more stationary population. 
 It is curious to remember how my elders talked 
 of cancer as an incurable disease, and of suicide 
 as a deplorable aberration if not as a crime.
 
 10 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 But I am wandering and must return to my 
 reminiscence. In the autumn of 1904 when I 
 was a young man of 47 I remember attending 
 the " funeral " of a distant cousin called Mrs. 
 Mitcham. In those days comparatively few 
 persons were cremated, and owing to the un- 
 certain tenure of life it was thought correct on 
 such occasions to simulate an almost unseemly 
 grief instead of accepting the natural close of 
 human activity in a spirit of rational resignation. 
 The following narrative may interest the younger 
 generation as showing the odd mixture of know- 
 ledge and ignorance, sentimentality and insensi- 
 bility, displayed by their ancestors. My memory 
 of the episode is so vivid that I have been able 
 to reproduce almost exactly the remarks made 
 by the persons then present. Though I have 
 lost sight of most of them, the probability is 
 that some are still alive, and I have, therefore, 
 preferred to use fictitious names. 
 
 There was, as I remember, at this " funeral " 
 a certain Mrs. Sophia Cardew, the only sister 
 of Mrs. Mitcham, with three more or less young 
 daughters ; a Mr. John Matheson, a stockbroker, 
 a pathetic-looking old woman called Mrs. Boles, 
 and two philanthropic ladies of the parish (Miss 
 Molesworth and Miss Honiton). Even in those 
 days there lingered the Victorian custom of 
 making the family solicitor read the will of the 
 person who had been buried, and this function 
 was accordingly performed by a solicitor of the 
 name of Binks, who recently died at the age of 
 103.
 
 A STUDY IN BEREAVEMENT II 
 
 The will began more or less in the common 
 form of the time. The testatrix had left her 
 "faithful landlady," Mrs. Boles, 7$ a year, so 
 long as she looked after the pug and three 
 canaries, and three small legacies to Binks and 
 her two co-district visitors, Miss Molesworth and 
 Miss Honiton, respectively. Mrs. Cardevv was 
 to have the life interest in 7000, which at her 
 death was to be equally divided among such of 
 her daughters as should be married by the 1st 
 April, 1907, when the eldest would be thirty-seven 
 and the youngest twenty-nine. Mr. Matheson, 
 the deceased's son-in-law, was residuary legatee. 
 He was a widower with one child, and Andrew 
 Mitcham, his brother-in-law, had died a reputed 
 bachelor some years before. 
 
 The will was on the whole satisfactory to all 
 parties. The landlady sat reflecting on what 
 would best conduce to the longevity of pugs 
 and canaries, and the Misses Cardew were quite 
 old enough to realise that their aunt's bequest 
 was the best of all possible excuses for open 
 dalliance with gentlemen, who, according to the 
 absurd fashion then in vogue, reserved to them- 
 selves the monopoly of courtship. Mr. Matheson 
 and Mr. Binks most imprudently drank a quantity 
 of "brown sherry" a poisonous liquor which 
 had not then been condemned by any Minister 
 of Hygiene.* 
 
 The decorous torpor of the scene was suddenly 
 interrupted by the appearance of the local doctor, 
 
 * If I remember right this ministry did not exist till 
 1908. T. P.
 
 12 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 in a garment called a " frock coat " and pince-nez. 
 An early marriage had forced him into a country 
 practice, but had not entirely destroyed a really 
 intellectual curiosity of a kind then comparatively 
 rare. 
 
 " I have come," he began abruptly, " on a very 
 urgent matter. I was up in town early this 
 morning, and with great luck managed to see 
 my old contemporary, Julius Tread well, whom 
 you may recently have seen boomed in the half- 
 penny papers. I had thought he was a complete 
 charlatan, and wished, if so, to have the means 
 of thoroughly exposing him. But he took me 
 off to Bart's* and, in the presence of a most 
 distinguished company, succeeded in restoring 
 life to a man who had been dead two days. He 
 sets the heart going after four hours' work, and 
 calculates that in such a case life may continue 
 quite five years more, or conceivably until senile 
 decay sets in. We did this with closed doors, 
 but no doubt the evening papers will be full of 
 it. He showed that even after four days he has 
 a reasonable chance of success, as he has now 
 discovered a means of combating any organic 
 changes that may have set in." 
 
 The company began to look more and more 
 scandalised, and Mr. Binks suddenly drew him- 
 self up with great solemnity. 
 
 " My dear sir ! " he remarked, " I am surprised 
 that you should burst in upon us in this way. 
 Such topics are scarcely seemly on an occasion 
 
 * A big London hospital.
 
 A STUDY IN BEREAVEMENT 13 
 
 of this kind, and I have not yet finished explaining 
 the will to the beneficiaries." 
 
 " Come, come," said the doctor, " you don't 
 seem to see what I'm driving at. I arranged 
 with Treadwell that I would wire to him 
 immediately on obtaining your consent to try 
 his skill. He will have innumerable applications 
 from all parts of the country to-morrow and, 
 having regard to the startling circumstances of 
 his position, he says he must have a thousand 
 guinea fee even if he fails." 
 
 " I think," replied the solicitor more emphatic- 
 ally, " that you misapprehend the situation. My 
 clients are, I am sure, not at all prepared to allow 
 such sacrilegious experiments to be tried on their 
 beloved relative. I must also point out that the 
 whole procedure seems to me grossly illegal and, 
 in any case, no body can be exhumed without 
 the leave of the Home Secretary." 
 
 At this point I remember that Mrs. Cardew 
 went off into a fit of hysterics, which brought the 
 nerves of the whole party to extreme tension. 
 
 "Dr. Mills," remarked Mr. Matheson, "I 
 entirely agree with my solicitor in thinking that 
 this subject should not have been broached in 
 the presence of the ladies. But, apart from any 
 other consideration, I think it would be cruel to 
 restore life to anyone who has gone to his last 
 rest. I go further, and maintain that it is utterly 
 contrary to the dictates of the Christian religion, 
 however unimportant you may think it." 
 
 "You had better call in the parson on that 
 point," retorted the doctor, becoming slightly
 
 14 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 heated ; " but here I see you all in deep mourning, 
 and presumably afflicted by the loss of the lady 
 who has just died. In all seriousness I hold out 
 a prospect of restoring her to you, and you 
 immediately flout it. I can hardly imagine that 
 you are influenced by the question of expense." 
 
 " The fee," said Mr. Binks, with awakened 
 interest, "would, I suppose, be paid by the 
 executors* as a part of the funeral expenses ; 
 it would therefore be deducted from the residue, 
 and would ultimately fall on the residuary legatee 
 that is, of course, you, Mr. Matheson." 
 
 " Of course, if I thought there was anything in 
 the idea I should have nothing to say against it," 
 was Mr. Matheson's rapid comment. 
 
 " Properly speaking," continued Mr. Binks, 
 " nothing should, in my opinion, be done with- 
 out the consent of the deceased but I feel 
 slightly bewildered by the proposal. In any 
 case the fee should, I think, be apportioned 
 among the beneficiaries. I should add that, 
 even if Mrs. Mitcham were alive again, she 
 would have no means of replacing the income 
 of a thousand guineas." 
 
 " Interesting as these details may be to the 
 legal mind," said the doctor, addressing himself 
 to the whole company, " the question now before 
 all of you is whether or not any of you wish to 
 
 * In those days the State had not yet taken over these 
 functions, and even solicitors were allowed to act in this 
 capacity until 1921, when the great principle of "com- 
 pulsory administration " was inaugurated by the cen- 
 tenarian Lord Chancellor. T. P.
 
 A STUDY IN BEREAVEMENT 15 
 
 see Mrs. Mitcham alive again. The man I saw 
 this morning is now lying in bed in a perfectly 
 normal condition and talking as anyone might 
 who had emerged from a long catalepsy. I see 
 myself no reason for seriously doubting that the 
 same result might not be achieved here." 
 
 Mrs. Cardew had, meantime, slightly recovered, 
 and suddenly observed : 
 
 " You know perfectly well, doctor, that this is 
 sanctioned by no law, human or divine." 
 
 Her daughters did not seem to know quite 
 what to say, but the eldest, whose share of the 
 jooo seemed unpleasantly contingent, turned 
 to her mother : 
 
 " You must remember, mamma, that modern 
 science does wonderful things. As Mr. Fulton 
 said in his sermon last week, scientific discoveries 
 are often providential. In that case they are like 
 new Acts of Parliament, and become a law in them- 
 selves. Think of having dear auntie back again ! 
 We needn't see her till she has recovered." 
 
 The landlady, who, as far as I remember, 
 cared more for the dead woman than her rela- 
 tions, here showed a strong inclination to tears. 
 At the same time Miss Molesworth and Miss 
 Honiton rose, and said they thought that Mr. 
 Fulton should be consulted before any decision 
 was arrived at. I understood Miss Honiton to 
 add that she had never thought she would live 
 to see those beautiful words " Earth to earth, 
 dust to dust," entirely lose their meaning.* 
 
 * A quotation from a liturgy then in use at u funerals."
 
 1 6 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 At this moment there was a knock at the 
 door, and the doctor's servant entered with a 
 telegram. The doctor opened and read it. 
 
 " Can no longer come down booked for next 
 fortnight. Treadwell." 
 
 A visible relief came over every one. 
 
 " I wonder if the remarks of Lazarus's family 
 were correctly reported," muttered the doctor as 
 he closed the door behind him. 
 
 Lazarus, I may add, was a personage whose 
 name, though now only familiar to scholars, was 
 commonly cited at that time to illustrate what 
 was then considered a miraculous recovery of 
 consciousness.
 
 Lady Hamilton and "Horatia" 
 
 THE papers of my great-grandfather, Sir Harris 
 Nicolas, have recently come into my possession, 
 and the letters addressed to him by Nelson's 
 daughter, Horatia, while he was bringing out 
 his edition of Nelson's despatches, which have 
 slumbered in an old trunk for upwards of sixty 
 years, still possess a certain interest. They can 
 hardly be said to contribute new facts, except 
 for showing that Mr. Matcham, her uncle by 
 marriage, fetched Horatia from Calais after Lady 
 Hamilton's death, and not the 2nd Earl Nelson 
 and Mr. Henry Cadogan, as is commonly related, 
 but they undoubtedly shed some light on Lady 
 Hamilton's character, and Horatia's recollections 
 of her early life with Lady Hamilton after 
 Nelson's death cannot be called dull. 
 
 Sir Harris first met Horatia, who was born on 
 the 2Qth January, 1801, and in 1822 married the 
 Rev. Philip Ward, in 1844, and their correspond- 
 ence lasted till 1846 and chiefly consisted of an 
 examination of the various fictions employed by 
 Nelson and Lady Hamilton to conceal the 
 parentage of Horatia. Both Sir Harris and 
 Mrs. Ward died in ignorance of the real facts, 
 and in his last volume of the despatches Sir 
 
 c
 
 1 8 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 Harris even conjectures that the relations of 
 Nelson and Lady Hamilton were Platonic, 
 although his opinion on that one point must 
 subsequently have changed and was never more 
 than merely conjectural. But Sir Harris did 
 not long survive the completion of his Nelson 
 volumes. Worn out by a succession of misfor- 
 tunes and disappointments, he sank under them, 
 like Sir Walter Scott, and died at Boulogne in 
 1848, engaged on fresh work to the last. He 
 was in his last days, editing the papers of Sir 
 Hudson Lowe, and had even jotted down some 
 notes for a history of Boulogne. His compara- 
 tively short career (for he died just under fifty) 
 had been indeed full and varied. In his teens 
 he had captured French frigates off the coast of 
 Calabria and invented a fresh signalling system. 
 Just out of his teens he had been called to the 
 Bar and stood for Parliament in the cause of 
 Reform ; he had written erudite works on every 
 conceivable topic which had, as he told Carlyle, 
 " ruined nearly all the booksellers in London " ; 
 he had spent an extraordinary amount of his 
 energies and patrimony in getting rid of the 
 abuses in connection with public records, built 
 up a flourishing practice in peerage cases, which 
 fell greatly in value owing to Sir Robert Peel's 
 decision in 1840 not to revive peerages in 
 abeyance, and kept up a running commentary 
 on general topics in most of the newspapers and 
 reviews of the day. History and research as we 
 know it now had scarcely come into existence in 
 those days, and he suffered as all pioneers must.
 
 LADY HAMILTON AND " HORATIA " IQ 
 
 But his friend, Mrs. Horatia Ward, lived to an 
 advanced age and died in 1881 without ever 
 knowing, so far as I am aware, who her mother 
 was or seeing among the Morrison papers (which 
 were not acquired by Mr. Morrison till 1887) the 
 documents which have now established the facts 
 of the case. 
 
 These facts are as follows. As the result of 
 Nelson's intimacy with Lady Hamilton in the 
 spring of 1800 Horatia was born on the 2Qth 
 January, 1801, actually at 23, Piccadilly (Sir 
 William Hamilton's house), and was within a 
 week of that smuggled by Lady Hamilton 
 (some say in a muff) to a house in Marylebone, 
 where she was put in the care of a nurse. 
 Lady Hamilton frequently visited the child there, 
 and the child was often brought to the house of 
 Sir William Hamilton. The child was baptised 
 in 1803 as Horatia Nelson Thompson at the 
 Marylebone Registry, and her birth was ante- 
 dated to October 1 800, presumably to antedate 
 the time of the conception, and thus to conceal 
 the fact of her real origin. 
 
 Nelson's letters at first mention a " Mr. 
 Thompson," the fictitious father, but he after- 
 wards acknowledges himself as the father, and 
 constantly refers to an equally fictitious " Mrs. 
 Thompson" as the mother. The name is not 
 always spelt the same way. A letter from 
 Nelson to Lady Hamilton, the existence of 
 which was unknown both to Sir Harris and 
 Mrs. Ward, has long since shown that Lady 
 Hamilton was the mother, and further documents 
 
 C 2
 
 20 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 have shown that in 1804 Lady Hamilton had 
 another child by Nelson called " Emma," who 
 did not long survive her birth. Lady Hamilton 
 was appointed by Nelson to be guardian of the 
 child, and in all letters sent through the post 
 (and not by a trusted messenger) she is referred 
 to as such. The recapitulation of these facts is 
 for the general reader a necessary preliminary to 
 the perusal of the following letters. 
 
 It is certainly odd that Lady Hamilton should 
 not only have convinced Nelson that Horatia 
 was her first child (which was not the fact), but 
 also have successfully prevented her own daughter 
 from knowing that she was her mother, and con- 
 cealed from her the birth of the second child. 
 After this we may even believe that Sir William 
 Hamilton remained unaware of Horatia's birth 
 in his own house. Lady Hamilton had, of course, 
 every reason for not acknowledging Horatia as 
 her own child, since otherwise her intimacy with 
 Nelson was not strictly proved, and she could 
 always claim the benefit of the doubt a most 
 important consideration, having regard to the 
 fact that she was always expecting and asking 
 for a public pension. The first extract I shall 
 give of the letters to Sir Harris is as follows : 
 
 " Would she (i.e. Lady Hamilton) have dared to have 
 a child brought constantly to her husband's house had 
 she had a nearer interest in it than that of friendship to 
 those to whom it belonged ? It has always appeared to 
 me that she was just the woman who, to gain a stronger 
 hold on Lord Nelson's affection, would be likely to under- 
 take the care of a child which he might feel anxious 
 about to show herself above common jealousies. The
 
 LADY HAMILTON AND " HORATIA 21 
 
 only quarrel which I ever heard between Lady H. and 
 her mother took place when we lived at Richmond, when 
 I suppose I had been very naughty, for I was in sad dis- 
 grace and had received a most pathetic lecture on the 
 error of my conduct. Mrs. Cadogan pleaded for me, 
 saying that I had done nothing requiring such a severe 
 scolding, when Lady H. became angry and said that she 
 alone had authority over me. Mrs. Cadogan, rather 
 irritated, said, ' Really, Emma, you make as much fuss 
 about the child as if she were your own daughter,' when 
 Lady H. turned round much incensed as I was present 
 and replied, ' Perhaps she is.' Mrs. Cadogan looked a: 
 her and replied, ' Emma, that will not do with me ; you 
 know that I know better.' Lady H. then ordered me 
 out of the room. On her death-bed at Calais I earnestly 
 prayed her to tell me who my mother was but she would 
 not, influenced then, I think, by the fear that I might 
 leave her." 
 
 Another letter contains an interesting account 
 of Lady Hamilton's movements after Nelson's 
 death. 
 
 " Poor Lady H., as you are aware, left Merton in 
 consequence of her not being able to remain there for 
 pecuniary reasons. I believe that then she was con- 
 siderably involved, but of course I was too young to 
 know much about it. She then went to Richmond to 
 live and took a seven years' lease of the house in Herring 
 Court. After a year or two she left and took lodgings in 
 town in Bond Street, where her brother died. She then 
 quitted those apartments and took lodgings in Piccadilly 
 where she stayed about a few months. From there she 
 went to board and lodge in a house in Dover Street and 
 after that took a house in Bond Street where she remained 
 till she became too involved to remain 'at large' and 
 then went to Fulham to Mrs. Billington where she re- 
 mained secreted for some weeks, having sent what she 
 most valued in papers before her. From thence she went 
 to Temple Place in the rules of the Bench, and after living
 
 22 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 in them for more than a year she left London for 
 Calais. At the time of her death she was in great dis- 
 tress, and had I not, unknown to her, written to Lord 
 Nelson to ask the loan of 10, and to another kind friend 
 of hers, who immediately sent her ,20, she would not 
 literally have had one shilling till her next allowance be- 
 came due. Latterly she was hardly sensible. I imagine 
 that her illness originally began by being bled whilst 
 labouring under an attack of jaundice whilst she lived at 
 Richmond. From that time she never was well, and added 
 to this the baneful habit she had of taking spirits and wine 
 to a fearful degree brought on water on the chest. She 
 died in January 1814 and was buried in the burying 
 ground attached to the town. That was a sad, miserable 
 time to me. Latterly her mind became so irritable by 
 drinking that I had written to Mr. Matcham, and he had 
 desired that I would lose no time in getting some respect- 
 able person to take me over and that I was to come to 
 them, where I should always find a home. After her 
 death, as soon as he heard of it, he came to Dover to 
 fetch me. With all Lady H.'s faults, and she had many, 
 she had many fine qualities." 
 
 and Horatia goes on to mention that almost 
 to the end Lady Hamilton had spent all the 
 interest on Lord Nelson's legacy, which she 
 received as guardian, entirely on her daughter's 
 education. 
 
 Perhaps the strictest test of human virtue is 
 that of plain honesty in dealing with money, 
 and it is good to know that Lady Hamilton, 
 under the severest temptation, conscientiously 
 applied the money of which she was virtually a 
 trustee. 
 
 In connection with Lady Hamilton's finances, 
 I found a copy of the following pathetic appeal 
 written by Lady Hamilton to Lord Sidmouth,
 
 LADY HAMILTON AND " HORATIA " 23 
 
 which, so far as I know, has not been printed 
 before. 
 
 "COMMON OF ST. PIERE. 
 " October yM, 1814. 
 
 "MY LORD, It is with the utmost anguish and regret 
 I write to you. Sir William Scott was so kind, knowing 
 my services to my country, to speak to your Lordship on 
 behalf of myself and Horatia, the daughter of the glorious 
 and virtuous Nelson. If there is humanity still left in 
 British hearts they will not suffer us to die with famine 
 in a foreign country. For God's sake then send us some 
 relief. Let Horatia, who will be fourteen the 29th of 
 October, finish her education, let her be provided for. 
 At present we have not one shilling in our pockets, 
 although I spent all I had on the family of Earl Nelson. 
 He never takes notice of his brother's child although he 
 knows "well she is his child. I will not tease your Lord- 
 ship any more only to say if Horatia will be provided for 
 and believe, my Lord, 
 
 " Your grateful, 
 
 " EMMA HAMILTON. 
 " My direction is chez Desin." 
 
 The next letter, written after the publication 
 of the last volume of the despatches, shows that 
 a letter printed by a certain Mr. Harrison, and, 
 as Mr. Sichel conjectures, probably stolen from 
 Lady Hamilton by her secretary, was shown to 
 be genuine, contrary to the opinion of Mrs. 
 Ward. Sir Harris writes of Mr. Harrison, that his 
 life of Lord Nelson, published in 1806, "was 
 written under the direction of Lady Hamilton 
 with the view of supporting her claims upon 
 the Government," but he and Lady Hamilton 
 seem subsequently to have quarrelled. On the
 
 24 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 4th November, 1844, Mrs. Ward wrote to Sir 
 Harris as follows : 
 
 " It appears to me that Harrison, who was a needy 
 man, thought he might oblige Lady H. to give him a 
 certain sum by the threat of publishing letters which he 
 had in his possession of hers, when he found that she 
 had it not to give him he immediately turned his head to 
 concoct a set of letters from those in his hands which 
 would bring him in a handsome remuneration." 
 
 Various reasons are brought forward to support 
 this hypothesis, but Mrs. Ward's conjectures are 
 generally unlucky. 
 
 On the 2 ist August, 1846, she wrote to Sir 
 Harris as follows : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, Most correctly have you judged when 
 you said that I should be much shocked to find those 
 wretched letters are genuine. Alas that such a master- 
 mind should be subject to such a weakness. Of what a 
 strange medley is the human mind constituted. I cannot, 
 however, help rejoicing (I hope not from any love of dis- 
 simulation) that these letters did not come under your 
 notice till after the 7th vol. was published ; had you seen 
 them earlier you would have felt bound to take some 
 notice of them, now they cannot sully his fame, as I firmly 
 believe most of the readers of that unfortunate publication 
 of Mr. Harrison's disbelieved them better so. Still I 
 do not alter my opinion that Lady Hamilton could not 
 have been my mother. In the letters as printed there 
 does not appear any reserve in Lord Nelson's manner of 
 addressing Lady H. from fear of the letters not reaching 
 her or he would not have expressed himself as he did in 
 them. 
 
 " Yet I do not recollect one in which I am named as a 
 mutual tie between them or any allusion of the kind/' 
 
 Mrs. Ward's persistent declarations that Lady
 
 LADY HAMILTON AND " HORATIA " 25 
 
 Hamilton was not her mother seem to me quite 
 sincere, but they are puzzling in the light of a 
 letter dated the i8th April, 1813, in which Lady 
 Hamilton throughout describes herself as her 
 mother. The only explanation appears to be 
 that Lady Hamilton may have adopted the 
 habit of calling herself Horatia's mother, though 
 it was clearly understood between them that she 
 was not. Such a mode of address is constantly 
 used by step-children and sons-in-law and 
 daughters-in-law. 
 
 The other letters in my possession have no 
 particular interest. They wander round such 
 topics as the purchase of Nelson's coat by the 
 Prince Consort, and the silence of Nelson's 
 solicitor, Mr. Haslewood, who probably bore the 
 secret to his grave. But there is a certain 
 comedy in the launching of these laborious con- 
 jectures while documentary evidence of the truth 
 was lying hidden all the time ; and the success 
 with which Lady Hamilton concealed the truth 
 from her own daughter makes it a little more 
 possible to believe that Sir William Hamilton's 
 attitude to Nelson's relations with Lady Hamilton 
 was not so philosophic as some have imagined.
 
 Oxford and Cambridge A Study in 
 Types. 
 
 IT is strange that the world, again awake to the 
 charm of ' Friendship's Garland,' should have 
 allowed to fall out of print a little book entitled 
 ' Sketches from Cambridge by a Don,' written 
 by the late Sir Leslie Stephen, and published 
 anonymously in 1865. There are few books of 
 more real insight and quaint humour ; and most 
 of it is as true to-day as it was forty years ago, 
 especially the passages contrasting Oxford and 
 Cambridge. Stephen identifies himself with 
 Cambridge in the most spontaneous fashion ; 
 we feel as if the writer had never ceased to be 
 part of the place where he resided till well into 
 middle life. 
 
 For this reason it may be interesting to touch 
 on some of the traits in his writings which seem 
 typical of Cambridge, and in so doing it is 
 almost impossible to avoid comparing the in- 
 fluences of Oxford and Cambridge as Stephen 
 himself does in the ' Sketches.' His luminous 
 and pointed remarks unconsciously show how 
 strongly he felt himself to be the product of his 
 own University, and how the essential character- 
 istics of Cambridge may best appear by being 
 put into relief against those of Oxford.
 
 OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 2/ 
 
 It is difficult to generalise about the differences 
 between Oxford and Cambridge without making 
 a very careful selection of types. In the nine- 
 teenth century 'I should be inclined to put 
 forward Ruskin, Symonds, and Newman as 
 typical of Oxford, and Wordsworth, Fawcett, and 
 Tennyson as typical of Cambridge. Stephen's 
 own choice of types fell respectively on Macaulay 
 and Gladstone. His remarks on the subject are 
 well worth quoting : 
 
 " We [i.e. Cambridge men] despise, or at any rate care 
 little for, abstract disquisition. Representing in this 
 respect the commoner English type, we have the 
 strongest objection to look beyond our noses. We 
 take what lies next to us and don't trouble our heads 
 about its remoter bearings. Our studies are all modelled 
 in accordance with a strictly practical view of the matter, 
 that is, as I have said before, with a view to affording 
 a good test for examinations ; and we are inclined to 
 sneer at loftier but more aerial considerations. Our 
 ideal takes in the good and the bad points of rough, 
 vigorous, common sense ; whereas the Oxford man is 
 not content without a touch of more or less refined 
 philosophy. We generally take a narrower but what is 
 commonly called a more practical view of matters. 
 
 ' Which of these two types is the best is not for me 
 to say ; but the distinction which I have endeavoured to 
 describe runs through all our manifestations in the most 
 marked degree. Mr. Gladstone, with his great abilities 
 somewhat marred with over-acuteness and polish, is an 
 excellent type of the Oxford mind. . . . Perhaps I might 
 mention Lord Macaulay, with his clear and energetic, 
 but limited intellect, as, in many respects, a fair specimen 
 of the Cambridge tone of thought." 
 
 If we look for an obvious antitype to Stephen 
 himself, there is none better than his contem-
 
 28 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 porary, Matthew Arnold. Oddly enough, Arnold 
 came from a college which has not invariably 
 turned out the pure Oxonian type. T. H. Green, 
 R. L. Nettleship, the late Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, and Arnold Toynbee, to take examples at 
 random, all had an extremely practical bent 
 without the Oxonian tendency to rhetorical ex- 
 pression and " aerial " speculation that is to be 
 remarked in J. A. Symonds or Mr. Swinburne. 
 
 The contrast between Arnold and Stephen is 
 all the more interesting because they seem to 
 have had great points of resemblance. Both had 
 the most lovable personal qualities ; both were 
 keenly interested in literature ; theologically, 
 both inclined to a more or less passive scepticism, 
 and politically, neither was prepared to think 
 along party lines. Ecclesiastically, both were 
 Erastians (Arnold from the sentimental point 
 of view, and Stephen probably from the legal 
 point of view) ; each wrote more for the student 
 than the general reader, yet neither lacked an 
 intimate interest in humanity combined with a 
 deep vein of tenderness and melancholy. The 
 strong points of contrast between their writings 
 were, as it seems to me, largely due to differences 
 of environment in early life, and illustrate in a 
 striking way the typical differences between 
 Oxford and Cambridge. 
 
 Stephen curiously suggests this in an essay 
 on Arnold. He writes : 
 
 "A hard-headed senior-wrangler is in his own conceit 
 a superior being to a flighty double first-class man. But 
 perhaps his solid conviction that he was in the right
 
 OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 29 
 
 faith made him rather unfitted to judge of the Sister 
 University. He thought her impulsive, ill-balanced, too 
 easily turned into the pursuit of theological, philosophical, 
 and literary chimeras ; and therefore was unjust to her 
 substantial merits, and even to the intellectual impulse 
 which, with all its vagaries, was yet better than stagna- 
 tion." 
 
 That is an admirably fair piece of writing, and 
 it is possibly more autobiographical than it seems 
 at first sight. 
 
 Perhaps the most radical contrast between the 
 two men is that which appears between Stephen's 
 "fear of enthusiasm" on the one side, and 
 Arnold's tendency to emotional rhetoric on the 
 other. Except possibly in his ' In Praise of 
 Walking ' and one or two other stray pieces, 
 Stephen never " let himself go." The repressed 
 sentiment that occasionally emerges in his Life 
 of Dr. Johnson is typical of his style. He 
 mentions the founder of the " Newdigate " at 
 Oxford having "as much sense as could be 
 expected irom the founder of a prize poem." 
 Stephen did once own to having written verse 
 himself, but it was "at a very early period of 
 infancy. . . ." " The subject was the ' Prairie on 
 Fire,' the only verses which I can at present 
 remember being : 
 
 See the bisons in despair 
 
 How they tear their grizzly hair, 
 
 or words to that effect. A difficulty in ensuring 
 a sufficient supply of rhymes caused me to 
 abandon this ambition." Arnold, on the other
 
 30 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 hand, besides writing excellent poetry, gave free 
 rein in his prose to all that engaging rhetoric 
 and unction of style of which Renan was so great 
 a master. On the whole, we may be grateful to 
 writers who do. I mention the characteristic, 
 however, only by way of emphasising the fact 
 that Arnold's tendency was due to the warmth 
 and colour of the Oxford tradition. Such a 
 school may often ensnare a writer into subtle 
 fallacies or useless digressions, although in a case 
 like that of Arnold the result has a rare charm of 
 its own. But if we return to the " narrower view 
 of matters," Arnold could never, like Stephen, 
 have written the model summary of a man's 
 career which made the ' Dictionary of National 
 Biography ' a practicable enterprise. 
 
 The same difference of training not, as I 
 think, of temperament manifests itself in 
 religious matters. Arnold is always giving ex- 
 pression to a touchingly retrospective melancholy. 
 Whether we turn to ' Geist's Grave ' or ' Dover 
 Beach' or the sonnets, we invariably find him 
 trying to reconstruct the cosy creed of his fathers, 
 to believe that all is here for the best, and that 
 we all meet happily afterwards. Possibly Stephen 
 felt all the force of what he calls " musical moans 
 over spilt milk," but, if so, he never confessed it. 
 He writes that he found he had never properly 
 believed the creed in which he was brought up, 
 and so was not pained by its loss. It was there- 
 fore irrelevant for him to speculate on its merits 
 (if any) as a means of consolation. He prides 
 himself on the indifference of Cambridge to
 
 OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 3 1 
 
 theology. In all the heated controversy of 
 Cambridge on the war of the Federals and 
 Confederates 
 
 it was only necessary to turn the conversation upon 
 theology to smooth the troubled waters. This would, I 
 believe, be a dangerous expedient in a country parish, or 
 possibly some other place. But at Cambridge I have 
 always found that it is a topic which everyone can discuss 
 in perfect good temper except the few whom it sends 
 to sleep. 
 
 This remark certainly would not apply to 
 modern Oxford even undergraduate Oxford, 
 which not so very long ago was stirred to its 
 depths by a proposal to add one of Mr. Walsh's 
 works to the Union Library, and where a gentle- 
 man who recently proposed that examiners in 
 Theology need not necessarily be in Holy Orders, 
 was greeted in Convocation with cries of " traitor." 
 
 With his curious insight into the British mind, 
 Mr. Gladstone once observed that Englishmen 
 hated the Pope and an abstract proposition more 
 than anything else. In respect of the latter he 
 ought to have excepted Oxford, where abstract 
 propositions usually excite general interest and 
 approval, though there have always been excep- 
 tions. I once asked the late Mr. York Powell 
 whether it was worth my while to read Hegel's 
 ' Philosophy of History,' and he replied that if I 
 wanted to read off my subject (which was history), 
 I should be more profitably occupied in the study 
 of steam-engines. But Oxford is seldom privi- 
 leged to produce regius professors of his type, 
 and perhaps never will again. Most readers,
 
 32 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 however, will agree that Arnold's pages bristle 
 with formula and abstract propositions, whereas, 
 except in his more recent writings, Stephen's 
 statements are always strictly qualified and 
 limited. In his later works, for example, the 
 ' English Utilitarians,' and notably in ' English 
 Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century,' 
 he became bolder, and his generalisations are all 
 the more valuable because they fit the facts like 
 a glove. The last-named book is astonishing in 
 the way it combines close accuracy and suggestive 
 theories. Even here, however, he characteristic- 
 ally remarks : " I hope I have said nothing 
 original." On the other hand it is noteworthy 
 that the school of Oxford historians who have 
 made the loudest declarations in support of strict 
 and technical research, have often implicitly 
 started from the most surprisingly bold supposi- 
 tions. Freeman, for example, might deceive the 
 casual reader by objecting to the Arthurian 
 legend on the ground that " it proves nothing and 
 teaches nothing," but one is tempted to suggest 
 that the groundwork of his historical ideas was 
 about as deductive and abstract as anything 
 could be. 
 
 To turn to less scholastic matters, Arnold and 
 Stephen both typified in themselves other minor 
 differences between the manifestations of the 
 academic spirit in Oxford and Cambridge. It 
 has been said I know not by whom that 
 whereas Cambridge may be provincial, Oxford 
 is suburban. Some have, as I think unfairly, 
 attributed the "suburban" character of Oxford
 
 OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 33 
 
 (i.e. its closer contact with London) to the alleged 
 desire of Balliol to be " in the swim," and have 
 supposed it to be originally fostered by the week- 
 end visits of London celebrities which Jowett 
 inaugurated. Such critics may fasten eagerly on 
 certain passages in Mr. Belloc's great memoir of 
 Mr. Josiah Lambkin, of Burford College, whose 
 characteristics are not altogether unrecognisable 
 in modern Oxford : 
 
 He was the guest and honoured friend of the Duke of 
 Cumberland, the Duke of Pembroke, the Duke of Limerick 
 (" Mad Harry"), and the Duke of Lincoln ; he had also 
 the honour of holding a long conversation with the Duke 
 of Berkshire, whom he met on the top of an omnibus in 
 Piccadilly and instantly recognised. 
 
 Oxford, however, has been, for the last three 
 centuries at least, more in touch with London 
 than has Cambridge, and has generally prided 
 herself on being less remote from " the great 
 heart of the world." Parliaments have been 
 held there, and, on the whole, despite her pre- 
 dilection for lost causes, she has been more 
 involved in politics. Possibly it has resulted 
 from this that Oxford has usually had more of 
 the missionary spirit, and has more immediately 
 influenced English thought. Arnold may have 
 felt himself aloof from his Philistine countrymen, 
 but he was keenly anxious to rouse them to a 
 sense of higher things. Cambridge, on the other 
 hand, has been more recluse and disinclined to 
 be mixed up with public affairs. It is recorded 
 of Stephen that he arrived in England fresh 
 with the news of the Battle of Sedan, and only 
 
 D
 
 34 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 mentioned the subject to a friend after two hours' 
 animated conversation on less topical subjects. 
 Such behaviour would rather shock an Oxford 
 common-room, where the nightly discussion of 
 London omnibus fares or of some new scheme 
 for dealing with urban sewage, displays a properly 
 cosmopolitan spirit. 
 
 Perhaps, however, this difference no longer 
 continues in the same degree. It is said that a 
 political pamphlet by an eminent Cambridge 
 writer recently earned the distinction of being 
 seriously studied by Cabinet Ministers for their 
 edification. Certainly a visitor of both Uni- 
 versities would be equally impressed by the 
 knowledge of general matters respectively shown 
 there, even though Cambridge dons have not yet, 
 so far as I know, occupied their vacations as war 
 correspondents. Yet Oxford, however zealous 
 to be in the world, preserves a certain affectation 
 of exclusiveness. 
 
 An Oxford contemporary of mine once horrified 
 his scout by announcing that he was going to 
 Cambridge. " I've never been there," exclaimed 
 the perturbed servitor. " Ain't it something in 
 the Keble line, sir ? " This somewhat disdainful 
 attitude has, I fear, not always been confined to 
 anti-clerical scouts, and is in some measure 
 characteristic of the conventional attitude of 
 Oxford, not only to Cambridge, but also to the 
 world at large. Many of Arnold's most enthu- 
 siastic admirers have often felt repelled by a 
 phraseology which was, after all, a mere man- 
 nerism in a singularly benevolent personality.
 
 OXFORD AXD CAMBRIDGE 35 
 
 Translated into the flesh, this mannerism is 
 precisely what constitutes the " Oxford manner." 
 This element of apparent condescension is con- 
 spicuously absent in Stephen. Both Arnold and 
 he had real humour, but Arnold too often makes 
 the reader feel that the writer is laughing as 
 much at him as with him, whereas Stephen is 
 more genial. No one can help being amused by 
 Stephen's account of how Bentham's wish to 
 promote the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number was marred by his habit of keeping 
 both cats and mice in his study, but Stephen's 
 pleasantry always leaves an agreeable after-taste 
 of sympathy. Arnold's remarks on dissenters 
 and the middle-class stir up in the reader all the 
 acidity latent in the dyspeptic existence of our 
 civilisation, and, moreover, suggest a superiority 
 of attitude which was probably not felt by the 
 writer. 
 
 These interesting contrasts between two men 
 not so very unlike each other in themselves 
 may, I think, fairly be attributed to those differ- 
 ences of environment which in youth leave an 
 ineffaceable impression, but which are in them- 
 selves hard to analyse. It is no less difficult to 
 explain such a divergence as exists between 
 Oxford and Cambridge than to search out the 
 causes that differentiate communities or nations. 
 Perhaps something may be ascribed to locality. 
 Cambridge has for the most part been recruited 
 from the northern and eastern districts of 
 England, whereas Oxford is geographically more 
 connected with the west. The western popu- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 lation is on the whole more Celtic in character, 
 while the Teutonic element is more deeply rooted 
 in the north and east. This broad fact might 
 explain some of the differences, but the specu- 
 lation is obviously too uncertain to be seriously 
 followed up. Yet, to take an example on a 
 smaller scale, most men acquainted with the 
 history of Balliol would agree that some of the 
 essential characteristics of the college are in a 
 great measure due to the constant immigration 
 of Scottish students, and very probably the same 
 causes have been at work in both instances. 
 
 In conclusion, it may be interesting to speculate 
 how far the ordinary man of affairs carries with 
 him the influence of his University through life. 
 Such an attempt is, of course, somewhat baffled 
 by the variations of the individual. Mr. Balfour, 
 for instance, might well be imagined to have 
 sprung from Oxford, and Mr. Morley from 
 Cambridge, by any one who should compare 
 'The Foundations of Belief with ' Compromise.' 
 The general impression would seem to be that 
 the Cambridge man takes to the professions 
 (except possibly that of journalism) with more 
 readiness than the Oxford man. His interests 
 are perhaps less numerous and his power of 
 applying himself to the task immediately in front 
 of him more pronounced. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Oxonian has his compen- 
 sations in later life. He may begin by criticising 
 the form rather than the substance of the matter 
 he has in hand (even so far as to make marginal 
 notes concerning the grammar of Blue-books),
 
 OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 37 
 
 and may possibly not be so quick in coming to 
 the point. But he will always respond to a 
 greater number of stimuli, there will probably be 
 more colour in his life, and he will have a better 
 chance of being proof against the "ossifying 
 process " of middle age. In politics, Mr. Glad- 
 stone was certainly more receptive, as he got 
 older, than Macaulay. It is scarcely possible to 
 imagine Ruskin, had he been drilled in the 
 austerer traditions of Cambridge, beginning his 
 splendid attack on the Gradgrind school of 
 economists at the time of life which he chose 
 for it. 
 
 Oxford may well console herself with the 
 saying " Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il 
 croit." The intellectual indiscretions of youth 
 have their ultimate compensations, and even the 
 intellectual indiscretions of old age have a certain 
 gallantry about them. Education has been 
 defined as " the enlargement of the personality," 
 and if this definition be accepted, Oxford may 
 still be content to dispense with engineering and 
 agricultural triposes.
 
 A Romance of 1821 
 
 CONSCIOUS as we all are of our elders' short- 
 comings, we are sometimes inclined not to credit 
 our more remote ancestors with qualities that our 
 elders did not possess. In our day we are all a 
 little pleased with ourselves because we have 
 broken down something of the barrier which was 
 supposed to divide the sexes in what Mr. Wells 
 has unkindly called an era of "sham delicacy, 
 nasty sentiment, and giggles." Our young ladies 
 read and attend the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw 
 and sundry other authors from whom they hope 
 to derive a knowledge of the world. They share 
 masculine recreations, and are able to discuss 
 masculine topics. We may legitimately pride 
 ourselves on this emancipation. Indeed it is 
 only to be regretted in the interests of female 
 hygiene that Mrs. Grundy should still frown upon 
 pipes and cigars, even if she may occasionally 
 connive at the insidious cigarette. 
 
 At the same time we are a little unfair to the 
 ladiesof the pre-Victorian age, and the conventions 
 of 1840 to 1860 loom a little too conspicuously in 
 our horizon. During that period political power 
 and social influence came to a number of most 
 estimable persons who did not exactly know 
 what the proprieties demanded. The poor, who
 
 A ROMANCE OF 1 82 1 39 
 
 have no time for pretences and euphemisms, 
 accept and discuss the obvious facts of life with a 
 certain frank rationality. The properly civilised 
 and educated person may have recourse to 
 euphemisms, but endeavours to discard pretences. 
 Our immediate ancestors rather fell between two 
 stools, and their attitude was undoubtedly respon- 
 sible for a certain amount of sentimental hypocrisy 
 which frequently led to unhappy marriages. 
 
 But this was, after all, merely a passing phase 
 in English life Kate Nickleby is not the typical 
 girl of English literature, and, as an antidote to 
 her, we may do well to recall some of Shake- 
 speare's most fascinating heroines, the memoirs 
 of Lady Fanshawe, the letters of Dorothy 
 Osborne, Fielding's adorable Sophia Western, 
 and even Miss Jane Austen's young ladies. 
 
 These reflections are to some extent suggested 
 by a very human document which I recently un- 
 earthed from a number of old manuscripts. It 
 consists of a tiny little book bound in red leather 
 and written in a flowing Italian hand by a girl of 
 twenty-one to a youth of twenty-two to whom 
 she was then engaged and whom she married 
 soon afterwards. It certainly shows a laudable 
 ambition to settle all outstanding differences as 
 much as possible before the irrevocable act of 
 marriage, and it records the results of " five 
 months' strict observation." The book begins 
 as follows : 
 
 "CHRISTMAS, 1821. 
 
 " These desultory remarks on your character, my be- 
 loved , were suggested to me by your so repeatedly
 
 40 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 asking my opinion of the character given you by Miss F. 
 I know with your primitive notions of love, you will think 
 my affection for you ought to blind me to all your little 
 failings, but if I am less lenient to them than Miss F. 
 remember it is because I am more anxious than she 
 could possibly be that your merits may be seen in their 
 proper light and not obscured by any failings." 
 
 The lady displays peculiar wisdom in warning 
 her lover, who afterwards achieved some eminence, 
 against the way in which young men sometimes 
 resent the unreadiness of the world to take their 
 good qualities for granted, though she might 
 perhaps have added some reflections on the un- 
 reasoning acceptance of old age for its own sake 
 which may also be observed : 
 
 " She has justly ranked pride as one of the leading 
 features of your character. I admit that in some in- 
 stances it may operate beneficially on you and save you 
 from follies . . . which a man of less pride would not 
 hesitate to commit ; still, carried to the excess which I 
 have sometimes seen in you, it becomes a vice, by gener- 
 ating hatred, revenge, and all their hideous feelings, and 
 occasionally so fetters your excellent judgment as to 
 induce you to regard the natural reserve which many 
 people feel for the virtues or merits of a young man, when 
 experience has not convinced them of their existence, as 
 a personal insult." 
 
 The young gentleman appears to have professed 
 a Byronic misogyny which was perhaps fashion- 
 able in the cultivated youth of the period, but 
 was somewhat disconcerting to his future wife : 
 
 " However much you may smile at me and call me the 
 champion of my sex, still I cannot help noticing to you 
 the contempt which you so often express, and still oftener
 
 A ROMANCE OF 1 82 1 41 
 
 evince by your manners, for women. That my opinion 
 of them may perhaps be more exalted than they actually 
 deserve I do not dispute, but surely it is neither flattering 
 nor pleasing to hear a young man who contemplates 
 marriage strenuously endeavouring to depreciate that sex 
 from whom he will derive most of the comforts of his 
 future life. I know and acknowledge that you feel an 
 individual respect for the virtues of a few of the sex with 
 whom you happen to be intimate, but your judgment has 
 been so allured by the fine poetry of Lord Byron, warped 
 by prejudices contracted in early life in those climes 
 where sexual slavery prevails and profligacy is tolerated 
 and practised, from reading works which describe only 
 the feelings and passions of those women whose laxity of 
 principle reflects a partial disgrace on the whole sex, and 
 lastly from living in a metropolis without the comforts of 
 home and comparatively secluded from society where the 
 mild radiance of female virtues shines the most con- 
 spicuous, and forced into that, which corrupts the heart 
 and greatly influences the opinion. How different would 
 be the sentiments of a man who had been fostered in the 
 bosom of a domestic and united family, who could reflect 
 with gratitude and love on the numberless little incidents 
 which press on his memory, where an affectionate mother 
 has cheerfully sacrificed her personal feelings or deprived 
 herself of some enjoyment for his sake, while the silent 
 admiration painted on the cheek of a favourite sister, 
 who probably shares the deprivation, reveals the un- 
 feigned pleasure which she can derive from a brother's 
 gratification." 
 
 The writer goes on to vindicate the qualities of 
 women in a clear-sighted way almost worthy of 
 Jane Austen : 
 
 " To say that a mother will lay down her life for a 
 child gives but a faint idea of what she is capable. 
 Although such a sacrifice may add splendour to a tale of 
 heroism or romance, there is but one effort required and 
 pride lends its powerful aid in the accomplishment of
 
 42 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 that effort ; but to bear patiently and cheerfully a suc- 
 cession of petty inconveniences and wounded feelings, 
 daily privations, loss of fortune . . . are evils which 
 require more strength of mind to bear, inasmuch as the 
 struggles are more frequent and derive no support from 
 those powerful agents of the human mind, pride and 
 ambition. 
 
 "That mind which has been accustomed to find these 
 excellences in part of the sex, will easily credit the whole 
 of the better part for the possession of them, and will find 
 that they exist in nearly all, and that they only await 
 time and circumstances to bring them into action." 
 
 It is only to be added that the writer of these 
 words proved herself more than worthy of them 
 in later days. 
 
 The digression, however, does not lead her off 
 the track, and she rapidly proceeds to a less 
 academic subject of apprehension : 
 
 "You have a quickness and asperity of temper, my 
 
 , which I sincerely wish did not exist. If your future 
 
 companion were too amiable to notice, or too callous to 
 be wounded by its effects, it would not be worthy of 
 remark, for it would never subject you to the imputation 
 of ill-temper, but unfortunately I am neither the one nor 
 the other, and when that ungraceful asperity is exercised 
 to me I cannot help thinking it the germ of future un- 
 easiness ; for in proportion to the happiness I feel in 
 your unbounded kindness, so great is my wretchedness 
 when that kindness is withheld, and that too by one on 
 whom I have every claim which unlimited confidence 
 and the sacrifice of friendship can exalt. I know your 
 deep and almost romantic sense of honour, and to that 
 I trust. Miss F. says you have great command of your- 
 self, and I shall willingly agree in her opinion when I see 
 that self-command exercised in checking these virulent 
 and sarcastic feelings." 
 
 Some further sentences follow on the dangers
 
 A ROMANCE OF l82I 43 
 
 of Ambition and the possibilities of disappoint- 
 ment it brings, which are precociously wise, and 
 to some extent, I fear, prophetic. She thus closes 
 her discourse : 
 
 " You will see, my dear , that these remarks have 
 
 been carelessly put together. I appeal, therefore, to you 
 to pardon any inaccuracies which your better sense may 
 discover. Every merit, or failing, I have noticed I firmly 
 believe has its existence in your mind. Jealousy I have 
 not noticed, because in a lover it may be tolerated and I 
 hope it will be discarded when you are united by a nearer 
 tie. The latter are only venial errors which I am well 
 convinced you can banish as soon as you please, and by 
 so doing give me the highest satisfaction which the world 
 can give by making that man pre-eminent for his virtues, 
 loved by his friends, and respected by his enemies, whom 
 I have pledged myself to love as my husband and esteem 
 as my friend. 
 
 Should you be disposed to follow my example, I shall 
 patiently listen to any follies which you may object to 
 and will endeavour to eradicate them." 
 
 Here follows the date, "Monday December 
 24th, 1821," and the name and address of the 
 writer on the next page : 
 
 " Oblige me by preserving this little memorial, that, 
 when years have chilled the ardour of youth and an 
 increased intercourse with the world has dissipated our 
 more romantic feelings, we may ensure that half hour's 
 enjoyment which a retrospective view of our earlier years 
 is sure to create, and thus give vitality to some latent 
 spark of youthful fervour which even the icy breath of 
 Time cannot extinguish." 
 
 Unhappily, history does not relate if the young 
 man was ever disposed to follow his future wife's
 
 44 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 example, or if on the other hand the little homily 
 gave rise to any manifestation of the " quickness 
 and asperity of temper" to which she refers. 
 But as " extreme candour " was one of his 
 characteristics let us hope that he enjoyed the 
 prospect of a candid wife. The pleasing fact 
 remains that their marriage was singularly happy 
 and affectionate. The style of the little book 
 resembles, I have been told, that of the theme 
 which the schoolgirl of the period was taught to 
 write and, if this be the case, one may be old- 
 fashioned enough to wish that schoolgirls were 
 still taught to write so precisely even if the pre- 
 cision sounds quaint to modern ears. 
 
 I have had some qualms about unveiling the 
 privacy of this old romance, but the ordinary 
 objections to the publication of love-letters does 
 not quite apply to this case. As Mr. Chesterton 
 has recently said, the affection of marriage is to 
 some extent associated with a mutual fondness 
 for amiable follies in each of the parties which 
 neither interests the world at large nor exhibits 
 the persons concerned quite as they would wish 
 to be seen by their friends and acquaintances. 
 " Dulce est desipere in loco " is an excellent motto 
 for lovers, but they naturally prefer to be by 
 themselves. My little book, however, is sternly 
 practical, and I cannot help feeling that its 
 engaging, if slightly didactic, author might have 
 experienced some pleasure in the thought that 
 an anonymous reproduction of her ingenuous 
 exhortations should be given to the young men 
 and maidens of another century.
 
 Le Bonheur de ce Monde 
 
 LOOKING round the walls of my little study, I 
 see framed and hanging a facsimile of a sonnet 
 written and printed in the sixteenth century 
 by one Plantin at Antwerp, with the above title. 
 It has always a terrible irony when one remem- 
 bers that the home and family of the author 
 suffered the usual penalties of a Spanish siege. 
 It runs : 
 
 Avoir une maison commode, propre et belle, 
 
 Un jardin tapiss d'espaliers odorans, 
 
 Des fruits, d'excellent vin, peu de train, peu d'enfans, 
 Posse"der seul, sans bruit, une femme fidele. 
 
 N'avoir dettes, amour, ni proces, ni querelle, 
 Ni de partage a faire avecque ses parens, 
 Se contenter de peu, n'espeVer rien des grands, 
 
 Regler tous ses desseins sur un juste modele. 
 
 Vivre avecque franchise et sans ambition, 
 S'adonner sans scrupule a la deVotion, 
 Domter ses passions, les rendre obdissantes, 
 
 Conserver 1'esprit libre et le jugement fort, 
 Dire son Chapelet en cultivant ses entes, 
 C'est attendre chez soi bien doucement la mort. 
 
 I cannot imagine any ideal that would be so 
 fiercely attacked by many persons in this country.
 
 46 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 It is essentially middle class, it is the ambition 
 of a man who has troubled little about public 
 affairs and not more than necessary about his 
 own. He might even forget to vote in a general 
 election, or be indifferent as to the locality or 
 residential environment of his garden. " Peu de 
 train " ! What a sordid, unenterprising notion ! 
 
 But even more damaging criticisms can be 
 imagined. The Progressive Liberal element 
 among us not to say the Nonconformist will 
 certainly be shocked at the early and prominent 
 mention of "excellent wine," or, indeed, at its 
 being mentioned at all, and the recommendation 
 not to separate business from religion may seem 
 to some a more sensible aspiration for one who 
 has retired from business. " Peu d'enfans " 
 is perhaps worse still. Such a desire would 
 highly displease certain ecclesiastics, while the 
 old-fashioned early Victorian, who complacently 
 regarded a rapidly-increasing family and a rapidly- 
 exhausted wife as the excellent work of a 
 benevolent Creator, and the more modern Im- 
 perialist, who conceives it to be the duty of every 
 Briton to populate the Empire with superfluous 
 children, will fiercely denounce the epicurean 
 Plantin. 
 
 Yet, for all that, it would seem as if the 
 Plantin scheme of life were insidiously gaining 
 ground in the growing generation. The birth- 
 rate, as always seems to happen in really pros- 
 perous communities, continues not to rise in 
 leaps and bounds, despite clerical precept and 
 practice, and we are hearing on all sides of
 
 LE BONHEUR DE CE MONDE 47 
 
 garden suburbs. The smaller family has closer 
 ties than what could hardly be called anything 
 but a clan ; the children die less frequently in 
 the more prosperous class, and prefer, if they 
 can, to stay in their own country. When Taine 
 visited England in the sixties, he was struck by 
 the way in which families were large and dis- 
 persed all over the world, unlike the French 
 family, which was small and clung to its own 
 soil. We seem nowadays to be nearer the 
 French ideal. 
 
 The fundamental and really important question 
 behind all this is whether the change savours of 
 national decline, or whether it means a saner and 
 better scheme of life, and a preference of human 
 prosperity to mere money-making. 
 
 Hitherto we have been an adventurous race. 
 We have preferred making rapid fortunes by 
 an adventurous career to a steady routine of 
 industry. The unemployed, who in many cases 
 refuse work and who leave the agricultural 
 colonies provided for them by philanthropists 
 because requested to wash their own linen, would 
 probably accept with joy the prospect of a search 
 for hidden treasure. A gentleman who recently 
 appropriated some treasure-trove in Kensington, 
 cheerfully admitted in court that he had not 
 worked again till he had spent his money. The 
 industrial Titans of the nineteenth century made 
 money as quickly as possible in order to settle 
 down as country gentlemen. The idea of work 
 as one of the enjoyments of life is certainly alien 
 to the Anglo-Saxon mind as we know it from
 
 48 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 the times of Tacitus, and the industrial prosperity 
 of the country seems to have been generally 
 initiated and stimulated by alien elements 
 namely, Flemish and Celtic. 
 
 Our chief danger, therefore, seems to be that 
 the loss of the spirit of adventure might involve 
 a decline of national energy. The old English 
 notion I take to have been this : " Produce energy 
 by poverty. Primogeniture will endanger activity 
 in the younger son ; to educate, but not to make 
 provision for, your children is the best means of 
 inducing your daughters to marry and your sons 
 to work. If there is no room in England for 
 Englishmen, India and the Colonies remain. The 
 world at large is waiting for the improving efforts 
 of our race, and we are born to rule it if we only 
 increase and multiply in sufficient numbers." 
 
 The Manchester School of course took the 
 other side. " India is a terrible liability, and the 
 Colonies will drop off when ripe. Have economy 
 and prosperity at home and peace with the world. 
 Our ideal should be cosmopolitan, and national 
 differences should be merged in a general enthu- 
 siasm for trade." 
 
 The old Manchester School had its day, and 
 died with Majuba and Khartoum. The pendulum 
 swung, and we renewed our policy of adventure, 
 which reached its culmination in the Jameson 
 Raid. Finally, however, the Boer War sobered 
 the adventurous. Fighting turned out to be hard 
 and serious work instead of a splendid game ; 
 gold mines required the strenuous efforts of the 
 Chinese to make them work. On the top of this
 
 LE BONHEUR DE CE MONDE 49 
 
 came the proposal of another adventure. Our 
 Imperial existence was to depend on a fiscal 
 union against all the world. Food would cost 
 more, but somehow or other we were to have 
 more money to spend, and that money was to 
 come out of the foreigner's pocket. Rightly or 
 wrongly, the country prefers its present ills to 
 others it knows not of. I have even met some 
 heretics who would prefer Chinese labour to the 
 incessant blundering and inefficiency of the British 
 workman, and would not greatly object to living 
 on the income of foreign investments. 
 
 What is to be the future ? It almost looks as 
 if French notions might assert themselves. In 
 the United States and some of our Colonies, 
 where there is plenty of land, the population may 
 or may not expand up to a stationary level of 
 prosperity. But in England the aristocracy is 
 generally content to live a country life, the over- 
 taxed middle-classes will prefer to pay less to the 
 revenue, and the British workman will continue 
 to hope for a guaranteed wage irrespective of his 
 activities. We may be content to see other 
 countries wealthier than ourselves, provided that 
 we have enough for our own needs. We may 
 leave it to the Colonies to decide whether or not 
 they agree with us in thinking that the Empire 
 should be kept up, and if they do they will then 
 perhaps contribute rateably to its maintenance. 
 Like modern France, we may come to the con- 
 clusion that national and individual wellbeing 
 and a proper distribution of wealth are better 
 worth striving for than the ambition of incessantly 
 
 E
 
 50 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 adding fresh territory and protectorates to the 
 Empire. We may achieve as prosperous and 
 splendid a record of human happiness as the 
 Roman Empire did in its later days. 
 
 The last sentence bears its own warning. In 
 the history of the world it seems as if a nation 
 or an empire can never safely sit still. The 
 propagation of large families, the struggle for 
 wealth, and the thirst for adventure are after all 
 only manifestations of the will to live. The 
 Romans sat down to enjoy the fruits of their 
 labours and conquests, and then little by little 
 the alien was made to fight and work, and the 
 Empire slowly decayed. The same fate may 
 await us. But if, in the end, the British Empire 
 shall lose its identity in the same sense that an 
 individual dies, then in the same sense that the 
 results of a man's career live on we shall have 
 left a legacy to the world of justice and fair 
 dealing between man and man which will endure 
 as long as the great fabric of law and adminis- 
 trative order that has come down to modern 
 Europe from Rome. And with that comforting 
 reflection many will be content to enjoy the 
 delights so eloquently enumerated by Plantin, 
 and 
 
 "Attendre chez soi bien doucement la mort." 

 
 Old Humphrey's Walks in London 
 
 THE other day I had been reading Leigh Hunt's 
 gossipy book about London, when I suddenly 
 noticed among my books ' Old Humphrey's 
 Walks in London/ written, like the other work, 
 somewhere about 1850. I had never looked at 
 the little volume since it had been given to me 
 as a boy on the death of an aunt. The book had 
 been presented to my aunt in 1854. 
 
 The characteristic phraseology of a period is 
 often better preserved by a popular, than by a 
 distinguished, writer. Leigh Hunt would not, for 
 example, have written, " St. Paul's, the most 
 gigantic, the most elevated, the most celebrated, 
 and by far the most conspicuous building in 
 London, is a fit edifice to be visited by a peram- 
 bulator." It takes a little time to realize that 
 "perambulator" is here used to define not a 
 machine but a pedestrian, just as it once needed 
 a little reflection to understand a startling post- 
 card from the above mentioned aunt. " Your 
 old relation," she wrote from Brighton, "is not 
 seriously indisposed but is temporarily suffering 
 from the effects of walking improperly." 
 
 She only meant, of course, that she had been 
 walking to an improper extent, but this was not 
 obvious at the first reading. 
 
 E 2 '
 
 52 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 " Old Humphrey " preserves not only the char- 
 acteristic phraseology, but also the characteristic 
 ideas, of his times. In this way he particularly 
 entertains the modern reader who takes any 
 historical interest in the ideas of the Victorian 
 era. I make bold to say that Old Humphrey 
 explains, as no one else can nowadays explain, 
 exactly what inspired Matthew Arnold's indig- 
 nation against the middle class and exactly how 
 Ruskin came to write a book like ' Mornings in 
 Florence ' ; while he also illuminates, by ex- 
 plicitly stating, a whole number of opinions and 
 prejudices which linger in a dormant or moribund 
 condition all over the country and crop up when 
 least expected principally, perhaps, in the silly 
 season. 
 
 Old Humphrey has the merit of extreme 
 honesty. There is no mauvaise honte in his 
 composition. We positively warm to him when 
 he writes in his preface : "If, however, my 
 mourning has been great, my mercies have been 
 greater ; and seldom do I pass an hour of any 
 day without a Halleluia on my lip or in my heart." 
 We are delighted to be assured that " habitual 
 cheerfulness is no unfit attendant on healthy 
 piety," and to know that it has " not been incon- 
 sistent with my years and my hopes to give 
 some account of such places of public interest in 
 London as may be visited by Christian people in 
 their hours of relaxation without hampering them 
 in their earthly duties, or hindering them on their 
 way to heaven." 
 
 Old Humphrey's piety has, if I may say so, a
 
 OLD HUMPHREY'S WALKS IN LONDON 53 
 
 good body to it, and it fits in very profitably with 
 his pleasures. Thus he is genuinely fond of 
 giving " copper coins " to the poor, but does not 
 seem inclined to do much more for them. " What 
 a comfortable thing it is," he writes, " that one 
 can buy such a substantial gratification, as that 
 of lighting up the eye, and gladdening the heart 
 of the poor, at the low price of two-pence ! " But 
 the piety of the period was certainly robust 
 enough to stand crucial tests. We are told of 
 the terrible fire which destroyed the Grand Store- 
 house at the Tower. Our old friend then con- 
 tinues : " I have just spoken to a pious lady 
 residing on Tower Hill, who, when told, on the 
 night of the fire, that the surrounding neighbour- 
 hood would be blown up by the gunpowder in 
 the magazine, was enabled calmly to reply that 
 such an event could not take place without God's 
 permission, and again went to repose on her 
 pillow." This naturally leads on to some apposite 
 quotations in connection with the end of the world, 
 and the " fervent heat " likely to supervene at 
 such a time. 
 
 Old Humphrey's reflections are not, however, 
 always so remote from mundane affairs. His 
 conscience is considerably perturbed by a visit to 
 the National Gallery. 
 
 " There are many splendid specimens of art," he writes, 
 " magnificent triumphs of the pencil, in the gallery, to 
 which, on account of the freedom exercised in their 
 design and execution, particular allusion cannot be made. 
 One of two things must be admitted, either that the 
 general conception of modesty and propriety entertained 
 by the Christian world is too strict, or that painters in
 
 54 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 their principles and practice are too free. Without any 
 affectation, I am quite inclined to think that the latter is 
 the more just, and certainly the more safe, conclusion of 
 the two. The morality of a painting reaches the judg- 
 ment only by passing through the lengthy avenues of 
 reason and reflection, while its immorality influences the 
 passions instantaneously through the eye. Hardly can I 
 persuade myself that my error is to be too precise and 
 severe in judging of the thoughts, words, or deeds of my 
 fellow men," 
 
 and so forth. 
 
 After this it is not surprising to find that " the 
 pencil of Hogarth, like that of many other 
 painters, was not so chaste as a Christian spec- 
 tator might desire," although " in a picture where 
 the artist's object is a moral one, the very ap- 
 pearance of evil, if not necessary to point the 
 moral, should be avoided," or to read, " So long 
 as Music is content to be the handmaid of devo- 
 tion she is well worthy of regard ; but when she 
 sets up herself to be worshipped, down with her, 
 down with her, to the ground ! " 
 
 Old Humphrey gets his chance, in Westminster 
 Abbey, of giving some public and appropriate 
 expression to his feelings. 
 
 " The conductor has hastened onwards," he tells us, 
 " with a group of visitants, leaving me alone. I have 
 written with my finger on the dust of a monarch's tomb, 
 ' Sown in corruption.' This is a fit place for reflection. 
 Here kings are crowned, and here they lie down in the 
 grave, making corruption their father, and the worm 
 their mother and sister, Job xvii. 14." 
 
 This paragraph somehow reproduces a vivid 
 image of old Humphrey himself furtively inscrib-
 
 55 
 
 ing his remark while no one is looking. I feel 
 sure that he spoke very precisely, and with a 
 particularly full and unctuous roll of syllables. 
 It is gratifying to hear that he only used his 
 finger and the dust for recording his reflections, 
 for the reader has occasional misgivings that 
 " Christian spectators " not infrequently used 
 their pencils on public monuments. 
 
 We are pleasantly surprised, however, to find 
 Old Humphrey not insensible to earthly dignities 
 in the flesh. In the Thames Tunnel he is re- 
 minded of an illustrious personage. 
 
 "Years ago I was cooped up in this place with a 
 princess ; yes, Old Humphrey was standing on the same 
 plank with the Grand Duchess Helene, sister to the 
 emperor of all the Russias, who happened to visit the 
 tunnel when he was here. Had she been a peasant 
 instead of a princess, this record of the event had never 
 been made. What trifling circumstances puff up the 
 heart ! " 
 
 Old Humphrey, as befits his generation, has a 
 righteous horror of war except when pursued for 
 righteous ends. In the Tower he notes 
 
 " And now the implements of war, the instruments of 
 destruction, thicken upon me. These are the prolific 
 progeny of evil passions ; the scorpion brood of sin. 
 There is a party of visitors before me, and their admira- 
 tion and praise are unbounded. One timid female alone 
 has whispered the word ' dreadful ! ' . . . and dreadful 
 they are." . . . 
 
 Here follows an enumeration of medieval 
 weapons. On the other hand a grocer's shop 
 suggests a different vein of reflection, which,
 
 56 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 after a dissertation on black and green teas, 
 continues : 
 
 "We are purblind beings at the best, and cannot 
 fathom His almighty counsels, whose 'ways are not as 
 our ways.' The tea trade, which we only regard as a 
 source of luxury and temporal profit, may one day, by 
 the Divine permission and blessing, be a battering-ram 
 to knock down the wall of China, a key to unlock the 
 hearts of the Chinese, and a channel through which a 
 flood of gospel light may flow to illumine the three 
 hundred millions of pagans which the ' celestial empire ' 
 contains." 
 
 It is, however, to be feared that the writer might 
 not have been too fastidious in his choice of a 
 battering-ram in pursuit of these laudable aims. 
 
 His horror of war slightly flavours his unfavour- 
 able impressions of the pensioners at Greenwich 
 Hospital, " most of whom must be treading on 
 the brink of an eternal world." He notes that 
 "now and then a thumb-marked Bible was 
 visible, but more frequently a jest-book and 
 boasting ballad." 
 
 The " panoramas " of such places as " Mont 
 Blanc," Lima, or Lago Maggiore, appear to have 
 been a great feature of the time. We are con- 
 ducted through all of them. At one point Old 
 Humphrey finds that the exhibition he came to 
 see has for some time been removed, and quite 
 incorrigibly remarks, " These little disappoint- 
 ments are not without their advantages ; they 
 prepare, or at least ought to do so, our tempers 
 for greater trials." But we are rewarded by dis- 
 covering, instead of the exhibition, a model of
 
 OLD HUMPHREY'S WALKS IN LONDON 57 
 
 St. Peter's at Rome, which provokes the com- 
 ment, 
 
 "Amid all the goodly glory of St. Peter's, I cannot but 
 remember that it is one of the strongholds of Popery a 
 temple wherein the mummeries of the Romish religion 
 are practised with a high hand. Would that a purer 
 faith and simpler religious ceremonies prevailed within 
 its decorated walls ! " 
 
 "With a high hand" is certainly a splendid 
 effort of rhetoric, but leaves rather a vague im- 
 pression. A visit to Madame Tussaud's exhibi- 
 tion follows, which includes a colloquy with 
 Madame Tussaud herself and at which Old 
 Humphrey is mistaken for an effigy by some of 
 the visitors. 
 
 A long chapter on the " Cemeteries of Lon- 
 don " shows our friend quite at the zenith of his 
 powers. His curiosity is always quite inex- 
 haustible, especially where horrors are concerned. 
 As he remarks, when strolling in Kensal Green, 
 "A cemetery should soothe sorrow, as well as 
 call forth profitable reflection. Judging by my 
 present feelings, this place is calculated to do 
 both." After visiting Old Brompton and Kensal 
 Green he comes to Norwood and is quite fasci- 
 nated by the family vaults. 
 
 " I have passed through the chapels and descended to 
 the vaults below them the silent receptacles of the dead. 
 The chapels are plain, and in excellent keeping. Many 
 would like some stained glass in the large window, and 
 / should have no objection to a little drapery round it, to 
 increase the solemnity of the place j but these things are 
 not important and can be dispensed with."
 
 58 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 The italics (needless to say) are not Old Hum- 
 phrey's. I expect that he would have chosen 
 festoons of a dark Indian red with a yellow 
 fringe. But later on he makes an even more 
 attractive discovery, namely, that coffins are 
 lowered into some of the vaults by means of a 
 piston working in water underneath the chapel. 
 This invention is praised not only for its me- 
 chanical skill but also for its harrowing effect 
 on mourners. 
 
 "While the mourners . . . are yet gazing, with eyes 
 half-blinded with tears, on the coffin that contains the 
 body of the departed, the elevated bier, or stand, on which 
 it lies, begins slowly and noiselessly to sink, without any 
 apparent agency. The astonished spectator can hardly 
 believe his senses ; yet lower and lower the coffin descends 
 until it altogether disappears ... I am told that at a 
 funeral, a few days ago, in an assembly of at least a 
 hundred persons, scarcely was a dry eye seen in the 
 chapel." 
 
 Old Humphrey's delight in the success of this 
 ingenious device is perhaps symptomatic of the 
 delight in machinery for its own sake felt by his 
 contemporaries. As it seems to me, his book is 
 curiously typical throughout of the men who, in 
 the hackneyed phrase, "have made England 
 what she is." He has the great quality, which 
 Goethe so highly valued in young Englishmen, 
 of daring to be himself. In all his pharisaical 
 and sanctimonious vulgarity he is quite as 
 sublimely naked and unashamed as he is be- 
 nevolent and courageous on the better side of 
 him.
 
 OLD HUMPHREY'S WALKS IN LONDON 59 
 
 I have never been able to discover his identity,* 
 but I have no doubt that he was an honest 
 citizen with a large family, who, after " relishing 
 his broiled ham or bacon " in the morning and 
 reading and descanting on the Holy Scriptures, 
 sallied forth to do excellent work, and fulfilled 
 all his obligations with unsparing zeal. His 
 walks in London display an encyclopaedic know- 
 ledge of all sorts of subjects whenever it is allowed 
 to emerge through the continuous mass of plati- 
 tudes and moralities. If he hurls texts at the 
 publican and sinner, he at least throws "copper 
 coins" to the poor. His little book is, at any 
 rate, an admirable collection of materials for 
 what the Germans call the " culture-historian " of 
 the nineteenth century in England. 
 
 * Mr. Elkin Mathews informs me that his real name 
 was George Mogridge (1787-1854), and that he is buried 
 at Hastings. I am also indebted to Miss Lucy Deykin 
 for similar information, and she mentions that Mrs. 
 Mogridge died in 1871 and is buried in the churchyard 
 of Harborne Parish Church, near Birmingham. It 
 seems a pity that neither of them (i.e. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Mogridge) should have enjoyed the posthumous ecstasy 
 of being lowered into a vault " by means of a piston 
 working in water."
 
 The " First Gaudy " 
 
 IN my undergraduate days I had always imagined 
 that my first " gaudy " would be a series of dis- 
 illusions. I had pictured all my friends, acquaint- 
 ances,and enemies transformed into a monotonous 
 assembly of bald, fat, middle-aged mediocrities 
 with nothing whatever to say to each other. My 
 vision had indeed closely resembled the ordinary 
 conception of heaven, where everyone is uninter- 
 esting, respectable, and thoroughly bored. It 
 was therefore with a feeling of painful curiosity 
 that I attended the ceremony. I do not know 
 and modesty forbids me to speculate if my 
 experience of the next world will in any way 
 reproduce my memories of the gaudy, but it was 
 a curious anti-climax. The extraordinary feature 
 of the scene was that everyone remained the 
 same. Physically there had been some change. 
 My contemporaries were balder and had streaks 
 of grey in the hair, but they did not seem fatter, 
 though personally I became conscious of an in- 
 creased girth. And in themselves they remained 
 exactly as I had known them. Many had 
 become members of the genial club in which our 
 legislation is conceived by publicists to .take 
 place. Those who had been self-important as
 
 THE "FIRST GAUDY" 61 
 
 undergraduates were no less self-important now, 
 but for the most part they were quite as cheer- 
 fully giddy and irresponsible under the burden 
 of empire as they had been in youth, and seemed 
 considerably more at leisure. Constituencies 
 appeared to be even less difficult to please and 
 amuse than university examiners, and there 
 were no lectures to attend or text-books to 
 cram. Members of the mercantile and profes- 
 sional classes were perhaps a little less buoyant, 
 but, meeting on common ground, all had the air 
 of having just returned from an unduly prolonged 
 vacation. 
 
 This was especially marked in the groups that 
 spontaneously formed themselves. The old little 
 sets and cliques sprang up again in a moment 
 just as they had before, except that everyone 
 tried to assume an air of universal benevolence. 
 At what point the naturally gregarious instinct 
 of mankind merges into snobbery is always 
 difficult to gauge, but the general instinct of 
 human beings always lies in the direction of 
 desiring to appear in the group which for one 
 reason or another is held to be most respectable, 
 whether the society is that of the Antipodes, 
 England, the Continent or the backwoods. The 
 degree of sacrifice that is made to the instinct 
 depends wholly on the individual, but where the 
 craving is at all strong, difficulties will always 
 result from those changes of environment that 
 occur, at any rate in early life. 
 
 An intimacy with Smith major, the captain of 
 the school eleven, may be highly desirable at
 
 62 
 
 school, but may not possess the same value at a 
 university, where Smith's capacities may fade by 
 the side of greater prowess. A close friendship 
 with Jones, who moves in the most approved set 
 of the college, may not have the same value in 
 London, where Jones may turn out to be quite 
 poor and obscure. And nothing is more decep- 
 tive than the society of a university, in which 
 forecasts of success and failure seem oftener than 
 elsewhere to miscarry. The most brilliant scholar 
 of the year may be languishing in a home for 
 inebriates or a lunatic asylum, and the most 
 gilded youth may be wandering about in search 
 of credit as an undischarged bankrupt. Such 
 contrasts are particularly puzzling for a certain 
 type of don. Thackeray's sketch of the old- 
 fashioned don in his ' Book of Snobs ' is a little 
 out of date now. Dons are not so simple-minded 
 as all that ; and, to tell the truth, represent, on 
 the whole, a shrewder, more sensible, and finer 
 type of man than one ordinarily meets in the 
 world, though they suffer much from the incessant 
 contact with immature minds and from the lack 
 of personal responsibility for their blunders. 
 Still, in these respects they are at no greater 
 disadvantage than Cabinet ministers. But there 
 is a certain type of don generally young and 
 clerical of an inferior mould. He devotes an 
 unduly large part of his time to cultivating the 
 more influential section of the undergraduate 
 world, and is respected by his kind in proportion 
 as he has succeeded in frequenting the society of 
 the athlete and of the person who is vulgarly
 
 THE "FIRST GAUDY" 63 
 
 known as the " blood." Perhaps the memory of 
 discovering queer specimens of live pigs, poultry, 
 or shellfish in his bed inspires him, in sheer self- 
 defence, to propitiate the bolder spirits of his 
 college ; perhaps he only suffers from a laudable 
 anxiety to propagate his ethical or religious 
 ideals by imparting them to the most respected 
 members of the community. 
 
 At any rate the gaudy is an embarrassing 
 occasion for him. Some few other alliances may 
 have sprung up among those whom he considered 
 quite separated, or an increased knowledge of the 
 world may have made his old friends less recep- 
 tive of his ideas. He may, however, always 
 console himself with the reflection that nobody 
 will have the time or inclination to indulge in 
 such overt expressions of disapproval as those to 
 which I have before alluded. And after all he 
 cannot spoil the real sodality of the occasion. It 
 is greater, as a rule, than that of an old school- 
 fellows' gathering. There is a type of man 
 whose friendships, or what are termed such, de- 
 pend wholly on the proximity of accident the 
 arrangement of a table for meals or the constitu- 
 tion of a football team and college boat. Such a 
 man will, in after life, not seek for society outside 
 that of his colleagues, his neighbours, or relations. 
 To him a university means little, but to those 
 who are really capable of friendship, Oxford or 
 Cambridge brings the chance of finding truly 
 congenial spirits and the time for appreciating 
 them outside the more fixed routine of school, 
 where one is generally bound to sit next the
 
 64 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 same person at meals or at work. And, at 
 Oxford or Cambridge, as opposed to later life, 
 friends can meet without the ordeal of prelim- 
 inary correspondence and telegrams or of intro- 
 ducing each other's wives. 
 
 This is the great contribution of our universities 
 to English life, where the relations of human 
 beings are often so much stiffer and less adapt- 
 able than elsewhere. It is impossible to cultivate 
 the society of one's friends at big receptions or 
 at dinner-parties, where general conversation is 
 impossible, and where the exacting duty of 
 talking to one woman, or at most two, is substi- 
 tuted for the delights of a general conversation. 
 It is almost equally difficult to feel " unbuttoned " 
 at clubs which tend more and more to resemble 
 big hotels. Our gaudy at least recalls us to the 
 memory of a better state of being, and may even 
 console us for the intellectual handicaps of a 
 university education.
 
 The Commercial Spirit 
 
 OUR ancestors frequently affected to despise 
 commerce and things commercial, though they 
 did not disdain to profit by its advantages. 
 There was something low about trade in general 
 and traders in particular. Probably they did not 
 love Napoleon the more for calling them "a 
 nation of shopkeepers." A professional man, 
 such as a doctor, lawyer, or surveyor, was a little 
 better than a tradesman, but then he laboured 
 under the stigma of earning a livelihood ; he 
 neither enjoyed the feudal distinction of owning 
 land or fighting, nor the traditional prestige that 
 a clergyman might derive from carrying a bishop's 
 crozier in his carpet bag. 
 
 About the middle of the nineteenth century the 
 climate of opinion slightly changed. The Reform 
 Bill and the industrial revolution gave the middle 
 classes more scope and prestige. Physical science 
 was applied to the production of wealth and 
 ultimately gave rise to the growth of enormous 
 fortunes. Public opinion unbent a little, " broad- 
 minded " people began to admit that a successful 
 manufacturer should be respected for his success, 
 and it became less discreditable to work for a 
 living. To an enlightened nobility a rising 
 
 F
 
 66 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 doctor or lawyer came to appear a little less 
 like a monkey climbing up a stick than he did 
 before. Even the trader, pure and simple, was 
 regarded as contributing in his humble fashion 
 to the prosperity of the country, though the 
 actor, musician, and journalist still remained 
 outside the pale. 
 
 Meanwhile, even larger fortunes were being made 
 in the United States, and as time went on, these 
 fortunes dowered the nobility, and enriched the 
 hotel-keepers, of Europe. The latter phenomenon 
 has made living up to the American standard on 
 the Continent as difficult as it is to evade copious 
 draughts of iced water in what used to be com- 
 fortable and unpretentious hotels. It is a well- 
 known commonplace in economics that supply 
 creates demand. Hence, modern plutocracy also 
 began to introduce a number of new demands on 
 the purse. Motor-cars, week-ends, dinners at 
 fashionable restaurants, and a number of other 
 indispensable requirements all involved having 
 more money. Persons hitherto classed as rich 
 now had to wake up. Directorships inaugurated, 
 and the receipt of various commissions cemented, 
 the association of the gentry with trade. The 
 foundation of half-penny newspapers not only 
 swelled the new aristocracy but also provided a 
 certain amount of casual labour for some of the 
 old brigade. 
 
 The ancient prejudice against trade involved 
 the erroneous belief that traders must necessarily 
 be dishonest, and the modern tolerance of trade 
 seems to be tainted with the same fallacy. It is
 
 THE COMMERCIAL SPIRIT 67 
 
 becoming sufficient, in these days, to cover a 
 palpable fraud by saying " business is business," 
 and this is largely due to the extraordinary 
 notion that commerce is necessarily dishonest. 
 All bargaining has certain rules. A and B are 
 assumed to conceal from each other the degree 
 of desire that each feels to buy or sell respectively, 
 but this involves no kind of fraud. Subject to 
 this reservation, to give a misdescription or a 
 false warranty is, of course, fraudulent. The 
 occasional success of these latter tactics impresses 
 the half-educated person with the conviction 
 either that all business is cheating or that the 
 man who cheats is cleverer than the man who 
 is cheated. It therefore frequently happens that 
 the half-educated person who loses his prejudice 
 against trade, also loses his prejudice against 
 cheating, and, in fact, associates it with superior 
 talent. Hence the word "commercial" oftener 
 than not connotes the half-educated notion of 
 sharp practice in all its forms. Yet to buy in 
 the cheapest market and sell in the dearest is 
 perfectly honest, and it is not equivalent either 
 to buying at an unfair price and selling at an 
 unfair price, or to sweating employees and over- 
 charging customers. 
 
 This tendency to admire sharp practice has 
 naturally grown with the corresponding multipli- 
 cation of the half-educated classes who have 
 acquired an insidious influence by sheer force 
 of numbers. The enterprising politician or 
 newspaper proprietor cannot afford to ignore 
 them, and frequently panders to them. It 
 
 F 2
 
 68 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 sometimes looks as if public opinion, in so far 
 as the phrase covers effectual public opinion, 
 might in the end become the epitome of all 
 that is cheap and nasty, and nothing can be 
 cheaper and nastier than the notion that petty 
 but law-abiding dishonesty or meanness con- 
 stitutes the indispensable equipment for what 
 is vulgarly known as success. 
 
 In these circumstances, it is not surprising if 
 our society is, in many essential respects, less 
 healthy and stable than it was forty or fifty years 
 or so ago, and especially in regard to money- 
 making. Upper class privileges may then have 
 been often abused, but, on the whole, personal 
 honour stood for more, and wealth stood for less, 
 than each respectively stands now. Money was 
 made more slowly, but it was spent more ration- 
 ally, and there was considerably less anxiety to 
 escape all those tiresome obligations that are 
 so conveniently summarised in what used to be 
 known as the " gentleman's psalm." In other 
 words, business engagements were better kept, 
 and bills of all sorts were paid without chronic 
 haggling or evasion. Gentlemen did not use 
 their social advantages to tout for tradesmen or 
 to earn commissions in the City. Ladies did 
 not so inveterately gamble on the Stock Ex- 
 change. Emancipation from irrational prejudices 
 against commerce may be desirable, but freedom 
 from so-called commercial prejudices is equally 
 desirable. In the United States, for example, 
 where thought is no less precipitate than every 
 other form of human activity, there appears to
 
 THE COMMERCIAL SPIRIT 69 
 
 be a distinct prejudice, among high financiers, 
 in favour of making money by any means ready 
 to hand. To cheat one's partner, to deceive 
 the public, to monopolise a staple article of 
 food, are triumphs of ingenuity not unknown 
 to some American captains of industry. In 
 Great Britain, the tendency is, perhaps, more 
 negative, and oftener takes the form of an auto- 
 matic impulse, quite common among the half- 
 educated, to avoid payment whenever possible. 
 To make gratuitous use of charitable institutions 
 like hospitals, to telephone or write a letter to 
 a doctor in order to avoid paying for a consulta- 
 tion, to induce a country solicitor to undersell 
 his local colleagues, and generally to avoid 
 payment in any circumstances where it is un- 
 likely to be enforced, are accomplishments pro- 
 bably commoner and more avowed than they 
 used to be, both among the rich and the poor. 
 
 I once knew a consumptive doctor who practic- 
 ally killed himself by devotion to his patients, 
 and whose death was undoubtedly due to going 
 out on a terribly cold night to look after an 
 urgent case. He died leaving a widow and 
 child with nothing more than the proceeds of 
 a small practice, and an insurance policy for 
 jiooo. A bare request to his patients, who 
 were made fully aware of these facts, was of 
 little use, and nothing but repeated threats of 
 county court proceedings, followed by the issuing 
 of summonses, availed in the great majority of 
 cases to obtain payment of the fees which he 
 had actually earned by severe self-sacrifice during
 
 70 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 his life. It is edifying to speculate on the 
 virtuous indignation that these defaulters would 
 have displayed to a person who had been found 
 out cheating at cards, or who had served a short 
 term of imprisonment 
 
 The fallacies of the " commercial " mind are, 
 like most other fallacies, merely due to mental 
 indolence and stupidity. As Mr. Chesterton has 
 remarked, worldly success can only be achieved 
 either by doing very good work or by cheating. 
 Observing certain hypocrisies or precautions, it 
 is, of course, much easier to cheat than to work 
 well. It is at first sight easier for a tradesman 
 to obtain custom by paying secret commissions, 
 or employing pretentiously dressed touts, than 
 to supply really good commodities, or for a 
 certain type of publisher to succeed by over- 
 paying writers with well-known names, and 
 underpaying everyone else. 
 
 Conversely, the gospel of cheapness involves 
 the fallacy of supposing that advice on questions 
 relating to a man's health or property can be 
 obtained by the same sort of economic process 
 that lowers the price of provisions to an irre- 
 ducible minimum. This common delusion 
 merely raises the rates of mortality and enriches 
 lawyers. 
 
 The really interesting question is whether it 
 pays in the long run to do bad work. The 
 above-mentioned devices may be invented by 
 fools for fools, but may it not be argued that 
 they will successfully hoodwink the majority 
 of mankind ? Is the average man really capable
 
 THE COMMERCIAL SPIRIT 7 1 
 
 of distinguishing between good advice and bad 
 advice, good work and bad work, good food and 
 bad food ? The " commercial " assumption 
 appears to be in the negative. Yet in a society 
 less pre-occupied in money-making than anxious 
 to lead and enjoy a really good life, there is no 
 reason why this should be the case. Bad advice 
 from a doctor or lawyer soon makes its conse- 
 quences felt. Bad plumbing must be discovered 
 socner or later sometimes too late though 
 the same remark probably does not apply to 
 moderately adulterated food. 
 
 Yet although honesty may be the best policy 
 for a fairly prosperous person in an old country, 
 it is not necessarily so in a new country where 
 fortunes are rapidly accumulated. Under such 
 conditions, a man may have made money enough 
 to retire from business before being detected, 
 especially when everyone else is making, or try- 
 ing to make, money by the same methods of 
 overcharging and underpaying whenever possible. 
 
 Our society has not, however, come to this 
 pass, and one would fain hope that the sub- 
 stantial expediency of clean business methods 
 may, one day, appeal to modern England more 
 than it does now. Early Victorian honesty bore 
 good fruit in its day. Ruskin was proud to 
 describe his father as an " entirely honest mer- 
 chant," a person more respected in those days 
 than a smart commission agent. 
 
 The modern imbecilities of the so-called com- 
 mercial spirit will not be cured, indeed they will 
 probably be aggravated, by State interference.
 
 /2 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 The recent statute against secret commissions is 
 never likely to be exercised against any very 
 important or conspicuous offender. No prosecu- 
 tion under the Act can take place without the 
 permission of the Attorney-General, and it may- 
 be remembered that the prosecution of Whitaker 
 Wright had to be conducted by private enter- 
 prise. Probably, too, Whitaker Wright con- 
 sidered that he was playing quite fairly. His 
 methods were, after all, largely trans-Atlantic, 
 and he had spent much of his life in the United 
 States. Legislation may sometimes have humani- 
 tarian results and make men less cruel by forcibly- 
 stirring up a torpid benevolence, but it is pro- 
 verbially impossible to make men honest by Ac: 
 of Parliament. The only remedy for the recent 
 symptoms of blind money-grabbing I have 
 described is to convince people that it is really 
 cleverer, as well as more profitable, to " do very 
 good work " instead of cheating. 
 
 It has been sardonically remarked that modern 
 democracy will make a very pleasant environ- 
 ment to live in a thousand years hence. Mean- 
 while the necessary state of transition has its 
 disadvantages. We seem to be reaching a state 
 of opinion in which everyone is to have rights 
 without duties. Big fortunes are to be abolished, 
 but otherwise everyone is to receive a decent 
 allowance of unearned increment from pro- 
 miscuous confiscation. Dangerous criminals are 
 to be treated with a leniency which may soon 
 lead to the revival of lynch law, as in France and 
 the United States. Everyone is, in short, to be
 
 THE COMMERCIAL SPIRIT 73 
 
 entitled to complain of the State if his life does 
 not happen to be all beer and skittles. Such 
 ideas naturally induce a state of mind in which 
 the average citizen will desire to shirk work and 
 get everything for nothing. Fortunately the 
 disease must achieve its own remedy, but remedies 
 are either preventive or heroic. One of the best 
 preventives might be the public restoration of 
 honest dealing to its proper place among the 
 virtues.
 
 Pseudo-Intellectuals 
 
 AN elderly and cultured spinster was taken not 
 long ago to see a pretty little flamboyant church 
 in France. Amid the unsophisticated pleasure 
 of the rest of the party she remained cold and 
 aloof. On her opinion being invited she looked 
 slightly affronted, and icily remarked "Rather 
 late Gothic, I think." 
 
 Similar anecdotes could easily be collected by 
 any tourist who attentively listened on his travels 
 to the conversation round him. Italian picture 
 galleries are full of didactic females who read 
 aloud to their companions long passages of 
 Ruskin, and merely look at the pictures in order 
 to identify them with those mentioned in the 
 sacred text. Their pleasure in what they see, or 
 think they see, appears to be more ethical than 
 aesthetic or intellectual. After a " Morning in 
 Florence " laboriously spent in assimilating 
 Ruskin at his best little Bethel period they can 
 digest their midday meal with a feeling of duty 
 done. They have got to know how wicked and 
 decadent the Renaissance was, they have dis- 
 cerned the anecdotic " values " of Giotto, and have 
 probably discovered new incentives to virtue in 
 Byzantine Madonnas almost as angular as them- 
 selves.
 
 PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALS 75 
 
 The pastime is undoubtedly edifying, but, as a 
 matter of idle curiosity, it is difficult to understand 
 where the elements of pleasure or recreation 
 come in. The energies devoted to parochial 
 philanthropy, the decoration of churches, or the 
 moral improvement of the poor might surely be 
 renovated by some less strenuous occupation. 
 The " movement," which is only a growth of the 
 last twenty or thirty years, is however, an interest- 
 ing phenomenon and affords a high testimony to 
 those sterling qualities which have made England 
 what she is. 
 
 " Not once or twice in our rough island story 
 The path of duty was the way to glory." 
 
 In this case it is to be hoped that it is not also the 
 way to boredom. 
 
 It would be ungallant to speak as if this class 
 were purely feminine. It includes also a large 
 number of young gentlemen either engaged in 
 academic pursuits or possessing a moderate in- 
 dependence, but endowed with all the meritorious 
 attributes which we commonly associate with the 
 British spinster as seen on the continent. 
 
 It would also be unfair nay cruel to suggest 
 that these laudable pursuits are a waste of time. 
 That the names of Giotto and Botticelli should be 
 known at all to the middle classes of this country 
 is no doubt a gain, even if the names convey no 
 more than a sense of moral exhilaration, and other 
 painters not mentioned by Ruskin are neglected. 
 But the same sort of thing may in other directions 
 mean waste not only of time but of money.
 
 76 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 To the wealthy unemployed the moral outlets 
 that existed for their energies a generation ago 
 now seem tame and unsatisfying. Mere ordinary 
 philanthropy tends to be discarded for the "higher 
 sewage " or " imperial schemes." Among others 
 the clergy feel that they have to live up to the 
 requirements of an enlightened age. " Many a 
 worthy clergyman," wrote Mr. Oscar Wilde, " who 
 passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, 
 lives and dies unknown ; but it is sufficient for 
 some shallow uneducated passman out of either 
 university to get up in his pulpit and express his 
 doubts about Noah's ark or Balaam's ass or Jonah 
 and the whale for half of London ... to sit 
 open-mouthed in rapt admiration at his superb 
 intellect." 
 
 The British workman is also beginning to 
 cultivate his mind, or rather to have it cultivated 
 for him by unwilling but submissive ratepayers. 
 The writer once knew of an institution that 
 caught clerks and artizans quite young, and, in 
 many cases, against the wishes of their parents 
 and employers. Their enthusiasm was noble, 
 but sadly unpractical, for it made them com- 
 pletely indifferent to any ideas of earning a 
 livelihood. Nor did they seem to assimilate 
 knowledge except as an adjunct to certain fixed 
 ideas. In the middle of a lecture on the Refor- 
 mation in England they would ask the lecturer 
 what he thought about " payment of members." 
 The same sort of phenomena is sometimes ob- 
 served in the British workman's female relations 
 at " Extension Lectures." Both sexes at any
 
 PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALS 77 
 
 rate seem to agree in postponing the practical 
 business of life to this somewhat unmethodical 
 kind of speculation, and the tendency is a little 
 unfortunate, because the wealthy unemployed can 
 at least pay to get the practical business of their 
 lives transacted for them, whereas the poor cannot. 
 " Intellectuals " was a term used at one time 
 in France to define persons who either could not 
 or would not understand common people or ideas. 
 " Pseudo-intellectuals " is an expression which 
 may fitly describe persons who do not really 
 comprehend either the world or the things of 
 the mind. In England we have two classes of 
 "pseudo-intellectuals." There is the so-called 
 man of affairs, e.g. the Labour Member, who 
 would do better to improve his study of eco- 
 nomics instead of soaring into the empyrean of 
 sociology. There is, on the other hand, the 
 academic and leisured person who, unsatisfied 
 with his own pursuits, seeks to " know life," and 
 in time derives a precarious acquaintance with it 
 from the works of Ibsen or Mr. Bernard Shaw. 
 In the abstract nothing can be more desirable 
 than that the practical man should be able to 
 recreate his mind with books or that the college 
 don should learn how to balance accounts. But 
 in the restlessness of our age there seems a 
 tendency for people to neglect their business, 
 and this may have unfortunate results even in 
 the present not to mention the future. The 
 long-suffering householder may not be consoled 
 for an attack of diphtheria by the knowledge 
 that the plumber's man reads 6d. editions of
 
 78 EARLY VICTORIAN AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 Haeckel in the evening, and the student's thirst 
 for exact thinking will not be slaked by the 
 college don's impressions of the populace at San 
 Gimignano sandwiched into a discussion on the 
 freedom of the will. 
 
 Our modern zeal for intellect really goes too 
 far. A deserving clerk in the Civil Service was 
 not long ago relieved from his duties and given 
 a competence to enable him to write treatises, 
 the style of which shows that he could have 
 written even better Finance Acts statutes which 
 seem to be designed by a benevolent govern- 
 ment to compensate lawyers for the loss of their 
 conveyancing business. This experiment seems 
 to have worked very well, but the writer can 
 never forget a certain hotel porter who, in his 
 leisure moments, read Shakespeare's sonnets, 
 and evolved a new theory about them. Some 
 kind person gave him enough money to read up 
 the subject at the British Museum, and the 
 delighted porter wrote and published a treatise 
 on the subject. By the time the copies were 
 printed he was, in an almost starving condition, 
 taking them round and trying to sell them to 
 the world at large. But for a timely act of 
 benevolence on the part of a generous man, now 
 dead, he would certainly have committed suicide 
 out of sheer chagrin and destitution. This 
 happens to be a true story, but it has certain 
 merits as a parable. It illustrates, among other 
 things, the advantages of technical education, the 
 proper uses of benevolence, and the dangers of 
 the higher criticism.
 
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 of a recognition that the how is more than the how much, which is 
 new in English literary art. ... As slight and clever fragments of 
 observation ' London Etchings' are well done." Athentzvm. 
 
 THE VIEWS OF CHRISTOPHER. With a Preface 
 by COULSON KERNAHAN. [Second Edition. 
 
 "This is a book to be read and re-read; it is unique." 
 Methodist Times. 
 
 " Wholesome, vehement, exacting criticism of men and manners 
 in general is set down in this dainty book with the frankness, 
 gravity, and finality of the philosophy of eager youth. . . . T t may 
 frankly be commended mrginibus puerisgue and to the elders. 
 A good book." The Month. 
 
 %* Other Volumes in Preparation. 
 
 LONDON : ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET, W.
 
 A 000 669 427 7