THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE FIRST PUBLISHED, NOVEMBER, 1892. TWICE REPRINTED, NOVEMBER, 1892. AGAIN REPRINTED, DECEMBER, 1892. AGAIN REPRINTED, JANUARY, 1893. PRINTED IN CROWN 8vo., JUNE, 1893. REPRINTED, DECEMBER, 1893. THE MEMOEIES DEAN HOLE ' From grave to gay, from lively to severe ' TH'ELFTH THOUSAND LONDON: EDWAED ARNOLD NEW YOEK: MACMILLAN & CO. 1894. Vf\ INTRODUCTION THESE Memories are the holiday task of an old boy, who desires, and hopes that he deserves, to rest, but is too fond of work to be quite idle. He would float awhile, ' with languid pulses of the oar/ upon the Cherwell, that, like the Dido of the unripe scholar, vento profecta secundo, he may come again with second wind to the eight-oar on the Isis. And, though he cannot aspire to combine with his own relaxation any signal service to his fellow-men, even as Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, when he was weary, amused himself by translating Theocritus, he ventures to hope that, from the varied experience of a long and happy life, among all sorts and conditions of men, he may communicate information which will be interesting, and suggestions which may be useful. 2018823 CONTENTS ARCHERS. CHAPTER I. PACE Early associations in childhood and boyhood The Royal Sher- wood Archers at Southwell The Woodmen of Arden Horace Ford Remarkable scores ... ... ... 1 ARTISTS. CHAPTER II. John Leech His enjoyment of the country Sherwood Forest Mr. Speaker Denison On the hunting field His sketch of ' A Contented Mind ' Nascitur, non Jit His drawings on the wood His hospitality His friends ... ... ... 12 CHAPTER III. A little tour in Ireland Leech on the ocean wave His visit to Blair Athole A fiend in human shape His wife and chil- drenSketch from Biarritz Bull-fight at Bayonne The last new Rose ... ... ... . . , ... 29 CHAPTER IV. Leech as a pugilist In melancholy mood New process of en- larging his drawings ' Sketches in Oils ' Exhibition in London The beginning of the end Thackeray's entreaty Thackeray's death Leech's presentiment His sudden departure His work ... ... ... ... ... 41 x CONTENTS CHAPTER V. PAGE Mr. John Tenniel A clever reprisal Mr. Frederick Tayler ' Mind your own business ' Edward Lear Herbert Marshall Frank Miles at Buckingham Palace Herbert Ollivier Charles Furse Mr. Kempe Unintentional praise Musicians Power of music Sir George Grove and the Royal College of Music Sir John Stainer Anecdote of Gounod Famous singers ... ... ... ... 51 AUTHORS. CHAPTER VI. My first tragedies and poems The two shortest dramae in exist- ence Editorial importance My literary friends The Rev. Henry Lyte, the author of ' Abide with me ' His popularity at Brixham His death at Nice ... ... ... 62 CHAPTER VII. First meeting with Thackeray Stories of giants The Garrick Club His delight in his daughter's success as an authoress His allusion to ' Vanity Fair ' Pen or pencil ? Nemo me impune lacessit The Cornhill Magazine A letter in verse ' The Carver's Lesson ' ... ... ... ... 69 CHAPTER VIII. Correspondence and interview with Charles Dickens His affec- tionate admiration of John Leech Rochester associations His home at Gad's Hill The study and garden ' Charles Dickens going out of fashion !' ... ... ... 77 CHAPTER IX. Dr. John Brown, author and physician His visit to Caunton His quaint letter to Bishop Magee Associated, like Dickens, with Chatham, where he practised at the time of the cholera Strange incident His death His fiiends Four editors of Punch Mr. Charles Knight The Laureate The Duke of Argyll ' John Inglesant ' Augustus Hare Edmund Yates 85 CONTENTS xi CEICKETEES. CHAPTER X. PAGE The love of cricket An Oxford song The good influence of cricket Tom Barker Fuller Pilch Lillywhite Mynn W. Clark Guy Box R. Daft George and Sam Parr Country stories My match at single wicket Umpires ' The Free Foresters ' Remarkable incident at York Extraordinary scores Should clergymen play cricket ? ... 96 ECCLESIASTICS. CHAPTER XI. Past and present Fifty years ago Zebah and Zalmunna The dawn of day The Oxford Movement The foreigner's visit The American bishop .., ... ... ... 113 CHAPTER XII. Personal recollections Dignitaries Archbishop Vernon Har- court Bishops Kaye and Jackson Anecdotes of the Duke of Wellington ... ... ... .. ... 123 CHAPTER XIII. Bishop Christopher Wordsworth His appointment to Lincoln His spiritual, intellectual, and bodily excellence His 'Eirenicon to the Wesleyans,' and his anxiety to promote reunion The ' Old Catholics ' The Greek archbishop Strange incidents in connection with almsgiving 'Theo- philus Anglicanus ' The last message ... ... ... 129 CHAPTER XIV. Bishop King The power of charity Archbishop Tait American and Scotch bishops Pusey, Newman, and Keble The Oxford revival Indiscretion ... ... ... ... 137 CHAPTER XV. The village church The daily service The choir Loss and gain ' Finn may fiddle ' The school ' The child is father to the man ' Special services for children ... ... 151 xii CONTENTS CHAPTER XVI. PAGE The country parson and his people The Eanters The village demagogue The village artist The club Decrease of drunkenness The 'Rang-tang' ... ... ... 159 CHAPTER XVII. Parochial incidents Boring for coals The traveller by the way- side, half dead The village murder The carrier's dog Visions of the night Coincidences ... ... ... 171 GAMBLERS. CHAPTER XVIII. My first experience Fallen among thieves Gambling at Oxford Suicides, abroad and at home Racing and betting Results Remedies Principiis obsta Power of example ... 178 GARDENERS. * CHAPTER XIX. The love of flowers innate Children's gardens Flora forsaken for Pomona The love and practical knowledge of horticul- ture should be encouraged and instructed Allotments Schools for gardeners Window-plants ... ... ... 189 CHAPTER XX. Our gardens sixty years ago Landscape-gardening Beautiful trees and shrubs Herbaceous and Alpine plants Roses Famous gardeners, and writers about gardens Realities and shams ... ... ... ... ... ... 202 CHAPTER XXI. floral exhibitions, committees, and exhibitors Town and country shows The Knave of Spades Judges, righteous and in- capable ... ... .- ... ... 216 CONTENTS xiii HUNTE ES. CHAPTER XXII. PAGE Antiquity of ' the sport of kings ' Erroneous ideas about hunting 229 CHAPTER XXIII. My first horses A sad catastrophe Squire Musters The Belvoir Hunt Will Goodall The Quorn The Pytchley Rufford incidents Captain Percy Williams Jack Davis Colonel Welfitt Hunting parsons ... ... .. ... 242 SHOOTEES. CHAPTER XXIV. Johnny Jebb and his gun My first partridge Joyful memories The past and the present The old keeper's lamentation A clever auctioneer ... ... ... ... ... 254 CHAPTER XXV. Partridge-shooting in the olden time The sickle and the scythe Tame birds Temptations and inclinations to poach The poacher ... ... ... ... ... ... 264 OXONIANS. CHAPTER XXVI. Preparatory schools Newark-upon-Trent Young Mr. Gladstone Memories of the elections Arrival at Oxford Magdalen Bridge The anxious freshman College friends ... ... 275 CHAPTER XXVII. Dons and undergraduates Reading, hunting, and boating men Humiliation of pride Want of religious sympathy and in- struction How supplied in later and happier days The Universities and Public Schools Missions ... ... 285 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER XXVIII. PAGE The first lecture Timidity and impudence A brave beginning The fascinations of the chase Mr. Drake's hounds, and the Heythrop Jim Hills Buying and selling horses Perils and penalties ' The Grind ' The river The race with seven oars ... ... 294 PEE ACHEES. CHAPTER XXIX. My experience No help at Oxford The 'Evangelicals ' the best preachers fifty years ago Personal experience Dr. Dollinger to Mr. Gladstone Simeon and Newman Objections to preaching without manuscript The matter and manner of preaching The Great Example Read and think Savonarola Utterance Length Preachers ... ... 308 WOEKING MEN. CHAPTER XXX. Happy sympathies The demagogue distrusted as ignorant and immoral Promissory notes Might against right True friends Parks, gardens, and playgrounds Clubs and libraries Technical schools The home The smoke nuisance Temperance The Church and the working men 322 LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS PAOK PORTRAIT OF DEAN HOLE ... ... Frontispiece THREE MISHAPS ... ... By Leech ... 23 LEECH AT SEA ... ... ... ... 30 " A FIEND IN HUMAN SHAPE ... ... 34 PONY INCLINING TO EMBONPOINT ... ... 35 LAST SWEET THING IN HATS ... ... 39 PATERNAL JOY ... ... ... ... 40 THE BRUNSWICK SQUARE PET ... ,, ... 41 THE CARVER'S LESSON ... By Thackeray ... 75 THE MEMOEIES OF DEAN HOLE CHAPTEE I. ARCHEES. Early associations in childhood and boyhood The Royal Sherwood Archers at Southwell The Woodmen of Arden Horace Ford Remarkable scores. I BEGIN my recollections, as I began my education, in alphabetical order. Again my first object-lesson, ' A was an Archer, who shot at a frog,' presents itself to the mental eye. He was an object indeed, but no longer of my admiration. He was impossible as an archer, and immoral as a man. In defiance of the first law of the craft, that the bowman stand erect and firmly on his feet, he leaned forward on one leg. The brim of his absurd hat would have hopelessly prevented any approximation of the arrow to his eye, but he appeared to be perfectly satisfied in drawing it near unto his hip. He was encircled with coils of tuneful brass, as triplex circa pectus erat ; and I was reminded of him, many years after I made his acquaintance, when on a moonlit night, 1 2 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE having dined with the regiment of yeomen of which I was chaplain, and going down the inn yard for my dog-cart, I saw a brazen monster, gleaming, as it swayed to and fro, and accosting me, as it came alongside, with, ' 'Ow de yer do, Mr. 'Ole ?' Then I recognised one of our bandsmen bearing his ophi- cleide, whom I also knew as a clever house-painter ; and when I proceeded to rebuke his intemperance, he gravely made reply : ' Why, it were only t'other day as you was a-praising on me for graining your study door, and I do reckon to follow up natur' pratty close in oak, but I defy you at walnut !' I declined the challenge, and bade him go to bed. I repeat that this educational archer was, both in posture and purpose, vile. What contemptible, cruel cowardice to array himself in such a costume to shoot at the harmless frog ! I don't like frogs. I have been greatly disturbed by their nocturnes in Southern climes. I was taught in my early childhood that their conduct was not always filial ; that they left their homes, and made proposals of marriage without the permission of their maternal parents, as it has been beautifully told in the Latin language : 4 Ranula f urtivos statuebat quasrere amores, " Me miserum," tristi Rolius ore gemit, Ranula f urtivos statuebat quserere amores, Mater give daret, sive negaret, iter.' But there is no suggestion that this bowman was a moral champion in quest of 1'Enfant Prodigue, or even that he was a French epicure yearning for food ; and we should be harrowed by all the emotions which troubled the poetic soul of Mrs. Leo Hunter ARCHERS 3 when she wrote her lamentations on ' The Expiring Frog,' were we not quite sure that our archer was incapable of hitting his mark. Another vivid memory of my childhood is closely connected with archery. Many a time has the cistern of my little heart overflowed, when nurse read to us the tragic history of the irritable and nervous tailor, who could not endure the surveillance of the carrion crow from the aged oak hard by, and, shooting his arrow in the haste of his wrath ' Full many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer never meant ' pierced the heart of the aged sow. I remember how we all fell a-sighing and sobbing, when we came to the supreme crisis of the tragedy : ' The old sow's body was laid in the clay, Ding-a-ding, a-ding, a-ding ! All the little pigs came weeping away, And it's heigh-ho, the carrion crow, Ding-a-ding, a-ding, a-ding O !' Then came compensation. Diana smiled on me as I went, a happy boy, into the woods with the keeper, and he cut the stout, round, supple, shining hazel with my new knife (I still bear signs manual of its trenchant power), and I bought whipcord for the string at the village shop, carefully putting by a portion, having just read Miss Edgeworth's story of ' Waste not, want not,' and we went adown the brook for the stiff, straight reed, which we shortened into arrow form, and the blacksmith converted long nails into pointed piles, and the shoemaker fixed these 4 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE firmly with waxed thread, and I sallied forth, as it seemed to me, a combination of Apollo, and Robin Hood, and William Tell, and of some stalwart an- cestor, who following the banner, ' Olde Nottingham, an archer cladde in green,' and sending his arrows hurtling through the air, helped to win the great victory, on Crispin's Day, at Agincourt. How delightful it was when first I shot an arrow into the air, and it fell to earth I knew not where ; when I shot mine arrow over the house, and might have hit my brother, had I not been an only son ; when pigeons and rooks were eagles and vultures, and cats and dogs were tigers and bears ! I shot profusely, but, happily for her Majesty's lieges, I lost and broke so many arrows that my bow was soon laid aside. There still remained in use two instruments of terror (boys are a charming nuisance), namely, a cross-bow, made by the village carpenter, which ejected small portions of tobacco pipe, and a sling of stick, which propelled from a cleft at its upper extremity the smooth stones, which suggested on several occasions the exercise of the glazier's art. Civilization and science had not then achieved that infernal machine, the catapult. In due course, I put away these malignant missiles, with other childish things, and, promoted to a full- sized bow and arrows, was permitted to practise with my father at the targets, elected a member of ' The Royal Sherwood Archers,' learned to ' Prove by shooting in a compass narrow, That I was born at Bow, and taught at Harrow ; ARCHERS 5 and my ' auri sacra fames,' my longing to hit ' the gold,' was gratified by the annexation of my first prize. Our meetings were held on a fair ground, over- looking the valley of the Trent and Southwell, half garden and half town, with its grand old church. The latter was largely indebted to Archdeacon Wilkins, who occupied 'The Eesidence,' for the restoration and maintenance of the fabric. Murray, his son, was rector, a man of much humour, and of practical energy in his work, for he was the first to introduce into the Midland Counties the harvest and choral festivals which are now universal ; and I remember, as a specimen of his wit, the remark which he made upon our archers, ' that, though the gentlemen shot well with yew bows, the ladies shot better with beaux yeux.' And, apropos to his musical instincts, as we were walking down the main street of Southwell, he stopped opposite a bank, which was then kept by Messrs. Wild and Sons, and sang sotto voce, ' I know a bank, wherein the Wilds' time goes.' One day the Eoman Bishop of Nottingham, Eoskell, came to inspect the minster. He was of portly and imposing aspect, and, when he was gone, the rector inquired from the chief mason what he thought of the visitor. ' Well, sir,' was the reply, ' I saw nothing very particular about him. He seemed to me the kind of a man as 'ud be pretty reg'lar 'ome at meal- times.' At Southwell Lord Byron lived when he wrote his ' Hours of Idleness,' and the book was published by Eidge, in the neighbour-town of Newark. ' Eidge, 6 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE Kidge,' a friend said to me, as he read the word over his shop ; ' what a curious name !' ' Much more remarkable,' I could not forbear saying, 'in the life- time of his old partner, Furrow.' But my companion seemed suspicious. The readers of Byron's 'Letters' will remember the name of the Eev. J. T. Becher, whose descendants still reside at Southwell. Not long ago, at a great ecclesiastical function I think it was the enthrone- ment of Bishop Kidding my friend, the present head of the family, who was rector's warden, was constrained to intimate to one of the vergers, an excellent servant, but enfeebled by age, that he must be superseded for the occasion by a younger man. The poor old fellow could not understand it, and at last exclaimed, in an astonishment of indignant grief, * What me, as brought in ' Ar court /' Which meant that, at some distant period, he had walked before the Archbishop ~of York. We were long in persuading him that there was no diminution of respect. The oldest societies in England are the Broughton Archers, in Lancashire, of whom I have no informa- tion ; the Toxophilite, whom I only know by the high reputation which they most successfully retain in London; and the Woodmen of Arden, of whose pleasant meetings at Meriden, in Warwickshire where they have their hall and ball-room, their dress- ing-rooms, kitchens, and cellars, their spacious grounds, with targets and butts and clouts, their servants clad in Lincoln green (reminding us of the dear old ' Heythrop,' of which anon), where guests are enter- tained with the most genial courtesy, and fed on ARCHERS 7 venison, archers' favourite food I have joyous memories. There, in the older days, when Coker Adams and Coker Beck were the heroes, and in later time, when my dear old friend Biland Bedford and others won bugles and arrows, it was my exultation more than once to win ' the stranger's bow.' These meetings were more like private parties than public assemblies, the members being so well known to each other, and there was a merry exchange of what the French call badinage and the English chaff". For ex- ample, when the member whom I have last named was standing on a chair, reaching some of his archer's gear from his ' Ascham,' another friend, a layman, who officiated as judge and referee at this and at ' the National ' gathering, addressed him with, ' Now, rector, give us a sermon.' ' If you wish,' was the prompt reply. ' Shall I preach about the unjust judge ?' Archers are nomad and gregarious, and I became acquainted with the best bowmen of their day, Higgin- son, who was one of the chief founders of 'the National,' Hippesley, Peckett, Luard, Maitland, Muir, Bramhall, Moore, the Garnetts, a triumvirate of brothers (of whom Charles, the eldest, shot the swiftest, strongest arrow I ever saw fly from bow), cum multis aliis, good men and true, whose names I do not recall. ' Bat one I would select from that proud throng' as the prmce and champion of all archers, Horace Ford. In the year 1845, at York, Mr. Peter Muir, of the Queen's Body-guard of Archers at Edin- burgh, beat all competitors in the Double York Eound, with a score of 537. Twelve years afterwards, at Cheltenham, Mr. Horace Ford took precedence, after 8 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE shooting the same number of arrows, with a score of 1251, which has never been surpassed in public. ' Micat inter omues Jnlium sidus, velut inter ignea Luna minores.' But I have before me a letter, signed, ' Yours to the pile, Horace Ford,' in which he gives the details of a still more wonderful performance, made while shooting with the Eev. John Bramhall, who also achieved an admirable score : FORD. 100 yards 144 arrows 127 hits 017 score 80 96 88 486 60 48 47 311 Total ... 262 hits! 1414 score. BRAMHALL. 100 yards 144 arrows 114 hits 504 score 80 96 89 465 60 48 47 v 275 '. Total ... 250 hits. 1244 score. Ford also sent me some clever verses, written by his friend, Mr. Hughes, and entitled LINES TO Miss VILLIERS. ' Of all the damsels whom the Muse Hath e'er summed up, as target-drillers, I ne'er saw one whom I should choose To hold a candle to Miss Villiers. ' All the fair ladies on the ground Shot well, Peels, Harding?, Bakers, Millers Et caetera ; but none were found Within two hundred of Miss Villiers. ARCHERS 9 ( Our champion draws a yew as well As the old Agincourt blood- spillers, But query if he can excel, At the same distance, this Miss Villiers ? 4 Peters, and ye, my staunch R. T., When next we meet, let's all be fillers Of a full pledge, with three times three, To the good health of fair Miss Villiers. ' Old Worcestershire may swell at heart With pride to call such grace and skill hers, As we have witnessed on the part Of this redoubtable Miss Villiers !' The poet does not descend to statistics, but I do not suppose that Miss Villiers ever attained the splendid score which Mrs. Legh made at Leamington in 1885, namely, 142 hits from 144 arrows, value 864 ! Ford was ever ready to instruct ignorance, and he was pleased with a pictorial description which I sent him of ' my archery before, and my archery after, six lessons from Professor Ford.' In the first tableau one arrow was in the leg of a farm labourer, who was dancing with pain ; another was in a haystack ; and a third in the fleece of a sheep. In the second tableau the first was in the centre of the target ; the point of the second in the ' nock ' of the first ; and the point of the third in the ' nock ' of the second. On re- ceiving this proof of my progress, he expressed his intention of retiring into private life. Mr. Edwards, of Birmingham, a successful archer, communicated to me an incident which blended tragedy and comedy in a remarkable degree. He had received a dozen new arrows from Buchanan, and went forth to try them in a paddock adjoining his house. He had made eleven successive hits at sixty yards, and to THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE was delighted with his purchase, when a cow, which he had not observed, slowly approached the target, and pushed it down with its horns. ' You will guess what I did,' he continued. ' It was no longer in my power to make a bull's-eye, but I touched up the other end of the cow.' And the old nursery rhyme came into my thoughts, how ' Tidy hinched, and Tidy flinched, and Tidy cocked her tail f and the old schoolboy round-hand copy, ' Retribution follows crime.' Two remembrances of graver import are associated in my mind with archery. Staying with a friend for a ' bow meeting ' in his neighbourhood, my razor, which I was stropping with the careless rapidity of youth, suddenly slipped from my grasp, and made a gash in the lower part of my left thumb, from which the blood streamed continuously. The wound re- quired a surgeon, and was long in healing. Pollice truncus, but no poltroon, I resumed my archery as soon as I was able, but never again had the same firm grip of my bow. In the same house, after the first day's practice of the year, my host and I decided to try a prescription for hardening the fingers of the right hand, which were sore from the bowstring, by striking them quickly on a heated poker, just touching the metal. The operation took place in the smoke-room, and the lady of the house, who came in during the process, volun- teered to hold the poker, which was nearly red-hot. Suddenly, as she lowered it for an instant, her dress which I think was made of tarlatan caught fire, ARCHERS ii and to our horror she was at once surrounded with flames. Her husband lost his presence of mind, and tried to extinguish the fire with his hands. As he rushed to ring the bell for help, I bade her lie down, and, spreading out the large thick dressing-gown in which it was then the fashion to smoke the evening cigar, I enfolded her completely, and effectually smothered the flames. The husband was in bed for nearly a fortnight, the wife a day or two, her right arm being badly burnt ; the guest escaped unhurt, with a gratitude, which will never leave his heart, that he had been used to prolong the life of one of the most charming and beautiful women of her day. Taking leave of this subject, so interesting from its associations with the past, and so powerfully presented to us by a modern poet, Mr. Conan Doyle 1 What of the bow ? The bow was made in England, Of true wood, of yew wood, The wood of English bows : So men, who are free, Love the old yew -tree, And the land where the yew-tree grows What of the shaft ? The shaft was cut in England, A long shaft, a strong shaft, Barbed, and trim, and true : So we'll all drink together To the gray goose feather, And the land where the gray goose flew ' I would commend archery as a most healthful and social exercise, forewarning all who have not made the experiment, that success can only be attained by acquiring a good style, and by constant practice 12 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE (' Many prate of Eobin Hood, who never shot with his bow '), and that with excellence there conies a powerful temptation to devote too much time to an amusement which, however fascinating, should be re- garded only as a relaxation, subordinate and auxiliary to work and duty. Horace Ford expressed in his later day a sorrowful regret that he had spent so largo a portion of his time in archery. CHAPTER II ARTISTS. John Leech His enjoyment of the country Sherwood Forest Mr. Speaker Denison On the hunting field His sketch of ' A Contented Mind ' Nascitur, non fit His drawings on the wood His hospitality His friends. I MIGHT have been an artist, but I met discouragement. In my early childhood I had pictorial instincts and a sixpenny box of paints, but my mother not only re- proved me for painting the baby during the absence of its nurse, but objected to the decoration of my own person and vestments. Under a more auspicious patronage I might have acquired the dexterity of Quintin Matsys, who, having expended on his own pleasures the money given to him for the purchase of a new suit, to be worn at some grand ceremonial of the Court, to which he was attached, painted on canvas a most gorgeous costume, and wore it, to the admira- tion of all. Again, in boyhood, when, having received lessons in drawing, I took home my show-piece, a weeping willow ARTISTS 13 by a ruined wall, entitled, ' The Deserted Home ' no willow had ever such cause to weep, like Harms or Mariana, over a more desolate scene my father first kindled, and then extinguished, my hopes by his com- mentary, ' that it was just the sort of thing which he liked for gun- wads.' Wherefore I retired from the School of Art, and satisfied myself, as most boys do, with marginal illus- trations of my books, of the noble horse, as ' Lseta per arva ruit,' with portraits of those who taught me how to trans- late them, with mural delineations in chalk, and, in after-time, with such occasional cartoons in pen and ink as that to which I have referred, and which evoked the eulogies of Horace Ford. How, then, it may be asked, dare you presume to write about artists ? And I offer my apology in the language of the flower in the Persian fable, 'I am not the rose, but cherish me, for we have dwelt to- gether.' My dearest friend for many years was John Leech. It was a memorable day on which we first met. I went literally ' from grave to gay.' In the morning there had been a consecration of ground added to our churchyard, by Bishop Jackson, of Lincoln ; and a most incongruous incident had oc- curred in the distribution, by one of my parishioners, who had brought the wrong parcel from my study, of the ' Schedule of the Caunton Cottage Gardening and Horticultural Society,' instead of the Form of Service ; and in the evening I went to dine with a neighbour, and to meet Leech. I had always longed .14 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE to grasp the hand which diffused so much pure enjoy- ment, and taught men how to be both merry and wise, and it was an epoch in my life, a green spot on the path of time, to look on his kindly, intellectual, handsome face. He had come into the Midlands, with his old friend Adams, to have a day with the Belvoir Hounds, and was greatly amused, with a soupqon of annoyance, at the ill-concealed attention which had been freely bestowed upon him. Some expected him to witch the world with noble horseman- ship, whereas, fond as he was of hunting, he was a timid rider, and loved a placid steed. ' Give me an animal,' I have heard him say, ' on which you can carry an umbrella in a hailstorm.' Some hoped for a recitation in the familiar intonation of Punch; and all expected to see themselves next week in the pages of the London Charivari. As to his appearance, it might be said of him, as Sterne said of Uncle Toby, that ' Nature had written Gentleman, with so fair a hand, on every line of his countenance,' and that, as Lord Peterborough said of Fenelon, he was ' cast in a particular mould, never used for anybody else.' After his death, his father sent me the Illustrated London Neivs, having written in pencil over his portrait therein, ' An exact likeness ; the best extant.' He was tall, but slight in figure, with a high broad forehead, large blue-gray, Irish eyes (his family came originally from Ireland), and a face full of expression. When he saw anything which he disliked, when he was bored or vexed, there was ' a lurking trouble of the nether lip,' but the sunniest of smiles, avijpidj.iov ye\da-fj,a, when he was enjoying the ARTISTS ridiculous, or giving pleasure to his friends. He was modest in his demeanour, and silent as a rule, as one who, though he was not working, was constrained to think about his work. ' Les petits esprits,' Koche- foucauld writes, ' ont le don de beaucoup parler mais de rien dire ; ' but when Leech spoke, he spoke well, and when he was with those whom he loved, no one was merrier than he. He dressed tastefully but quietly, like a gentleman, and was one of those who believe that cleanliness is next to godliness. Some years ago, I was writing letters in the morning-room of a great house, and one of tw r o fine ladies, who evidently wished me to be edified by their conversation, inquired from the other, ' Do you care, dear, for artists and authors, and that sort of people ?' And the answer was, ' No, dear, I can't say I do. They're so dirty!' I ventured to suggest the names of individuals, distinguished in literature and art, who were manifestly as fond of ablutions as the haute noblesse, but they evidently did not believe me ; and I must confess that I have met disciples of the palette and the press whose back hair has suggested both scissors and shampoo, and whose lighter raiment would be best described in Latin ' Qui color albus erat nunc est contrarius albo.' The first time John Leech paid me a visit, it did me good to watch his enjoyment of country air and quiet. He sat under a tree, stretched himself, folded his arms, closed his eyes, and opened his mouth, inhaling, like one 16 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE ' Who feels, as in a pensive dream, When all his active powers are still, A distant dearness in the hill, A secret sweetness in the stream.' Like the Arctic voyager, when the sun shone once more, he ' seemed to be bathing in perfumed waters.' No child among the cowslips, no schoolboy homeward bound, could be happier. I drove him to ' The Dukeries,' so called because at one time there was a conjunction of four ducal homes. Thoresby was the residence of the Duke of Kingston, succeeded by Earl Manvers, Clumber of the Duke of Newcastle, Welbeck of the Duke of Portland, Worksop Manor of the Duke of Norfolk. Passing through Wellow, he seemed to be as delighted with the maypole on the village green as was Washington Irving, when, in writing of his visit to England, he says, 'I shall never forget my joy at first seeing a maypole.' But when, having left our carriage, we wandered among the grand old oaks and the golden bracken, he closed his sketch-book, almost as soon as he had opened it, and murmuring, ' This is too delicious,' sat down in the sunshine. We discoursed on Kobin Hood (Eobin o' the 'ood), who, by a ubiquity only surpassed by that of our royal Charles, who seems to have slept in several beds on the same night, is supposed to have spent much time in this Forest of Sherwood ('the Shire Wood'), chasing the wild deer and harassing the tourist. Leech was pleased by an account, which I gave him, of a recent Archaeological meeting at Newark, in which a learned antiquary, after an ARTISTS 17 elaborate history of Eobin and his doings, was suc- ceeded by a brother savant, who undertook to prove, by unanswerable evidence, that no such person ever existed. And I told him, apropos of outlaws, how, not many miles from the place where we sat, a Nottinghamshire gentleman was met as he was re- turning, on horseback, by night from Mansfield, where he had been to receive his rents, and having a large sum of money with him, by Dick Turpin, who stopped him with the inquiry, ' Mr. Milward, I think ?' 'Noa, sir,' it was answered in a vulgar provincial twang, ' I bean't Mister Milward. I be his mon. The master's got a party at the inn, and he won't be home till midnight.' On he went unmolested, but it was long, after discovering the deception, before ' Eichard ' was ' himself again.' I invited all my neighbours to meet Leech at a garden-party, my annual Fete des Eoses, of which I had then three or four thousand trees; and, in memory of the fair ladies, who admired him, and the flowers, and the cooling cups, he afterwards made a charming picture of Mr. Punch, crowned with a wreath of roses and surrounded by smiling Hebes, offering sherry-cobblers, fanning him, and shading him from the sun. He was somewhat perplexed by one exuberant worshipper, who insisted on drinking his health at intervals, and assuring him that he was ' the delight of the nation,' and evidently felt, as Mrs. Nickleby, when one of her lovers would cut her initials on the pew-door during Divine service, that ' it was gratifying but embarrassing.' 2 1 8 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE He liked the sympathy of those who could appre- ciate the intention and execution of his work, but his countenance, his mixed expression of indignation and amusement, was a memorable sight to see. ' A moment o'er his face a tablet of unutterable thought was traced,' when a vulgar fellow, who travelled with us on the rail, asked him ' how much he got for his funny cuts,' and assured him that ' some on 'em was tiptop, though he thought old Briggs was bosh.'* Everybody gave him heartiest welcome whenever he came and wherever he went. The Speaker, Mr. Denison, afterwards Lord Ossington, at whose house one met the potentates of the age, the American statesman, the English Premier, the popular prelate (I have in my recollection Daniel Webster, Lord Palmerston, and Bishop Wilberforce), mounted him, dined him, and told him, as few could tell, amusing incidents. Apropos of art, he narrated how, when making alterations in his house, he had sent away from a long gallery two waggon-loads of worthless pictures, copies from the great masters, to a dealer at Eetford, who bought them for three or four pounds apiece. A worthy chemist from Southwell, very fond of pictures, went to inspect the purchase, and was so delighted with 'A Monk at Prayer, by Murillo,' that, as he told a friend on his return, he hardly dared to inquire the price, lest he should reveal his anxiety to * 1 had the pleasure of suppressing an intrusive fellow- traveller of this type, who brought into the carriage a strong odour of whisky, and, having bored me for some time with his imbecile remarks, roughly inquired, ' What comes next to Itchin? And when I answered, 'Scratching,' the conversation flagged. ARTISTS 19 purchase. Finally, on payment of ten pounds, he secured, and brought home, the treasure. There must have been some merit in it, for not many days after, Mr. Wright, of Upton, an accomplished scholar, the translator of Dante and Tasso, a clever artist, and the owner of many valuable pictures, saw it, bought it for eighty guineas, and gave it the best place in his collection. He died. The pictures were to be sold, and Messrs. Christie and Manson sent down an expert to prepare a catalogue. A proof was forwarded to the chief executor, who wrote back at once to express his astonishment that no mention was made of the gem of the collection, the Murillo. The explanation was depressing a courteous intimation that the owner of the picture had made an injudicious purchase, and they could not advise that it should be sent to London. On the hunting-field Leech was a most delectable companion, when he had a gentle, tranquil steed, and hounds were not running. No incident or object of interest escaped his keen observation. He directed attention to circumstances which were exceptional, characteristics which were quaint, things beautiful or ugly, where ordinary eyes saw nothing worthy of notice. I remember, in proof, that, as we were going from covert to covert, it was necessary to negotiate an ordinary fence. 'Now,' he said to me, 'there is no hurry, nothing to fire your inflammatory spirit ; wait awhile here and watch. You shall see that no two men, women, or boys, no two horses or ponies, will go through this performance, which seems so simple, in the same temper and style.' His prophecy was ex- 20 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE actly fulfilled. Some men gathered themselves and their bridles together, gripped their steeds, put their feet further through their stirrups, pressed their hats more tightly, and charged the obstacle, as though they rode to battle. Some held a loose and some a tightened rein. Some used the whip, and some the spur. Some were silent, and some addressed their animals with brief words of encouragement. Some kept their seat, and some rose so high as to open out an extensive view of the distant landscape between themselves and their saddles. The horse and rider who knew their business went, the pace imperceptibly quickened, with serene confidence to the leap. The quadrupeds, like the bipeds, showed signal diversities of form. Some jumped a foot higher than the hedge, and covered four times the necessary space. Some cleared it, and that was all. Some broke it with their hind-legs, to the intense gratification of the timid, who were rendered yet more happy when an excited four- year-old or a blundering underbred brute went through it with a crash. Some suddenly refused, and then, if the rider was without experience, it was a case of 'stand and deliver.' Lastly, the mixed multitude, including that section which a friend of mine was pleased to designate as 'The Pop and Porter Brigade,' passed bravely through the gaps, and the gay cavalcade moved on. When the chase began, Leech was not in the fore- ground. He was not physically strong ; he had not hunted in his youth ; his arm had been broken by a fall from his pony, and the recurrence of such an accident would have been disastrous to him and to us ARTISTS 21 all. We, whose limbs were comparatively of no im- portance, could afford to risk an occasional fall ; and, apropos of such contingencies, he sent me, in reply to a letter, in which I informed him that I had been riding a most promising young chestnut in a long and difficult run, and that we had only had three mishaps, a sketch, which afterwards was published in Punch, as illustrating : A CONTENTED MIND. ' Well, Master Eeynolds, so you've been riding the young un. How does he go ?' ' Splendid ! never carried better in my life ! It was his first run, and we only came down five times !' With the original, he wrote : * DEAR MASTER EEYNOLDS, 'I should immensely like a mount on this charming animal. * Yours ever, ' J. L.' The city and country mouse exchanged frequent visits, but with no unpleasant interruptions, as in the fable. He came and went as he pleased, and could work or rest at his will. He gathered welcome mate- rial in fields fresh and pastures new. Sometimes he would say, ' I must make a memorandum,' and would trace a few mysterious lines in his sketch-book to be developed hereafter ; and sometimes he would ask, with the meekest diffidence, if he were told an anec- 22 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE dote worthy of illustration, ' May I use that ?' as though you were conferring a priceless obligation, instead of receiving a privilege, in playing jackal to such a lion. Sometimes he would have a horse brought out, and draw him. Sometimes my wife sat to him in her habit. Both may be seen in combina- tion in one of his ' Sketches in Oil,' wherein a young horsewoman leaves the road, to the horror and ex- postulation of the fat groom behind, and takes a fence into the adjoining field, to spare the poor animal's legs. The horse is the only true presentation the lady in the picture is short instead of tall, and if I had proposed to any servant of mine to assume that coat of many colours, I should have received an im- mediate month's warning. Leech never published likenesses, except of public men in his cartoons, on principle, and I am not sure that he had the power, if he had desired it. He spent the best part of a day in endeavouring to produce a pencil sketch of the lady aforesaid, and then destroyed it as a failure. It was like bringing water to some fair plant which was drooping in drought, food to the hungry, fuel to the frozen, to tell Leech a good story which the public had never heard, and which none could repeat to them so charmingly as he. I see that dear face light up once more as I relate how the farmer at the rent dinner (it took place, I think, on the Belvoir property) smacked his lips over the rich liqueur, and, turning to the footman behind him, said, ' Young man, if you've no objection, I'll tak' some o' that in a moog;' how the coachman, unaccustomed to act as waiter, watched with agony of mind the jelly which he bore 24 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE swaying to and fro, and set it down on the table with a gentle remonstrance of ' Who-o, who-o, who-o,' as though it were some restive horse; with other his- tories, many in number, which he made famous. He was ever on the look-out,* listening, musing, realizing. ' I am obliged,' he said, ' to keep my pencil hi exercise, lest it should get above its work.' But the real constraint was in the continuous demand, ' nutta dies sine lined.' ' There is always,' he sighed, 'a boy from the Punch office, diffusing an odour of damp corduroy through the house, and waiting for fresh supplies.' Sometimes he could work with mar- vellous rapidity. I have known him finish three drawings on the wood before luncheon. Sometimes he said that his pencil was on strike, that it was a dangerous anarchist, and that he proposed to call out the military. I have met with those who seemed to think that it gave him no trouble to produce his sketches (we are all of us inclined to regard other people's work as much more easy than our own), and that, like Gliick the composer, when he took his piano with a bottle of champagne into his garden and played joyous airs, his life was all music and sunshine ; but at times he was sorely pressed. No artist had ever more enjoyment from his art. It was innate, as with all extraordinary genius -poeta nascitur, non Jit. It * So we read of Hogarth in his rambles through London streets, always on the watch for striking features or incidents, and accustomed, when any face struck him as particularly grotesque or expressive, to make a preliminary sketch on his thumb. ARTISTS 25 was so in a marvellous degree with Handel, but the difference was that Leech had every encouragement (Flaxman, the sculptor, foretold his excellence), whereas Handel's father opposed his son's inclina- tions, and kept all instruments out of his reach, ignoring the wise advice of Lord Bacon, that 'if the affection and aptness of children be extraordinary, then it is good not to cross it.' He contrived to get possession of a clavichord, which he secreted in his garret, and played while others slept. It is recorded that he presided at the organ in the cathedral at Halle before he was seven years old, and that he began at the age of nine to study composition. I have seen some very clever drawings which Leech did about the same period of life, notably a coach with four horses, and two knights tilting in the ring, and no doubt his pleasure increased with his skill ; but he was overworked, and sacrificed himself for the advan- tage of others. No one knows what John Leech could do, no one has seen the supreme perfection of his art, who has not been privileged to admire his drawings when they were finished on the wood for the engraver. There was an exquisite delicacy of touch, which, even by such, accomplished artificers as Mr. Swain, could never be reproduced in their integrity. The slightest divergence in an eyelash, or the curl of a lip, changed the expression and misrepresented his work ; and I have heard him groan when Punch arrived at his breakfast-table on Tuesday morning, and he saw that some small aberration had detracted from his design and achievement. Happily there always remained an 26 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE amount of excellence to satisfy and gratify all who saw them. The mention of a Breakfast Table of which he was Autocrat (he had high admiration of Wendell Holmes) suggests his hospitality, and he was the most considerate and thoughtful of hosts. He gave to all his best. He had no chasse-cousin, no cheap wine, halfway on its road to vinegar, and so called because the French give it to poor relations when they wish to shorten their stay ; and though he never pampered himself in private, nothing was too good for his friends, for whom he always produced, as Douglas Jerrold bade the waiter, 'the old, not the elder, port.' I asked him one day, after he had given us a merry little dinner at his lodgings, No. 1, The Crescent, Scarborough, how he made such good champagne cup. ' The ingredients,' he replied, ' of which this refreshing beverage is composed, and which is highly recommended by the faculty for officers going abroad, and all other persons stopping at home, are champagne, ice, and aerated water ; but, in consequence of advancing years, I always forget the seltzer.' I remember a dish of British Queen strawberries, of a size and colour to make a gardener take off his hat, crowned with a majestic monster, which would have made a dumpling ; and he gravely requested a servant to remove the apex from the pyramid, and to have it carved on the sideboard. But better than choice fruit, or food, or vintage, though remarkably nice in combination, was the feast of reason and repartee provided by the clever guests ARTISTS 27 whom he delighted to gather round him : Thackeray and Millais ;* Adams, his oldest, and one of his dearest friends, who lived at Baldock in Hertford- shire, where Leech went a-hunting, and where our eighth Henry went a-hawking, and was nearly suffo- cated in a muddy ditch, his jumping-pole snapping in twain as he was vaulting over; Lemon, Shirley Brooks, and Tom Taylor three successive editors of Punch ; Douglas Jerrold and Percival Leigh ; Tenniel, Holman Hunt, Du Maurier, Silver, Mowbray Morris (the manager of the Times'), Dasent, Lucas, Knox (on the staff), and others, whose names I forget. Dickens was absent, because, when I first knew Leech, there had been an interruption of their friendship, but it was afterwards happily resumed. Their intimacy had been long and affectionate, and Dickens had nursed him in a serious crisis. Leech was his guest at Bonchurch, and while bathing was suddenly struck by a gigantic wave with a force that brought on symptoms of a congested brain, and for a time im- perilled his life. Dickens wrote, ' He was put to bed with twenty of his namesakes upon his forehead, became seriously worse, and was again very heavily bled. The night before last, he was in such an alarm- ing state of restlessness, which nothing could relieve, that I proposed to Mrs. Leech to try magnetism. Accordingly, in the middle of the night, I fell to, * A gentleman came into his studio, and, seeing his famous picture of ' The Black Brunswicker,' asked, ' What uniform is that ?' Millais, who had been at great trouble and expense to procure the exact costume, replied, ' The Black Brunswicker.' ' Ob, indeed !' said the visitor ; ' I knew it was one of the volunteers, but I wasn't sure which regiment.' 28 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE and, after a very fatiguing bout of it, put him to sleep for an hour and thirty-five minutes. A change came on in his sleep, and he is decidedly better. I talked to the astounded Mrs. Leech across him as if he had been a truss of hay.' He took me to dine at the weekly congress, the hebdomadal board, of Punch, which was held on Wednesday, in Bouverie Street, when the subject of the next large cartoon was fixed by the authors and artists. Afterwards he told me, ' You are an honorary member of our mess,' a compliment which I most gratefully appreciated, and which, I was informed, had only been offered to one other favoured guest, Sir Joseph Paxton. I need not say how elated and exhilarated I was, to be where ' the sparks of wit flew in such profusion as to form complete fireworks.' Thomas Hood I write the name with reverence, because no English poet, except Shakespeare, has united in one brain and heart such pathetic and humorous power, who was among authors as Garrick among actors, alike excellent in tragedy and comedy Hood was one of his select friends, and he went to see him, he told me, shortly before his death. He was weak, and emaciated in body, but the old bright spirit was strong within him. ' Ah, Leech,' he sighed, pointing to some pungent plasters, which his doctor had put on his chest, ' so much mustard, and so very little beef.'' Samuel Eogers said to him, ' Mr. Leech, I admire you much.' He was just beginning his success as an artist, and was gratified by this commendation, as he supposed, of his art. 'Yes,' repeated Eogers, 'I ARTISTS 2 9 admire you much. I saw you brushing your own hat, and a man who, in these days, does anything for himself is deserving of admiration.' CHAPTEE III. ABTISTS continued. A little tour in Ireland Leech on the ocean wave His visit to Blair Athole A fiend in human shape His wife and children Sketch from Biarritz Bull-fight at Bayonne The last new Rose. LEECH proposed that we should take a fortnight's holiday in Ireland, and I accepted his invitation with an eager gladness, which was somewhat subdued when he suggested, ' You shall write, and I will illus- trate, an account of our little tour.'* Nevertheless, my hesitation was brief; for I knew that the sauce would compensate for the want of flavour in the fish, and that the dulness of the drama would be redeemed by the splendour of the scenes. He sent me a sketch of his delight on the ocean wave, being, in fact, an early and helpless victim to mal de mer, and having stated in a letter to Charles Dickens, whom he visited at a chateau in France, that on his arrival at Calais he was re- ceived by the congregated spectators with a distinct round of applause, as being by far the most intensely and unutterably miserable object that had yet ap- peared. From the hour of embarkation to that in * 'A Little Tour in Ireland.' Illustrated by John Leech. London : Edward Arnold. 30 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE which we parted, our journey was all ' sweetness and light.' To have had as a companion ' an abridgment of all that is pleasant in man ' ; to have realized Sallust's maxim, ' eadam velle, eadam nolle, ea demum est amicitia ' ; to have shared his quick perception and keen appreciation of all that was grand and lovely in ARTISTS 31 nature, and of all that was eccentric and laughable in man ' His eye begets occasion for his wit ; For every object that the one doth catch, The other turns to a mirth-loving jest ' as we looked over the Bay of Dublin from the hill of Killiney, wandered among the solemn mountains and lakes of Connemara, all but danced with joy over the first salmon which he caught at Kylemore, shot the weir between the upper and lower lake at Killarney, rowed by moonlight to Innisfallen, talking to the boat- men about the O'Donoghue, and listening to the bugles as they set the echoes flying, travelling mile after mile of tranquil enjoyment in the cosy Irish car; these are memories to make an old man young, He was perfectly successful in all his attempts at delineation but one the portrait of a most offensive odour in Cork Harbour, which, he said, taking out his book and pencil, ' was quite strong enough to sketch.' He had previously achieved a representation of a sneeze, which is still in my possession. Soon after our return from Ireland, he wrote me an account of his visit to Blair Athole. He was delighted with the scenery and the gracious hospitality, but (as the lady said, when she was congratulated on her daughter's engagement, ' Jenny hates the man, but there's always a something ') his spirit was perturbed by the lateness of the dinner-hour, which depended upon the ducal siesta, and was sometimes delayed until 9 p.m., and also by the presence on the dinner- table of a small but obese dog, who, as the footmen took up large hot-water dishes and handed them to 32 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE the company, watched his opportunity, and crawled from one vacant space to another, that he might enjoy the warmer locality. Asking the reader's permission to record my memo- ries as they present themselves, I would narrate another canine incident, also connected with the dinner-table and warm water, which I heard from an eye-witness. In a London home it was the custom to place a foot-warmer, before the repast began, in front of the chair of the hostess, who was chilly and infirm from old age. On this occasion the guests were early, or the footman was late, and the latter was still under the table when the former took their seats. The lady of the house became conscious of some motive power below, and thinking that it came from a favourite retriever, which was allowed to roam where it pleased, fondly addressed it as ' Eollo, good Eollo !' and, failing to hear the protest, 'It's not Eollo, grandmamma it's Alfred,' affectionately patted the head as it emerged from the table, with a halo of powder, and an expression of perplexity which Leech himself could not have copied. I have before me nearly one hundred and fifty of his letters one, ' written with a pen which had no mouth, and bolted,' all in haste. A large proportion consists of invitations or replies thereto. When I pleaded my reluctance to leave my garden, he sent me a sarcastic view of a ' rational being admiring a chrysanthemum /' bade me seek ' the more refined and intellectual gratifications to be found in a pantomime,' and called upon me to remember how we had enjoyed together the consummate acting of Eobson in The ARTISTS 33 Porter's Knot, so pathetic that a young man in the stalls near to us, who, before the performance, had been 'turning to mirth all things of earth/ when the drama was over, murmured to his friend, with tears in his eyes, ' Awfully jolly, awfully jolly !' Leech was himself a clever actor, and played in private theatricals at Sir Lyfcton Bulwer's house at Knebworth, with Dickens, John Forster, Frank Stone, Mark Lemon, Cruikshank, Egg, and others ; also, for charitable purposes, as ' Slender ' in The Merry Wives of Windsor, at the Haymarket, the St. James's, and Miss Kelly's theatres. Shirley Brooks describes him as being by far the most effective figure, in a combina- tion of ancient and modern costumes classic tunic over dress black trousers and patent-leather boots, new silk hat with wreath of laurel, spectacles, umbrella, etc., at a fancy ball, which was given by their mutual friend, John Parry. His first public appearance was when, with two or three other medical students, he sang, ' for the fun of the thing,' at night in the streets, the concerts being profitable as well as amusing. He told me that on one occasion a listener, to whom he presented his hat, produced from behind his back a small violin to intimate that he was one of the profession. When I invited him to have a day with the Eufford, and promised him a horse which had won his confi- dence, he denounced me as a fiend in human shape (I never quite understood why he put a college cap on my head) ; and afterwards, in reply to a similar pro- posal, he wrote to say that his work, chiefly for ' the almanac,' would not even permit him to ride his pony, 3 ARTISTS 35 which was ' swelling wisibly before his wery eyes ' in the stable. Moreover, he was devotedly attached to his home, for he was a ' Douglas, tender and true,' and the best of husbands and fathers, as well as the best of friends ' The gladdener of ten thousand hearths, The idol of his own.' 'Love at first sight, firstborn, and heir to all,' con- strained him to seek an introduction to Miss Eaton, to woo and win ; and though, when I first knew her, the bloom of la premiere jeunesse was gone, there remained abundant evidences of the charms which dazzled the eye, bewildered the brain, annexed the heart, of John Leech, bachelor, and reappeared con- tinually in the pretty girls of Punch. He has given us numerous manifestations of his delight in children, and one of the most delicious drawings he ever made is that scene in the nursery where a child of seven appears, in a hat, neckerchief, and coat (tails touching the floor), evidently the 36 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE property of the elder brother, as the family doctor, solemnly prescribing for the sick doll, while a wee lassie of four summers respectfully holds his (rocking) horse. Mrs. Lemon, the wife of the editor of Punch, and designated sometimes by irreverent minds as Judy, told me that Leech was sadly disappointed in the first part of his married life that he had no children ; then a child was born and died, and then there were two more, a son and a daughter, whom I knew from their early days. The son, George Warrington, had many ' notes of fatherhood.' A mere child, he must wear a little velvet coat like his papa's, and he expressed a wish to have the hair removed from the top of his head, that he might resemble the parental pate, which had what the Americans term 'a snow line,' where vegeta- tion ceases. I see the dear little fellow now, standing before his miniature easel, and, with a most solemn gravity, richly colouring, in a style of polychromatic splendour hitherto unknown, the engravings of the Illustrated London News. He was remarkably quick and shrewd. On the arrival of a new nurse, he informed her at once that his papa had said that he was a sort of boy who required peculiar and kind treatment (a quotation, have no doubt, from the mouth of his indulgent father, which he was not intended to hear), and that he would trouble her to bring him an orange and a cake. On another occasion, when he was staying in my house, and my wife's maid remonstrated with him, and threatened to tell his mamma, he imme- ARTISTS 37 diately made answer, ' Oh yes, go, if you like ; and I shall go too, and say how you idle away your time with nurse.' Leech had an original and effective method of reprimanding his children. If their faces were dis- torted by anger, by a rebellious temper, or a sullen mood, he took out his sketch-book, transferred their lineaments, with a slight exaggeration ' pictoribus atque poetis Quidlibet audendi semper fuit oequa potestas ' to paper, and showed them, to their shameful con- fusion, how ugly naughtiness was ! The boy went to Charterhouse, and was the first to win the ' Leech Prize for Drawing,' given annually in honour of his father, who had been there as a scholar with Thackeray. Thence he went into Lincolnshire, a tall, handsome youth, to learn on a large farm the science and practice of agriculture; and then, not being strong, he set forth with a friend, the captain of a ship, to Australia, and as they were returning one night from the shore at Adelaide, South Australia, the boat was upset by a sudden storm, and young Leech was drowned. His sister, of whom Leech might have said with Byron, ' Ada, sole daughter of my home and hearth,' a gentle, delicate, affectionate girl, had her home in ours soon after the death of her mother, who was separated but a brief while from him whom she so dearly loved, and remained with us until her marriage with Mr. William Gillett. Alas ! she too died soon after the birth of her child, Dorothy, now the only living descendant of John Leech. 38 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE Ada possessed a most charming miniature by Millais in water-colours of herself as a baby, with the hand of her father appearing round her waist. I never saw it without thinking of the lines, ' for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still !' And I remember another sketch by the same great painter, which Leech showed me with mirthful ad- miration, for it was equally adroit, though in an entirely different style, of ' Old Mr. Leech and old Mr. Millais on their hunters.' How thankful we ought to be that 'Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state !' Leech took as much lively interest in my engage- ment and marriage as though he had been my brother; insisted on accompanying me, when I went on the somewhat anxious mission of discussing settle- ments with the young lady's guardian, to the door of his house ; sent me a charming present of a gold horse, exquisitely modelled, on a large seal, and, having requested and received long notice of the wedding-day, ' because,' he said, ' his coat, waistcoat, trousers, and especially his scarf, must be gradually and carefully developed,' he appeared in due course, a combination of good looks, good temper, and good clothes, as my best man. In the following year (1862) he went to Biarritz, and I received in one of his letters ' the last sweet thing in hats (with a walking-stick, if you please).' In his next he writes : ARTISTS 39 '32, Brunswick Square, W.C., September 18, 1862. ' My DEAR HOLE, ' I have only just returned from a bull-fight at Bayonne! and find your kind note. Don't think me a brute, therefore, for not replying sooner, whatever you may think of me for assisting at such a disgusting display. I had heard of such things, but had always supposed that they were mere circus or Astley affairs, and never thought that any civilized people could delight in so much animal suffering. "When I tell you that, besides six bulls, seven horses were sacrificed for the afternoon's entertainment, you will imagine what an exhibition it was to say nothing of such a trifle as one man being nearly gored to death. . . . ' Yours always faithfully, ' JOHN LEECH. 'P.S. I bathed " in the Bay of Biscay !" What do you say to that with your Scarborough ?' Then he sent me, with his congratulations, the accompanying sketch of my paternal joy. f ARTISTS CHAPTEE IV. ARTISTS continued. Leech as a pugilist In melancholy mood New process of enlarging his drawings ' Sketches in Oils ' Exhibition in London The beginning of the end Thackeray's entreaty Thackeray's death Leech's presentiment His sudden departure His work. LEECH was a man of peace, but when a fascinating lady presented him with a piping bullfinch, he an- nounced that, with this bird as the crest upon his knightly helmet, he was prepared to maintain against 42 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE all comers the supremacy of the donor, as Queen of Beauty. ' In the lists,' he added, ' or any other ring.' There were times when from overwork, which troubles few, or from indigestion, which oppresses many, Leech took gloomy views of his surroundings. He affirmed and he believed, for he had not a soupqon of affectation in him, that he was wasting time on un- worthy subjects and an inferior method, and he main- tained the opinion, which prevailed in the time of Pliny, ' Nulla gloria artificum est, nisi eorum qui tabulas pinxere ' (' None but the painter of a great picture can be a great artist ') ; and that there would be no grand masterpiece, by which he would be remembered when he was gone, as the picture of the Transfiguration was placed by the dead body of Raffaelle. It was necessary on these occasions to deal with him very firmly to ride the contumacious horse with the curb, and to give him a touch of the spur ; to apply the asperities of sarcasm and the sound arguments of common-sense ; to attack his position with the light cavalry of ridicule and with the heavy brigade of grave admonition ; to recommend medical interposition, depletion, and total abstinence ; to suggest a keeper, and the difficulty he would experience in the exercise of his vocation under the embarrassments of a strait-waistcoat. Seriously, we, his friends, were unanimous, and he who was then the most famous painter of his day, Mr. Millais, joined us, in our indignant expostulation, and in assuring him that his work gave more pleasure to his fellow-men than all the pictures which were hung up in galleries and in rich men's homes, and therefore ARTISTS 43 were comparatively unseen. We told him that he might as reasonably regret that he had not followed his original vocation, and become an eminent doctor, seeing that, un medecin male/re lui, he had done more by his chirurgery or handiwork to cheer in- valids, raise the spirits of the doleful, and promote convalescence, than all the Eoyal College of Surgeons. I believe that he was convinced, but, nevertheless, he made a compromise. Soon after the publication of our ' Little Tour,' a process was discovered by which his drawings could be enlarged, and he sent me some of the first results of the experiment, taken from his illustrations of our book, and afterwards coloured. The modus operandi is thus described : The principal agent is indiarubber. A block of this material, considerably larger than the engraving to be copied, is compressed to fit it exactly. In this state it is impressed, so as to become a counterpart of the engraving. On being removed, it at once ex- pands to its full size, and the result is a reversed copy of the original on an enlarged scale. If the process is repeated, a much larger copy is obtained, and so on, until the necessary dimensions are realized. Then a prepared stone is applied to the enlarged indiarubber block, and the drawing transferred to it is again printed upon a piece of canvas, and is ready for the colours of the painter.* By the aid of this discovery, Leech painted the ' Sketches in Oils,' which were exhibited in the Egyptian Hall, and were much admired by the public, See the Athenceum, June 27, 1852. 44 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE although generally regarded, by artists especially, as being inferior in merit and interest to the original work. And now, though I am writing beneath an Italian sky, ' So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, That God alone is to be seen in heaven,' a shadow falls upon my heart, and a chill, such as comes at sunset in these southern climes. It is the shadow of the valley of death. Thackeray was the first to alarm me as to the failing health of our friend, entreating me with all his earnestness to ' get John Leech out of London. He was in a state of nervous debility, which would be fatal if he did not rest. Not only the street music, which he had always abhorred, but now any sudden or unusual sound, even the move- ment of a scythe over the lawn under his window, startled and distressed him.' I could only answer that, though I was continually pressing him, even to importunity, I would make a more strenuous appeal. I could not persuade him, nor would he leave his work, until he was ordered by his doctor to Whitby. Thackeray little thought that he should be the first to go. They knelt together in the chapel at Charter- house on the 12th of December, and dined in the old hall afterwards to celebrate Founder's Day, and little more than one week later Thackeray was found dead in his bed. Mr. Leech told Millais of his pre- sentiment, that he too should die suddenly. Hogarth had the same foreboding. He called his last picture ' Finis,' and broke his palette when it was completed. ARTISTS 45 It was published in March ; and in October he died, just a century before Leech, suddenly, on his return from Chiswick, as Leech on his return from Whitby, in London, both having sought relaxation when it was too late. A short time before he left town, the Speaker (Denison) told me that he had met him, and in answer to his expression of hope that he, who gave so much pleasure to others, enjoyed some portion of the repast which he prepared, he answered, with a sorrowful sigh, that he felt like a man who had undertaken to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, and who was oppressed by the fear of failure. ' He saw a hand we could not see, Which beckoned him away ; He heard a voice we could not hear, Which said he must not stay.' The end here of the beginning of the hereafter came very suddenly. On the day before his death he had promised, and had commenced, a drawing for Punch. On the morning of that day he said to his wife, who in her widowhood repeated his words to me, ' Please God, Annie, I will make a fortune yet.' Messrs. Agnew had offered him 1,000 for four original pictures. He proposed to give up his work for Punch, which overtaxed his strength, and to take a house in the country. But ' God's finger touched him, and he slept.' A sudden spasm, angina pectoris, and that noble heart was still. That right hand, cold and white as marble, could give and bless no more. His last words were, ' I am going.' 46 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE ' :< I go," he said ; but, as be spoke, they found The bands grow cold, and fluttering was the sound. They gazed affrighted, but they caught at last A dying look of love, and all was past.' I did not hear of his death until the morning of All Saints' Day, when I saw the announcement, with a grief which I shall never lose, in the Times ; and half an hour afterwards, in our village church, I was reading, to my unspeakable solace, in the First Lesson for the Festival, that ' the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to be utter destruction ; but they are at peace.' I said the Burial Office as best I could at the grave, which was close to Thackeray's, and which was sur- rounded by his friends. The pall-bearers were the four consecutive editors of Punch (Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, and Francis Burnand), Millais, Tenniel, Lucas, Mayhew, Silver, and Evans. Dickens and many other distinguished men were mourners. Looking up during the service, I was for a second startled to see what seemed to me at first an apparition, an exact likeness of what John Leech would have been had he lived to old age. It was his father, whom I had not met before. I pray, and hope, and believe that I shall meet his son, not by the gate of death, but of life, when ' With the morn those angel-faces smile, Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.' The world was bereft of a benefactor, who had made it more happy and more wise. He was a ARTISTS 47 preacher of righteousness, manliness, sincerity, kind- ness, truth, and purity to thousands who \vould not obey the injunction that they should hear sermons. He suggested the grandeur of virtue by exposing the ugliness of vice, and the keen shaft of his ridicule pierced an epidermis which was proof against all other weapons. He made a wide distinction between those who did evil wilfully, from a chronic male- volence, and those who were but seldom overtaken by a fault ; and while he would hack about him, like Don Quixote among the puppets, when he fell among thieves, when he was intent upon unmasking hypo- crites, or was engaged (to quote the words with which Sydney Smith once commenced an article in the Edinburgh Review) ' in routing out a nest of conse- crated cobblers,' he dealt gently with the ignorant and weak. He sent all reprobates to the pillory, and bade the neighbours pelt ; but he let folly go with a box on the ear, or with a rebuke, which hurt more than a blow. His power was infinite, but he never abused it. The multitude of men who are uneducated, or have no time to read or think, and the multitude who are too idle to do either, are impressed by the clever caricature which they see in the windows of the shops, at the railway bookstall, or on the tables of their clubs, and may be influenced thereby for better or for worse. Leech never pandered to mean or sensual inclinations, and thoroughly despised the Spanish notion, ' Nada es mala que gana la plata ' (' Nothing is bad which gets money ') Cicero says, ' Duplex est omnino jocandi genus : unum illiberale, 48 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE petulans, flagitiosum, obsccenum : alterum elegans, urbanum, ingeniosum, facetum ' (the refined, harm- less wit of the gentleman, and the coarse, malignant, obscene jokes of the snob). We were together many days at a time. I have seen him under great provo- cations, but I never heard him utter a word that was malicious, lascivious, or profane, or saw him do an unkind act. He knew that ' "Us excellent To have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.' What sermons he preached against greed of gain, against that love of money for its own sake which is verily the root of all evil, in that drawing of the old man building on the seashore with a child's toy spade a little heap of sand, on which are the letters ' s. d.' ! The great waves are coming to sweep all away. He heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them, when the word shall be spoken, ' This night shall thy soul be required of thee,' and all the gold in the Bank of England cannot buy him another moment of life. And, again, in the bloated Jew, smoking his cigar, and watching a row of skeletons busily at work on the tailor's board ' Stitch, stitch, stitch, in poverty, hunger, and dirt, Sewing at once with a double thread a shroud as well as a shirt.' Or, once more, in the awaking after a night's debauch of the betting-house frequenter, what a warning is given to be content with that which we have, and not to covet or desire other men's goods ! What a sermon against the dotage of lust in that ARTISTS 49 tottering old beau, who is offering a huge bouquet to a coryphee behind the scenes ! What a record of the miseries of vice in the meeting of those two un- fortunates, seeking shelter from the pouring rain on a miserable winter's night under the arched entrance of a London house, and in the question of terrible, though unintended, irony, ' How long have you been gay?'! He had intense enjoyment in the exercise of his art, and he knew that the manifestations of his humour would be everywhere welcomed with delight, but he had no self-conceit. He ever reminded me of Buskin's words, ' I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility doubt of his own power, or hesitation in speaking his opinions, but a right understanding of the relation between what he can do and say, and the test of the world's sayings and doings. All great men not only know their business, but usually know that they know it ; and are not only right in their mere opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them, only that they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnoldo knows he can build a good dome at Florence ; Albert Durer writes calmly to one who had found fault with his work, " It cannot be better done;" Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled any- body else ; only they do not expect their fellow-men, therefore, to fall down and worship them ; they have a curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them ; that they could do or be anything else that God made 4 them. And they see something divine and God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.' Merciful to the sinner, not to the sin, for it is cruel to ignore or condone evil ; and when Leech exposed the snob and the hypocrite to ridicule and contempt, he did a work of mercy in rebuking folly and vice, attacking it where it is most vulnerable, in its irritable self-conceit. After his death Mr. Euskin wrote to one of his sisters : ' John Leech was an absolute master of the elements of character ; of all rapid and condensed realization ever accomplished by the pencil, his is the most dainty and the least fallible in the subjects -of which he was cognizant ; not merely right in the traits which he seizes, but refined in the sacrifice of what he refused.' One more word of praise. How little exaggeration or caricature there is in his drawings ! so accurate, BO natural, so true, that they remind us of the com- pliment which Aristophanes, the grammarian, paid to Menander, ' Life and Menander ! which of you has imitated the other ?' How superior in the good taste which designed, as well as in their form of execution, to the coarse, personal, malignant caricatures of Gillray and Eowlandson, who put sharp stones in their snowballs, and shot with poisoned darts ! All mourned for him they most who knew him best. Tenniel and Du Maurier, who have so success- fully maintained the reputation which was imperilled by his death, still speak of him with a fond admira- tion. Shirley Brooks wrote, ' That during twenty years of their weekly meetings, at which men of very ARTISTS 5 1 different opinions spoke without restraint, Leech was never provoked into angry discussion, and no word spoken by him ever rankled in the mind of a col- league.' In pace requiescit. CHAPTEE V. ARTISTS contin ued. Mr. John Tenniel A clever reprisal Mr. Frederick Tayler 'Mind your own business ' Edward Lear Herbert Marshall Frank Miles at Buckingham Palace Herbert Ollivier Charles Furse Mr. Kempe Unintentional praise Musicians Power of music Sir George Grove and the Eoyal College of Music Sir John Stainer Anecdote of Gounod Famous singers. IT has been my privilege, in these latter days, to revisit the home of John Leech in Kensington, where I spent such happy days, at the invitation of our mutual friend, Mr. Silver ; to meet Mr. Tenniel, and to see how affectionately time had dealt with him. I could not induce him to immortalize an incident which had recently occurred to me, because he said that he knew, and that I knew, only one man who could have done it justice. In a narrow London street, the hansom in which I was seated was stopped by a line of carriages on one side, and by a stationary cart filled with flowering plants on the other. My driver civilly requested the florist to move on and let him pass, but only obtained in answer a defiant grunt and sneer. He perceived in a moment, to my intense de- light, that he was master of the situation. He brought his horse's head into close proximity to the cart, and 52 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE then slackened his reins ; and when the animal saw his opportunity, and began to browse among the mignonette and geraniums, he called to the proprietor, ' He's a-smclling on 'em /' and that morose individual turned round to see a long stalk of pelargonium, with a large flower at the end of it, extruding from our quadruped's mouth, like a toothpick, and required no further inducement to clear the way. I often met Mr. Frederick Tayler, the animal painter, in the house of Mrs. Bridgman- Simpson, who was, I have been told, the most accomplished of our English amateur artistes. She had visited the most pictur- esque places of the earth, and her home, especially her drawing-room, was a treasury of gems. Mr. Tayler was a most amusing companion. Give him an old shawl and bonnet, and he would sing in char- acter such songs as ' The Lost Child ' with irresistible humour. He related to me an occurrence which illustrates the determination of some men to make money, recte si possis, si non, quocumque modo. He was walking in one of the streets of the City, w r hen he saw in a shop window an engraving from his picture which is known as ' The Weighing of the Deer.' Underneath, a notice was written that 'this beautiful engraving, from the original by Sir Edwin Landseer, could be purchased ' at such a price. Mr. Tayler entered the repository of art, and meekly in- formed the proprietor that there was a mistake made about the engraving, as it was taken from a picture which was not painted by Sir Edwin Landseer, but by an artist of the name of Tayler. The information was received with a most bland equanimity, and evoked ARTISTS 53 the following reply : ' If you, sir, will be so good as to mind your own business, we shall be glad to follow your example.' There is something almost sublime in the impudence and trickery of this knave of art one of those consummate scoundrels who ' will lie with such volubility that you would think truth was a fool.' I am indebted to Mr. E. Tayler, the miniature painter, for excellent likenesses of my wife and son ; and to Mr. E. E. Tayler for a very striking picture which he painted, entitled 'Abide with me,' when master of the School of Art at Lincoln, before he went to Birmingham, and which was exhibited in the Eoyal Academy. I knew Edward Lear, who was alike happy as an artist in his pictures, and as a poet in his ' Nonsense Verses.' I met him first when he was painting in Charnwood Forest, and afterwards in his charming home at San Eemo. I claim the friendship of Mr. Herbert Marshall, though I knew him best as a cricketer and a vocalist, before he was famous in art. Frank Miles I knew from his childhood, and was sorely grieved by his early death. Of him might be quoted our Nottinghamshire poet's verses of another Nottinghamshire man : ' Unhappy White ! while life was in its spring, And thy young Muse just waved her joyous wing, The spoiler came, and all thy promise fair Has sought the grave, to sleep for ever there.' Frank was not only loved by his friends, but was patronized by princes, and had to undergo some cheer- ful chaff from his brethren. Eeturning one night 54 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE from a dinner, he invited a dramatic friend, who does not restrict his love of comedy to the stage, to take a seat in his hansom, as he should pass his door. Un- happily for Frank, he was exhausted by a long day's work, and went sound asleep in the cab. He did not awake until, aroused by the driver, he rubbed his eyes and looked around him, and anxiously inquired, 'Where am I?' 'Buckingham Palace, sir !' 'Buck- ingham Palace ! And why on earth have you brought me here? I live in Tite Street, Chelsea.' ' Beg your pardon, sir, but the gent as come along with you said I was to drive you to Buckingham Palace.' Of my younger friends who are artists, Herbert Ollivier is rapidly achieving greatness ; and I confi- dently anticipate that Charles Furse will be in due time among the magnates. Of painters on glass, I rejoice in the friendship of one who, as it seems to me and to many, in the reverent spirit of his design, in his drawing and colouring, far excels all others I mean Mr. C. E. Kempe. I was told by a Cheshire rector that, going one day into his church, he saw in a side aisle, some distance before him, two Eoman priests. He followed them, and, as they turned into a transept, he heard one of them exclaim, ' Ah, that's something like glass ! That's none of your post-Reformation rub- bish !' 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'you are admiring the window. It is very beautiful, and it was placed there by Mr. Kempe, last week' Passing from the art which charms the eye to that which delights the ear, I am ashamed to confess that ARTISTS 55 the offerings which I have brought to the feet of the Muses Euterpe, who presides over instrumental, and Polyhymnia, who presides over vocal, music have been both shabby and few : the penny trumpet, the comb and paper, the broken drum, the keyless flute, the accordion touched in the wind ; but I love music, though I may not call myself a musician, as being one of our most gracious blessings, from the lullaby which soothes the infant to sleep, to the solemn re- quiem for the dead. To children at school and to men stricken in years, to soldiers on the march and to sailors on the sea, in the factory and on the farm, down in dark mines and out in harvest-fields, the spirit is refreshed by ' concord of sweet sounds.' Always, everywhere, and by all, by the hewer of wood and the lord of the forest alike, ' the song of one who hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instru- ment,' is heard with a thankful joy by the prince and by the village smith. ' He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys ; He hears the parson pray and preach ; He hears his daughter's voice Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice Singing in Paradise ; He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies, And with his hai'd rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes.' And when I speak of princes, I am reminded of the great revival of art in England by the late Prince Consort, and of the development and culture of $6 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE musical talent by his son, the Prince of Wales, as founder of the Royal College of Music. He is a true patriot who increases and improves the music of his country. Not many weeks ago it was my privilege to meet a gentleman who said to me in the course of conversation, ' I have met with pros- perity, and I have thought anxiously how I might lay out a portion of my wealth for the good of my fellow- men. I believe in the refining influence of music, and therefore I am building a college in which persons having vocal or instrumental talent will be qualified, as accomplished performers and teachers, to gratify and to educate that love of harmony which prevails throughout the land." He did not tell me, not being his own trumpeter (albeit, for the gratifica- tion of his neighbours in Yorkshire, he is the pro- prietor of a brass band), that this building would cost 40,000, and would be the New Royal College of Music. And I claim to number among my friends the president of that admirable institute, Sir George Grove, although I do not find in his ' Dictionary of Music ' (otherwise excellent) any account of the only concert in which I took part, and which I do not hesitate to say was, in the quality of the performance and in the enthusiasm of the audience, absolutely unique. It was given by undergraduates of Brasenose, who had tuneful proclivities, but had not received a musical education. I contributed ' In my Cottage near a Wood,' and was encouraged by applause, for which there were frequent opportunities, as my ' Music, heavenly maid, was young,' and hesitated not seldom between the notes, Another gentleman, ARTISTS 57 who was learning the cornet, gave us ' The Light of Other Days,' with appropriate illustrations, having unhappily lost an eye ! He appeared in the pro- gramme as ' Herr Koenig.' ' Mario ' was there, and ' Grisi,' though her boots were more masculine than feminine, and it must have been, I think, the only occasion on which she sang ' The Tantivy Trot/ Nor have I ever known an audience to be so excited and carried away by the music. They not only joined in the chorus,j3ut, in accordance with a ' way they have in the University ' in their hilarious moods, they made free use of cries and exclamations which, as a rule, are restricted to the chase. From gay to grave : I rejoice to include in my society of friends one who has done more than any other in our day to improve the character of our sacred music, and thereby the dignity of our worship Sir John Stainer, Mus. D. Gounod said that 'the mid-day celebration at St. Paul's was the finest service in Europe ;' and of that great composer I would re- peat, with the permission of Lady Stainer, an in- cident which she related to me. Calling one day in Amen Court, and shown into her drawing-room, his eye rested on an engraving of Beethoven, which he at once approached and addressed in impassioned words of reverence, delight, and love. Finally, he turned to Lady Stainer with tears on his face, and humbly asked her pardon, but he ' could not refrain from offering his homage to the great master.' I have heard the great singers and instrumental performers of my time Miss Love, Miss Sheriff, Malibran, Jenny Lind, Grisi, Eubini, and 'his 58 brother Tom Eubini,' as the sailor named Tam- burini, Lablache, Mario, Braham, Sims Beeves, and the elite of our English basses, baritones, tenors, and altos ; and if I were asked to place those in order of merit who have won the largest approbation, my arrangement would be Jenny Lind, Sims Beeves (for the English, profess what they may, still love their own music best), Malibran, Grisi, and Mario. The Swedish nightingale outsang them all. Within my remembrance, great pr^ress has been made in the quantity and quality of the music which we have in our homes ; and this is largely due to the royal encouragement and institution to which I have referred. The pianists and pianos, the vocalists and the songs (the words retain their chronic debility pressing invitations to private in- terviews, principally by moonlight ; personal allusions to hair, eyes, lips, and limbs ; frequent repetitions of 'we two,' 'you and I,' 'ever,' and 'never'), these are more numerous, and more capable ; and the addition of violin music by the daughters of the house (I can remember when there was only one lady fiddler in our neighbourhood, and she was ever regarded, how- ever pathetic were her tones, as a comic eccentricity) is indeed a sweet and welcome refreshment after the burden and heat of the day. A similar development has been made in painting and drawing. Where, when travelling, thirty years ago, you saw a single sketch-book, you see now a score. It emanates from the same sources, from schools of art, first established at Kensington, and now throughout the land. I made a reference to a member of the Corps ARTISTS 59 Dramatique, and my memory suggests a few words on the histrionic art. It was the custom, in the days of my boyhood, for the stars of the theatrical firma- ment to pursue at intervals their planetary courses through the country, and in the little playhouse at Newark on the Trent I have seen Edmund, the elder Kean, Mathews, the father of Charles, accompanied by his friend, Mr. Yates, Listen, Macready, and others. There was a great disappointment one night at the non-appearance of Miss Foote, who had preferred an engagement with Lord Harrington, whom she had married that day. The theatre was managed by Mr. and Mrs. Eobertson, whose descendants have done such good service to the drama, by successful author* ship as well as by successful acting, and they were highly esteemed. A country bumpkin, one market night, threw a turnip on the stage in front of Mrs. Eobertson, who was performing admirably as ' Jane Shore,' and I distinctly recall her expression of dis- gust as she contemplated the offensive vegetable, and turned away with, ' I'll play no more.' Clever actors and actresses, professional and amateur, were never so abundant as now, and in many pathetic pieces, and in comedy, they are ex- cellent; but though we have had, and still have, actresses who can present the heroines of Shake- speare to us as I believe he wished them to be pre- sented (the ' Ophelia ' of Ellen Tree, afterwards Mrs. Charles Kean, was the most impressive piece of acting I ever saw), I have never seen the actor who did justice to the most sublime conceptions of the poet- king, the approximations being, to my mind, the 60 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE ' Hamlet ' of Mr. Beerbohm Tree, and the ' Shylock ' of Mr. Henry Irving. My father always affirmed that we had no actor equal to Charles Kemble, and had he lived until now, he would not have changed his opinion. When the landlord of the inn at Newark told him that, just before leaving for the theatre, Kean senior had supplemented his after-dinner wine with a bottle of mulled madeira, he exclaimed in- dignantly, ' If the man had drunk a hogshead he never could have played Richard.' Some of my brethren, ecclesiastical and lay, unre- servedly denounce the drama, and because there are eome plays which suggest evil and condone guilt, ' as though,' in Jeremy Taylor's words, 'the ruin of a soul was a thing to be laughed at, and deadly sin was a jest,' because some actors are immoral and some actresses immodest, instead of doing their best to expose and rebuke, to find an antidote for the poison, to entice men and women from that which is bad by placing beside it something that is better, they con- demn the whole system as corrupt. I wonder that it never occurs to them to consider the proportion of plays which present to the public the victories of virtue, as compared with those in which vice succeeds and is triumphant; the plays in which truth, and honesty, and chastity meet their sure reward, and those in which they are made the objects of scorn and ridicule, and in which the liar, the knave, and the lascivious are promoted to honour. And when they speak such bitter words of those who have been led away and overcome of evil, and turn upon them their virtuous backs, I should like to ask them what ARTISTS 6 1 they have to say, and whether they have said it, to those who have availed themselves of their social position, or their good looks, or their money, to tempt, and lure, and degrade. ' One had deceived her, and left her Alone in her sin and her shame ; And so she was wicked with others On whom will you lay the blame ?' There is a class of men, sadly too numerous, who cannot believe in use where there is abuse ; who, if they see a withered branch on a tree, call for an axe instead of a saw, and cut it down instead of pruning it ; who regard decapitation as the only cure for head- ache ; and who, if they were rigidly consistent with their creed, would go about naked, because some people spend too much upon dress ; would abolish horses because some jockeys won't let theirs win ; and would burn the vines, the barley, the oats, and the hops, because some fools put an enemy into their mouths to steal away their brains. ' They make a desert, and they call it Peace.' I have no more to say about actors, except to express rny high admiration of one, who, without appropriate costume, without scenery, without a prompter, and without an orchestra, possessed a mar- vellous power of personating, not only one character, but all the characters of a long Shakespearian play ; who in the most minute particular, such as the three distinct voices of the witches in Macbeth, never forgot to vary his intonation. I mean my old, dear friend, Sam Brandram. 62 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE CHAPTEE VI. AUTHOKS. My first tragedies and poems The two shortest dramas in existence Editorial importance My literary friends The Rev. Henry Lyte, the author of 'Abide with me' His popularity at Brixham His death at Nice. HAD I not been an exception to the rule that early ambitions, if they be cherished and educated, are as the tide, which, taken at the turn, leads on to fortune, I must have been a great author. I never heard my nurse say that ' I lisped in numbers,' but I began to compose as soon as I began to think. I brought out my first tragedy when I was about eight years of age, and, with a remarkable anticipation and prescience of the sensational incidents which would be most acceptable to the popular taste, I did not weary my audience with preliminary explanations and dull de- tails, but I conducted them at once to scenes of wild excitement and to situations of terrible distress. My drama began, ' Act I., Scene L, Enter a man swimming for his life;' and if any of my readers will place themselves on a carpet, as in the act of natation, and endeavour to propel themselves along the floor, they will give me credit for a courage which was ready, like Cassius, to ' leap into the angry flood, and swim to yonder point ' the point being an armchair placed halfway across the day nursery (the swimmer emerged from the night ditto), and representing the welcome A UTHORS 63 shore. How I clutched, and crawled, and reached the land, and, looking back, saw buttons floating on the ocean wave, is beyond my comprehension now. There were other original conceptions. An archer, wandering through the forest, sees bright plumage in the thicket, and joyfully exclaiming, ' Ah, a beautiful bird !' shoots, and then cries out in horror, ' Alas, my father!' the beautiful bird being unfortunately the feathers in the parental cap, and the arrow having penetrated the parental skull. Then I took to history, and a thrilling effect was produced by the escape of Mary Queen of Scots from Lochleven Castle, the castle being represented by a four-post bed, and her Majesty by my younger sister, aged seven, appearing from between the drawn curtains, and gracefully descend- ing into the boat, our nursery tea-table inverted. Here again was a difficulty as to propulsion ; but the brave boatman (and author) jumped into the sea, and by some process, known only to himself, made the bark glide smoothly over the lake. Our audience, consisting of parents, sisters, and nurses, looked on jadmiringly ; if they had laughed, we should have cried. The chief merit of my plays was brevity. They occupied about seven minutes, and I have seen nothing so concise in dramatic performances except in a booth of strolling players at a fair in Newark, when, owing to the numerous attendance, a tragedy and comedy, with an interlude of singing and dancing, were executed in a quarter of an hour. I have for- gotten the name of the tragedy, but the details were these 64 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE Woodland scene. Small chapel in the distance, ivith bell-turret. Enter GREGORY. Gregory. 'Ark ! I 'ear the chapel bell. Bell tolls at intervals.) It is the signal that tells me my Hem- meline is no more ! 'Ere conies Constantius to tell the 'orrid news. Enter CONSTANTIUS, on icrong side, and salutes. Gregory (turning ivith a scowl of disgust), Con- stantius, thy looks betray the 'orrid news my Hem- nieline is no more ! Constantius (with a broad grin). Cheer up, bold Gregory ! thine Hemmeline liveth ; and Hednmnd, thine henemy, lies dead at the chapel door ! Gregory. Then must I to the forest of Hawleens, and when victory has crowned my harms with triumph, I shall return, and claim her for my bride. Bell. Curtain. But when I quoted this example of compressed genius to Mr. Standing, the actor, whom I met on board the Orient on his way to Australia, he repeated to me the tragedy, yet more brief, of ' THE EMIGRANT'S KETURN.' In one Act. Scene a cottage in Ireland. Enter Emigrant, who surveys the duelling with emotion, and knocks at door> Door opens. Enter Inmate. A UTHORS 65 Emigrant. Is my father alive ? Inmate. He is not. Emigrant. Is my mother living ? Inmate. She is not. Emigrant. Is there any whisky in this house ? Inmate. There is not. Emigrant (sighs heavily). This is indeed a woeful day ! [Dies. Slow music. Curtain. I improvised scenes off the stage. When the sister aforesaid was contumacious, I pretended to be her lover, just returned from India (I don't know why, but I was fond of returning from India, also from the field of battle), and, surveying her with an expression of intense disappointment, sorrowfully sighed, ' Alas, I left her a blooming girl ; I find her a withered maniac !' My elder sisters, I am afraid, encouraged me in this and similar duettos, and there was some- thing irresistibly comic in the serious resentment with which the 'withered maniac,' with her golden hair, blue eyes, and roseate cheeks, invariably heard the allegation. I must have been nearly ten years old before I became a poet. I could not hear distinctly the words of the aged vicar, under whom I sat in my early child- days, and that which I heard I could not understand, therefore I feel no shame in confessing that my first and great epic, on ' The Battle of Waterloo,' was composed during his sermon. I only remember the first verse, but it will suffice, like some fragment of 5 66 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE exquisite sculpture, to suggest the beauty of the whole : ' We heard the rumbling of Great Gallia's drum, Onward we saw the hostile army come ; Nearer and nearer to the plain we sped, Where many a veteran, many a stripling, bled.' I consider ' the rumbling of Great Gallia's drum ' to be one of the most striking lines in the language, and I have often wished, when in Paris, and other cities of France, that she had only one drum to rumble ! Then my Muse, parva metu primum mox sese attollit ad auras ingredlturque, The Nottingham Journal, in a poem entitled 'Lines on the Death of William the Fourth,' framed with mourning edges, and exciting the author with feelings of elation, which were any- thing but funereal. Then I became an editor. The Newark Bee was issued monthly, at one penny, by the same firm which had published for Byron, and was precious in the estimation of its contributors as the Hours of Idleness. No man, whatever may be his position and responsi- bilities, can be so impressed by a sense of his own importance as an editor, aged sixteen. Afterwards, I wrote de omnibus rebus; and of making many books there was no end, from ' Hints to Fresh- men,'* to 'Hints to Preachers,' leaflets, pamphlets, sermons, speeches, travels, treatises ; but only one * Fifty years after the publication of ' Hints to Freshmen ' I read the advertisement in an Oxford paper of a book under the same title, and wishing to see how the modern author had dealt with the subject, I wrote for a copy, and received my own composition. A UTHORS 67 book, which it is not for me to name, has realized my hopes, reaching a twelfth edition, translated into German, and widely circulated in the United States by publishers who have made no charge for their kind patronage. The most difficult piece of writing I ever achieved was an account of the Carnival at Nice, written in a mask on the grand stand, under an unceasing and heavy shower of confetti, and afterwards published in the London Guardian. I proudly compared myself to Protogenes, who, when Ehodes was besieged by Demetrius, would not leave his studio, but proceeded daily in his work amid the noise of battering-rams and catapults, and the shouts of contending foes. I do not presume to claim membership with the Worshipful Company of Authors, but I have been honoured by their friendship. I paid a visit, going with his son from Oxford, to the Eev. Henry Lyte, who was Vicar of Brixham, and lived at Berryhead, by Tor Bay. It was good for a young man to be in the society and under the influence of such a true gentleman, scholar, poet, and saint, to be impressed by the beauty of holiness, and to be so happily assured that the voice of joy and health is in the dwellings of the righteous. He was revered by all who knew him, especially by those whose sympathies he prized the most the poor. The fishermen came up from Brixham for supper, and sang their satisfaction in the old Devonshire chorus : ' We'll stay and have our breakfast here, We'll stay and have a 'levener here, We'll stay and have our dinner here, We'll stay and have our supper here ;' 68 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE each line being thrice sung, and each triplet followed by the emphatic declaration (fortissimo) ' And we wont go then /' ' A 'levener ' (some may desire the information) re- ferred to a snack, or luncheon, which it was usual to enjoy one hour before the meridian. Edmund Field, so long associated with Lancing College as chaplain, and so long beloved by the boys, was then Mr. Lyte's curate. Always zealous in the Master's service, he asked his vicar's permission to preach now and then on the sands, that he might compel absentees to come in. While Mr. Lyte hesi- tated as to the wisdom of such an innovation, though he was a foremost leader in the great Catholic revival, known as ' the Oxford movement,' a Dissenter adopted Field's intention, and, standing upon a small inverted tub, gathered round him for some Sundays a small congregation, who went by the name of ' Bucket Christians.' Mr. Lyte wrote, as most men know, many pathetic verses chiefly psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. In one of the latter he prays earnestly that he may be permitted to write, before he goes hence and is no more seen, some words which might be helpful to the souls of men, and by which he might be re- membered for good. ' Might my poor lyre but give Some simple strain, some spirit-moving lay, Some sparklet of the soul, that still might live When T was passed to clay ! A UTHORS 69 ' Might verse of mine inspire One virtuous aim, one high resolve impart, Light in one drooping soul a hallow'd fire, Or bind one broken heart ! ' Death would be sweeter then, More calm my slumber 'neath the silent soJ, Might I thus live to bless my fellow-men, Or glorify my God.' And what a gracious answer came ! Christians all over the world are singing, and will sing for ages, the hymn which he afterwards wrote, and which begins ' Abide with me.' He was long time in delicate health ; and staying at Nice, he became suddenly conscious, in the middle of the night, that the time of his departure was at hand. He summoned a servant, and asked that a priest of the English Church, if there was one in the hotel, should be found and brought to him without delay. After some little time a clergyman appeared, and gave him the last consolations of the Church. He was one of his own friends, and his name was Henry Edward Manning, then Archdeacon of Chichester, and afterwards Cardinal of Eome. CHAPTEE VII. AUTHOES continued. First meeting with Thackeray Stories of giants The Garrick Club His delight in his daughter's success as an authoress His allusion to ' Vanity Fair ' Pen or pencil ? Nemo me impune lacessit The Cornhill Magazine A letter in verse ' The Carver's Lesson.' I FIRST met Thackeray at dinner, when I was staying with Leech. When one of his daughters asked him, 70 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE 1 which of his friends he loved best,' he replied, after brief consideration, ' John Leech.' And so he arrived in high good humour, and with a bright smile on his face. I was introduced by our host, and for his sake he gave me a cordial greeting. ' We must be about the same height,' he said ; ' we'll measure.' And when, as we stood dos-a-dos, and the bystanders gave their verdict, ' a dead heat ' (the length was six feet three inches), and I ha lest it should be destroyed by the enemy, is found after many years, and is carefully cleansed and skilfully restored, and the eye is delighted with the successive development of colour and of form, and the lifelike countenance, the historical scene, the sunny landscape, or the moonlit sea comes out once more upon the canvas ; so in that great revival of religion, which began in England more than half a century ago, the glorious truths of the Gospel, the ancient verities of the Catholic faith, were restored to a dis- obedient and gainsaying people, who had forgotten or slighted them so long. They were with us in our Bibles, in our Prayer-books, in our Sacraments, and means of grace, but they were hidden from our eyes, like the colours of the picture, by the dust of a long neglect. Or as when, after some sad, restless night of pain, of feverish vision, and of fearful dream, joy cometh in the morning, and the sun shines upon a world ' By suffering worn and weary, Yet beautiful as some fair angel still ;' so with the awakening of our religious life from that sleep, which seemed like death. The first agents employed in this work of restora- tion, the first promoters of ' The Oxford Movement,' invited and secured, through the press and from the ECCLESIASTICS 121 pulpit, the consideration of their readers and hearers, as they appealed to the Holy Scriptures, to the Prayer- book, to the ancient Fathers, and to primitive practice, in their expositions of our privileges and of our duties as members of the English Church. They reminded us, and proved to us, that this Church was no modem establishment, devised by human prudence and de- pending upon secular support, but that it was founded in Apostolic times, or shortly after the decease of the Apostles, by those whom they had ordained ; that it was here when Augustine came to exalt and extend it ; and that in later days, having, like the Church of Ephesus, lost its first love, and remembering from whence it was fallen, it had been reclaimed and re- formed ; that our bishops, though statesmen had the power to commend, and kings to command, their appointment, derived their dignity and power from consecration and the imposition of hands ; and that our clergy, however unworthy, were royal ambassadors, entrusted with messages of pardon, and with the bene- dictions of peace. They taught us, at the same time, that these privileges were worthless, unless we proved our appre- ciation; that it was vain, and worse than vain, to have the most excellent form of godliness on our lips, if in our lives we denied the power of it ; and that they only, who receive the seed into an honest and good heart, can bring forth fruit with patience. These soldiers were the pioneers, the advanced guard, of a victorious army, marching to the relief of a beleaguered citadel and of famished men, and they wrought a great deliverance. Ere they came, 122 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE a foreigner visited this country and wrote a record of the impressions which it made upon him. After praising its scenery, valleys and hills and streams, its woods and cornfields, gardens and orchards, its wealth and industry, its great discoveries in science, its achievements in art and in arms, he goes on to say, ' But most impressive, at first sight, to me was the view, not only in cities and in towns, but in every village, of the church tower or spire, rising over the roofs and the trees, and hard by the pastor's peaceful home. Surely, I thought, we have here, not only a prosperous, intellectual, energetic, brave, and accom- plished people, but they are devout and religious also. Imagine then my disappointment when, as I drew near, I found the graveyards uncared for, the tomb- stones broken, defaced, defiled, the church doors barred and locked, and when I obtained admission, for which I was manifestly expected to pay, I looked on desolation and decay, comfortable apartments for the rich, with cushions and carpets, bare benches for the poor ; and was told that the church was only used once in the week, and that the chief shepherd resided a hundred miles from his sheep !' How great would be his surprise of joy could he return to us now ! His utterance of sad reproach would be exchanged for some such words as those which were spoken, when the first influence of this reaction was felt throughout the land, by an American bishop, George Doane, of New Jersey. Preaching in the parish church at Leeds, he said, ' Brethren, right reverend, reverend, and beloved, it is written in the records of the Older Testament, that when the Ark of ECCLESIASTICS 123 God was on its way to Zion, it rested for three months in the house of Obed-Edom, " and it was told King David, saying, The Lord hath blessed the house of Obed-Edom, and all that pertaineth unto him, because of the Ark of God ;" and as I have gone from scene to scene of varied beauty in this the most favoured land of all the world, as I have contemplated your prosperous industry, and enjoyed the hospitality of your happy, peaceful homes, and have remembered that over every sea floats the Red Cross of Saint George, and that on the limits of your Empire the sun never sets, I have asked myself, Whence to this little island, whence to Britain, once unknown to the civilized world, this glory and this power ? And the answer which has come to me instinctively is this : " The Lord hath blessed the house of Obed-Edom, and all that pertaineth unto him, because of the House of God." Yes, brethren, the power and glory of England comes from her pure and ancient Chris- tianity. And the armament which guards her shores is the fleet which bears to distant lands her missionary zeal.' CHAPTER XII. ECCLESIASTICS continued. Personal recollections Dignitaries Archbishop Vernon-Har- conrt Bishops Kaye and Jackson Anecdotes of the Duke of Wellington. MY own parochial experience of this great transfor- mation and renewal reminds me of its progress from small beginnings. A new curate came to reside within 124 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE three miles of our church ; the next, within two ; his successor actually in the parish, though at the ex- treme boundary ; and then the appointment was given to me, residing in my old home, not two minutes' walk from the church. Since that time a new school and vicarage have been built, ' the House of God set in its state/ the daily service and weekly Communion re- stored. And this may be said generally of the parishes throughout the land. As a rule, there is a resident and earnest clergyman, and a restored church ; the children are taught, the sick are visited, the poor have the Gospel preached to them, and the worship is frequent and sincere. My first recollection of dignitaries is of Archbishop Vernon-Harcourt, who confirmed me at Newark a tall, aristocratic man in a wig, which became him well. There was in those days a scant administration and a large abuse of this Apostolic ordinance. Seldom offered, and only in cities and towns, the ceremony was attended by crowds from the surrounding districts, who came with little or no preparation, behaved with much irreverence and levity within the church, and outside as though at a fair. From a parish adjoining my own the candidates went in a waggon, and gave a fiddler half-a-crown to play them merry tunes on their journey ! Then came Bishop Kaye, who ordained me deacon and priest, ever to be remembered by those who had the privilege of knowing him, with admiration of his learning and veneration of his character. Spiritual and intellectual beauty made sunshine on his counte- nance, and ECCLESIASTICS 125 'Oa his lips perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity.' He had, as I afterwards discovered from converse with others, an invariable system of dealing with those whom he examined personally for Holy Orders. He took an exact measurement of each before he let him go. He led us by the hand into shallow waters, and onward until we were out of our depth ; and then, giving us one plunge overhead, he brought us gently and lovingly ashore. The process commenced, on my first interview, with easy passages from the Greek Gospels, and I was congratulating myself on the serenity and security around, when I found the waters rising rapidly, as I made mistakes in my trans- lation of the shipwreck in the Acts, and finally lost my foothold and my Greek in the Epistles, as huge billows, lingual and doctrinal, surged and roared over- head. Then I grasped the outstretched hand of his sympathy, and heard, as I reached the land, that he was fully satisfied. Nevertheless, there was not then the anxious fore- thought, the preliminary training, which are now bestowed upon those who are candidates for the diaconate and the priesthood. Too many young men were attracted by the leisure which seemed to ac- company the life of a clergyman, and to a profession which brought ready admission into what is called good society. Some were to have rich livings by purchase, and some through family ties. There were none of those admirable training colleges to which the young graduate can now go for special instruction "re- lating to the ministerial office, nor do I remember an 126 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE instance of that reception in the house of the bishop, or in other congenial homes, which is now as general as it is wise and helpful. In my day we went to the hotels. A singular incident occurred during a confirmation held by Bishop Kaye at Newark. A boy named Hage, from the neighbouring village of Balderton, looked so much younger than his years, as to have quite a childish appearance, and the bishop, as he approached for the imposition of hands, paused and inquired, ' My boy, what age are you ?' He was immediately answered, 'Please, sir, Hage o' Balderton.' Then his pastor came forward and explained. Bishop Kaye was succeeded by Bishop Jackson, a loving servant of his Divine Master, an earnest preacher of practical religion, fervent in spirit, energetic in the duties of his office, so much es- teemed for his sermons when Eector of St. James's, Piccadilly, that both the leaders in Parliament were members of his congregation, and were alike desirous to offer him a bishopric. He told me that one morning, when he was preach- ing in the Chapel Boyal of St. James's, he was much perplexed by the conduct of a verger, who, at the close of the sermon, opened the door of the pulpit, and just as the preacher was about to step through, suddenly closed it with all his force, and with a noise which rang through the building. ' I looked at him for an explanation,' the bishop continued, ' and he informed me in a whisper that his Grace the Duke of Wellington was asleep, and that, not liking to touch him, they adopted this method of rousing him from ECCLESIASTICS 127 his slumbers. There was no necessity to repeat the bombardment, as ' that good gray head, which all men knew,' was no longer nodding. We all like to be reminded of our Great Duke ' He that gained a hundred fights, Nor ever lost an English gun,' and I may therefore record some characteristic words of his, repeated to me by one who heard them, Dr. Blakesley, Dean of Lincoln. ' I've just come from Buxton,' he said. ' I haven't been there since I was quite a youngster ever so many years ago but the man at the inn knew me again !' He had the modesty which forgets its own greatness, and I quite believe in his meeting the lady who was going up the steps to see the model of Waterloo as he came down them, and in his saying, ' Ah, you're going to see Waterloo. It's very good, very good indeed I was there, you know.' He left behind him three memorable sentences, which we ecclesiastics should quote continually to those who revere his memory and confide in his common-sense. He said ' that education without religion would surround us with clever devils ' ; and our prison records will testify to the truth of his prophecy. He said to one who pushed aside a poor man who was going up before him to the altar, and bade him ' make way for his Grace the Duke of Wellington,' ' Not so we are all equal here.' And when a young clergyman was speaking in disparage- ment of foreign missions, he rebuked him with, ' Sir, you forget your marching orders, "Go ye into 128 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." Bishop Jackson suffered much from depressing headaches, but when in health he was always genial, sometimes humorous. He said that the prebendaries of his cathedral, being deprived of their prebenda, had ' stalls without a manger ' ; and this remark suggests the clever epithet applied to them of ' Rifled Canons,' ar.d an amusing story told of one of their brother- hood. Under the old regime, when cannons were some- times removed from their places on board a man-of- war for the sake of accommodation, they were re- placed by short wooden dummies, which looked ex- ternally just like the real thing, but occupied much less room. A naval officer, who bad taken offence at something which had been said at a dinner-party by a clergyman who had just been made an honorary canon, and who was somewhat autocratic, resolved to be avenged. He invited the whole party to inspect his ship next day, and when inquiry was made as to the use of one of these sham substitutes, which he had placed in a conspicuous position to attract notice, he replied, in a tone which all could hear, ' Oh, that wooden tiling 1 } It's only a dummy a sort of honorary canon /' One more explosion, but only from a minor canon. His temper was not always in harmony with his music, and he was afflicted by sullen moods, which made him impiger, iracundus, incxorabilis, acer, sudden and quick in quarrel, resentful of any interference. A sick man had been prayed for twice daily in his ECCLESIASTICS 129 cathedral during several weeks, and when the constant repetition of his name became somewhat monotonous, the canon in residence, from whom I received the story, politely suggested that the words ' for a sick person ' should be substituted for the name of the invalid. The request received a brief ungracious assent; and at the next service, and just before the Prayer for All Conditions of Men, the minor canon announced in a tone of surly indignation, ' The prayers of the Church are desired for a person whom I'm not at liberty to mention.' Bishop Jackson much enjoyed ' a doubtful com- pliment ' which was paid to him by the young curate of the parish in which he lived, who was much attached to him, and said to him one day in conver- sation, ' I can assure you, my lord, that my rector is such an exceptionally good man, and his wife is such an exceedingly good woman, and they are in every respect so infinitely my superiors, that, if it weren't for your lordship and Mrs. Jackson, I should feel quite uncomfortable.' CHAPTEE XIII. ECCLESIASTICS continued. Bishop Christopher Wordsworth His appointment to Lincoln His spiritual, intellectual, and bodily excellence His ' Eirenicon to the Wesleyans,' and his anxiety to promote reunion The ' Old Catholics ' The Greek archbishop Strange incidents in connection with almsgiving 'Theo- philus Anglicanus' The last message. BISHOP JACKSON was succeeded by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Archdeacon of Westminster. The late 9 130 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE Bishop of Peterborough, Dr. Magee, afterwards Arch- bishop of York, said to me, ' I was never in Bishop Wordsworth's society without feeling better from the interview.' And it was impossible to know a man so saintly, so learned, and so kind, without a reverent and loving affection. There was a remarkable coinci- dence in the circumstances of his appointment. Having to preach in the Abbey at Westminster, I was staying with my old Oxford friend, Canon Prothero, in the house which had been occupied by Archdeacon Wordsworth, and having occasion to write to him, I referred to the fact. He told me in his reply that in the room from which I wrote, close to the plac e of St. Hugn's consecration, he had received, on St. Hugh's Day, the offer of the bishopric once held by ' St. Hugh of Lincoln.' His ' praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine,' but none could honour him more. Eight worthy of the beautiful name of Christopher, he evoked and exalted Christian sym- pathies wherever he was, and men 'took notice of him, as of the Apostle, that he had been with his Divine Master.' He spoke eloquently and instruc- tively on all subjects, even as King Solomon spake of trees, ' from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,' and would descend from the heights of theology, or the classical slopes of Parnassus, to the humble abodes of the valley or the playgrounds of the school. ' I have learned more,' he said, ' in sick-rooms, and from poor and simple folks, than from all the books which I have read.' He left his library once, I remember, when the lake was frozen at Eiseholme, and, putting on his ECCLESIASTICS 131 skates, astonished and delighted the spectators. He never forgot the days when he played in the eleven of his school, or the match in which ' Manning, caught Wordsworth, 0,' seemed to intimate that the first of the two did not always play with a straight bat. He sympathized with all sports, games, and recreations which were manly and free from vice, and which could be enjoyed without dereliction of duty or unwise expense. When he was told that the wife of one of his canons had been driving tandem in a sleigh over the snow, his commentary was not at all in accord- ance with the anticipation and hope of the individual who laid the information : ' I should greatly have en- joyed the drive !' He had the courage of his opinions, and swerved neither to the right hand nor to the left, when he believed that he was on the way of righteousness, however rough and steep. He disputed the presenta- tion to a living which seemed to him to be illegal, and the lawsuit which ensued, and ended in a verdict against him, cost him nine hundred pounds. The clergy of his diocese subscribed and sent a cheque for the amount, for which he expressed his gratitude, and his hope that he might be allowed to expend the money on the restoration of the Old Palace at Lincoln. Some criticised his ' Eirenicon to the Wesleyans ' as an imprudent interference, which would only widen the gulf between that community and the Church ; but the result was that ' he received,' to quote his own words, ' more applications from Wesleyan ministers for admission into Holy Orders than he 132 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE could possibly entertain.' ' This morning,' he writes to me in one of his letters, ' I have three communica- tions on the subject.' He had a great yearning for the reunion of Christendom, that all who profess and call themselves Christians might hold the Faith, as the Founder prayed, in unity of spirit.* The Archbishop of Syra and Tenos was his guest at Eiseholme, and on the occasion of a great Church function, in St. Mary's at Nottingham, I was honoured with an introduction. He spoke to me very kindly, but no chorus in the ' Agamemnon ' of ^Eschylus had ever perplexed me more than his Grace's modern Greek, and when I rejoined my friends, and was eagerly questioned as to the subject of conversation, I could only say, with the minor canon, that I was not at liberty to mention it. At the luncheon which followed, the bishop proposed the archbishop's health, and the latter responded in modern Greek, and the physiognomy of the listeners was a study some trying, some, I fear, affecting to understand, and some assuming an expression of honest ignorance and hopeless stupidity, which was not encouraging to the speaker. Many curious incidents are narrated having refer- ence to the giving of alms. How Lady Cork was so impressed by a sermon, soliciting pecuniary help, that she borrowed a sovereign from Sydney Smith, who sat next to her, but could not make up her mind to * He took a deep interest and a prominent part in the ' Old Catholic ' movement, and in the year 1872 attended the Con- gress at Cologne, and addressed the members in a powerful Latin oration. ECCLESIASTICS 133 put it into the plate, or to repay Sydney. How a certain quaint canon in a northern diocese was playing billiards in a country house, and having ' lost a life ' at pool, produced payment in the form of two three- penny bits, and when an exuberant youth exclaimed, ' Oh, canon, you've got to the offertory,' effectually silenced his critic with the rejoinder, ' You recognise your miserable contributions, do you ?' And there is the authentic history of the lady, or rather of the female disguised as a lady, who came into the vestry after a collection, and asked that a sovereign, which she had put in the alms-bag, mistaking it for a shilling, might be returned to her ; and all doubt as to the course to be pursued was dispelled from the minds of the churchwardens by the absence of the coin, which the claimant hoped would be there. But all these (even were we to include the gentleman, not generous, feeling the rim of his offering, lest he should give a fourpenny instead of a threepenny piece, and singing the while : ' Were the whole realm of Nature mine, That were an offering far too small') all these pale their ineffectual fire in the splendour of an incident which occurred during the episcopate of Bishop Wordsworth, and at the consecration of a church in his diocese. There was a very large con- gregation, and the rector, seeing that there was only one alms-dish, made signs to a rustic from the chancel entrance to come to him, and bade him go into the rectory garden, through a glass door into the dining- room, where there had been a slight refection before the service, bring a dish from the table, take it down 134 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE one side of the north aisle, and up the other, and then bring it to the clergyman at the place from which he started. The rustic disappeared, reappeared with the dish, took it, as he was ordered, and presented it to the people on either side of the aisle, and then, ap- proaching the rector, whispered in his ear, ' I've done as yer told me, sir. I've taken it down yon side of the aisle, and up t'other they'll none on 'em 'ave any.' No order had been given to empty the dish, and it was full of biscuits ! No incident in our Comic Ecclesiastical History excites my admiration more than that which I have told ; but America in this, as in all things else, challenges our precedence, and I must meekly acknow- ledge that the occurrence, certified to me by Dean Hart, of Denver, as an actual fact, substantiates her claim. 'We have a certain parson,' he writes, giving the name, ' whom we keep on the frontier. He is a rough diamond, and has a knack with the miners. Not long ago, he went to a camp called Eico, borrowed the dance hall over the saloon for his service, " rounded up his boys," and the hall was filled. After the sermon came the collection, a very impor- tant feature. The preacher ran his eye over his audience, and selecting a certain "tin-horn" gambler, known as "Billy the Kid," "Billy," he said, "take up the collection." Very much honoured, Billy took his big sombrero hat, and with an important and dignified air, as was fitting for the occasion, he made his way to the front, and held his hat for a young man on the foremost chair to " donate." The young miner dropped in a quarter (Is.). Billy looked at' ECCLESIASTICS 135 it, then, putting his hand under his coat-tails, drew his revolver, " clicked" it at the donor, and said, with the utmost gravity, " Young man, take that back ; this here's a dollar show." Then, with his hat and revolver, moving round the hall, he got as many dollars as there were people.' One more curious incident from the States. An American bishop, whose praise is in the Churches, told me that a collector in a church in San Francisco, on receiving a shake of the head instead of a dollar from the hand of one whom he knew intimately, stopped to remonstrate, and said, ' William, you must give something. You've heard what the rector has said it's your duty.' ' My money belongs to my creditors,' said William. ' And who is your greatest creditor ? To whom do you owe the most?' asked the collector. 'Well, that's very true,' replied William ; ' but just now He's not crowd- ing me quite so much as the others.' The Church of England never had a braver champion nor a more loyal son than Christopher, Bishop of Lincoln. No book had so great an influ- ence in its day upon young men, at our public schools and universities, and upon candidates foi Holy Orders, to convince them of the Divine insti- tution of their Church, and of their privileges and duties as Churchmen, as the manual entitled ' Theo- philus Anglicanus.' With good will and kind words for all, he never accommodated his creed to his com- pany, or sacrificed truth to peace. While, with the charity which hopeth all things, he dare not limit the Holy One of Israel, yet, knowing the terrors of his Lord, he would persuade men to flee from the 156 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE wrath to come. When he prayed to be delivered from false doctrines, heresy, and schism, he believed in their existence, for he saw them around him, and knew that they were perilous to souls. He asked from others the obedience which he always rendered to the rules of the Church. He thought that the ' Ornaments Eubric ' meant what it said, and that it was lawful, though it might not be expedient, to wear the special vestments in use throughout Christendom at our highest act of worship. But he was equally opposed to additions as to subtractions. He generously encouraged the building and beautifying of churches, he was the advocate of frequent and reverent services, but he disdained the curtseyings, and osculations, and tinkling cymbals introduced from Eome, as much as he disliked the chill indifference of those who sat to pray, and only cared for the preaching of tenets which emanated from Geneva. He was neither papist nor puritan, but one who believed in his heart that ' be- fore all things it was necessary to hold the Catholic faith.' Not long before he died, he sent me this message : ' Tell him, who is so fond of flowers, that no bed in the Garden of the Soul is so beautiful as the bed of sickness and of death, on which the penitent seems to be in the presence of the Gardener and to have a prevision of the flowers, and a foretaste of the fruits, of Paradise. Tell him that these thoughts may give him a subject for a sermon.' I never forgot his words, and waited for the opportunity to preach, as he proposed. It came in an invitation from his suc- cessor in the archdeaconry of Westminster to speak ECCLESIASTICS 137 from the pulpit, which he so often occupied, in aid of a society, which he had instituted some fifty years ago, for the spiritual welfare of the district in which he lived. Then I endeavoured to develop the analogy which he had suggested to contrast the soul, which is a watered garden, with that which is as a barren and dry land where no water is, the flowers and fruits of holiness with the cruel thorns and poisonous weeds of sin ; and I essayed to show how every man may ' make the desert smile,' not only in his own heart and home, but in the abodes of ignorance and poverty and sin. Abiit, obiit I would fain say, as I pray, prceirit. Dr. Hammond's epitaph might be inscribed over his grave: ' Nihil eo excelsius erat, aut humilius, Sibi uni non placuit, Qui, tarn calamo quam vita\ Humane generi complacuerat. CHAPTER XIV. ECCLESIASTICS continued. Bishop King The power of charity Archbishop Tail American and Scotch bishops Pusey, Newman, and Keble The Oxford revival Indiscretion. HE was succeeded by another episcopus episcoponim, Bishop King. And here I would say of our bishops generally, from the long and large experience of one who has been permitted to do some work for his Master in almost every diocese, not only in England, 138 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE but in Scotland and in Wales, that all Churchmen should render hearty thanks to that great Shepherd of the sheep who has sent such loving, learned, and laborious men to take the oversight of His flock ; and though I may not say much that I should like to say, personally, I may console myself by relating incidents with which they were connected, which have gone into circulation, and have become, as it were, public property. I begin with an interview between the prelate whom I just now named and a deputation of aggrieved parishioners, who went from a neighbouring village to Lincoln, to lay their grievance before him. Being questioned on their return as to the result of their appeal, they seemed much perplexed and confused, and there was some hesitation before Mercurius, the chief speaker, delivered his report of the meeting : 1 We went to see the bishop, and he came out to meet us in his purple dressing-gown, and seemed so pleased to see us; and said he was just going to have his lunch, and hoped that we would join him ; and we sat down, and he smiled and talked, and told us to come again, and behaved himself so gracious, that we could not find it in our hearts to bring in anything unpleasant.' This triumph of charity, so honourable to all who won it, brings to my memory another meeting between Archbishop Tait and a shrewd layman, very character- istic of both. A passenger entered the railway carriage, in which I was travelling, with a bit of blue ribbon on the breast of his coat, and said benignly, after surveying my person, ' A Catholic priest, I pre- ECCLESIASTICS 139 smne ?' ' Yes,' I replied, ' I am a Catholic priest, of the English, not the Eoman Church.' He then in- quired whether I objected to conversation, and being assured that I liked it, he told me that he was a Non- conformist teetotaler, and went about giving lectures. Being myself much engaged in the latter business, we made it our chief topic, and we were unanimous in our protest against an annoyance of which we both had experience, and which is caused by chairmen and others, who have been reading up the subject, ' rising to say a few words of introduction ' of the lecturer and anticipating some of his best points, statistics, and illustrations. I told him the story of the loqua- cious squire and the garrulous rector, who, by their preliminary speeches, occupied nearly all the time which had been allotted to a lecture in the village where they lived. The lecturer spoke for some twenty minutes, and then, looking at his watch, he said, ' Ladies and gentlemen, I must now leave that I may catch my train, but I will ask your permission before I depart to suggest for your consideration an occur- rence which took place on board a small American vessel. The captain, the mate, and a passenger dined together, and upon the occasion of a roly-poly pudding being placed on the table, the captain inquired from his guest, " Stranger, do you like ends ?" and re- ceiving a negative answer, went on to say, "Oh, don't yer? Me and the mate does;" and he cut the pudding in two, giving one end to the mate, and appropriating the other.' My companion said it was a good story, but he could tell me a better, in which he himself was the 140 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE sufferer and the avenger. ' I was invited,' he said, ' to speak about total abstinence at a mixed meeting, and, being nobody in particular, I was placed last on the list. Worse than this, the chairman introduced a lot of other speakers, and the whole audience were sick and tired, when he informed them that Mr. Bailey would now give his address. And I rose and said, " My address is 45, Loughborough Park, Brixton Eoad, and I wish you all good-night." : Then in the course of our conversation he told me of the interview to which I referred. He was work- ing as a turner in Lambeth parish, when a servant came from the Palace with a note, inviting him to see the archbishop, who was anxious to obtain some in- formation from him. ' I was engaged in some im- portant work,' he continued, ' which had just come in, and I sent my respects to his Grace, informing him that I could not spare the time to come. The same day he came down to my workshop, and stood for a couple of hours beside my lathe, until he had heard all I could tell him concerning the good works in which he was engaged. Then he thanked me, and asked, " Is there anything I can do for you ?" " Well, your Grace," I replied, " we are giving a tea to our Eagged School next week, and our funds are very low." "What shall I give?" he said. Tasked for a sove- reign, and he said, " Take two," putting them on the bench close by. Then I remarked, "Mrs. Tait, per- haps, would like to subscribe ;" and he answered, " I am sure she would," and he laid down another sove- reign. Then I thought, " I may not have another visit from an archbishop; I must make the most of ECCLESIASTICS 141 the occasion," and I said, " There's dear Miss Tait ; we must not leave her out in the cold !" and he took out his purse and added half a sovereign more.' There is another story of an American captain (which was told to me by the Bishop of Minnesota, and may therefore be included in my episcopal anec- dotage), who reproved one of his passengers for begin- ning his breakfast on Friday, a day which the captain rightly observed as a day of abstinence, with a huge beefsteak. The beef-eater was silent, but he was on the watch for his time of retaliation, and all things come to him that waits. That same morning some- thing went wrong on deck ; the captain lost his temper, and, like the Scotchman, who went into the middle of the street and swore at large, he used words vile and profane. Then the passenger drew near and addressed him, ' I guess, captain, that if you'd eat a little more and cuss a little less, you'd be much nigher the kingdom.' The bishop has delicious records of Indian sagacity, how the shrewd old chief, with the quickest insight into character and intention, will listen with an ex- pression of the most solemn gravity and intense in- terest to some proposal which is designed to deceive and cheat him, and will suddenly, and in some quaint, unexpected manner, make it known to all that the fish sees the hook in the gaudy fly, and flaps his tail at the angler on the bank ; that the days are gone, de- parted never to return, when lands, and ivories, and skins were to be had in exchange for glass beads, pad- locks, and ' Turkey reds.' A pious fraud, desiring to revive these ancient nego- H2 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE tiations, was endeavouring to make a favourable im- pression upon a tribe of Indians by assuring them that he had lived such an unblemished life that he should not know how to cheat. ' The winds of sixty winters,' he said, 'have passed over my head and left this snow upon it, but never from my childhood have I done a dishonest deed.' Then, after a pause, the chief arose and said, ' The winds of sixty winters have likewise turned the little hair I have to gray, but they have not blown out my brains.' And when another visitor, also in search of advan- tageous contracts, came to them in a military uniform, and informed them that the Great Father (the Presi- dent), knowing their valour in battle, had selected him from his warriors, as being most worthy to hold inter- course with them, another chief drew near, with a look of delighted, reverent admiration on his face, and said, ' All my life I have longed, and hoped, and prayed that I might be permitted to see the white man in his war paint, and now ' (walking slowly round the object of his worship, a short, fat man in clothes which did not fit) ' now ' (sitting down with a sigh of blissful satiety, after one last fond look) ' now I am ready to die.' Before I leave the States, my memory suggests that I should pass from lively to severe, and should chronicle an impressive incident impressive as a proof that the seed which is sown in faith, and re- ceived in an honest and good heart, never fails to germinate, and that, where intentions are pure and earnest, the reward is sure related to me by the Bishop of Albany. His father, the eloquent and ECCLESIASTICS 143 beloved Bishop of New Jersey, whose words I have quoted,* was staying with Dr. Hook at Leeds, and preached one Sunday, in the grand old parish church, a sermon upon Baptism, in which he pleaded with those who had not been baptized to prepare them- selves at once, and to receive the Sacrament, as being necessary to salvation, wherever it might be had. Dr. Hook thanked the bishop after the service for his excellent sermon, but deemed it only due to his con- gregation to add that, so far as he knew, they were all baptized. The bishop expressed his great regret that, under the impression that in Leeds, as in the place from which he came, large numbers were unbaptized, he had chosen this theme for his discourse. Some months after he had crossed the Atlantic, a young man came to Dr. Hook, and told him that, walking through the streets, he had seen an announcement of a sermon from the Bishop of New Jersey. He had at that time no religious convictions, and had never been taught the Christian Faith ; but he ' thought he would see what a Yankee bishop was like,' and went accordingly to hear him preach. He was so impressed by the sermon, that it became his dominant and most anxious thought ; and he sought counsel and instruc- tion, not only from human wisdom, but from Him who is always merciful to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the valley of the shadow of death, and to guide their feet into the way of peace. He was baptized, confirmed, and came now, as a communicant, to ask Dr. Hook what assistance he could render in any branch of his work. * Page 122. 144 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE Of the Scotch bishops who have left us, two, Alexander, Bishop of Brechin, and George, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, were my dear friends. Forbes was with me at Brasenose, and was a delightful com- panion. No man could have more solemn convic- tions, or a more reverent spirit, but the sunlit, silvery waves of his humour danced and gleamed above the depths. George Mackarness, like his brother, 'Honest John,' Bishop of Oxford, was beloved by all who knew him. Upright in mind as in mien, the kindness of his heart shone in his handsome face. Mine was, I think, the last house he visited, before he went to Brighton, where he died from cancer of the tongue a fearful disease, but as his day so was his strength ; a few lines written in pencil, shortly before he died, assured me of his perfect resignation, and of his bright and certain hope. Why was St. Andrew selected to be the patron saint of Scotland? This question has exercised the clerical and lay curiosity, but has not been satis- factorily answered, unless the explanation, offered by the Archdeacon of Calcutta at a dinner which he attended on St. Andrew's Day, be confirmed as final, a consummation which we can hardly anticipate, though the archidiaconal conjecture was received with unanimous, nay more, hilarious, applause. ' Gentle- men,' he said, ' I have given this difficult subject my thoughtful consideration, and I have come to the con- clusion that St. Andrew was chosen to be the patron saint of Scotland because he discovered the lad who had the loaves and fishes /' ECCLESIASTICS 145 Passing from the prelates to a lower grade of the priesthood, I was greatly impressed as an under- graduate by Dr. Pusey's preaching, as afterwards by his published writings, by his saintly life, and his loyal love, faithful unto death, for the Church, in which he received from those in authority so much opposition and .distrust. His manner was in itself a sermon, and he went up to preach with a manifest humility, which no hypocrite could assume, and no actor could copy. Newman was a far more attractive preacher. There was such a pathetic tone in his utterance, of that which the French describe as 'tears in the voice,' such a tender appeal of plaintive sweetness, that I remember to this day the first words of the first sermon I heard from his lips ' Sheep are defenceless creatures, wolves are strong and fierce.' But I fail to comprehend, regarding the matter in the light of con- sistency and common-sense, why it was proposed that a statue of Cardinal Newman should occupy the best site in Oxford ; why the representation of a deserter should be set up in a barrack-yard of the Church Militant, as a model for the young recruits ! I can understand the gratitude and respect which built a college in honour of Keble, and a ' house ' in remembrance of Pusey ; I can understand the Eoman Catholics delighting to honour their illustrious prose- lyte; but the exaltation by English Churchmen of a man who forsook and denounced them, while they ignore the claims of her own champions, saints, and scholars, who have fought her battles and died in her ranks, is to me a mystery. 10 146 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE The revival of faith, and therefore of life, in the Church of England may be regarded in three phases, divided into three epochs. (1) It was, first of all, as I have endeavoured to show, a restoration of doctrine, as taught by the Church in her Prayer-book, with an appeal to history as to her right to teach. (2) It was then manifested in the restoration of churches, and of a more dignified and frequent worship. And (8) it has now reached the supreme height of its ascension, and is exercised by the noblest of all ambitions, to seek that which was lost, to bring back that which was driven away, to bind up that which was broken, and to strengthen that which was sick to obey the Divine injunction, ' Go out into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in.' The shepherds have filled up the gaps in their fences and rebuilt the breaches of their walls in vain, if they do not seek and find the sheep which have wandered from the fold. They will not come until they hear the shepherd's voice how can they hear without a preacher ? Paul preached in the market- place and on Mars' Hill, as well as in the synagogue. If we would have ' the common people,' o TroXu? 0^X09, hear us, as they heard the Master, gladly, we must try to preach in the same spirit, and must go about doing good to the bodies and souls of men. We want the working men, and when they know why we want them, there is abundant proof that they will come. On this subject I shall have more to say. The revival met with a fierce opposition, partly ECCLESIASTICS 147 from earnest men, who were really afraid of Romanism or formalism ; partly from the timid, who were averse to alter, or from the indolent, to enlarge, their work ; but chiefly, as in most instances, from the worldly and irreligious, always prone and prompt to resent and ridicule any signs of an aspiration higher than their own, any examples of that better life which they rightly regard as a rebuke to their self-indulgence. The bishops, with two or three exceptions, dis- couraged the movement, and sought rather to sup- press than to guide this new-born zeal. Newman complained sadly of episcopal antagonism, and said he ' could not fight against it.' A friend of mine told me that when he went with others, who had been instrumental in building a new church, to the bishop (afterwards an archbishop) of the diocese, to submit to him their proposals as to the services, he expressed his surprise and dissent as to their intention of singing the Psalms, and asked them whether they were aware that this was only permitted to cathedrals and collegiate churches. They showed him the rubric, ' Then shall be said or sung the Psalms in order as they are ap- pointed,' and he frankly confessed it had escaped his notice. When they expressed their desire that their church should be free and open to all, he expostulated, and inquired in a state of much perturbation, ' Gentle- men, have you considered the number of police which will be necessary to keep order ?' They who preferred the surplice as ordered by the Church, in preference to the academical gown, were snubbed, hooted, hustled, and pelted in the streets. ' Puseyites ' were burnt in effigy, and then the de- 148 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE fection of Newman caused a panic of consternation, raised a hurricane, which would have swept away the edifice, had it not been built upon the Eock. When Manning absconded, there was compara- tively but a small regret. He was admired, but not loved, as Newman. Others followed, whose absence was more bitterly lamented, but by degrees the fish which were taken in the meshes of the Koman net became few and small, some so diminutive, or in such flabby condition, that, even though they were gold and silver fish, a true sportsman would have thrown them in again. Of course, there were in this, as in all great revivals, notably the Wesleyan, men who have a zeal, but not according to knowledge, and who insist on trans- gressing the boundaries marked out by their leader. There are men who rejoice in walking on the rims of rocks, standing on the tip ends of precipices, skating on thin ice, going where they are forbidden to go. There were, moreover, extravagances of ritual which not only enraged opponents and bewildered simple folks, but estranged the sympathies of many who desired a reverent and beautiful service, but were pained and offended by 'the last new dodge from Borne.' I went to a high celebration in a London church, and, arriving after the service had commenced, was never able to distinguish one word of it, and only knew by close observation what part of the office we had reached. On another occasion, I went to cele- brate at the altar of an absent priest, and w T as actually unable to find the service in a book which was there, ECCLESIASTICS 149 full of hieroglyphics and illustrations to me unin- telligible. I was wondering whether I could repeat from memory the more important portions, when I saw in the hand of the little server behind me a small twopenny Prayer-book, and this supplied all my need. In my own church, a stranger, officiating in my absence, remained so long bending over the altar, that my worthy churchwarden feared that he had some paralytic or apoplectic seizure, and went to his relief. And in a village church, some four miles away, a lady, dressed in the height of fashion, paused as she came up the aisle, and made such a low obeisance that the vicar rushed from his prayer-desk to render assistance, under the impression that she had fallen or fainted. When the country squire, preferring eyesight to hearsay, went up to town to judge for himself in the matter of high ritual, and inquiring from the first clergyman whom he met in the church to which he was directed, ' whether it was Sacrament Sunday ?' was answered, ' Five Masses have been already said,' it seems to me that the reply, a combination of bad taste and braggadocio, was eminently qualified to make foes instead of friends. Does not the Church of England supply us, in her ancient offices and prayers, with a most solemn and beautiful worship ? And when their adaptation is required, as for missions and other special services, have we not the full sanction and sympathy of those who have the rule over us ? If we lack anything, it will be given to us, if we work and wait, but not if every man doeth that which is right in his own eyes. ISO THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE 1 To obey is better than sacrifice.' Moreover, it should ever be had in remembrance that ' there are diversi- ties of gifts, but the same Spirit ' ' differences of administrations, but the same Lord ' ' diversities of operations, but the same God ' ; and that there always have been, are, and will be, two great divisions of Christians, alike sincere those who welcome an ornate ritual, with all that is attractive to the eye and sweet to the ear, because it helps them to worship in spirit and in truth; and those who love simplicity, and avoid the accessories to which I have referred, lest they should divert rather than direct their thoughts. Why should there not be a mutual for- bearance and respect? Why should Ephraim envy Judah, and Judah vex Ephraim? Might we not think more of those grand truths which we all believe, and less of those minor matters on which we differ, uniting in prayer for union, and seeking to prevail, not by debate and controversy, but by the most con- vincing of all arguments, example the practice of a religion which is pure and undefiled, which visits the fatherless and widows in their afflictions, and keeps itself unspotted from the world ? When we recall the past and meditate upon the influences which we prize the most, we shall find that they have come to us, not so much from good books (with the one exception) as from good men and women. The Christ-like life, unconscious of its power, draws all men to the Cross. ECCLESIASTICS 151 CHAPTEK XV. ECCLESIASTICS continued. The village church The daily service The choir Loss and gain ' Finn may fiddle ' The school ' The child is father to the maa ' Special services for children. I EEFEEEED just now to our village church, and I would linger awhile among the memories which rise within it and without, like ghosts, or rather angels, for they are welcome messengers, and those which remind us of sorrow point upward to the Bow upon the cloud. Home what sweet, pathetic music in the word ! You have been at some great concert and have heard the most accomplished artists, vocal and instrumental, of their day, but no brilliant manipulation, no marvellous vocal range, has reached and troubled the fountains of your heart like that simple ballad of ' Home, sweet home.' You admired, or tried to admire, or pretended to admire, the more scientific music, but this melody took possession of the spirit within you. ' A flood of thoughts came rushing, and filled mine eyes with tears.' "Who does not love to recall, and yet more to revisit, Home ? The field in which we learned to bat ; the pond on which, with fear and trembling, and legs much too far apart, we made our first uncertain slide ; the hedge in which we found our first bird's nest ; the brookside or the river bank from which we saw with an ecstasy, thrilling, intense, the bright new 152 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE float, as it dipped and rose, and finally disappeared in the depths ; and then we pulled our line with such a powerful effort that the prize at the end of it, a youthful eel or ' snig,' about four sizes larger than the worm which it had seized, rose high above our heads and fell some distance in the meadow-grass behind. The dear old faces smile on us once more ; we hear the merry voices of our playmates, so many of them silent ; we see the curly heads, which are now grown white as snow. Some have failed, and some have won riches and honour. Some have wasted their time and worse : ' The eye no more looks onward, but the gaze Rests where remorse a wasted life surveys ; By the dark form of what he is, serene, Stands the bright ghost of what he might have been. There the great loss, and there the worthless gain, Vice scorned, yet sought, and virtue wooed in vain ' and some have done bravely and well the work which was given them to do, and have dedicated their manhood to the Divine purpose for which it was created and redeemed. And now I pass as an ecclesiastic for this chapter was to be ecclesiastical as I passed daily for more than thirty years, from the church to the school. And here I venture to express my surprise that so few of the clergy obey the plain injunction which they have promised to observe, namely, that the curate, being at home, shall cause a bell to be tolled, inviting his people to pray with him in their parish church, and that the Order of Morning and Evening Pra} r er be said daily, not weekly, through- ECCLESIASTICS 153 out the year. I would not recommend him to take his servants to church, because ' laborare est or are ' (true work is true worship), but to have a short service with his household, and, after breakfast, Matins. Two or three, at least, will be gathered together; and is not the Church, as St. Chrysostorn said, ' the Court of the Angels,' and when we go there, to quote a greater than St. Chrysostona, are we not going ' unto Mount Sion, and the City of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn'? It is good for the many w r ho cannot come to be reminded that prayer is being offered for them, and to be assured that their pastor is at work, as they are; and I would advise that the time of this service be so arranged that, when it is over, he may go with his boys to the school. What boys? For many years I educated six boys and maintained a daily choir, at a cost of half a crown a week ! The expenditure was : school pence for six pupils at threepence a week ; twopence to each boy weekly, as a reward of regular attendance and good conduct ; total, half a crown. We sang the Venite and a hymn in our shortened service, which lasted about twenty minutes, the daughter of my churchwarden or my wife playing the organ, and then I went with the boys to the school. What a transformation I witnessed in our village choir quantum mutatus db illo ! which was crowded in a small gallery, set up in front of the beautiful western arch, and backed by a lath-and-plaster in- sertion, having a plain square window in the middle, 154 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE and which, accompanied, preceded, and followed by flute, clarionet, fiddles, and bassoon, and all kinds of music, sang, I must say, lustily and with a good courage, though not unanimous as to time or key. The gallery is gone, the sun sets once more upon our evensong. We have an organ, better singing, far more reverence, though I have at times thought that the odour of peppermint was more distinct than the odour of sanctity, and though I often wish that there had been a reform rather than an expulsion. The performance of sacred music must always have some influence for good, and this might have been largely extended, as the surroundings became more suggestive of devotion, and the performers realized more and more the privilege and importance of their music. As it was, the practice of their instruments afforded them a pleasant and innocent occupation of their leisure hours. Organs by all means, where they may be had, but why organs only ? Drums and trumpets make grand music in our cathedrals, and why not the voice of harpers harping with their harps, and the instruments of softer tone, in our smaller churches ? I am aware of the difficulty which exists in harmoniz- ing the organ with other music ; but it can be, and has been, dealt with, if we may not say overcome. The loss, however, which has been inseparable from the progress of our Church service must not cast a moment's shadow upon the sunshine of our thankful joy, as we compare the present with the past. A friend of mine remembers the time when it was made known to the congregation assembled in the church of St. Peter at Marlborough that they ECCLESIASTICS 155 were going to have an anthem, because the singers left the church during the service to fortify themselves for the enterprise with a refreshing beverage at the Six Bells over the way. There were irregular scenes elsewhere. In a Nottinghamshire village the rector employed the village tailor to make the livery of his groom. The artist in question, by name Kemp, was also a musician, and led the choir on his violin. From some cause unknown to me perhaps there came a more fastidious groom Kemp's raiment failed to please, and the rector sent his servant to Nottingham to be measured by Mr. Finn, who had a great reputa- tion in his trade. He achieved an admirable outfit, but on the first Sunday of its appearance at church there occurred an unforeseen disaster. When the clergyman gave out the hymn, there was no recog- nition, no preliminary note, from the gallery at the other end of the church. He repeated the announce- ment in a louder tone, but when he ceased grim Silence held her solitary reign. Once more he pro- claimed the number, and read the first verse in vain. Then ' Melancholy marked him for her own,' and he stood gazing in mute despair at the orchestra. There was a brief consultation, and then an ambassador came up the aisle, and, standing in front of his per- plexed pastor, delivered his message in a tone which all could hear, ' If you please, sir, Kemp says as Finn may fiddle.' I have had personal and quaint experience. At one period of our improvements, my precentor, who had retired from her Majesty's service, and was engaged in commerce that is to say, had been a 156 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE policeman, and was then a grocer had a fine bass voice, and played our harmonium, but he had not received a classical education, and was somewhat rude of speech. We had recently held a local Choral Festival at Southwell, and had heard for the first time that exquisite hymn from the 'Ancient and Modern ' collection, which begins, ' The strain upraise of joy and praise,' and in which the word ' Alleluia ' occurs repeatedly. Shortly afterwards, on my ex- pressing a wish to the leader of our choir that this hymn might be sung in our church, I received this answer : ' Well, sir, we have had a go at it, and if I could only get Butcher Hodgson to cut his Alleluias a bit shorter ' as though he were chopping meat ' we could sing it almost any Sunday ; but William, when he gets hold o' them Alleluias, he seems as if he never knew when to let go of 'em.' On another occasion, when my old friend and neighbour, Mr. Cook, was entertaining several guests, I asked the precentor on Sunday morning what hymns he proposed for the following service. ' Oh, sir,' he said, ' we must have " Jerusalem the golden " just then a favourite hymn 'this afternoon; Mr. Cook's very full o' company.'' From the choir to the school. It is a pleasant help to the schoolmaster or mistress to have the sympathy of the clergyman in their monotonous life, and to have his counsel and mediation in the many difficult cases which arise in dealing with parents and others. It is right that the shepherd should know and should love the lambs as well as the sheep, and he has one of the brightest encouragements ECCLESIASTICS 157 which are given to his work when he gains their affection, and is welcomed, when he meets them, with a smile. Moreover, the child is father to the man, and it is wise to watch the first indication of good and evil instincts, to strengthen and to suppress. When growth is small, and the ground is soft, you may eradicate weeds, but when the plant is established in the hard-set soil, ' with men it is impossible.' Not only should these tendencies, virtuous or vicious, be cherished or condemned, but special talents and capacities should have, when it is possible, a technical education. Serious mistakes are often made, a life rendered comparatively useless, and a loss inflicted upon the community, by thwarting these early in- clinations. Minds are like soils ; all, with culture, will produce in due season their various contributions to our store ; but some parents insist upon planting roses, instead of rhododendrons, in peat, place their ferns in sunshine, and their Alpine flowers in the shade. Not long ago, a clever boy put his fingers into one of his pockets, and produced a tooth. ' This, mother,' he said, ' is a rat's tooth, and it is so formed because,' etc., etc., etc. (here he gave a concise and clear ex- planation) ; ' and this ' bringing out another ' is a hedgehog's tooth, and you perceive ' (explanation) ; ' and this ' extracting No. 3 ' is a badger's tooth, differing from the others ' (explanation) ; ' and this ' fourth and final illustration ' is Sandy Mac- pherson's tooth. He sits next to me at school, and a very good sort of fellow he is.' What cruel mad- ness it would be to send this lad to sea, or to an 158 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE office, instead of training him, as he will be trained, to be a professor of Natural History, and to make the world richer when he leaves it as his grand- father, an archbishop, enriched it with the results of his studies. The children of our time have a great advantage in those special services, which are becoming general. No surer process of estranging children from religion could be devised than that which made Sunday a desolation and a weariness, which sent them to long services, and sermons which they could not under- stand, with the inevitable result of fidgets, fightings, and misbehaviour in all its branches, severely re- buked and punished by those who, me judice, should have themselves been put in the corner as the authors of irresistible temptation. I found large coloured prints, which I procured from the Society for Promoting Christian Know- ledge, and from the National Society, and which I placed on an easel on the chancel steps in front of my little flock, to be a most powerful auxiliary force : ' Segnius irritant animos, demissa per aurem, Quara quse sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus ;' and when their eyes were somewhat heavy, it was a pleasant sight to see them open wide, and sparkle with interest, as some new scene was set before them. We had, of course, our share of strange and silly replies. My sister was teaching in our Sunday- school, and asked : ' What was meant by the Law and the Prophets ?' A bright little girl immediately ECCLESIASTICS 159 answered : ' If you please, ma'am, when you sell anybody up.' The law presented itself to her mind in the person of the bailiff distraining for debt, and of the auctioneer selling the effects, the profits being the results of the sale. There was the eager boy, who will speak before he thinks, and who informed me, without a moment's delay, when I inquired what proof we had of St. Peter's repentance, ' Please, sir, he crowed three times.'* CHAPTER XVI. ECCLESIASTICS continued. The country parson and his people The Ranters The village demagogue The village artist The club Decrease of drunkenness The ' Rang-tang.' PASSING from the school to the parish, I must confess that I am sometimes perturbed in spirit, when I hear the country parson (very unlike George Herbert's) complaining that he has nothing to do, nobody with whom he can associate, or when I hear his friends bemoaning him, as one who is ' buried alive, utterly thrown away,' etc. ; and no one can be in doubt why, where such men are, there is disaffection and dissent. * We country folk have no monopoly of these eccentric errors. A clergyman in Holborn asked a little girl, who some- times appeared in pantomimes and other fairy scenes, how many Creeds there were. And the reply was, ' Two, sir 'Postles and Lyceum ' (Nicene). And a boy, also in the vicinity of the Law Courts, included 'the Epistle to Phillimore ' (Philemon) among the writings of St. Paul. 160 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE Men who go where their charity and their duty should lead them will make dear friends among the poor, and will learn many lessons from their patience, and resignation, and kindness to each other ; and all who have tried to win their confidence will testify that, though exceptions be many, there are noble spirits and tender and true hearts among them, rare jewels in rough setting : 'Alas, 'tis far from russet frieze To silk and satin gown, But I doubt if God made like degrees 'Twixt courtly hearts and clowns.' Who has not met with illustrious snobs in glossy hats and patent-leather boots ? Who has not found brave gentlemen in corduroys, and true gentlewomen in humble serges, whose only ornament (it cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof) was a meek and quiet spirit? Again, there is a frequent complaint that the poor are so ungrateful. ' I've heard of hearts unkind kind deeds With coldness still returning ; Alas ! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning ;' and I do not hesitate to say that, to my experience, where the accusation has been loudest the obliga- tion has been least. It is not the occasional half- crown, even though it be accompanied by the dry, inappropriate, and improbable tract, but it is the constant sympathy, the Christian sympathy, coming from a brother's heart, which wins affection. It is ECCLESIASTICS 161 written, ' Blessed is he that consider eth the poor and needy ' has them often in his thoughts and prayers. A poor man said to me, ' I have two rich neighbours, who come to me and give me money. One visits me very seldom, and then he enters my house without knocking, and sits down, with his hat on his head and his cigar in his mouth, and after he has lectured me and preached to me, as though I were a ticket-of- leave man, he takes a shilling out of his purse, and presents it as though it were a golden guinea. I'm very, very poor, but sometimes I almost wish he would not come. The other gentleman enters my mean home uncovered, and thanks me when I offer him a chair, and he talks as freely and cheerily as though we were equals, and speaks words of comfort and of hope ; and then he presses money into my hand with a smile, as though I were doing him a favour and I am doing him a favour, bless his generous heart ! for I cannot recompense him, but he shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.' Bough men have rough ways of showing their gratitude. The story is well known of the sick man who promised the priest that his first act of thankful- ness, on leaving his sick-room, would be to ' poach him a little rabbit,' but a far more remarkable mani- festation was made to a friend of mine, when he was located in Lancashire among the miners. He was in his study on a Saturday night, when a visitor was an- nounced, and there entered one of his subterranean parishioners, who, having cautiously looked round to see that there were no listeners, addressed his clergy- 11 man with an air of grave, mysterious importance: ' Mestur Whit worth, you've been very kind to my ould girl, when she wor sick so long abed, and I want to do yer a good turn, and I can do yer a good turn. There's going to be the gradliest dog-fight in this place to-morrow, and I can get yer into th' inner ring /' There are many more instances, not more hearty, but of a much higher tone, of the good will of working men towards those who really care for them. A stable, which had been converted into a place for worship and instruction by the clergy of one of our University Missions (of which I hope to speak hereafter in their connection with the labouring class), suddenly col- lapsed into a wreck. There were no funds for rebuild- ing, and the disappointment was very sad, until one evening a deputation of working men called at the Clergy House, and offered to build a new Mission- room, by working over-hours, if the material could be supplied. Their zealous self-denial was joyfully appreciated, the money was found, and a most con- venient and commodious room was erected, several of the workers contributing articles of furniture, as well as giving their time. In a midland county, a number of miners came to their vicar, and announced to him that, hearing he would lose fifty pounds of his income in consequence of the death of the gentleman who had paid it, they had determined, at a meeting recently held, to sub- scribe that sum, and he would receive it in regular instalments. The shoemakers at Northampton built the Church ECCLESIASTICS 163 of St. Crispin, with the aid of their friends ; and I preached not long ago in a church, within three miles of our cathedral, in which the carved altar and stalls were made by ship-carpenters, and a beautiful font was presented by subscriptions from children of the working classes. I cannot omit another singular expression of grati- tude, though it is but slightly connected with the pre- ceding theme. An old Oxford friend, who had a living in Worcestershire, was visiting his parishioners, when one of them, an old woman, informed him that since they met ' she'd gone through a sight o' trouble. Her sister was dead, and there wor a worse job than that : the pig died all of a sudden, but it pleased the Lord to tak' 'im, and they mun bow, they mun bow.' Then the poor old lady brightened up, and said, 'But there's one thing, Mestur Allen, as I can say, and ought to say : the Lord's been pratty well on my side this winter or greens /' Some may be surprised to hear that this woman meant to be, and was, sincerely religious. She was very fond of her sister, and only referred to the temporary loss, which was to her most deplorable, and which sorely tried but could not overcome her spirit of resignation. I need scarcely add that in saying the Lord had been on her side she was using the Psalmist's words, or that all the green things upon the earth are as much His gift, Who openeth His Hand and filleth all things living with plenteousness, as the bread which strengthens, and the wine which gladdens, man's heart. As different as a painted plaster of Paris peach to a ' Eoyal George' was the sham religion of another old 1 64 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE lady in my parish, which she used rather as a cloak for her maliciousness than as a robe of righteousness. She made great professions of charity, but was always quarrelling with her neighbours. She had much of the spirit of that preaching Eanter, who declared that ' he loved everybody, but if the Lord had a thunder- bolt to spare he thought it would be well bestowed on brother Gubbins's head.' She came to me one morn- ing as I was going to church, and said, ' Mister Eennuds, I've got another lift towards 'eaven. Willises ' (who lived next door) ' has been telling more lies blessed are the persecuted !' Apropos of Banters, I cannot say, after an experi- ence of more than half a century, that they were much believed in outside their own community. The Wes- leyans were always and highly esteemed, but the ' Primitives ' were bumptious, self-righteous, and bitter enemies of the Church. Not satisfied with their own meeting-house and open-air assemblies hard by, they selected a vacant space within a few yards of our church for their resonant repetitions, until one of our churchwardens was suddenly seized by an irrepressible desire that three of his farming men should learn the art of bell-ringing, and sent them off at once for their first lesson and their last ; for the Banters ranted there no more ! We had our village demagogue, who told our inhabitants that all kings and lords were thieves and knaves, that I received a thousand pounds a year (I was at that time curate, and my income was a hundred pounds), and that I was a particular friend of the Pope. He left the church and went to the ECCLESIASTICS 165 chapel, left the chapel and went nowhere, except to the public-house. There he had a very small follow- ing of malcontents, who objected to manual labour, and preferred a division of property. Sometimes he suggested abuses which were injurious, and reforms which were right and wise, and so made some com- pensation for the harm which was done by his lies ; but his main object seemed to be to vituperate squires and parsons. The latter especially could do nothing that was right. If they took an interest in social, political, sanitary, or parochial matters, he bade them mind their own business. If they complied with his request and restricted their attention to their ecclesi- astical duties, ' they cared nothing for the public weal.' I was pleased to hear that one evening, when he had been exercising his hobby, and had declaimed against the peers and the priests as living in luxury upon the industry of the sons of toil, our village blacksmith remarked ' that ho shouldn't care to be the particular nobleman or clergyman who lived upon his (the speaker's) earnings ; he wouldn't be a fat un !' We had our village artist. He painted the sign of the Spread Eagle, which the rustics described as ' the Split Crow,' and the White Lion, which they called ' the Prancing Cat.' It was told of a brother artist in the neighbourhood, that this white lion was the only picture he could paint, and that a sailor who came home and, having saved a little money, took a public- house in his native place, went to consult him as to a sign. The painter, after a preliminary intimation that he was thoroughly master^ of all subjects, suggested, 166 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE as a friend, that there was nothing in the whole range of his repertoire which seemed to fascinate the public , to win their admiration, and make them feel thirsty, so quickly and completely as a white lion. The sailor replied that he had been to several countries, but had never met the animal in question, and did not care to make his acquaintance". He would rather have a ship. The artist explained that although a ship was in every way respectable, and a most desirable thing on the sea, it was incapable of giving any satisfaction on the land, and would be generally avoided. If the sailor wished to succeed, and to have his house full instead of empty, he must not be led away by his old fancies, but must consider the wish of his customers ; and that which they loved the best was a white lion. Jack would not be convinced. He applied epithets to the white lion which were abusive, if not profane. He w r ent so far as to doubt the existence of this white king of beasts, as when Mrs. Gamp remarked of Mrs. Harris, that she ' didn't believe there was no such person.' He would rather endure the dislocation of his members, or, as he expressed it nautically, the shivering of his timbers, than have that humbug over his front door. The unhappy artist saw that it was vain to persevere ; but he, too, had a will of his own, and that will was to paint the sign, and be paid for it. He proposed a compromise. ' You're a very obstinate man,' he said, ' and you'll be sorry for it. Of course you can have a ship if nothing else will suit you, and I shall paint you a ship, but it trill be more like a white lion.' The association of the sailor with the inn brings ECCLESIASTICS 167 ine another remem brance, which, as Pepys would say, ' mightily pleased ' my sense of humour. I went to preach to the members of a Friendly Society in a village on the banks of the Trent, and afterwards dined with them. The chairman went through the usual routine of toasts, but when ' The Army, Navy, and Auxiliary Forces ' were proposed, there seemed to be no representative of the two former professions. There was a consultation of the brethren, and it was finally determined that the landlord of the Lord Eaglan Arms should return thanks for the army, and that a bargee from the river hard by should express the gratitude of her Majesty's navy. I would note here the gradual and gratifying change, which has been wrought by a better educa- tion, by common - sense, and by the temperance societies, in the conduct of these social gatherings. Drunkenness was the rule, now it is the exception. I recall the time it was the time when the tipsy labourer, returning from feast to farm, and followed by a bull, which he did not see, ' booing ' behind him, and, on his arrival at the boundary of the field, push- ing him with his head into the ditch, indignantly exclaimed, as he lay prostrate, ' You may be a musician, but you're no gentleman' a time when the members of these institutions seemed to think that they were bound to make beasts of themselves, and to prove their claim to the title, which in those days was commonly given to their community, of ' the Sick Club.' I have seen them, years ago, staggering and reeling to and fro, and sighed, ' Oh that man should put an enemy into his mouth to 1 68 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE steal away his brains !' degrade his manhood, and defile his soul ; but on the last occasions in which I was cognizant of their proceedings I saw no drunken man. Happier still the transformation in our harvest festivals, the cessation of that gross ingratitude which insulted the Giver by the abuse of His gifts, and the gathering together of rich and poor in their Father's house, to praise Him who is the Maker of them all, for the fulfilment of His promise that seedtime and harvest shall never cease. Nevertheless, this service, though it is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, should not deprive those who have borne the burden and heat of the day of their annual entertainment, their roast beef and plum-pudding, their glass of good ale, their pipe, and their song and jubilation, ' within the limits of becoming mirth.' They have found out, most of them, that it is possible to be merry and wise. Something better still, that without this wisdom, which cometh from above, ' even in laughter the heart is sorrowful ; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' ' The old giveth place to the new,' and sometimes one views this exit with a sigh, as when the parish stocks were removed to my grounds to be kept as a memorial, there being no further use for them, though they had brought many a drunkard, many a rogue, to shame. The old penfold is broken down. I should hope that the belief in witchcraft has died out ; it existed but a few years ago. A man who seemed perfectly sane assured me continually that he was bewitched by a woman in the village, who persecuted ECCLESIASTICS 169 him at night, and, though he bolted his door, 'used to come and yark the clothes off his bed.'* One ancient and wholesome custom is still in force, ' the riding of the stang,' commonly abbreviated into ' Bang-tang.' If a man is known to have ill-treated his wife, a band of performers on penny trumpets, horns, old kettles, pokers, and fire-shovels, meet under his bedroom window at night, and serenade him with derisive verses, of which I have no copy. That expressive monosyllable ' yark ' evokes my sad regret that many of our rural words, some of them older than the language of a more refined society, are in danger of extinction from the higher criticism, and from those locomotive facilities which tend more and more to produce uniformity in manner and in speech. They may be coarse and dissonant to ears polite, but we who have heard them from childhood would not willingly let them die. For example, we had in our village a huge, conceited sluggard, who went by the name of Brawnging Billy, who was much given to gawster, and to lorp about, setting folks on the hig, slaring his neighbours, and up to noat (nought) but mischief. He took to himself a wife, and it was soon manifest, to the joy of all, that 'Billy had married his niestur, and &b.Q'd.gloppened him a goodish bit.' Again, is there not a concentrated essence, a condensed power, of suggestive description in the five letters shack 1 The shack is a man who objects to regular employment, * In the beginning of the seventeenth century two women were burnt at Lincoln for witchcraft, confessing that they had familiar spirits, and it is not a hundred and fifty years since Ruth Osborn was drowned in a horsepond by the mob at Tring, in the belief that she was a witch. 170 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE but can and will do almost anything, except ordinary work. He prefers field-sports, covert-beating, partridge or grouse driving, running with the hounds, opening gates, holding horses, acting as ' supernumerary ' in the cricket field, poaching, mowing and threshing, hoeing and weeding (in small doses), sheep- washing, hop-picking, carpet-beating, etc., etc. There is the man, in the country lane, leaning on the gate, and watching the run of that hare, for which he has a snare in one pocket, and the stock and barrel of a gun in the other. He is very sly and observant, but he does not know that he is watched by an under-keeper, who will come upon him some day, when he has the gun, or the snare, or the hare in his hand, and there will be no escape. It was an under-keeper, by the way, who gave me a rich vocabulary of Nottingham- shire words, in relating how that he had shot at a snipe in some boggy ground, but had caught his foot on a tuft of grass, when he was in the act of firing ; that the gun flew out of his hands, and he had a heavy fall. ' It yarked up, and screeted, and I nipped round, and Hazed, but I catched my toe on a bit of a tussock, and she flew I should think she flew thirty yards, and I came down such a helper!' Shacks and poachers are not restricted to villages. They abound where men most do congregate, at the corners of the streets, in the clubs, and in the parks. ' Bofen-yed ' and ' noggin-yed ' were terms applied to persons who were stupid and obtuse. 'Yed' for 'head,' as when the Lancashire witness, badgered by a young barrister who had a new wig and a nez retrousse, and ECCLESIASTICS 171 falsely accused of having contradicted his own evidence, suddenly turned on the lawyer and exclaimed : ' Why, yer poivder-yedded monkey, I never said nowt o 1 sort. I appeal to th' company.' The rustic is sometimes plain of speech. He has no scruples in saying to an invalid, ' You're looking fine and ill ' ; and an old man will bellow into the ear of his deaf contemporary, ' You're breaking very fast.' ' Well, Booth,' a visitor said to his sick neighbour, ' thee'd like to get better, wouldn't thee, Booth ? But thee mun dee, this whet.' Their announcements startle now and then : ' If you please, sir, the corpse is wait- ing ;' ' If you please, sir, the corpse's brother would like to speak to you.' A village has generally its Mrs. Malaprop, the un- educated female who loves long words, whether rightly applied or not. She ' thought it her duty to inform me as them Browns was a conspirating to get rid of Sally's misfortune (baby) in as genteel a form as they could, and the poor little thing looked quite emanci- pated.' CHAPTEE XVII. ECCLESIASTICS continued. "* Parochial incidents Boring for coals The traveller by the wayside, half dead The village murder The carrier's dog Visions of the night Coincidences. BEFORE I leave our village, I would refer to the few crises of excitement which have lashed our little pond into a sea. In my father's time it was confidently announced that there was a rich substratum of coal in the parish, and Mr. Bristowe, the owner of the hamlet of Beesthorpe, the head of an old Notting- hamshire family, was accordingy induced by some plausible adventurer to employ a large body of men on part of his estate in boring for the precious mineral. The process went on week after week, to the satisfaction of the chief conspirators, one of whom, the clerk of the works, was ever hopeful of proximate and prosperous results, but failed to tran- quillize his employer, who day by day grew more and more doubtful, not only as to the result of the under- taking, but as to the honesty of those who advised it. It became evident that they must find coal or go, and as they were in comfortable circumstances, they de- cided to find coal. One of the miners was to bring a few small fragments of the article in his pocket, on his return from dinner, and, as soon as they saw Squire Bristowe approaching on his pony from the hall, the men were to stand round the pit with ring- ing cheers of joy, and he was to be welcomed with the glorious announcement, ' We've found coal !' Now, the squire, though on this occasion his inclina- tion had overpowered his discretion, was a man of brains and keen observation, and when he had closely scrutinized the sample put into his hand, he returned it to the clerk of the works, and said, ' I shall be the richest man in all England. You have not only dis- covered a mine of coal, you have found a mine of bread and cheese !' The conspirator who brought the bits of coal in his pocket had not noticed that a few small fragments from his luncheon were blended with ECCLESIASTICS 173 them, but they were quickly detected by a readier wit and by a more piercing eye. Two hours after this interview, not a man was to be seen upon the spot. Then came in my boyhood a tragedy, with a strange denouement, which made a deep impression upon me. Two labourers going to their work at daybreak on a summer's morning heard the most pitiful moans and groans from a plantation which adjoined the road, and looking into it they saw a poor fellow tied with ropes to a tree, his head bound with some dark material. They released him and uncovered his face, but he fell to the ground in a state of complete ex- haustion and unable to utter a word. Seeing that there was no probability of his immediate recovery, one of them returned to the village, while the other remained with the sufferer, whose horror lest his assailants should return was painful to witness. Then a cart was brought, in which he was conveyed to the inn. Stimulants were administered, and he gradu- ally regained the power to tell that, on his way to Newark the evening before, he had been attacked by three men, who had knocked him down, robbed him of his watch and all the money he possessed, and then, dragging him through a gap in the fence, had tied him with ropes to a tree, and had also fastened some sheets of brown paper round his head, cramming it in his mouth, and meaning, as he believed, to suffocate him ; that he had succeeded, by rubbing his head against the tree, in loosening the paper so as to breathe a little more freely, but that he felt as though death was coming upon him when they arrived to 174 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE rescue. He remained three weeks at the inn, re- ceiving every attention, many of the parishioners coming to see him, and sending him presents of wine, jellies, and fruit ; and when he was strong enough to continue his journey, a collection was made, which, after the payment of his expenses, left a balance of seven pounds in his favour. A few weeks after his departure, the subscribers were perturbed in spirit, as they read in the newspapers that the same performance had been successfully repeated in a distant part of the country, the only variation being the earlier exit of the hero, who thought it safer to make a more rapid recovery, and left the day after his discovery with <4 10s. in his pocket, and in high spirits, for the next murderous onslaught. Another catastrophe, which was a tragedy indeed, occurred also in my boyhood. The village shop was kept by a widow who sold, with other articles, lauda- num and tincture of rhubarb. Through some sad mistake, she gave the poison instead of the medicine to a neighbour, whose husband was ill, and who came to her for the tincture. The man died, and his widow openly declared that she would have revenge. She had one son, a farm-labourer of weak intellect, but quite capable of self-control and of going about his business like other men. It was always believed that his mother urged him to do what he did, and many years after for she lived to be an old woman I felt convinced that she had a burden on her conscience, and quite expected her confession ; but she died, and made no sign. Her son came back one night from a circus at Newark, with some other villagers, and, when ECCLESIASTICS 175 he left his companions, went straight to the shop, broke through the door, and strangled the poor widow in her bed. I shall never forget seeing her next morn- ing, for my father was from home, and, though I was but fourteen, I was sent for as his representative, turned a crowd of gossips out of the house, and despatched a messenger for the police. They found the poor widow's watch and money on the person of the murderer, who was at work in the fields, and he was tried, condemned, and hanged at Nottingham. A very pious lady in the neighbourhood visited him in prison, and sent him, with questionable taste, a white camellia on the morning of his execution, which he wore upon the scaffold ! About this time, and in the adjoining county of Lincoln, there occurred a far more remarkable tragedy, and I give the details as related to me by one who was then residing close to the scene of this sad, eventful history. Two sisters, who kept a toll-bar in the neigh- bourhood, both dreamed in the same night that an attempt was made to break into their house. They were greatly alarmed, and as the next day wore on they confided their fear to a carrier returning from the market at Stamford. He lent them a large dog, which always accompanied his cart as a guard ; but the animal got away soon after his master had left, and rejoined him on the road. The carrier had been so impressed by the nervous anxiety of the two women that he left his conveyance in the care of his passengers, returned, and, taking off his outer coat and placing it on the floor close to the window, he bade the dog watch, and said, ' He'll stay with you now until I 1 76 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE come again.' In the middle of the night they heard a noise outside, and, silently leaving their beds, they escaped through the back door into a side lane, and hurried to the nearest dwelling, then occupied by a blacksmith. He was not at home, but his wife gave the poor creatures shelter, and soon after sunrise the trio went back to the toll-bar. There they saw a strange sight the lower part of a man's figure outside the window, the upper part being evidently in a stoop- ing position within the house. The form was motion- less, and when, accompanied by some labourers who were going to their work, they entered the apartment, they found that the burglar had forced open the window', and that, as soon as he had thrust in his head and shoulders, the dog had seized him by the throat and held him until he died. The dead man was the husband of one of the three women the blacksmith ! Are these dreams coincidences only, imaginations, sudden recollections of events which had been long forgotten? They are marvellous, be this as it may. In a crisis of very severe anxiety I required informa- tion which only one man could give me, and he was in his grave. I saw him distinctly in a vision of the night, and his answer to my question told me all I wanted to know; and when, having obtained the clearest proof that what I had heard was true, I com- municated the incident and its results to my solicitor, he told me that he himself had experienced a similar manifestation. A claim was repeated after his father's death, which had been resisted in his lifetime and retracted by the claimant, but the son was unable to ECCLESIASTICS 177 find the letter in which the retractation was made. He dreamed that his father appeared and told him that it was in the left-hand drawer of a certain desk. Having business in London, he went up to the offices of his father, an eminent lawyer, but could not discover the desk, until one of the clerks suggested that it might be among some old lumber placed in a room upstairs. There he found the desk and the letter ! Then, as regards coincidence, are there not events in our lives which come to us with a strange, myste- rious significance, a prophetic intimation, sometimes of sorrow, and sometimes of success ? For example, I lived a hundred and fifty miles from Kochester. I went there, for the first time, to preach at the invita- tion of one who was then unknown to me, but is now a dear friend. After the sermon I was his guest in the Precincts. Dean Scott died in the night, almost at the time in which he who was to succeed him arrived at the house which adjoins the Deanery. There was no expectation of his immediate decease, and no con- jecture as to a future appointment, and yet, when I heard the tolling of the cathedral bell, I had a pre- sentiment that Dr. Scott was dead, and that I should be Dean of Eochester. 12 178 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE CIIAPTEE XVIII. GAMBLERS. My first experience Fallen among thieves Gambling at Oxford Suicides, abroad and at home Racing and betting Results Remedies Principiis obsta Power of example. I HAD a very early and startling experience in the matter of gambling. Before my father had decided whether he would buy me a commission in the army or send me to Oxford, he thought it desirable that I should make ' the grand tour,' as it was then called, through France, Italy, etc. ; and as I was then but a stripling of eighteen, without experience, I was to be accompanied to Paris by a dear old German gentleman, who was compelled in his adversity to leave Fatherland, and had established himself as a teacher of languages in the little town near my home. He was to remain with me a month in Paris, and then I was to go on alone. As the time of our separation drew near, and I had dis- covered that my ability to translate a few French fables and the easier portions of Telemachus did not empower me to converse with the natives, I began to dread and lament my silent loneliness in a strange land, and I advertised in Galignani for a companion. A bright, good-looking young English gentleman called on me on the following day to say that he proposed to follow the same route, and should be thankful to have a fellow-traveller. He had been for some time in Paris, and could speak French fluently. I went with him to GAMBLERS 179 his hotel in the Place Vendome, and we were there joined by two of his friends, both bearing, like himself, honourable names, but older men and less attractive in appearance. We strolled about the Champs Elysees, and it was proposed that we should enter a shooting- gallery and have some pistol practice, at which they seemed to be adepts. In the evening we dined at the Trois Freres in the Palais Eoyal, and afterwards ad- journed for coffee to the Place Vendome. Ving-et-un was suggested, and, as the stakes were to be small, and I suspected no evil, I sat down to play. Gradually the stakes rose in amount ; the success of the two senior competitors rose with it (the junior kindly accompanied me in my losses) ; and their supernatural agility in dealing themselves aces and tens first evoked an impression, and then, as I watched, a conviction that I had fallen among thieves. I declined to play longer, and, asking each of the winners ' how much he said I owed him,' put the sums down, amounting together to over sG300, in my note-book. Then one of them, assuming an air of virtuous indignation, inquired what I meant by ' said.' And he was evidently astonished, and I have been ever since astonished, at my coolness in replying, 'What I mean is this. I shall make inquiries to-morrow whether there is any ground for my suspicion that the money has not been honestly won, and shall act accordingly.' There was a good deal of bluster about apologies and satisfaction (the pistol practice in the Champs Elysees was not without a purpose), and then the younger of the trio pressed me to leave, and offered to accompany me home. On our way to Meurice's he expressed a most i8o THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE affectionate sympathy, assuring me, at the same time, that I had made a deplorable mistake, which he knew I should acknowledge on reflection, his friends being members of distinguished families and men of un- doubted honour. He reminded me that he had him- self lost over a hundred pounds, and urged me to pay at once (he knew that I had the amount in circular notes), promising, if I would do so, to appease the righteous wrath of the receivers. Then he left me, and the latter part of the journey to my hotel was a very gloomy proceeding. I might be wrong after all, and then to ask pardon and go back to England moneyless was a vision which oppressed me with despair ; and I have rarely known such a jubilant relief and reaction as when I met my German chaperon on my arrival, and he told me he had been sitting up in great anxiety, having received information, which he could not doubt, that I was in the hands of a lot of unscrupulous villains, whose rascalities were notorious to all Paris, though hitherto they had evaded the penalties of the law. We went next day to the Procureur du Eoi, who received us most kindly, heard our statement with attentive sympathy, and then told us that he had listened to many similar accounts, that he knew all about these conspirators, but could not see his' way to a prosecution, and that he advised me to take no further notice. I received no application from these genteel brigands. I met one of them a few days after, making his promenade, his rogue's march, through the streets, and, after a brief but brisk exchange of incivilities, we parted, and I saw him no more. On counting my loose money, I found GAMBLERS 181 that, as we had left off payment in coin when the stakes were raised, and had used counters, I was a richer man by a dinner and a few f ranee than when I left my hotel. They must have experienced that profound dejection which comes to the angler when the fish nibbles off his bait ; and it must have been a long and bitter recollection that a raw lad from the country had dined at their expense ! My next experience was at Oxford. There was no cheating, but gambling did great harm. We can say, all of us, without compunction, ' We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow ;' but they who have wasted the after-hours on cards and dice, cham- pagne, cigars, in anxious and sometimes angry excite- ment, must recall them with regret and shame. There were many instances, moreover, in which it might be said of gambling, that ' it separateth very friends ;' and I have seen the sad estrangement of those who had been long and affectionately attached, because one had lost to the other a sum which he could not pay. Since those Oxford days, I have seen, as any man may see, the results of gambling, in estates heavily mortgaged, ancestral homes sold or let to strangers, or desolate and empty ' No human figure stirred to go or come, No face looked forth from shut or open casement No chimney smoked, there was no sign of home From parapet to basement ' in incomes reduced one half by payments to life insurance companies, to secure sums borrowed for gambling debts; in quarrels between fathers and sons ; in the exile of impoverished families to countries 1 82 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE where they can live more cheaply ; in the flight of those who have robbed their employers to foreign lands, where the runagates continue in scarceness, unless they are caught by the police ; in hundreds of youths who have taken money from the till and cash- box, who have embezzled, and made false entries, and forged, because they have gambled and lost. In suicides. Again and again we read in our news- papers, ' Suicide of a Betting Man.' The number who commit self -slaughter at Monte" Carlo is ex- aggerated, but it is a long and gruesome list. The last time I was in the neighbourhood, the purser from a Eussian man-of-war came ashore, and won a few napoleons ; came again, and lost ; came, and lost more and more ; appropriated some of the ' ship's ' money, lost it, and shot himself dead.* A young man was boasting, on the rail between Monte Carlo and Nice, that he had won thirty golden corns, when an old man quietly remarked : ' I am glad they were not silver, or they might have suggested the price of blood.' Eather more than two years ago, the senior verger of the cathedral at Eochester was talking to my butler at the entrance to the Deanery grounds, when they heard a strange, gasping, gurgling sound from Gundulph's Tower, hard by. They looked in, and saw, with horror, a man hanging, and nigh unto * The latest, and one of the saddest, of these terrible records is that of the American heiress, who, having lost the whole of her fortune, 250,000 dollars, on Monday, September 12, 18P2, returned from the Casino to her residence at Ventimiglia, and was found dead next morning, shot through the heart with a revolver, which was lying beside her. GAMBLERS 183 death. He was cut down, and when sufficiently restored, was taken in charge by the police. I saw him next morning in the cells of the station, and a more miserable object never stirred the soul with pity. It was long before he could answer my inquiry, what had driven him to do this desperate deed ; but at last he said, ' Gambling and drink.' Eacing will not harm a man any more than a rubber of whist. I would subscribe to races, and go to view them, over the flat or the fences, and rejoice to see working men on a Bank Holiday enjoy the sport, if I could be assured that the best horse would win, that knaves and harlots would be warned off the course, and that drunken men would be taken away and whipped. Neither the race nor the rubber is hurtful until it becomes secondary and subservient to that love of money which is the root of all evil, and has nowhere a more abundant crop of its rank, vile produce than on our English Turf. A man who loves racing for its own sake may be as much sans peur et sans reproche integer ritte scelerisque purus, as the best of preachers, but as soon as the greed of gain has the mastery, and he loves the chink of the gold and the rustle of the crisp banknotes more than he cares for the horses, and the honour, and the sport, he begins to deteriorate. I know cases, as numerous as they are sad, of young men, who could not do a mean action, and who disdained a lie, gradually lured by temptations, or goaded by deceptions, to deviate from the straight course ; to say with lago, ' To be discreet and honest is not safe,' or, in the humbler language of the vendor of apples, ' If I must chate orbe chated, 1 84 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE why raythur cf the raythurest I'd raythur chate.' If they resist and refuse, as so many honourable men refuse, to take any unfair advantage, what security have they that they will not be duped by others ? And if they are men of culture and refinement, must they not be often disgusted (as Mr. Greville tells us in his Memoirs that he was continually offended) by their inevitable association with depraved, unscrupulous men ? And there are no men, the gaol chaplains tell us, whose conscience seems so seared, as it were with a hot iron, who are so hopelessly given over to a reprobate mind, as the habitual gambler and cheat. Some years ago, a visitor to the Sheffield Workhouse was surprised to see among the inmates on elderly woman whom he had formerly known in comfortable circumstances, and he said to the master, ' That woman's son is earning at the present time about four pounds a week, and it is disgraceful that she should be here.' The master went to the son, and expostu- lated with him as to his unfilial conduct. And this was the answer : ' If you'd lost forty pounds on that cursed handicap, as I did last week, you'd be none so keen about maintaining other folks !' Gambling and cheating are doubtless as old as the other vices. I have seen, in the museum at Naples, the loaded dice which were brought from Pompeii, but their antiquity does not make them venerable ; and when we are told that youth must have its fling of these dice, we can only answer, as Talleyrand to the beggar, who said that he must live, that we fail to see the necessity. The fling may be finished at the end of the hangman's rope, and is always more GAMBLERS 185 perilous than any flight from the trapeze. It is wiser and kinder to tell youth that he will be safer and happier on terra firma, and to warn Phaeton in plain language as to the disastrous consequences of driving the sun. Let him have his four-in-hand, and his tandem, his hunters, his moor, his deer forest and salmon stream, if they come to him by inheritance, or he can afford to pay for them, and if his enjoyment of them does not interfere with the duties of his position and the work which is given him to do ; but let him be told plainly that he may lose all, if he is induced to gamble and bet. My father heard the owner of one of the best estates in the midland counties say, just before the St. Leger was run, 'Now, it's lands or no lands ' (I substitute this word for the name of the property), and a few minutes later it was 'no lands.' And yet you will hear it said, that 'a man has a right to do what he will with his own,' as if there could be any right in breaking up happy homes, bringing in the auctioneer to scatter their heirlooms and their ancient and modern treasures among the brokers, pauperizing their children, to enrich those who will exult in their ruin, and gloat over the last notes which they could pay. I would that youth could have a few object-lessons ; that apprentices and clerks who are tempted to gamble and bet could visit those who, having lost more money than they could pay, have been detected in pilfering and false entries, and could hear their regretful ad- monitions ; and that young men of property could see, as they might see in every English county, the com- parative results of reckless gambling and of a rational 186 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE economy the evil which is done in a neighbourhood among tenants and poor folks, the dreary dilapidated farmsteads, the impoverished soil, the broken fences and gates, which there is no capital to renew ; and the substantial buildings, the well-cultured fields, the neat cottages, of the owner who cares not only for himself but others, and who recognises his responsi- bilities as a steward who must render an account. What else can we do to expel or restrain this evil spirit, which inflicts such degradation and distress? Principiis obsta. Rebuke, repress, the first signs of an inclination to covet and desire other men's goods, to be enriched at the expense of others, to receive without giving, to reap where we have not strawed. They are sparks which, if they are not extinguished, will kindle a conflagration. You may take a wasp's nest with a squib, but a ton of dynamite will be use- less when the grubs are hatched and gone. You may uproot a young thistle with a spade, but who can calculate the harm when it has flowered and run to seed ? Habitual gambling becomes an infatuation. I can vouch for the following illustration, and know the names of the persons referred to. One of them had a marvellous success in all games of chance, but refrained, on principle, from playing for money. The other was possessed by the fascination of gambling. They had dined together, and the latter signified his intention of going to the tables. He had already lost a large amount of money, and his friend earnestly endeavoured, but all in vain, to dissuade him. Finally, he consented to accompany him, on the condition that if he won five hundred pounds he would return home. GAMBLERS 187 This he accomplished, following the directions of his 'lucky' friend, and they came back together. At breakfast the next morning, he who had given con- gratulated him who had followed the advice, and ex- pressed the hope that he would keep his winnings and run no further risk. He was perplexed to see that his words were received in silence, and without a smile, but the mystery was quickly dispelled by the dolorous confession, 'I'm awfully ashamed, but I must tell you that when you were in bed I could not resist the temptation to go back to the tables, and I lost not only all I had won, but another five hundred pounds also.' As the prophet wrote, men are 'mad upon their idols,' and to-day, as when he wrote, more than two thousand years ago, men make this very madness an excuse for sin ' I was mad with drink, mad with excitement, mad with rage ;' but of all in- sane idolatries there is not one which seems to have such hopeless, absolute, irresistible control, as that of gambling for money. Wherefore, begin with boyhood, and despise not the day of small things. Let boys be taught that there is something contemptible, and unworthy of a gentle- man, to be hankering after money which does not belong to them, which they cannot gain without inflicting loss and pain upon others, and that games which do not interest them unless their object is money are not worth playing at all. It seems a severe restriction to forbid the smallest stakes. I once thought it unnecessary and absurd, but I have been convinced by argument and reflection that it is the wisest and kindest rule ; and, after all, the players 1 88 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE are just as happy without them, and the thought of winning money would never have occurred to their mind had it not been suggested to them. L'appetit vient en mangeant, and the desire to win pennies may develop into a craving for pounds. I should never have been involved in the misadventure which befell me at Paris had I not played vingt-et-un for lesser sums at home. It has been said that it is silly to denounce those who play only for stamps and pence, that in the large majority of cases no harm has come, that some of the worthiest men and women we have known have enjoyed for years their sixpenny points ; but I think now that, for the sake of those in whom the first taste may produce insatiate thirst, I would have no playing for money. I have little faith in legal restraints, much in the power of example. The nobility copy the court, the squires and other magnates copy the nobility, the working classes their employers, children their parents. These are wise human precautions, but, after all, the only sure safeguard is the spiritual conviction that our minds and bodies, our money, our nights and days, are given to us for a nobler purpose than the gratification of mere selfish instincts; that the first lessons which we learned were the best ' not to covet nor desire other men's goods, but to learn and labour truly to get our own living, and to do our duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call us.' ' Ah, my lady,' the Scotch girl said, when she was pleading with the queen for her sister's life, ' it's nae what we've done for self, but what we've done for others, that'll make us happy when we come to die.' GARDENERS 189 'Lockhart,' said he who recorded these touching words, Sir Walter Scott, just before he died, ' be virtuous, be religious; nothing else can bring you peace at the last.' CIIAPTEE XIX. GARDENEES. The love of flowers innate Children's gardens Flora for- saken for Pomona The love and practical knowledge of horticulture should be encouraged and instructed Allot- ments Schools for gardeners Window-plants. Is it the dim innate remembrance of Paradise lost, or is it the bright inspired hope of Paradise regained, which makes our childhood so happy among the flowers of the garden and the field ? The sunny bank on which we found the first violets, white and blue ; those favoured plots in the great wood which were the homes of the primrose ; the pastures where we made the daisy chain and cowslip ball; the grassy lanes with their huge hedges of wild roses (stubbed up now, to make way for the model farm) ; the pond which ? surrounded by marsh-mallows, looked like a mirror in a golden frame ; the brook which flowed by the red campion and the white meadow-sweet, with the blue forget-me-not beneath all these are present as vividly to my imagination as, more than sixty years ago, to my eye. Do any forget, who have ever known, these blissful hours in the groves and in the meadows by the stream ? A lady, whom I know, took a fresh posy of primroses into a miserable attic in Whitechapel, igo THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE and placed them on a table by which sat a poor creature, from whom sin, and disease, and want seemed to have taken away all trace of womanhood. She looked at them for a few seconds with a stupid stare of apathy, and then suddenly they suggested some thought which seemed to thrill through her, like a galvanic shock, and she burst into tears, ' tears from the depths of some divine despair, while thinking of the days that are no more.' The flowers spoke to her of a time when she was joyful in her innocence, and she might have said to them as Burns to the banks and braes of Doon : ' Ye mind me of departed joys, Departed never to return.' ' He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.' Who recalls those days, and scenes, and companions, without some sad regrets, without Job's prayer, ' Oh that I were as in months past ! Thou writest bitter things against me ' the recollection of disobedience to those who loved us dearly as their lives, unkindness to those who were younger or weaker than ourselves ? ' And by the brook, and in the glade, Are all our wanderings o'er ? Oh, while my brother with me stayed, Would I had loved him more !' But the gladness of our hope expels the sadness of the fear the hope that once again, as little children, gazing on such beauty as eye hath not seen, and listening to such music as ear hath not heard, we shall rejoice in the eternal sunshine of our Heavenly Father's love. GARDENERS 191 Returning from the woods and the fields, we find those dear little gardens at home wherein we planted the twig, and were annoyed next morning to see no signs of foliage ; sowed the melon seed, and were dis- appointed because, unlike Jonah's gourd, it grew not up in a night. The doll's house (the door of which occupied the entire frontage, the architect having for- gotten the stairs) stood centrally at the upper end of our domain, representing the family mansion ; ' the gardener,' a tin soldier in full uniform with fixed bayonet, spent most of his time lying on his stomach, his form being fragile and the situation windy ; and the fishponds were triumphs of engineering skill. Mine was a metal pan, which had been formerly used for culinary purposes, placed in an excavation prepared for it, and containing a real fish, about the size of a whitebait, and caught by hand in the brook hard by. One of my sisters produced, I must confess, a more brilliant effect with some bits of looking-glass, but they lacked the gracefulness of nature and the charm of reality. The grotto, an oyster-barrel placed on its side, and tastefully ornamented with broken pieces of ivy and other evergreens, contained the wives of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, taken from our ark, and attended by a dog, a cat, and a parrot. They remained in a perpendicular position night and day, and had a fine effect. The former inmates of their bower, the oyster-shells, were also present on our parterres, for ornamental and, as in Lord Macaulay's history, for territorial purposes. There is nothing in his biography more delightful than the record how, when his sister had been rearranging the boundaries and readjusting 192 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE the shells, he rushed into the house, exclaiming, ' Cursed be Sally ! cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark !' The conservatory was a noble structure adjoining the family mansion, but of larger dimensions a square hand-glass, which looked as though it had been in a phenomenal hailstorm, and had only one qualification for plant culture, a free circulation of air. I dwell upon these adjuncts to horticulture rather than upon the produce of the soil, because in the latter department we did not attain a like success. We were not on the best of terms with our gardener the real gardener, not the tin soldier and he would not help us. Our ways (over the flower-beds) were not his ways, and he objected to the promiscuous use of his syringe and the premature removal of his fruit. We differed, again, on the subject of transplanting. It seemed to us an easier and more satisfactory process to transfer specimens in full beauty from his garden to our own, rather than to watch their tardy growth and tedious efflorescence. Unhappily for us, the specimens themselves did not seem to like it, and we were finally forbidden by parental authority to continue our importations. We obeyed cheerfully, for we loved the flowers, though we had erred as to their treatment loved them from the first snowdrop to the last Christmas rose, from the flowering trees and shrubs to the ' bachelor's buttons ' and ' fairy ' roses, which almost rested on the soil. ' The child is father to the man,' and I, to whom was granted in after-years the privilege of suggest- GARDENERS 193 ing and organizing the First National Hose Show, presided in my childhood at a floral exhibition, of which my little sister was the general and executive committee. A few petals of pansies, roses, etc., were spread upon paper and covered with the largest piece "of broken glass which we could find (the idea was taken from dried flowers in an old scrap-book), and then, when the edges of the paper were turned over the glass, we called it a ' Flower Show,' and the servants said it was ' beautiful !' Dear also to our happy hearts were the trees of the garden the tree in which was the swing (who does not remember the first mingled sensations of joy and terror which accompanied him to and fro?), and the two trees of weeping ash, which, surround- ing us on all sides with their boughs drooping to the ground, made for us ' here, in cool grot,' a charming summer-house. Here we kept our Feast of Taber- nacles, jubilant as those children of Israel who, more than three thousand years ago, dwelt in booths in the feast of the seventh month, and who, a thousand years later, in the days of Nehemiah, went forth into the mount and fetched olive branches, and pine branches, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, and made themselves booths, every one upon the roof of his house, and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God, and there was very great gladness. These umbrageous retreats were transformed at the will of our childish fancy as swiftly as the scenes of a pantomime by the touch of Harlequin's wand. Sometimes they were palaces and castles of the 13 194 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE nobility, and the marchioness would go in state on the top of a wheelbarrow, filled with mown grass from the lawn and propelled by an under-gardener, and would be graciously received by the duchess dwelling under her palm-tree like Deborah, and would be hospitably entertained with surreptitious black currants, served on a cabbage-leaf, or with clandestine tony from the village shop. The finger ends and mouths of the nobility after one of these interviews were remarkably rich in colour, and might have evoked the jealousy of the rosy-fingered Morn and of Phyllis with ' lips crimson red.' To be accurate, they only evoked the wrathful expostulations of nurse, with unpleasant allusions to the prevalence of cholera and to the marvellous merits of castor oil. Sometimes these arboric abodes were the dens and lairs of fierce brigands (my younger sisters as reprobate villains, with corked eyebrows and mous- taches, were a sight to make your blood run cold), and the under-nurse, dragging with difficulty a garden- roller over the gravel, and supposed to be a merchant of enormous wealth, conveying bullion to the bank, was robbed, and fled for his life. Sometimes the woman who weeded was startled to hear a sweet treble voice demanding ' Your money or your life !' On one occasion she looked up, and answered, ' Oh, Miss 'Lisbuth, what a Guy Faux you be !' Sometimes a lovely princess imprudently sauntered within a few yards of the robber's cave ; the tenant emerged armed to the teeth with the garden-shears, and intending prompt decapitation, but fell in love with his victim, and, throwing away the shears, went down on his GARDENERS 195 knees, proposed, and, with that slight bashful hesita- tion which befitted the brevity of their acquaintance and the disparity of their social position, was affection- ately accepted. Sometimes these sylvan homes were supposed to be the headquarters of the English and French armies, the tents of the two commanders-in-chief. A sentinel, armed with a rake, walked backwards and forwards in front of the British encampment. At intervals his Grace the Duke of Wellington, arrayed in a cocked hat and sword belonging to an old court dress, came out with a long telescope (parasol) and anxiously surveyed the enemy's position about fifteen yards in front. Napoleon followed his example, and gazed intently from time to time, through a roll of music, on the English lines. The soldiers on guard occasionally varied their mono- tonous exercise by exchanging their weapons for musical instruments, the French contingent perform- ing on a drum, and the English on a penny trumpet. These warlike preparations and sounds of defiance were quickly followed by a general engagement. The flower of the French army (sister No. 2) was slain to a girl, and the unhappy Napoleon, having been freely prodded with a pea-rod by the heroic Wellington, sought refuge among the rhododendrons. I must acknowledge sadly, that at an early age, soon after my promotion from frock to jacket, I forsook my first love, Flora, and the Naiades and Dryads, for Pomona ; and, in my boyhood and early youth, even in the groves of Academus and on the slopes of Parnassus, I ceased to woo. 196 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE But why descending to common-sense from Olympus why is not a more anxious, practical endeavour made in our schools and colleges to en- courage this love of the beautiful, and this know- ledge of the useful, by teaching horticulture? I maintain that such an instruction would add largely to the comforts and enjoyments of our community. The majority of our boys and girls will some day have a garden of their own, and under our present regime they will take possession of it without know- ing when to BOW a seed, where to plant trees, shrub, or flower, or how to cook a potato. Beginning with those who have the more extensive domains, I speak that which I know, namely, that nineteen men out of twenty are absolutely at the mercy of their gardeners. They have no notion how much produce they might expect, or when it should be forthcoming. They dare not complain, lest they should expose their ignorance. They either employ more labour than they need, or the auxiliary force is inadequate. They either expect to have everything which they admire elsewhere, or they survey it with abject despair. They come home from a flower show, and express their desire and in- tention to have the same roses which they have seen at the Crystal Palace, Sir Trevor Lawrence's orchids, Mr. Barr's narcissus, Mr. Turner's carnations, Mr. Laing's begonias, without further notice; or they have been present at some great banquet, and, on their return, request to be supplied in the future with Jersey pears and ' Cannon Hall ' Muscats. To those of smaller means and measurements, a knowledge of flowers, vegetables, and fruits, suitable GARDENERS 197 soils and manures, multiplying, training, and prun- ing, would not only suggest peaceful, restful hours of happy employment, but also an economic and delect- able improvement in the variety and quality of their daily food. Where there is adaptation and careful culture, where the best kinds are in the soil and in the situation most favourable to their growth, they attain an excellence and an abundance incredible to those who have not seen it. And so it may be said of the art of horticulture, more truly, I think, than of any other, that it not only elevates and refines ' emollit mores, nee sinit esse feros ' but brings sub- stantial benefits to the body as well as to the mind. Nor are these advantages restricted to the upper and middle classes. ' Nature never did betray the heart that loved her,' whether the proprietor be peasant or peer. There are no better gardeners, no men who know better what to grow and how to grow it, no men who produce more things pleasant to the eye and good for food from their gardens, than those Nottingham mechanics who have their small plots of ground and tiny greenhouses just outside the town ; and in many parts of the country you may find examples of the same enthusiasm, crowned with the same success examples which might be multiplied a hundred-fold if there were more encouragement and more accessible instruction. By all means let the working man have his allot- ment of land for pasture, for corn, for orchard, and garden, but let him be taught at the same time how to make the best of it. What is the good of giving a man a flute, if you do not teach him how to play it ? 198 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE Tell the poor man how to grow vegetables and fruits, and his wife how to cook and preserve them, and the rich man to help both, starting them with a few good trees and seeds, and requesting his gardener to give occasional advice, and you will deserve and win the gratitude of your fellow-men. Youths who propose to make horticulture their vocation should, of course, have a special training; and a scheme which emanates from the Eoyal Horti- cultural Society, for their technical education in gardening and spade industry, deserves general sympathy and support. The promoters of this laudable enterprise invite a more general recogni- tion of the importance of fruit culture, and the further development of gardening, together with the more careful and scientific treatment of small holdings, as a practical reply to the problem, ' What is to be done with the land ?' And in order to realize their design, they propose to establish ' a British School of Gardening, where lads from fifteen to eighteen years of age may receive a thoroughly practical training in all the details of their crafts, together with such simple elementary scientific instruction as may be sufficient to enable them to take an intelligent in- terest in the manifold operations of nature, with which their after-life will be concerned. With these objects they intend to furnish a house at Chiswick, in the immediate neighbourhood of the gardens of the Eoyal Horticultural Society, for the reception of students ; to appoint fitting persons as instructors and lecturers ; and to establish classes for the prac- tical teaching of the Craft of Gardening and Spade GARDENERS 199 Husbandry in the Society's gardens. To carry out this project, an initial sum of 1,000 is required, with a further annual sum of 250 for three years, after which the school should become self-supporting.' Might not some such institutions be established at different centres, in proximity to those large cities and towns in which there would be a profitable market for their produce ; and why should not schools and colleges, which consume such a vast amount of vege- tables, supply their own necessities, and over the entrance of a grand garden, in which horticulture should be exemplified in all its branches, write, ' Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci ' ? These arguments and intentions are, of course, appropriate to that science of agriculture which is always of supreme importance to the welfare of a nation, and seems now to be in sore need of new developments. There is a comic, a serio-comic, element in the inheritance of a large estate by a gentleman who would be perplexed to distinguish between barley and oats, turnips and mangolds, who could not tell you approximately how many sacks of wheat should be grown per acre, who likes sand better than clay because it's better for rabbits in a word, knows nothing whatever of the management of his own affairs. Some young men nowadays, who are heirs to broad lands, very wisely locate them- selves for a season in the home of a clever farmer ; and there learning how to buy and sell, how to breed and feed horses and cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, the wages and the ways of the labourer, draining, fallowing, manuring, sowing, reaping, thrashing, lay- 200 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE ing down ploughed land in grass, marketing, the rotation of crops, and all other details, they find themselves masters of the situation when they suc- ceed to their estates, take their part with a much deeper interest in their management, and, with regard to those in their employment, can distinguish the men who are doing their duty from those who are shirk- ing it, and can accordingly reward or rebuke them. Honest men will respect, idle men will fear them, and they will not only get more work, but it will be better done. No servants will do their best for a master who cannot appreciate exertion nor detect inertness. Thus finding new admirations in their gardens, and constant occupation on their estate, making their homes beautiful and their lives useful, they will not crave for excitements which can never sate, nor go in search of happiness, because it is already at their feet. I would entreat those fretful vagrants who run to and fro after contentment, like men looking for spectacles which rest upon the nose, and who are further from their object every step they take, to read ' A Tour round my Garden,' by Alphonse Karr, and try to see, as he did, some of the marvellous revelations of an infinite Power and Love, which are written everywhere, for those who have eyes to read. The same principle of appreciation, which does the work that is given to every man, in the work- shop where he is placed, and with the tools which he finds at hand, which can be merry and joyful with the mates of his childhood and in the play- grounds near his home, should have and might have GARDENERS 201 the same benign influence and the same beneficent results with the labourer as with the nobles, and squires, and other wealthy folk ; and if he finds pleasure and profit in his garden, his orchard, and his ' bit o' land,' he will seldom be attracted by those costly fascinations of the public-house, which are always so fugitive in fruition, and sometimes so disastrous in results. No one walking in London streets, noticing the exquisite treasures in the windows of the florists, the orchids, the bouquets, and button-holes, the baskets and bunches of less expensive specimens, the cartloads of plants in pots, offered to him by the locomotive agent, the tasteful arrangements of flowers and foliage in dining and drawing rooms, on balconies and sills ; or, as he passes by more humble habitations, the window plants in the poor man's home ; or, travelling by rail, glass-houses by the acre for the culture of flowers and fruit no one can fail to be impressed by the increase, in these latter years, of this new demand and supply. With some it is merely a matter of fashion and comme il faut, another opportunity of outbidding their neighbour, constraining him by their splendour to ' pale his uneffectual fire,' transcending him in town by a thousand roses, as in the country by a hillock of tame pheasants ; but there is with it a true and genuine love of the beautiful, and no one feels it so heartily, or enjoys it so happily, as the grower of the window plant. It is the man or the woman who strikes the cutting and sows the seed, who tends and trains and waters, protects from the frost 202 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE and screens from the heat, who watches the lateral break out of the stem, the formation of the foliage and the bud, who tastes the full felicities which "flowers bestow. You may buy flowers, pay others to grow them for you, and admire them when they are grown, but if this is the extent of your affection, you miss, and deserve to miss, three-fourths of the pleasure which is given to those who cultivate and care for the plant. What a wealth of flowers they always have, who are their most faithful ministers ! They seem to find them wherever they go, or receive them as offerings from those congenial gardeners who have heard of their devotion. That which they plant seems ever to thrive, and that which they nurse to recover. Cut flowers, which they arrange, seem to place themselves at once in the most graceful contrast and combination. There seems to be a reciprocity of mutual, mysterious love, an interchange of smiles. The only good thing I ever heard of the Mormons was their belief in a sweet sympathy between the florist and his flowers. CHAPTEE XX. CAEDENEES continued. Our gardens sixty years ago Landscape-gardening Beautiful trees and shrubs Herbaceons and Alpine plants Roses Famous gardeners, and writers about gardens Realities and shams. CONCEENING gardens. I subpoena my memories to give evidence, and my verdict is that sixty years ago the GARDENERS 203 gardens of England were more pleasingly, because more naturally, arranged than now. Mr. Marnock, the best landscape-gardener of his day, acknowledged and acted upon this conviction. I see him now with his arms folded over his broad chest, and his keen gaze surveying the site on which he is to form a garden, in reverent meditation how he should keep the congruity between Nature and Art by a careful obedience to the Latin rule, ' Ars est celare artem.' He marked out a plan for a bed here, and a tree there ; there was to be a walk, and there to be water ; and, when the plan was finished, on that amplitude of greensward which he ever regarded as of primary importance, you would not find a straight line or an angle. The poet who wrote, ' He wins all points, who pleasingly confounds, Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds,' was a true gardener; and he is a true duffer who thinks to give the idea of magnitude by exposing the whole extent of the ground to the spectator, who maintains a rigid uniformity, ' balancing ' bed against bed, tree against tree, conducts the visitor on straight walks from corner to corner, and finally embellishes and crowns his stupidity with a hideous arbour, or a huge construction of iron arches and chains, on w r hich the roses, for which it was designed, indignantly decline to grow. As for a quiet nook, in which to think or read, a sun-trap, or a shelter from wind or heat, an ambuscade for ' I spy ' and 'hide-and-seek,' or a spot which might embolden a bashful lover to whisper the avowal of his love, you might as well try to conceal 204 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE yourself in the middle of the road, or propose on the top of an omnibus. There can be no stereotyped designs for a garden, because the plan must be adapted to the extent, forma- tion, and surroundings of the site, but the laws as to a natural grace and congruity, as to outline, variety, and the planting out of boundaries, must be observed. The question ' What should there be in a garden ?' may be answered more definitely. There should be in every garden which has room for them an abundance of trees and shrubs having beautiful flowers or leaves arbutus, aucubas, almonds, acacias, crabs, limes, Mains jioribundus, Pyrus japonica, Primus Pisardi, laurels, laurestinus, lilacs, laburnums, Guelder roses, Forsytheas, Weigelas, sweet-briars, thorns (pink, white, and scarlet), rhododendrons, Kalmias, azaleas, and andromedas (where the four latter will prosper), maples (silver and gold), and copper beech, etc. There should be broad borders of herbaceous plants in front of the shrubberies, round the beds, and on either side of walks in the kitchen garden ; and at the backs of these borders should be tall screens, flower-walls of climbing plants, roses and honeysuckles, clematis, jasmines, golden and silver ivies, ceanothus, hollyhocks. A space should be set apart for Alpine plants, where large stones can be arranged as they are found in their natural stratum (not -set up on end as by an earthquake) and soil placed about them. This rock-garden must have all the sunshine which comes to our cloudland, and it should be one of the ' surprises,' which are not only so charming at first sight, but, like Phyllis, ' never fail to please.' Roses should have a bed to themselves GARDENERS 205 the queen ' brooks no rival near her throne ' and they should be ' dwarfs ' budded on the briar. Stan- dards may be planted behind the herbaceous borders elsewhere they are unsightly. Should the soil and the climate seem specially to favour any particular flowers, such as narcissus, lilies, gladioli, or carnations, these should be extensively grown in all their beautiful varieties, and made a prominent feature in the garden. On the other hand, it is a waste of time, money, and space, to persist in the cultivation of trees or flowers which are manifestly wretched in their exile from congenial homes. You may import cartloads of peat and of clay, and for a time you may have some success, but deterioration follows naturam expellasfurcd, tamen usque recurret and there is a gradual but sure decay. Then, as a false note spoils the harmony, or a dis- coloured tooth the set, your failure mars your success, and, where you might have commanded admiration, you hear a titter ! It has been my great privilege to know, and to number among my friends, the most accomplished gardeners, professional and amateur, master and servant, of our time, and in the society and the studios of these artists I have spent some of the happiest hours of my life. Foremost among these horticultural heroes, I place that ' grand old gardener,' to whom I and all loyal subjects of the queen of flowers are so much indebted for his ' Eose Amateur's Guide,' Mr. Kivers of Sawbridgeworth. It was the perusal of this book, the utterance of a loving heart, so clearly and concisely spoken, which revived my reverent admira- tion of flowers, kindled the spark into a flame, and 206 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE gradually extended niy garden of roses, until I was lord of five thousand trees. He sent me the editions of his charming manual, as they were published, with some kindly inscription, and in the last he wrote, after my name, ' once my pupil, now my master '; but he had forgotten more than I ever knew. I went to see him in his pleasant home. The house stood at the top of a bank, on which he had planted and trained the Ayrshire roses, so that he looked out in the summertide on a white cascade of flowers. He was hale and handsome, tall and erect as one of his own 'standards,' and with some of their roseate hue on his kindly, clever face. Apropos of standards, he told me that when they were first imported into this country from Belgium, the Duke of Clarence paid a thousand pounds for the same number of trees. He was among the first to reproduce on English soil this new dis- covery, and to import his stocks, not from the foreign nurseries, but from the hedgerows of Herts. The old foreman protested in vain against ' Master Tom plant- ing those rubbishy brambles, instead of fruit-trees,' but they proved to be more precious than golden pippins, and every briar was transformed into a mag- num bonum. It was delightful to walk with him among his roses, and in the orchard houses which he first designed, to be inspired by his enthusiasm and edified by his instruction, to examine the developments in symmetry, colour, and size, the results of that patient devotion, the selection, inoculation, hybri- dizing, budding, grafting, layering, striking, pruning, and careful cultivation, which he and others had bestowed upon the rose. His portrait has a con- GARDENERS 207 spicuous place in the long galleries through which my memory roams, and I rejoice in its genial smile. I know that he helped to make my life brighter and better, and there are times, when I think of him or read his books, in which I pray and hope that, when I am gone, I may be remembered by those younger men, who have already gladdened my heart by thanking me for a new-born zeal, with something of the affection- ate, brotherly regard which I cherish always for Thomas Rivers. Again and again I have walked with ' the king of the florists,' Charles Turner, through ' the Eoyal Nurseries ' at Slough ; have inspected the Crown jewels (I might say, held the regalia, for all gardeners must fumigate now and then) ; have admired the arrangement, order, and government of his extensive empire, the industry, the prosperity, and beauty of his subjects. Over the tribes and families known as the pelargoniums, azaleas, auriculas, carnations, dahlias, and pot roses, he maintained his royal supremacy. His specimens were magnificent, so large that on one occasion he was a victim to that ' vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself,' one of his azaleas attaining such abnormal dimensions that, when it was wanted for conveyance to a London show, it could not be got through the door, and it was necessary to remove one of the side-posts, at much trouble and expense. He could charm the ear as well as the eye, and if he had cultivated his exquisite tenor voice with the same assiduous attention which he gave to his garden, he would have been as distinguished in the concert as he was in the exhibition hall. 208 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE I have been with representatives of two generations of the Veitches, among the precious enrichments to our glass-houses and gardens which they have brought from all parts of the world, treasures for which men have imperilled their lives and lost them, as Douglas, who sent us the beautiful Pinus Douglasii, and who fell into a trap set for wild animals, and was gored to death by one of them. It is a joy and refreshment to go from London streets, and in the King's Eoad Nursery, at Chelsea, to see all plants which require protection in our colder clime from the gigantic tree-ferns in their lofty home, to the tiniest gem in its thumb-pot lovely and luxuriant as in their native land. Messrs. Veitch not only supply us with plants, but with planters ; they have not only a nursery for flowers, but a school for florists, from which many pupils have gone forth with grateful recollections of sympathy in their comfort as well as of education in their art. I have been personally conducted by Mr. Bull through his marvellous display of odontoglossum and other orchids, and his choice collection of novelties in stove and greenhouse plants; and, to make a triumvirate of orchideous potentates, I have passed many pleasant hours with ' Ben Williams,' of Hollo way, in judicial labour and in social converse. I have visited Switzerland-in -miniature with Mr. Backhouse, where he has formed in the suburbs of York the most perfect of rock-gardens, a natural conjunction of mountainettes and streamlets, in which you are shut out from the world beyond, and surrounded by fascinations, countless, and vying with GARDENERS 200 each other in beauty as in their distant homes, where ' hills peep o'er hills, and alps on alps arise.' Here we find ourselves fully qualified to answer the inquiry of Mr. Alexander Selkirk, ' Solitude, where are thy charms ?' for here ' there is society, where none intrudes.' I have seen many interesting Alpine gardens, notably at Lamport in Northamptonshire, where my old Oxford friend, Sir Charles Isham, by intro- ducing among the Lilliputian trees and caverns the figures of wee men in various attitudes, has produced a *most artistic, quaint, weird semblance of reality ; and I have heard of many other proofs that gardeners are beginning to appreciate this precious addition to a garden, which comprehends such manifold attrac- tions in so small a space ; but I have neither seen nor heard of any consummation so successful as that at York, where, in addition to this chef d'oeuvre^ there are broad borders of herbaceous plants, and a most interesting collection of rare ferns. I have been with Mr. Barr among the narcissus, with Mr. Laing among the begonias, with Mr. Waterer among the rhododendrons, Mr. Pearson among his pelargoniums, with Mr. Cannell among his dahlias and primulas, with Mr. Sutton among his giant cyclamen and grand gloxinias. I have been with Mr. William Thompson, king of the vineyards, the raiser of the finest grape ever seen I mean ' the Duke of Buccleuch ' under his vines at Clovenford, and with Mr. Bunyard, the emperor of pomologists, among his apples at Maidstone. I have been among the roses with the chief rosarians, by the side of the 14 2io THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE Rivers, in the midst of the Lanes and the Woods,* with the Pauls of Cheshunt and Waltham Cross (Mr. William Paul, Mr. John Lee, and myself are, I think, the only survivors of the old rosarians), Francis of Hertford, Cant of Colchester, Prince of Oxford, Cranston of Hereford, and many others, to whom I have awarded, as one of the judges, some scores of cups and of cheques. I have talked bad French to Victor Verdier, and been told by Jules Margottin how an English rosarian, expecting to gain advantage over his fellow-countrymen by obtaining his roses direct from France, having heard that M. Margottin lived at Bourg la Reine, but not being certain as to the orthography, and seeing in a catalogue the name of a rose, 'Belle de Bourg la Reine,' copied it and wrote at once ; and the jolly old Frenchman very nearly choked himself on receiving a letter addressed to him as the belle of the district. Risum teneatis, amid ? You, messieurs, sometimes misapprehend, as when our Bishop of Bath and Wells was entered in the book of your hotel as L'Eveque de Bain et Puits, and our Bishop of Sodor and Man, as L'Eveque du Siphon et d'Homme ! I have known other famous exhibitors in their various departments of horticulture William May, the Coles, and Thomas Baines. I have wandered with Mr. Boscawen in his wild garden in Cornwall; with Mr. Ingram on Belvoir's lovely slopes ; with Mr. Fish around beautiful Hardwicke, with its valley of ferns and its vistas, through which you look down on Bury. I have known our chief * Rivers of Sawbridgeworth ; Lane of Berkhamstead ; Wood of Maresfield. GARDENERS 211 horticultural writers, the editors past and present of our garden periodicals, Dr. Lindley, Dr. Masters, and gentle, genial Mr. Moore of the Chronicle, Donald Beaton and Dr. Hogg of the Cottage Gardener (now the Journal of Horticulture), Shirley Hibberd of the Gardener's Magazine; and, coming to more recent dates, I sat with my friend, William Robinson, under a tree in the Eegent's Park, and suggested The Garden as a title for the newspaper which he proposed to publish, and which has been so powerful in its advocacy of pure horticulture, of the natural, or English, school, free from rigid formalities, mere- tricious ornaments, gypsum, powdered bricks, cockle- shells, and bottle-ends. I have been with the peasants of France and Italy under the vines, and among the oranges and lemons, and by the long beds of excellent vegetables, which they grow on the terraces formed from the rock ; and I should like to show some of our indolent gardeners, who are ever complaining about their soil and other disadvantages, what can be done by pickaxe, trowel, and spade to utilize and beautify the barren mountain- side. With all my heart I honour these men and women (for the women work as hard as the men), as, under the burden and heat of the day, they patiently obey the Divine edict, ' In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread ;' and to them, if to any, may be spoken, when labour is over, or the Festa conies, these happy words, ' Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart ; for God accepteth thy works.' And last, but not least, I have ofttimes been with 212 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE the artisans of whom I have spoken, the labourers, who take a real interest in their cottage gardens, and their wives, who watch with anxious care the window plants at home ; and this is the conclusion to which I have come, from an intimacy long and close, that this appreciation of the beautiful is a divine instinct, and that it is so conducive to tender- ness, and gentleness, and reverence, and love, that he who has it may be readily taught, if he has not already learned, to look from Nature up to Nature's God, from the flowers of the garden to Him whose breath perfumes them, and whose pencil paints- This conviction has been confirmed by my clerical experience, as well as by my floral friendships. The gardener ought to be always, and is, as a rule, not only a man of refined taste, but of religious principle ; and this principle is, I believe, the chief source and stay of our brotherly attachment. It is not only similarity of inclinations and habits, but a more pure and sacred sympathy, which creates and maintains our alliance. The apron of the gardener, like the apron of the Freemason, which I have worn for half a century, not only means honest work, but brotherhood, and wherever I have been, with rare exceptions, I have found in him a brother. I do not claim for the gardener exemption from those infirmities of temper which flesh is heir to, and he may mistake his vocation as others do. There are cases in which his museum of red spiders, mealy bugs, and aphis seems to indicate that he should have been an entomologist ; there are instances in which the abundance of his GARDENERS 213 groundsel suggests his removal to the Canary Islands. There are examples of meanness and self-conceit. There is the selfish little ' Homer, who sits in his corner ' away from his fellows, eating his pie, but asking none to taste ; and ' he puts in his thumb, and pulls out a plum,' exulting in his display of some- thing which you have not got, and saying, ' What a good boy am I !' whereas he wants whipping. There is the gardener who cultivates one speciality, and ignores all other plants. He can only ride his own hobby, and can only play one tune, which he gives you, da capo, until you are bored into disgust. If you have not seen his Bougainvillea glabra (any- body may fill a stove with it), he has an astonishment in store for you; if you have not worshipped his calceolarias, you are in heathen darkness. I exclude from the category of gardeners the miser, the braggart, the ignoramus, and the impostor, and must sorrowfully attach the latter appellation to those ladies and gentlemen who profess to be ' so fond of flowers,' who grow them, and buy them, and wear them, and are pleased with them as ornamental adjuncts within and without their homes, but never study, in a wonder of delight, their infinite beauty of colour and of form, never think of them, never speak of them, when they are out of sight. I don't believe in those who call them ' sweets,' and ' pets,' and ' darlings,' and let them die for want of water. Take notice of these professors at a flower show, or a garden - party, or among the 'lilies of the field,' and you will know the quality of their devotion. What disap- 2J 4 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE pointments they inflict, who are 'so anxious to see your garden,' and with whom you anticipate an earnest interchange of sympathies and experience, and they rush through your grounds as though they were in training for some pedestrian feat, or stop to notice the most common plant in your borders, and call it by a wrong name. Yet more objection- able, because you do not get rid of him so soon, is the man who prides himself on the extent of his collection, and, as one who buys books but never reads them, cares only for the mere fact of possession. He comes to see whether you have anything which he has not. He will hardly look at your latest acquisition, because he has ' grown it for two seasons,' and he speaks of some of the loveliest flowers in creation, as he would speak of his grandmother, as ' poor dear old things.' He feels towards them as I to himself : he tolerates, but wishes they would go. Solace comes to you with the real enthusiast, who shares your admirations, your successes and disappointments, as though they were his own ; who is as anxious to receive, as he is willing to give, information, as grateful as he is generous. How quickly and happily the hours go, as, in his garden, or in yours, or wherever your favourites grow, you suggest to each other new charms, new combinations, new methods of culture. I went to one of the most beautiful of our great English gardens, and, meeting the head gardener, asked permission to walk through the grounds, and told him my name. To my momentary surprise, he made me no answer, but turning to one of his men at work close by, bade GARDENERS 215 him ' set the fountains playing.' That was his brotherly welcome, and it stirred other fountains besides those which suddenly arose and sparkled in their silvery sheen, and made my heart glad. In this delightful garden, there stands a statue of the noble owner, who reclaimed it from the waste, and underneath an inscription, 'He made the desert smile ;' and so our love of flowers and florists makes ' green spots on the path of time.' In this land of gardens, the gardener has troops of friends, and even in places which the world calls desolate, he shall find companions to cheer him, so long as there are lichens on the mountain, ferns in the valley, or algae on the shore. ' The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for him, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.' In referring to standards, by which you may measure, and scales, in which you may weigh and distinguish, the true and the pseudo florist, I have included a flower- show as one of the tests, and it may interest some of my readers to have the memories of my long expe- rience with regard to the flower-show itself. I am often asked, Can these exhibitions be easily established and profitably managed ? Is it desirable for gardeners to exhibit ? 216 riiE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE CHAPTEE XXI. GARDENERS continued. Floral exhibitions, committee?, and exhibitors Town and country shows The Knave of Spades Judges, righteous and incapable. IT is not difficult to establish a flower-show. The Marquis of Carabas, the nearest nobleman, is invited to be patron, and the mayor to call a meeting. This meeting is attended by a letter from the peer, regret- ting a previous engagement (a day's hunting or fishing, which he, not being a florist, naturally and wisely prefers) ; by those who have originated the scheme ; two or three exhibitors not quite so disinterested ; the publisher of a local paper, who is prepared to print the advertisements, schedules, etc. ; a gentleman who has a field to let which would be a most eligible site for the show ; and a rash, good-natured young man, who, with no prevision of the perils to ensue, overrating the importance and underrating the work of the office, consents to act as secretary. A committee is formed, a subscription list (the patron has kindly sent a cheque for 5) is opened, a list of prizes is prepared, the judges nominated, the day fixed. If that day is fine, the opening of the exhibition by her ladyship may bring success ; but I have never known an instance I am speaking of country towns in which that success was permanent, without the addition of other attrac- tions, balloons, black faces under white hats, banjos, roundabouts, steam organs, stalls, booths, etc. I do GARDENERS 217 not denounce these galas ; I like my fellow-men to enjoy themselves in their own way, so long as they are merry and wise ; but I desire to warn those who think that the public will be so far interested in a show of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, as to pay its expenses, even with the aid of a considerable subscrip- tion, that they will be disappointed. The attendance will diminish, and a few thunderstorms, drenching the tents, will turn that gay young secretary into a sadder and a wiser man. In our populous cities, and in our villages, more prosperous results may be attained. Some years ago, when the financial condition of the Manchester Botanical Society was a subject of grave anxiety, my friend, Mr. Bruce Findlay, the curator of the gardens, astonished the directors by a proposal to offer one thousand pounds in prizes, and to admit the public to see the results, on a Bank holiday, and at one shilling each. The executive bravely accepted the suggestion, and on the following Whit-Monday sixty thousand persons paid for admission. The success continued, and might be realized else\vhere by a like spirit and organization. If it were known, where men most do congregate, that the best specimens of horticulture, in all its branches, which science could produce, might be seen on a day of leisure, in pleasant grounds, and with an accompaniment of good music, for a shilling, the click of the turnstiles would sound merrily in the ears of the executive committee ; and I do not see how generous employers could do a more gracious act than by distributing tickets of admission among the working- men and their wives. 2i8 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE In our larger villages, where cottage gardens are numerous, an exhibition, chiefly of fruits and vege- tables, may be encouraging and instructive. I do not advise that this competition should take place with that of nurserymen, gardeners, and amateurs, because visitors will not care for John Smith's potatoes when they can gaze on stove plants; and Sally Brown's posy of wild-flowers ' looks mean and poky,' as Martha Penny remarked of the Protestant religion, in the midst of Roman splendour, when placed in proximity to a bouquet of my lord's orchids. Let the attention of all present be concentrated on the skill and industry of the grower, and let those who excel monopolize the rewards and praises. Let the squire's garden be offered for a tent, or the village schoolroom, if the weather is untoward, and all unite in hearty and practical alliance. There might be a contemporary cricket match, or other athletic sports, and I have known kind ladies and gentlemen discourse excellent music and give pathetic and humorous recitals. There must be vigilance, as well as vigour and self- denial, in the committee. The trail of the serpent is still to be found among the flowers. The exhibitor is tempted and falls. No class is free from frailty. He wants just one more dish in his collection of fruit, and he begs or buys it. He has not ' twenty-four distinct varieties,' so he puts in a duplicate under another name. Sometimes, very rarely, you will meet with the thorough scamp, the knave of spades, who has taken Luther's words for his motto Pecca fortiter, Win anyhow. Judging at a show, I was informed by one who inspired me with confidence, that an ex- GARDENERS 219 hibitor, to whom we had awarded a first prize, did not grow six plants of the flowers of which he had shown a dozen varieties, and had purchased his specimens from a famous nursery. As soon as we had made more important awards, I left the remainder to my judicial brethren, hired a dogcart, drove some four miles into the country to the garden of the sus- pected competitor, and was back in time to have a brief conference with the authorities, before the public were admitted, and to write, instead of ' First Prize,' upon his card, 'Disqualified, and expelled from the society.' I remember another exhibitor, who seemed to think that you could not have too much of a good thing decies repetita placebit and who, ignoring the con- dition demanding ' distinct varieties,' showed Charles Lefebvre under five, and Maurice Bernardin under four different appellations, with several other dupli- cates, which we placed in the same tube, to intimate ' how good and joyful a thing it was for brethren to dwell together in unity.' On my way to another exhibition, held by working men, my cab was stopped by an elderly dame, who was of Celtic extraction, raising her arms in benedic- tion, and accosting me with, ' Bless your rivirence, there's going to be an illigant show intirely. Our boy's been sleeping a fortnight with the roses, and it's the first prize your rivirence '11 be for giving the darlints as soon as iver you set your oiyes upon 'em.' But why had he slept in the little greenhouse with the roses ? Alas ! they would not have been safe without a custodian from rogues, who had backed other exhi- 220 bitors to win, and who would have stolen and sold his blooms ; but the jockey guarded the stable and won the cup in a canter. One more warning to make a committee cautious. I was staying with a brother florist in the neighbour- hood of a large town, where there was to be a show next day, and very early in the morning, being anxious about the weather, he awoke and looked out of his window. To his sorrowful surprise, he saw his under-gardener, with a stranger, carefully selecting and cutting some of his best roses, and in the distance he could descry a confederate, with horse and cart, waiting to convey them away. The window opened, simultaneously with the eyes of the petty larcener and the mouth of his master. His words were few, but full of a fire and force which powerfully impressed his audience, for they complied at once with his sug- gestion that they should ' drop those roses,' and the basket fell to the ground. There was a dissolving view, which included the under-gardener, ' departed, never to return,' and there was a lovely bouquet on the table when we went down to breakfast. These mauvais sujets are not gardeners; they are the weeds which grow among the flowers, and the slugs which devour them, to be uprooted by the hand and crushed beneath the heel. The loyal florist will have nothing to do with treason, treachery and spoils ; and, with the exception of those fellows of the baser sort, whom I have named, there can be no class of men more scrupulously honest than the exhibitors at our flower-shows. They are of Plato's mind, that there is something so vile and ugly in lying and steal- GARDENERS 221 ing, that if they were sure of escape from detection they would not demean themselves. He who would desecrate ' whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure,' by using them as instruments for sin, would rob a church or cheat a child. The rule of the exhibitor is, BouXov Kpareiv pev, avv deep S'del Kpareiv ' Make up your mind to win, but alwaj^s honestly.' I am aware that the exhibitor may occasionally make a fool of himself ' We are the sons of women, Master Page ' and I have seen a competitor of the highest respectability tear a card in pieces on which he read ' Second Prize.' There was no doubt with the un- prejudiced as to the justice of the award, but his vision was distorted, and his temper followed in its track. Sometimes an exhibitor has come to me in my judicial capacity, with a pallid countenance and quiver- ing lip, to inquire, in the calmest tone at his disposal, whether I would be so kind as to inform him why Mr. Black was honoured with the first prize for a lot of old rubbish which had all but gone out of cultiva- tion, whereas he, Mr. White, had shown the latest novelties from the first growers, at home and on the Continent, and at enormous outlay ? And when the answer has been given, that we were to decide on the merits of the flowers, and not on the date of their introduction, on the culture and not on the cost, it was evident that we made little impression, and that, if common-sense could not be confuted, he thought slightingly of common- sense. Wandering about the show, unknown, I have heard myself referred to as one of the umpires in terms opprobrious and severe : ' I should say the man as 222 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE judged those bouquets had just come out of a blind asylum ;' ' That orchid in No. 4 was worth the whole lot in the first prize,' etc. Sometimes we are accused of deliberate partiality : ' I know'd how it would be when I see Tom Jones shaking hands with the judge at the station.' But the ebullitions of disappoint- ment are not seriously intended, and are soon for- gotten. I only remember one instance, and that was associated with fowls, and not with flowers, in which a spirit of resentment lingered in the breast of an unsuccessful exhibitor. At the time of the Crimean War, a friend of mine, who had served as an officer in the 16th Lancers, and was then our Master of Hounds, was president of the Bolsover Poultry Show. A farmer, who had entered his name as a candidate for a prize to be given to the best three ducks, finding that one of his birds was much inferior to the others, substituted in its place a fine young goose, and was of course disqualified. On this he vowed vengeance on all connected with the show, and especially against the president, who had nothing whatever to do with the awards. He deliberately planned his vendetta. Meeting the M.F.H. one morning as he drove to covert, he stopped him with uplifted hand and in- quired, ' Morning, major ; how long has thee been out o' th' army ?' This strange question was politely answered, ' Fourteen or fifteen years.' The reply was not in harmony with the plot of the questioner, but he had loaded his gun and must fire it, hit or miss. ' Oh,' he said, ' yer know'd t' war were coming ; yer nipped out o' th' army. Yer lig nice and snug in bed when them cannon-balls were a-rolling and a-bowling GARDENERS 223 about Sebastopple. Yer'd raythur smell a fox than powder. Yer know'd t' war were coming ; yer nipped out o' th' army. Good-morning, major.' The righteous judge must solace himself with the consciousness that he understands his business and has done his best ; but it must be remembered by those who appoint him, that he cannot be righteous unless he is thoroughly conversant with the objects submitted to his arbitration. He must know from practical experience their habits and capabilities. He must be quick to detect duplicates or additions. He must concentrate all his attention upon his work, and be intensely patient in his scrutiny, until he is fully convinced. I remember a rosarian, who had a large collection and wrote cleverly about roses, enter- ing a show with his two coadjutors (myself and a well- known nurseryman), and when I took him to our first function, the inspection of six collections, each con- taining seventy-two varieties, he threw up his arms (and his appointment), exclaiming, ' I'm dazed at the very sight of them ! As for judging, I should never dream of it.' Nor could we persuade him to make the experiment. I have met with others far more in- competent, but not so scrupulous ; clever in some special department, but not in that which had been assigned to them as judges. I recall one of my coadjutors who had a quaint method of concealing his ignorance. He knew the securities of silence, and never volunteered a remark, but feeling that he could not consistently remain entirely aloof, he would from time to time hold a pencil, which he carried, over some particular flower, as though he were meditating 224 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE upon its merits, or wished to direct our attention tc it. If it was a poor specimen, we were to infer that he desired us to notice its inferiority ; if it was a fine bloom, he commended it to our admiration ; if there was nothing remarkable about it, that was just his perplexity, whether to praise or condemn it. When the other judges made a remark, he boldly intimated that was exactly what the pencil meant. My memory records examples of incapacity yet more strange than these. The Rev. E. Pochin, one of our most accomplished and successful rosarians, having won the chief honours at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, took collections quite as good as those which he had shown in London to a provincial show, and, there being no question as to the supe- riority of his flowers, was surprised to find them unnoticed. Venturing to communicate his astonish- ment to the judges, he was politely but positively informed that ' his roses were not the right sort for exhibition ' ! Having denounced the incapacities of others, I am conscientiously bound to acknowledge an in- firmity to which, in common with my learned and thirsty brothers, I have yielded more than once, namely, in devoting more time than was absolutely necessary to fruits, which were 'to be tested by flavour.' After two or three hours in a hot tent on a July day, the difficulty of arriving at a unanimous verdict as to the relative merits of the strawberries and the melons has been unduly magnified, and a superfluous number of witnesses have been examined by the judicial committee. GARDENERS 225 Should gardeners exhibit ? Some of their em- ployers are apprehensive that objects of special cultivation may divert attention from others, which seem of less importance to the gardener, but are quite as interesting to the owner. My experience is this, that if a man achieves signal excellence in any particular department of horticulture, he deserves the encouragement which he obtains at a show, and that he who has this excellence will not restrict it to one ambition. It is, moreover, advantageous for a gardener to see the best specimens of his art in all their varieties, to gain and give information. Exhibitors will not tell you all they know, but they will tell you much, if they find you zealous and ready to communicate your own experience. Letting my memory range among the many gardens which I know the best, it brings homo the conviction that, as a rule, the gardener who has some special superiority rises above mediocrity in his other productions, and that he who has no remarkable success is satisfied with a decent debility, a con- ventional standard, which just satisfies, and evokes neither praise nor blame. The same flowers (of the same size), the same fruits and vegetables (of the same flavour), appear, at the same time, in the same places, and might be under some Act of Uniformity which, like the law of the Medes and Persians, altereth not. ***** Flowers never seem to me so happily placed as when offered upon His altars who gives them to us, and who bids us, ' Consider the lilies.' Most beauti- 15 226 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE ful of all these lilies, for this sacred purpose, the eucharis, the arum, L. auratum, longiflorum, Harriet, candidum. The Christmas rose, protected by glazed frames, is a precious addition at a time when the Japanese anemone and other outdoor white flowers have bloomed; and some of the snowy chrysan- themums are fair emblems of purity and innocence. The white camellia has ever a stiff, artificial look, but this may be modified by intermixture with ferns and other flowers. I would choose all that were fairest and sweetest, not formally arranging them by ecclesiastical rule or pattern, but with a natural grace sometimes using only one variety, sometimes many. As a flower by itself, the arum is of all most effective, and its easy cultivation, size, and endurance combine to make it, in my opinion, the most valuable of all for church decoration. Ai the consecration of the first Bishop of Truro, there were two vases upon the altar, each containing five flowers of arum, and every white, ivory chalice was visible throughout St. Paul's. The larger orchids, such as Lcelia purpurata ; stove plants, such as the lovely dipladenia ; roses of one colour, or mixed, or in combination with lilies La France is, perhaps, the most charming ; the diverse shades of the paeony, pale yellow and bright rose ; with countless other flowers, and many varieties of foliage, are available and effective. A silly and inaccurate objection is sometimes made to placing flowers upon the altar, because it is a practice of the Eoman Catholic Church. The question is whether the use is right, and not whether it is Eoman ; and Eoman it is not, so far as my expe- GARDENERS 227 rience goes, seeing that it would be a misnomer and an insult to designate as flowers the artificial rubbish which is so often placed upon Roman altars. I am sorry, but not surprised, to see from time to time in our obituaries, ' No flowers.' A cross and a crown upon the coffin, expressing the humble hope that work is over, and that the worker rests from his labours ; that the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity, may bring welcome solace to the Christian mourner's heart, and it may be right that sincere affection and respect should lay their wreath upon the grave ; but when hundreds of pounds are thus spent on a single funeral, reason and religion must protest against the waste. Then especially, when these floreated coffins are made a public show. There is a natural desire to take a last fond look of those nearest and dearest, but to make a display of the dead with scenic surroundings, such as have been recently described in the London papers, must be suggestive to many minds of profanation rather than of piety. It is recorded in the Standard of February 11, 1892, that ' four memorial services were held at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on the day preceding, each attended by 5,500 persons. At each service, all eyes were centred, upon the grouping of coffin and bending palms, of white lilies, ferns, and myrtles, with hanging drapery, bearing texts or words spoken by the deceased, and the white bust in the centre, a striking likeness of the late pastor.' The same paper, on February 12, had an admirable article on the subject, in which the writer says, ' The public pulse 228 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE is getting into the habit of being at fever heat ; and unless the popular humour soon changes, men really great and eminent will shrink from the humiliation of public honours, whether in life or posthumously. The exaggerated demonstrations, held at the obsequies of those who have had their little day, will compel the surviving kindred of really great citizens to ask to be left alone with their sorrow, and to insist on a quiet interment in some country churchyard.' It is a matter of thankfulness to know that in our Church these spectacles would be impossible, and that any such display at the funerals of our great ecclesiastics, such as Dean Church and Canon Liddon, would be universally condemned. ' Our mother the Church hath never a son To honour before the rest, But she singeth the same for mighty king, And the veriest babe at her breast ; And the bishop goes down to his narrow home As the ploughman's child is laid, And alike she blesses the dark-browed serf, And the chief in his robe arrayed.' Of flowers for festivals, I love the primrose, so fresh and sweet, for Easter, in bunches and in water ; the holly and aucuba for Christmas ; and the bright dahlias, among the oats, for harvest. I conclude my reminiscences of florists and flowers with some verses which appropriately combine eccle- siastical and floral themes, and which I have permis- sion from the author, the Eev. John Spittal, to publish. The lines are addressed to Lord Penzance, a most scientific student of the rose, and were written on reading an account of his most interesting and GARDENERS 229 successful experiment in hybridizing his favourite flower, and which, read in the same spirit in which they were written, have been pronounced by his lord- ship to be ' very amusing.' 'I own it was with much surprise I Saw Penzance named in your report, By me connected with " rule nisi," Or " judgment for contempt of court." For High Church ways, and making crosses, His lordship sentenced Mr. Dale ; Poor Faithhorn Green had grievous losses, And spent about three years in gaol ; And while my lord prepares for taking An early hold on Mr. Cox, To find the judge himself cross-making, I must confess it rather shocks. Yet there is hope the truth may reach him, As he essays to hybridize, And wedding rose with rose may teach him With marriage bonds to sympathize. Surely a man of such resources May find sufficient work at least, Without insisting on divorces Of congregations from their priest. But all our trouble may be settled, When some new rose, of splendid fame, Brilliant in hue, distinct, large-petalled, Bears through the world Penzance's name !' CHAPTER XXII. HUNTEKS. Antiquity of ' the sport of kings' Erroneous ideas about hunting. MR. JOKKOCKS, though not a student, was historically accurate in his observation that ' hunting was the sport of kings.' He who 'began to be a mighty one 230 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE in the earth ' was Nimrod, the hunter. In the East, we read, hunting was always regarded as a manly exercise, requiring courage and dexterity, invigorating the body, and instilling into the mind a taste for active pursuits. It was held in such respect that the founders of empires were represented in the characters of renowned hunters, and the Babylonians were so fond of the chase that the walls of their rooms pre- sented a repetition of subjects connected with it, and they even ornamented their dresses and the furniture of their houses with the animals which they had hunted. The Medes and Persians were equally noted for their love of field sports, and, like the Egyptians, had spacious preserves, in which the game was in- closed. The animal to be hunted and the methods of hunt- ing have varied, of course, with the climate and scene of the chase. The artist who represented the Prodigal Son in scarlet, breeches, and boots, was a man of limited information ; and Sir Tatton Sykes was indulging his quaint humour when, his atten- tion being invited to some beautiful views, by Eoberts, of the mountainous districts of Palestine, he remarked, ' Queer country to get across, that, sir, queer country !' But, mutatis mutandis, the same spirit has per- vaded and pervades the ages. It has glowed in the hearts of kings, as we know here in England, from our royal chases, forests, and preserves, Grand Eal- coners, and Masters of the Buckhounds; it is the sport par excellence of the nobles, gentry, professional men, farmers of all who have a horse to ride ; and HUNTERS 231 with those who have none, the latent love of it wakes instantly at the sound of the horn, and men, women, and children rush with eager faces from their homes whenever the hunt goes by. There are some who hold that hunting is a mere barbarian instinct, innate in all, but conspicuously developed in the Englishman, whose first impulse, according to Charles Lamb, is to say, ' Here is a fine day, let us kill something.' They affirm that it is a frivolous, dangerous, and expensive amusement ; and, so far as these objections have come under my notice, I am convinced that in the case of those who make them, the vanity, the peril, and the extravagance would all be realized if they went forth to hunt the fox. They are persons who would be uncomfortable, both in body and mind, if they were placed astride a spirited horse, in proximity with a pack of hounds. They would be annoyed by his impetuosity, and would be perplexed, like Mr. Winkle, as to ' what makes him go sideways?' They would tumble off. They might require a doctor. They would rightly denounce the exercise as a waste of time, of peaceful contentment and personal security, of pounds, shil- lings, and pence. But their physical incompetence, it will be justly urged, does not invalidate their argu- ment ; that must be met as a principle, without per- sonalities. Well, then, I reply, you must allow that men need relaxation, as wheels need oil, and I ask you, W'here will you find it so conducive to manliness, healthfulness, and social intercourse, as in the hunt- ing field ? I have not a word to say in defence of the man who makes hunting his business, and does 232 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE nothing else. An idle man, wherever he be, who does nothing to justify his existence, who makes an idol of his lower self, and ignores the noble work and duty for which he was created, is a drone in the hive, a barren tree in the orchard, a dumb note in the instrument, a dead fish in the net. He monopolizes that which he was meant to share ; ' Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone ;' but for the man who is true to his manhood and its responsibilities, and who can afford the time and the money, I can think of no recreation so invigorating as a few weeks' holi- day in the shires, or two days a week from his home. And he will have far more enjoyment than the man to whom, in this as in all other excess, satiety brings indigestion. Some, who have no practical experience, have most erroneous ideas about hunting. They are under the impression that every man who rides, and has a good horse, goes out and follows the hounds. Their con- jecture is so far correct that a large majority, when they leave their homes, entertain that hope and in- tention; but not one in ten fulfils it. At the first stiff fence, when hounds are running, there is a pause. An observant eye sees a distant gate, and, galloping to it, is followed by half the field. While others are hesitating, an excited or underbred steed smashes a gap in the hedge, and the dubious lose their fears. Brief while ! A strong piece of timber, too strong even for the cart-horsy quadruped, who is down on the other side (proc ambit humi bos), scatters them in all directions, and they are seen no more. Now, two or three equestrians with large hearts and HUNTERS 233 little heads seem to take leave of the latter, and, for- getting that foxes do not always run in a straight line, rush forward recklessly, and do not discover until too late that the hounds are not to be seen. The huntsman has watched their demented disappear- ance with a thankful mind, for these are the men who override his hounds the men of whom Will Derry said, ' That's Parson Wills, sir, Parson Wills. He will be atop o' th' 'ounds. Whips blow'd him up, and he tuk no notice ; and I blow'd him up, and he tuk no notice ; and master blow'd him up, and he tuk no notice ; so we tuk the 'ounds 'ome.' A goodly number still remains with the pack, but as the pace grows faster, and the line of chase leads over some heavy ' plough,' a deep drain, and a ' beastly double,' others begin to veer and skirt, the roads and lanes and gates allure the unstable mind, and, after thirty-five minutes, only six men, all of whom might have been named before the fox was found, have kept their place with the hounds. The explanation is, that it requires something more than a man and a horse, though the man be courageous and the horse can gallop and jump ; it requires a man ' with brains, sir !' to ride to hounds. It is possible for a person of weak intellect and strong limbs to win a steeplechase on a superior horse ; he can only go in one direction, and go he must, between the flags ; but to keep with hounds in a long and difficult run is altogether a different thing, and the exceptions are very few to the rule that he who rides always with cool, courageous judgment has other accomplish- ments, other superiorities above his fellow-men. One 234 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE of these leaders, who could not only ride in a run, but describe it afterwards, as no other man Whyte Melville writes in 'Market Harborough,' after de- scribing the Honourable Crasher as reading the ' Idylls of the King,' ' There is something of poetry in every man who rides across country.' He who ' dares do all that may become a man,' delights to read in the old romance of gallant, knightly deeds ; and if sometimes he lays it down, and sighs, ' For now I see the true old times are dead, When every morning brought a noble chance And every chance brought out a noble knight,' then let him remember that stile in the corner, at which he disposed of a bumptious rival, or let him anticipate next Thursday's meet, when in all proba- bility they will have the brook. Days of chivalry are still in store au clieval and his rider. I shall ever remember with a grateful respect the groom who taught me to ride. As soon as my father, a keen sportsman, could persuade my mother that I was much too old (. THE MEMORIES OP DEAN HOLE The most accomplished tragedian could not have assumed bis look of horror, ' The keeper would kill him, and the squire would put him in gaol ' which teemed a superfluous appendix. For myself, though I felt, at first, something of that compassion which, we read in the 'American vEsop/ distressed the trader-hearted elephant, when she accidentally e* her foot on the hen-partridge, and, seeing the young birds in the nest below, sighed, ' Alas, what have I done ! I hare hem a mother myself/ and sat down on the callow brood 1 must confess that, on the whole, my emotions were more jubilant than grievous. Ignoring the fluke, I proudly remembered that I bad brought down my first game. My only regret was that I could not go home and make a full confession, for fear of I/ringing Johnny into trouble. Gradually he recovered his confidence, as he lost bis fear of discovery, and ha put the bird in his pocket, to be buried at nightfall, as he informed me, in some secret place. No long time after, when my old companion was gone, I told my father the incident, and be said ' it would be one of the best suppers poor Johnny ever bad!' At an early age I was presented with a gun, about the time when the old ' flint and steel ' was superseded by the ' copper cap/ and was instructed how to use it, My father gave me some simple rubs : ' Never carry your gun "on full cock/' except when you see, or expect to see, game; and take care to have the tnu/,/,lo THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE mere Methodists and Ranters, whose enthusiasm was glaringly inconsistent with the dignity and gentility of the Church of England. The rest were either high (far over the heads of their hearers I re- member preaching, as a deacon, to the farm labourers concerning ' the Anglo-Catholic Church and the (Ecumenical Councils,' and at the same time a quo- tation which appeared in the Times from a sermon by one of our greatest theologians to the rustics at Ambleside, in which he reminded them that they were surrounded by ' an apodeiknensis of theopratic omnipotence '), or they were dry as the desert, or both. Then came a momentous epoch. An evening service was so long delayed that I was unable, on entering the pulpit, to read a word of my sermon. In my brief but awful perplexity, the thought came to me, ' Surely you have some words for your Master,' and I prayed that I might speak them, remembering the promise, ' It shall be given unto you what ye shall say.' I repeated the text, without chapter or verse, forgotten, began to utter the thoughts which came into my mind, preached for the first time in my life (to read is not to preach) some twenty minutes, and then thankfully concluded. Nor should I ever have repeated the experiment, had not my church- warden informed me in conversation afterwards, that the congregation were much more impressed by my extempore address than by the ordinary sermon. ' You see, sir,' he said, ' the enemies of the Church are always jeering our folks, and telling them that the parsons buy their sermons at so much a yard, and PREACHERS 311 that any Cheap Jack from Newark Market is a better speaker. They say that no one would employ a barrister who read his brief, or go to see an actor who repeated his part from a book ; and that preachers who would win souls must speak from the fulness of their own hearts, and not from other men's brains.' The incident, and these commentaries upon it, con- strained me to obey the wishes of those who had the first claim upon my sympathy and service. I had always entertained the ambition, but never until now the hope, of preaching without a manuscript. Had I been requested, when I entered the church on the occasion to which I have referred, to speak without reading to my people, I should have replied, as thou- sands of the clergy would reply to-day, that it was simply impossible. I had been much impressed by Dr. Bellinger's words to Mr. Gladstone : ' Depend upon it, if the Church of England is to make way, and to be a thoroughly national Church, the clergy must give up the practice of preach- ing from written sermons.' I remembered Newman's statement : ' For myself I think it no extravagance to say that a very inferior sermon delivered ivithout book answers tlie purpose for which all sermons are delivered, more perfectly than one of great merit, if it lie written and read.' And I recalled an occasion when Mr. Simeon, who was then the great preacher of his day, being kept at home by illness, sent a sermon, which he considered the best he had every written, but which made very little impression, though it was well read by his friend. Now, it seemed that the time was come to give some practical expression to my belief in this sug- gestive instruction, and I began at once to comply with my convictions, and to realize my resolutions to preach from memory my own thoughts. I had fallen into easy ways of transfer and adaptation, which required little time or reflection ; and I soon dis- covered that my new ambition demanded and deserved all my energies in anxious and persevering work. I never had faith in ' extempore ' preaching, except in cases of unforeseen necessity. It is pro- fanity to offer unto God that which costs us nothing, and it is folly to contemplate success except on His immutable condition, ' In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.' But when there is earnest, arduous preparation, it will be accepted and blessed, as were the firstlings of Abel, because we bring our best. That preparation means prayer, a definite purpose, meditation, plan, study, illustration, simplicity. It means laying foundations that is, thinking and reading (above all the Book) ; then the scaffolding, the scheme and outline ; then the building, the sermon itself, solid in structure, and yet attractive in form, enriched, like a cathedral, with reverent orna- mentation. Then the architect must contemplate his completed work until it is reproduced like a photo- graph on his brain he must learn his sermon by heart, not word by word, but with such a compre- hensive remembrance of the sentences and arguments as will ensure a continuity, though it may not be an identity, of words. ' I wish I could do it,' it has been said to me again and again by my younger brethren, ' but it is not in PREACHERS 313 my power. I know that I should forget and break down.' And my reply is : How do you know? How can you know, having never tried? You cannot be more fearful of failure than I was, and as to for- getting, did you never hear what the Scotch elder said to the minister ? The minister made a very free use of notes in the pulpit, and his congregation did not approve. They decided to expostulate, and sent a deputation. He heard their remonstrance, and he informed his visitors, somewhat rudely, that his memory required assistance, and that he intended to use it. 'Weel, then, minister,' said the chief of the legation, 'if ye sae soon forget your own sarmons, ye'll no blame us if we follow your lead.' ' Have there been no failures ?' I have only heard of one authentic case, that of Bishop Sanderson, but of course there may be collapses from want of faith. Twice in twenty years I have come to a brief silence once for want, not of faith, but of food, having travelled nearly four hundred miles and foolishly postponed my meal until the service was over. I had not preached two minutes before it seemed as though the upper part of my head was petrified. I had just enough consciousness to tell my hearers that my memory failed, but that I was sure that God would come to my help, and then the stupor left me in a moment, and I preached without further interrup- tion. Once again, and more recently, I was thoroughly exhausted by a long series of engagements in different parts of the country, including the Church Congress at Rhyl, and while speaking at a great meeting of 314 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN PIOLE working men at Leeds I was seized with blank oblivion. ' Kf en was the shaft, but keener far to feel, I nursed the pinion which impelled the steel.' I had ceased to take with me the few written words which suggest the chief topic of sermons or of speech, which would have released me from rny dilemma, and which I shall not forget in the future, though I hope that I may never want them. Usually, in case of embarrassment, the repetition of a sentence, in substance, not verbatim, will enable the speaker to remember and to follow his line of thought, to pick up the thread which had fallen. He must expect the disappointment of forgetting now and then some argument or example, which he regarded as of special importance ; and though some new ideas and enforce- ments may suggest themselves when he is speaking, he should always have more material prepared than he is likely to want in delivering. Happily for me, there was a programme of musical interludes, and Dr. Talbot, with prompt and merciful consideration, gave a signal to the organist, and while he discoursed most excellent music I remembered, though im- perfectly, the remainder of my speech. Wherefore I maintain that sermons should be spoken from memory, and not read from a book. I believe that hundreds of the clergy, who write excellent discourses, would make a more general and a deeper impression upon their hearers if they addressed them without a manuscript, face to face. They would rejoice to find that difficulties, which PREACHERS 315 appeared to be so huge at a distance, dwindled and disappeared as they approached them in the courage of their faith, and that they possessed a new freedom and a new power in running the race that was set before them ; and they who have not the same clever- ness in composition would, I feel sure, have more influence if, after the best attention of thought and study has been bestowed upon their subject, they would speak instead of reading the results. St. Paul tells us that his speech and preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and where that Spirit is, there is an earnestness which speaks from soul to soul. It is not from incapacity, but from a mistaken diffidence, or from want of zeal, from indolence, that so few sermons are preached. Let me ask, in proof, would any unprejudiced observer say that the clergy of our Church were inferior in abilities and education to the Komanist or to the Nonconformist ? I assert, on the contrary, that, having the same intellectual power, the Church- man has advantages, many and great, over the Dissenter, in his more complete education, in his orders, sacraments, creeds, and liturgies, and the English has this precedence over the Eoman Catholic, in that he preaches a purer doctrine, and knows more of the men to whom he preaches. They use no manuscript, and if he dares not disuse it : * He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small.' 316 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE As to the matter and the manner of preaching, it must be ' very meet, right, and our bounden duty ' to follow in all meekness and lowliness of heart the example of One who would have all men know that He is the -Christ, because ' the poor had the gospel preached to them,' and of whom it is recorded that the masses (o vroXu-? 0^X09) ' heard Him gladly.' We should copy ' the simplicity of Christ,' and, like the Apostle, ' use great plainness of speech.' We should be bold in rebuking sin, as He who drove the money- grubbers from the house of God, and denounced the Pharisees as hypocrites and children of the devil; yet tender and pitiful and compassionate as He who wept over Jerusalem, and said to the woman taken in adultery, ' Neither do I condemn thee : go, and sin no more.' We should illustrate our sermons, as He did, by parables, by connecting them with the events and surroundings of our common daily life, speaking to our hearers of those matters which interest us all most deeply our nation, our occupations and homes, our common anxieties, our temptations, our troubles, and our joys.* There are too many preachers. who * And so George Herbert writes of the parson in his ' A Priest to the Temple' : ' When he preacheth, he procures atten- tion by all possible art, both by earnestness of speech, it being natural for men to think that where is much earnestness there is somewhat worth hearing. Sometimes he tells them stories, and sayings of others, according as the text invites him ; for them also men heed, and remember better than exhortations ; which though earnest yet often die with the sermon, especially with country people ; which are thick and heavy, and hard to raise to a point of zeal and fervency, and need a mountain of fire to kindle them ; but stories and sayings they will well remember.' PREACHERS 317 seem to forget that God teaches us by the dispensa- tions of His providence, as well as by the revelations of His Word, and that it is for them to demonstrate the fulfilments of prophecy, the teachings of history, the adaptation of the Gospel to all the conditions and necessities of human life, to lighten the dark- ness of our sorrows and our sins, and ' to guide our feet into the way of peace.' In words which all could understand, our Lord, who afterwards sent s unlearned and ignorant men to go into all the world and preach the gospel,' has connected the Divine truth which He taught with the objects most familiar to us. His people would not hear His voice, even as now they will not hear or read His Word, but He has made all creation to preach of Him. He has associated those things which are ever before us with the blessings and the lessons of the Incarnation, and has signed them with the sign of the Cross. ' From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve,' we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses ' the bright and morning star,' the light that ' lighteth every man that cometh into the world,' 'the sun of righteousness,' sleep and resurrection, the water that cleanseth, the bread which strengthens, the very door through which we come and go, the stones and the streets, the banks, the market-place, the courts of justice, the prisons, the hospitals, the little children, the men standing idle ; or, out in the country, the sheep and the oxen, the trees barren or bearing forth good fruit, the grass and the corn, the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field, the burning of the weeds, the 318 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE ploughing, sowing, and reaping; or, beyond city and country also, the sea, and the ships, and the fishermen. And not to the Apostles only, but to us the com- mand is given, ' What ye have heard, that preach ye.' ' The message which we have heard of Him declare we unto you.' We must ' preach the Word.' A young clergyman came to an older priest, who was greatly respected for his goodness and learning, and for his impressive preaching, and asked him what sermons he would recommend for his study and imitation. And the reply was promptly given, ' The sermons of Jesus Christ. Bead them, with prayer before and after, again and again, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, until it is with you as with the two who journeyed to Emrnaus on the first Easter Day, " and they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us, and opened to us the Scriptures ?" ' Asked to name books which, though not inspired, were most helpful, he said, ' To me, the works of St. Augustine and St. Bernard; the commentaries of Cornelius a Lapide and Bishop Christopher Words- worth ; the writings of Bishops Andrewes and Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Barrow and Isaac Williams; the ser- mons of Dr. Pusey, and the poems of Herbert and Keble. Read, and reflect on what you read; but books will not make you a preacher. You must study your own heart as a surgeon studies anatomy, that from self-knowledge you may know your hearers. It is specially true of preachers, that "the proper study of mankind is man." Keep your ears and your PREACHERS 319 eyes open, and then say what you have to say, plainly, bravely, to others.' Not many months ago, I was in the Duomo at Florence. No church in the w 7 orld has witnessed more marvellous manifestations of the preacher's power. Eude mountaineers from the Apennines and crowds of peasants from all sides of the city came in at daybreak, and waited for hours in all weathers until the cathedral was opened, to hear Savonarola preach ; and such was the effect of his sermons that ladies burnt their ball-dresses and finery, as being the hateful proofs of woiidliness and pride, and sold their ornaments and jewels, that they might give more alms to the poor. Five hundred years after Savonarola's martyrdom, a similar sensation and scene was witnessed in the same church, and thus described : ' Day after day through the greater part of Lent (1887), and down to Easter Tuesday, the Duomo at Florence has pre- sented a striking spectacle. The great veil of dark- green silk spread over the nave, a few feet higher than the sounding-board of the pulpit, has thrown the church into mysterious gloom. From seven o'clock in the morning till eleven, men and women have sat on chairs and benches to keep a place. Long before eleven, the whole dark area has been crowded thick with human beings, and the crowd has swelled and spread till it has filled the aisle and all the west- ward parts of the vast building. At eleven o'clock, men carrying a sedan-chair have made their way to the pulpit steps ; their living freight has passed with an effort into the pulpit, to pour forth for a whole 320 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE hour a torrent of impassioned words, addressed to the working classes by a preacher who has stirred them as no one has since Fra Girolamo Padre Agostino de Montefeltro. It is computed that an audience of seven thousand, chiefly of the working classes, has steadily attended his course of thirty-two sermons.'* How did those preachers attain this irresistible influence ? They prayed for it, that utterance might be given them, that they might speak boldly as they ought to speak, and then they were not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. They who had preceded Savona- rola had preached the dry dogmas of abstruse theo- logy, the subtleties of Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Schoolmen, even as they who preceded Montefeltro had declaimed on Papal Infallibility, Mario! atry, and other 'fond things, vainly invented;' but these men, as the eagle mounts from the cold barren rock, and soaring upward ' Bathes in ihe bickerings of the noontide blaze,' raised the thoughts of their hearers above sophistry and superstition, legend and myth, to Him who came to bear witness of the Truth, exhorting them to re- pentance and ' newness of life,' because the Saviour will soon be the Judge, because ' the wages of sin is death,' and because ' in Jesus Christ neither circum- cision availeth anything, nor uncircurncision ; but faith which worketh by love.' * A selection from these sermons has been admirably trans- lated by Miss C. M. Phillimore, and is published by the Church Printing Co. PREACHERS 321 As to utterance, the voice should always be distinct, and audible by all ; not monotonous, but varying with the subject-matter, not failing at the end of a sen- tence. If there are no inflections, no modulations of speech, attention will succumb to drowsiness, and drowsiness to slumber. If there is no indication of intense feeling in the heart of the preacher, he will excite no emotion from his hearers ' Si vis me flere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi.' The manner should be spontaneous, natural, and the parson should follow Hamlet's advice to the players, ' Let your own discretion be your tutor ; suit the action to the word, the word to the action.' As to duration, happy is the priest, and beloved by his people, who can say with Apelles, ' I know when to leave off.'* There is no more cruel tyrant than ' one whom the music of his own sweet voice doth ravish like enchanting harmony,' while it wearies all beside. I have known a popular preacher join three sermons into one (it was easy to distinguish the con- necting links) ; the first was heard with eager admira- tion, the second with calm approval, the third with a weary impatience. To such a discourse a lady, it is * Lord Chancellor Halsbury, speaking on this subject, 're- membered when the head of his college was asked by a dis- tinguished preacher at St. Mary's what he thought of his sermon, the former gravely replied that he had heard in it what he hoped never to hear again. " What was that ?" asked the alarmed preacher. "I heard the clock strike twice," was the reply. A sheriff's chaplain had once asked a judge what was the proper length of a sermon. " Well, twenty minutes," was the answer, " with a leaning to the side of mercy." ' 21 322 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE said, who adored the preacher, took Bishop Magee, and when she exclaimed, as they were going home, ' Oh, what a saint in the pulpit !' his lordship added, ' And, oh, what a martyr in the pew !' I may not speak of our great living preachers. Of those who are gone, ' where beyond these voices there is peace,' they who impressed and instructed me the most were Bishops Wilberforce, Magee, and Lightfoot, Doctors Pusey and Liddon. One of the best preachers I have heard, unknown to fame, a quiet gentle spirit, but endued with a wonderful power to make men think and try, was the Eev. E. H. Parr, the Vicar of St. Martin's, Scarborough. CHAPTEK XXX. WOKKING MEN. Happy sympathies The demagogue distrusted as ignorant and immoral Promissory notes Might against right True friends Parks, gardens, and playgrounds Clubs and libraries Technical schools The home The smoke nuisance Temperance The Church and the working men. As a child extracts the candied peel from his cake, or the epicure reserves the plumpest oyster on his plate for his last bonne bouche, or as, when leaving a mixed company, we keep, if we can, our final farewell for him or for her whom we love the best, so, parva componere magnis, I come in my concluding chapter to the happiest of all my memories recollections of hours (I would they had been multiplied a thousand- fold !) which I have spent with working men, in WORKING MEN 323 public worship and in private prayer, in fields and factories, on land and sea, on road and rail ; in their sorrow and pain, in sick-rooms and hospitals, in homes darkened by the shadow of death ; in their hours of relaxation, in their gardens and their games. My heart is with the working man who deserves that noble name, who ' goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening,' not believing in those malcontents who imagine mischief, and go astray, and speak lies, and stir up strife all the day long, denouncing all rulers as tyrants, all rich men as knaves, and all parsons as hypocrites. No long time ago, my son heard one of these dema- gogues orating in the Park. ' My brothers,' he said, ' the trumpet of war is sounding through the land. Even the village 'Ampton is hup in harms, and the worm which has been writhing for centuries under the 'eel of the landlord is shouting for the battle. Listen, nay friends, and I'll tell you what poor 'Odge is a-doing to deliver himself from the oppressor. One Sunday he ventured to take a walk in my lord's park, a-thinking that as it contained twenty thousand acres it might, perhaps, be big enough for both, and hup comes the noble-hearted peer, a-blustering and a- blowing, and he bellows out at poor 'Odge, "Now, feller, what are you a-doing a-trespassing on my land?" And 'Odge answers, "Who guv you this land?" And my lord, he says, " My faythur guv me the land." And 'Odge, he says, "And who guv your faythur the land?" And my lord, he says, "My grandfaythur guv my faythur the land !" " And who guv it your grandfaythur ?" says 'Odge. x " You him- 324 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE pudent snob," says the 'orty peer, " it has been ours ever since the Conquest, We fought for it, and the king guv it us." "Ho," says 'Odge, "you fought for it, did you? and we mean to fight for it, and we mean to have it ;" and then he walks up to his lord- ship, and snaps his fingers close to his noble nose, and finishes the discourse with, " We don't care that for kings !" And this is what we must do, my brothers. We must fight for the land,' etc., etc. But the working man, having quite as large an amount of brains as any other section of the com- munity, is aware that if 'Odge, in defiance of law and equity, in the absence of the police, the army, and the auxiliary forces, were to take possession of the land, Dodge and Podge, with a few hundred thousand ' brothers,' would lose no time in asserting a similar indifference to the rights of property and of title deeds, and would claim their equal share ; that this portion would be too minute to maintain the few who knew what to do with it; and that if every man had three acres (which he could not cultivate) and a cow (which he could not milk), the industrious, temperate, and acute would in a very short time annex the possessions .of the idle, the drunken, and the dunce. Wherefore, if only as a matter of common-sense, the working man declines to be humbugged by these 'murmurers and complainers,' who not only covet and desire other men's goods, but openly avow their inten- tion to let him take who hath the power, and let him keep who can. It is a policy which dates from a remote antiquity, and was once the dominant principle WORKING MEN 325 of our own British Constitution ; but it has proved to be incompatible with national progress and domestic happiness, and the character of those who desire its revival does not inspire confidence. They are roughs, and they are distrusted and despised by working men, not only because they are incapable, but because they are immoral. I have lived a long life among all sorts and conditions of my brethren, and I am convinced that no section of the community has a more apprecia- tive respect for honesty, justice, and truth than the genuine working man. Splendid evidence has been given to the public. I remember the case, referred to by the present Arch- bishop of Canterbury, of the printer employed in the Oxford University Press, who refused an offer of five hundred pounds for a surreptitious copy before publi- cation of the Eevised Version of the Holy Scriptures, and that of the working carpenter, who was not to be outdone in generosity even by such a man as Frederick Denison Maurice. Maurice accepted an offer for the lease of his house, forgetting that he had let a stable and coach-house at the end of the garden to the carpenter. His solicitor proposed to make the best bargain he could ; ' but,' said Maurice, ' you must tell him exactly how the case stands, and let him know his advantage. ' Well, now,' said the working man, on receiving the message, ' that's what I call a real gentleman, and I'll give up the stables any day, and take nothing for going out.'* When lie is assured of a sincere, practical interest in his welfare, the working man is grateful and * Economic Review, vol. i., No. 2. 326 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE sympathetic ;* but until he is convinced, he is coy and suspicious. He is losing faith in 'the true Friend of the working man/ irr placards which only profit the printer. He is ceasing to care for pro- missory notes, which are renewable, but never cashed. Like the pupil at Dr. Birch's school, on receipt of a hamper from home, he is surrounded by admiring friends, desirous to lend him their knives ; but, when they have got at the cake, he feels ' like one that treads alone some banquet-hall deserted.' He is distrustful alike of words which are softer than butter, and of words which are very swords. He does not believe that he is superior (or inferior) to his fellow-men, that he is an hereditary bondsman or an hereditary monarch. Nevertheless, though the working man has many would-be leaders, who disappoint him inflated wind- bags, who collapse when they are pricked with the pin of common-sense : rem acu tetigisti he has ' troops of friends ' whom he can trust, who regard him as a brother and not as a machine, of whom it may be said that : ' In making their thousands, they do not forget The thousands who help them to make.' I mean the men who give parks, and gardens, and playgrounds (if you don't now and then take the kettle from the fire, and let it sing on the hob, you will burn a hole in it), who build hospitals, and restaurants, and swimming baths. I mean such men as Francis Crossley, who, when he gave large and * Seep 161. WORKING MEN 327 beautiful recreation grounds for the people of Halifax, told them on the opening day that he attributed his prosperity in business very largely to the fact that, when he first commenced it, his mother had said, ' If the Lord prosper us in this place, the poor shall taste of it.' I mean those who, having ascertained that working men have minds as well as muscles, provide libraries, and galleries, and museums, music and other interesting entertainments. They are his friends who help him to reduce his expenses by co-operative stores, and to obtain fair remuneration for his work. It must surely be right for the tradesman and the working man to make the best market of his labour, so long as there is no violence (there is a tyranny of numbers as well as of individuals), and justice is done to all. He is a friend of the working man who helps him in his brave self-denial to provide for the time of sickness, who subscribes to those societies which obey the wise man's counsel, ' If a man live many years, and rejoice in them all ; yet let him remember the days of darkness ; for they shall be many.' And here, appropriately, I would refer to the advantage of inducing working men to join an ambulance corps, those especially who are engaged where accidents are frequent, so that they may know what to do in a perilous emergency. A traveller not long ago rescued two children from a canal, in which they had fallen. They appeared to be dead, and, had he not known the process of restoration, life would soon have been extinct. They help the working man, and he knows it, who 328 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE establish and maintain technical schools, in which the young may learn from skilled masters the best methods of using the best tools in the craft which they propose to practise. And with these technical schools for boys I would connect schools of cookery and thrift for girls, that they, who will be hereafter the wives of the working men, may be useful as well as ornamental, and know how to make the most and the best of their resources. If there were more wives who were good cooks, there would be more good husbands at home for supper. The working man has no truer friends than those who are doing what they can, whether as owners or from any other influence, to improve his home. No place deserves that beautiful name, in which men and women, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, cannot maintain both their moral and physical in- tegrity, in which they lose the shame which is a glory and grace, in which they cannot breathe the pure air, and enjoy the pure light, which God designed for us all. I shall be disappointed in my estimate and expec- tations as to the sagacity of the working man, if, being now master of the situation, he does not direct his attention, and the attention of his representatives in Parliament, to the abolition of the smoke nuisance. It has been proved, by Mr. Fletcher of Bolton and others, that the process is easy and inexpensive, and it is for those who suffer from it most to insist on its removal, with other pollutions and noxious exhala- tions, injurious to human life. Such a purification would be followed by infinite blessings to the bodies WORKING MEN 329 and souls of men ; the restoration of sunshine to darkened homes, of smiling health to wan, sallow cheeks, of green leaves and singing birds to blackened and stunted trees, and of fish to poisoned streams. And, brightest of all, the splendid and sure results would be such a grand help to temperance, by the removal of temptations to drunkenness, as no other human scheme, within my conjecture, could ever hope to win. Not only medical men, but all of us who know the crowded homes of the poor in our large cities and towns, can testify that a foul atmosphere induces a craving for stimulants. ' You come and live in our court,' a drunkard said to a philanthropist, ' and you'll soon take to the gin.' It has been asserted, and not disputed, much less disproved, that, wherever men are engaged in a healthy outdoor employment, and where their homes are also situated in healthy localities, these men, as a rule, are sober, and that drunkenness may be attributed more to atmospheric impurity than to facilities for drinking in the number of public-houses ; and that men who are employed in mines or works, where they breathe for hours a highly noxious atmosphere, with their homes in proximity, are more or less intemperate.* The best lecture I ever heard on intemperance was from a working man. He was sitting on a bench by the Midland Railway, looking somewhat weary, when a drunken fellow staggered alongside, and began to mumble nonsense. ' I don't want you/ said the A very interesting letter on this subject will be found in the Times of September 6, 1892, written by the author of ' The Topography of Intemperance,' Mr. Thomas Glyde, of Cardiff. 330 THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE working man to the sot. ' Go away ; you're drunk.' ' Now just you listen to me,' it was answered. 'Do you suppose as a mighty Power would make the barley to grow in the fields, and the hops to grow in the hopyards, and then put it into the mind of another party to make 'em ferment, and me not to drink 'em ? Why, you know nowt.' ' Well,' said the other, ' I believe in a glass of good ale, and I should like one now, for I'm fine and dry, but I'm quite sure as a mighty Power never made the barley and the hops to grow and ferment for you to take them and turn your- self into a beast.' * * * * What are the special helps which we clergy can offer to the working man ? First of all, we must win his confidence and affection. It is not difficult, when he is assured that we do not want his vote, or any- thing he has, but himself. He seems to know by intuition when, for the sake of the Lord our God, we seek to do him good, when we have too much respect for him and for ourselves to flatter him with ' mere verbiage, the tinsel clink of compliment,' and when we go to him with some of Christ's love in our hearts. Moreover, he must be assured that we too are working men, for bees love the hum of the hive, and they who labour rightly condemn those ' Who by their everlasting yawn confess The pains and penalties of idleness.' ' Do you know why I came to your church ?' an artisan said to a clergyman. ' Because I saw you going about your business early and late, and I don't WORKING MEN 331 believe in blinds down at nine o'clock in the morning, churches locked up all day, and six Bank holidays a week.' And when once he believes, he will return your affection. ' Thou hast gained thy brother.' He will listen, when you speak to him of the truth as it is in Jesus, the love of the Saviour, and the justice of the Judge that ' the gift of God is eternal life, but the wages of sin is death.' You will help him and he will help you, as ye ' bear one another's burdens,' to fulfil the duties and attain the promises set before us in the Gospel. You will welcome him to his Father's house. You will try to make his life happier, his home brighter. You will be the friend that ' loveth at all times, and the brother born for adversity,' until ' the night cometh in which no man can work ' until ' Where the dews glisten and the song-birds warble His dust to dust is laid, In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble To shame his modest shade. * The forges glow, the anvils all are ringing Beneath its smoky veil, The city, where he dwelt, is ever swinging Its clamorous iron flail. ' But by his grave is peace and perfect beauty, With the sweet heaven above, Fit emblems of a life of Work and Duty Transfigured into Love.' THE END. BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, OUILDFORD. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUF o" the lat A* ' t REGIONAL LIBRARY FACIL|TY DA 565 H69A2 189^ llll 111 1111 111" III" H"" "* r-r\ c Q A Q