KEMINISCENCES AND OPINIONS SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND co., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON BEMINISCENCES AND OPINIONS OF SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE 18131885 FIFTH EDITION LONDON LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 1886 All rights reserved CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. TAGK My reasons for writing this book My birth in 1810 Zimri, Duke of Buckingham Lord Fairfax Story of Sir William Harcourt and myself as horse-dealers Earliest recollections Departure from home to Monsieur Clement's school at Chelsea 1 CHAPTER II. Monsieur Clement's school Distinguished pupils of Monsieur Clement French teaching Prenez la Marque My first pun and its consequences Mr. Codrington's rice pudding Mr. Locke King's meringues The air pump Professor Daubeny at Oxford The Thistlewood Conspiracy 15 CHAPTER III. My introduction to Eton State of Eton education in my time Elected to the Debating Society before Mr. Gladstone Mr. Gladstone's maiden speech Milnes Gaskell Bruce, afterwards Lord Elgin Arthur Hallam His early and unexpected death Some account of his character The Eton Miscellany Sir John Hanmer Dr. Keate Keate v. Arnold Eton v. Rugby Commercial crisis of 1825 ....... 29 CHAPTER IV. Holidays mainly spent in Yorkshire Introduction as a boy to Sydney Smith Unfailing flow of his wit Its general character His quotations A pun of his A pun of mine The reason why he was not made a Bishop My first Derby Virtue its own reward Lucky escape in 1827 The Doncaster Cup race Other noteworthy boys at Eton with me George Lewis My vi CONTENTS PAOK mission into Yorkshire and Northumberland The Selwyns Frederick Tennyson Wellesley, afterwards Dean of Windsor Alexander Leith Monsieur Hamon How he earned a ring Lord Dalmeny's black eye The officers of the Coldstream Guards who fell at Inkerman 56 CHAPTER V. Leaving Eton Go to a private tutor's My fellow-pupils Meet one of them afterwards at Rome He constitutes himself my guide Works of art at Rome The Minerva Medica The Dying Gladiator The Faun of Praxiteles Sir Charles Napier Augustus' villa The confessionals at St. Peter's. . .83 CHAPTER VI. Pass on to Christ Church New Friends Political changes of opinion since then Whether I was prevented from changing by circumstances How far Lord Beaconsfield has influenced Mr. Gladstone My tutor, Mr. Williams Tiglath Pileser and Sardanapalus Lord Bolingbroke The ' Electra ' of Sophocles Mr. Jebb Frederick Rogers, since Lord Blachford Mr. Old- ham missing the Greek Iambic prize at Oriel Mr. Gladstone's abstinence from the Debating Society at Oriel. . . .89 CHAPTER VII. Cardinal Manning as a member of the Oxford Debating Society His great influence over his contemporaries His views on the subject of Barilla His fate as an explainer contrasted with that of Adam His speech on the question whether Shelley or Byron were the greater poet What really took place at and after that debate Mr. Gladstone takes Manning's place as leader of the Union Mr. Lowe's first appearance Mr. Glad- stone's Reform speech in 18G6 Shakespeare a member of the Stupid party Mr. Gladstone's Oxford distinctions How we competed unsuccessfully with a schoolboy for the Ireland Scholarship 105 CHAPTER VIII. Catholic Emancipation Albany Fonblanque's saying about it many years afterwards The Tory Cassandras right in their prophecies as to Catholic Emancipation, Parliamentary Reform CONTENTS vii PAGE and Free Trade Readings away from Oxford with Mr. Patch His extraordinary acquirements My visit to Mr. Gladstone in Kincardineshire Great natural powers of Mr. John Glad- stone, his father Pursuit of archery Dunnottar Castle Hope Scott His life by Mr. Ornsby Cardinal Newman Hope Scott's bloodhound Other incidents belonging to Natural History observed by me 127 CHAPTER IX. The first University boat-race Boat Lloyd's method with the Dons My adventure with a Duchess Winchester cricketers Lord Byron as a cricketer Introduction to Wordsworth Third reading of the first Reform Bill Mr. Gladstone an ad- vocate for rotten boroughs Principal speakers in the House of Commons Lord Stanley Whittle Harvey Sir Robert Peel O'Connell Sheil Macaulay Matthew Arnold Grattan's failure as an after-dinner speaker .... 159 CHAPTER X. Oastler, the demagogue His great oratorical powers Triumphs over Queen's Counsel at York Critical examination of the famous oath in the Oration on the Crown London amuse- ments Lady Davy at Stafford House My first tour Old Eng- lish racehorses Proposed alteration in the conditions of a Queen's plate 190 CHAPTER XI. All Souls A word in defence of All Souls fellowships Henry Ker Seymer Abolition of local scholarships Henry Denison and Mr. Dry The way in which the prizes are now decided My protest against it 203 CHAPTER XII. Marshal to Baron Parke in 1834-5 Eccentricities of, his namesake and brother- judge, James Allan Park The habit of talking to oneself Story of the Chinese pedlar Baron Parke's gene- rosity to his brothers and sisters Lady Parke, afterwards Lady Wensleydale Epigrams of Baron Parke Sam Rogers Courvoisier's Trial Duty of an advocate Family life at Ampt- hill Figure as a theological instructor 210 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER XIII. PAGE Failure to learn German Goethe's treatment of Madame Von Stein Called to the Bar Mr. Peard Sam Warren Roebuck Cresswell Alexander Grand Courts Circuit and Quarter Sessions Carlyle at Quarter Sessions David Dundas James Wortley Pilgrimage to John Scott's Dr. Johnson and race- horses Charles Greville at York Races Dundas at whist Stirling of Keir Murphy Baron Alderson .... 229 CHAPTER XIV. Trials of interest on the Northern Circuit Murder of Lord Wen- lock's keeper Quarrel between two brothers at Newcastle Tom Hodgson's bewilderment Shakespeare at Liverpool 'Much Ado about Nothing' 260 CHAPTER XV. Appointed Revising Barrister Justice defied at Bradford Litera- ture of the period Carlyle Tennyson Browning Best man to Mr. Gladstone at his marriage My own marriage Ap- pointed Receiver-General of Customs Mr. Grenville High- waymen at the beginning of the century Mr. Grenville'a death 275 CHAPTER XVI. House in Portugal Street Defalcation at the Custom House Death of Prince Albert Afghan War Repeal of Corn laws Pamphlet on Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister . . 293 CHAPTER XVII. Henry Cheney and his brother Edward Italian sermon referred to Impossible to report Divorces in Poland Tenth of April Seditious movements in Germany and elsewhere Death of Sir Robert Peel International Exhibition of 1851 Death of the Duke of Wellington Crimean War Indian mutiny Zulu War 307 CHAPTER XVIII. Napoleon's attack upon Austria Volunteer movement False economy Reasons why the Boers revolted State of the Navy discipline Curious story from New Guinea Civil war CONTENTS ix in America Accident to General Lee's despatches Lord Derby's opportunity Fenian murder of a policeman in Man- chester 325 CHAPTER XIX. Elected Poetry Professor at Oxford My lectures afterwards pub- lished Mrs. Siddons the younger The Moabite inscription 4 The Dream of Gerontius ' My ode to Lord Salisbury Mili- tant old clergyman Miss Austen Her sad adventure in Switzerland 346 CHAPTER XX. Origin of the Doyle family William Doyle, the wit My great- uncle Sir John Doyle His fine qualities Peroration of a speech of his My grandfather's remarkable power over his soldiers The quick march of the 14th Regiment Poem on the subject My father My uncle, Charles Joseph Stories of the Peninsular War 358 EPILOGUE. My feelings about Home Rule and other political questions Dis- trust of Mr. Gladstone Correspondence with him in 1880 Its effect upon my mind The death of Henry Taylor My view of his character and talents Weather reminiscences Story from Cavendish's ' Life of Wolsey ' Conclusion . . 403 KEMMSCENCES AND OPINIONS. CHAPTER I. My reasons for writing this Book My birth in 1810 Zimri, Duke of Buckingham Lord Fairfax Story of Sir William Harcourt and myself as horse-dealers Earliest recollections Departure from home to Monsieur Clement's school at Chelsea. WHEN anyone, as I am now doing, approaches the age of seventy-four, 1 he ought to be able to tell his juniors something worth listening to. Indeed, I rather regret that I did not begin this piece of work ten years ago ; my first recollections would have been scarcely less valuable then than now. I should have escaped interruptions from illness, and, moreover, have been able to write what had to be written whether from a personal or a public point of view with greater freedom and cheerfulness. Books of this kind have little claim to be valued 1 I am now seventy-six, but I cannot keep always altering the text. This book was written some years ago, and then put away till acci- dentally called for. A few sentences have been inserted, and a few verbal alterations made, in order to adjust it more or less to the present time ; it remains, however, in the main what it was. In the actual condition of public affairs I found it impossible to be silent. I have therefore given utterance to my feelings and opinions about them in a few pages which I have placed at the end of the volume. 2 CHOKER AND LOED MALMESBURY JOHNSON as literature in any high sense of the word ; their principal object, indeed, is to help on, more or less, future historical research. Memoirs, therefore, like those of Mr. Croker and Lord Malmesbury, based as they are upon national events, and enriched with important letters from men who have distinguished themselves in the service of their country, occupy one position ; gossiping volumes, such as mine, quite another. Indeed, what I am about to give to the world resembles rather a spirit distilled from the vin ordinaire of a life-talk, and bottled for future use, than a literary production. Of course, when the wine is not vin ordinaire, but Johnson premiere qualite, or the like, the juice expressed from it is * brandy for heroes/ and defies time. But much inferior stuff may be worth something for special purposes during a certain number of years. It has always been my belief that a more living knowledge of the past is to be obtained by study- ing the State Trials than by poring over formal narrations, however highly esteemed because these trials raise up before us clearer pictures of the men tried, and of their contemporaries, than any writer belonging to a different age, with new habits of thought and speech and conduct, can afterwards create out of books and parchments. So is it, in some degree, with the pictures that stay by us from our early youth. In proportion as they are pictures, and not mere records, they wear a more genuine aspect ; with more glow and colour MY QUALIFICATIONS FOR WRITING MEMOIRS 3 than can be found in ' Mr. Wordy's History of the late War,' with all its forty volumes. Indeed, a book like mine, composed out of my memory alone though, no doubt, it is in many respects inferior to more solid biographies possesses, nevertheless, certain compensations of its own ; what is produced comes back, because it has remained in my mind by its own strength, not merely because it was once noted down in a diary. And its survival is, one may say, something like ' the survival of the fittest.'. I may be told that there are many people, higher in standing than myself, ready and eager to scatter their recollections far and wide ; and I may be asked, what necessity there is for me to trouble mankind in that way at all. It is true that my career has not been an adventurous one, and that many of my con- temporaries may, must indeed, have more important communications to make. " Still, in the first place, several eminent persons who have left us, and several others who are yet alive, have done me the honour to accept and value my friendship ; secondly, I have been sufficiently knocked about in the world to become acquainted with men of different characters and conditions, and to see life under various aspects ; thirdly, though circumstances have shut me out from taking any active part in public affairs, and forced me, as a matter of official decorum, often to keep silence when, as an Englishman, I felt it painful not to speak out, I have, nevertheless, passed through important periods of history, and taken that interest B 2 4 MY BIRTH IN 1810 in them which is natural to one who has enjoyed the usual advantages of education. And, lastly, though I put forward no claim to those wonderful gifts in that department of the mind which distinguished, among others, or rather before others, Macaulay and the late Sir Robert Peel, my memory has always been strong and vivid : hence most of the events which from time to time awakened and attracted my attention remain quite alive, and as present before what Wordsworth calls ' the inner eye ' as if they had happened yesterday. And now that I have thus far explained the qualifications I suppose myself to possess for the task I have undertaken, I shall waste no more words but start at once. 1 I was born in the house of my grandfather (Sir William Milner), Nunappleton, near Tadcaster, in Yorkshire, rather more than seventy-six years ago. Nunappleton is a place of some interest, as having belonged to the Parliamentary General, Lord Fairfax, and afterwards to Zimri, Duke of Buckingham, his son-in-law. The Milner of that day had been a friend and adherent of the Fairfaxes, and bought the estate (cheaply enough, if I do not misjudge my 1 After having exhausted my own reminiscences, I have added a short chapter giving an account of my family, particularly of certain of my predecessors in it, whose lives, as it appears to me, are of much greater interest and higher value than my own rather colourless exist- ence. I can only hope that my readers, if I have any, will riot think these older recollections out of place. ZIMRI ANDREW MARVEL LORD FAIRFAX O ancestor, an honest man, but with an eye to the main chance) of Zimri's executors and creditors, shortly after that worthy had breathed his last ' in the worst inn's worst room,' according to Pope's very foolish couplet. There is something ridiculous in inferring a man's degradation and ruin, because, having broken his neck out hunting he is carried, as a matter of course, into the nearest public -house ! There is a poem written by Andrew Marvel to cele- brate Nunappleton, whilst yet belonging to the Fair- faxes. In its present condition it does not deserve the praise he lavishes upon it ; the park is a dead flat, with a heavy clay soil, and is very liable to floods and fogs ; in point of fact, in spite of some tine timber, it is decidedly an ugly place. Lord Fair- fax, besides his historical renown, is interesting to the Yorkshireman from another point of view : he figures in the Stud Book as the earliest Englishman (known to me, at any rate) who possessed an Arab, mare. She was an ancestress of Flying Childers and other celebrated racers. Arab horses were commoA enough towards the end of the 17th century, but the best Eastern mares came from Barbary, 1 not from Arabia. In that country, indeed, until very recently, they were guarded with a jealous care ; so that Lord 1 Tangier, in the reign of Charles II., when our actual breed of race- horses began to develop itself, belonged to England, a circumstance always overlooked by the Houyhnhnm writers, to whom bipeds are of no importance whatsoever. Shakspeare by Hobgoblin is their Shak- speare, not the mere poet of Stratford-on-Avon, who, whatever his other merits may have been, had only two legs. Fairfax could only have obtained this one by some accident, perhaps because she had, according to the native superstition, unlucky marks about her. I was born on August 21 (not the 22nd as the Baronetage states), 1810, and I made my first ap- pearance in the world whilst the York races were going on. I need scarcely say that during the months of August and September the air of York- shire is, or at any rate was, quite full of the racing element, and I may have instinctively drawn in my love of thoroughbred horses out of the echoes of the shouting that rolled southward from Knaves- mire, as I presented myself to the universe. An Eton friend of mine, the present Lord Fitz-Wil- liam's elder brother, whose blight and promising career was ended, alas, too soon by his unlocked for death, once somewhat annoyed a young lady, no longer quite a young lady, by proclaiming to a mixed company that she had been born in Paulinas year, thus fixing her age, without any appeal, upon the implacable evidence of the Racing Calendar. Not being a young lady I may safely borrow the phrase, and say that I was born in Octavian's year, or rather, as the St. Leger did not decide itself till after August 21, let me, though a Yorkshireman, fall back on the Derby and claim to have been born in the year of the great Whalebone, whose name, through his own exploits and those of his progeny, must ever remain one of the immortal and evergreen names of the turf. To the same village of Bolton Percy, the village near HORSE-DEALING 7 Nunappleton, another gentleman, much more impor- tant than I am, also belongs. Mr. William Harcourt, Sir William Harcourt's father, was rector of the parish it is one of the very best livings in the Archbishop of York's gift and if you compare the surnames of the successive rectors with those of the successive archbishops, you will find that, by some strange coincidence, they are often the same. Now, though Sir William Harcourt and I may think highly of ourselves, I doubt very much if our fellow parishioners, Yorkshiremen to the backbone, would look upon either of us with much respect, were they to learn what a position we have respectively occu- pied as horse-dealers. To begin with myself: I owned a big, powerful animal, sixteen hands high, but unfortunately broken -winded, and with forelegs open to criticism. As I had let my house for a year I wanted to get rid of him ; he was sold, after a good deal of chaffering, to the cabman at the Barnes Station for four pounds. Unluckily I did not insist upon having the money paid down there and then ; the consequence was, that during a visit to James Wortley at Mortlake, the butler interrupted me in the middle of my soup by announcing that a man in the hall wished to speak to me on particular business. When I went out I found my friend the cabman, who kept repeating that the horse had bitterly disappointed him. In vain I suggested that you could not expect to buy a Derby winner for four pounds. Admitting that, he still was determined not to fulfil his engage- SIK WILLIAM HARCOURT'S HUMILIATION ment, and as I had no place, except my bedroom, to lodge the horse in, I had to accept his terms and let the beast go for thirty shillings, the market value of his hide. Still, when I compare myself, from the Yorkshire point of view, with Sir William Harcourt, I feel a certain superiority over him, and can thank God that I am not even as that Cabinet Minister. He bought a horse for one hundred guineas from a dealer in Oxfordshire. After the meeting of Parlia- ment, he got immersed in his briefs (he was then a Parliamentary lawyer, not an M.P.), and forgot all about the park hack waiting for his orders at Bicester. In the month of August, just before starting for Scotland, his memory came back to him, and he sent off in a hurry to his agent, explaining, that perhaps, as he had no longer any use for it, the horse could be sold without coming to town. ' Certainly,' was the reply, ' but not now, in the autumn, for the sum you gave in the spring.' The hundred guinea horse only fetched seventy guineas, and yet Harcourt thought himself well out of the business. But, alas ! when he applied for his money, he was met with this courteous rejoinder: 'Pardon me, but you have for- gotten the keep of . the horse, you have forgotten various other items, not to mention a farrier's bill or two. In point of fact, you owe me thirty shillings, but, under the circumstances, I will not insist upon that.' I, at least, was spared that humiliation. Though fleeced, I retained the power of employing against my cabman what the Latin Grammar calls BARON MAULE'S VIEWS ABOUT ORDER 9 emphasis or energy of expression, whilst William Harcourt had to lick the boots of his magnanimous benefactor in silent gratitude. I am not sorry that this stoiy has occurred thus early in the book, as from it the reader may learn the manner of writing which if I were to write at all, could not but be forced upon me by the circumstances of the case. Mr. Baron Maule in one of his sarcastic moods addressed from the bench a barrister friend of mine thus : ' Mr. Barker, Mr. Barker, could you not state your facts in some kind of order ? chronological is the best, but if you cannot manage that, try some other ; alphabetical if you please.' Now what Barker had to say for himself I do not know. For me the connecting link cannot be anything else but the asso- ciation of ideas. My chronology creeps forward and makes its ground good, but it is always in subordina- tion, and moves slowly along, overlaid and pushed aside like the Mole and other underground rivers by suggestions which are perpetually rising up to interfere with its natural course. I write from memory alone ; and of memory the principal fountain-head is, and must be, the association of ideas. I quite under- stand a methodical man's objection to the rambling and disjointed style of my book as it stands, but there is no remedy, and he must take it or leave it. The very first thing I discern, on looking into my mind, is this : A conversation arose in my hear- ing (I was then between three and four) about some extraordinary feat of running recently performed by 10 MY FIRST RECOLLECTIONS certain Red Indians. I asked how it happened that they were so much swifter than white men. The answer given was, ' because they never wear any clothes.' Accordingly, when I went to bed, as soon as I was stripped, I darted out of my nurse's hands, and ran all over the house with an experimental zeal worthy of Bacon. Whether I ran faster than usual or not I cannot say. I only know that on being caught I was severely slapped, as that manner of criticising the speculations of the young natural philosopher suggested itself to my nurse ; this was to be expected, given the conditions under which the experiment was tried. Next after that, one of my earliest visions is the sense of being walked up and down Oxford Street, by a servant, called William Bateman, to take a look at the illuminations for the Peace of 1814. It is re- markable that, about the battle of Waterloo, and everything connected with it, my memory is a per- fect blank. I suppose that, owing to the suddenness of the campaign, and the terrible losses which fell upon the land, any public rejoicings over the victory that might take place were of a less formal and impressive character. In the course of the Waterloo year, I think, I remember with perfect distinctness undergoing my first moral struggle. I came down to -dessert one evening, and applied myself to some cherries greedily enough, I daresay, when some- body asked me, in one of those jesting moods so terrible to children, whether, if my papa was turned MY FIRST MORAL STRUGGLE 11 into a cherry, I would eat him or not ? Had the question been put to me some years later, when my natural truthfulness had been shaken to pieces under the grinding tyranny of Monsieur Clement my Chelsea schoolmaster, I have no doubt I should have made a very proper and decorous answer, indefensible on this ground only, that it would not have been true. In my then state of mind however, it was impossible for me to tell a lie, and though I felt all the time that what I had to say sounded discreditable to me, and would probably displease my hearers (and how bitterly children do feel such things is seldom re- membered, I think, by grown-up people), out it had to come. I answered thus : ' Well, if my papa was going to be turned back again from the cherry into my papa, of course I wouldn't eat him ; but if he is to keep always being a cherry, why shouldn't I ? ' Everybody laughed, to my surprise, and I went to bed relieved in mind, and thinking I had got off cheaply enough. The year 1816 was, as is notorious, a dreadful year for every kind of agricultural produce ; the har- vest in many places rotted on the ground, and wide- spread distress followed. This, no doubt, grew up into more than a mere social evil : it helped to aggravate those popular discontents which had already begun to develop themselves after the peace of 1815. The enormous expenses of the long war, indispensable to our national existence as they were, now that all excitement had subsided and the early glow of 12 PAIN A DISCRETION triumph had ceased to give delight, were felt to be all the more galling, just because peace and dulness had been restored. As one recovering from a fever we were out of danger, but our convalescence, like the convalescence of ordinary patients, was accompanied by peevish weakness and irritability, so that every little hardship easily enlarged itself into a serious evil, and this, alas, was not a little hardship. A very fine harvest might have parried the mischiefs for a certain time and to a certain extent ; but the worst harvest known for a hundred years naturally operated in the other direction, and greatly increased the diffi- culties of the Government. Men resorted to small expedients, but, as might be expected, without much success. At fashionable dinners, no such thing as ' pain a discretion ' could be permitted ; to ask for a second piece of bread became, as it were, a capital crime a crime of the same kind no doubt as that well-known felony in the Arabian Nights, which wrung from Bedreddin Hassan, ex- pecting to be at once impaled, the plaintive inquiry : ' Is it then a capital crime not to put pepper into a cream-tart ? ' My knowledge of that unhappy season is con- fined to this one fact. My father's housekeeper took me to her room, and solemnly showed me a bag of flour made from the potato : this was then used as a substitute for wheaten flour, a thing scarcely to be obtained in a satisfactory condition, at any price, after that disastrous harvest. In the meantime, my MY EARLY EDUCATION 13 education began and went on : my first teacher was a family friend, the learned Dr. Noehden, author of a German Grammar and other works highly valued in their day. He had been private tutor to my uncles at Eton and Nunappleton, and was afterwards promoted to a place in the British Museum a post connecting him with the library department, where he did good service, as his knowledge and acquirements fitted him for it exactly. He taught me Latin, and began to teach me Greek after I had passed my seventh birth- day. I used to go every morning with my lessons, well or ill prepared, to his chambers in the Albany, and when matters went happily, brought back a certificate of honour Bene, perbene, ultra perbene^ according to circumstances. Now each of these tickets had a fixed value in pence, according to its rank in the scale of merit ; the bene, twopence, the perbene threepence, the ultra perbene, ' like angels' visits few and far between,' a real silver sixpence. These are recollections not to be despised ; if I were inclined to indulge in fine writing, I should say that they constituted an oasis in the desert of memory, seeing that, in spite of my best endeavours, I have never been able to make any net profit out of literature since. My poems are entirely out of print, 1 and any stray copy, thanks I believe to Mr. Hermann Vezin's recitations, sells at a high price in the market, but that of course does me no good ; on the contrary, I 1 This was written before Messrs. Macmillan republished them the other day. 14 MY ONLY LITERARY SUCCESS lost twenty pounds by the last edition, so that if I had been able to put a single bene twopence out of them and my other books absolutely to the credit side of my publisher's account, it would have been much to my advantage. 15 CHAPTER II. Monsieur Clement's school Distinguished pupils of Monsieur Cle'ment French teaching Prenez la Marque My first pun and its con- sequences Mr. Codrington's rice pudding Mr. Locke King's meringues The air pump Professor Daubeny at Oxford The Thistlewood Conspiracy. AFTER this, nothing occurs to me worth recording, till I went with a heavy heart to the school I re- ferred to above, M. Clement's school at Chelsea. This was then a fashionable school, and of high repute, a repute on some grounds well deserved. The late George Lewis, the present Lord Lovelace, Ryders, Russells, and Harcourts (including my dear friend and relative Egerton Harcourt, whose loss all his York- shire neighbourhood still is lamenting), the Romillys, the Black woods, Sir Spencer Robinson, Walter Hamilton (the late Bishop of Salisbury), and his brother Edward (still surviving), Lord Delamere, Richard Croft, afterwards Fellow of Exeter, one of the most popular men and one of the best oars at Oxford, in company with many others whom it would take too long a time to enumerate, belonged to it in their day. Some of these had left before I joined, others, the majority indeed of those named above, were my own contemporaries. M. Clement, in addition to the usual private school Greek and 16 EARLY INSTRUCTION IN FRENCH Latin, undertook in a special manner to teach his boys French, and in u/ object he certainly succeeded. I should say that I never met any set of English men afterwards (I do not speak of women or girls), who, without pretending to be deep scholars, managed their French, as a spoken language, with as much ease and familiarity as we did. But this knowledge I thought then, and think still, was dearly bought. We were not allowed to breathe a word of English, and twice a day, after dinner and after supper, two or three unhappy ' messieurs ' who suffered under what Clement called ' the mark,' had to reply to his per- emptory summons. Everyone forced to acknowledge the possession of this encumbrance (there were, if I remember right, three classes or divisions) was kept in, as M. Clement finished his wine,, and set to learn a certain task while their fellows were amusino- o themselves in the playground or elsewhere. If this had been all the infliction it would not have been absolutely intolerable, but the holder of the mark (a name only, and not a visible thing) was expected to pass it on. If by so doing you did not shake it off between dinner and supper, besides the usual task you probably got your ears boxed ; if, when a third summons came, you still continued responsible for another failure to fix it upon some one else, the cane or the rod came into play, and a vista of punishments ever increasing loomed large in the distance. Hence the pressure upon us grew perfectly odious. You were betrayed into saying at cricket or trap-ball, ' Up HOW LA MARQUE WAS EVADED 17 with the ball there, quick ! ' or the like, and imme- diately a lurking spy at your elbow pounced upon you with these words, ' Prenez la marque ! ' Out of this, ill-blood grew up between the boys, and an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust poisoned all our fun. Before I left, we of the first class, who were expected to speak not only French, but correct French, took the matter into our own hands. We agreed to accept the mark in rotation, and got up cases of disputed grammar (knowing perfectly well what the result would be), in order that the French master might solemnly determine whether the mark had been properly passed or not. ' M. Pommier, Robinson a dit, " Je voudrais que j'avais ; " n'est-ce pas qu'il aurait du dire, " Je voudrais que j 'eusse " ? ' ' Cer- tainement, Doyle ; Robinson, vous avez la marque.' 'M. Pommier, Doyle a dit, " demicouronne ; " n'est- ce pas qu'il aurait du dire "petit ecu"? ' ' Certainement, Croft ; Doyle, vous avez la marque.' In order that suspicion might not be aroused, the worst linguists, who naturally derived the greatest advantage from this piece of strategy, were expected occasionally to devote themselves for the common good, and to pretend that the mark remained with them. At the second, and still more at the third call they might get a caning no doubt, once in a way, but then for the rest of the schooltime they were as free as air, having only to be on their guard, and take care that they did not speak English above their breath when an. usher was within hearing. The relief afforded C 18 STATE OF THE SCHOOL by this defensive association proved great indeed, though I cannot defend it on moral grounds. In- deed, I have always felt since, low down in my mind, a certain soreness, as if some of the original bloom had been irrecoverably rubbed off my natural frankness and sincerity under the process of learning French with the screw of ' prenez la marque ' upon me. Otherwise, Clement was in some respects a good master, in others not so good a one. Though poorly skilled in Latin versification, a deficiency which placed his pupils at some disadvantage when they migrated into a public school, we had nothing else to complain of in the matter of Latin and Greek. He was also well versed in Italian, and, setting him aside, the French and Latin ushers as a rule did well enough. We were, moreover, thoroughly instructed in arithmetic and the elements of mathematics by Mr. Hall, a man of very considerable ability and acquire- ments. He was one who might have done much better for himself, had he not succumbed to a passion for snuff and an uncertain weakness, to say the least of it, in the direction of gin. On the other hand, M. Clement was capricious, apt to be unjust, and of a very variable and untrustworthy temper ; given, more- over, to indulge his favourites and to press with great severity upon any boy whom he had selected as the object of his dislike ; so that, upon the whole, he was unpopular, and unpopular with good reason. We were also ill-fed, ill-warmed, and ill-play grounded. Hence, as I look at the scar of a broken chilblain upon my STORIES CONNECTED WITH CLEMENT'S 19 forefinger, still very visible, I can say to myself, con- scientiously, ' No, it was anything but a nice school.' Before passing on to Eton, I shall indulge myself by telling one or two stories which have remained with me since that private school period. I. MY FIRST PUN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. This joke (considering its results it could hardly be called a bon-mot) was not perpetrated under the happiest of auspices. Our classical master, one Mr. Hutchinson, a dreamy sort of man, apparently de- voted himself in his leisure moments to playing at metaphysics ; at any rate, whilst we were reading Xenophon's ' Memorabilia of Socrates ' with him, he kept continually asking different boys what the Summum Bonum might be, and no answer ever satisfied him. One victim replied, ' happiness,' another, ' virtue,' the third, ' a good conscience,' and so on ; but, ' No, no, not exactly that,' was always murmured in return by our mystical tutor. At last, when we were all greatly bored by the agita- tion of a subject quite beyond our years, he turned to me, and I, being saucily inclined, suggested by way of answer, ' What should you say, sir, to a very large magnum bonum ? ' If at that moment Milton's lines : How charming is divine philosophy, Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, had come into my mind, I should certainly have c 2 20 MONSIEUR CLEMENT AS DEMOSTHENES demurred to their exactness ; for divine philosophy was extremely harsh and crabbed, rose up in its wrath, and dragged me, as a culprit, to the head-master's desk, in order that I might be ' beaten with many stripes.' M. Clement had a fancy for being epi- grammatic and rhetorical in his punishments, but his rhetoric generally took a Demosthenic form. Action, action, action, being his motto perhaps even more emphatically than in the case of Demosthenes himself. Accordingly, he stood over me brandishing his cane, and adding energy to his remarks by a menacing swish : ' Je pardonne 1'indolence, souvent ' swish ' la desobeissance, quelquefois,' swish, swish ' mais, 1'insolence, JAMAIS ! ' crack, crack, crack I got it hot over my back and shoulders ; and retired to my bench, deeply meditating in my own mind that I should have done better if I had swallowed my joke without uttering it, or kept it, at any rate, for a more appreciative audience. II. MONSIEUR CODRINGTON'S FASTIDIOUSNESS. Codrington, afterwards Admiral of the Fleet, had reached the top of the school a year before I did. We were not, as I have said above, well fed at M. Clement's ; no, certainly not well fed ; and the habit which prevailed of loading our stomachs with odious puddings before we were allowed to touch a bit of meat was earnestly disapproved of. Every Tuesday, in particular, an especially filthy mess made its appearance before our roast mutton. Now, head boy MR. LOCKE KING 21 Codrington, sitting as he did at the top of the table, next Madame Clement, was in full view of M. Clement, who sat at the bottom. Codrington, as he ate, unwarily allowed a grimace of disgust to escape from him, and Clement's voice thundered out upon his critic at once 'M. Codrington, M. Codring- ton, que faites-vous la ? Si le Prince Regent venait diner ici' (an event, I may remark, rather more unlikely than Bishop Butler's typical improbability, viz., that the sun should fail to rise at his appointed hour to-morrow) ' je ne lui donnerais pas de meilleur ponding que cela ! Mettez-vous a genoux, M. Cod- rington, et mangez cela tout de suite ! ' M. Codring- ton had no resource left but to do as Clement told him whilst his enemy watched the process of de- glutition and the spoon tiring in its stride like a beaten racehorse, with a look of cruel glee. As soon as the last morsel disappeared, and Codrington's sigh of relief silently delivered itself ' Madame Clement, Madame Clement, donnez encore du pouding a M, Codrington,' was bellowed out by his relentless per- secutor. I can only hope that Madame Clement was 'ministering angel' enough to ladle out no great quantity ; still, how much mutton M. Codrington got through after that second helping, it would be rash to say. III. MR. LOCKE KING'S MERINGUES. One Sunday night, ten or twelve boys in the long room I, luckily for myself, not being one of them 22 MONSIEUR CLEMENT'S BLUNDERBUSS held a solemn festival after everybody was in bed and the house quiet ; but alas ! in the midst of their revels, Clement suddenly appeared in his old grey dressing-gown carrying a large blunderbuss ; Madame Clement, in ' robes loosely flowing, hair as free/ at his elbow, with a candle. It seems that some years previously, more than one burglary had been attempted upon Durham House, with what particular hope of booty, God knows (the burglars must have been crazy, I think) ! This fact, which I heard long afterwards from a man of older standing than myself, explained the blunderbuss a mystery inscrutable at the time. I need not describe in detail what happened then ; but next morning, of course, severe punishments were inflicted. M. Clement, perhaps conscious that he had made an ass of himself by bringing firearms to bear upon enemies not more formidable than figs and raspberry vine- gar, came down in one of his very worst humours ; when, suddenly, as he was haranguing and sentenc- ing the criminals, the school-door opened, and in walked Locke King, who had been spending Satur- day and Sunday at Lansdowne House. He looked as innocent as a daisy, but carried a basket in his hand, upon which M. Clement's angry curiosity fastened at once : ' Qu'est-ce que vous avez dans ce panier-la, M. King ? ' Locke King explained that it contained some meringues and other sweet- meats, given him by the Lansdowne House con- fectioner that morning. ' And, pray, sir,' roared LORD LANSDOWNE'S MERINGUES 23 out M. Clement, in a glow of virtuous indignation, ' was M. le Marquis de Lansdowne aware of this pro- ceeding ? ' Locke King, who knew very well that if the idea had suggested itself to Lord Lansdowne, he would undoubtedly have given his confectioner the necessary orders, and that, in any case, he would have been glad that the boy should take back with him to school the pastry in question, answered in perfect good faith 'Well, no, sir I cannot say that he did exactly.' ' And, sir,' retorted our noble- minded instructor, ' have you had the baseness to accept a present from a menial servant without his master's knowledge ? You ought to be ashamed of yourself ! Deliver up to me that basket at once ! ' Now, the logic of the case would seem to have re- quired that the confectioner's dainties should go back to Lansdowne House at the earliest possible oppor- tunity. Bat logic and practical good sense are not always in unison, and M. Clement was wise enough to devour the meringues and other sweetmeats him- self without any conscientious scruples as to the validity of his title to them. It is curious, as showing how capriciously memory acts, that, when these stories were told, many years afterwards, to the heroes of them, they had totally forgotten all the circumstances of which I, though an outsider, happened to retain so accurate a recol- lection. 1 1 Do I ! Frederick Romilly is said by others to have been the hero of this story not Locke King. It is odd if I have been mis- 24 THE ROMILLYS Among the most popular boys at M. Clement's were the three Romillys : they were all clever, all good-natured, and two of them, at least, Charles and Frederick, distinguished by their activity in running and jumping, their skill in games, and their mastery of athletics in general. Charles and Frederick were also the two best dancers in the school, and twice a week, under the superintendence of a certain M. Parodi, used to exhibit their superior proficiency, by performing, in first-rate style, the solemn minuet de la cour, succeeded by the sprightliest of gavottes, for the edification of M. Parodi's less advanced pupils. Of Charles, during the many years that have glided away since we were boys together, I have seen little ; perhaps, though the best-natured and kindest -hearted of men, he might wish that little to have been less ; inasmuch as the last time I recollect meeting him at dinner, I was his partner afterwards at whist, and, I am sorry to say, revoked, in the most blunder-headed manner : so that the renewal of our school acquain- tanceship cost him sundry half crowns. With Frederick, however, I have had the pleasure of re- viving, at the Board of Customs, all our early asso- ciations connected with Durham House, and a great delight the revival has been to me. Looking back, both at M. Clement's, and again at Eton, so many friendships formed in youth have remained unbroken taken, as Locke King's face, coming in at the school door, has been present to me ever since. I can see him now shaking hands with the servant who brought him back. SAM JOHNSON ON FRIENDSHIP 25 and unimpaired through life, that I feel to the ground of my heart the full force of old Sam Johnson's admirable dictum on the subject, ' Those that love longest, love best. Esteem of great powers and admirable qualities newly discerned may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years (for twenty years, in my case, read fifty, or even sixty) is interwoven with the texture of life. A friendship may often be found and lost ; but an old friend can- not be found ; and nature has provided that he can- not be often or easily lost.' This is a fine sentence pleasant to read and to believe in ; but I sometimes fancy that it comes home to you, even with greater keenness, when you find, as every now and then you do find, that it has suddenly broken down under your feet, and you have reluctantly to confess to yourself that, though generally, it is not absolutely true. I have not much more to say about my Chelsea private school ; our early introduction to physical science, if it did not prepare the soil of our minds for a growth of future Newtons and Faradays, afforded us, on one occasion, at any rate, a good deal of amusement. We used to be taken, every now and then, mostly in Lent, I think, to popular lectures on electricity, galvanism, optics, and so on. At the particular lecture I am speaking of, the air-pump was called into play, and one or two of Clement's boys I being one of them volunteered to undergo the ordinary experiments belonging to that instrument : 26 PROFESSOR DAUBENY and, to begin with, had the air under our hands ex- hausted and drawn away. As soon as the first paw had been glued down to the vacuum, by the pressure of the atmosphere from above, our lecturer began to declaim, in a very grandiloquent strain. ' There, sir,' said he, addressing the prisoner of science, ' my cap- tive you are, and my captive you will remain till I think fit to release you ; not Alexander the Great himself, not all the legions of Xerxes, the great king, could drag you from your present position without my consent.' Upon this, the urchin, whose palm, I suppose, was somewhat smaller than had been reckoned on, so that the exclusion of the air had not quite completed itself, gave ' a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together,' up came his hand, in the sight of the whole assembly, and we laughed till we cried. Then, as the rest of us came tumbling up, one after the other, the trumpet was played in a much lower key, and the successive experiments had no success at all, till at last, a small girl, really trapped and held fast, enabled the professional orator to recover his confidence and self-esteem. A double failure of the same kind used to be quoted with equal glee by the undergraduates of my time at Oxford. Daubeny, the Professor of Che- mistry, nearly as short-sighted and awkward as I am (but then, I never attempt to perform experiments), was showing off to his class, and descanting, in the happy predynamite days, upon some terribly explo- sive substances. lie went on thus : ' Now, gentle- 27 men, you see those two packets : I shall be upon my guard ; you may rely upon my care, for if by any sad accident they happened to come together, awful indeed would the consequences be ! ' A moment afterwards, whilst he blundered blindly over the dif- ferent articles before him, this was the very thing that did happen but, fortunately for his audience, as he had compounded them with the same slovenli- ness that he handled them, nothing occurred. Whilst still at Durham House, I was taken by the William Bateman mentioned above to Cato Street, and saw the room where Thistle wood and his accomplices had lately been arrested. The Thistle- wood conspiracy is now, I dare say, scarcely remem- bered by the young men and young women of the day but it might have been an extremely serious affair. The plan was to knock, in a careless manner, at the door of Lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square, where a ministerial dinner should have been held to rush in, as soon as the footman opened the door, murder all the ministers, and attempt imme- diately afterwards to surprise the Tower, the Bank, and other public buildings. The reader must recol- lect that Peel's new policemen had not yet come into existence. One of the band, however, either shrunk back from this wholesale murder, or else thought he could make a better thing of it by turning informer. Through his intervention the plot was baffled, and the gang of plotters captured in the room where they held their meetings. Poor Ruthven, the detective 28 WINTER -ROSES officer, fell dead, being instantly killed by Thistle- wood ; but, I am happy to say, neither the head ruffian nor any of his associates escaped the gallows which was their due. Many years afterwards, I wanted some roses for January 20, a time of year when roses are not so easy to find. Oddly enough, the man who finally obtained them for me was a son of the Ruthven mentioned above ; so that when I got hold of them, I could not help saying to myself, ' Is Cato Street a proper street, or this representative of Cato Street a proper person to entrust a love- tale to ? ' CHAPTER III. My introduction to Eton State of Eton education in my time Elected to the Debating Society before Mr. Gladstone Mr. Glad- stone's maiden speech Milnes Gaskell Bruce, afterwards Lord Elgin Arthur Hallam His early and unexpected death Some account of his character The Eton Miscellany Sir John Hanmer Dr. Keate Keate v. Arnold Eton v. Rugby Commercial crisis of 1825. IN the beginning of the year 1823 I left M. Clement's and went to Eton as a pupil of Mr., now Dr. Okes, the respected Provost of King's College, Cambridge. This was a very important step in my career. There had been some question of my being sent as a gown-boy at the Charterhouse. My father, however (and I have always been glad of it), finally decided otherwise. At Eton I spent several thoroughly happy years; at Eton I formed friendships which have coloured and brightened my whole life. At Eton my character shaped itself, and I became much the same Frank Doyle that I have continued to be ever since. I cannot say that, technically speaking, it was a good school. Some Greek and Latin poetry had to be learnt by heart (no one could escape from that), though 30 EDUCATION AT ETON even for those repetitions little accuracy was required, not to mention that a quick-eyed boy, by sidling up to the desk, often managed to read from the master's book the lines that he appeared to be diligently re- peating. For any other form of study there was no necessity at all. An idle fellow might elude all his recurring tasks from year's end to year's end. He could run the chance of not being called up in his class, even if he were called up, he had heard the lesson construed at his tutor's, and again might hope, supposing he had not attended to that exposition in the pupil-room, that some one at his side, or behind him, would be able to prompt him safely away from the block. He could always get his exercises done for him, or find ' an old copy ' on the subject he had to deal with among masses of manuscript carefully preserved through many generations of Eton boys. He could therefore spend his time pretty much as he liked. He probably knew somehow or other that ' two and two make four,' but they might make three or five, as far as he was concerned, without firivino- ' 'DO ' Henry's holy shade ' the slightest anooyance. The workers, or ' saps,' as they were called, wrote a great many Latin verses, learnt a lot of Horace, Homer, and Virgil, to repeat every morning, and looked over their construing lessons, which were mere trifles both in quantity and character, more or less carefully be- fore going into school. I soon acquired ease and fluency in rattling over my elegiacs, hexameters, and alcaics, and used as a rale to be ' sent up for good,' as THE CHANCELLOR'S PRIZE AT OXFORD 31 the phrase was, at the end of the term. There was y however, one real obstacle to reaching excellence even in Latin versification, which rather stood in the way of Eton men at the universities. Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, had already instituted annual prizes ; this introduced a habit of more careful work and thought among our rivals, and no one could expect to win a Chancellor's prize unless his competing poem were well-written throughout. Now among us, who had nothing of the kind to look forward to (being simply called upon to knock off in an hour or two a number of verses twice a week), it became the practice to con- centrate our whole activity upon the more attractive parts of a given subject, leaving the 'juncture callidae ' to be supplied by our tutors, who read over and corrected all exercises (a stupid practice, I think, if only on account of the facilities it gave for the accumulation of the aforesaid old copies), before they were delivered up in school. These habits of rapid and careless composition constituted, as I have said, a certain disadvantage to Eton men at Oxford, which lasted till prizes were established at Eton also. At least that was the excuse I made to myself twice over, on failing to secure the Chancellor's Latin prize at the university ; though, most likely, if that excuse had not been ready to my hand, I should have found another just as good to explain away the untoward fact. After having been a year or two at Eton, I joined the Debating Society, held at Miss Hatton's, a 'cook 32 THE ETON DEBATING SOCIETY and confectioner,' so that we were able to combine bodily refreshment with intellectual culture. This turned out to be a great step in my school progress, conferring upon me advantages which I could have obtained nowhere else. The one compensation, indeed, for a careless system which the easy-going practices of Mater Etona bestowed on her boys was our perfect freedom. Physical freedom for those who preferred it, but also intellectual freedom for any one who chose. The Debating Society thus brought together many of the cleverer boys from their different forms, and not only that, but from every corner of the college as well. By this means, those who would otherwise have hardly known each other to speak to. were soon turned into intimate friends. They read with, or, as Whigs and Tories, in opposition to each other, they discussed historical and literary subjects, they argued and split hairs, and walked together, dis- puting about Shakspeare, Milton, the old dramatists, and so on. Hence, day after day, our wits were sharpened by these collisions, and we made more way, unless I am mistaken, out of school than in school. I do not deny that gentlemen skilful at cricket, or strong in a football scuffle against the wall, denounced us as prigs, nor am I prepared to say that they were altogether wrong in that decision. But after all, priggishness in a boy is not necessarily a fatal or permanent defect, and even the grandest of leg-hitters gets fat and slow in time. Had it not been for the Debating Society, I should have known nothing of < ETON FRIENDSHIPS 33 Mr. Gladstone, or of my beloved friend Arthur Hallam ; Bruce, afterwards Lord Elgin, Wentworth who became the elder Lord Milton ; the future Lord Canning, Selwyn, Pickering, Sir John Hanmer, Gaskell, and many others, would have been equally out of my ken. In point of fact, the only very intimate friend I made at Eton, independently of our Debating Society, was James Hope, afterwards the well-known Parliamentary advocate, Hope Scott. He, luckily for me, boarded at my dame's. In my case, these intimacies were the more important as I was in a great measure shut out from games and the oppor- tunities for forming friendships at games, afforded to other boys. For cricket I was too blind ; for football incapacitated by an injury to my ankle, which I had inflicted on myself years before, in trying how many steps I could jump down; moreover this blindness and lameness combined made me generally awkward and unenterprising. I could scull moderately and swim pretty well, but, as a rule, I preferred walking to Slough, Salt Hill, &c. with Hallain or Mr. Gladstone, to any more active exercise in the playing fields or 011 the river. In the Debating Society Mr. Gladstone soon dis- tinguished himself. Though two removes below him, the members of this oratorical club, irreverently called Pop by outsiders, through some accident elected me before they elected him. I therefore had the privilege of listening to his maiden speech. It began, I recollect, with these words : ' Sir. in this age of D 34 MR. GLADSTONE'S MAIDEN SPEECH increased and still increasing civilisation.' This phrase, falling from the lips of a boy destined to play so im- portant a part in the history of his country and his race, gives us much to meditate, and something, I think, to mourn over. Civilisation, no doubt, has added a great deal to the comfort of the well-to-do classes, but what has it done for the very poor ? Because I call myself a Tory, I am not therefore blind to the many terrible aspects of modern life, and I see, for one thing, how the rapid and unorganised over- growth of a populace, which this so-called civilisation has mainly dragged into being, though it may have increased the resources of the capitalist, though it may foster trade (as if the souls of men had been created to be always interchanging commodities, and for no other purpose whatever), has nevertheless impover- ished and degraded large masses of my fellow-country- men. I find it difficult not to suppose that the British peasant of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies, in spite of his rough surroundings, and the fearful hardships he was often forced to undergo, yet filled his place upon earth with more dignity and satisfaction than the majority of his descendants. There was nothing, if I have eyes in my head, so bad, nothing to make one so much ashamed of the human race, as the present condition of our great cities, with their swarms of miserable men, women, and children, festering in poverty, vice, and wretchedness, who are left behind by this boasted civilisation of ours, and are likely to revenge themselves upon it at no great MY EEASONS FOR BEING A TORY 35 distance of time. I am a Tory because history Is not quite hidden from me ; because I have learnt how ' the master of those who know ' taught his own, and all future ages, what evils democracy passing into ochlocracy is sure to bring upon its victims. I would therefore rather adjourn free government for a time, and hand over the management of affairs, after the Roman fashion, to some firm, vigorous, and patriotic dictator, if we could only find him, than encourage a huge eyeless Samson to drag down the pillars which sustain what is left of our social edifice, on the chance of his rebuilding the temple of human life out of its ruins, with more consummate skill, and on a nobler plan. I am not a Tory, alas, because I look upon the present state of things with approval, or even with hope, but because I think our Govern- ment worse than it was sixty years ago, and because I think that if something be not done to arrest the growth of our ever-increasing population, it will be worse sixty years hence than it is now. To proceed, however. After Mr. Gladstone's ar- rival the Debating Society doubled and trebled itself in point of numbers, and the discussions became much fuller of interest and animation. Hallam and Mr. Gladstone took the lead, supported by Milnes Gaskell and others. Milnes Gaskell, afterwards my brother-in-law, was a very curious specimen of a boy. He had fed upon politics and House of Commons details until he became a sort of walking Hansard. By some 36 MILNES GASKELL'S CAKEER IN LIFE process best known to himself, he had got acceptance from the various door-keepers as a sort of honorary M.P., and slipped about the holes and corners of the Parliamentary buildings with at least the tacit acquiescence of those officials. He attended whilst in town most of the important debates, and received a good-natured notice from Canning and many other leading members whenever they met him. After- wards, his close friendship with the late Lord Canning brought him into more constant communication with his brilliant father, of whom he has preserved in private letters many interesting anecdotes. Some of these have been lately given to the world by Charles Milnes Gaskell, his eldest son. He knew the Parlia- mentary history of the last hundred years with an absolute knowledge, and could recite most of the great speeches with marvellous exactness, and he spoke very well, in spite of having adopted a regular House of Commons manner which was not entirely free from affectation. His after career was scarcely as successful as it ought to have been. In point of fact, he was too rich and too indolent for a hard- working life, so indolent indeed as to shrink from taking any real physical exercise. A great pity, as the want of it gradually impaired his energies and damaged his health. Nay, even when he exercised his intellect, and that he did often enough, he only exercised it as he chose, and never would do any- thing except what he liked ; he therefore never filled his mind with reading enough, or braced it with MY OWN FAILURE 37 thought enough, to give his excellent abilities fair play. Whenever he spoke in Parliament, he achieved a decided success, but he was too apt to hug, as it were, each small piece of that success, hesitating to risk the parcel of reputation he had just gained by any further efforts. He therefore spoke too seldom to make much impression on the general public, though as a private member of Parliament and able worker on committees, the other hon. members held him in high esteem. I hope it will be understood that, because I criticise my brother-in-law, I do not therefore take up my position as a ' Sir Oracle ' against whom no { dogs are to bark/ or claim to have ordered my own life any better than he has done his far from it. I might have devoted myself to literature, and perhaps created something worth the world's notice, or, on the other hand, I might have given up my mind to political philosophy, practical work, and effected some good in that direc- tion. As it is, from the want of a certain fixity of purpose, I have fallen between two stools, and now at the age of seventy- six, consider myself rather a poor creature. Gaskell, as I have said, spoke seldom in Parliament, but in our Debating Society, with a view to perfect himself in the art, he was always speaking. Nay, not content with our formal meetings at Miss Hat- ton's, he and Mr. Gladstone, with Canning, I believe, and perhaps one or two others (I joined their party once or twice, but never became a regular attender) established a kind of inner Debating Society, to be held on certain summer afternoons in the garden of 38 MR. GLADSTONE IN DANGER one Trotman. Now Gaskell was a proficient in all the varieties of cheering enthusiastic, ironical, crush- ing, &c., which prevailed at St. Stephen's. In this accomplishment he carefully instructed his disciples. It happened that my tutor, Mr. Okes, rented a small garden near to Trotman's, and by some chance found himself there on the occasion of one of these debates. To his surprise, he heard three or four boys on the other side of the wall sneering, shouting, and boo-hoo-ing in the most unaccountable manner. There seemed but one conclusion open to him as an experienced Eton tutor, viz. that they were what we at the Custom House used somewhat euphemistically to call ' under the influence of liquor.' He there- fore summoned Mr, Gladstone to his study, listened gloomily and reluctantly to his explanations and ex- cuses, and all but handed over our illustrious Premier, with his subordinate orators, to be flogged for drunken- ness. Bruce, afterwards Lord Elgin, was charmingly agreeable in conversation ; any intercourse with him was sure to give pleasure. Besides this, though he may not have equalled Mr. Gladstone in force of character and general ability, he realised my idea of a born orator, with perhaps the single exception of Carlyle, more than any man I have ever met. When- ever he got upon his legs, something not existing in his mind before came to him, as it seemed from with- out, and his powers of expression grew and spread like a wind suddenly rising as the speech went on. LORD ELGIN 39 If ever he wrote anything, the most striking parts of his essay or letter were just faint echoes of what he would have said much better, and without pre- meditation, as an extemporary speaker. His career in the House of Commons was entirely baffled by the unexpected death of his father, a Scotch repre- sentative peer. He would greatly have preferred to keep his seat in the House of Commons, after the fashion of the Irish peers, had it been pos- sible ; but though he grumbled a good deal, and even talked of making some such attempt, he must have been well aware all the time, that no innovation of the kind could be permitted. Thus, he had to retire at once. Meanwhile, the Scotch rules of suc- cession prevented him from taking his father's place in the House of Lords, so that he was shut out from Parliament altogether. And the one reward he ob- tained for his brilliant success at starting was to be sent all over the world, from one colonial government to another, without getting a chance, for many years at least, of repeating that success in England. His brother Frederick once told me, that, in a speech addressed to a mixed assemblage of Americans and Canadians, he so touched the hearts of the former, that some of them came up to him, probably after dinner, whilst the stimulus of Madame Cliquot's magnums was uniting itself with a vivid impression of Lord Elgin's eloquence, and informed him that if he would only go the democratic ticket, they would put him up for the Presidency the very next time. As, I 40 ARTHUR HALLAM believe, no one unless born in the United States is eligible for that particular office, there is a touch of froth about the compliment, suggesting, as I hinted but now, a previous consumption of champagne ; still, even with that drawback, it confirms what I said above as to his natural powers of oratory. And now what shall I say of Arthur Hallam ? I have been somewhat taken by surprise, though probably without sufficient cause, to find how much of his memory has ceased to exist for the younger men who sway the present time. He has remained so vividly before all of us, first as the most charming and perhaps the most promising of our contemporaries, and secondly, as the hero of the great poem ' In Memoriam,' that we thought his name an imperishable one ; but a poem is one thing, the man in whose honour it is written, quite another. We now read ' Lycidas ' without taking any great interest in Mr. King, and those who come after us may go on admiring Tennyson's verses, without dwelling much on the image of Tennyson's friend. It may be as well therefore to give a short account of him here. He was the eldest son of the well-known historian Henry Hallam, and he died suddenly when about one -and -twenty. His death was a very sad one, and has left behind it in many hearts a sorrow not to he put aside. As a boy, he had suffered much at intervals from serious head-aches. His Eton and Cam- bridge friends, naturally enough, thought them head- aches and nothing more, but when the end came it THE AFFECTION HE INSPIRED 41 was made clear that his life had been a long struggle against incurable organic disease. A severe bout of influenza weakened him, and whilst he was travelling abroad for change of air, and to recover his strength, one of his usual . attacks apparently returned upon him without warning, whilst he was still unfitted to resist it ; so that when his poor father came back from a walk through the streets of Vienna, he was lying dead on the sofa where he had been left to take a short rest. Mr. Hallaru sat down to write his letters, and it was only by slow and imperceptible degrees that a certain anxiety, in consequence of Arthur's stillness and silence, dawned upon his mind ; he drew near to ascertain why he had not moved nor spoken, and found that all was over. A son of Mr. Tennyson's, though born many years after he left us, has been called Hallam, and a son of mine has been called Arthur. It seemed as if neither he nor I could bear to let the name pass quite away from, us, and I have no doubt that the same thing has hap- pened in many other families, as he was regarded by all who knew him with unusual affection. Even those unacquainted with him personally must regret that he was prematurely cut off, just as he was gaining the mastery over a deep original intellect, and bringing his great faculties into harmonious com- bination. We all of us, even Mr. Gladstone, I think, felt whilst conversing with him, that we were in the presence of a larger, profounder, and more thoughtful mind than any one of us could claim for himself. 42 DEVELOPMENT OF HIS FINE INTELLECT But his very depth and originality rendered it more difficult for him to bring his ideas to the surface, and give them their adequate expression. He re- quired more time for his full development than we did. For instance, his poems, as poems of promise, gave greater hopes for the future than my diluted Scott and water or Byron and water. But just because they were his own, and not borrowed, they seemed (naturally enough, because he was yet but a boy) stiff as to the language, and imperfect in point of form. Before he died, these defects had almost disappeared, or at any rate were rapidly disappearing ; I would particularly mention a dramatic scene pre- served in his Remains, between the painter Raphael and his mistress (the Fornarina she was called), which strikes me as not only beautifully conceived, but excellent in point of execution. His prose writings were vigorous and effective, but still somewhat want- ing in ease, grace, and lightness. Here again, he was moving onward with rapid strides. In proof of this I may refer to the fine analysis of Cicero's character and writings, also preserved in his Remains. This paper was, somehow or other, connected with the Trinity declamation prize, a prize which he won. It was not, if I recollect rightly, the victorious essay itself, but a sort of acknowledgment to the College, expected from the successful candidate, in return for his medal or other reward. Still, whatever the occa- sion of its being written, it is a critical and philo- sophical dissertation in the very first rank of such 'IN MEMOEIAM' 43 dissertations. I need scarcely add that his temper was so charming and his social qualities so delightful, that it would be difficult to say whether we admired or loved him most. I have thought it necessary to say thus much of Arthur Hallam, though perhaps it may seem almost impertinent to the reader of Tennyson's l In Memoriam ' to speak of Arthur Hallam at all. In talking of Hallam' s literary compositions, I have forgotten to say how they first appeared before the world at Eton. He was one of the chief supporters of the Eton Miscellany, a periodical estab- lished and conducted by us, for a year, under Mr. Gladstone's unfaltering superintendence. It was here that I first came out as a poet ; and partly, per- haps, because, having been a shorter time at Eton than most of my companions and fellow-labourers, and thence comparatively unknown, I took the school by surprise, I obtained more credit than I was really entitled to. It is true that Hallam, from whom much more had been expected, did not quite fulfil those expecta- tions ; I have already explained why. Had he lived, and given the strength of his mind to poetry, I feel quite sure that he would have beaten me easily in the long run ; but his compositions, though full of promise to a discerning eye, were at the moment somewhat crude and immature, so that the preference then given to me over him was not wholly unreasonable. But there was another friend of mine, Sir John, afterwards Lord Hanmer, whose claims to hold the highest place 44 THE LATE LORD HANMER among us as a verse writer were never, I think, suffi- ciently considered. The ancients used to worship Memory as the mother of the Muses ; the mother of my Muse she undoubtedly was. I knew quantities of Byron and quantities of Scott by heart, and had read the older poets over and over again, so that verses came to me abundantly and easily. But they came quite as much through cisterns filled from other sources as out of any fountain of my own. Being, moreover, a half-blind cockney, I derived my images from books instead of gathering them out of nature herself. Now Hanmer was not a cockney, but a Welshman; he lived among the old associations of his family, and from the traditions of his native place, and from the Celtic blood in his veins, was urged to write, as it seemed to me, by a lyrical impulse more decidedly from within than any lyrical impulse of mine. The last time I looked into the Eton Miscellany, I thought his lines on the Burial of Sir John Elley's Charger finer in quality than any of mine. He quarrelled with Selwyn about something or other before the magazine had been long on foot, and left our society, so that he contributed but little to the magnum opus, but all that he did contribute I thought good, nor was this early promise of his without fruit. He cultivated poetry for a few years, if not very perseveringly still with good success, till the life work of a landed proprietor and the pressure of Parliament drew him away from literature. He made his mark, however, to this extent. Many years SIR HENRY TAYLOR'S POETS 45 afterwards my friend Sir Henry Taylor, whose critical faculties are well known, and whose sympathy with the talents of other men is (was, alas) almost un- equalled, pointed out to me those whom he called his four unknown but real contemporary poets. The first of these was Darley, a man of true genius, and not of poetical genius alone, for he distinguished him- self also as a mathematician and as a man of science ; the second was Hanmer. The names of the third and fourth have escaped me. To return to the Miscellany ; it went on its way in spite of Hanmer's defection, in spite also of the fact that Hallam, Selwyn, and other contributors left Eton at midsummer (or election as we used to call it). Mr. Gladstone and I remained behind as its chief supporters, or rather it would be more like the truth if I said that Mr. Gladstone sup- ported the whole burden upon his own shoulders. I was unpunctual and immethodical, so also were his other vassals, and the Miscellany would have fallen to the ground but for Mr. Gladstone's untiring energy, pertinacity, and tact. I may as well remark here that my father, a man, as I have said elsewhere, of great ability, as well as of great experience in life, pre- dicted Mr. Gladstone's future eminence from the manner in which he handled this somewhat tiresome business. ' It is not,' he remarked, ' that I think his papers better than yours or Hallam' s that is not my meaning at all ; but the force of character he has shown in managing his subordinates ' (insubordinates I should rather call them) ' and the combination of 46 PRAED AND THE 'ETONIAN' ability and power that he has made evident, convince me that such a young man cannot fail to distinguish himself hereafter.' (I own as an Englishman that I often wish my father had not been quite so good a prophet.) As to the Miscellany, there is little more to be said about it. It cemented our friendships, helped to fill up the gaps in our so-called ' Eton education,' and, as a piece of writing, was not discreditable to us, who were real schoolboys. As a literary composition its merits were not equal to those of the ' Etonian,' but for that there were several sufficient reasons. In the first place, Praed, the manager of the ' Etonian,' was a man of genius, and his genius had that easy, graceful, and sparkling character which exactly fitted him for the task he had undertaken ; secondly, though called the ' Etonian,' a great part of its contents was furnished by ex-Eton boys, then residing at Cambridge. Now the years between sixteen and nineteen, or seventeen and twenty, are very long years ; and an under- graduate who has passed five or six terms at the university ought to be much forwarder in point of acquirements, intellectual development, and produc- tive power, than a fifth form boy at a public school ; and this the Cambridge undergraduates proved them- selves to be ; lastly, the Miscellany came out once a fortnight, the ' Etonian ' only once a month, thus the writers in the earlier work were enabled to give more time and attention to their productions than we could. However, at the end of 1827, the Miscellany, good or bad, came to an end, and Mr. Gladstone and I went I LEAVE ETON FOR A PRIVATE TUTOR'S 47 our ways to different private tutors before settling ourselves at Oxford. I cannot take leave of Mr. Gladstone's Eton career without recording a joke of his, which even at this distance of time seems cal- culated to thrill the heart of Mid -Lothian with horror and dismay. He was then, I must remind my readers, a high Tory, and used, moreover, to criticise my passion for the turf, to chaff me, if I may say so without irreverence, for the interest I took in a pursuit quite uninteresting to him. One day I was steadily computing the odds for the Derby, as they stood in a morning newspaper. He leant over my shoulder to look at the lot of horses named. Now it happened that the Duke of Grafton owned a colt called Hamp- den, who figured in the aforesaid list. ' Well,' cried Mr. Gladstone, reading off the odds, ' Hampden, at any rate, I see, is in his proper place between Zeal and Lunacy? f r such, in truth, was the position occupied by the four-footed namesake of that illus- trious rebel. But oh, ye Schnadhorsts and Caucuses, what an utterance to fall from the lips of the idealised Liberal and coming regenerator of mankind ! It would be impossible to leave Eton behind me without just mentioning th&trara avis Dr. Keate, the rather that I think he has had hard measure dealt him in some recent articles by a certain Mr. Brinsley Richards, and still more because the obituarist in the ' Times ' re-christened him Keats the other day, as if instead of standing out as the stalwart flogger of ever so many thousand boys, he had gone in for 48 ETON F. RUGBY poetical dreaming, and written the ' Ode to the Night- ingale.' He was an odd and imperfect head-master no doubt, as any one except the obituarist would have known from Kinglake's world-famous account of him, but he had his redeeming points. He had even fine qualities of his own, and was at the worst a real man, what Carlyle would call ' a genuine bit of thoroughly human stuff.' Like all the rest of our older peda- gogues, he has been overshadowed and banished into darkness by the widespread renown of the late Dr. Arnold, whose avatar is supposed to have en- tirely reorganised English public education. That there was much to admire in that eminent personage, no one will dispute, and that he intro- duced new elements of great value into his profes- sional work is equally beyond question ; still, as I am neither a Rugby man nor a Whig, but a high Tory and an Etonian, I may perhaps venture to point out one qualification for a head-master which Keate pos- sessed but Arnold did not I mean the knowledge of God Almighty's intention that there should exist for a certain time, between childhood and manhood, the natural production known as a boy. Every sixth form Rugbeian was bound under Arnold's auspices to come of age in his teens, and to wield the sceptre placed by the great head-master in his hands, with a solemn self-esteem too apt to degenerate for a season into priggish self-importance. As you encountered these beardless sages marching upon the university, the notion that crossed your mind inevitably was, that KEATE AND BOYS 49 every one of them must have been recently rebaptized under the name of Theudas. That Arnold's class of august hobbledehoys soon improved itself out of all this, and has done quite as well as any other class of men in after years, cannot be doubted, but that they have done much better I have yet to learn ; England is full of Eton men, Winchester men, Harrow men, Charterhouse men, Westminster men, &c., as well as of those care- fully cultivated products from Rugby, and I am not aware that you can draw a special line of demarca- tion separating any one of these public schools even Rugby from the rest. The fact is, that men in general are obliged to finish their education for them- selves from within, and though carefully applied dis- cipline is often useful, it sometimes works after an- other fashion, and produces an intemperate reaction against all restraint. Such, at least, is the lesson taught us by Terence's comedy of the ' Adelphi,' to say nothing of the greater drama of life. Now though Keate was not good at manufactur- ing youthful infallibilities of the normal Arnoldian type, he was perfectly aware that boys existed, and that they always must be boys, not manikins, like the little Master Laocoons. He was rough with them, I admit, but neither unkind nor unjust beneath that roughness. He had no favourites, and flogged the son of a duke and the son of a grocer with perfect impartiality. He was also thoroughly manly and right-hearted in the depths of his nature. I have E 50 DEATH OF YOUNG ASHLEY seldom been more deeply moved than I was by the noble address, full of unshrinking courage and stead- fastness, delivered by him to the school shortly after the sad accident by which young Ashley lost his life at the end of a protracted stand-up fight in the play- ing fields. ' It is not/ he said, and said gallantly, ' that I object to fighting in itself; on the contrary, I like to see a boy who receives a blow return it at once, but that you, the heads of the school, should allow a contest to go on for two hours and a half, has shocked and grieved me.' He then proceeded to express his sympathy with the bereaved parents, in a strain of genuine, because it was honest eloquence, and to urge upon us that for the future we should act in such cases with a better judgment, and under a deeper sense of responsibility. One and all, after listening to that speech, we trooped out of the upper school with a thorough belief and confidence in Keate that Arnold himself might have envied. It must be ad- mitted, no doubt, that when the higher parts of his character were not touched and roused, he often showed himself to be a very queer creature indeed. On one occasion the old clock in the school-yard, a clock very prone to error and rapidly approaching its second childhood, chimed three quarters when it ought to have chimed two o'clock, all those who hung about waiting to hear the hour of ' absence ' strike, were not unnaturally late for the roll-call, and thereupon Keate's indignation at having the same explanation (a perfectly reasonable one) given him KEATE'S QUEERNESSES 51 by boy after boy, swelled into a perfect hurricane of real, or more likely of seeming rage. One of the gusts of this sham fury rushed upon me. ' Clock, sir, don't talk to me about clocks ; if there were no clocks you would be bound to come in time for absence just the same.' To this I summoned up my courage and replied, ' Yes, sir, if there were no clocks, but there is a clock.' He glared at me for a moment without speaking, and I was enabled to slip away, but only to hear, as I went, my successor thundered upon with equal vehemence for repeating the one un- avoidable excuse. I was talking this over with my old schoolfellow, the present Lord Blachford, many years afterwards, and happened to observe that Keate did not mind your lying to him ; what he hated was a monotony of excuses. ' Mind your lying to him,' retorted Lord Blachford, ' I should think not ; why, he exacted it as a mark of proper respect. I remember getting into some trumpery scrape, and when called upon for my explanations, instead of making the shuffling statement he anticipated, I told him the literal truth ; upon which he at once inquired of me, with a great appearance of anger, whether I had been drinking.' Two rather amusing scenes connected with Keate return to my memory, and I may as well set down my recollections of them. There was in our time a Cambridge publication, called the ' Museum Criti- cum ' (Thirlwall's famous essay on the Irony of Sophocles made its appearance therein) ; among 52 H ALLAH AND THE ' MUSEUM CRITICUM ' other things, it contained a considerable number of o / Latin verses poems written by distinguished scholars at the request of the University, to give a lift to successive Commemorations. We used to veneer our hexameters by d'gging up, and then spreading over the surface of our exercises, a good line or a happy expression out of these poetical quarries. On one occasion Arthur Hallam had taken rather more than his usual allowance from some fine lines on Deidamia. The poem was signed R. S. e Coll. Trin., in other words, Robert or Bobus Smith, Sydney Smith's elder brother, who as a Latin poet is perhaps unequalled among modern English- men. Arthur Hallam, placing full confidence in the signature, helped himself as I have said somewhat freely, and his verses were sent' up for good. As soon, however, as it had been copied out and placed irretrievably in Keate's hands, to be publicly read over in due time, the writer lighted upon the follow- ing apology in the next number of the ' Museum Criticum.' ' We have to apologise to the distin- guished author of Deidamia. Instead of R. S. e c3 CoU. Trin. the signature should have been, J. K. e Coll. Reg.' John Keate of King's College, that is to say. This discovery was the reverse of pleasant to Arthur Hallam, still there was nothing for it but patient expectation. At last the day came, and Keate on reading the poem over, played with his victim as a cat plays with a mouse. ' Ah, that line is not altogether new to me ; that paragraph I cer- I DESCRIBE THE NILE 53 tainly have seen before,' &c. &c. However, the recitation came to an end- all things do and as the thefts were really of no importance, like the Law de minimis non curavit Keatius. On the second occasion I was the person brought into con- tact with the doctor. Under some Lawsonian im- pulse, he gave us as the verse subject for the week, apicrrov //,> vScup (there is nothing like water). Sir Wilfrid, of course, had he been a contemporary of ours, would have revelled in such an opportunity for airing, or rather, for opening the sluices of his imagi- nation. But I, not being a total abstainer, took a different view of the matter, and did not fancy my task. After a time it occurred to me, that it would be rather a clever evasion if I described the whole course of the Nile. I could not have done it now. Accordingly, I started with that ancient river, from his mysterious and inaccessible fountain heads, hur- ried him through Abyssinia, made great play with the hundred gates and innumerable chariots of Thebes, rebuilt all the temples of Memphis, and glassed them in his limpid current. Keate read the lines over, grumbling a little, now and then, at passages which were not of the water, watery. So long, however, as I kept close to the river banks, he bore with me more or less patiently, but when, in the end, I stood out to sea, boarded the French ships, and proclaimed aloud the glory of England, and of Nelson, he could stand it no longer. ' It was not? he cried, ' the Battle of the Nile, it was the Battle of Aboukir Bay.' Still, 54 KEATE AND SWING in spite of Aboukir Bay, the exercise had been sent up for good, and there was an end of the matter. Keate joked so seldom, that I feel all the more bound, in taking leave of him, to repeat a witticism of his which caused great amusement at the time. In the days when ' Swing ' set to work destroying, in the supposed interests of the labourer, agricultural ma- chinery, Keate received an anonymous letter, threat- ening him, unless he stopped flogging, to set fire to his premises. Keate read the letter out to the boys, and went on thus. ' This is all nonsense ; " Swing " can have no complaint against me, for I always employ my hands , and have never used any machinery at all.' So for a long farewell to Dr. Keate, who, with all his faults, was an able and honest man. The year 1825, about the middle of my Eton career, was remarkable for a severe commercial crisis. The Bank of England itself trembled on the edge of bankruptcy, and the directors gloomily mur- mured that they might be driven to suspend cash payments. If that event had come to pass, it is difficult to estimate the amount of evil which must have followed. An incident happening at the time shows to what a height the feverish alarm then prevailing throughout the country had risen. It was freezing hard, and an old woman slipped down out- side the door of Lubbock's Bank, and broke her leg. Four or five people gathered round her, to give what assistance they could. And in consequence a rumour immediately began to flit about the Exchange, that HOT SOVEREIGNS 55 a run upon Lubbock's Bank had started. In half an hour this imaginary run became a real one, and though the firm stood as solidly as Snowdon. still the having to realise their resources without delay, at any cost, is supposed to have landed the partners in a loss of 80,000/. There was another story (a more comical one) of the sharpness shown by a head clerk of a provincial bank, I rather believe, Wakefield's Bank at Kendal. All its customers, on a certain market day, were crowd- ing round the counter, clamorous for their money. The bullion was running low, and things looked as black as possible, when this expedient suggested itself to the man of whom I have been speaking. He put a shovelful of sovereigns into the fire, and after a dexterous readjustment, poured them out into the hands of a farmer, who had eagerly presented his cheque. The man started back, considerably burnt about the fingers. ' Good God, my dear sir,' was the explanation, ' I beg you ten thousand pardons ! In my hurry I forgot to warn you, but we have to go on making these things so fast, that there is no time to let them cool.' The rustics, according to the legend, were perfectly satisfied as to the solvency of the firm, and the run stopped itself for good and all. CHAPTER IV. Holidays mainly spent in Yorkshire Introduction as a boy to Sydney Smith Unfailing flow of his wit Its general character His quo- tations A pun of his A pun of mine The reason why he was not made a Bishop My first Derby Virtue its own reward Lucky escape in 1827 The Doncaster Cup race Other noteworthy boys at Eton with me George Lewis My mission into Yorkshire and Northumberland The Selwyns Frederick Tennyson Wel- lesley, afterwards Dean of Windsor Alexander Leith Monsieur Hamon How he earned a ring Lord Dalmeny's black eye The officers of the Coldstream Guards who fell at Inkerman. OF course there were holidays spent elsewhere than at Eton. My readers, if I have any, must recollect that life then, and life now, were two very different things. The gloomy streets of London at night were turned into ' darkness visible ' by twinkling oil-lamps. There were no policemen, only wooden old watchmen, crying out the hours, so as to give thieves and bur- glars an opportunity of dropping their profession for a few minutes if they thought it worth while, to resume it when the self- announcing functionary with his rattle had retired into his box. There were, moreover, no rail- roads, and travelling cost much more. The result of these things was, even in my youth, and still more so in the first years of the century, that as you could not ac- complish much by hurrying and fussing about, time seemed of less importance. To leave London, for in- LIFE EARLY IN THE CENTURY 57 stance, was a much more solemn and serious under- taking than it is now. Nobody rushed into Yorkshire or Northumberland, still less into Scotland and back, within the week, for a battue or a ball. You left London once during the year, and went to stay with your friends and relations for six weeks or two months, according to previous arrangements. Your life became a part of the house-life, and you yourself a member of the family for the time being. In many respects this was a pleasanter system than the one which now prevails. No one was harassed or pushed away from one place to another, as is the case at present. I found a home during the holidays, as a rule, with my uncle at Nunappleton. His wife, Lady Milner, was fond of me, and I lived with my cousins, girls and boys, on terms of the closest affection. During one of these holiday visits, I had the good fortune to be introduced to Sydney Smith ; he had come over as a guest from his rectory, situated some- where beyond York (the same rectory which he describes in one of his letters as being geographically situated eleven miles from a lemon). He stayed at Nunappleton a few days, and whilst other people went out hunting or shooting, or got through what- ever might be the business of the hour, I was told off to walk him round and show him the beauties of one of the ugliest places in Yorkshire. I took him to the gardens, which I admit had great merits, so far as peaches and apricots were concerned. I marked out for him the confluence of those two 58 SYDNEY SMITH'S FORMS OF WIT mighty rivers, the Wharfe and the Ouse. I showed him the great oak, in the home wood (poor old oak, I have not seen you for the last twenty years, and doubt much whether I shall ever see you again). In short, in my then state of life, I did the duty to which I had been called. During all this time, he kept me roaring with laughter, till my sides ached as if they were about to split. His inevitable and irresistible flood of fun rolled over me like a cataract, never ceasing, never slackening, never varying its pace for an instant. Most of these conversations, as is the case with all the finest and wittiest talk, have effer- vesced away for ever. Like champagne, the brightest iridescences of wit depend upon the surrounding atmosphere, and cease to shine when they cease to reflect its immediate influence. Still I have carried away from that conversation, or rather oneversation for, as may be supposed, I was listening too eagerly to say much myself a valuable specimen of the man, in the shape of a brilliant pun. This is valuable, like other things, partly on account of its rarity, and there- fore very valuable, for he hardly ever condescended to that inferior form of jocoseness. 1 As for Sydney Smith, he was great in many ways, in repartee, in quotation, in easy banter, but his typical form of wit was a fanciful form. He fixed before you a scene or situation in some picturesque or original grotesqueness, and then 1 Though, when a pun is not merely a pun, but also flavoured with a spice of humour, I think better of it than Addison did, whose wit probably belonged to his pen rather than to his tongue. HIS QUOTATIONS 59 took your breath away by his ludicrous exaggerations. As for instance, when he lamented the successful in- trusion of the Methodists into ordinary life, and then compared their victims to the Puritans on the watch against Claverhouse and Dalziel. ' I shall live,' he said, ' to see four elderly gentlemen playing at long whist on the hills, with scouts on the look-out for dragoons.' Again, when a scandalised fop pointed out, with a grimace of disgust, a straw on the carpet of a drawing-room filled with people of fashion, thereby implying that some unworthy plebeian had driven to the door in a hackney coach, this, as we all know, was Sydney Smith's rejoinder: 'God bless my soul, do you care about that ? Why, I was at a literary soiree the other night, where the carpet was like a stubble field.' Two of his quotations occur to me on the spur of the moment. They were well known once, but have probably never reached the ears of the present genera- tion ; they are worth recording as excellent of their kind, and also, as thoroughly characteristic of the man. First comes the motto which he proposed to the Scotchmen around him when they established the i Edinburgh Review.' ' Tenui musam meditamur avena.' ' We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.' I am told that I ought to apologise for repeating a joke so familiar to many, but ' singula de nobis anni prtedantur euntes,' and it is not unlikely to have dropped into practical oblivion. The second was a wonderfully happy adaptation of a passage in Virgil to 60 HIS VIEW OF AMERICAN SLAVERY the question of American slavery. In talking over that subject with his friend Mr. Everett, Everett observed in a tone of tender self-pity, that we in England did not really understand the matter, and could not feel at our distance how impossible it was to associate with the negroes, they smelt so abominably. ' Ah,' re- torted Sydney Smith, without a moment's hesitation, 'At si non alium late jactasset odorem, civis erat' (' laurus erat,' is Virgil's expression) ; ' that, sir, may be a reason for not inviting him to a crowded evening party, but it is no reason for refusing them their free- dom.' To return, however, to his pun, all the more valuable as, I repeat, I never heard of his making another. 1 ' My friend Tate,' he began (his friend Tate was the highly distinguished master of a York- shire grammar school), ' sent his boy over to spend the day with my boy ; they set him on my boy's pony, and the pony ran away with him. Oh ho, cried I, that is what our lively neighbours call " tete-montee." ' ' My boy ' was the well-known gentleman, who, according to tradition, on being told by his father that he really must drop his horsey talk, and suit his conversation to the Bishop of London, destined to sit next him at dinner, showed his obedience by putting this question to the right reverend pontiff. ' Pray, Bishop, how 1 I have been since reminded, that when a young man of fashion, trying to uphold the reputation of a well-known nobleman accused of cheating at play exclaimed, ' Well, I don't care what they say, I have just left a card upon him.' 'Did you mark it, then?' replied Sydney Smith ; ' otherwise he will not take it as an honour.' The pun he shot out upon me was not of so truculent a character NEBUCPIADNEZZAR UP FROM GRASS 61 long do you think it took Nebuchadnezzar to get into condition after he came up from grass ? ' He was, I fear, not a very satisfactory son, and gave his father a good deal of uneasiness, but he seems to have in- herited a good share of that father's wit. The vener- able Lord Lansdowne, as men, I hope rightly, used to call that old nobleman, in some emergency, under- took to speak to him seriously, and point out how necessary it had become that he should drop gambling, change his manner of life, and turn out a respectable member of society. Young Smith listened in silence till his monitor had finished, and then jerked out this seemingly irrelevant inquiry. ' Lord Lansdowne, do you know how Jones, Lloyd, and Co. made all their money ? ' ' No,' replied Lord Lansdowne in some surprise. ' Then I will tell you,' explained Smith ; 'by minding their own business." 1 I am here tempted, under the appearance of Sydney Smith as a punster, to bring to life a pun of my own, which I thought, and still think, taking the circumstances into consideration, a good one of its kind. I, the only civilian, was dining at the Guards' mess in St. James's Street a few days after the town had been startled by a tremendous fire at the Tower. The Armoury, with its thousands of various weapons that had heaped themselves together within the last three hundred years, was entirely consumed. In fact, the whole range of buildings, the Record Office, the Barracks, the Church, everything that fire could reach, had run the greatest danger of being burnt to 62 SYDNEY SMITH'S DISAPPOINTMENT the ground. A stalwart Scotch sergeant- major, equally well versed in his duties and in his Bible, observed in the hearing of his officer, as he and his men were working away in the midst of that over- whelming rush of heat : ' Now I begin to understand how the flames of the fire slew Nebuchadnezzar's soldiers as they were carrying Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to the burning fiery furnace.' Upon this there ensued a good deal of what is now called chaff- ing, and a gallant captain remarked, ' I wonder on what principle the commander-in-chief at the Nebuchad- nezzar Horse Guards selected his officers for that very uncomfortable duty.' To which I replied at once, ' Why, what is more obvious ? He took the first upon the roster' This joke, coming from the one non-soldier of the party, was much, and though I say it of myself, deservedly applauded. But to return to Sydney Smith, of whom I saw a good deal afterwards at Baron Parke's and else- where in society. He was a very striking looking man, with a countenance indicating great intellectual power ; a countenance, indeed, which might have been said to wear a thoughtful, if not rather a stern expression in repose only that it never was in re- pose. His strength of mind, firmness of purpose, and great general ability, ought, no doubt, to have earned for him a bishopric from the Whigs, but un- luckily his wit lost it him. The chiefs of his party had not courage enough (more shame to them) to place so unquenchable a live firework upon the MY FIRST DERBY 63 episcopal bench, though nobody who knew him ever doubted that he would have made an excellent bishop. For he was thoroughly conscientious, knew men, and understood life in all its forms and varieties, and was rendered indulgent, both to high and low, by the softening influence of humour, as well as by the breadth and vigour of his mind. He also dis- tinguished himself as a preacher, but that as a quali- fication for a bishop, whose business it is to rule, guide, and organise, seems to me to be of secondary importance. My second year, 1824, was, in a certain sense, an epoch to me. On June 4, my uncle, Sir William Milner, took me to see my first Derby. After many years of ill luck, he found himself the owner of a very fine horse, called Osmond, who had at one time a great chance of carrying off the blue ribbon of the turf. But alas, some time before the race, what trainers call the distemper got hold of him, and though sufficiently recovered on the day to start, he could not even then be pronounced quite up to the mark ; he was, moreover, ridden about as ill as pos- sible. Furiously pressed up the hill (where he ought to have been tenderly handled) in order that he might catch his horses after a wretched get off, down the hill, just where his great stride and iron legs would have enabled him, in the language of the turf, to lose his antagonists, he was pulled double, that his jockey might atone for his first mistake by falling into a second and still worse one in the opposite direction, 64 SEARCH AFTER ME AT EPSOM something after the manner of Charles Lamb's sophistical excuse for invariably coming so late to his official duties, ' Yes, I do, but then I always go away so early.' The result was that up the final rise, where his stride told less and his recent illness more, Osmond was easily beaten by a colt called Cedric, and had to content himself with the second place. He was again thoroughly mismanaged for Doncaster, and turned into a complete roarer by being put into a damp stable at the beginning of the St. Leger week. And thus he passed away, like other horses and other men, into the large and ever-increasing class of the ' might have beens.' The Derby being over, I walked about the course, endeavouring to console myself for my disappointment, a disappoint- ment, by the way, involving the loss of four sove- reigns rather a severe blow to a fifth form boy by inspecting the humours of the festival. Now I was extremely short-sighted, it was true, still I knew what I was about, and had taken the bearings of my uncle's carriage with perfect accuracy, when suddenly a lugubrious voice fell upon my ear thus : ' Has anybody seen a young gentleman about fourteen in a blue jacket, white trousers? ' &c. I might have been caught, but ' me servavit Apollo ; ' under his divine impulse the terrible truth flashed upon me at once ; my nervous old aunt, thinking me, ME, an ETON FIFTH FORM BOY helpless and lost, had pressed into her service an unfortunate but thoroughly conscientious young man. In his benevolence he ['ACCIDENT TO ME IN 1827 65 undertook to find me, and kept on performing his duty nobly, though dismally, in the face of a pro- foundly indifferent universe. I ought, perhaps, to have thrown myself into his arms, but I did not ; on the contrary, I hid myself behind a carriage till he had passed by, and d d my old aunt with right good will. If I could have taken his likeness, I should have been glad to present mankind with the portrait, for the expression of his face was worth perpetuating. 'Melancholy had marked him for her own.' I cannot justify myself, I know, but still I felt a wicked satis- faction as I listened to his despondent cadences, and chuckled to hear ' Has any seen gentleman trousers ? ' &c. gradually dying away in the distance. Naturally enough, he did not return to his employer, so that I can only hope for him that his exceptional good faith and virtue, to which I can bear witness, was, according to the proverb, its own reward. During the summer holidays of 1827, I met with an accident which might well have been a fatal one. As, however, I escaped without any real injury, I should not have noticed it but for a psychological reason. In the September of that year, I was riding through Wheatley Park with an Eton friend, Dick Lumley, the present (no, now, alas, the late) Lord Scarborough. We rode from Sir William Cooke's house to see the St. Leger run for the St. Leger, I mean, won by Mr. Petre's Matilda a race which I afterwards described in verse, not without success. Two Eton boys on such an errand naturally began to 66 THOUGHT IN MOMENTS OF DANGER race with each other as soon as they could. I had been mounted upon a hot, hard-mouthed pony, who could not be stopped, when once in his gallop, under a hundred yards at least. Having taken the lead, instead of keeping my eyes before me, I continually looked back to watch Dick Lumley's progress, wide on the right. (He, of course, was doing his best to overtake me.) Then, happening to turn round, I saw with dismay a great oak across my path, with its boughs stretching away on both sides of my advance. What was to be done ? This question dashed through my mind 'Shall I throw myself off?' 'No,' darted up the answer, ' I will take my feet out of the stirrups, and give way to the blow the instant it comes upon me.' This, accordingly, I did, but had to wait for a period which seemed to me incompre- hensibly long, showing from what accuracy of obser- vation Shakespeare speaks when he tells us how Time 'crawls, trots, or gallops,' according to the circum- stances of each particular case. When the crisis arrived, I can say, without any doubt or hesitation, that I felt the rough touch of the bark across my upper lip before I felt the shock which threw me to the ground. The two impressions were perfectly distinct. This quickening and intensifying of the processes of thought and sensation struck me greatly at the time, and afterwards at the bar, whenever I heard counsel, in defending a prisoner, try to prove how confusion of thought and an overclouding of the perceptive facul- ties must be the necessary consecmences of excite- THE DONCASTER ST. LEGER OF 1827 67 ment and alarm, they did not convince me. I be- lieve, and always have believed, that in many cases the opposite results might safely be predicted. My tumble, in the end, amounted to nothing. I rose from the ground, little the worse, though Dick Lumley rode up, crying out in rather a reproachful tone, ' Why, I thought you were killed ! ' as if I had no business to get off so cheaply. He honestly rejoiced, I have no doubt, like the good-natured fellow he was, at my unexpected escape, but I fancied I could detect passing through his mind a momentary nicker of something like disappointment, that he had not to gallop back to the house and electrify its inmates with the melancholy tidings that I was lying a corpse under that ill-omened oak tree. However, on finding o me by no means a corpse, he made the best of it f helped me to catch my pony, and we then rode on, to take our places in the Doncaster stand, I with a lump on my upper lip as big as a pigeon's egg, but other- wise none the worse. I have always felt glad to have been able to go on my own way after what had happened, first, because ' The Doncaster St. Leger,' perhaps my most successful poem, would otherwise not have been written ; but secondly, and still more, because, had I been confined to the house, I should have missed one of the most interesting and remarkable races of the century. There is but one other, that I know of, fit to be brought into comparison with it the race for the Gold Cup at Richmond, in 1815, won by Filho da Puta. 68 DONG ASTER CUP EACE OF 1827 The Doncaster Cup race of 1827 was a race such as I had never seen before, and certainly shall never see again. The best horses of Great Britain met there to oppose each other ; they had come from every part of the kingdom to compete for that highly valued prize. There was Fleur de Lis, from North- umberland, till that day a practically invincible mare, seeing that she had never been truly and fairly beaten. There was Mr. Watt's famous Memnon, the winner of the St. Leger in 1825. There was Lord Scar- borough's Tarrare, who had been successful for the same stakes in 1826. After him came Longwaist, the best of the South Country racers, particularly over a long course. With him appeared Actaeon, the finest and stoutest representative of Scotland ; and Starch, the Irish champion. There was also Reviewer, a three-year-old of merit, and I rather believe a second three-year-old, but I cannot quite recollect ; besides the above, there was Lord Fitz- William's Mulatto, who succeeded in defeating these famous antagonists, one and all, in the memorable struggle I am about to describe. The Cup course at Doncaster, as must be well known to those who take an interest in such matters, is two miles and five furlongs in length. For this race, as was natural, Fleur de Lis stood out as first favourite, but Nelson, the jockey who had so often ridden her to victory, belonged of right to Lord Scarborough, the owner of Tarrare ; so that he was taken away from the mare and she had a strange rider put upon her back. DEFEAT OF FLEUR DE LIS 69 Being of a difficult temper she resented the intrud- ing hand and seat of this interloper. Accordingly, the moment the horses set off she ran away with him and came past the stand, for the first time, at least a dozen lengths in front of her rivals. The others fol- lowed in a body, all of them packed closely together, like a squadron of cavalry. Soon the pace grew so terrible that this close order could not be main- tained ; a hundred yards or so beyond the stand, the two three-year-olds stopped as if they had been shot ; a little further on the same thing happened to Starch, and then again to Tarrare. Each of them, with a surrounding of his constituents, formed a little black dot in the distance, and moved slowly on across the course, with wide spaces intervening between them, as they respectively walked home. At the Red House, Actaeon, without absolutely stand- ing still, dropped away from the leading horses, and. in a moment was half a distance in the rear. Thus, as they approached their goal only four out of the eight or nine competitors were still able to gallop. Fleur de Lis as yet held her place in front, but the desperate exertions she had made for the first two miles and a half, and the long struggle with her jockey, who had striven throughout to moderate the pace, exhausted her so much that Mulatto and Memnon were now running close at her heels, and her most sanguine adherents began to see that defeat was at hand. Still, when passed at the corner of the stand by Mulatto and Memnon, she would not yield 70 NOTEWORTHY ETON BOYS without a struggle, but collaring the latter on the post again made a dead heat with him for the second place ; Mulatto, on that occasion only, was too much for her, and won by about half a length. The two miles and five furlongs were accomplished, according to the watches of 1827, in four minutes, ten or eleven seconds. Taking the last of these two estimates as the correct one, the pace would be fast enough to puzzle any horse of the present day, if he tried to perform that distance at racing speed, a feat which his trainer is much too wise to let him attempt. Longwaist, the fourth horse, was some twenty lengths behind, outstridden and overpaced, but invincible in point of mettle and staying power. Altogether, the whole character of this race was unique, and I at any rate never saw so many good horses matched against one another with such a result. It is perhaps unadvisable to take leave of Eton without saying a word or two about some older worthies, technically my contemporaries, though practically, except as a lower boy and a fag, I had little or nothing to do with them. George o o Lewis, the well-known statesman and philosophical inquirer, boarded at my dame's. He was high up in the school when I first made my appearance at Mrs. Holt's ; I knew and admired him afterwards, but except by laying his breakfast things, and occa- sionally lighting his fire (offices which I performed exceptionally ill), I had little or no communica- GEORGE LEWIS 71 tion with him at that time. He was noted at Eton, and subsequently at Oxford, for strong good sense and great logical ability. Hence the positions he occupied, when older, in the Ministry and in the House of Commons, seemed only his due. At Eton he figured as a quiet, good-natured boy, or rather young man, for he never was much of a boy, more given to books than to sports, though manly and straightforward in character, so that he was respected as well as liked. He passed on from Eton to Christ Church, where he increased his reputation and ob- tained high honours, but as he had taken his degree before I went up to the university, we were not even nominally together at Oxford, as we had been at Eton. A certain number of years after this, whilst head of the Poor Law Board, he sent me into York- shire and Northumberland to make some inquiries about the labour of women and children in those counties. I did my best for him, and forwarded iny report to the proper quarter. On my return to town, however, when the question of remuneration arose, a slight difference of opinion started up between me and the Treasury officials. This difference of opinion remains unsettled, theoretically at least, to the pre- sent hour. Fifty pounds was my fee for five weeks' hardish work ; from this fifty pounds, the high- minded economists of Downing Street deducted the income tax. I did not think this a magnificent pro- ceeding, still I had no valid objection to make, and acquiesced as a matter of course. But there was yet 72 THE MISFORTUNE OF HIS DEATH another question behind ; forty pounds or so had been paid by me for gigs, hotel bills, and other sundries, and when the acting functionary handed me over a cheque from Government in discharge of this sum, he proposed once more to bring his income tax deduction into play. ' No,' said I, ' that cannot be ; to purchase these things, I advanced money to you, money of rny own, which had already paid its share of the income tax. You must not saddle me with that impost twice over.' They did not absolutely refuse to discuss the matter from this point of view, but quibbled and procrastinated, till after having attacked the Treasury three times, without effecting a lodgment, I raised the siege. I found indeed that I should probably lose more in cabs and shoe leather than the capital sum under discussion ; I therefore shook the dust off my feet at them, happy to secure, instead of the sum due to me, a grievance for life at the cost of a few shillings. If George Lewis had taken care of himself he might possibly have been alive now, 1 but he was of a sceptical turn of mind, and even disbelieved in what is the centre of truth to so many, his own country doctor. Hence, an illness, I believe easily curable at first, rapidly got worse, and no one attended to it, till too late. And so he died prematurely. His loss has been a very great one, and we feel it more and more every day, for he stands out as one of those honest and independent Liberals, whose political fibre was 1 This was written some years ago. WILLIAM SELWYN 73 not relaxed by his constantly feeding himself upon sentimental platitudes. He really loved his native land better than his party or his own personal inte- rests, so that whenever a duty to England showed itself before him, he might safely have been depended upon. He also belonged to that class of statesmen who grow wiser with advancing years, instead of allowing passions and fancies, proper enough com- panions for one's youth, to inflame themselves more and more as life goes on, like chariot wheels which get hot with driving ; at the same time, from a Liberal point of view, he was not open to the imputation of Toryism, or of indifference to the welfare of the people (a charge brought by the ochlocrats at present in power, though now not for the moment in office, against us Tories. In my opinion most unjustly). Besides George Lewis, there are several such men in my eye of whom it may reasonably be said, that had they been spared to us, they would not have followed their leader like sheep to the edge of the precipice, bleating forth impotent murmurs under their breath in society, or at any rate to private friends, but never daring to think or act for themselves in any public capacity. 1 Another of the brilliant boys, a long way above me in the school, was William Selwyn. Though far superior as a scholar and a Cambridge Don to his brother George, he had I suppose less force of cha- 1 This, again, does not apply in the same degree to the present state of parties. 74 CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH racter, and less moral energy. At any rate he did not attain to the same pre-eminence among his con- temporaries afterwards, but remained rather as he had begun, a brilliant schoolboy, to the end of his life. Mr. Brinsley Richards, in his ' Seven Years at Eton,' has observed, that the Selwyns (two or three of them at least) were the most distinguished Etonians of our time. Their father before them, by the way, was senior medallist at Cambridge, and this may have secured to them, either under his immediate tuition or at least under his skilled superintendence, better early training and a luckier start than the majority of their contemporaries could attain to. Of the four brothers, the third, Selwyn minimus in Eton phrase- ology, was by many considered the Coryphaeus of the family, but he died too young to make that claim good. It was William, the eldest, who carried every- thing before him at Cambridge. He flourished as senior classic, senior medallist, university scholar, and took a high place among the wranglers beside. He was also, in addition to these honours, the winner of numerous poetical prizes. If he could not claim, like Alderson and Kaye, to be senior wrangler and senior medallist at once, his successful Greek and Latin poems, as evidences of fine literary taste, may be set against their mathematical degrees, and after all, even in that department of study, he came out sixth wrangler, after, I may add with a note of admira- tion, having been brought up at Eton!! His great rival at the university was Christopher Wordsworth, PRIZE ODE TO IPHIGENIA 75 the late Bishop of Lincoln. He came from Winches- ter, being, I think, two years younger than Selwyn. There was a contest between them for the Latin ode, subject Iphigenia ; in this contest Wordsworth gained the victory. I presume, however, that the judges were not unanimous, as the university authorities requested Selwyn to publish his unsuccessful com- position. If I had been consulted, I should, as I generally do, have agreed with the minority, though I admit, of course, that I may have been prejudiced against the non-Etonian. W T ordsworth gives us, in very good alcaics, a straightforward account of all that happened at Troy. When the leaders of the Danaans basely stained their altars with the life-blood of Iphianassa. To Selwyn (a more poetical conception I think), there suggested itself a choral dirge of the virgin bridesmaids who had accompanied their beloved mis- tress from Mycenae to her imaginary nuptials with Achilles. I do not recollect the two odes in detail, so that I cannot institute a formal comparison between them, but I think this stanza of Selwyn's finer than anything to be found in his antagonist's composition : Quantus erit dolor, Quum pro jocosis funera nuptiis, Moestaeque custodem favillse Pro domina referemus urnam. William Selwyn became Dean of something or other, and held, I think, one of the divinity professorships at Cambridge for a time, but his progress through 76 FREDERICK TENNYSON life was noiseless, and somewhat obscure, at least for one who had started in so brilliant a manner. Of the late Bishop of Lincoln, his rival, I should not pro- nounce obscurity to be the weak point. His dispute with the Squarson, as Samuel Wilberforce would have called him, Mr. King, about racehorses, and with the dissenting minister about the inscription on a tombstone, brought his character under rather too fierce a light. Frederick Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson's elder brother, was another remarkable Eton boy among my senior contemporaries. Like most of the Tenny- sons, though full of genius, his genius had a touch of eccentricity about it. Of his poetical talent you could not say that it belonged to anybody but himself; still it seems to me more akin, naturally more akin, to that of the Laureate, in spirit and in form, than the talent of their intermediate brother Charles ; the graceful and finished compositions of the latter writer reminding one of no other person in his own family or out of it. Frederick Tennyson for many years lived abroad, and finally married an Italian lady, so that he rather separated himself from England and English literature, in which had he chosen to work with a steady purpose, he would no doubt have acquired distinction. At Eton he was rather a silent solitary boy, not always in perfect harmony with Keate. After one of the long vaca- tions, he did not make his appearance until three or four days beyond the appointed time. Being in the HTS GREEK ODE 77 sixth form, with all sixth form privileges, and being neither an unsteady nor a dissipated lad, Keate waited with a patience unusual for him, till Tennyson thought fit to offer up his formal excuse for hav- ing stayed away, but no excuse came. Keate, boiling over with suppressed rage, at length summoned the delinquent to explain ; but no explanation was forth- coming. Tennyson listened with silent indifference to all that the doctor said. It was not till Keate wound up his harangue as follows ' Go home, sir, go home to your dame's ; sit down and write to your father at once, and tell him that I insist on his for- warding to me a written excuse for your non-appear- ance,' that Tennyson put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a dirty letter, which had been lurking there since his return, and presented the document to the peppery little doctor. Keate stood speechless with wrath, and it required a certain interval before he found himself able to stutter forth his fragmentary utterance ' And showing such a temper too.' He was also, I think, pretty constantly in hot water at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he did not try very steadily for honours, though he gained Brown's medal for a very fine Greek ode on the Pyramids, the last cadence of which has stayed in my ears ever since : o\\v^eva.v yap a ^Oajv e^aTroXetrat. 1 Wellesley, the late Dean of Windsor, was also held in high honour as a distinguished Etonian at that period. Though a good deal older than myself, 1 When they perish, the whole world around will perish too. 78 THE LATE DEAN OF WINDSOR he was nearer to me than Tennyson and the others I have just mentioned. I had, therefore, more inter- course with him than with them. We were both members of the Debating Society together, though only for a short time ; whenever he did speak there, he spoke very well, but his special gift, a gift derived, I suppose, from his uncle Lord Wellesley, was a per- fect mastery of Latin versification. I think at the time of his leaving Eton he ranked higher as to that accomplishment than any one else ; the opinion of the school on this point had been pretty well summed up in this dictum, which, uttered by some individual, was generally accepted all round. ' Wellesley says that George Selwyn is our best Latin verse writer, George Selwyn on the other hand picks out Wellesley, and it is George Selwyn who is right.' Like Tenny- son and Selwyn, Wellesley passed on to Cambridge, but I do not think he troubled himself to read for honours there. As one uncle, Lord Wellesley, had been famous among Oxonians, and the great Duke of Wellington afterwards became Chancellor of Oxford, I do not know why the parents of this particular nephew of theirs preferred the other university. Among other memorable figures of that day there was Alexander Leith, a man of magnificent presence and immense physical strength. A cousin of his, Sir Henry Fletcher, I think, had a statue made from him after he reached manhood, in the cha- racter of the modern Hercules. Barnard and Hand, succeeded by Dupuis, Sievewright, and others, were MONSIEUR HAMON 79 our principal cricketers ; Leith, mentioned above, Stanniforth, and Seale, the most famous oarsmen of my time. I heard from my fencing-master, M. Hamon, who seemed to be well acquainted with him, that Leith, by continually overdoing himself in the pursuit of athletic supremacy, and striving to maintain his bodily frame at the highest point of physical training for an unusually long period, brought on inflammation of the joints, and died com- paratively young. Nothing; more occurs to me at this moment o in connection with Eton. As, however, I have mentioned Hamon's name, I may as well record a curious story which he told me while I practised quart and tierce under his directions. Hamon was a very agreeable Frenchman, who understood his business perfectly well, but he had a touch of the Gascon about him, so I content myself with giving his version of the tale, and say nothing either one way or the other as to its exactness. One morning he showed me a very handsome ring, I forget whether it was an emerald or an amethyst, and went on thus : This ring has just been presented to me under very singular circumstances. Some little time back a gentleman, not an Englishman, called upon me in rather an anxious temper. He had involved himself in a serious quarrel with some other foreigner a quarrel so serious that a duel to end only with the death of one or other of them had become inevit- able. A fortnight had been allowed to the duellists 80 HOW HE GOT HIS RING for the purpose of arranging their affairs and provid- ing for their families. Now his adversary had the reputation of being a skilled swordsman, whilst he was totally uninstructed in the use of arms. This being the case, he had recourse to Hamon in the hope of getting some instruction during the intervening fortnight. ' Teach you to fence in a fortnight,' cried out Hamon : ' that is all nonsense. I could do nothing 7 O in that time except embarrassing, and practically extinguishing, your natural strength and activity by subjecting you to formal rales of which you would be the servant and not the master. You must set about learning some irregular and anomalous attack with the foils under my guidance ; you must work at this hour after hour and day after day. It will of course be very bad fencing, but if, as is pos- sible, it takes your opponent, accustomed to the re- cognised system, by surprise, it will, unless I am mistaken, be quite good enough to kill him.' Lessons were given from this point of view, and the result turned out just as Hamon had prophesied. The ignoramus ran the artist through the body, and showed his gratitude to his instructor by presenting him with the ring I have spoken of. The best fencers of Hamon' s school were Lord Dalmeny (Lord Rosebery's father) and Maynard of the Blues, who would have become Lord Maynard, I believe, had he not died before his father. With Lord Dalmeny, who was more than a match for me, I used to fence very often, and hardly ever managed to touch LORD DALMENY'S BLACK EYE 81 him, but in boxing, having longer arms, I made a better fight of it. On one unlucky occasion he rushed in just as I hit out with my left, and lo and behold he acquired a severe black eye, of that peculiar kind known to professional pugilists as a ' mouse.' Now, as he had to attend the Queen's ball that night, there was a certain awkwardness in this disfigurement. On con- sulting experts, however, all difficulties vanished immediately. We were conducted to the shop of a neighbouring virtuoso, whose business consisted in covering over black eyes with a delicate flesh-coloured pigment (a branch of high art which I had never heard of till then, but possessing, as I then found out, its regular professors, and at least as well established as the guild of Quatorziemes at Paris). Dalmeny submitted to the operation, and appeared afterwards in her Majesty's presence literally 'as fresh as paint.' A much more painful impression attached itself to that fencing-room during the Crimean War. It happened that the Coldstream Guards had sud- denly taken a fancy for athletic exercises of the kind, and a dozen high-spirited handsome young gentle- men were laughing and working in my company for some months under Hamon's superintendence ; but the war suddenly broke out, and when I took up the paper recording the battle of Inkerman, I found that the Coldstream Gmards, after escaping almost un- scathed at the battle of the Alma, was the regiment that suffered the most on that terrible 5th of Novem- ber. One familiar name after another rose up before 82 INKERMAN my eyes, and I laid down the paper with the mourn- ful consciousness that the members of ' that bright band,' all but one, were numbered with the dead. It was long before I could harden my heart sufficiently to go back to that haunted room. I have had to undergo many afflictions in life, but a sadder impres- sion than this has seldom fallen upon me. 83 CHAPTER V. Leaving Eton -Go to a private tutor's My fellow pupils Meet one of them afterwards at Rome He constitutes himself my guide Works of art at Rome The Minerva Medica The dying Gladiator The Faun of Praxiteles Sir Charles Napier Augustus* villa The confessionals at St. Peter's. AT Christmas 1827, I left Eton, not for good, for I had much better have remained another year pro- fiting by Keate's fine scholarship, in the sixth form, but at any rate for ever. I then went to a private tutor's, the rector of Greetham in Rutlandshire. Mr. Baker, the rector, was a very good man, but only of moderate ability and average acquirements. My fel- low pupils were agreeable, kind-hearted lads, and by no means stupid. Still I found myself in a somewhat duller atmosphere than that of the Eton Debating Society, with its various intellectual excitements. I got nothing very stimulating out of my tutor's method of instruction ; the consequence was that I learnt but little, unlearnt a good deal of what I had acquired at Eton, my power of writing Latin verses well, especially. That rusted over a good deal ; in short, I came away from the place a good deal stupider in myself than I went there, and by hurry- ing from Eton as I did, missed, as I said before, my best chance of improvement under Keate in the sixth 84 MEETING SANSUM AT ROME form. I have often been told since, that the last year under him was of greater value to a boy of any cleverness than all the earlier years put together, and therefore I have always regretted losing that opportunity when it lay open to me. Of my com- panions at Greetham Rectory, I never met but one again, a man called Sansum. In the year 1848 I went to Rome for a fortnight and ran up against him in the colonnade of St. Peter's. It was a fortunate meeting for me, as Sansum, having married a foreigner, had continued to live mainly abroad, since we were first fellow Etonians, and secondly, fellow pupils of the Rev. Mr. Baker. He knew his Rome thoroughly, from corner to corner, and kindly devoted himself to show- ing me everything that was worth looking at, in the most effective manner and in the shortest possible time. As the cicerone from whom he rescued me, in describing the cardinal virtues, had identified Justice with the virtue of Architecture, because she happened to hold up a pair of compasses, it was, perhaps, just as well that 1 fell into the hands of a more capable guide. I must confess, that with Rome, taken as a whole, I was somewhat disap- pointed. The Rome of Cicero, of Horace, of Virgil, of Livy, the only Rome with which we are familiar, has so entirely disappeared, that we feel as it were in an unknown place when we find ourselves among the late Emperors predominating there. This, of course, aoes not apply to the art galleries, nor yet to the THE MINERVA MEDICA 85 inside of St. Peter's, where you discover what is left of the real ancient Rome to a much greater extent than among her nominal ruins. Returning to the galleries, I have never yet seen any work of art which pro- duced so powerful an impression upon my mind as the Minerva Medica, a marble statue of the goddess, magnificent in point of expression, and clothed with a solemn overshadowing divinity. The statue I mean is one armed with a spear, and having a helmet on her head. The Apollo Belvidere might perhaps have affected me even more powerfully, but then I had been familiarised with him before in all sizes and in every kind of material, whereas the Minerva was a new presence, filling me with wonder as well as with delight. The other pieces of sculpture in the Vatican, which I remember as having had specially pointed out to me, were first the bust of Demosthenes, and also the Faun of Praxiteles. There is a legend attached to the Faun, lending it an interest indepen- dent of its artistic merits. It seems that Praxiteles, besides being a pure-blooded Greek, was also some- thing of a Bohemian, and had promised one of those ' she companions,' then in fashion at Athens, with whom he had entangled himself, that he would make her a present of any statue she chose to fix upon, out of those that were collected in his studio. The lady, after the manner of such ladies, was anxious not to lose this opportunity of enriching herself, but she was at the same time doubtful of her own critical 86 THE DYING GLADIATOR acumen. Accordingly, one evening whilst he was at supper with her alone, a slave, carefully bribed beforehand, rushed in with the melancholy news, that the buildings occupied by Praxiteles for his works were in flames. He jumped up at once, making hastily for the door, and crying, ' For God's sake, help me to save my Faun.' Upon this the brazen- faced hussy burst out laughing, and stopped his progress with these words : ' Oh, you need not be alarmed, all your statues are quite safe ; only you will be good enough, according to your promise, to hand that Faun over to me.' The Dying Gladiator, as he is called, is beautifully executed, but the barbaric type of face lessened my admiration a little. On showing, however, a small bronze copy of it to a child of two years old, he was immediately filled with the deepest sympathy and began stroking the figure, murmuring as he did so, ' Poor boy, poor boy, oh, poor boy ! ' a manner of re- cognising the skill shown by the artist in depicting pain, languor, distress, and despair, which, had he been still alive, and among us, must, I think, have touched him as a compliment worth having. The funniest thing during our fortnight's companionship was that, whether we were drinking from the foun- tain of Egeria, or contemplating the tomb of Henry IX. (Cardinal York) in St. Peter's, or standing at the base of Pompey's statue, where, before us, Cassar himself had stood and fallen, the one thing that interested Sansum, the one historical fact he cared to SIR CHARLES NAPIER 87 recall and discuss, was the great fight in the Eton playing-fields between Stephen Denison and Latham the Colleger. Nay, what seemed to me funnier still, many years afterwards, when I was dining with General Sir Charles Napier, who had been a friend of my father's, in the course of conversation I hap- pened to mention this fact laughingly, as I am now doing, and immediately the battle-loving blood of the Napiers began to tingle in the veins of my host. He became full of excitement, rubbed his hands eagerly together, gnashed his teeth, and would not be satisfied until I had reported to him, round after round, all the details, as far as I could remember them, of that famous schoolboy combat. As I have digressed into Rome, I may as well, before taking up my Oxford career, mention a curious incident which happened to my youngest sister, Selina Ridgway, whilst she was spending a winter there. A picnic organised itself to go and overlook excavations in some place where, according to an old tradition, a villa of Augustus's had been burnt to the ground. Her eyes were keen as mine are defective, and she caught sight, among the rubbish thrown up into the air by the spades at work, of a curious looking pebble. Mark- ing where it fell, she went and picked it up, carried it with her to London, and showing it some time afterwards at Garrard's, asked the foreman what it was. He examined it carefully, and replied, ' Well, we need not now discuss what it is, what it wax must have been, 1 should say, a very valuable sardonyx, but you or THE CONFESSIONALS AT ST. PETER'S somebody else must have been poking it between the bars of the grate.' A remarkable confirmation of the legend she had heard whilst on the spot. What impressed me most deeply at Rome, more even than the Catacombs, was a thing I had never heard of before. I mean the sublime arrogance and uncom- promising self-assertion of the Catholic Church, as shown by the confessionals in St. Peter's. They embrace the whole circuit of the Cathedral, each of them being inscribed with its own words of gui- dance, ' Pro lingua Ethiopica,' ' Pro lingua Arabica,' ' Pro lingua Abyssinica,' ' Pro lingua Sinensi,' ' Pro lingua Japonica,' &c. &c. It is impossible to imagine a bolder or grander method of snubbing all men with- out her pale, and though the Rev. Grimes Wapshot, pace the late Bishop of Lincoln, might denounce it as Popish impudence, I could not help admiring the power and sweep of thought of which it gave evi- dence, particularly when, on inquiring whether these pretensions were real pretensions, or only put for- ward to gull and deceive people, I was assured that they were perfectly real, and that if you went to confess in the tongue of Ethiopia, though you might have to wait an hour or two before the proper ecclesiastic came, come he would. I can recall nothing more at present about my Roman visit, I therefore fall back upon that part of my life from which I diverged. 8'J CHAPTER VI. Pass on to Christ Church New friends Political changes of opinion since then Whether I was prevented from changing by circum- stances How far Lord Beaconsfield has influenced Mr. Gladstone My tutor, Mr. Williams Tiglath Pileser and Sardanapalus Lord Bolingbroke The 'Electra' of Sophocles Mr. Jebb Frede- rick Rogers, since Lord Blachford Mr. Oldham missing the Greek Iambic prize at Oriel Mr. Gladstone's abstinence from the Debating Society at Oriel. AFTER the Christmas vacation of 1829, I went up to Christ Church. There I found old Eton friends and sooner or later made others. The present Sir Thomas Acland, then the highest of Tories, now a Home-ruler, and marching shoulder to shoulder, I suppose, with the Parnellites, under the orders of Mr. Herbert Gladstone (who seems at present to fill in England something like the place occupied by Themistocles' little boy at Athens), Sidney Herbert, Joseph Anstice, Henry Seymer, Robert Phillimore, Wynell Mayow, and others. I was not happy at Oxford as I had been at Eton. A sense of re- sponsibility weighed upon me ; my father was not at all well off, and I was putting him to an expense he could ill afford. On the other hand I had a natural talent for idleness, and tried in vain to satisfy my conscience by a continual determination to begin on the very next Monday a career imblam- 90 POLITICAL CHANGES AMONG MY FRIENDS able by men or gods. But the Mondays came and went without much change, and my self-reproaches increased instead of diminishing ; whereas at Eton, on the other hand, I took things as I found them, was quite content if I did a good copy of verses, and had no remorse for anything except a false quantity. I have just noticed above Sir Thomas Acland's passage from Toryism to advanced Parnellism ; the same statement would very likely also hold good of others among my most distinguished contemporaries. These changes I have always attributed to the per- sonal influence exercised over them, through his great talents and powerful character, by Mr. Glad- stone, and I have often wondered whether, if circum- stances had not shunted me into the Civil Service, leaving me as it were high and dry, I should not have accompanied them in their transit. Had I been one of Mr. Gladstone's parliamentary satellites, this might have been the case. No, I think now I can say that it would not. From another point of view, though perhaps the Caucuses may consider me impertinent, if not blas- phemous, for saying so, I doubt whether Mr. Glad- stone's present position is not in some degree an accidental one. We may all of us recollect the Irish soldiers who marched up to, and then passed a stan- dard erected by William III. Some regiments moved to the right hand, others to the left, the right hand division taking service under Louis XIV., the other division submitting to the English Government. On MR. GLADSTONE AND LORD BEACOXSFIELD 91 their first separation they were but an inch or two apart, but the distance gradually widened between them till they, or their representatives, met face to face at Fontenoy. So, after the death of Sir Robert Peel, Lord Beaconsfield's presence established, like that standard, a line of demarcation between the two portions of the Tory party. Had it not been for his being fixed across their path, I think Mr. Gladstone, Herbert, and the other Peelites would have joined Lord Derby instead of becoming Whigs. And if so, as Mr. Gladstone must always be moving on in one direction or another, he would have ' kept to the left,' and then the gulf must have yawned, not between Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury, but between Mr. Gladstone and the Caucus leaders, Schnadhorst, Illmgworth, and Co. Nor would Mr. Gladstone's logic have been in fault (when is it?) or failed to justify abundantly the course he had chosen. My tutor at Christ Church was the Rev. John Williams. In those days you matriculated without any previous examination, giving in your adhesion to the thirty-nine articles, and starting off at once from that orthodox position into complete university mem- bership. It happened, however, to be raining hard when I called upon Mr. Williams that I might be put through the necessary forms of admission, and he began to examine me, simply by way of passing the time. I construed as well as I could a passage from Herodotus, and then a chapter of Livy. After this the Bible was brought down from its shelf, and he 92 TIGLATH PILESER asked me if I could tell him the Scripture name of that well-known Assyrian king, Sardanapalus. As to that highly important fact, I was absolutely in the dark, but I recollected Marshal Souvaroff s contempt for any one who replied to a question, ' Je ne sais pas,' whatever that question might be, and the praise bestowed by him on the Swiss gentleman who told him that just at that moment there were forty thousand, three hundred and twenty-nine fishes and a half in the Lake of Zurich instead of professing a natural ignorance on the subject. ' Ha, voila un homme ; ce n'est pas un de ces messieurs " Je ne sais pas." I felt, moreover, that the whole business was a farce, and any answer I might give not of the smallest importance, sol conjured up the most vigo- rous and mouth-filling title that occurred to me and voted without hesitation for Tiglath Pileser. Now it appears that Tiglath Pileser, who, for aught I knew, might have lived five hundred years before Sardanapalus, or five hundred after him, has been identified with Arbaces, the rebel who usurped his throne after putting him to death. Oddly enough, the other day I met with a passage from Boling- broke's Letters on History : ' The Scripture takes no notice of any Assyrian kingdom till just before pro- fane history makes that Empire to end, then we hear of Phul (the real Simon Pure) and of Tiglath Pileser, who was, perhaps, the same person? Had I happened to be aware that I possessed so plausible a supporter, I should have greatly strengthened my case ; even as THE 'ELECTRA' OF SOPHOCLES 93. it was, the arrow that I had shot forth at a venture was so nearly hitting the bull's-eye, that my tutor doubted for a moment whether I was not a learned young man, with original views of his own about Scriptural chronology, and with solid reasons in the rear to support those views. Accordingly, he took down one book after another, and hunted his authori- ties up like a bloodhound ; he then turned round upon me, with an appealing air : ' Tiglath Pileser, Tiglath Pileser are you quite sure ? ' To this I had nothing to say, but, ' No, I am not quite sure, but such is my supposition.' He went to look at his library shelves again, and finally decided that I was wrong, and that the gentleman in question was known to the Jews as Pul, or Phul, and not as Tiglath Pileser. This decision I accepted with bland acquiescence, admitting that I must have miscalculated the number of years. Whether Bolingbroke would have surrendered with as good a grace, I cannot say. In the meantime, the rain had stopped, and we went off to the Vice Chancellor's together, in perfect agree- ment about the Scriptural name of Sardanapalus. Taking leave of Tiglath Pileser, I shall refer to a lec- ture given by the same Mr. Williams on the ' Electra ' of Sophocles, partly because what happened then was rather amusing, but mainly because I wish to claim for myself priority over Mr. Jebb, who pointed out the other day that the description of Orestes' imagi- nary death at the Pythian games was probably founded upon a real event. Accidents on our own 94 THE CHARIOT SMASH racecourses are common enough, but if Ormonde and his compeers were harnessed to Greek dog-carts, the sweep round Tattenham corner would become a serious business indeed. Unless my recollections of Pindar fail me, on one occasion, when a Sicilian Fred Archer steered the car of Hiero (or Thrasybulus was it ? I forget which), through ruin and confusion to victory, forty chariots are said to have been upset and broken to pieces. Whether Sophocles was referring to this particular catastrophe is open to question ; I should say not, as his field, to adopt our own Turf phrase, was a smaller one, and Pindar flourished a good while before him, but that he had some such cata- strophe before his mind when he put his description upon the stage, I have never doubted for a moment ; and this belief of mine I always proclaimed at Christ Church to those who took an interest in the matter. My reasons for assuming the general smash, as re- corded by Sophocles, to have actually taken place, are first, that by recalling to his audience a terrible but picturesque accident, which had recently im- pressed itself upon them at one of the great national festivals, he gives an emphasis and reality to his verses which otherwise might have been wanting to them, and secondly, that as Cyrene was not in existence until long after the epoch of Orestes, it would have been ridiculous to introduce Cyrenaic chariots into a drama of his time, unless it were that, as Sophocles wished to put before the spectators what they had seen for themselves, Cyrene could not well be left out. I SET HERMANN AND ELMSLEY RIGHT 95 In his day the wiry little barbs from Africa had, I fancy, a great advantage over their Thessalian and Spartan antagonists, and therefore they play an im- portant part in the Electra narrative, just as they did, I feel sure, in the collision from which that narrative derived itself. What then amused me and my fellow lecturers, was that I brought my racing experience to bear upon the construing of a sentence, and defied Hermann and Elmsley because, in spite of their scholarship, they had blundered about a matter of which they knew nothing. Orestes was in the rear vcrrfpas e^v ircoXovs, as they interpret it, because his horses were inferior. I said to my tutor, ' No, sir, that is not right ; it means holding his horses in hand behind. Don't you see a line or two further on ro> re'Xei TT'KTTW fyepwv " putting his confidence in the end " in other words what we call making a waiting race of it.' ' But, Mr. Doyle,' was the answer, ' that is not in accordance with Hermann's views.' ' I can't help that, sir.' came from me in reply ; ' Her- mann, I am sure, was never either at Doncaster or at Newmarket.' The undergraduates around me laughed out, and there was nothing left for my tutor to do but to laugh also and concede the point in dispute. Mr. Gladstone was a year before me in standing, which was unlucky for me in this respect, that we had not to attend the same lectures, and were there- fore always engaged in different books, in different 96 MR. GLADSTONE'S FELLOW STUDENTS pupil-rooms, at the same time. With each other's formal studies, therefore, we had little or nothing to do. My recollection is that he and Frederick Rogers of Oriel, the present Lord Blachford, worked together at classics, and that he read his mathematics for the most part in company with Henry Penison, a well- known Christ Church man, not the Bishop of Salisbury by any means, as Mr. Brinsley Richards in his book about Eton carelessly asserts, but a brother of his, younger by about ten years. His career, one of high promise, was cut short by a terrible accident in Australia. Being thrown from his horse, he all but broke his neck, and although he survived this accident for a good many years, he became paralysed, rendered unfit for any active pursuit, and had, we may say, to leave all hope behind him. This unfor- tunate result was the more vividly brought before his friends inasmuch as it was merely a physical result. Henry Denison was still Henry Denison, his fine intellect remaining unimpaired to the last, so that he himself, and his admirers, were continually re- minded of all that had been lost. His misfortunes indeed brought out the innate nobleness of a character which greatly endeared him to his friends, inspiring them with the deepest sympathy and the most affectionate respect. He had been, in his first youth, a sort of Admirable Crichton among his contempo- raries ; a first-rate rider, a first-rate shot, an excel- lent cricketer, and absolutely the first amateur tennis player of his day. To these bodily gifts he added HENRY DENISON 97 thorough scholarship and great general powers of mind, and yet, flung down as he was from the pinnacle where he had been standing, he faced the melancholy reverse with a courageous cheerfulness and magnanimity, which beforehand I should have thought impossible. There was no complaint uttered, no weakness or peevishness shown ; he accepted what was inevitable with manly frankness, and sought by cultivating pleasant intercourse with his friends, and following up such intellectual pursuits as were still open to him, to ' deceive the burden of life,' arid set an example to others of patience and self-control more easily admired than followed. As for Mr. Gladstone, in the earlier part of his undergraduateship he read steadily, and did not exert himself to shine as a speaker. In point of fact, he did not attempt to distinguish himself in the De- bating Society till he had pretty well made sure of his distinction in the Schools. Now the life of a reading man at Oxford, whether his name be Brown, Jones, or Gladstone, is monotonous enough, and Mr. Gladstone's habits at first were much the same as those of other men with the like objects in view. I used often to walk with him in the afternoon, but I never recollect riding or boating in his company, and I believe that he was seldom diverted from his normal constitutional, between two and five, along one of the Oxford roads. A slip of the tongue which he once made at lecture in this part of his career is amusing enough, but there is nothing characteristic of him II 98 THE SENIOR CENSOR nbout it, the same thing might have happened to any- one else. Tn the ' Trachiniae ' of Sophocles, the Centaur Nessus is called 6 Gyp (the monster), and why Mr. Gladstone could not construe it so is not worth inquiring into ; he meant to put it into English as the Centaur, but he said by mistake, Censor, that is, he called his tutor and lecturer, old Vowler Short, a monster, in the face of his class. However, old Short, the senior censor, was a good-humoured elderly gentleman, and only laughed louder than anyone else. Frederick Rogers (whom I have named as Gladstone's fellow-student) was a quiet and decorous undergraduate, with a great sense of humour underlying that decorum, a gift which, but for his fine abilities and general good character, might have landed him now and then in a scrape. One particular instance of this I recollect, and perhaps my readers may like to have it recorded. The Dons, both at Oxford and Cambridge, were" careless in ascertaining, or rather in not ascertaining, what prize subjects had been set of late at the sister university. Macau! ay's prize poem of Pompeii, for instance, was made considerable use of, in the -year 1826 unless I am mistaken, by a certain Mr. Hawker who gained the Newdigate, on this same subject, of that year. Besides gipsying away a good many lines, he quietly conveyed Macaulay's notes, totidem verbis, into his manuscript. The Newdigate in question, it may be said, was composed quite as much by the help of Mercury, who besides being a literary deity, ORIEL IAMBIC PRIZE 99 is also the god of thieves, as under the guardianship of Apollo. After this, the incident I am referring to took place. A passage from ' King John ' was selected at Oriel, to be turned into Greek Iambics. The same, or nearly the same passage, had been chosen for the Porson prize at Cambridge a certain time before. The famous Greek scholar, Dr Kennedy, carried off that prize. Rogers, who had been suc- cessful at Oriel in a former contest, was precluded by our Oxford rules from competing again ; he was therefore perfectly at leisure to assist the under- graduate conspiracy then set on foot. Some lines, either at the end or the beginning, because they had not formed a pai t of Mr. Kennedy's exercise, Rogers, urged by the mischievous Oriel party, I believe agreed to furnish. A sham document was then submitted to the fellows under the name of an honest straight- forward undergraduate (Mr. Oldham) who could have written Chinese verses in imitation of Litaipe, about as easily as Greek Iambics in imitation of Sophocles or Euripides. Hardinge, a clever, eccentric, but somewhat unmanageable man (he was afterwards Judo;e Advocate, and made a bundle of the unfortu- O O nate 'Alabama' question), took an interest in the plot, but refused to accept any active share in it, because he foresaw, with prophetic instinct, that the moment the plan was discovered, the Dons, in their irritation, would pounce upon him as the probable ringleader. Nothing daunted by this refusal, the Oriel nihilists, with Rogers as their instrument, if he were their a -2 100 THE FELLOWS OF ORIEL instrument, proceeded to carry the scheme into effect. Days passed on, and the culprits watched in silent en- joyment suppressed symptoms of an agitation that was beginning to ferment among their tutors. At length the critical moment arrived, and the fellows of Oriel were seen marching in a solemn phalanx towards the common room. The bell was rung, and, ' Send Mr. Oldham here,' the mandate issued. Oldham arrived, quite ignorant why they wanted him. With the ut- most austerity of manner, the head official began thus : 1 Mr. Oldham, we had intended awarding to you the prize for Greek Iambics ' (here Oldham opened his eyes in bewildered astonishment), ' but to our horror we have discovered that you have been appropriating in the most shameless manner verses of Mr. Kennedy's, which obtained the Porson prize a few years ago, and therefore,' &c. &c. ' I, sir,' shouted out the innocent Oldham, ' why, I could not write a Greek Iambic to save my life! I don't know what you are talking about.' ' Mr. Oldham,' they replied, ' we beg you ten thousand pardons for an unjust suspicion. We ought to have known better; go in peace,' or whatever is the nineteenth century equivalent for that ancient term of courteous dismissal. Exit Oldham, but as he went out, the bell sounded again, and the words, ' Send Mr. Hardinge here ' followed him into the Quadrangle. Hardinge, then summoned, came at once, ' walking delicately,' like Agag, though not exactly in Agag's frame of mind. ' Mr. Hardinge/ was thundered in his ears, ' are you one of the HARDINGE'S TRIUMPH 101 persons who have imposed upon the college authori- ties in this audacious manner? ' ' Well, sir,' was the exulting reply, ' I have been told that something of the kind was being meditated, but as I had a fixed belief that you would throw the blame upon me if you could, I declined having anything to do with it.' After this double rebuff, no further steps were taken to unearth the delinquents. If any suspicion fell upon Rogers, justly or unjustly, the fellows, with whom he was a great favourite, probably thought it wiser ' not to disturb Camarina.' The most adventurous thing I ever did at Oxford in Mr. Gladstone's company, if it really were as ad- venturous as I find he still asserts it to have been, was when I allowed myself to be taken to dissenting chapels. We were rewarded by hearing Chalmers preach on two occasions, and Rowland Hill at another time. I say this was my most adventurous exploit, because Mr. Gladstone thought, and still thinks, I believe, that we should have been rusticated had we been found out. I didn't and don't. In earlier days, it may be admitted, the authorities would have shown us no mercy. They would have treated us, I dare say, as Bos well's ' good creatures ' were treated, Boswell's good creatures being certain under- graduate Methodists who were expelled from St. Mary's Hall for holding their peculiar services there. Everybody knows Johnson's answer to the plea of extenuation put forward on their behalf by his aide- de-camp. ' Good creatures, sir, yes I dare say they 102 CHALMERS may be, in their proper place. A cow, sir, is a very good creature in a field, but we turn her out of the garden.' Still, whatever might have happened in 1770, they could scarcely have been so relentless in 1830, and my belief is that when we had explained to the Dean of Christ Church how we had merely gone out of curiosity, without any intention of leav- ing or even of criticising the Church of England, he would have let us off with a reprimand at worst. Mr. Gladstone seems to have delighted in these escapades, as I find a letter from him in Hope Scott's life, stating that he again defied the university rules in his company, and conducted him more than once into what they both would afterwards have con- sidered the Tartarus of dissent. I suppose he is sure of his facts, though I confess a doubt crossed my mind, when I first read the letter in question, whether he was not confusing me, then his intimate friend ; with Hope Scott, who was not an intimate friend, or indeed a friend at all, till 1836. Of Chalmers' oratorical powers, it would be a waste of time to speak. His was a voice that filled the world, the English- speaking world at any rate, from end to end in its day, although if, as they say, he was one of those apt to confound Augustine of Hippo with our first Canterbury Archbishop, rhetoric rather than theo- logical learning must have been his strong point. Rowland Hill, though less uniformly eloquent, was even more original as a preacher, and from his great age, brilliant wit, and charmingly eccentric character, was, ROWLAND HILL'S REPARTEES 103 in my opinion at least, as interesting a personage. In Trevelyan's ' Life of Macaulay,' Lord Carlisle, quoting Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, has preserved some of his best known gibes, particularly that famous answer to a dissenting donkey who remonstrated with him for coming to chapel (he was then past eighty) in his private brougham. ' Is this,' inquired the long-eared Methodist in question, ' the way in which our Lord himself used to attend divine worship? ' Rowland Hill (the story is well known, so much so, indeed, that if I did not think it amusing enough to bear any number of repetitions, I should hardly be justified in repeating it), read this precious epistle from the pulpit, admitting with an air of ingenuous penitence that our Saviour had not been in the habit of using a brougham. ' But,' added he, ' to atone for my indiscretion, if the writer of this letter will come into the vestry, after service next Sunday, bringing along with him a saddle and a bridle, I will ride him home.' But though he cites this and other witticisms well worth preserving, the Bishop, to judge from the conversation reported by Lord Carlisle, was igno- rant of what I have always considered the subtlest and most exquisite of all Rowland Hill's repartees, with less of broad fun about it, no doubt, than the one I have just narrated, but superior to it in quality and fineness of grain. He used to go about to various dissenting chapels, without troubling himself much as to minute differences of creed, and on one particular Sunday he found himself among strangers. 104 OUR TABLE The ordinary worship came to an end, and the Sacra- ment was about to be administered. Rowland Hill presented himself as a communicant, but was inter- rupted by one of the elders of the church, who asked him if he belonged to their special persuasion. ' Well,' was the answer, ' I am a sincere Christian, and accept all the great Christian doctrines with abso- lute faith, but as to being exactly one of you, I do not suppose that I am.' 'In that case,' was the reply, ' I am afraid that we cannot admit you to our table. 1 1 Oh, indeed,' retorted Rowland Hill, 'I beg you ten thousand pardons, I would not intrude for the world; but then you see, I thought it was the Lord's table. ,' If the functionary thus hit and wounded had a skin less thick than that of a rhinoceros, I think he would have sympathised for a long time with the well-known line of Virgil's Hseret later! lethalis arundo. 105 CHAPTER VII. Cardinal Manning as a member of the Oxford Debating Society Hia great influence over his contemporaries His views on the subject of Barilla His fate as an explainer contrasted with that of Adam His speech on the question whether Shelley or Byron were the greater poets What really took place at and after that debate Mr. Gladstone takes Manning's place as leader of the Union Mr. Lowe's first appearance Mr. Gladstone's Reform speech in 186G Shakspeare a member of the Stupid Party Mr. Gladstone's Oxford distinctions How we competed unsuccessfully with a schoolboy for the Ireland Scholarship. BEFORE Mr. Gladstone paid much attention to the Debating Society, the leader of our house was Man- ning (the present Cardinal and Archbishop). Be- sides possessing great natural talents, he was, I think, having been at first intended for a different career, rather older than his average contemporaries. He would always have been in the ascendant, but his greater maturity, as might have been expected, in- creased that ascendancy. He possessed a fine pre- sence, and his delivery was effective. These qualities, joined to an impressive and somewhat imposing manner, enabled him to speak as one having autho- rity, and drew into his orbit a certain number of satellites who revolved round him, and looked up to him, with as much reverence as if he had been the actual Pope, instead of only an embryo Cardinal. 100 THE BARILLA DUTY Their innocent adulation led him into his most obvious weakness, an assumption of omniscience which now and then overshot itself. There was a story illustrative of this floating about Oxford in my time, for the accuracy of which I by no means vouch, but it amused me and others when we heard it. In the debate on the first Reform Bill, Mr. Gladstone, whilst making that famous speech against it which introduced him to the old Duke of Newcastle and brought him into Parliament, as, to adopt Macaulay's words, ' the one hope of the stern and unbending Tories,' attacked the Whigs in a part of his oration, perhaps not with perfect fairness, for their administrative incapacity. They had been out of office for more than twenty years, and were, as might have been anticipated, somewhat raw and unhandy at the technical office work that came before them. Mr. Gladstone, however, at that period was not disposed to make much allowance for Liberal weaknesses and vacillations. He therefore enumerated a lot of trumpery failures in succession, always driving the imputation home with this galling question : If they cannot say the the whole and nothing but the how dare they thrust upon the people of England as if it were a chapter out of their infallible A\ r hig Khoran the Bill the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill ? One of these reiterated formulas, was the barilla duty, the whole barilla duty, and nothing but the barilla duty in the fixing of which some hitch, I .suppose, had taken place. Stephen Denison, then a ADAM ON THE FIXED STARS 107 young undergraduate of Balliol, and one of Manning's most devoted vassals, puzzled himself, and small blame to him, over this expression new and strange to a boy. Accordingly, in all humbleness, he sought out his pope and asked him for an explanation of the unknown word. ' Dear me,' replied Manning (this at least is the tradition), 'not know what barilla means, I will explain it to you at once. You see, in com- merce ' (now Manning had been intended for a com- mercial career) ' there are two methods of proceeding. At one time you load your ship with a particular com- modity, such as tea, wine, or tobacco, at other times you select a variety of articles suitable to the port of destination. And in the language of trade we denomi- nate this latter operation " barilla." ' Stephen Dcnison, thus carefully instructed, went his way, but in a week or so he found out that barilla meant burnt seaweed or its equivalent, and his faith in Manning's infallibility was no longer the same. This Oxford legend may be a mere fable, but even if a fable, it shows where his Oxford contemporaries thought that the weak point in the future Cardinal's armour might be looked for. If the story were not invented, Manning, in that his mistake was found out, must be considered less lucky as an explainer than the father of mankind under similar circumstances. Eve, as anybody may see who will turn to the ' Paradise Lost,' consults Adam as to the nature of the fixed stars, and receives from him an authoritative exposi- tion of that phenomenon, about as near the truth as the 108 BYRON AND SHELLEY barilla history mentioned above. Eve, I presume, unlike Stephen Denison, was not undeceived in this world. Still, though Adam kept his reputation for wisdom unimpaired, his knowledge of astronomy was not of much value, and but that Raphael, the affable archangel, when he came to dinner was too much of a gentleman to peach, he might have fared as ill with his wife as Manning did with his adherent. On another occasion Manning took a part, and a part highly creditable to himself, in a memorable debate on the comparative poetical merits of Byron and Shelley. This discussion, which I, under Cambridge influences, brought forward, was attended by three distinguished members of the Cambridge Union, Arthur Hallam, Richard Milnes, and Sunderland. They came over from the sister university by what was then called the Pluck coach. I do not know that I can give a better account of this debate than by reproducing some pages of a lecture on Wordsworth delivered by me at Oxford. ' Many of the young may wonder that I make no mention of Shelley or of Keats. The fact is, that neither of these two poets interfered with, or helped to overshadow, Wordsworth at all. The premature death of Keats, indeed, was perhaps the greatest blow of its kind, the severest blighting of her poetical bloom, that England ever sustained, but till after he had passed away the world at large knew nothing about him. ' In order that I may prove to you how Shelley QUOTATION FROM A LECTURE 109 also was unknown and unregarded, I am tempted and for this I hope you will pardon me to embark upon a digression. ' Some three-and-forty years ago, I brought for- ward a motion in the Oxford Union that Shelley was a greater poet than Byron. The debate, after the ordinary fashion of non-political debates, would pro- bably have been a languid one ; but friends of mine at Cambridge (the motion, I may say, was an echo of Cambridge thought and feeling) took the matter up, and appeared suddenly on the scene of action. The first of these friends was Arthur Hallam, the Marcellus of our time. Of him I need not speak again, I need not tell you how, as combining perfect sweetness of nature with most extraordinary intellectual gifts, he left upon the minds of all who knew him an impres- sion never to be effaced. I need not do this, I say, for has not his monumentum cere perennius been raised in all men's sight by another and a nobler hand ? ' The second was also a very remarkable man- Mr. Sunderland. By common consent he was an orator unequalled in promise, and at that moment rapidly expanding into unequalled power. His fate, alas ! was even more appalling than that of Arthur Hallam. Just as he was issuing forth into life, all the stormy hopes all the struggling energies all the tumultuous aspirations of his impassioned soul w r ere suddenly arrested by the grasp of some myste- rious brain disease. For forty years he remained dumb torpid and motionless, recalling to our minds 110 SUNDERLAND that mighty image, suggesting itself to the poet among the glaciers of Switzerland, of A cataract Frozen in an instant. ' The third member of the trio happily survives [alas, not now] Lord Houghton known to all men alike for his brilliant talents and for the sympathetic tenderness of his nature ; for the helping hand eagerly stretched out to raise up and guide any struggling way- farer of literature, who happens to falter or faint upon the road. The first two found no difficulty in obtaining permission to come here. But Lord Houghton, though at least as great an enthusiast for Shelley as either of the other two, was unluckily at the moment, as I was told, a gated enthusiast. In order to fulfil his mission he had to escape from the iron vigilance of Trinity, triumphant but breathless, without an exeat, and also without a hat. However, here he was ; here the}' were ; and the benches of the Union, instead of being scantily dotted with indifferent occupants, swarmed and murmured like a hive of bees. Lord Houghton, some of you may perhaps remember, has described the discussion that ensued. So also has his Grace, or rather his Eminence, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. But the recollections both of the one and of the other are hazy and incorrect. Lord Houghton. for instance, has picturesquely introduced Mr. Gladstone who really had very little to do with the business, except that he came afterwards to supper a feat that might have been accomplished with equal LORD HOUGHTON 111 success by a man of much inferior genius. The Cardinal fancies that Hallam and Milnes spoke before Sunderland, who then, according to him, came in like Jupiter Tonans, and electrified his hearers. This was not so. Sunderland, a politician and not a man of letters, imagined, perhaps, that Arthur Hallam's greater knowledge of the subject and profounder philosophical faculty might take the wind out of his sails. At any rate, he spoke first, and spoke with great effect, though scarcely, I believe, with the same fire that he often put forth on more congenial sub- jects. Then followed Hallam, with equal if not superior force. After him jumped up a gentleman from Oriel, who, in a bluff and burly manner, began to pooh-pooh the pretensions of Shelley, as to which, I need hardly say, he was absolutely ignorant ; when, all at once, he caught sight of Mr. Richard Milnes, since Lord Houghton, sitting in his place. He caught sight of him, as of one still competent to speak in answer still competent to make a pounce, and tear him limb from limb. The two former orators, then, were the mere velites, the skirmishers of the expedi- tion, the foraging parties in advance of the real army ; \vhilst Lord Houghton represented in his own per- son the triarii of the tenth legion, the Macedonian phalanx, the Old Guard of Napoleon, irresistible in attack and inexorable to resistance. In the presence of that terrible antagonist the gentleman from Oriel lost heart and faltered. He changed his front at once, and went over to the enemy like the Saxons at Leipsic, 112 MANNING'S REPLY in the very middle of the action, recording as a de- serter his vote for Shelley, to the amazement and amusement of his hearers. Lord Houghton then stood up, and showed consummate skill as an advocate. In order to prove Shelley's gradual approximation out of his boyish atheism to the principles of Christian truth, he read, with great taste and feeling, that fine chorus from the " Hellas," one of Shelley's latest works, the chorus I mean containing this stanza : A power from the unknown God, A Promethean conqueror came ; Like a triumphal path, he trod The thorns of death and shame. Anxious, however, perhaps over-anxious, to inculcate, or as somebody once phrased it, to tread the truth into the ignorant and unthinking multitude before him, he passed somewhat lightly over the fact that the chorus in question is a dramatic chorus, and put by the poet into the mouths of captive Christian women. After him there was silence in the Union for several minutes, and then Mr. Manning of Balliol, perhaps at that particular time the actual leader of our debates, with great propriety rose. He felt that it would be a somewhat clownish and inhospitable proceeding if these bold guests went away un- challenged if their shields were not touched with the arms of courtesy by some daring Oxford cavalier. He spoke well, exceedingly well, but the framework of his argument the backbone of his oration- amounted just to this : Byron is a great poet, we have THE OXFORD DEBATING SOCIETY 113 all of us read Byron ; but (and this is my justifica- tion for introducing the topic at all) if Shelley had been a great poet, we should have read him also ; but we none of us have done so. Therefore Shelley is not a great poet a fortiori he is not so great a poet as Byron. In hanc sententiam, an immense majority of the Union went pedibus : the debate was over, and we all of us, including Mr. Gladstone, adjourned, as I have said, to supper.' As soon as Mr. Gladstone dawned upon the Union, which was not, as I have said, in the earlier days of his undergraduateship, he took the first place. How far this pre-eminence was gained by eclipsing his pre- decessor Manning, and how far because Manning, whose degree time was approaching, withdrew from our debates, to fall back upon his books, I do not precisely remember. My impression, at any rate, is that the two were not in full activity very long to- gether. Gladstone and Gaskell became the leading Christ Church speakers. Henry Wilberforce and Hardinge, taking a tone somewhat different from theirs, upheld the reputation of Oriel. Henry Wil- berforce in particular exhibited an easy grace and facility, such as the Wilberforces, one and all, seem to have inherited from their distinguished father. Part of this inheritance was the wonderful Wilber- force voice, so remarkable for its melody and power. Nor was the speaking confined to the regular debates. Private matters, e.g., whether we should take in the l Sporting Magazine ' or not, were argued i 114 MR. GLADSTONE'S ANTI-REFORM SPEECH about with great earnestness, and what was said on those occasions showed now and then a life and reality which our formal harangues often wanted. Still the great oratorical event of my time was, as I have stated just now, Mr. Gladstone's speech against the first Reform Bill ; I may add that the debate as a whole, being the outgrowth of genuine passion, and an excitement shared by all, was better than the average. Most of the speakers rose more or less above their ordinary level, but when Mr. Gladstone sat down, we all of us felt that an epoch in our lives had occurred. It certainly was the finest speech of his that I ever heard. I must, however, explain, that this is not his fault, but mine. Once or twice, when I have tried to get into the House of Commons in the hope of listening to him at his best, I have failed to secure a seat, and the only time when I was so far successful, I threw away my chance by my own folly. I was sitting under the gallery expecting to hear his reply on the second reading of the Reform Bill in 1866. Everybody anticipated that this would be one of his greatest efforts, and so it turned out to be, but Jasper More, the then member for Shrop- shire, induced me to leave my place and dine with him in the coffee-room. He persuaded me to do this, by solemnly pledging himself that he could manage matters with the door-keeper so that I might return when 1 chose. Had I reflected for a moment I must have known that he was talking nonsense, but I felt hungry and somewhat knocked up, after sitting there JASPER MORE IN 1800 MR. LOWE 115 motionless for hours, and in a moment of weakness I yielded to the voice of the tempter. On going back after dinner, I found, of course, that Mr. More had made a promise impossible for him to fulfil. Indeed he would have found it almost as easy to annihilate time and space, and to procure for me a comfortable chair in the Roman Senate House whilst Cicero was impeaching Catiline. The result was that I had to kick my heels in the lobby till the division was over, favouring Jasper More all the while with a good deal of doubtful language under my breath. To return to our Oxford debate, another incident happened in the course of it, happened to me at least, which left me for a moment hardly knowing whether I stood upon my head or my heels. For a certain number of Thursdays, the day when our debates were held, I had watched, affectionately and respectfully, an old gentleman with snow-white hair, who seemed to have become a regular attendant. I have already told those who care to know, that I am as blind as a bat, so that any thing, or any person, a few yards off, is most imperfectly discerned. I therefore pictured to myself that this unknown personage was an enthusiastic veteran, donatus jam rude, who sat watching the rising generation, to see if a flash of lightning here and there were visible among us. Week after week I kept saying to myself, there is that dear old boy again. How nice of him to come */ O and investigate for himself what we are worth. I i 2 116 MY ASTONISHMENT wish I knew who he is. This information was soon to be vouchsafed to me. Whilst the Reform debate was going on, some earnest young Tory had de- nounced Lord Grey and his colleagues, as a vile crew of traitors. He had hardly finished, when up jumped my patriarch (it was the summer term, with the boat races in full force), and in a bold and vigorous tone of voice took him to task thus : ' The honourable gentleman has called his Majesty's ministers a crew. We accept the omen, a crew they are ; and with Lord Grey for stroke, Lord Brougham for steerer, and the whole people of England hallooing on the banks, I can tell the honourable gentleman they are pretty sure of winning their race.' Down he sat, loudly and deservedly applauded. But I I fell into a state of bewilderment that passes description. I thought my respected Methuselah had suddenly gone mad. On recovering myself, however, I made inquiries, and soon discovered that I had been revering as an ancient sage the famous white-headed boy, Bob Lowe, now flourishing as Lord Sherbrooke. Pie after- wards held his place till I left Oxford as one of the most effective of our young speakers. But in spite of Mr. Lowe, his Majesty's ministers, so far as we were concerned, did not win their race. We con- demned them by a large majority, and I for one, if the thing were to be done over again, should vote against them now with as much zeal as Mr. Gladstone and I voted against them then, and I should expect Lord Sherbrooke to vote with me instead of with THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 117 Mr. Gladstone, seeing that he has grown wiser as well as older. I wish I could feel that this progress, as life goes on, was common to all men especially to all statesmen. That day, besides being interest- ing to us, was also an important day for England. The effect produced by the great speech was imme- diately made known at Clumber by Lord Lincoln, and that stout unbending Tory, the old Duke of Newcastle, at once exerted himself to bring Mr. Glad- stone into Parliament as member for Newark. To us, as we look back, it appears that if fate, according to a phrase now in fashion, ever condescends to be ironical, she must have amused herself a good deal in watching the progress of, and in listening to the speeches delivered at that debate, and the subsequent election. We only hope, as lovers of Eton, on behalf of the founder of the Newcastle scholarship, that if the spirit of his Grace, wherever his abode now is, still takes an interest in British politics, when he sees how he has been acting upon them of late, through his carefully selected nominee, consola- tion may be found somewhere, and that, at the worst, the worthy old Tory is not exposed to the scorching sarcasms of the ' first Whig ' on account of that parliamentary misadventure. As Shakspeare remarks, ' There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will,' and the truth of this maxim conies home to us with great force, when we reflect tli.it but for this bigoted old duke, Mr. Glad- stone, instead of becoming in his youth a parliamen- 118 PRO-REFORM SPEECH IN 1866 tary orator and a statesman, would undoubtedly have been called to the Bar. Had this event taken place, the untiring energy given by him to everything he takes in hand, coupled with his splendid talents, must have ensured him a signal success. The proba- bility is, that he would not have entered the House till he entered it as Solicitor-General, in which case, I venture to think that the lessons of life learnt, and the knowledge of human nature acquired by a bar- rister in large practice, would not have been without value to him, when he became, as no doubt in the end he would have become, a Cabinet Minister and leader of men. I have said how constantly I regret not having heard his famous Reform speech in 1866, not only because it was universally accepted as one of his greatest oratorical efforts, but also because, when- ever I read it over in Hansard, some portions thereof seem to me as if they had been given to the world roughly and imperfectly. For instance, when Mr. Disraeli, who had himself passed over from extreme Radicalism into the High Tory camp, attacks Mr. Gladstone most unfairly, because he also had left his youthful opinions behind him, the defence, however invulnerable at the time, reads oddly now. There were, I cannot doubt, arguments, elucidations, and delicacies of explanation in the actual speech, that have effervesced away since, and are not now to be found in the printed volume. Indeed Mr. Gladstone's apology, as it stands in the book, is simply an WHY MR. GLADSTONE CEASED TO BE A TORY 119 apology for having been unfortunately well educated. 1 He confesses to have been once a Tory, but excuses himself because he had been brought up under the influence of Canning (the greatest practical statesman of the day), and still more under the influence cf Burke, still revered as our largest and wisest political thinker. Surely he, a thorough scholar and student, might have added that his mind had been nourished up to maturity by a multitude of great writers, that he had mastered Thucydides, Aristotle, Plato, and others, all well-known critics of democracy. From the manner in which he speaks of these influences, one would suppose that they had produced within him a sort of intellectual and moral blood poison- ing, requiring a long course of liberal altera- tives, before its mischief could be eradicated from the system. As to my views, I am a pessimist, and think every one who meddles with statesmanship would do well to begin, by admitting that all the forms and varieties of government are bad, because they all represent, and must represent, human nature, a combination full of weaknesses, follies, and faults. If you pull down a monarchy, the evils that cling to monarchy may cease to exist, if you obliterate an aristocracy, oppressive and insolent habits of life may perish with it, if you confiscate property, and trample down ancient rights, the harsh con- 1 The same twist of his intellect seems to have reproduced itself just now as every one not his vassal knows and regrets. 120 STATE OF ENGLAND trasts between wealth and poverty may trouble us no more ; but do you suppose that the new society as.it replaces the old will not also represent human nature ? represent it indeed by a more uneducated and more ignorant subdivision of the whole, and bring along with it fresh devilries devilries if we may trust history, or, hi the absence of history common sense, seven times worse than those which you have just cast out. You cannot have a perfect govern- ment till we men are perfection, and whenever that happens, whether there is a government or no govern- ment, will not signify a button. The first object of a government ought to be the maintenance of a national life, and the preservation of one's place in the world. This, under the old constitution, a consti- tution not without its vices, but yet able to unite freedom with energy and authority after a fashion once admired, we were able to do. Is it certain that in a muddle like our present chaos, still more when the whole direction of the country belongs to a short- sighted, ignorant multitude, enmeshed in their own immediate interests, and hardly knowing what a foreign countrv means, we should once more be able o / * to hold our own, as we held it of old, against the terrible presence of a Napoleon's genius and power ? Is this a matter of no importance, or is it the only consequence of the coming changes that we have to fear ? Far from it. we can learn from Shakspeare, if we like, what an unchecked and unbridled democracy means. The lines I am about to quote read to me SIIAKSPEARE A SOUND TORY 121 like a prophecy gloomily foretelling how the nine- teenth century in England is about to end. Degree being vizarded, The unworthiest shows as fairly iii the mask, (Shakspeare apparently would not have given his adhesion to the Ballot), The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office and custom, in all line of order. . . . . 0, when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder of all high designs, The enterprise is sick ! How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, The primogenitive and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place ? Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows ! Each thing meets In mere oppugnancy ; The bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores And make a sop of all this solid globe. Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong (Between whose endless jar justice resides), Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite, And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And, last, eat up himself. .... Mr. Bright is never tired of telling us that we con- stitute the stupid party (perhaps under existing circumstances these invectives will drop into a mo- mentary abeyance). It is some consolation to know 122 THE GUILLOTINE OF THE FUTURE that Shakspeare also belonged to it. I think we might fairly claim Homer too, but of that Mr. Glad- stone, the modern high-priest of the great Hellenic poet, will be able to judge better than I can. Of course it may be said by the Brights and Chamber- lains, that they accept Shakspeare' s verses as a whole, only that ' degree ' must be taught from this day forward to begin better, viz. at the honourable members for Birmingham. In this case it is pretty clear that they will have to answer a question sure to rise up from beneath, why is your levelling to stop when it comes down to you, instead, of descending step by step till it reaches us? Such a question was asked, as we know, of the Girondins, by the Re- volutionary mob of Paris, and it finally answered itself thus : ' Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonne, et cin- quante-trois autres, a la guillotine.' To return to Mr. Gladstone's Oxford career. In 1831, he took a double first class, and would easily have obtained a fellow- ship in any College where fellowships depended upon a competitive examination. He did not, I believe, make any attempt of the kind, perhaps he thought that his acceptance of a Christ Church studentship stood in the way, and that it would have seemed un- grateful to his own College, if he left it after that, though for a more lucrative holding elsewhere. Not that a Christ Church studentship was usually thus looked upon. Henry Denison stood for All Souls, and Bruce for Merton, but Mr. Gladstone likely enough might be more sensitive and scrupulous over-sensi- THE IRELAND SCHOLARSHIP 123 tive and over- scrupulous, I think, on that point than other men. I have said previously that we Etonians were not fitted by our training to contend on equal terms for scholarships with Winchester or Shrews- bury opponents ; but Mr. Gladstone, I must admit, very nearly put me in the wrong on that point, when he tied with Scott, the finest scholar of our day, for the second place in the Ireland of 1829. Scott, I should fancy, was like one of those racehorses who perform extraordinary feats at home, but when tried at Newmarket or Doncaster, do not quite run up to their form. There can be no question (his after work proves this), that the reputation he brought up to Oxford of having been the best man from Shrews- bury, since Dr. Kennedy left it for Cambridge, was well deserved. And yet somehow he was three times beaten for the Ireland scholarship, before he finally acquired it in his fourth year. On this occasion, when Mr. Gladstone divided the second honours with him, they were both defeated by a boy named Brancker, sent up from Scott's old school to take as it were a preliminary canter, but he went down again at the end of the week to execute his second verses, with victory in his pocket. To him this unexpected triumph was a delusion and a snare ; I suppose it turned his head, and led him to idle away his time afterwards, for he did nothing else, and only secured a second class when he went up for his degree ; a very poor con- clusion after so brilliant a start. To Scott this was 124 MR. GLADSTONE'S DEGREE a great disappointment, as, reasonably enough, he had made quite sure of winning. There was a long, diffi- cult, and corrupt chorus in the ' Eumenides,' which upset us one and all, and it was supposed that Brancker had been carefully put through it before- hand, in obedience to a happy instinct on the part of his head-master. We had first to translate it into English, and then into Latin Alcaics. About the latter operation there was no difficulty at all, each of us wrote a magnificent copy of lyrics, but the translating it into English was quite another matter. Herein, both Scott and Mr. Gladstone failed as signally as I did. I myself do not think that sort of paper a fair one to set. Examiners have a right to test your accuracy and acuteness with hard Greek, but not with Greek corrupted into gibberish by careless or stupid transcribers. The boy who happens to be familiar with it, and who knows what Bentley and Person and Herman have said, and what conjectural emendations they may have suggested, obtains an unfair advantage. In the Schools afterwards, Mr. Gladstone's classi- cal first was about the best that had been gained for many years, not so much from superior scholarship in the narrower sense of the w r ord (though even in that respect there was no fault to be found with him), as from his philosophical and historical know- ledge, and, if I may pick up a phrase out of our modern conversation, his general excellence all round. The only mistake, as far as I know, made by UNIVERSITY SERMONS 125 him in his viva voce examination, to which I listened most attentively, was one that I was sure to detect. The examiner, perhaps a Yorkshireman like myself, asked him to name the finest horses brought over from Asia by Xerxes when he invaded Europe. He replied, plausibly enough, but quite wrongly, that they were Arabians (the Arabs were all mounted on camels), instead of those matchless white Cilician coursers, who ran clean away from their Thessalian antagonists, supposed to be of the finest breed in Greece. Mr. Gladstone had perhaps ac- cepted Bolingbroke's view of history, that it is philosophy teaching by examples, and not a dry register of useless anecdotes, and believed that such a query belonged to Bolingbroke's class of idle and irrelevant inquiries. This may or may not be so. As a lover of the turf, I think that if Crassus, for in- stance, had been led to reflect by that passage in Herodotus, how an irregular cavalry mounted on fleet Eastern horses was likely to act in its native desert, he might have saved his Roman army from being hopelessly cut to pieces in the sand wastes of Parthia. Still, at the worst, this trivial mistake only brought out into greater relief, as it were, the width and accuracy of his general knowledge. The only other time during our undergraduate days that, to borrow a metaphor from the cricket field, I scored off Mr. Gladstone, was a victory in quite another direc- tion. He used rather to mount guard over my religious observances, and habitually marched me off 126 DULL SERMPNS. on Sundays after luncheon to the University sermon at 2 o'clock. Now I have not the gift of snoring comfortably under a dull preacher ; instead of a narcotic, he acts on my nerves as an irritant ; but with Mr. Gladstone the case was otherwise. One afternoon I looked up and discovered, not without a glow of triumph, that although the reverend gentle- man above us had not yet arrived at his ' Thirdly,' my mentor was sleeping the sleep of the just. ' Ho ! ho ! ' said I to myself, ' no more 2 o'clock sermons for me.' Accordingly, on the very next occasion when he came to carry me off, my answer was ready. ' No, thank you, not to-day ; I can sleep just as well in my arm-chair here as at St. Mary's.' The great man was discomfited, and retired shaking his head, but he acknowleged his defeat by troubling me no more in that matter. 127 CHAPTER VIII. Catholic Emancipation Albany Fonblanque's saying about it many years afterwards The Tory Cassandras right in their prophecies as to Catholic Emancipation, Parliamentary Reform, and Free Trade Readings away from Oxford with Mr. Patch His extra- ordinary acquirements My visit to IVtr. Gladstone in Kincardine- shire Great natural powers of Mr. John Gladstone, his father Pursuit of archery Dunnottar Castle Hope Scott His Life by Mr. Ornsby Cardinal Newman Hope Scott's bloodhound Other incidents belonging to Natural History observed by me. IT may not be out of place here to remark that in 1829, one of our undergraduate years, the first great Liberal measure, I mean Catholic emancipation, was carried into effect. Mr. Gladstone and I (most of us indeed), as worshippers of Canning, were zea- lous pro-Catholics, and felt rejoiced that this act of justice had (however tardily and awkwardly) been accomplished whilst we were still young and full of enthusiasm ; but yet but yet if we look back at the joyous anticipations heralding its advent, and con- trast them with the actual results, there is room for grave disappointment. I recollect, many years after 1829, walking away from a dinner with Albany Fonblanque (who certainly cannot be accused of Tory proclivities), when he broke out suddenly, 'It is a galling thing to have to acknowledge to one's self, that in the matter of Catholic emancipation we 128 ALBANY FONBLANQUE were quite wrong, and George III. and all the damned fools were perfectly right/ Now at the house where we had been dining the claret was good, still with due respect to the proverb, ' In vino veritas,' he probably did not mean all that he said, but some of it he certainly did. I was led to recall his remark the other day, and indeed to carry it somewhat further, as I lighted on one of those instances of shallow self-conceit cha- racteristic of the empty minded politicians, who fill their bellies with the East wind of Liberal platitudes, not giving to the important subjects about which they talk, as parrots talk, one moment of real human thought- The gentleman to whom I refer is the author of a somewhat tedious ' Life of Sir Robert Walpole,' and in discussing that statesman's project of establishing an Excise, he thinks it necessary to break forth into a general outcry against the Tories. He points out that in Walpole's time ' the Tory Cassandras ' indulged themselves in the same absurd and unmeaning apprehensions about the proposed Excise plan, as they have since done about Catholic emancipation, Reform, free trade, and the like. In the first place it is worth while to notice the ' curiosa infelicitas ' of the writer's phrase. He seems to have forgotten, if he ever knew, that the ill-omened pre- dictions of Cassandra, though they were invariably dis- believed iu, turned out nevertheless to be invariably true, and I may add that the Tory Cassandras against whom he lifts up his voice have inherited, more or less, TORY CASSANDRAS 129 this melancholy gift from their Trojan forerunner. To begin with Catholic emancipation ; it was well, no doubt, and even if not well, it was probably inevit- able, that some such measure should pass, but it was carried through Parliament by the wrong people, too late, at an unlucky moment, and after an unlucky fashion, so that there were great drawbacks, entirely overlooked by its advocates, of whom I was one, but on the other hand, distinctly foreseen and foretold by its opponents. Those who voted in its favour believed, or affected to believe, that all religious enmity and rancour would very soon drop away out of life ; that men, now on equal terms, would teach themselves as good citizens to differ without bitter- ness, and never stop to ask whether such a one went to church or to chapel. On looking back to the debates, we find that the great Irish orator, Lord Plunket, when he pressed the measure upon the House of Lords, ridiculed the idea that anything done to relieve the Roman Catholics could tend to the disestablishment of the Irish Church. ' If that were proved,' he went on to say, ' he would resist the measure as strongly as any noble lord on the opposite benches.' It was Lord Lyndhurst, lead- ing on the Tories, who replied, 'Not so. The aggres- sive character of Rome (for which I am not blaming her) can never be extinguished, it is part of her nature ; and every concession we make will be mainly valued by her, as a step towards recovering that lost supremacy which neither persecution nor temptation K 130 CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION will ever induce her to forego.' Towards this faith Albany Fonblanque, philosophical Radical though he might be, had to veer round ; and we read in Hope Scott's Life how, when Mr. Gladstone abolished the Irish Church, that immense and unlocked for con- cession was contemptuously flung back in his face, by the dearest friend he had in the world, with the chilling remark, that ' until he had refixed that Church in the position held by her before the Reformation, he would have done nothing and earned no gratitude.' We can therefore hardly pronounce Albany Fon- blanque though he probably refrained from talking in that way except when claret had melted him into candour to have been altogether wrong in his re- cantation. In point of fact, the gulf of separation between Papists and non-Papists has grown wider and deeper than it was during my boyhood. Mar- riages then easily arranged have now become almost impossible ; and, passing beyond that, I happen to know (regretting, but not venturing to condemn his intolerance), that Cardinal Manning preferred to upset a charitable plan, framed in the largest spirit of charity to benefit all within its reach, rather than permit his Catholic vassals to join in repeating the Lord's Prayer (a prayer round which as round its central sun our common Christianity has been thought to revolve), in company with their Protestant fellow- citizens. However great their general incapacity, it is not as a school of prophets that the ' stupid party ' has REFORM IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECIES 131 failed of success. In the second place, with regard to Reform, I am not going to argue for or against it ; it may have been right, or if net right, it may have been impossible not to urge it forward ; still I defy the closest of Mr. Gladstone's satellites, even Sir William Harcourt (originally more a comet than a satellite in the Glads tonian system) to contradict me when I affirm that the gloomy anticipations of the Tory Cassandras as to the consequences of the Reform Bill were much nearer the truth than the rose-coloured visions of ' Finality John.' Lord Somers has not, according to the programme of 1831, taken St. George's place as the patron saint of Eng- land, nor has the Whig millennium, under the per- petual guidance of Greys, Cavendishes, and Russells, kept gliding on through peaceful decades to its appointed haven, with envious Tories silenced on the one side, and grateful Radicals applauding on the other. Far from it, we are being hurried headlong into democracy, and at this very moment, even advanced Liberals do not seem quite easy in their minds about the ' Revolution of 1884.' They hold out to us, no doubt, this vague comfort, that we can trust the people of England. Of course we can, when- ever the natural good qualities of that people have been trained and disciplined into trustworthiness. We can trust English soldiers, so long at least as they are properly educated for their work, to stand firm and to fight well ; they have been taught how to stand firm, and how to fight well ; but I do not trust the K 2 132 FREE TRADE masses to guide this great Empire wisely, or to deal with infinite complications and almost insuperable difficulties, as to which they are as ignorant as babies, any more than I would trust my solicitor to make me a pair of boots, or my shoemaker to draw up a will. Again I say that the reforming Cagliostros, though possibly wiser as statesmen, have no claim to compete as seers with the Cassandras of Toryism. Lastly, as to free trade, it may, like Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary Reform, have been the least bad of two evil alternatives pressing upon us at the moment, but certainly its promoters are not entitled to take rank as artists in prophecy. Free trade, according to Messrs. Cobden and Co., was to extend her beneficent influence everywhere, ' from China to Peru/ So far from this being the case, the instinctive common sense of mankind has hardened its heart against it like the nether mill- stone, from St. Petersburg to Cape Horn. Our very colonies, loyal and true as they are said to be, refuse to listen to us on this point, whilst the Cassandra statement, that British agriculture would be ruined, is rapidly accomplishing itself. I read in the ' Times ' not long ago, some sort of project for turning the country into one vast dairy farm, and reasons urged in consequence why the Government should be active in waging war upon the foot and mouth disease ; and since then the papers have been filled with exulting anticipations from Manitoba farmers, that in ten years British competition must MR. SENIOR 133 become hopeless, so that no farmer in England would be fool enough to grow corn any more. I must confess that my faith in free trade was rudely shaken long ago. I was reading Mill in some uncertainty of mind, when I lighted upon a passage praising an American political economist with such extraordinary enthusiasm, that I actually bought and read the book. This praise astonished me, and when I accidentally found out from Lord Dalmeny that he was a friend of Senior's, the Oxford professor of political economy, I put my difficulty before him, and asked him to sound Senior on the subject. The next time I met him, he came up laughing, and said, ' Well, I did not get much out of Senior. The moment I mentioned the book, he also began to praise it furiously, de- claring himself to be the man who had discovered it and shown it to Mill ; but when I asked him, as I did, quoting you as my authority, how it came to pass that a political economist of that high class, could have written a treatise for the sole purpose of up- holding protection, and exposing the failures of free trade, he answered thus: "Oh I never looked at that part of the book ; what I am referring to as so excel- lent is a certain chapter on the accumulation of capital, and other discussions of a like kind." As soon as I got home I shut up Mill, and put him back upon the shelf. I thought that pedants who were so afraid of entangling themselves in the labyrinth of their own science, that they would not follow a man whose genius and power they admitted a single step off the 134 POSSIBILITIES IN A WAR beaten road, lest they should find no end, ' in wandering mazes lost,' were no guides for me, because it was clear that they could not have any confidence in themselves. To me, who I admit have never studied the sub- ject with much care, it appears that the tendency of free trade in the long run must be to adjust mer- cantile prosperity in proportion to each country's natural resources, and that as we had risen to the top of commerce by a series of accidents in quite other ways, it was scarcely wise to scatter that artificial superiority to the winds at once, without at least attempting to secure something in the shape of an equivalent for our sacrifices ; nor can I doubt that there are matters connected with free trade requiring to be taken into consideration, which yet its advo- cates always refuse to consider. In the first place, with wheat driven out of cultivation, our difficulties in a w r ar forced upon us, at their own time, by the envy and ambition of others, might easily become im- measurable ; absolute surrender, or a famine recalling the famine of Jerusalem, being the alternatives before us. This to my mind cannot be dismissed as a mere idle vision. Secondly, if British agriculture is ruined, something must be done with the labourer thrown out of employment. Either emigration on a large scale will take away all the best and most vigorous among them, draining as it were the national heart of its reddest blood ; if not, the squalid population of the great towns will be increased beyond all measure and EMIGRATION 135 management. In either case a gradual degradation of the British people is sure to set in, and I, for one, am not prepared to see with a light heart those natural forces which have built up the England of history, carried off from here to the other side of the world, or else rotting into ruin at home, lest theorists should have to retire from any of the details of their somewhat technical and artificial creed. As I have said, however, I am not discussing political economy in the abstract. What I undertake to show, and have shown, is, that in the matter of free trade, as before in the matter of Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary Reform, the prophets who prophesied smooth things are beaten out of sight, and again the cry is ' Cassandra wins.' During the last terms of Mr. Gladstone's under- graduateship, I was not much at Oxford with him ; in fact I had let so much time slip away without profiting by it, that I felt, if I meant to get a first class, I must read hard for it, and it seemed to me that I should do better away from Oxford. Accord- ingly, I obtained leave after the long vacation, and grappled with my task at home. Even then I should probably have failed but for my good fortune in lighting upon Mr. Patch, one of the most remarkable men I have encountered in the course of a long life. He was a most admirable scholar, though not quite a scholar in the modern style. His Oxford education had ended before the present honour system began; he had therefore read books, not to take them up in 136 MR. PATCH the Schools for examination, but simply to master Greek and Latin, and thereby to cultivate his intellect. He was supposed to be the finest mathematician hitherto turned out by Oxford, and his general know- ledge was something portentous. He was not, how- ever, a fortunate man. Originally intended for the medical profession, his extreme susceptibility to fevers forced him out of it, and drove him back upon his Oxford fellowship. In that place he achieved, par- ticularly as a mathematical tutor, the greatest success. Had he lived a strictly blameless life, he would have done well. Had he been a hypocrite, and indulged his weakness with due caution, perhaps better still. As it was, without taking any particular pains to hide his proceedings, he carried certain habits, acquired as a medical student, into the position of an Oxford Don, and soon found out that he had made a mistake. He quickly became notorious, and was hunted away from Wadham, his College, as a social leper. This, though unfortunate for him, was lucky for me, inas- much as I secured an instructor for six months, such as I never could have found otherwise. Under him I read harder than I had ever done before, or have done since, and came out one of the three (the other two being Lord Blachford and Mr. Brewer, after- wards a well-known divine) who made up the classical first class at the summer examination of 1832. Some idea of Mr. Patch's various knowledge may be in- ferred from this fact, that whilst I was reading the ' Timaeus ' with him (the deepest and abstrusest of all HIS EXTENSIVE KNOWLEDGE 137 Plato's dialogues), hardly a day passed without his bringing down from London an essay on some recon- dite subject connected with that difficult treatise ; e.g., first an essay setting forth all that is known about the old Greek music. He was himself a scientific musician as well as a profound scholar, and therefore quite well worth listening to on the subject. Secondly, a paper about anatomy, as understood by the ancients, with which, as a thorough master of medicine, he was perfectly conversant. Thirdly, an account of modern chemistry, as illustrated by Plato's more imperfect theories ; and so on. I often pressed him afterwards to publish an edition of this book, which, according to my belief, no other man in England could have done half so well ; but misfortune in the past had made him careless and despondent, and he preferred living from hand to mouth. As now fifty years and more have passed since I looked into the ' Timaeus,' I frankly confess that I do not remember much about it beyond its general character and form. The one thing that clings to my memory is what Mr. Patch told me about the arteries. ' After death the veins are full and the arteries empty, so that the circula- tion of the blood being as yet undiscovered, the men of old naturally looked on the latter as air, not as blood vessels ; ' but, he added, ' this is not always so. In cases of absolutely sudden extinction, notably when a man is killed on the spot by lightning, the veins are empty and the arteries full.' Shortly after taking my degree, I spent fcome time 138 FASQUE IN KINCARDINESHIRE with Mr. Gladstone at his father's house in Kincar- dineshire, a large comfortable house, in a picturesque part of the country. Whilst there, I was very much struck with the remarkable acuteness and great natural powers of Mr. Gladstone, the father. 1 Under his influence, apparently, nothing was ever taken for granted between him and his sons. A succession of arguments on great topics and small topics alike, arguments conducted with perfect good humour, but also with the most implacable logic, formed the staple of the family conversation. Hence it is easy to see from what foundations Mr. Gladstone's skill as a debater has been built up. I was also able to confirm my previous opinion as to the energy and pertinacity of Mr. Gladstone's character. One of the amusements (occupations, rather) resorted to by us before August 12 arrived, was shooting with bows and arrows. The grass on each side of the target grew very long, and in this the said arrows conspired, one would say, to hide themselves without the slightest remorse. 1 sug- gested that we should leave them to themselves, like naughty children, and trust their recovery, which was sure to come about in the end, to chance and time. This, as there were plenty of recruits at hand, would have saved us trouble, and suited my easy- going views of life. But no Mr. Gladstone was made of sterner stuff, and not to be persuaded, so that whenever a culprit disappeared, we had to keep 1 Afterwards Sir John. ARCHERY DUNNOTTAR CASTLE 139 marching up and down like the sentinels before St. James's Palace, until some one of us caught sight of the truant in his lurking place. This rendered our pursuit of archery (it was, as the reader may see, literally a pursuit), a somewhat serious one, and we took our pleasure therein, after the manner of Frois- sart's Englishman, sadly enough. On another occasion, we started on horseback for Dunnottar Castle, a place in the neighbourhood of great historical interest. He was riding a skittish chestnut mare, who would not let him open a gate in front of us. My cob was perfectly docile, and quiet as a sheep, so I naturally said, ' Let me do that for you.' But ' no ' again. His antagonist had to be tamed out of her obstructiveness, and for forty minutes she reared and sidled and plunged a la Randolph Churchill rather than a la Northcote, whilst I sat as motionless on my sleepy little nag as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius sits on that hollow-backed brute at Rome which artists insist on our admiring. In time, however, a steady hand and a strong will are apt to prevail with mares, as with other personages of the same sex, and we went on towards our castle. At that period Mr. Gladstone had not mounted up to his High Church views, and Glenalmond was still a long way off. He attended the Presbyterian Kirk zealously and contentedly, and took me along with him to what they call the 'fencing of the tables ' an operation lasting five or six hours. It 140 HOPE SCOTT is not altogether a pleasant recollection. If I had known what the fencing was, I should have parried the invitation. I cannot remember the exact date of this visit, but it must have been two or three years before 1836, when his acquaintance with James Hope Scott sud- denly ripened into a warm friendship : a friendship apparently based upon identical opinions and aims, though this supposed identity turned out in the end to be a mere delusion. Hope Scott was at one time the most intimate friend I had at Oxford, but as I would not accompany him to Rome, or even, in Yorkshire phraseology, ' set him a piece o' t' way ' in that direction, our friendship, after a time, ceased to maintain itself in an active state. It was, I suppose, impossible for him, as his sense of religion deepened into an absorbing passion, to be intimate with anyone who did not share his opinions more or less, and after the way in which we had grown up together, acquaintanceship short of intimacy was out of the question. He therefore, either led by his own convictions, or influenced by others, soon dropped me out of his daily life as an incurable heretic. There never was any quarrel, nay, there never was any coolness between us, and I have reason to believe that he regarded me to the last with that sort of affection which keeps alive for us the memory of the dead. Of this I was assured directly by Cardinal Manning, and indirectly many years afterwards by Mr. Monteith of Carstairs, himself a convert to MR. ORNSBY'S BIOGRAPHY 141 Catholicism, but we hardly ever met, and when we did it was by accident. A Reverend Mr. Ornsby has recently published an elaborate account of Hope Scott's career. On this Mr. Macmillan asked me to make some comments. I consented, though with some reluctance, and accord- ingly a paper of mine appeared in his Magazine for April 1884. As, however, an article in a Magazine addresses itself to a limited circle of readers, and only produces a momentary impression, I do not think it out of place to repeat here some of the things I have already said in that article. Hope Scott was a sufficiently remarkable person to interest a new generation, especially since the memoirs I speak of have shown that there were not many of his contem- poraries entitled, morally or intellectually, to rank with him. Of his early years, and the early years of distinguished men are always attractive, I do not know any one able to speak more authoritatively than myself, nor can I mend what I have written on the subject already. I shall, therefore, plagiarise from my article in Macmillan without scruple. Mr. Ornsby makes this statement : 'In 1824 James was removed to the Reverend Edward Pole- Hampton's preparatory school for Eton, at Greenford Rectory, Essex. Among his companions there were Lord Selkirk and the present Sir Francis Doyle.' This is a mistake : in 1824 I was already at Eton, and so far from having been at Mr. Pole- Hampton's with him, I never, to my knowledge, 142 HOPE'S PUN heard of the reverend gentleman till I saw his name printed in Mr. Ornsby's book. My acquaintance with Hope Scott began in 1825, when he came to the house of our dame, Mrs. Holt of Eton. He was my junior by about two years, and I gave him the best advice I could about his verses, private business, and the like. He was wonderfully handsome and agree- able-looking, and distinguished by a very charming manner. We associated together, whilst at Eton, mostly in the house, I naturally taking my exercises and amusements with boys nearer my own part of the school, who were friends already made. For some reason or other, perhaps merely from indolence, an indolence attributed by Mr. Ornsby to the effects of a severe typhus fever that had attacked him in Italy, Hope Scott was not particularly keen about school glory of any kind. Fate drove me to literature and verse-making, O' because I was as blind as a bat, and a good deal crippled by an early accident besides, but there was no apparent reason why he should not have figured successfully in the playing fields or rowed with credit in the boats. To the best of my recollection, he did not do any great things in that line, nor on the other hand did he show any special zeal for his Greek and Latin. Again, what I always regretted, he refused to join the Debating Society, either at Eton or at Oxford. This explains why his acquaintance with Mr. Gladstone was comparatively slight, till 1836, when their High Church sympathies brought them 'VISION OF ER THE PAMPHYLIAN' 143 together. Mr. Ornsby says, ' he was given to pun- ning' and I recollect the punning reason he gave me for declining to mix himself up with our discus- sions at Oxford. He said the place was only fitted for 'des betes.' Still, as the first speech that he made was almost as much a success as Erskine's, practice beforehand would have probably been but of little advantage to him. At Oxford our friendship was closer than at Eton, since we lived together both indoors and out. Our principal relaxation was riding on Oxford hacks, whose absolute duty it was to gallop, so that they had all but forgotten the arts of walking and trotting. We read with each other a great deal in our rooms (principally Plato) and used to discuss him afterwards according to our lights. This still interests me as connected with almost the last flashing up of our half-extinguished friendship. A poem of mine, ' The Vision of Er the Pamphylian,' founded on a legend in the ' Republic ' of Plato, was privately printed before I gave it to the world. I sent it to him (this was after he had gone over to Rome), with the following letter : ' My dear Hope, Circumstances have caused us to drift asunder, but I do not see anything in that to prevent me from for- warding to you these verses in memory of the books we read and the thoughts we interchanged at Christ Church.' I received in return an affectionate reply, accom- panied by an invitation to Abbotsford. This invita- tion, by ill-luck, some other engagement prevented 144 CHANGE IN HOPE'S TEMPER me from accepting, so that I never saw him in his own house after he became a Catholic. Going back- wards again to Oxford and my friend Hope : we rode and we walked, we read, and we talked and dined together, we entrusted to each other our hopes and longings, and never, I suppose, were two men on more confidential terms than he and I, till the ' rift in the lute' began to show itself. After the first year at Christ Church a strange gloom fell upon his spirits, and turned him from being the most brilliant youth of the day into a sullen recluse, shrinking from all society. This change, as far as associating with him went, to me made no difference, although it grieved me much. It was not, in the first instance at least, the outcome of any religious impulse it rather proceeded from a profound dissatisfaction with life, aggravated, if not mainly caused, by a terrible family affliction. His youngest brother Alexander got wet through out hunting, and took refuge in a peasant's cottage. He was most hospitably received, and the owners insisted on putting him to bed whilst they dried his clothes ; but, alas ! they forgot that the bed had been occupied, some months before, by one of their sons whilst suffering from small-pox. Alexander Hope caught the disease and died without a chance of escape. I have said that James's sudden melancholy was not the outgrowth of any religious impulse, if any- thing, it worked in the opposite direction. I do not suppose that he was at any time a real sceptic, but if RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 145 he ever dallied with scepticism, it would have been during those months of despondency when he sat alone in his long dismal room at Christ Church brood- ing over French and German metaphysics. In truth his mental state was such that I feared he might go mad. It was not long, however, before he found safety and peace by giving up his whole heart to the Church, and seeking, through her influence, to raise the moral and religious condition of the university after a fashion of his own. It is a curious instance of the intense zeal with which he embraced his religious opinions, that no friendship, apparently, could keep its hold upon him unless in harmony with them. He withdrew from all personal intimacy with Mr. Gladstone on becoming a Catholic even more formally and decisively than he withdrew from mine on becoming a High Churchman. It was not, I am sure, that he ceased to regard either Mr. Glad- stone or me with a certain affection, only he settled that it was better for him not to give way to it, but as it were 'to pass by on the other side.' No such necessity, that I am aware of, has ever suggested itself to Cardinal Newman. He retains his kindly feelings towards those whom he knew of old, and interests himself in his former friends and favourites with the old warmth of heart, Protestants though they be. It was Cardinal Newman, I think, whose example ope- rated most strongly in leading Hope to the Catholic Church. That great man's extraordinary genius drew all those within his sphere, like a magnet, to attach L 146 CARDINAL NEWMAN themselves to him and his doctrines. Nay, before he became a Romanist, what we may call his mesmeric influence acted not only on his Tractarian adherents, but even in some degree on outsiders like myself. Whenever I was at Oxford, I used to go regularly on Sunday afternoons to listen to his sermon at St. Mary's, and I have never heard such preaching since. I do not know whether it is a mere fancy of mine, or whether those who know him better will accept and endorse my belief, that one element of his wonderful power showed itself after this fashion. He always be- gan as if he had determined to set forth his idea of the truth in the plainest and simplest language, language as men say * intelligible to the meanest understand- ing.' But his ardent zeal and fine poetical imagina- tion were not thus to be controlled. As I hung upon his words, it seemed to me as if I could trace behind his will, and pressing, so to speak, against it, a rush of thoughts and feelings which he kept struggling to hold back, but in the end they were generally too strong for him and poured themselves out in a torrent of eloquence all the more impetuous from having been so long repressed. The effect of these outbursts was irresistible, and carried his hearers beyond themselves at once. Even when his efforts of self-restraint were more successful, those very efforts gave a life and colour to his style which riveted the attention of all within the reach of his voice. Mr. Justin McCarthy, in his ' History of Our Own Times,' says of him : ' In all the arts that make a great preacher or orator, MR. JUSTIN MCCARTHY 147 Cardinal Newman was deficient. His manner was constrained and ungraceful, and even awkward, his voice was thin and weak, his bearing was not at first impressive in any way a gaunt emaciated figure, a sharp eagle face and a cold meditative eye, rather repelled than attracted those who saw him for the first time.' I do not think Mr. McCarthy's phrases very happily chosen to convey his meaning. Surely a gaunt emaciated frame, and a sharp eagle face, are the very characteristics which we should picture to ourselves as belonging to Peter the Hermit, or Scott's Ephraim McBriar in ' Old Mortality.' However un- impressive the look of an eagle may be in Mr. McCarthy's opinion, I do not agree with him about Dr. Newman. When I knew him at Oxford, these somewhat disparaging remarks would not have been applicable. His manner, it is true, may have been self- repressed, constrained it was not. His bearing was neither awkward nor ungraceful ; it was simply quiet and calm because under strict control ; but be- neath that calmness, intense feeling, I think, was obvious to those who had any instinct of sympathy with him. But if Mr. McCarthy's acquaintance with him only began when he took office in an Irish Catholic university, I can quite understand that (flexibility not being one of his special gifts) he may have failed now and again to bring himself into perfect harmony with an Irish audience. He was probably too much of a typical Englishman for his place ; nevertheless Mr. McCarthy, though he does not seem to have L 5i 148 EDWARD BADDELEY admired him in the pulpit, is fully sensible of his intellectual powers and general eminence. Dr. Pusey, who used every now and then to take Newman's duties at St. Mary's, was to me a much less interesting person. A learned man, 1 no doubt, but dull and tedious as a preacher. Certainly, in spite of the name Puseyism having been given to the Ox- ford attempt at a new Catholic departure, he was not the Columbus of that voyage of discovery, undertaken to find a safer haven for the Church of England. I may, however, be more or less unjust to him, as I owe him a sort of grudge. His discourses were not only less attractive than those of Dr. Newman, but always much longer, and the result of this was that the learned Canon of Christ Church generally made me late for dinner at my College, a calamity never inflicted on his All Souls hearers by the terser and swifter fellow of Oriel whom he was replacing. Another Oxford friend of mine who looked up to Hope and Newman with the most enthusiastic admi- ration, and in the end followed them to Rome, was Edward Baddeley. With him I recollect having a rather curious conversation just before he became a Romanist. I was anxious, not unnaturally, to learn what Hope's determining motives were when he ceased to be a Protestant, because I considered him, from his abilities and worldly position, to be, if not the most important convert, at least the most impor- tant lay convert of those years secured by the Church of Rome. After giving me the explanation I re- VARIATIONS OF THE INNER EYE 149 quired as well as he could, he began to talk about himself. ' I have left,' he said, ' the English commu- nion for good and all, but to Rome I never will go ; I cannot stand her Mariolatry.' To this I replied : ' There is nothing wonderful to me in Davie Deans's electing himself as the infallible guide of his own con- science, and that of his one follower, but you, with your intense zeal for church history, your absolute faith in Apostolic succession and other Catholic doctrines, will find yourself in a very difficult position.' His answer was, ' I know I shall, but I must make the best of it ; I cannot accept the worship of the Virgin.' How many days passed before he swallowed and di- gested that doctrine, I cannot exactly remember, ac- cording to my present impression, about a fortnight ; and I suppose in a month or two he would have been prepared to adore St. Ursula and her eleven thousand handmaidens at the bidding of the Pope. Such emo- tional changes of opinion are not intelligible to me, and therefore I must not criticise them. There are, I should say, variations of the ' inner eye,' analogous to those variations of the outward sense of sight, which at their extreme point lead some people to confound red and green. As with our bodily, so it may be with our mental faculties. Fountain-heads of thought and feeling, which exist for A, may not exist for B, or exist only under such altered condi- tions as to differ in kind rather than in degree : on such questions therefore, we cannot understand each other, and must rest satisfied with a reciprocal 150 HOPE'S BLOODHOUND toleration. By way of changing the subject, I shall mention a thing that struck me at the time as curious and interesting. When Hope and I walked out together, he usually took with him a young blood- hound, and it occurred to us that we would try the dog's powers by hunting each other. To effect this, either Hope or I walked on two or three hundred yards, to the right and to the left, backwards and forwards, in circles and squares. Then, as soon as the chasee had taken up his station, either behind a tree or elsewhere, the chaser put on the dog. It was a beautiful sight to see with what perfect accuracy he threaded out our windings, increasing in pace and power of motion as he approached the end. I frankly confess, that when I saw him, on the first occasion, about twenty yards off, leaping four feet into the air at every stride, I felt, if I may revert to Eton phrase- ology, 'rather in a funk.' On reaching me, however, he sank down instantly into the exact attitude of a setter marking game. I should have thought before- hand, that finding a friend he would have jumped and fawned upon him. But no, it appeared as if the bloodhound instinct were supreme ; and that having been set on my track, though not an enemy to be caught by the throat, I became his goal for the time being, not his friend. This practice he always re- peated. As I have touched on Natural History, I may as well mention one or two of the most remark- able facts it has presented to me in life, before passing on to some other Oxford friends, since if I omitted to OTHER STORIES FROM NATURAL HISTORY 151 notice the incidents here, very likely they would pass out of my mind altogether. I was on a visit at Donington in Leicestershire, sitting with my hostess, Barbara Lady Hastings. On one side of the room was a sort of aviary, holding some thirty birds or so, birds gathered from every part of the world. All at once she interrupted me in a story I had begun to tell her, and said ' Now I want you to listen. You hear that creature making an uncouth grumbling noise ; he is a very ill-bred, ill- conditioned husband, and is now quarrelling with his wife. In a second or two he will say something arousing the righteous indignation of the whole com- munity ; do attend for a moment.' I obeyed, and sure enough, almost immediately a general hubbub rose up from the cage, which seemed to me, as far as I could judge, the absolute equivalent of what we do when we call for the police. ' There,' said my com- panion, ' I wanted you to hear that ; it happens three or four times a week, and always under the same circumstances.' Now I can understand that the prize-winning parrot when introduced to its several competitors should shriek out : ' My eye ! what a lot of parrots ! ' I can understand that a great lawyer's pious cockatoo, after escaping out of confinement, and beholding from the top of a tree its august master in a hurry to recover it, should mockingly intone ' Let us pray,' in a not unfamiliar 'voice. But that a single form of .speech should be intelligible to birds of twenty 152 SPIDERS species from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America alike, is a marvel in ray eyes. Why, if Leibnitz had realised his universal language for men, such a wide- spread power of intercommunication would leave him and us far behind. I can only vouch for the fact, leaving it to be explained by naturalists wiser than I am. Passing from dogs and birds to insects, it would seem that the instincts and habits of the latter are more interesting, and indicate a stronger personality than I at least was aware of. I have heard some- where of a girl who tamed certain butterflies, so that they would come at a peculiar call and drink up syrup from her hand and from her lips. This story may or may not be true, but from what I have seen myself I have no great difficulty in believing it. Whilst I was hard at work under Mr. Patch, I read my books in a hayloft above the stables. When I was tired of working I amused myself for a minute or two by watching the manners and customs of certain spiders with which the place abounded. I daresay an illustrious arachnologist, as somebody was once called by somebody else, would have distin- guished many different kinds. I only marked out two varieties, whose plans of life differed altogether. Spider No. 1, as soon as a fly had entangled herself in his snare, walked leisurely down and wove round its victim a thick network of thread. As soon as the poor thing was hopelessly handcuffed and stifled, she was drawn up to a sort of larder at the top of the WASPS 153 premises, and left there till wanted. Spider No. 2 darted down more impetuously, just touched his captive on the opening behind her neck, and then trotted back into his parlour. Whenever I took his fly out of the web she shook herself and for a short time seemed little the worse, but in five minutes she was lying on her side paralysed, and in ten stretched out on her back, perfectly dead. I wonder if the illustrious arachnologist referred to above could in- form me if the habitual shedder of venom, or the habitual expender of network, does the more exhaust- ing work, and which is the longer lived creature of the two. I may add, as I am going on from spiders to wasps, that the spider, when he encounters one of those formidable insects, would be just as well pleased if he would imitate the priest and the Levite and ' pass by on the other side.' For a wasp when caught prepares for action at once, by moving his sting backwards and forwards into various positions all intended to meet the spider coming down ; but the spider, whether of the first class or the second, ' is Yorkshire too,' and won't come down at all till his unwelcome prisoner is starved into helplessness a waste of time inconvenient to both. I was once in a kitchen garden, fighting against a swarm of wasps that infested a plum tree. I struck and hurt one without killing him, and he fell into a large spider's web spread out below. To my surprise a fellow- wasp instantly flew down to his rescue. He poised himself close to the web, whilst his wings 154 'LETTERS ON HISTORY' worked with a sort of thrill, till they became an indistinct and invisible glitter. He was obviously taking care of himself, not an easy thing to do, as all the time he kept striking deft and rapid blows at the threads that held his friend. Finally he cut him out, and the poor devil fell down to die upon the ground. I was so much struck with this evidence of a heart, as well as of brain, in the case of wasps, that I not only spared the V.C. wasp himself, but also the rest of the troop, and left the plums to their fate. In confirmation of the fact that wasps do possess understanding and are capable of being taught, I will quote a curious extract from one of Bolingbroke's 1 Letters on History.' He is speaking of the strange causes that lift men to power under absolute mon- archies. After contemptuously dismissing Turkey, he proceeds thus : ' In France indeed, though an absolute government, things go a little better. Arts and sciences are encouraged, and here and there an example may be found of one who has risen by some extraordinary talents, amidst innumerable examples of men who have arrived at the greatest honours, and highest posts, by no other merit than that of assiduous fawning attendances, or skill in some despicable puerile amusement, in training wasps, for instance, to take regular flights like hawks, and stoop at flies.' I suppose his correspondent knew to whom he was alluding I don't. At present this form of falconry is, I should think, a lost art. Perhaps Sir John Lubbock, our nearest modern approach to a Beel- MR. COTTON 155 zebub, 1 when his own special insects happen to leave him a moment's leisure, might think it worth reviving. At Christ Church, not in my time, but a year or two afterwards, Cotton, one of our distinguished Eton men, a Newcastle scholar, thought proper to adapt the rural economy of the Fourth Georgic to Peckwater, the subdivision of Christ Church where he lived. He devoted himself assiduously to bees, and troubled his contemporaries (so they said at least) with continual buzzings and an occasional sting. In these cases he always denied stoutly that his bees were in fault, and once when Dean Gaisford, having sent for him, told him plainly that his bees must be sent away because a gentleman commoner had just been stung in Tom Quad, he replied instantly : ' Mr. Dean, I assure you that you are doing us a great in- justice. I know that bee well ; he is not mine at all, but belongs to Mr. Bigge of Merton.' My cousin, Henry Milner, a passionate entomo- logist, who crowned himself with glory by discovering in Ireland a moth hitherto unknown, was walking with me in Richmond Park, when a bird made a dash at some passing insect and knocked it over. Henry Miluer rushed to pick it up, and then cried out joy- fully : ' By Jove ! here is the very beetle I've been looking after, without finding one, for seven years.' The creature, as far as I can recollect, was a modified 1 I don't mean to be uncivil, but he is certainly the Lord, if not of flies, at least of bees and ants. 156 IRISH DIAMOND stag beetle with yellow lines about it. It was fortu- nate that this piece of luck fell to an expert and a collector. It would completely have been thrown away upon me as upon most other people. To pass from entomology to mineralogy. Horace Brooke, who is married to a young cousin, or rather (if I may adopt an expression sometimes used which points out the relationship more distinctly), Welsh niece of mine, told me of an odd thing that once happened to his mother, Mrs. Brooke. The family residence is on the banks of Lough Earn, and there, as elsewhere in England, Scotland, and Wales, pearls of more or less merit are not uncommon. Mrs. Brooke took to collecting them, and children from the surrounding villages got into the habit of bringing any that were picked up near, receiving in return a shilling or two for their find. One day a little girl arrived from a greater distance than usual, offering not a pearl but a pebble. Mrs. Brooke, who was only seeking after pearls, declined to buy it. Shortly after- wards the butler, a good-natured man, came up and suggested she should change her mind. ' The little girl,' he said, ' has had a very long walk, and is crying bitterly at having to go home empty-handed.' ' Oh, very well,' said Mrs. Brooke, ' take the stone and give the child what she asks for it.' This he did. A month or two afterwards, a friend of theirs, a great traveller, who knew South America well, after ogling the pebble for some time suddenly broke out thus : ' Do you know, if I were in Brazil, I should be certain (M5SAR AND BRITISH PEARLS 157 that in that bit of stone you had got hold of a real diamond.' The bit of stone was submitted to a com- petent jeweller in Dublin, who entirely confirmed this ' tale of a traveller ; ' and the Lough Earn pebble is now one of Mrs. Brooke's diamond rings. Unluckily, all traces of the little girl and her whereabouts had been lost ; she may for aught I know to the contrary, have been a fairy in disguise, so that no inquiry could be made as to whether stones of the same kind had been found in the neighbourhood before or since. If Mr. Gladstone could introduce diamond fields into Ireland as well as Land Acts, both Ireland and England might ' O O be all the better for this new opening. I do not say that there is anything impossible in the supposition that native diamonds may be hidden in Ireland, though it would surprise me to hear that the dis- covery was one of any great value. There is a French rivulet somewhere, in the sands of which Oriental rubies of good quality have, I believe, been found now and again, and in the waters of the Upper Loire there certainly are or were sapphires. I can only hope that if any steps should be taken in this direction, we may not be disappointed in our diamonds as Caesar must have been in our pearls. Some tradition about the British pearl was one of the lures that drew him on to the first invasion of the country, and there is some- thing touching in his sulky tone when he tells us that they are all ' lividi et subfusci coloris.' In fact, like everything else in this world, as Solomon would have said, they turned out to be ' vanity and vexation 158 (LESAR'S SULKINESS of spirit.' To have organised a costly expedition, to have killed your thousands, and burnt ancient cities to the ground, yea, more than that, to have flung away precious Roman lives that might have been useful to him on the edge of the Rubicon for the sake of ' livid and subfusc pearls,' pearls only fit to ' cast before swine,' must indeed have been a bitter disappointment. However, he got his pearls -just as Esau before him got his pottage and if both gentlemen afterwards grudged the cost, that is their business and not ours. 159 CHAPTER IX. The first University boat-race Boat Lloyd's method with the Dons My adventure with a Duchess Winchester cricketers Lord Byron as a cricketer Introduction to Wordsworth Third reading of the first Reform Bill Mr. Gladstone an advocate for rotten boroughs Principal speakers in the House of Commons Lord Stanley Whittle Harvey Sir Robert Peel O'Connell Shell Macaulay Matthew Arnold Grattan's failure as an after-dinner speaker. DURING my undergraduateship, the first boat-race between the two universities was fought out at Hen- ley-on- Thames. Oxford won. We had, I need hardly say, no electric telegraph, no railway even between Henley and Oxford, then, so that the news of our victory was brought to us, as a friend of mine rushed into my room and told me, by a ( messenger upon a sweating hack.' Whether the change of scene, and the sham excitement of the London mob, covered with dark blue and light blue ribbon, has improved the character of the struggle, I doubt. One of my companions in Mr. Williams's pupil- room (when he could be caught, that is to say) was a powerful, handsome young man known as Boat Lloyd. He was distinguished among our Christ Church crew upon the river, but in anything except rowing was quite unable to keep time. Still his good 160 BOAT LLOYD looks and good temper were enough to make him popular with the authorities, and he used to glide out of scrapes with an easy dexterity and presence of mind that every now and then left me rather envious of him. Once I remember we were both detained after a lecture which he had honoured by attending, to answer for our separate delinquencies. He was called upon to face the enemy first. ' Mr. Lloyd/ it was asked of him by the puz/led Williams, ' what are we to do with you ? You won't come to lecture or to chapel ; we set you impositions, you won't do them ; we send for you, and you won't come ; you do come, and you won't speak. Again I ask, what are we to do with you ? ' Lloyd remained placid and motionless, with a vacant expression of countenance, as if that question wholly belonged to the College officials, and stood before his tutor exactly as if he had been what is now called a t deaf-mute.' My tutor was thoroughly baffled. His interrogative peroration, meant to produce a great effect, had produced none at all, and yet Lloyd was so handsome and gentleman- like that Williams could not bring himself to be hard upon him. Accordingly, after a pause, he gathered himself together, like a stumbling horse, and stam- mered out, ' Well, well, I suppose we must give you another chance.' When he heard this, the culprit turned upon his heel and went his way. I then took the scolding I had earned after my own fashion, and overtaking Lloyd, remarked to him, ' You have a curious way of dealing with our friend yonder.' RETURN FROM DINNER 1G1 ' Yes,' he replied, ' I have carefully considered the matter ; and after trying various methods with the don, have come to this conclusion, that passive resis- tance answers the best. I myself seldom troubled the Isis except for bathing purposes, when I usually sculled down to one of the ' lashers,' as they are called, and back again. To boating I preferred, as a rule, walking with Mr. Gladstone, or riding with Hope, Henry Denison, and the present Sir Thomas Acland- Being anything but a good horseman, I came often enough to grief. Once, funnily enough, I was staying up during the long vacation to read, or to put it more truthfully, with a view of reading. I went over one day to dine with Black Saunders, after- wards the Charterhouse head-master, and finally Dean of Peterborough. He was then, unless I am mis- taken, acting in someone else's stead as vicar of Cuddesden. I left the house, and the night looked very dark, but I was mounted on Duchess, a charming hack, hired by me whenever I could get her, and so I trotted oif merrily enough. Now I trusted impli- citly in Duchess, but did not know that she was rapidly going blind. Duchess again trusted im- plicitly in me, not knowing that I was pretty well blind already. We therefore trotted along, danger- ously secure in our common ignorance of each other s shortcomings. I fancied that I saw a patch of thicker gloom just ahead, but I said to myself, ' If there is anything Duchess will take care.' Duchess M 162 DUCHESS AND THE BLACK DONKEY very likely echoed my thought, and meditated in her own mind, ' If there is anything Mr. Doyle will look to it.' Anyhow we came at once, without warning, upon a black donkey, roped to a tree in the hedge- row, and lying comfortably across the road. The brute, on being disturbed, rose up suddenly just under Duchess's nose. What she exactly did I never knew, but I found myself flat on my back several yards off. Luckily, however, I was then light and muscular, and so got no hurt. Luckily, also, Duchess being desperately frightened had not pluck enough left to gallop away to her stable, but stood there, shaking like an aspen leaf, till I got into the saddle again. I then rode on to Christ Church, if not a sadder, at least a slower, andr I hope in that slowness a wiser man. The only other special school event that occurs to me during these Eton and Oxford years was the first appearance of a Winchester Eleven at Lord's. They took the field first against Harrow, and then against Eton, and smote them both 'hip and thigh.' The founder's-kin scholars at Winchester had the right to stay on, in the hope of reaching New College fellowships, until they were long past twenty, and there were two or three of these old boys, stronger, tougher, and more formidable than any of their opponents, who played on the Winchester side. Anyhow the two fashionable schools were taken by surprise, and had to accept their defeats as they might. This, as I have said, was the first time when WINCHESTER CRICKET LORD BYRON 1G3" Winchester entered the lists. The contests between Eton and Harrow, on the other hand, though not without an interruption every now and then, had gone on for a great number of years. In one of the Harrow Elevens, Lord Byron (the poet) found a place. I confess I cannot quite reconcile his performances in that school match with the account given by Tre- lawney (who saw him after his death) of the strange deformity which must, one would have supposed, have altogether crippled his legs and feet. As a batsman he scored moderately ; that, if he had a boy to run for him, is not so difficult to understand, but he also figured as a bowler, and took two or three wickets. Now, after Trelawney's account of his bodily conformation, this puzzles me. We know that afterwards he took lessons in boxing from Jackson, and acquired, so at least he says himself, some skill in the art. A wiry young fellow, with long arms, might, I daresay, without moving about much, practise a defensive kind of pugilism well enough, but a successful bowler ought to have the full use of all his limbs. Upon the whole, Trelawney must have exaggerated the matter. On leaving Oxford, I went to live with my father in Harley Street, with a view to reading for the Par. Mr. Gladstone established himself in the Albany as a rising M.P., and our intimacy continued without any break or hitch in it. In politics, as a strong Tory, I looked upon him as the head of my form, except indeed that in spite of my admiration for Cardinal M 2 164 CHRYSES ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY Newman's character and genius, I cared little or nothing for High Church doctrines. To them Mr. Gladstone was then devoted, and still apparently adheres, though I sometimes fancy, when his enthu- siasm for Homer masters him, that, if he could resuscitate Chryses, and make him Apollinaris, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, surrounded by a lot of Homeridge as the raw material for his canons or prebendaries, a church so constituted would be almost nearer his ideal than even the queen of the thirty-nine articles. He used to give breakfasts at the Albany, which were often important to me. It was then and there that I was first presented to the illustrious Wordsworth. The great poet sat in state, surrounded by young and enthusiastic admirers. His conversation was very like the ' Excursion ' turned into vigorous prose. The natural force fitted for new poetical creations was there in abundance, wanting only the ' accomplishment of verse.' I met him again at a mixed dinner party, where he was less at home. A voluble young woman full of animal spirits, and wanting a good deal more than ' the accomplishment of verse,' wanting, for instance, reverence and sympathy, talked him down. So that the author of the ' Ode to Immortality.' and of ' Tintern Abbey,' gradually became a silent gentle- man in a black coat, eating an indifferent dinner like other black-coated gentlemen, to my great dis- appointment. If we had been dining at the Palace of Truth, and my thoughts had passed into words, I WORDSWORTH AND ROGERS 165 should probably, according to strict law, have in- curred several fines, at any rate I should not have pleased the lady in question. I saw Wordsworth for the third and last time at old Rogers's house in St. James's Place. On that occasion there was no disap- pointment ; his conversation was full of interest, and I never was so pleased with Rogers himself as then and there. The frank and deferential courtesy which he showed to his eminent guest, about whose superiority to the author of the ' Pleasures of Memory ' his opinion may have been scarcely in unison with ours, proved, at least, that if not a great poet, he was thoroughly kind-hearted, and, when he chose, a per- fectly high-bred gentleman. At that same breakfast I laid the foundation of one of my most valued friend- ships, I mean the friendship of Sir Henry Taylor, then a very handsome young man, though not quite what he is now at eighty-four, the handsomest man for his years in all England. 1 Mr. Gladstone soon made his mark in the House of Commons. I went every morning to my conveyancer, William Plunket, giving him, I fear, but little promise of ever making my mark at the Bar. In the meantime (this, however, was before Mr. Gladstone's return for Newark) the first Reform Bill, having been thrown out of the Lords once, was passed and carried. After the third reading, I sat under the gallery one night, whilst 1 Again I have to remind my readers of another loss to England as well as to myself. 166 THIRD READING OF THE FIRST REFORM BILL the condemned boroughs in succession were being led out for execution (the representatives for the City of London, I would remind my readers, until Lord John Russell became one of its members, were usually blustering aldermen, more distinguished for noisy Liberalism than for talent or refinement). The manner of proceeding was this. As each borough mounted the scaffold, and was about to breathe its last, the sitting member felt bound to utter a short farewell. If he were a Liberal, he laid the helpless victim 'avec effusion,' as the French say, on the altar of his country ; if he were a Tory, he consigned the Whigs to the hottest place known, in the neatest parliamentary language that suggested itself to him. The name of a borough was read from the chair. I have forgotten what it was ; let us provisionally call it East Looe (though in point of fact East Looe only dated back to the reign of Elizabeth). A good- looking young gentleman, self-possessed, self-satisfied, with a certain amount of that valuable property known to the gods as impudence and to men as cheek, was on his legs in a moment. ' The borough of East Looe,' he said, ' has been a borough since the days of Henry III. ; during this long period its re- presentatives have aimed at doing their duty to their constituents and their country in a quiet and unos- tentatious manner, like English gentlemen, never in a single instance making themselves a spectacle to men and angels ' (and here he threw a gesture of con- tempt straight across the house). ' as the four members MEMBERS FOR THE CITY OF LONDON 167 for the City of London habitually do.' The shaft went home, the ministerial benches howlel with indignation, and the burly patriots for London jumped up one after the other, red, foaming at the mouth with useless rage. They protested furiously against such an insult to their High Mightinesses, on the part of a miserable individual representing nothing better than a dead rotten borough, but they overlooked the fact that his triumph was heightened exactly in proportion to their display of wrath, and that if they had treated his impertinence with silent contempt, the arrow would have missed its mark. He, in the meantime, sat with folded arms smiling at his own success, and undisguisedly exulting that he and his borough had died game. I looked afterwards in Hansard, to remind myself what that borough was, and to discover, if I could, the orator's name, but Hansard had treated all proceedings on the Reform Bill, after the third reading, as mere matters of form, and not taken the trouble to report them. Only the other day I was amused to find out, what I might have already known, if I had paid steady atten- tion to the parliamentary debates, that an affection for close boroughs was one of the surviving sparks of that Toryism, which once burned so hotly in Mr. Glad- stone's breast. I happened to be staying with him at Ha warden, and formed one of a party that accompanied him to Chester. He went there that he might introduce Mr. Lawley, who has since become Lord Wenlock, to 168 THE MAYOR OF CHESTER his future constituents. I went mainly because my daughter was anxious to hear the great orator speak, but I went, so far as politics were concerned, as an avowed enemy, though quite willing to listen to and applaud my old Eton friend's eloquence when we got there. The town hall was crammed with an eager mob. The crowd indeed was so numerous and so closely packed together, that it was hardly possible to breathe. The managers, therefore, j udged it advisable to break some small diamond-paned windows, in order to improve the ultra-liberal atmosphere of the place. Before this could be done, after a short consultation they decided that the fact must be announced, lest a sudden panic might be kindled amongst those dense masses, and mischief ensue. Accordingly up rose the Mayor, a burly and prosperous gentleman, and endea- voured to get a hearing, but his intervention was ex- tremely ill received. ' Sit down yah ! yah ! yah ! Sit down ! Mr. Gladstone ! Mr. Gladstone ! We don't want you, sit down, yah ! Mr. Gladstone ! Mr. Gladstone ! Sit down. Sit down, we don't want you ! ' The Mayor, however, was not unequal to the occasion, and pounced with dexterous alertness upon a lull. ' Don't bother ! ' he cried out ; ' I don't want to speak, but I have got something to say ! ' I have always thought this the most eccentric way of introducing a renowned speaker to his eagerly expectant audience, that has yet been resorted to, and, what is more, I believe that I was the only man in the room, precisely because I cared little for the MR. GLADSTONE'S BREVITY 169 object of the meeting, who felt the fun of the situa- tion. However, the purpose was answered, the win- dows were solemnly broken, and Mr. Gladstone rose. The most important part of his speech consisted in an emphatic recommendation to the electors that they should choose Mr. Lawley because he was young. The one thing, he told us, that was needed to in- vigorate and improve the House of Commons was the infusion of young blood. The speech was in his very best manner, and it was none the worse I think be- cause he tried to be shorter and compacter than usual. He began his address, indeed, by informing us that his only object being to present his young friend and relative to the patriots assembled below us, he should not detain them for more than a moment or so. My daughter's face fell at once. She had driven over from Hawarden, seven miles in the rain, but it was to listen to the great orator, not to hear Beilby Lawley doing his best to make himself agreeable to the electors (though I must say for him, that in spite of the enor- mous disadvantage of having to follow Mr. Gladstone, he got through his awkward task, afterwards, without flinching or faltering, like a man of sense and educa- tion). I consoled her, however, by pointing out that possession is nine parts of the law, that we had got the right hon. gentleman OD his legs, and that I would give her five shillings if he was down under an hour. Nor was he ; he spoke for exactly seventy minutes. Nevertheless, that opening promise, though certainly not absolutely fulfilled, did not leave his mind whilst 170 ROTTEN BOROUGHS lie was speaking, so that he avoided the one criticism to which his oratorical style is sometimes open, namely, that it would be better if it were more closely com- pressed. As we were driving home, I said to him, ' If you are so anxious to have young men in the House of Commons, why did you Liberals abolish the rotten boroughs ? ' He answered with some heat, ' I abolish the rotten boroughs ? What do you mean ? Why, I was the last man in either House of Parliament who has ventured to utter a word in their behalf.' This fact, which I ought to have known be- fore, was absolutely true, and I felt glad to hear him say so, as, in my judgment, the close borough system, though mainly an accident resulting from the drifts and changes of time, was yet the happiest of accidents, quite the curiosa felicitas of, alas, the old British Constitution. It can now never be restored ; that is beyond even the power of our present Prime Minister. We shall get no more Burkes, Pitts, and Foxes, and Horners, and Cannings, and Mackintoshes, Macau- lays, and Gladstones into the House of Commons along that covered way. So that, if youth is to get a hearing at all, it will be got rather by echoing and exaggerating extreme opinions, and not as the reward for any special promise of talent, or, as of old, any special aptitude for public affairs. Pindar remarked a certain number of years ago (and it would not be amiss if we listened more attentively to the words which some of those wise men of former ages have bequeathed to us) : THE PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKERS OF MY YOUTH 171 Easy indeed to shake a state, That much at least may do Some slight and worthless man, but great, And tasking wrestler's limbs, the feat To fix her in her former seat And build the whole anew. Fourth Pythian. The state of England, God knows, has been shaken all but to pieces. By whom it will be rebuilt, or how, I don't think even Pindar, if he were raised from the dead, could tell us. For some time, as I have said above, both before the passing of the first Reform Bill and shortly after- wards, I went constantly to hear the debates. As, however, I soon perceived that I never should have any opportunity of even aiming at distinction in that line, and had to occupy myself with other matters, I gradually dropped the practice, but not until I had formed my own opinion as to the relative merits of the most distinguished speakers of the time. The only man, as far as I was concerned, who always took the ache out of my shoulders at one o'clock in the morning, was Lord Stanley, the late Lord Derby. That this arose from the actual impression of his elo- quence upon the nerves of my brain, and not from any more indirect cause, may be inferred from the fact that I had no great esteem for his statesmanlike wisdom, nor was I particularly attracted by his personal character, even after he became a Tory, and at that time he belonged to the party of innovators which was odious to me ; so that it was his power of 172 LORD STANLEY SIR ROBERT PEEL speech, and his power of speech alone, which smoothed away fatigue and lifted me out of myself. His great opponent was Sir Robert Peel. Now, I have always heard, that properly to appreciate Sir Robert Peel, you must have been a member of the House of Commons, and this no doubt was true ; his knowledge, his dex- terity, his tact, his powers of reasoning, his careful choice of topics and the like, could not be properly felt and valued except by those on whom they were con- stantly acting. To me, a stranger, and therefore un- familiar with these continuous operations of his mind, there was a defect in his style fatal to oratorical excel- lence of the highest order ; namely, that he wanted the true inward impulse which kindles the speech into greater power, as it proceeds. He began well and effectively, but after a time the pace slackened, the middle part of his speech might be sensible, might even be wiser than the opening, but the orator was colder and less interesting in point of language and manner, so that when he worked himself round again to a brilliant peroration, there was no blinking the fact that it had been carefully thought over, if not written beforehand. Hence I always was possessed with the feeling that he got weaker instead of stronger as he went on, and had to put some fresh tea in, and fill up the tea-pot once or twice, before the final distribution of what he had to give to the world. Whittle Harvey was almost perfect as a speaker, both in substance and in form. To listen to him, you would have thought that he was the rir pietate gravis WHITTLE HARVEY 173 immortalised by Virgil. In his famous duel with Lord Stanley about the pension list, the opinion of impartial judges, unless my memory deceives me, amounted to this, that although two such antagonists had seldom tilted against each other in the House of Commons, Whittle Harvey was not the one who came off second best. There were, however, imputations on his character, whether justly entertained or not is no business of mine ; these weighed him down and interfered with his parliamentary advancement. One of the most amusing legends of Lord Melbourne's easy skill in slipping out of a difficult position and evading uncomfortable responsibilities, refers to this public estimate of Whittle Harvey's past career. He had been useful to the Government, he thought, and was therefore entitled to some reward. A new Board, I think it had something to do with the regulation of hackney coaches, was set on foot, with four com- missionerships attached to it. One of these he coveted, and for a time was apparently encouraged to hope that his wish might be gratified, but the first commissioner was appointed, and he was not Whittle Harvey ; he felt a little anxious. Then the second com- missioner was appointed ; again he was not Whittle Harvey ; he became alarmed. In process of time, the third commissioner was appointed, and still he was not Whittle Harvey ; he grew desperate, and rushed off to Lord Melbourne that he might pour forth his complaints and urge his claim before it was too late. Lord Melbourne received him with bluff politeness, 174 STRANGE SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS but quietly put him aside by remarking, apparently with some little surprise, as if he himself had no opinion on the subject, ' Why, you see those d d fellows say they won't serve with you.' By the way, in speaking of Sir Robert Peel, I omitted to mention a curious scene in the House of Commons con- nected with him of which I was a spectator. I have never seen it alluded to since, so that it does not seem to have taken hold upon other people as strongly as it took hold upon me. Peel had just risen to speak (I should mention that the event took place in the first session of the newly formed House of Commons), he had just gone through his usual trick of exposing his white-waistcoated stomach to the gaze of an admiring universe, when all at once there dashed out from under the gallery, where we were sitting together, a wild, haggard-looking man, who made straight at him. Party feeling ran high at that moment, and political passions were strongly excited. A terrible flash of alarm swept through me, and T said hurriedly to myself, ' Gracious heavens ! another case of Bellingham and Perceval! God help him!' The intruder, however, stopped short before reaching Peel, bowed to him with elaborate courtesy, and went on thus : ' Sir Robert Peel, I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the House of Commons, I beg your pardon again, but I am an unfortunate man who has just been poisoned by Earl Grey.' Pie was at once taken into custody, and then O'Connell, who knew something about him, explained the origin HOW MOSES SHOT A PEELER 175 and cause of his madness. He was instantly removed, and the debate went on, but ended flatly, as Peel's nerves had been, not unnaturally, a good deal shaken, and he was hardly up to the mark. His antagonists also were probably startled by the incident, just as I was, and so the debate died off. This, perhaps, is as good a place as any other to record a thing which happened to Sir Robert Peel whilst Irish Secretary. He was attending an exami- nation at one of the National Schools, and they put him forward to question the boys in the Old Testa- ment. ' Tell me,' he said, ' what was the reason why Moses left the land of Egypt ? ' The young fellows belonging to the first class were not able to answer the question, but a small boy behind them, shrewd- looking and bright-eyed, jumped up eagerly and called out, ' I know, your honour.' ' Do you, my little friend ? ' said Peel ; ' come to the front then, and tell us all about it.' The child obeyed, and when he got to the front, looking Peel full in the face, he ex- plained the matter thus : ' Plase yer honour, he shot a Peeler.'' I need not add, that though not strictly accurate in point of detail, he was substantially right, but the manner in which he managed to Paddify Egypt, thus making things easier to himself, is very funny, though I am afraid that this story at present is likely to amuse an Irish American even more than it does us. There is this, moreover, to be said in his defence, that the Egyptian Jews, unlike their succes- sors, opened a business career by borrowing and not 1 7 C O'CONNELL SIIEIL by lending ; they were probably, therefore, less unlike modern Irishmen than the Hebrews of the present day. About the truth of this history there is no doubt whatever, as Sir Robert Peel himself told it to David Dundas. Sir James Graham enjoyed a great parliamentary reputation, but though able and dexterous, I always thought him heavy, not to say tiresome. For a short sudden speech, suggested by some casual incident, coming away on the spur of the moment, there was nobody, I think, equal to O'Connell, but his longer and more heavily weighted addresses were compa ratively ineffective. An Irishman of another kind was Sheil ; he never spoke without careful prepara- tion, and every sentence was beautifully modelled. As a whole, perhaps, there was too much glitter and gaudiness, but still his glowing fancy and great rhetorical skill bore down all hostile criticism, and everybody listened to him as he went on with admiring expectation. Unluckily, both for himself and his hearers, his voice was detestable something between the yell of a peacock and the squeak of a slate pencil so that unmixed pleasure could not be enjoyed, and you were obliged to wait for the news- papers next morning to understand how great he really was. I recollect being told that his speeches were concocted in a manner that belonged to himself alone. His mind was one of exuberant fertility and high cultivation, and his pen the pen of a ready writer so ready, indeed, that it flew over the paper MACAULAY 177 without an instant's pause ; still, for some reason or other, he could not trust himself to deliver an extem- pore speech, nor, on the other hand, did it suit his character to write out a discourse exactly, and then to learn it by heart as a schoolboy learns his morn- ing lesson. His plan, therefore, was to rattle off five or six compositions on the same subject, and then to lean upon his memory, with a confident hope that out of the five or six, a sufficient number of meta- phors, epigrams, and arguments would return upon his mind to make up one brilliant oration. Macaulay I never heard but once, but I was for- tunate in my opportunity because it was a speech in which occurred the well-known adaptation of Jotham's parable against the men of Shechem in the Book of Judges. Macaulay was arguing that the populace had been suffered to fall under the guidance of anarchists and demagogues, because men of talents, position, and character left their humbler fellow- countrymen without light, leading, or advice. Jotham helped him to tell us how ' the vine would not because of her vintage, and the fig-tree would not because of her sweetness, and the olive would not because of her fatness, so the bramble was anointed king, and out of the bramble came the fire that devoured the cedars of Lebanon/ The sentences were so managed as not to be exactly a quotation, but practically they were the words of the Bible and Bible words have seldom been used with greater force and effect. At the same time, the point of what he said was greatly N 178 MACAULAT AND ARNOLD marred by a mechanical defect, which though it may seem trifling is nevertheless of considerable im- portance. I mean that he hurried along too fast. Of old at Athens, and even now perhaps among the southern nations of Europe, whose perceptive facul- ties are supposed to be quicker and keener than ours, this mistake may not signify so much, but an average English intellect requires time to take in and digest what you say to it. You may speak with the tongue of angels, or archangels if you can, but unless your sentences are allowed to sink gradually into the minds of those whom you address, they lose half their weight and influence. I believe Macaulay after- wards recognised this fault of delivery in himself and corrected the bad habit more or less. Not that error is impossible in the other direction, far from it ; you may be too slow and send your hearers to sleep. But as, in most men, the mere fact of getting upon your legs in front of a critical audience tends to generate a certain tremulous irritability, over-quickness is more common than the reverse. Having referred to Macaulay, I cannot but express my regret that Mr. Arnold, whose influence on public opinion in his own line is so great, so widely diffused, and, I may add, so thoroughly well deserved, should always talk of his distinguished contemporary with a certain harshness, I may almost say, with a certain contempt. He looks upon him as a sort of false prophet in literature, to be discountenanced and con- demned by all true believers. As an essayist and 'LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME' 179 rhetorician I shall leave Macaulay to take care of him- self, observing only that one-sided and prejudiced as he is, when a one-sided and prejudiced man speaks Avith a tongue like his, he is often worth listening to. O Q A n advocate who puts forth any portion of the truth with extraordinary spirit and strength teaches us something, though his teaching may be imperfect and indirect. Take, for instance, a man whom I accept as a man of higher and more original genius than Macaulay, I mean Carlyle. I doubt whether I have agreed entirely with a single thing he ever said, still each of his sayings has had an effect, and a valuable effect too, upon my intellect, because it gives a new aspect to life, because it introduces into my mind fresh elements to think over, and because it lends a breadth to old opinions, which, if not absolutely false and mis- taken, are yet, in their original form, too narrow and conventional to embrace the whole truth. Something of the same kind, I think, may be urged on behalf of the robust Whig Philistine against whom Mr. Arnold, like Lord Burleigh in the ' Critic,' shakes his saga- cious head. It is, however, with regard to the ' Lays of Ancient Rome' that I feel myself compelled to explain at greater length why I differ from Mr. Arnold. I am compelled to do this, because, not content with judging them from his own point of view, he insists that everybody should prostrate himself before his critical Ukase on the subject. He makes admiration of them, as he tells us, a test ; and measures people's literary incapacity by the degree of their approval. 180 THE HARVESTS OF ARRETIUM Now, as I think the ' Lays of Ancient Rome ' a very good piece of work, deserving all the popularity that it has earned, I should look upon myself as a coward if I declined to accept this challenge. Nobody, least of all Macaulay himself, has ever put them forward as constituting a great poem, still his poetical powers, little as he cultivated them, are not inconsiderable. They are quite enough, when supported by the vivid and accurate knowledge of the topics he is handling, and fired by his genuine historical enthusiasm, to create a poem good of its kind and in its degree ; a poem, moreover, which, unlike many more ambitious compositions, is alive and not dead. He has at any rate succeeded in making Roman heroes and Roman traditions household words at the average English fireside, and it is not everyone who could have done that. When I say that his poetic powers are not inconsiderable, I will just quote one passage out of many, moving before my memory, to prove it, and I think most people will agree with me that the picture presented to us in the following lines The harvests of Arretium, This year, old men shall reap ; This year, young boys in Umbro Shall plunge the struggling sheep ; And in the vats of Luna, This year, the must shall foam Round the white feet of laughing girls Whose sires have marched to Rome. could not have risen upon the mind of anyone who was not a true poet. Mr. Arnold begins by quoting a SHORTCOMINGS OF ALL CRITICS 181 rather wooden phrase, 'to every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late,' and announces to his fellow-creatures that the words give him positive pain every time he meets them. Now we must all sympathise with the real Prince Critic, when he hurts his delicate fingers, though shielded by a velvet glove, against this rough knot in Macaulay's bay- tree, just as we sorrow for the real Princess in the fairy tale when she is galled by that intruding pea, through the thirty mattresses lying between her and it. Still a critic liable to be mortally wounded by a rub of that kind, or to ' die of a rose in aromatic pain ' when his sympathies are awakened, is of too ethereal and sylphlike a texture for this work-day world. We take a poem as we take a wife, 'for richer for poorer, for better for worse ; ' a beautiful woman is not to be despised because she has a freckle or a mole or two on her face (nay, Lord Bacon says that such slight deviations from an implacable per- fection, only lend a life and character of their own to her charms), and a poem in the same manner must be judged as a whole; we put aside trifling defects, indeed, what poet is without such faults ? Milton we often find as heavy as lead (or gold if you please). Even Shakspeare errs not unfrequently in point of taste and style. How does Mr. Arnold confront the Mermaid in Campbell's ' Battle of the Baltic ' ? Passage after passage in ' Peter Bell ' must make him shudder. Indeed a faultless poet is seldom a poet of the highest rank ; he is apt to want spon- 182 GOETHE ON DANTE taneity and ease, to ride his Pegasus as it were too much upon the curb, whilst if every bad line in every great writer acts upon Mr. Arnold's critical skin like a mustard leaf, what pangs is he not daily under- going ? Poor man, under such perpetual afflictions, his life must be one long agony. To speak with perfect frankness, it seeems to me that Mr. Arnold's one weak point as critic is a tendency to over-fasti- diousness. Now, in my opinion, the critic ought not to be over-fastidious, but to take broad, bold, and tolerant views of whatever comes under his ken, and to possess the gift of seeing and feeling in a proper degree the merit of everything that is good of its kind. But it is perhaps foolish to expect that a writer of Mr. Arnold's stamp, naturally attracted as he is by those subtler and deeper qualities to be found only in rare poets and thinkers, should sympathise strongly with plain straightforward ballads such as Macaulay aimed at producing. If I may borrow a metaphor from the cricket field, in criticism as in other matters * no one is equally good all round.' Even men of the highest and widest intellects, men reckoned all but infallible, startle us every now and then by the strangeness of their paradoxes. Hear what Goethe says of the ' Divina Commedia. 7 ' The Inferno abomi- nable, the Purgatorio doubtful, and the Paradiso tire- some.' I daresay Goethe did not always cherish a notion like that ; it may have been the result of a fleeting irritation, it may have been a gust of repug- nance roused up by Dante's harsh and gloomy temper, 'THE CHRISTIAN YEAR' 183 a temper so opposite to his own ; but still that is what he said, and it remains on record against him. Along a road where Goethe trips and stumbles, who can hope at all times to stand upright and tread surely ? As for me, if I could only find shelter under a corner of Goethe's magnificent storm-proof umbrella 1 against the pelting scoffs to which I might expose myself, I should have a dozen pestilent heresies to confess, and I believe that most students of literature, once in the confessional, would do much the same thing if they only had the courage to speak out. There is ' The Chris- tian Year ' for instance. Who will dare to say that 1 The Christian Year ' is not a true, perhaps a great poetical work ? It has carried hope and happiness and support to hearts that cannot be numbered ; but it says little or nothing to me. Poetry has been somewhere or other called ' idealised utterance.' I do not quite understand this definition (definitions of poetry indeed are always more or less unintelligible), but accepting it as an approach to the truth, and judging Keble by that definition, I should say that he commonly stammered rather than spoke. But yet his power of influencing beautiful souls, and filling them with unfading joy and peace, is so great a gift, that to talk of him without due reverence seems something like a blasphemy. This heresy, however, is a mild one compared with another which I am reluc- 1 As this umbrella was put up long before Mr. Gladstone's, and as my manuscript has beun read by many friends, 1 see no reason for taking it down. 184 < LYCIDAS' tantly bracing myself up to acknowledge, here Goethe's protecting umbrella becomes more necessary than ever. Mr. Arnold, like everyone else who speaks with authority on such matters, is horrified when Dr. Johnson bluntly condemns ' Lycidas.' Now I could read over the ' Allegro ' and ' Penseroso ' a thousand times without tiring of them. ' Comus,' ' Paradise Regained,' the other secondary poems, all of them, give me great pleasure, though in different degrees ; but as for ' Lycidas,' well, I say ditto to old Sam. In the first place the kind of idyll is not to my taste. If a poet really sorrows over the death of a friend to that decree that he cannot, as a relief to the soul, o refrain from pouring out his sorrow in song, I think his utterance should be natural and straightforward ; he should not speak in a falsetto tone, or overlay his theme with classical affectations. On the other hand, if the grief is only a half grief, conjured up by the imagination to play with like a toy, then, in my opinion, the bard had better hold his tongue. Tn the second place, the jumbling together of Christian and heathen traditions jars upon me just as it jarred upon the tough old dictionary-maker. Nay, besides all this, ' Lycidas ' appears to me not so much a spontaneous outburst as a self-appointed task. One of Milton's editors tells us that Mr. King's friends Milton being one of those friends agreed to write, and bind up together, a lot of verses on his death, but that when ' Lycidas ' made its appearance, it proved so much more important than all the other I SAY DITTO TO SAM JOHNSON 185 poems put together, that it was withdrawn from the book, to be afterwards separately published ; and even now, I think, traces of the original business-like arrangement are to be found in the elegy as we have it. ' He must not welter to the parching wind, with- out the meed of some melodious tear' looks as if Milton (Mr. John) was working himself up towards the fulfilment of a promise, though he found it some- what irksome to fulfil, and the very last line, ' To- morrow to fresh woods and pastures new ' seems to me as if the author were muttering to himself ' Thank God ! that job is off my mind. Old Hobson starts for Cambridge to-morrow morning ; he shall hand over my manuscript to the other fellows, and joy go with it.' Still, when I say this, am I to set myself in oppo- sition to all the great critics, and to pronounce a poem (which Wordsworth himself magnanimously admitted to be all but equal to his own ' Laodamia '), a poem without value, because it does not happen to touch my innermost feelings ? Far from it ; I assume that certain imaginative nerves and fibres to which ' Lycidas ' appeals are wanting to me, as they were wanting to the founder of the club at which Mr. Arnold and I both dine as members. This blank in nature, like my short-sight and Dr. Johnson's short- sight, is not to be filled up by pretending to see what I do not see, I therefore sorrowfully ' pass by on the other side,' leaving the immortal idyll for those who are more worthy of it, and take my delight elsewhere. 186 MACAULAY MAY STILL BE BOUGHT Now ' Horatius ' is not ' Lycidas,' nor am I Mr. Arnold. Still, I think, so far as the ' Lays of Ancient Rome ' are concerned, I am one with the majority. The public on this point agrees with me, and not with him. Is it not therefore possible that while I am too shallow and commonplace to appreciate Milton's masterpiece as it deserves, he, on the other hand, may err from over-refinement, and blind himself to the real merits of a popular work, because those merits are not characterised by what he would perhaps call sufficient distinction. If he will reconsider his judg- ment from this point of view it is well, and if not, the executors and representatives of Macaulay may draw this consolation, even out of Mr. Arnold's hostile verdicts ; though he stand aloof himself, he still permits the ordinary Christians and eaters of beef to read, and, what is more important, to buy, this Philistine publication. It is only the select few, the initiated, those whom Mr. Arnold, borrowing a phrase from the Hebrew prophet whom he has lately taken under his wing, might like to call the ' Remnant,' who are directed by their critical seer to abstain from an intellectual food denounced by him as ' common and unclean.' I have been led a long way out of my road by a natural desire to claim justice for Macaulay, justice at least, if the literary rulers of this generation are not disposed to grant him anything more than strict justice ; and I must hope that my readers will sympa- thise with me when they reflect how it wounds a MR. GLADSTONE AS AN AFTER-DINNER SPEAKER 187 man to see the idols of his youth treated as Dagons, and ruthlessly broken up, because as the years change the spirit of a national literature may change with them, and new fashions become predominant for a season. After all, those now in the ascendent are not the last of the human race any more than Macaulay was, and the ' whirligig of time ' may bring about his revenges. To return however to the point I was discussing some pages back, I mean the influence of manner and temperament upon oratory. I once asked Mr. Gladstone whether after his long years of practice, he ever felt nervous now on rising to speak. ' Not on political questions,' was his answer, ' but if I am called upon to deliver what the Greeks used to call an Epideictic Oration, as at the Literary Fund dinner or the like, I am often somewhat troubled at first.' As far as he is concerned, whatever his inner feelings may be, this motion along a groove which is more or less an unusual one does not visibly affect him, but there are cases on record in which, under similar cir- cumstances, the result has been strange and perplex- ing. My old great-uncle, Sir John Doyle, once told me that when Grattan transferred himself from Dublin to London, he was appointed to organise a great Irish dinner for a set of London Irishmen, and thus to give their eminent fellow-countryman a fitting welcome. When the day came, Sir John had to propose his health with all the honours. Whilst he was upon his legs, Grattan, sitting by his side, grew 188 WHY GRATTAN FAILED fidgety and anxious in the most incredible manner. He kept asking Sir John ' What am I to say ? What am I to do? ' and so on. Sir John stopped between his sentences to reassure him, naturally pointing out that he knew better what to say than anyone else in the room. But this did not turn out to be the case. Grattan, when he arose, began to stutter and mumble in the most pitiable manner, and finally broke down so completely that Sir John thought it necessary by various allusions and reminders to drag him up again, in the hope that his accidental shyness would have dissipated itself, and that at the last he would be able to make for them such a speech as was due from Grattan on such an occasion. But the difficulty could not be overcome ; he failed again just as he had failed at first, and the dinner ended as it might. And yet this was exactly the time when he was taking the English House of Commons by storm, when, as the orator warmed to his work and shot out his short keen sentences one after the other like arrows, always hitting the target at which he aimed, Pitt, as we are told, kept watching the continually increasing success of the speech with the strongest interest and sympathy. The legend is that he went on slapping his thigh, repeating at intervals ' It'll do, it'll do ; it's very great, by God,' as in spite of the strange delivery and unfamiliar style of .the new member the power within him asserted itself and gradually mastered his audience. The reason .of the mishap mentioned above I take to have been, that AS DID THE IRISH DINNER TO HIM 189 his manner of speaking was naturally bitter, aggressive, and pitiless, intended for enemies and not for friends ; hence on looking into his mind for the butter and honey out of which after-dinner amenities and plati- tudes are made up, he found nothing of the kind within his reach, he became in short for the moment just like an empty-headed novice, the difference between them being, that whereas the novice would have had nothing to say at all, the veteran had nothing that was suited to his hearers or his actual position. 190 CHAPTER X. Oastler, the demagogue His great oratorical powers Triumphs over Queen's Counsel at York Critical examination of the famous oath in the Oration on the Crown London amusements Lady Davy at Stafford House My first tour Old English racehorses Proposed alteration in the conditions of a Queen's plate. PASSING out of St. Stephen's, there flourished in the days of my youth a queer sort of demagogue named Oastler, who under more favourable circum- stances might, I think, have claimed a place in the very first rank of orators. He had entangled himself in money difficulties and was under a cloud of some kind ; he exercised nevertheless complete control over the Lancashire mobs, to whom he always appealed, oddly enough, in the character of a high Tory. I recollect greatly admiring a speech of his against the new poor law, which began thus : ' How comes it to pass, my friends, that I, a high Tory, am the only man of my party who can at all times command a hearing from the people of England ? ' This speech was full of fire and energy, exciting the crowd into tremendous enthusiasm. At the same time it would have puzzled the most fastidious among scholars to find a fault in his diction or in the structure of his .sentences. His distinction between Radicals and OASTLER AND THE DISSENTING MINISTER 191 Tories was as follows : that the first-named revered and respected nothing but their own crotchets and dreams, whilst it was the characteristic of the genuine honest Tory, though no doubt he reverenced deeply the prerogatives of the Queen upon her throne, to reve- rence them neither more nor less than the rights of the peasant in his cottage. This masterpiece came to me through the newspapers, but I heard him speak at York from quite a different position, and secure, if possible, a yet greater triumph. He had ruthlessly libelled a dissenting minister, who seemed, from what came out on the trial, to be an underbred fellow, of coarse habits and disagree- able manners, but I did not gather, in the course of the discussion, that he had been guilty of positive immorality or was really a bad man. The dissenter's friends had hired some of the ablest advocates on the circuit to plead his cause, and against them Oastler, a layman of humble rank and imperfect education, stood up alone. By contrasting the vulgar roughness of his antagonist with the idea and behaviour of a true Christian priest, by painting, which he did with admirable force and effect, what the plaintiff really was, and what, as a minister of God, he ought to have been, he made him so odious to everybody that the Queen's Counsel Avrestled with their unlearned opponent in vain, and could extract from the jury for their client nothing better than a farthing damages. Oastler's peroration I recollect perfectly ; it was grandly conceived and grandly delivered. 192 OASTLER'S TRIUMPH ' Gentlemen of the jury,' he exclaimed, ' the plaintiff asks you to award him a thousand pounds as some mitigation of the injuries I am supposed to have inflicted upon him. If you take his view of the case and find me guilty, I can only say that I am poor and helpless. I do not possess a thousand pounds, no nor yet a thousand shillings in the world. Such a verdict therefore to me is just the same as a sentence of life- long imprisonment, but, gentlemen, even then, even if yonder towers ' (pointing to York Castle, with the grim old keep of the Cliffords overhanging it, and frowning in at the windows), 'are destined to be my home and my grave, I can yet make myself happy to the end. 1 have unmasked a scoundrel, and shall still thank God for the good that I have done.' After this the poor dissenter, treated perhaps some- what worse than he deserved, could do nothing more than slink away into the darkness, with or without his hardly earned farthing, whilst Oastler strode out of court in a blaze of glory. Considering the toughness of a Yorkshire jury, and the real ability of the men whom he encountered and over- threw on their own ground, I do not remember a greater rhetorical victory. As we are talking of rhetorical victories, this part of my book is perhaps as good as any other for putting forward and claiming as my own, a side light which I have attempted to throw on the most famous passage of all recorded speeches. I mean the great appeal to the dead, in Demosthenes' Oration on ORATION ON THE CROWN 193 the Crown. As I remarked with reference to the Pythian St. Leger in the ' Electra ' of Sophocles, you suggest what something in the ' Electra ' or elsewhere really means, then twenty or thirty years afterwards, you meet your own opinion again, evolved out of the inner consciousness of some well-known professional scholar, and it becomes his property from that day forth. Now, whether rightly or wrongly, I am somewhat vain of my interpretation of the immortal appeal, or, as it is commonly called, oath, in question. This oath, I may remind my readers, is an adjuration summoning up before his audience the memory of those who faced the first great Hellenic dangers, at Marathon, at Salamis, at Platea, and other battlefields for their common country. He calls upon these mighty shadows to give their sanction to the course adopted by him against Philip, and to ratify his acts, without reference to their good suc- cess or ill success, because, like them, he was inspired by a true patriotism, by an enlightened devotion to a great and glorious cause. Now this passage has always been considered by the Greeks, and by those who follow the Greeks, as a marvel of eloquence. We find it selected by the well-known critic Longinus, as the chief instance of the sublime in oratory, and this praise has been echoed on through a crowd of commentators and lecturers, from generation to gene- ration. I own frankly that when I first read De- mosthenes, these praises appeared to me a little over- pitched ; the diction no doubt is perfect, and the roll o 194 CAPTAIN SIIANDON ON THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON of the sentences falls upon the ear like the sound of a minster organ, but after all, even in England, where passions and sympathies are less easily roused than in more southern countries, it does not require a superhuman genius to make a good deal out of Trafalgar or Waterloo. As Captain Shandon in Thackeray's ' Pendennis ' remarks, with a wink in his left eye which was not all enthusiasm, * I never knew the Duke to fail.' Now, Marathon and Salamis among the Athenians must have been topics as safe to win cheers, as Trafalgar or Waterloo among our- selves. Surely, I said to myself, there must be some subtler magic, some deeper charm in these immortal words, or the admiration of Longinus would hardly have kindled itself up into such unprecedented zeal. What can ihat charm and magic be ? After thinking the matter over, it occurred to me that our modern scholastic pilots have missed their proper channel, by confusing the modern system of oaths, and the modern view of swearing, with that appeal to the gods and demigods always floating about the ordinary talk of Greek men and women, as a matter of course. In this very oration, Zeus and other deities, if I mistake not, are invoked, without any particular reason, a hundred times or more before we come to the men of Marathon. Therefore there must have been a special happiness in the allusion to them, and this, according to my belief, was that special happiness. The Athenians were listen- ing intently to the arguments of Demosthenes, but MY INTERPRETATION OF THE OATH 195 listening without any expectation of ' some new thing ' dawning upon them. When the words ov /x,a were uttered, they were uttered for them as the beginning of a familiar and well recognised formula, and they had no more doubt that Demosthenes was going to finish the phrase with the words TOV Aia or the like, than I have that the ensuing Session will be opened by a Queen's Speech ; but whilst they waited thus, carelessly anticipating the words about to come, for the first time in history they were startled to find a mode of speech hitherto consecrated to Zeus and the other immortals suddenly linked with the names of men, and that those who had fought at Marathon and at Salamis, under whose guardianship Demosthenes, because he had inherited their noble- ness, and trod in their footsteps, sublimely begged the question in his own favour, stood up at once, lifted to the rank of gods and heroes, by the mere form of the expression. No wonder that with their feelings already at a white heat, all hearts among the men of Athens broke out together into a conflagra- tion of sympathy, and that Jischines, the rival and enemy, struck down by this undreamt of thunderbolt of eloquence, ceased to exist for the audience. In order to ascertain whether anything like it had hap- pened previously, I went straight through Aristo- phanes. I thought that perhaps he might have shown the way to Bob Acres in Sheridan's comedy, and set on foot the odds, whips, and wheels system of swearing as a valuable element in some of his o 2 19G THE SWEARING BY THE SCEPTRE plays ; but nothing of the sort is discoverable. I then applied to Mr. Gladstone, perhaps the highest authority that we can name on questions of eloquence and scholarship combined. The only exception to the ordinary rule suggested by him was that Aga- memnon in the Iliad once makes his ancestral sceptre a thing to swear by, va\ pa roSe o-K^irrpov. The answer to this is double ; first that Homer belonged to a very remote epoch, to a time differing so completely in manners, customs, and feelings from the time of Demosthenes, that he is hardly admissible as a wit- ness, and secondly (this is the true answer), that the exception is not a real, but only a seeming excep- tion. The sceptre in question had been brought down by Hermes from heaven as the consecrated and consecrating gift of Zeus ; it was delivered over to the holder's forefathers, as the symbol of God-given au- thority, and therefore possessed from the beginning a divinity of its own. This estimate of mine as to the real reason why this famous passage produced so great and lasting an effect, I submit for what it is worth to scholars and critics, and also to men of the world whose knowledge and critical power are not confined to books and manuscripts, but pass beyond them into life. During all this Eton and Oxford time, of course, I partook of the usual London amusements and relaxa- tions 7 but balls and parties in London are mono- tonous enough, and though one or more of them may have possessed for you a special attraction, that will LADY DAVY AT STAFFORD HOUSE 197 not interest the future ages. The only thing that returns upon me here as worth mentioning was my accidentally catching a glimpse of what may be called ' high life below stairs,' one night at Stafford House. There was a huge assembly there, and the hall- porter, a grand looking giant, absolutely dazzled one's eyes in his state livery of green and gold. His duty was to call people's carriages, and he performed his duty well. Old Lady Davy, widow of the celebrated philosopher and fisherman, Sir Humphry, pressed her claims upon him with some intensity. It is im- possible to conceive anything more elaborately courteous and deferential than his way of addressing her. ' Yes, my lady, I have already called for your servants three or four times, and they do not answer, but if your ladyship pleases, I shall be glad to try once more.' She accepted this offer eagerly, and out he went, I following on iny own business. The moment he was beyond a green baize curtain mo- mentarily occupying the place of the door, his whole manner and demeanour changed at once; he swaggered amongst the dingy linkboys like a blase rainbow, and called out in the roughest possible voice, and in a style anything but respectful, ' I say you fellows, give that old Davy girl another call.' He kept his pro- mise with strict fidelity, but if she had heard how he did it, I think, after his extreme politeness inside the house, it would have startled her as much as it amused me. In the summer of 1829 I went abroad for the 198 DKEADFUL ACCIDENT AT SPA first time. It was not much of a tour, and I should hardly have mentioned it but for a terrible misfor- tune that took place at Spa in the house where we had established ourselves. A Monsieur Du Briasse and his wife, an exceedingly pretty woman, occupied the ground floor. It was the custom of the Spa visitors to ride out all together on capital little forest ponies belonging to the place. One morning, it turned to rain, and we came back wet and discomfited. I was reading in my bedroom. Suddenly a strange cry fell upon my ears. I could not decide whether it were a scream of agony, or merely hysterical laughter, and hurried down to ascertain. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, before me stood Madame Du Briasse half naked, for her clothes had been burnt off her back. Her petticoat, slipping an inch or two below her riding dress, was seen on her return home to be slightly wet. She tried to dry it over a wood fire, when a spark flew out of the grate, and she found herself in flames. Her husband lost his head, and rushed out into the open hall calling for help, instead of attend- ing to her himself, and she followed him. The wind caught her, and did its evil work in an instant. Help had come from others ere I arrived, but it had come too late, and she died a week afterwards. Even in that terrible moment, I could not help being struck by an illustration of St. Evremond's remark, that a woman always cares less for her life than her beauty. RACE-HORSES OLD AND NEW 199 ' Je suis abime'e pour toujours,' repeated over and over again, was the expression that rose naturally to the poor sufferer's lips, and I learnt then that the French cynic's experience on this point is not to be entirely disregarded. This sad event threw a gloom over the whole journey, and we were glad to find ourselves at home again. The recreation, however, as I have told my readers before, that I liked best, was attending races, and I generally managed to be at York or Doncaster during the summer vacation. From the racing at York in 1824 I derived an impression, never to be effaced, that our present horses have been for many years gradually decreasing in point of stamina and endurance. These fancies of mine, I know, lead the worshippers of Admiral Rous to look upon me as a fossilised old fool ; I return the compliment by looking upon them as a set of racing tradesmen, who only care for our national sports as a trade. To them the superiority of our English thoroughbreds as one of the elements of England's greatness is perfectly indif- ferent ; to most of them the best horse is the horse that wins them the most money they have no other criterion of merit. In August 1824, I saw Lord Durham's Carnival run two desperate four-mile races on two successive days. In his second race he met new antagonists, including an ex-winner of the St. Leger. He then walked over after a dead heat with Mr. Watts's Duport, none the worse for his previous exertions. Even then, though it did him no harm, this 200 REFORMATION OF QUEEN'S PLATES double trial was considered to press upon Carnival somewhat unfairly. In 1800 such an effort would have been so wholly in accordance with the ordinary routine, that the busiest of humanitarians would not have troubled himself to wag a tongue on the horse's behalf, whilst in 1884, if the Rousites will find me an animal who after galloping four miles in seven minutes and forty seconds, and running his antagonist to half a head, will be ready to face fresh opponents on the next day after over the same distance at the same rate of speed, I will imitate Charles Greville's example, and offer up a silver horseshoe at the shrine of the handicapping Admiral's patron saint, if he have a patron saint. I have often, when young, witnessed contests of the same kind both at York and Doncaster ; at York also, in 1824, I saw two miles accom- plished in three minutes and twenty-eight seconds. All that I have seen tends, therefore, to confirm me in my heresy, if heresy it be, that our present racers, though they may be as speedy as ever, are no longer, in many important respects, what once their forefathers were. This being my decided opinion, I do not think it out of place to repeat a suggestion here, submitted to Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville several years ago. Three thousand pounds and up- wards are annually spent upon a certain number of Queen's plates. These Queen's plates, at the time of my writing, were only one hundred guineas apiece ; they have since been raised to two and in some cases to three QUEEN'S PLATEES TO BE MADE TO GALLOP 201 hundred guineas apiece. This is a step in the right direction, but not a sufficient step. The object of these grants being to maintain our national breed of horses unimpaired, and to keep our national pre-eminence over all other European countries beyond dispute, unless we get an adequate return for this expenditure of public money, the manner of expending it ought to be reconsidered. At present I affirm the money to be simply thrown away. Now, although I do not suppose the scheme I offered to Mr. Gladstone would work miracles, I still think it worth trying. This was the scheme. That the Government should reduce the numerous Queen's plates, which have become per- fectly useless, from their present number to three of one thousand or twelve hundred pounds apiece. If Ministers were disposed to be generous, they might add two more, one for Ireland and another for Scot- land, annually. If, however, they do not choose to give anything but what they give already, they ought to keep two of these plates for England, and assign the third to Scotland and Ireland on alternate years. I would add that as this is a tax imposed on English- men for the sake of the English horses, Frenchmen, Germans, and Americans, who can take excellent care of themselves, should be completely shut out from such competitions. I need not enter into special details ; the one point I should insist upon above all others, is a regulation of the pace at which the races must be run. If, as Admiral Rons asserts, neither Highflyer nor Eclipse could now win a selling race, 202 PRESENT AMERICAN RACE-HORSES our present matchless coursers cannot complain if they are required to gallop as the contemporaries of Highflyer and Eclipse used to gallop in their day. Three minutes and a half for two miles, 5.15 for three, 1\ for four, 7.55 for the Beacon course (I am speak- ing roughly no doubt), would be my limits, and any winner who did not accomplish his prescribed task would have to forfeit half the money given. This sum I should add to the next year's plate, and hope that, in process of time, large sums would thus accumulate, and tempt breeders to aim at producing stronger, sounder, and more enduring animals ; to reproduce, in fact, horses such as Lord Stradbroke recollects, when the Beacon course was sure to be run over in less than eight minutes if the weather were not exception- ally bad. Such horses, I may point out, as Iroquois and Foxhall, were bred and reared more according to the old system than the new, and are more akin to Hambletoniun, Waxy, and Sir Peter (I am not speaking of Highflyer or Eclipse), than our actual Derby winners. 203 CHAPTER XL All Souls A word in defence of All Souls fellowships Henry Ker Seymer Abolition of local scholarships Henry Denison and Mr. Dry The way in which the prizes are now decided My protest against it. AFTER my degree, in due process of time I was elected to an All Souls fellowship, and here formed many friendships. These All Souls fellowships were not very defensible in theory, but if you judge them by their actual effects, there was something to be said for them. They formed, in common with, perhaps even rather more than other lay fellowships, a link between the world and the university. They did this by enabling men possessed of many valuable qualities, who otherwise would have passed away from Oxford altogether, to maintain their connection with it a connection, I think, of use both to the College Dons, who were inspirited by the oxygen of a larger life from without, and also to the men I speak of, who preserved the associations of their youth, and renewed their early friendships to freshen them up amid the dust and bustle of the world. Of such men you could not find a better specimen than Henry Ker Seymer, afterwards member for Dorsetshire. Though clever and highly cultivated, he 204 ALL SOULS FELLOWSHIPS HENRY KER SEYMER had not sought distinction in the Schools from Greek and Latin, and therefore would not have been able to offer himself as a candidate under the new system. But though not more than fairly good as a classical scholar, he was thoroughly well versed in French and Italian, as well as in other kinds of knowledge. He had also travelled much, and knew life as well as, if not better than books. His temper was excellent, his judgment sound, enriched by a fine sense of humour and a keen insight into character. Such a man, coming down from London and the House of Commons once a week or so, during the term, gave, as I have said, something to the Oxford residents, and received from them something in return, to the advantage of both. In the House of Commons he was highly valued as an able speaker, but still more as one exercising a good influence over public opinion, and as an excellent representative of the best and highest class among our English country gentlemen. An alteration in the Oxford system took place, I cannot exactly say when, which I suppose will be said by its advocates to have done good upon the whole, but at the same time it produced a certain amount of mischief, mischief that cannot be repaired, and which was not, I think, sufficiently considered. The alteration I mean was the sweeping away of local scholarships and exhibitions in favour of un- restricted competition. A decayed Grammar School, at Pottlebury let us call it, may not send up shining lights to Balliol or LOCAL EXHIBITIONS 205 Exeter, whilst a certain number of half-educated young men, and, possibly not of the highest breeding, will be sure to have bothered and irritated their tutors more or less. Out of a hundred scholars, therefore, ninety and nine of those who now fill up the vacancies on Mr. Robinson's foundation (meant by him to benefit his native place) may be superior to their rustic predecessors. But even in that case, as the ninety-nine candidates aforesaid would pro- bably have found their place in a College through their own resources, the university gains little or nothing, whilst in spite of this being a democratic age, you are robbing the poor to bestow undue advantage upon the rich. The wealthier a man is, the better he can educate his children ; naturally he grudges no expense, and therefore these scholarships and exhibitions now fall to those for whom they never, were intended, whilst the poor young men of promising talents, for whom they were intended, are left out in the cold. In ordinary cases, though injustice is done to the founder, and also to the natural objects of his bounty, the evil may not be very serious or very extensive, but it is easy to con- ceive that every now and then something much worse than this may happen to the country, nay to the world at large. Y"ou may bar the door of advancement against a Newton, arrest his mental development at the most critical period of his life, and probably end by driving him into a grocer's shop. The smug young gentleman from Eton or Shrews- 20G OBJECTIONS TO THEIR ABOLITION bury, who under the actual system fills his place, passes, I dare say, creditably enough through a commonplace life, but the man of high though un- developed genius, whom he shuts out from those possibilities heretofore opened to him by some pro- vincial patriot, may have to tie up half-pounds of tea, day after day, for his village customers, instead of discovering the theory of gravitation and weighing the stars in a balance. It would be difficult to say how many first classes would adequately compensate for the quenching, or even for the eclipsing, of such a light. It was whilst I was a fellow at All Souls that Liddell and Scott's Lexicon took the place of the Hederics and Scapulas plodded over by us. Our successors at Oxford ought in consequence to be, as I believe they are, better Greek scholars than we ever were, though, of course, if Greek be made easier, men will spend less thought and work in acquiring it ; hence it becomes more of an accomplishment, and loses some of its value as a great element of education in the true sense of the word. We might even start higher up ; our great-grandfathers failed to understand many passages smoothed into clearness and simplicity for us, and still more so for our successors, but in trying to understand them, they did more for the enlargement of their minds than do the men of this O generation, leaning upon their cribs, and surrounded by annotations to explain everything. Nevertheless, education or no education, 1 wish that a Grrcco- Mil. DRY, THE CHRIST CHURCH BUTLER 207 English, and still more an Anglo-Greek Lexicon, had existed in my time. It would have saved me a great deal of trouble. To this day, I cannot help laughing whenever I recall Sydney Smith's inimitable picture of the unhappy boy blundering about among the various English renderings of the six Latin words, all grouped together around that one Greek word the meaning of which he had to fathom, ' when all the O 7 time he knows, that by just running round the corner, he can obtain any quantity of ripe gooseberries on credit' I have said above that Henry Denison had been a student of Christ Church before he became a fellow of All Souls. His flitting from the one College to the other was accompanied, or rather followed, by an amusing incident. Our old College butler, Mr. Dry, was a gentleman believed to be quite able to take care of himself. Though answerable to the newly elected fellow of All Souls for the remnant owino: o to him out of the surrendered studentship, this remnant he seemed in no hurry to hand over. During the interval, Henry Denison grew furious, and went about denouncing the law's delay, and heaped upon poor Dry unsparing invectives on account of his wicked procrastination. ' That old beggar Dry, I cannot get hold of him. I believe he means to cheat me out of my money. I won't stand it much longer, I can tell you.' At last the earnestly desired moment came, and Denison claimed what was due to him somewhat fiercely, but Mr. Dry, on his 208 MY BOUT WITH HIM part, being a man of the most elaborate and unctuous politeness, bowed gravely in return, and replied thus : ' Oh, certainly, Mr. Denison, nothing will give me greater pleasure, but perhaps you will oblige me by settling this little account before I do so.' Then straightway there issued out of his terrible pocket, like the ghost of Peter Schlemihl's Uncle, a ghastly apparition of ' battells, dues, and decrements,' which, not content with swallowing up the debt supposed to be owing from the College, asked for more as shame- lessly as Oliver Twist. When it came to my turn, I endeavoured to avenge Henry Denison by using with my best skill the arms of courtesy against this bland old humbug. He congratulated me ' on being elected to a society of such distinction, after having passed through the ordeal of the university with such brilliant success.' * Mr. Dry,' I answered solemnly, ' thank you very much for your kind congratulations, but I think you underrate my merits. I have been elected to All Souls, not after, but before, passing through the ordeal of the university, inasmuch as this bill of yours, a somewhat serious item of such an ordeal, remains unpaid ; however, as the French say, " Rira bien, qui rit le dernier." Mr. Dry, pocketing the money I owed to him, smiled with calm superiority, and we parted friends. My first fellowship lasted seven years, until my marriage and socially speaking, has always remained full of pleasant recollections. From a money point of view, on the other hand, the profits were small. UNPLEASANT ECONOMISTS 209 A man residing there constantly, at least if he were a junior fellow, would hardly have got more than his board and lodging. When I was again elected as Poetry Professor, the fellowship had much im- proved in value, and turned the professorship into a well-remunerated office, which in itself it was not, particularly as it seemed good to the university, shortly after my election, to convert the leaseholds whereon it rested into freehold property, a re-invest- ment benefiting the university I daresay, but at my expense. I believe the authorities have since found out a way to raise the salary again, and that it re- turns to what it was in Mr. Arnold's time, which is all the better for Professor Palgrave. I have no doubt that the gentlemen responsible to Oxford had excellent reasons for what they did, both first and last, and I do not pretend to have been ill-used, still I may perhaps point out that I was somewhat unlucky to come in medias res, as it were, under the grip of intervening economists. 210 CHAPTER XII. Marshal to Baron Parke in 1834-5 Eccentricities of his namesake and brother judge, James Allan Park The habit of talking to one- self Story of the Chinese pedlar Baron Parke's generosity to his brothers and sisters Lady Parke, afterwards Lady Wensleydale Epigrams of Baron Parke Sam Rogers Courvoisier's Trial Duty of an advocate Family life at Ampthill Figure as a theo- logical instructor. To return to the days of my first fellowship. I was then reading law with William Plunket, an ex- cellent fellow, and an Equity lawyer of promise. He, alas, like so many of my earlier friends, died in youth. In 1834 and 1835, I was taken as marshal and introduced to the Northern Circuit which I after- wards joined by Baron Parke, an old family friend, and the most learned if not the greatest lawyer of his day. There were at that period two James Parks or Parkes who must not be confounded together, as no two men could well be more different. The elder of the two, James Allan Park, was a very worthy old gentleman, and as a judge I believe quite par negotiis in general ; but he had a certain eccentricity of temper and thought, which every now and then turned him a little out of the right course. Before proceeding to the real Simon Pure, my Baron JUDGE PARK'S SELF-COMMUNING S 211 Parke, I may as well tell one or two stories illus- trating his namesake's recorded queernesses on the Bench stories which, I daresay, are now lost to the present generation of barristers. He was a very religious man, and a great believer in special inter- ventions of' providence on adequate, or, indeed, on inadequate grounds. He also very commonly talked aloud to himself without being aware of what he was doing. In one case that came before him, the prisoner was accused of stealing some faggots, and Park, on the Bench, was heard to mutter something to this effect, that he did not quite see his way to a verdict, one faggot being as like another faggot as one egg is like another egg. The quick-eared bar- rister retained for the defence caught these murmur- ings from above, and instantly made use of them. 'Now, witness,' he cried out, 'you swear to those faggots ; how dare you do such a thing ? Is not one faggot as like another faggot as one egg is like another egg ? ' Immediately the judge, who though a good man, had certainly no claim to be an angel, rushed in without any proper apprehensions. ' Stop the case,' he shouted, ' stop it at once ; the coincidence is quite miraculous. I vow to God that the very same thought, in the very same words, passed through my mind only a few seconds ago. Heaven has in- terfered to shield an innocent man. Gentlemen of the jury, you will acquit the prisoner.' ' But, my lord,' interposed the prosecuting counsel, ' your lordship is under a misconception.' ' Sit down, Mr. 212 LORD DUDLEY Richards, sit down at once ; there can have been no misconception, this trial must not go on. I say again, gentlemen of the jury, you will acquit the prisoner without delay.' The enemies of providence were finally silenced, and the faggot stealer went home, or perhaps to the public-house, rejoicing that he had been tried by such a judge. This habit of unconsciously talking aloud to one- self is not an uncommon habit, and often produces wonderful results. The Lord Dudley of my youth, the memory of whose great talents and acquirements has somewhat faded from the public mind, was notorious for going astray in this manner. Indeed I believe, just before his last illness, he travelled down to Dover in his carriage alone, but he carried on an imaginary conversation throughout the whole journey, and complained bitterly on arriving at his inn, that he had been careless enough to let a most agreeable companion, who had accompanied him from London, escape before he could ask him to dinner. Some years before this, he was the guest of a connection of mine, the late Mrs. Cunliffe Offley. Mrs. Cunliffe was aunt by marriage to the beautiful daughters of Sir Richard Brooke. On coming into the room, Lord Dudley asked at once after the lovely Miss Brooke (the present Lady Meath), who during the previous season had taken all hearts by storm. Mrs. Cunliffe answered : ' I suppose you mean Harriett. She is now at home, but Mary, her sister, is with me this year in her place, and among ourselves, LORD DUDLEY AND MRS. CUNLIFFE 213 we think Mary, though her beauty is of a different kind, quite as handsome as Harriett.' 'I daresay,' retorted Lord Dudley in a regular fume ; * that is always the way with you women ; if there is one pretty girl among a lot of sisters, you will try to poke the rest of them down our throats over her back.' Mrs. Cunliffe, being an old friend, and well aware of the Dudley eccentricities, was not much moved by this somewhat rough contradiction, observ- ing only, ' Well, it is nothing to me, Lord Dudley, but that is our opinion ; agree with it or not, as you please, and now we had better go to dinner.' To dinner they went, and Lord Dudley, sitting opposite the new beauty, very soon began to talk to himself, and to employ expressions which, as Punch would say, he might just as well have kept unuttered. ' Confound the old jade, I almost think that she is right after all ; damn the old hag, she is indeed.' ' What are you talking about, Lord Dudley ? ' was the not unnatural inquiry. ' Well, Mrs. Cunliffe, you see it had just passed through my mind that your opinion as to Miss Brooke's beauty is quite justified, and I suppose I have been saying to myself how thoroughly I agree with you.' After that, of course there was nothing to be done except to stop that sort of conversation as soon as possible. The other story belonging to James Allan Park, and still floating about the York and Lancaster law courts when I first went round the circuit as marshal, is certainly a strange one, but barrister after barrister 214 A CHINESE PEDLAR so solemnly assured me that it was really true, and that it had been repeated to me without any measur- able exaggeration, as to leave me no choice except to believe it. Here it is. Some Yorkshire footpad (perhaps partly for the fun of the thing) robbed a Chinese pedlar near Leeds. An orthodox church- man, by his own account, he was quite ready to kiss the book and go through all preliminary forms as a Christian, but a terrible doubt fell upon the mind of Park, the presiding judge. He insisted on having the Celestial pedlar's religious views thoroughly ascertained. ' Ask him,' he said, sternly putting aside the prosecuting counsel's general assurances, ' where he was baptized ? ' The obedient interpreter started at once ; Hubble Bubble &c., out came the answer in the same dialect. ' My Lord,' explained the interpreter, ' he says he is baptized in every town he comes to.' This fact, as far as it went, was un- doubtedly creditable to the Chinaman, but it did not absolutely chime in with the thirty-nine articles, or satisfy the exacting piety of the judge. ' Oh dear, oh dear,' he said, ' ask him where he expects to go after death.' The Hubble Bubble process resorted to again brought out this reply in English, ' that he expected to go back to Pekin.' The judge, completely upset, applied to David Dundas, of whom I shall have much to say hereafter, in these words : ' My dear young friend, you have heard what has happened ; pray go over to the other court, and ask my brother Judge what I had better do.' A TOUGH YORKSHIRE JUDGE 215 Away went Dundas as directed. Now this brother Judge happened to be a very tough hard York- shireman, who had forced his way to the front of his profession by sheer strength rather than by any special cultivation or grace of manner. Dundas found him stripped to the waist, sponging and soap- ing himself all over (the weather being then very hot), before he started on his walk before dinner. 1 What,' he shouted out from the middle of his basin, ' has Park caught a Tartar? What an ass he must be to hesitate about the matter ! Go back and tell him from me, that the man's evidence is clearly inadmis- sible.' ' But, my lord,' meekly suggested Dundas, ' the fellow says he is a Christian.' ' He a Christian ! ' roared out the Judge, resuming his ablutions with redoubled vigour. ' He be damned ; he is no more a Christian than I am.' This was the answer that David Dundas had to carry back. Not that I suppose the Judge meant more than to reinforce his statement as emphatically as possible, only the soap and water, in which he kept plunging about like a walrus, pre- vented him from picking and choosing his words with perfect discretion. At any rate, not being under examination, the precise attitude he took up towards the head of the Church, however it might operate against him in the future, was of no present importance. My friend Baron Parke, as I have said, had but little in common with his quasi namesake. He was one of the most vigorous and masterful judges on the 216 BARON PARKE'S KINDNESS TO HIS FAMILY bench, a thoroughly accomplished lawyer, and re- markable for strength both of body and mind. His defect was a passion for legal niceties, which ap- parently led him away every now and then, so that when he got an opportunity he decided with a certain relish against parties who trusted to the right, instead of relying, as they ought to have done, on the fine legal quality of their replications and demurrers. In spite of this weakness, however, to say nothing of his talents, there were few men of more generous or nobler nature. He was the youngest of thirteen children, and his father, once a successful merchant, had fallen into difficulties. The family circumstances, therefore, were not prosperous, but he had an uncle who died possessed of considerable wealth. This uncle, probably because he had discovered that his nephew James was the flower of the flock, left everything to him, but James, saved from actual want by his Trinity fellowship, and feeling strong enough to stand upon his own legs, had no idea of becoming rich at the expense of his nearest and dearest relations. He ac- cordingly divided this inheritance into thirteen shares, and distributed them, one by one, amongst his brothers and sisters, reserving only the last share for himself. He was not, in the end, I believe a very great loser by this open-handed proceeding ; most of his brothers died before him without marrying, and restored to him what he had originally bestowed upon them. This, however, he could not calculate upon beforehand, and there are many men claiming to act LADY PARKE 217 always from the highest motives, who would have felt it a gross violation of duty, to set at naught the last wishes of so excellent a man as the testator. He continued from first to last a firm friend of mine, and always behaved to me with the utmost kindness. If, for a moment, a little cloud overhung our relations, I, not he, was in fault, and this cloud soon passed away never to return. I was also extremely fond of his wife. She was the most gracious and affectionate among women, and though not pretending to any special cleverness, had always lived on the terms of the closest intimacy with her husband's friends, men for the most part of the highest talents and acquire- ments. Distinguished among them were Sydney Smith, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Brougham, Baron Alderson, Chief Justice Tindal, and David Dundas. To these, if it were worth while, many fit to rank with them might be added. The result was that she had been excellently educated by this intercourse with wits and scholars eminent in their day, and though this education had been carried on in a some- what abnormal fashion, by conversation rather than by books, it was not, in my judgment, any the worse on that account. Baron Parke, besides his knowledge of law and powers of reasoning, had been Chancellor's medallist at Cambridge and also fourth wrangler. He possessed, moreover, a great deal of humour and was a first- rate epigrammatist. I recollect two epigrams, one in Latin, the other in English, both worth recording. 218 BARON PAHKE AN EPIGRAMMATIST There were others equally good in their way, of which I remember the outlines, but as they are longer and more elaborate, I could only quote them imperfectly, and, that being so, it is better not to quote them at all. Here is the Latin one. Lady Parke made David Dundas on his birthday a present of a silver saltcellar. At the bottom of this saltcellar were engraved these two following lines, dictated by her husband, and if Martial could have beaten them, I should think more highly of his wit than I do at present. Ecce tibi vacuum dat Parca benigna salinum : Ipsos jam dederat Parca benigna sales. The second was improvised whilst we were walk- ing together in Ampthill Park, soon after the Baron had settled himself there. It was a severe slap in the face to poor old Rogers, the poet, and one which I am nearly certain he had not deserved. Lord and Lady Holland had preceded the Parkes at Ampthill. Now Lady Holland, as is well known, ruled her literary vassals with a rod of iron, and I have no doubt that the unlucky poet who composed the verses scourged by Parke' s epigram, composed them under her ladyship's sternest compulsion. There is a magnificent oak near the house, known as the ' King's Oak.' To this tree was attached a wooden placard, differing from ordinary placards which give information to trespassers that they will be prosecuted, and convey other legal notices, in this respect, that upon it were painted certain blank verses, MONSIEUR MORT 219 by the author of the ' Pleasures of Memory,' as was generally believed, and very poor blank verses they were, although they took upon themselves to announce publicly that even oaks must yield to time, and that if they feel any hankering after immortality, the help of the poet must be invoked. Parke cocked his eye, sparkling with pungent, I will not say malicious fun, and commented upon the blank verse in the following rhymed couplet I'll bet a thousand pounds, and Time will show it, That the stout oak outlives the feeble poet. To the best of my belief, these lines were never written down. The feeble poet (if Rogers were the author of the inscription) was a frequent guest at Ampthill, and it would have been dangerous to give him an opportunity of inspecting so bitter a criticism upon himself. Though, if Tennyson be accurate in estimating his own future renown at ' half the lifetime of an oak ' (his admirers, of whom I am one, would lay odds on him against a yew), Parke's epigram must be looked upon, though Rogers himself might have winced under it, as taking an indulgent view of the banker-bard's posthumous chances. We may indeed doubt if posthumous is an admissible epithet in his case. Most elderly persons are familiar with the various stories about him and his cadaverous appearance. How, when he and Moore called upon some distinguished Frenchman, and Rogers followed the footman announcing M. Mort, the startled Parisian jumped up in a panic and fled 220 SYDNEY SMITH'S MOURNING BRIDEGROOM for his life. How, when there was a rumour that he contemplated marriage, Sydney Smith suggested the two Miss Berrys as bridesmaids, the sexton as best man, and a certain Mr. Coffin, a clergyman known at that time in London, as the proper person to offi- ciate at the wedding, which would of course take place in the Church of St. Sepulchre, &c. How, being with him in the Catacombs at Rome, Lord Dudley picked up a skull, looked alternately at it and his friend's ghastly face, and then solemnly put it down, as if, having made a careful comparison between the two deathlike aspects, he was thoroughly satisfied that the one was the image of the other. Afterwards Rogers avenged himself for this insult in the two famous lines Ward has no heart they say, but I deny it ; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it. Dead or alive, however, he appeared on the face of the globe for many years after composing this epi- gram. During the last two years of his life I saw a good deal of him, as I was much at Brighton, to which place he retired after partially recovering from a severe accident. He had been knocked over by a carriage in the street, or rather had fallen under the imminent peril of being knocked down, and broken his thigh. At his great age, the bone could not reknit itself, so that he never walked again. Up to that time, old as he was, and ill as he looked, he had been wonderfully active and independent. Though cele- brated for the quickness and neatness of his repartees, ROGERS AS A POET 221 the tinge of bitterness that ran through his conversa- tion made him less agreeable to listen to than Sydney Smith, nor did he possess anything like the same affluence and variety of wit. He was, moreover, a disappointed man ; his poetical success, which, mainly owing to the absence of powerful competitors, was at first very considerable, could not uphold itself against the rush of popularity lifting up Scott and Byron and Campbell far above him ; and long before he died, Wordsworth and Coleridge and Shelley came also to the front ; so that he gradually found him- self somewhat in the position of the pushing Bible guest (except that no blame attached to him person- ally), and began with sadness, though not with shame, Ho take the lowest room.' His early triumphs had no doubt flattered his imagination with the hope of future greatness, and when this hope failed to realise itself, his temper turned somewhat sour, as indeed did his face ; still this ' vinegar aspect ' did not go very deep, it was only an ' aspect,' and never impaired the genuine kindness of his nature, a kind- ness always ready when he found fitting opportunities for its exercise. My attendance on Baron Parke as marshal was a pleasant attendance, and brought me into constant communication with other distinguished judges. Among them I may name Baron Alderson and Lord Denman, beloved by everyone who knew him. I also became acquainted with the leading counsel on several circuits. 222 SEKJEANT MAULE It was at Gloucester, unless I am mistaken, that my Baron came into collision with Serjeant Maule funnily enough. Maule, afterwards the well-known Baron of the Exchequer, was engaged in a case, and as Parke thought, kept wasting everybody's time that he might indulge in humorous irrelevancies simply to please himself. ' Come, come, Brother Maule, can't you get on a little faster ? I must be at Stafford to-night.' The Baron interrupted him thus, but Maule was the last person in the world to accept a snubbing without resistance, and he answered as follows : ' My Lord, I should be most happy to oblige your lordship, but you see, just at present, I am not Brother Maule, but John Robinson' (giving his client's name), ' who has not the least wish that your lordship should get to Stafford to night ; in point of fact, he does not care a straw whether your lordship ever gets to Stafford at all.' Of course when an advocate entrenches himself in such an im- pregnable position as this, the judge can only retreat ; this Parke did with very good grace, accepting some sham Greek Iambics of mine in perfect good humour, he even contributed to them, by way of improving the joke. I recollect that these Greek Iambics began thus ^/covcro. -n-ptarjv tv So/x,owri /co/m'ois /?apa>vos e How they went on, God knows, I am afraid Mnemo- syne herself, though the Mother of the Muses, could not supply the end to my memory. Baron Parke was COURVOISIER'S CONFESSION 223 the judge who tried Courvoisier for the startling murder of Lord William Russell at his house in Norfolk Street. Phillips, a well-known Irish bar- rister, celebrated for his persuasive eloquence, had undertaken the defence, when he was suddenly worried and embarrassed by the prisoner's unlocked for confession of his guilt. This did not of itself alter his duty to his client, because a man is not hanged for committing murder, but for having the act of murder proved against him by sufficient legal evidence, and in England, at any rate, it is thought better that no certainty should be strong enough to put the rope round a man's neck, unless it be a legal certainty. Still, a counsel whose business it is to get an accused person oif, would rather know no more about the matter than the public at large ; he is then able to insist upon all the points which tell in his client's favour without any difficulty or delicacy towards others. In Courvoisier's case, the only possible exculpation was to show that the murder might have been committed by another of Lord William's servants, and to do this, knowing all the time that the other servants must be perfectly innocent, might well perplex the most resolute and unhesitating of advocates. In fact the world at large afterwards severely blamed Mr. Phillips for having pointed out to the jury that one of the women servants was as much open to suspicion as his client. However, he had taken his precautions very artfully ; he felt that he might confide in Parke's passion for 224 OBLIGATIONS OF A BARRISTER the 'nice sharp quillets of the law/ and that his knowledge of the prisoner's guilt would rather strengthen than impair his determination to secure for him the full benefit of any presentable doubts, that rose up in the course of the trial. Anyhow he begged Parke to watch over the proceedings, and to interfere at once if he overstepped the proper limits of advocacy. Parke promised to do this, but held his tongue throughout the trial, and maintained after- wards to the last, that Phillips had not exceeded his privileges in any part of the defence. No doubt Parke would have affirmed it to be the duty of a man holding a brief for any criminal, to put aside his per- sonal opinions, and to fight against a conviction, as a doctor fights against disease, to the last. A physician keeps in life by drugs and stimulants, though he sees how useless his efforts are. He does this be- cause he knows that if he depart from the simple rule of facing death as an enemy, with whom no com- promise can be made, he may be gradually opening a door to doubtful and dangerous practices. I think, upon the whole, that Parke was right ; Law, in the eyes of a barrister, is, or ought to be, the life of our social system ; his business is to uphold it, without looking to the right or left. The answer of another well-known judge, who when he was asked whether anyone with a tender conscience could practise in the law, replied ' Tender, oh yes, undoubtedly, tender, but not raw,' seems to me to put the matter in its true light. Certainly LADY RIDLEY AND MRS. CHARLES HOWARD 225 a counsel must not be dishonest, but neither should he be squeamish or overscrupulous in the exercise of his profession, because, if he be, he undermines one of its greatest powers, the power, I mean, of maintaining liberty against tyranny, either from above or below. Whilst I was thrown with Baron and Lady Parke, first as marshal or legal aide-de- camp, and secondly as an old family friend, his two daughters, Cecilia, afterwards Lady Ridley, and Mary, who became Mrs. Charles Howard, were in the first bloom of their youth. Both of them being beautiful and also charming, they were regarded by all the habitual visitors at Arnpthill with the warmest affection, and, alas, by dying as they both did in their prime, they left a gap in the lives of those who loved them which nothing ever filled up ; but, at the time I am speaking of, the future before them seemed full of hope and brightness, and the present, at any rate, was without a cloud. The Parkes had previously lived in Yorkshire, in different parts of the county, but Ampthill in Bedfordshire was the first place where they established themselves perma- nently in a country house. The young ladies, as was natural, undertook the parts usually played by the girls who belong to the squire's family ; they visited the poor, they presided over the distribution of coats and blankets among the old people, and tried to help the schoolmistress in the education of her children. It must be added that Lady Holland, too completely absorbed in giving party dinners, and in bullying her Q 22 G EXAMINATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN literary satellites to care for meaner things, had left them a great deal to do. The theological acquire- ments of their young protegees had not advanced much under her liberal superintendence. One Sunday, for some reason that has escaped me, the school chil- dren, contrary to the usual practice, had been brought up to the house for their weekly examination, with tea and buns looming in the distance. We who were staying at Ampthill, unexpectedly pressed into the service, found ourselves turned into special examiners for the nonce ; and they handed a small girl of about ten over to me, that I might put her through her facings in the Catechism. o o The reader will be perhaps surprised to learn, that I, aged about five-and-twenty, who because I had taken a first class at Oxford reckoned myself a clever fellow, was a bit of a prig, and, if I were deficient in any- thing, it certainly was not in self-conceit. I therefore undertook my task with some half- developed intention of cutting a considerable figure. At first I seemed likely to be successful, but after the manner of Prince Rupert at Marston Moor, my brilliant onset, through an unforeseen movement of the enemy, was converted into a disastrous rout. Still I showed myself, I think, superior to Prince Rupert in this respect, that if I failed to teach, I gathered out of my failure some instruction for myself, which he never managed to do. My small damsel repeated her paragraphs glibly enough, but it struck me, as a young wise- acre, that she did not understand what she was say- MY FAILURE 227 ing, and accordingly I laid myself out to improve her understanding. A straightforward little wench enough, she had no pretensions, and the following dialogue passed between us : ' Now, my dear, you have been talking to me about a " state of salvation." Do you know what a state of salvation means ? ' ' No, your honour. ' ' Do you know who your Saviour is ? ' ' No, your honour.' ' Do you know what to save is ? ' ' No, your honour.' ' Ah, I see. Do you know what being in a pond is ? ' ' Yes, your honour.' ' If you fell into a pond and anyone pulled you out, you would thank him I suppose.' ' Yes, your honour.' ' Well, as far as the pond goes, he would save you, he would be your saviour ; but there is a much worse place than a pond to fall into can you tell me what that place is ? ' ' Yes, your honour. Hell, your honour.' ' Good little girl,' I cried out rejoicingly, forgetting, in my premature ex- ultation, that the fear of hell, rather than the hope of heaven, often works upon the childish imagination as the chief incitement to religion, and that children know more of that subdivision of theology than of any other. I now felt secure of victory, and after two or three more questions, I addressed her with the utmost confi- dence. l Now then, you can tell me what a state of sal- vation means.' ' Yes, your honour.' ' What is it, my dear ? ' ' Being in a pond, your honour.' ' Ibi omnis effusus labor.' I had to strike my flag and submit to be laughed at without resistance, but I fully real- ised this truth, that it is wiser to let Christian words Q2 228 HOW CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAUGHT and phrases sink into a child's brain, and take root there so that the meaning may grow up of its own accord, as a plant grows from its seed, than to try and ripen them before their time by artificial means. I resolved, if ever I found myself in a similar pre- dicament later on, not again to attempt being too clever by half. 229 CHAPTER XIII. Failure to learn German Goethe's treatment of Madame von Stein Called to the Bar Mr. Peard Sam Warren Roebuck Cresswell Alexander Grand courts Circuit and Quarter Sessions Carlyle at Quarter Sessions David Dundas James Wortley Pilgrimage to John Scott's Dr. Johnson and racehorses Charles Greville at York Races Dundas at whist Stirling of Keir Murphy Baron Alderson. THE days when I visited at Ampthill were among the happiest days of my life, but the girls grew up and were married, my marshalship came to an end, and the brightness passed away. I ought to have been studying law hard, but somehow or other I could not overcome that unfortunate habit of trusting to next Monday, and I got less from my excellent teachers, AVilliam Plunket and Hassard Home Dodg- son, than I ought to have done. Looking back at that part of my life, I must say that though I am glad I was called to the Bar, I regret that I ever opened a law book ; the few easy briefs that were put into my hands required nothing but common sense to do justice to them, and the law of registra- tion, of which as a revising barrister I was bound to know something, in those early days was so simple that it must have given me but little trouble. But 230 WANT OF RESOLUTION owing to my half study of the law I fell between two stools. I gave up too much time to conveyancing, pleading, and the like, to make a proper use of my leisure for other kinds of reading, which, as it has turned out, would probably have been more valuable to me, whilst yet I paid a certain attention to literature, and thereby was prevented from acquiring any solid or extensive knowledge of law. If I had contented myself with eating my dinners at the Temple, and devoting the time I wasted upon Fearne and his contingent remainders, and other such books, to history, poetry, and modern languages, I think I should have done better for myself upon the whole, without being for any practical purpose a worse lawyer. One of the great mischiefs resulting from my weakness of will and want of definite aims, is that I have never made any real progress in the German language. I call myself an educated man, and yet am unable to grapple with the works of Goethe. By the help of cribs and dictionaries I can just discern that he is a splendid lyrical poet. But the rest of his greatness is more or less out of my ken, and I therefore feel in the presence of his nume- rous volumes naked and ashamed. Of Goethe him- self, moreover, as a man, it is difficult to form a just estimate without understanding the German language, and the German nature, better than I understand them at present. His fellow-countrymen seem to have condoned his leaning towards Napoleon and the French, in the great crisis of 1813, and as a foreigner GOETHE AND WOMEN 231 it is not my business to try and overrule their judgment. His treatment of women generally, and of Madame von Stein in particular, does not please me, but if he behaved selfishly in such matters, so do most other men, and the self of a Goethe, as of one born for the universe, has perhaps a greater claim to indulgence than that of ordinary persons. The one plea I can- not accept (I doubt whether he would have accepted it himself), is the extenuating circumstance, that though he may have broken Madame von Stein's heart, he attended to her stomach and constantly sent her from his own table (a table at which he was sit- ting with the rival woman whom he had literally picked out of the street) portions of any dish that pleased his own palate. A more ridiculous and sordid apology never, I should say, had been put forward on behalf of a faithless lover. How the lady re- ceived these kitchen-grate atonements we are not told. I can only hope that she had a pet dog with a large appetite. In the meantime, whilst I was reading law in this half-hearted kind of way, German scarcely at all, the hours went on and my day arrived for being called to the Bar. Fifty years ago, the Benchers did not trouble themselves about your acquirements. You procured sureties for solvency and good conduct, that was enough for them. If you knew nothing you were not likely to make your fortune as a lawyer ; but that Avas your business and not theirs. The 232 CALLED TO THE BAR Inner Temple therefore opened its arras to me with- out scruple, and one day after dinner, in company with thirteen or fourteen other students, 1 obtained my credentials as a barrister. The most remarkable person in our actual batch was Mr. Peard, known afterwards much more widely as ' Garibaldi's Eng- lishman.' Then a young man of great stature and extraordinary muscular strength, he had been ter- rible for years to the Oxford tag-rag and bob-tail in a town and gown row ; famous also among the many famous oars of an invincible Exeter boat. Old Stephen Davis, the well-known Isis waterman, full of years and matchless in experience, had never known such a crew. In describing them, he distinguished, graphically enough, between two different kinds of physical power. ' Mr. Copleston,' he said (he was the stroke oar) 'is all brass wire, and as for Mr. Peard, he's got the shoulders of a bull.' I made Mr. Peard' s acquaintance that evening, but I never heard of him again till after he had gained his honours in Italy. Nay, upon recollection, I cannot quite say that. There was a story of a wonderful Bacchanalian feat achieved by him in the Temple Hall, on what we used to call a gaudy day. I must add, that I do not believe he was in the least given to drinking. His services to Garibaldi, re- quiring as they did, tact, discretion, and sobriety of mind, imply the contrary. He was also a man of cultivated tastes, with a real talent for painting, so that nothing is less likely than that he should have THE CUP OF HERCULES 233 been a sot. I apprehend that in the case I am speaking of, his action was nothing more than a Berserker-like freak, suggested by a tempting oppor- tunity. On these gaudy days, a loving cup which held about two quarts of spiced and sweetened wine went its rounds. By the special intervention of Zeus, or some other god, the man sitting just above Peard drained the last drops of the flagon, so that it was placed in Peard's hands refilled to the brim. Such a prospect of proving himself the true modern representative of Alcmena's son, by tossing off this cup of Hercules with a light heart, was not to be thrown away. Accordingly he stood up in the sight of men and angels, and drank it dry at a pull. He sat down much applauded, an applause in which old Sam Johnson, with his ' claret for boys, port for men, and brandy for heroes,' would probably have joined. Shortly after my call to the Bar, I joined the Northern Circuit, hoping that my Yorkshire connec- tions might be useful allies, and try, at least, to help me on in my profession. In this hope I was dis- appointed, unless indeed I am to reckon among them an old butler with whom I used to go out shooting as a boy. He must have been himself a born advocate, as he actually broke through the guard of an ancient solicitor, no trifling feat of oratory, and persuaded him to give me a thirty - guinea brief, the only important one I ever fingered during my legal career. Think of a butler melting 234 AN ELOQUENT BUTLER SAM WARREN an attorney's heart by recalling my grandfather's kindness to him long before when he made his start in life. Had I been like Miss Edgeworth's Alfred Percy in * Patronage,' this would of course have been the beginning of a distinguished career ; as it hap- pened, I had very little to do with the conduct of the case, which ended in a compromise, and left me, as to any prospect of future success, very much in my old position. After having been called to the Bar, I joined the Northern Circuit. As the chief advantage I gained from that proceeding was the acquaintanceship of other interesting men, I shall begin with the one in whose company I travelled down to York for my first circuit. This was Sam Warren. He had by that time acquired a considerable reputation, and had no doubt at all that he was going to do great things, to occupy the Woolsack, after leading the House of Commons, and generally dazzling mankind. His ' Diary of a Late Physician ' produced a great effect, partly, I think, under the mistaken impression that it had been bequeathed to the world by a real practising physician, and therefore dealt with interesting facts, and not only with amusing fancies. But partly also because, though somewhat rough, if not coarse in tex- ture, it gave evidence of talent, and was reasonably held to be a work of promise. Sam was a very good fellow and a capital talker, but he had unfortunately been bred up in small dissenting schools, where he found nobody able to make him gallop. He therefore SAM WARREN AND DAVID DUNDAS 235 fancied himself a sort of St. Simon (the modern Eclipse I mean, not that inferior person the French memoir writer), and these opinions of his being scarcely ac- cepted by other members of the circuit, placed him now and then in a false position. The very first day of his appearance at mess he had been laying down the law at the lower end of the table with his ordi- nary emphasis. During this process, David Dandas, sitting much higher up, got into a dispute with an ancient waiter, who had accustomed himself to bully the barristers from generation to generation, and called him ' an old coxcomb.' Warren's ear caught the substantive, and he being filled with an idea that the leaders of the circuit were watching his Avatar with jealous apprehension, thought the expression aimed at him, and intended as a deliberate insult. Accordingly, after dinner, before Dundas had half got through his first brief, he received a visit from a stuttering satellite of Warren's, demanding satisfac- tion. Dundas stared, and on learning the nature of the supposed offence, simply replied : ' Sir, all I have to say is that Mr. Warren's image never crossed my mind during the whole of the day.' ' Th th then, sir,' retorted the stammering belligerent, ' i i if you did not mean Mr. Warren, d d did you mean me ? ' ' You, sir,' was the answer ; if you will forgive me for saying so, I did not know that you were in rerum natural This foolish and restless vanity on Warren's part naturally created some irritation. He then chose to imagine that a 236 SAM WARREN MURPHY ROEBUCK conspiracy had been formed to prevent his matchless talents from having fair play, and thereupon com- plained to Murphy, a brilliant and careless Irishman, of his secret enemies. All the consolation he got amounted to this : ' Enemies, God bless my soul, you've no enemies but yourself, and you would not be half a bad fellow if you were not such a damned vapouring jackass.' These lessons, I may add, were not thrown away upon Warren ; he sobered down by degrees, and being clever, pleasant, and good- humoured, grew in popularity, but though generally liked, he was not much employed by the Yorkshire attorneys. When employed, though he got through his work reasonably well, he failed to impress his hearers either as a remarkable advocate or a profound lawyer, and was, I think, fortunate in obtaining a Lunacy Commissionership. This gave him a good income and a respectable position, thereby enabling him to cultivate literature in his leisure moments, not without a measure of success. Another man, well known afterwards as an eager politician and an able member of Parliament, was Roebuck. I think Roebuck showed himself at his best whilst on circuit. When he arrived in England from Canada, some opposition to his acceptance among us was threatened for an instant, but we, the majority of the barristers I mean, put aside any such objec- tions as irrelevant. We said, ' There is no stain on Mr. Roebuck's personal character ; he may be trusted to behave like a gentleman and a man of honour in all ROEBUCK KEEPS HIS TEMPER 237 the relations of life, and as to his being a Republican, if he be one, that is no business of ours.' He was not only elected a member of the Bar mess at once, but proposed by Jim Wortley, perhaps the leading Conservative, both in social position and professional standing, among the Yorkshire lawyers. Roebuck felt, I think, that in this matter not only had we done him justice, but done it in a kindly spirit, and ac- cordingly, though his temper was apt enough to lead him into disputes and quarrels elsewhere, he hardly ever gave way to it on circuit. He never obtained, I doubt whether he ever aimed at, much practice at the Bar, looking upon the legal profession, I imagine, merely as a stepping-stone to that parliamentary career which was the real object of his ambition, but whenever he spoke, he spoke with considerable effect. His style being clear, terse, and logical, with some- thing of passion condensed below the surface, it lifted him, as a rule, a good deal above the mere argumen- tative pleader. The two leading advocates of my day were Cress- well and Alexander. Cresswell, a thoroughly accom- plished lawyer, dexterous, versatile, and self-possessed, had much the higher reputation of the two. This reputation he maintained as a judge. And to be equally good in court and on the bench is anything but common. Alexander, though fluent of speech, and sufficiently skilful in managing his cases, was by no means Cresswell's equal in capacity or learning. Out of his wig and gown, I may say I thought him 238 CRESSWELL AND ALEXANDER a very second-rate sort of person. In point of fact I believed at the time one cause of his success to be this, that he accomplished all through a sort of instinct which others had to learn by thought, labour, and experience. Men more highly educated, and of finer intellects, could not swim through the platitudes and commonplaces out of which a nisi-prius speech is usually made up until they had educated them- selves into the practice as artists, but Alexander moved about in these congenial elements as easily and naturally as a fish glides along under water. I recollect dining with him alone, when we both happened to be late for mess, and it seemed to me that his views of life and his manner of express- ing them, were just such as would have done him good service if communicated to a jury. I may add that, not being on duty as a juryman, this style of conversation did not interest me in the least. He was somewhat vain, and therefore a little pushing and presumptuous. An attempt of his to speak French on one occasion was made use of to turn him into ridicule ; not ill-natured ridicule we were all exposed to it, and had to accept it without flinching in our turns, if the appointed official of Momus, on our so-called grand nights, thought us worth noticing but still good, broad satire, that would not have required much alteration to play its part perfectly well in the Palace of Truth. Judofe Williams, who was coming; the Northern C i O Circuit in a week or so, had invited all the barristers GRAND COURTS 239 he himself had been a Northern Circuiter to a great legal dinner before he started for York. By some accident or other, an irrelevant foreign Duke, having mistaken his own day, found himself a solitary wan- derer in the midst of this alien crowd. Alexander, as the senior Queen's Counsel present, took upon himself, so at least it was said afterwards, to explain matters to the stranger. According to the comic Attorney- General of the next festive dinner, what followed was this. Alexander's French being as unintelligible to the person addressed as if it had been Hebrew- Greek (whatever that traditional dialect may be), Wight- man, strong in black-letter lore, pushed him aside, exclaiming, 'Be off! don't you see that he belongs to the good old school, your modern slang is quite thrown away upon him ; let me speak to him in the right sort of language, and there will be no further difficulty.' Then he straightway addressed the unex- pected guest in our ancient law French : ' Ceo e ell maison del Williams Justice, peradventure, vous etes nemi invite.' Whether this older tongue was better suited to the high-bred foreigner than the Alexandrine French, the Attorney- General failed to inform us. There are many valuable specimens of wit arid humour hidden away in the grand night archives, and I wish they could be made public. As a rule, the most notable performers who came forward to play these parts of Attorney and Solicitor- General at the dinners in question were not our most fluent and witty talkers, as for instance, Murphy or David Dundas ; 240 VIRGILIAN ECLOGUE on the contrary, they were dry, silent men, who never said a word elsewhere, accumulating and keep- ing in reserve stores of fun and fancy which they tapped on these occasions only. Such a man was Adolphus the reporter, well known as the author of that admirable piece of criticism identifying Walter Scott with the author of ' Waverley,' long before Scott had made his own confession, and called upon Robertson to emulate his candour by acknowledging himself the ' murderer of Begbie.' A sort of Virgilian eclogue, full of brilliant anti- thesis, comes back to me. It is supposed to be a conversation which took place on a short holiday tour in Cumberland between a special pleader and an advocate strong in the criminal court. I wish I could remember the whole of it, but nothing has remained with me except the last five lines : See one by one the pleasure boats forsake This land with water covered^ called the lake. Let us return, the inn is somewhat far, Cold are the dews, though bright the evening star, And Wightman might drop in, and eat our char. The ukases of these grand courts were carried into effect with inflexible resolution. An unfortunate barrister passed through York on a night coach whilst one of our festivals was in operation. Now, by being in the town without attending this solemn assembly, the miserable man had violated one of the fundamental rules of our august community, and 1 The proper legal description of a lake or pond. JUDGMENT EXECUTED 241 accordingly punishment, in the shape of the robust and impetuous Robert Hildyard, fell upon him like a thunderbolt. The coach stopped at its appointed inn, and the passenger in question found himself at once collared and handcuffed by this improvised police- man from the grand court. He was allowed by his chivalrous captor to dispose of the place he had taken and paid for througli a sort of extemporary auction, but the bargain once concluded, he was marched off to the judgment seat, fined and detained at York for the night. In fact, we were members of a very rough republic, bound to submit to the edicts of those in authority, much as the Birmingham Liberals have to bow down to Mr. Schnadhorst and his Cau- cuses, except that with us the processes were pleasant and amusing, and the tyranny humorous only, instead of being harsh and sullen. The Quarter Sessions, on the other hand, from their frequent recurrence, and from our having to establish ourselves at inns, instead of taking to comfortable lodgings in the county towns, were tiresome enough. Sometimes indeed we got away from the larger places, to find fresh air and pleasant walks at Skipton in Craven, or some such rural village. A good many of us used to spend two or three days there, without any hope of briefs, simply to refresh ourselves after seeing and smelling the rivulets of Bradford rivulets dressed up in all the colours of the rainbow, and running pink on one morning, green on another, and blue on a third, according to the dye which happened to be in the ascendent. The country B 242 QUARTER SESSIONS AT SKIPTON folks did not quite understand why we appeared among them, and I recollect a jolly farmer, when fifteen or sixteen of us, bewigged and begowned, were streaming down into court together, calling out as we passed him in a tone of cordial sympathy, ' Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen, I'm sadly afeared there ain't a job apiece for all of you.' On another occasion, at Skipton also, unless my memory deceives me, we were rewarded for our pil- grimage by a splendid outburst of eloquence from the local chairman. There had been a serious conflict be- tween some English and Irish labourers, in which the Englishmen had behaved as ill as possible. Out- numbering their Irish competitors, they fell upon them with the utmost fury, and nearly drowned one poor fellow by ducking him in the river until it became a mere chance whether he recovered or not. However, when the trial came on, the rioters, as ad- vised by their solicitors, pleaded guilty, and expressed a proper regret for their misconduct, in the hope a hope I daresay realised of obtaining a milder sen- tence than would have fallen to their lot had they attempted to vindicate themselves. Under the cir- cumstances, the prosecutor, according to the etiquette of the Bar, is expected to content himself with a dry statement of facts, and to refrain from making any approach to oratory. But the barrister then and there employed was a very young man, and in- dulged himself in a certain amount of rhetoric, de- nouncing the culprits with more emphasis than THE CHAIRMAN'S ELOQUENCE 243 usual in such cases. His example appears to have stirred up the chairman to overtrump him, and in delivering judgment, he soared up into unexpected magniloquence. ' Think,' he said, ' how narrowly you have escaped the gallows ! You kept dipping your victim and pushing him continually under water ! One other dip might have dipped him into the womb of Eternity ; one more push might have pushed him into the presence of his Maker ! ' Fine sentences like these were rare at Quarter Sessions, and we valued them accordingly. The Rev. Mr. Alderson, cousin to the famous Baron, generally pre- sided at Sheffield, and for practical purposes was a good chairman, but his reasonings were not always so logical and consecutive as those of his eminent kinsman. The legend of the ducks is so well known that I hardly dare repeat it. ' John, John,' he cried out, addressing a criminal in whose family he took an interest, ' this is sad indeed ; God Almighty has given you health and strength, instead of which you go about stealing ducks.' This brilliant vrpo? TO o-rj/xawo/xei'oi', as the commentators on Thucydides call such a figure of speech, may amuse any of my readers to whom it is new, whilst as to those familiar with it, I have not detained them long. At another time, whilst the Pontefract Sessions were going on, Lord Houghton's father, the well- known Robert Milnes, entertained a number of us at Fryston. Besides the barristers, Carlyle was amongst his guests. Roebuck came as one of the Bar contingent, 244 CARLYLE AT FRYSTON and between him and Carlyle it was not always easy to keep the peace. Indeed I understand that Lord Houghton, since then, acquired a letter from Carlyle to his wife, entering into details about the party. In this letter, to say nothing of his bitterness against Roebuck, few, if any of us, are spoken of in a manner tending to promote self-complacency. As far as I was concerned, whether he wrote about me harshly or gently I know not, but as far as appearances went, I got on well enough with the Chelsea sage. He took an interest in the English law proceedings, as being comparatively unknown to him, and praised Lord Wharncliffe highly, not so much as an ex- cellent chairman, which he undoubtedly was, but rather because he, a man of rank and wealth, gave up his time to public business without payment or reward, thereby chiming in with Carlyle's notion of a natural aristocrat, or born king of men. But if he sympathised with Lord Wharncliffe much, still more was he drawn on to sympathise with an old scoundrel found guilty of some theft or other. There were at least twenty convictions recorded against this o*entleman, and when these were read over O O ' in succession he acknowledged, as one who saw the game was up, their truth with sublime indifference. Moreover, at the end, when the magistrates asked him whether he had anything to urge why judg- ment should not be passed against him, he answered thus : ' No, gentlemen, no ; least said is soonest mended.' These words went straight to the heart DAVIT) DUNDAS- JAMES WORTLEY 245 of the great Silence-monger, and all the way home he kept muttering to himself, ' Least said is soonest mended ; least said is soonest mended ; poor fellow, poor fellow!' I felt convinced, at the time, that if the result had been left in Carlyle's hands, instead of despatching this veteran pilferer to York Castle, he would have given him a pension for life. The man on circuit whom I looked up to and admired the most was David Dundas, afterwards Solicitor- General for a short time. His character was a fine one, and he possessed brilliant abilities. Though not perhaps of the exact temper out of which great lawyers are most naturally and easily formed, he would nevertheless, I believe, have reached the top of the tree, had he not been upset by a long and ex- hausting illness at the most critical moment of his career, an illness from which he never quite recovered. Much the same may be said of James Wortley, a man beloved by all who knew him. He was appa- rently sure of attaining the highest distinction, but unfortunately for himself, he happened to be present at a Yorkshire election just after he had successfully got round the Tattenham corner of the great Bar Derby, apparently full of running. Party feeling ran high at the time, and serious riots were appre- hended. James Wortley and a distinguished Whig friend, the late Lord Halifax, I fancy, walked down arm in arm to confront the excited populace, and appease by their combined influence, as far as they could, the rising storm. The two hostile armies 246 PELTING PACIFICATORS behaved with a noble impartiality ; the Liberals allowed their adversaries to pelt Sir Charles. "Wood just as much as they pleased, whilst they performed the same kind office for Jim Wortley without any interruption from the Tories. I hope Lord Halifax, then Sir Charles Wood, escaped scot free, or as near as may be, but Jim Wortley received a very severe blow on the head from a large stone, and the result was that when he naturally would have exerted him- self to the utmost, in order to fix himself in the high position he had just reached, abstinence from work was forced upon him, and he thus missed in some degree the great opportunities of his life. Both David Dundas and Wortley were capital speakers. Wortley, who was a good musician, and who had a beautiful tenor voice, made great use of that instru- ment wheD it was his cue to be pathetic and work upon the feelings of a jury. In one case of child murder, I remember an achievement of his in oratory supposed to be absolutely without a parallel. He actually made two barristers cry ; though candour obliges me to add, that one of the two at least was suspected of a slight advance on the road to delirium tremens. The only person in court quite unmoved by his eloquence was the culprit herself. If he could have drawn a few ' iron tears ' down her cheek, the triumph would have been complete, but she would take no hint, and remained to the end of the trial, if I may adopt a conventional phrase not out of keeping with Milton's metaphor, ' as hard as nails.' VISIT TO SCOTT'S TRAINING STABLES 247 Besides his legal reputation, James Wortley, owing to his high character and charming manners, pos- sessed great influence on circuit, an influence always exercised for good. As a Yorkshireman. and the son of a Yorkshireman who had bred several fine horses, he naturally took an interest in racing. I recollect going with him and one or two other friends to visit Scott's stables at Malton. This was in 1842, during the Lent Assizes, the time of year when, according to Sydney Smith's own account, his grandfather dis- appeared for ever. We saw the crack three -year- old, Attila, together with many others. John Scott was perfectly frank with us, making no secret of his opinion that if the colt kept well, he was perfectly certain to carry off the Derby. This feat he accom- plished some two months afterwards, winning his race in a canter. Not that he was first favourite at the post ; a creature called Coldrenick, who had never started before, never started again, and cut a most miserable figure in the contest, was believed, or at any rate affirmed, to be a wonder. He was thought so highly of indeed that the odds against him in the face of a large and good field are given in the Racing Calendar as 11 to 8. Unprejudiced observers by no means shared the high opinion seemingly entertained of him by his trainer, and for aught I know to the contrary, he may have ended his days in a hansom cab. Attila would probably have won the St. Leger as well as the Derby, if his heart had not been broken by a severe race at Goodwood over a long distance of 248 TOUCHSTONE AND VELOCIPEDE ground. In this race he had to carry 8 Ibs. extra, and though he ran well and struggled gamely to the end, this additional weight proved too much for him. Hence, when he came to Doncaster, though still greatly fancied by the public at large, there was a rumour floating about among the more experienced Yorkshiremen on the ground, that something had gone wrong with him. A veteran stud groom declared in my hearing that he was sure the horse was amiss, because he would keep jumping about in a strange nervous manner, 'just as if they had fed him on live birds.' He took no part in the struggle for the St. Leger, was again beaten easily two days afterwards over the Cup course, and then retired from the turf. Nor did he make any mark as a stud horse. I suppose he must either have died early, or else have been sent abroad. I was very much pleased with the manner in which John Scott conducted his establishment ; he and Mrs. Scott paid great attention to the health, happiness, and good behaviour of their men and boys, and worked hard to make the best of what pious folk would probably consider a bad business. He talked freely about the merits of older horses who had passed through his hands, and named three of unapproached excellence, Touchstone, Velocipede, and Glaucus. The third name, I confess, surprised me. I should have thought Don John would have taken precedence of him, but John Scott told me that no doubt Don John was an admirable runner at three years old, and that THE BLOOMSBURY CASE DR. JOHNSON AND ATLAS 249 he believed, in the autumn of 1838, he could have beaten any four-year-old in England at even weights, but still he ' attained not unto the first three.' Where he would have placed West Australian, of whom I know he entertained a high opinion, I cannot say. As for myself, measuring him through Kingston, Rataplan, and other horses, against the image of Velocipede galloping in 1827 and 1828, which is still perfectly fresh before my eyes, I do not believe he was Velocipede's equal. Whether James Wortley was engaged in the famous Bloomsbury case or not I fail to remember. Bloomsbury was the winner of the Derby in 1839, but his enemies declared that his pedigree was not properly given by the owner when he entered him for the race. I believe his enemies were technically in the right ; but Baron Maule, the presiding judge, did not feel disposed to attach much importance to the technicalities of the Jockey Club code. As I am discussing turf matters, I may as well jot down an anecdote or two here ; for if I pass them over, very likely, as I have before remarked, I shall forget them altogether. To begin at the beginning, nobody would have suspected old Sam Johnson to have interested himself in the four-footed heroes of Newmarket ; but he did interest himself, odd as it may seem. There is a curious passage in Boswell's Life, giving Boswell's account of a visit they paid to Chatsworth. After having been shown everything worth seeing in the house, and introduced to the famous horse Atlas by 250 WHAT JOHNSON COVETED Babraham Atlas having been foaled in 1752 must have been at that time well stricken in years, but he was still so beautiful and gentle tempered that he won the doctor's heart at once Johnson went his way muttering to himself, ' Of all the possessions of the Duke of Devonshire, I covet Atlas the most.' I think these words ought to be engraved on the portrait of the horse, if there be a portrait, which I cannot doubt, in the Duke's possession. It must be confessed that Atlas, as one of the doctor's surroundings in Fleet Street, would have cut a singular figure. With Hodge the cat, he might, I daresay, have fraternised easily enough, since cats and racehorses are often intimate friends, but I fear Mrs. Williams would have found him a white elephant, and have ex- pressed her feelings on the subject with the acerbity usual to her when displeased. Atlas, by the way, is also celebrated by another man of letters, Holcroft, the writer of comedies, novels, and also, I suppose, since he was tried for high treason, of revolutionary pamphlets. Holcroft, a self-made man, had begun life as a stable-boy at Newmarket, and records the opinions of the trainers there that Atlas was the best horse that had ever been seen in England since Flying Childers. 1 Hol- croft witnessed Atlas's triumph over the hitherto invincible Careless by Regulus, and refers to that im- portant event in his memoirs. 1 This phrase was repeated several times till Eclipse put it out of court. MR. JOHXSON CHARLES GREV1LLE 251 To return to Dr. Johnson. There was a namesake of his, known among sporting men as the celebrated Mr. Johnson. The doctor, who before his honorary de- gree might possibly have disputed the title, speaks of him nevertheless with great enthusiasm. This John- son was a wonderful horseman ; he undertook among his other performances to ride a mile over York race- course in three minutes, standing upright on the top of his saddle. He accomplished his feat in little more than two minutes and a half, and the doctor points him out as the leading man in his profession, adding that all such men deserve honour, whatever the profession may be, because they must possess certain remarkable qualities. The horse under him on this occasion was not thought worth speaking of by his chronicler, Mr. Orton. Still, as we are assured by our modern wiseacres that Eclipse and Highflyer would be utterly contemptible now if pitted against ordinary platers, he ought to have been a fair animal for his time, 1760. On one occasion I accompanied Charles Greville, the memoir writer, to York from a country house at which we were staying together. He had entered a mare called Adine for the principal handicap at that meeting, and felt quite certain, with very good reason I believe, that she would carry off the prize. Accord- ingly, he drove over to York in high spirits, kept rubbing his hands joyously together, and remarked : ' I don't think I can be beat. I shall stick it into Davis for another thousand or two.' Davis, a 252 THE LEVIATHAN BETTOR thoroughly honest and straightforward fellow, was then generally known as the Leviathan bettor. It was my unpleasant office to throw cold water on these exulting anticipations, and I had to say : 'I don't think you will do that this morning, Mr, Greville, for I met Davis in the Strand last week, and he told me he never meant to go to York again they robbed him so." 1 Mr. Greville seemed to regard this abandonment of professional duties on Davis's part very much as a general would regard the refusal of a colonel to advance upon the enemy because their fire was too hot, and he began to curse and swear in the most emphatic manner, ending his conversation thus : ' Not come to York indeed ; what the h does he mean by it ? ' There was but one answer possible : ' Well, I suppose he means not to have those additional thousands stuck into him by you and other people.' Charles Greville did not look pleased, and if he thought I was worth his notice, may have snarled at me in some part of those memoirs still held back by Mr. Reeve. At the same time, though his temper was none of the best, he had a sense of humour which modified it a good deal in practice, and his manner of telling a story against himself, outbursts of anger alternating with flashes of fun, was often highly amusing. I recollect his account of a defeat that he sustained at the hands of a well-known bird-stuff er and entomologist, which always produced a great effect. Charles Greville was the owner of an Impeyan pheasant in a glass case, at AN DIPEYAN PHEASANT 253 a time when Impeyan pheasants were rarer than they are at present. Being dissatisfied with the style in which it was got up, Charles Greville sent his bird to the person referred to in order that it might be re- arranged. Now this gentleman apparently liked to exhibit the handsome bird in his window. Week after week, and month after month, he refrained from returning it, till Charles Greville grew furious, and tore it angrily away. Back it came at last, bringing with it a long bill (I do not mean as one of its bodily characteristics) . This bill Greville disputed fiercely, on the ground that his Impeyan pheasant had never been touched, and was restored to him exactly as it went. A violent wrangle ensued, and the ornithologist summoned him into the County Court. War seemed inevitable, and Greville, who was always lamenting that a man so evidently intended by nature for a great statesman should have dwindled down into a o mere member of the Jockey Club, rather chuckled over the notion of meeting his fraudulent enemy face to face, and crushing him under the weight of his eloquence. But the bird-stuff er knew what he was about, and after waiting till it was too late to employ counsel, so that Greville had to appear in person or not at all, got the trial fixed for the day of the Derby, and Charles Greville, finding it impossible to put his Epsom business on one side, had to haul down his flag, and his adversary, we may fairly say, walked over for the stakes at issue between them. Nothing could be funnier than the way in which he invariably 254 DAVID DUNDAS told the tale, foaming at the mouth with rage over his grievance, yet ever and anon, under the softening influence of humour, relaxing in his wrath, and echo- ing the laugh which the story of his defeat always awakened in everyone else. But to return to the circuit. David Dundas, James Wortley, and Murphy, the Irishman of whom I have spoken already in connection with Sam Warren, were, I should say, the most popular men on it. David Dundas, though not absolutely the wittiest, or abso- lutely the cleverest man of his day, was yet, I think, the most agreeable talker and the most charming companion to be met with anywhere. Besides being a thorough gentleman, he was a warm friend, affec- tionate and steadfast, as Scotchmen often are. When I say that to these moral gifts were added humour, a playful imagination, a tenacious memory, and a fine taste in literature, I think my readers will agree with me that the effect he produced on all who knew him is not to be wondered at. I could tell any number of stories in connection with him, but as they do not carry along with them his presence, voice, and manner of telling them, it is perhaps better to confine myself to one or two of the more striking ones. He was once playing at whist with a lawyer called Jacob, a man of the highest reputation in his time, but the cards went against Dundas with special ill-luck ; upon this he laid them down with an air of sorrowful resignation, and pathetically exclaimed, ' The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of See-saw.' THE KEIR BAILIFF OF 1745 255 His nearest neighbour in Scotland was the celebrated Stirling Maxwell of Keir. Once, after dinner, they agreed that each of them should improvise an epitaph on the other. What the epitaph on Dundas may have been I know not ; that for Stirling Maxwell took this form Here lies Stirling of Keir, A very good man, but a queer ; In short if you want to find a queerer, You must dig up a Stirlinger of Keirer. The story of the old bailiff on this Keir estate which I got from David, is, I think, v well worth re- cording, for Englishmen at any rate, to most of whom it will be new. Stirling's ancestor, out in '15, had been invisible, on the Continent or elsewhere, during the next thirty years, but in '45 he reappeared on the scene. I suppose there was no evidence of his having entangled himself in the actual rebellion of that year, as the Government relied upon a former conviction, obtained by them during his absence, to bring him to the scaffold. The first step of course was to identify the suspected prisoner with Stirling of Keir. This his ex-bailiff undertook to do so readily and frankly, that the counsel for the prosecution did not trouble themselves to procure other witnesses, probably after the lapse of thirty years difficult to find. But when the trial came on, the bailiff gazed steadily at the man in the dock, and then explained to the judge that he was verra like his maister, but that, on looking on him weel, he dooted, indeed he 256 THE BURNS CENTENARY DINNER felt sure, that he was na his maister at all. The prosecution went down like a house of cards, and the Hanoverians were baffled. The Presbyterian minis- ter of the place naturally became furious, and vented his indignation upon the culprit in the strongest terms. ' Where,' cried he, ' you perjured villain, do you expect to go to after death lying to God as you have lied to-day ? ' ' Weel, weel, meenister,' was the reply, ' what you say may be a' verra true, but you see I'd rather trust my saul with my Maker, than my maister with thae fellows.' Transcendent morality, no doubt, but still, I think, morality of the right sort. David Dundas attended the Burns Cen- tenary dinner, but happened to be oppressed by a cold at the time. Before the end of the banquet, his neigh- bour, a well-known Scotch bookseller called Burnet, turned sharply round upon him and remarked, ' Weel, Mr. Dundas, I have always heard that ye were vary gude company, but I canna say ye have added much to the heelarity of the evening.' David humbled himself duly, and pleaded illness, but his inexorable critic retorted at once, ' Weel, Mr. Dundas, I am sorry to hear ye are sae indisposed, but that canna affect the truth of my observation that ye have na added much to the heelarity of the evening.' David made his peace, I believe, with his persecutor shortly afterwards, by claiming to be a Scotch cousin, through old Bishop Burnet, whom the Scotch pub- lisher naturally held in great veneration. Murphy must have left so many good things be- MURPHY IN RE CHARLES BULLER 257 hind him at the Reform Club, where he was out of my reach, that I shall content myself with mention- ing one repartee of his, which, if not the best joke, was about the quickest flash of utterance that ever darted across a dinner-table. Roebuck was talking rather pompously about Charles Bailer, to the effect that it was strange he should be so awkward, un- gainly, and ill -looking a person, seeing that his mother had been so wonderfully lovely as never to be called in India anything but the Queen of the Ganges. Before the word Ganges had quite left his lips, Murphy, with his mouth full, retorted like a rocket : ' Well, you know, that is just the reason why he runs into the Hugly ' (Hooghly). Whether, beside this ad- mirable piece of logic, Talleyrand's gibe against Bobus Smith under similar circumstances, ' C'etait done monsieur votre pere qui n'etait pas si dien,' was also applicable to the Buller family, need not be inquired into. The Charles Buller thus commented upon I unluckily never met, though I once met his coat, which had been carried off by mistake from a country house by another man, who had to appear in it at dinner till the matter was set right. As Charles Buller, besides possessing many other in- tellectual gifts, was a very sparkling talker, his coat, I should say, must have found its inmate at that par- ticular dinner party unusually dull. When in company with Carlyle, his old tutor, the Chelsea prophet began abusing Lord Falkland, as might have been expected, and ended his invective s 258 LORI) FALKLAND'S CLEAN SHIRT thus : ' Puir meeserable creature, what did he ever do to be remembered among men ? ' * Well,' re- plied his former pupil, ' at least he put on a clean shirt to be shot in, which is more than ever you would have done, Carlyle.' I have said above that David Dundas was not the cleverest man whom I ever knew ; that distinc- tion I think I should award to Baron Alderson. Of course, under the term cleverness I am not including high original genius or profound thinking powers, but, using the word in its more special sense, I should say that Alderson's clearness of head, quickness of apprehension, and logical acuteness could scarcely be equalled, and, what is more to my purpose, there Avere few of his class who could touch him as a wit. I shall content myself, however, with recording one of his good things, and one only, first because I heard it myself, and secondly because, unless I take care, serious- minded critics, especially if they happen to be of the Radical persuasion, will take the oppor- tunity of holding me up to general contempt as a Jack Pudding and a second-rate Joe Miller. Alex- ander, though one of the leaders of the circuit, was apt to waste time, and to be dull in court. Through- out the morning, he had somewhat irritated the Baron, a man not very tolerant of prosing, by his prolixity and tediousness. At last a witness came into the box called by his adversary to prove some- thing or other. Alexander, who had learned that this witness, like many other ' capable citizens ' in BARON ALDERSON'S VIEW OF A FUTURE STATE 259 the West Riding, professed himself an atheist, rose up to stop his evidence with an air of solemn self- sufficiency which did not awaken much interest either in the judge or in his fellow- barristers. ' Stop, sir, stop,' he cried out ; ' before I allow my learned friend to begin his examination, I have a most vital question to put to you myself. Do you believe in a future state ? ' The man hesitated, and Alderson, bending over from the Bench, inquired in a tone of appealing pathos, ' Mr. Alexander, Mr. Alexander, are you asking the witness his opinion as to whether we shall ever get on to the next case ? ' I must conclude the story by admitting that in the end pomposity carried the day against wit. Alexander brought his theological batteries to bear upon the joke, and Alderson, in reality a very pious man, had to eat humble pie ; a thing he seldom did, and never liked doing. 8 2 200 CHAPTER XIV. Trials of interest on the Northern Circuit Murder of Lord Wenlock's keeper Quarrel between two brothers at Newcastle Tom Hodg- son's bewilderment Shakspeare at Liverpool ' Much Ado about Nothing.' OF the many interesting trials witnessed by me on circuit, the greater number have faded away out of my mind, but some still remain. At Newcastle (I begin with this as a lighter memory, for some of my recollections are profoundly tragical), a South- country judge, I think Taunton, was going his round through our Northern towns, profoundly ignorant of the local dialects. In Newcastle, the narrow street called by Scotchmen a wynd has received the name of a chare. Whilst a trial for murder was going on, one witness, rejoicing in a well-developed Northum- brian burr, had to detail what he knew. ' Go on, witness.' ' Yes, rny lawd; then I saw thwee men come out of a chare foot.' Taunton looked upon this simple fact as an impossibility, at least anywhere out of the ' Arabian Nights,' and got very angry. * Mind what you are about, witness, and don't talk nonsense of that kind; go on now, and be careful.' ' Yes, my lawd; yes. my lawd ; then I saw thwee men come out of a chare foot.' ' Witness, you must MURDER OF LORD WENLOCK'S KEEPER 261 be drunk ; if you don't conduct yourself properly, I shall refuse you your expenses.' ' Yes, my lawd ; yes, my lawd ; then I saw thwee men come out of a chare foot.' At this point a local barrister rose to explain, but only added to the confusion. ' Sit down, Mr. Fen wick, sit down at once ; I will not be inter- rupted.' Of course, in process of time, the judge was made to listen, recovered his temper, and got a lesson, let us hope, in provincial English. One of the earliest crimes that excited the most vehement indignation in my mind was the murder of Lord Wenlock's keeper, a man called Robinson. Robinson was a very fine fellow, powerful, courageous, kind-hearted, and of admirable fidelity to his employer. His character and conduct caused him to be looked upon by a gang of poachers about the place as their bitter enemy, an enemy to be removed at all hazards. They therefore laid a plan to kill him, and unhappily it succeeded. As far as I recollect, the deed was done before the shooting season had commenced, and must be regarded as the result of a deliberate calculation ; no accident, therefore, even in the slightest degree, but a thoroughly cold-blooded mur- der. Robinson was about to be married, and, accord- ing to a practice habitual in that part of the country, was sitting up alone during the dark hours with his betrothed wife. The poachers in question knew where to find him, and coming close to the cottage of his intended father-in-law, fired several shots to entice him forth. Out he rushed to perform 2 62 FAILURE TO CONVICT his duty, at whatever risk to himself, and as he rushed out, the ruffians pretended to run away. He followed them as fast as he could, throwing off, in the eagerness of the pursuit, his coat here, and his neckcloth there. But the most touching incident of this part of the story was, that he disarmed himself by placing his gun against a tree. This, we were told, was the course he invariably took under similar circumstances; he trusted to his natural strength and courage in all such encounters, and preferred facing an extra danger to carrying a weapon, lest he might be tempted to shed the blood of a fellow-villager, known to him perhaps from boyhood. Against the ruffians who sought his life, this chivalrous temper availed him nothing; they had arranged how to kill him, and accomplished their purpose without hesita- tion or remorse. After letting him see clearly the way they went, they passed through a high hedge, and lay down in the ditch on the other side ; the moment he arrived at this point, they rose up suddenly, knocked him down, and cut his throat from, ear to ear. There was no moral doubt as to the two men who had committed the crime, and the evidence brought it home to them with perfect distinctness, but unfortunately the point, on which the prosecuting counsel insisted the most in his opening speech, was the only one which absolutely broke down. It is possible that the minds of the jury were bewildered by the unexpected introduction of this confusing element into the case, I am sorry to say it is also JURYMEN AND POACHERS 263 possible that in a poaching murder the jury were glad to discover, or to invent, a loophole through which they might escape without finding the prisoners guilty ; at any rate they acquitted them at once, to the great disgust of the judge and the barristers present. We thought, reasonably enough, that admitting sympathy with poachers to be not un- natural in the class from which common jurymen are taken, that sympathy should be confined to cases where a keeper is killed in a fair stand-up fight, but that when fellows pretend to be after game, their real object being to ensnare, and then ruthlessly assassinate an honest man, the jury who sympathise with them must be composed of scoundrels or fools. However, a verdict is a verdict, and Messrs. Morley and Bell went their way rejoicing. Bell died shortly afterwards, and it is from his deathbed con- fession that the details of the crime were learned . The consequences of this acquittal were not pleasant to gamekeepers or to squires. Morley and Bell found imitators in different parts of the county. Notably, on my uncle's estate, a farmer of the name of Ridsdale did his best to put one of the game watchers out of the way, without the smallest provocation. Cartwright that was the watcher's name was a humourist and an athlete. Luckily for himself, he possessed an iron constitution, or he never would have survived the wounds inflicted upon him. Some months before, 1 recollect his creating a laugh throughout two elevens in a Hall match ; he had 264 CART WRIGHT AND RIUSDALE intended making a very long score, but was bowled out by a leg shooter, after a short and unsuccessful innings ; however, he shouldered his bat with a grin, and quietly remarking, ' the best of a' maun dee,' sauntered back into the tent. Poor fellow, he did not foresee how nearly he was about to realise this indisputable fact a few months afterwards, possibly through the kind assistance of one of the lookers-on. However that might be, one January afternoon, about half- past three o'clock, he was leaning over a five- barred gate, when shots were fired close to him, and Mr. Ridsdale appeared, fowling-piece in hand, carrying a hare. He was met with, ' Hullo, Joe, what are you about ? You should not be doing that, you know/ ' Oh, shouldn't I? ' was the farmer's rejoinder ; ' if my gun were only loaded, you would have something to learn about that.' ' Stuff and nonsense,' retorted Cartwright, ' you are not such a fool as that.' In the meantime Ridsdale quietly reloaded his gun, and as soon as he had done so discharged both barrels, not being above three or four yards off, into Cart- wright's chest. He dropped as a dead man drops, and Ridsdale, thinking the job done, went his way. But the assassin had not made sufficient allowance for the intervening bar of the gate, and his victim, though desperately wounded, was only hit in the throat. His jugular vein and windpipe were pierced through, but the heart and lungs had escaped. Cartwright, on being found and brought back to consciousness, though he could not utter a word, was able to write ATTEMPTED MURDER NEAR LIVERPOOL 265 his assailant's name on a piece of paper, and the farmer was at once arrested. He richly deserved hanging, and might in those days have been hanged according to law, but on what always has appeared to me the illogical ground that a criminal, because he is mistaken in supposing himself to have killed his man, deserves mercy, he got off with penal servitude for life. The most odious assassin whom I ever saw tried made his escape from the gallows through a similar loophole. His offence was this. A farmer about to emigrate took with him, as people believed, a considerable sum of money in hard cash. In the natural course of things he went to lodge at a marine boarding-house near Liverpool. The villain came there after him, made friends with his intended victim, and after worming himself into the man's confidence, lived with him in the closest intimacy for two or three weeks. After this, he pretended to disclose the precautions he had himself taken to be secure against robbery, and finally elicited from his unsuspecting comrade all that he wanted to know. He then enticed him to take a long walk into the fields, that they might take leave of their common country together, drew him onwards to a lonely spot, fell upon him and murdered him. I say murdered him, because he did not stay his hands at the last through any promptings of pity, but simply because in his belief the business was finished and the man dead. When found, however, the breath was in his body still, and by a sort of miracle he recovered sufficiently 266 MURDER BY A FARMER to give evidence against his false friend. But Baron Alderson was the judge, and his nerves always failed him when he had to pronounce a capital sentence ; the farmer had escaped with life, and this gave him an opportunity, of which he availed himself, to evade a painful duty, so that this ruffian also was only transported for life, instead of being hanged as he ouijht to have been. Another atrocious murder was O committed on Lord Wenlock's Yorkshire estate. A profligate tenant of his killed his wife. He made some pretence of farm business at Malton, knowing that if he returned secretly in the afternoon, all the inmates of the house except her would be at work in a neighbouring hay-field. Under these circumstances, she, being alone, might be supposed to have met her death at the hands of some wandering tramp. Other evidence, I daresay, cropped up against him, but the one thing that caught and settled him was the silence of the yard dog. Any stranger entering the farm would no doubt have been furiously barked at, but the hay- makers close at hand never heard a sound. The inference was then irresistible that no stranger had been there ; and this fact, taken in conjunction with his vile character, removed all doubts ; he at any rate was very properly hanged. But amongst these cases the one which interested me most was tried at Newcastle. We may all, I think, take warning by it, as it shows how men may pass through a long life, held in general esteem, and yet with evil passions, probably unknown even to them- BITTER FAMILY QUARREL 267 selves, lying hid under the smooth surface of an ordi- nary career ; passions which wait only for some sufficient temptation to rise up suddenly, and sweep away all sense of right and wrong. There were two brothers engaged in a bookselling and publishing busi- ness at Alnwick. The elder of the two was seventy- three, the younger sixty- nine years of age ; they both of them were popular among their fellow-townsmen, they both of them had been respected as honest trades- men and capable men of business for many years, and it might well have been thought, the journey not being a long one, that they would have gone down to the grave in peace and credit. But by some evil chance money disputes arose between them. After a long dis- cussion the partnership was dissolved, and in one moment a deadly hatred rose up in the mind of the elder brother against his junior. This hatred he re- solved to gratify at all hazards. Accordingly he sought out an Irish harvester who had landed in England to cut something, whether corn or throats he did not seem to care much, as he readily agreed, in return for a cer- tain sum down, to help this bookseller in committing the murder he had at heart. They arranged their plan as follows. The central shop was fixed, as I have said, at Alnwick, but there were branch establishments connected with it, at Morpeth, Rothbury, and other small Northumbrian towns. At certain intervals the proprietor went a kind of circuit through these dependencies, and brought back the gains of the month or quarter, whichever it might be, to his home. The 268 IRISH HARVESTER HIRED two conspirators watched their opportunity, and way- laid their intended victim shortly after he had left the Rothbury inn. It was a fine summer evening in July, and they did not dare to complete the operation until night had fallen. They therefore dragged their man off into the middle of Rothbury moor ; when there, they handcuffed and placed him between them. After this, they robbed him, and out of the proceeds of the robbery, the Irishman was paid beforehand for the assistance he had kindly undertaken to give. But summer days are long in the North, so they kept walking up and down, just like three friends on an evening stroll together ; they took care, of course, to give a wide berth to any other wanderers who might also be enjoying the fine July weather. During this enforced delay, the elder brother abused his captive and struck him repeatedly, but the Irish- man, though ready to earn his wages when the moment came, maintained a stoical impartiality, seeing no reason why he should interfere in the matter till then. Darkness arrived at last, and the principal gave his order to his subordinate. ' You keep watch over him here ; I will go over to my friend Farmer Thompson, who lives close at hand, and borrow from him a cart and a sheet. We will put the body into this cart, drive over the hills to a turn I know of, and throw it, properly weighted, into the water. We may then separate, and nothing more will ever be heard of the matter.' Having thus left the Irishman on guard, he went his way to Mr. Thompson's farm. He had not A BODY'S ADVICE 209 calculated, however, upon the mobility of the Celtic temperament. The sentinel got bored in the silence and gloom, and to fill up the time, condescended to enter into conversation with ' the body.' He observed, with much justice and good sense, that such family quarrels were very unfortunate and annoying. ' The body,' as might have been expected, took the same view of the case, and encouraged by the affability of its assassin, went on thus : ' Now just listen to me whilst I tell you what I would do in your place. You are paid, and will get no more by killing me than you have got already, why don't you make your way northwards over the moor at once? You will reach Aln wick just in time to catch the mail passing south, you will take your seat on the top of it with your money safe in your pocket, be off the Lord knows where, and nobody in these parts will ever set eyes on you again.' The agri- cultural labourer pondered for a moment, and then exclaiming, ' By Jasus, I think you're right,' jumped up to carry the advice given him into effect. ' Hullo,' called after him his disinterested adviser, ' before going, you may as well unfasten my hands and set me free.' But no, the Irishman, though he slipped out of his engagement to suit himself, still retained a queer kind of loyalty to the elder brother, and felt that he could not, as a gentleman, take any actire steps to frustrate his murderous purpose. So off he went, leaving 'the body' still in bonds, but this was of little consequence, as, being now unguarded, it was 270 FARMER THOMPSON able to remove itself and become a bookseller again. He soon wrestled himself out of his manacles, and reappeared, late at night, before the Rothbury inn, rousing its landlord, and telling his story as I have told it to you. The Irish accomplice, as had been predicted, got clean off with the Saxon gold safe about him, and transferred his attentions, let us hope, to wheat and barley elsewhere. But the elder brother was immediately arrested. When the trial came off, the circumstances were so strange and inexplicable, that we barristers thought, ' Oh, the prisoner at the bar, though he may have intended to bully and frighten his enemy, cannot really have formed any such black designs as are imputed to him.' But, lo and behold, Farmer Thompson entered the box, and proved in the most straightforward manner, that the elder of the two booksellers had visited him about ten o'clock on the evening in question, had invented some plausible excuse for borrowing the cart and the sheet, and, added Farmer Thompson, ' As I had known him for forty years, and always believed in him as an honest man, I lent him the things he wanted, and he drove away.' This settled the ver- dict, and the man was found guilty, but the queer- ness of the case did not end even there. Baron Alderson, the presiding j udge, sentenced the prisoner to fifteen years' transportation, but just as the culprit's head was disappearing under the dock, he called him back with the utmost politeness, remarking, ' I beg your pardon, but I have made a mistake ; I have con- BARON ALDERSON'S APOLOGY TOM HODGSON 271 demned you to fifteen years' penal servitude, but I find on looking at the Act of Parliament, that I cannot give you less than twenty. However, it makes no difference to you ; either term will see the end of your natural life.' This was in all probability quite true, but one may doubt whether it was within Alderson's province to make so cock sure of it. Another singular trial took place during my youth, as to which I cannot fix the exact date, but since a friend of mine was mixed up in it, I may as well give what account of it I can in this part of the book. I must add, however, that not being per- sonally cognisant of the details, I will not pledge myself to their perfect accuracy as I do in the trials spoken of before. Tom Hod son, the manager of a pack of hounds in the east of Yorkshire, lodged from year to year with a well-to-do man of business in Beveiiey. This man being without children, he had adopted a niece, who was regarded by him, so at least everybody thought, as if she were his own daughter. Then his health failed him, and a medical man, named Turn- bull (he was afterwards famous for a time as an aurist in London), took her place in his favour with- out anybody being aware of it. One evening Hodgson came back from hunting wet, tired, and hungry. He was called into the sick man's room, as he passed it, to witness his will. Anxious to free himself as soon as possible, he was allowed somehow (there could have been no 272 INVERTED ATTESTATION solicitor present) to hurry through the operation in a headlong sort of manner, and to go his way. Shortly afterwards the man died, and to every- body's surprise, Turnbull came before the world as the principal, if not the sole legatee, the niece being practically disinherited. The family solicitor thought it as well to ask Hodgson, who, I must point out, was the simplest and most unpractical person to be found anywhere, what, so far as he knew, had really happened. ' Well/ answered Hodg- son, ' I went to the table and signed my name, then the testator signed his.' ' You mean/ replied the man of law, ' that he signed his name, and that when he had done so, you followed him.' i Not at all ! ' re- torted Hodgson ; ' I mean what I say.' In point of fact, the testator had witnessed his signature, not he the testator's. The will was accordingly disputed, and on Hodgson's testimony upset. Scarlett, Turnbull's advo- cate, got very angry when this unexpected point ex- ploded under his feet like a spring gun. and it being impossible for him to turn any redder (for his name was pale as compared with his complexion), grew, as I was told, absolutely purple with rage. The verdict being given, Turnbull, rendered furious by his disappointment, indicted Hodgson (for conspi- racy I suppose) and he was tried by Lord Tenterden. Now at that moment Lord Tenterden, I understand, had the gout and was not in the best of tempers. When, therefore, lots of great people peers, baronets, squires, ct hoc ymm omnc rushed into the TENTERDEN DISTRUSTS THE ARISTOCRACY 273 witness-box to speak for Hodgson, who was about the most popular man in the three Ridings, he settled in his own mind that an unscrupulous aristocracy had entered into a combination to over-ride justice on behalf of their friend, and summed up breast high against the defendant. Hodgson was found guilty, and bound over to come up and receive judgment within a certain time. Luckily for him, however, Turnbull had adopted a bold, broad, and enterprising style of aurism, and the result was, that according to report, he did a lot of mischief. One patient at least had been carried into the street out of his consulting- o room quite dead, and many others were much injured. He also, I believe, got into debt and other scrapes, so that he had to levant. Hence Hodgson was never summoned to receive sentence, still, he remained maundering till the end of his life in a state of utter bewilderment and mystification as to what error he had fallen into, and why he had been tried. To end my circuit experiences. Whilst I was still at the Bar, on one occasion during the Lent Assizes, we had a great playgoing time of it. A company of actors came down from London to intro- duce, yes, I may say literally to introduce, Shak- speare to some of the citizens of Liverpool. The ignorance of many people in the boxes, who, if not well educated, were perfectly well dressed and well mannered, surprised us not a little. Certain of their remarks would have been by no means out of place in the Globe Theatre, towards the end of the six- T '274 'MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING' teenth century. ' Oh ! the old villain ! ' or some such phrase was applied to Falstaff by several persons at once, when he tries to cajole Prince Hal by saying * that he owed him his love, a love worth a million.' And in ' Much Ado about Nothing,' the Elizabethan joke of Beatrice, when she demurs, somewhat broadly no doubt, to Don Pedro's plan of getting her a hus- band, fell perfectly flat, till, just as it had all but evaporated into space, a jolly butcher in the gallery caught the meaning, and burst into a roar of delight. From him the infection spread, and the house gradu- ally passed into shouts of laughter all round. At the same time this want of familiarity with ' Much Ado about Nothing ' is not confined entirely to Liverpool. A young gentleman in London last year, I was told, said to a relative of his, ' My dear aunt, most of the new plays are rubbish, but there is one that you really ought to see. It is very amusing, and not only that, it is also extremely well written. They call it " Much Ado about Nothing." ' One may say this, however, for the young gen- tleman in question, that whatever his bookish ac- quirements may, or may not be, his natural taste is undeniably good, and that the divine Williams, when the criticism reaches him, will probably be better pleased with this spontaneous applause from a born admirer, than with the esthetic eulogies of many more highly trained and carefully drilled partisans. 275 CHAPTER XV. Appointed Revising Barrister Justice defied at Bradford Literature of the period Carlyle Tennyson Browning Best man to Mr. Gladstone at his marriage My own marriage Appointed Receiver- General of Customs Mr. Grenville Highwaymen at the beginning of the century Mr. Grenville's death. AFTER a circuit or two, though I got no briefs, I was appointed a revising barrister, and saw in the next two or three years a good deal of Yorkshire life. West Riding boroughs I revised two or three times, and the West Riding itself once. There was a district between Settle and Ripon which I travelled over with the late Mr. Pickering, my coadjutor, and thought well worth visiting. We hired a post-chaise at Settle, and passed through the valley of the Upper Wharfe, just where the river divides itself into two branches. We then proceeded through a pastoral country, without towns, without villages, without visible squires, so that whenever we changed horses, it was at a house the centre of a grazing farm in the first degree, an inn only in the second. What changes have passed over this part of the country since then I do not know, but I presume that rail- ways have altered its character more or less. I should be sorry to hear that it had been entirely T 2 276 DISCUSSION AT BRADFORD disfeatured, for, five-and-forty years ago it was de- lightfully fresh, rural, and unspoilt. I got into a difficulty once at Bradford, but extricated myself, I think, deftly and discreetly enough. Now the ' Haven- cake Lads,' as (from the recruiting sergeant's tra- ditional practice of going over the moors round about, with an oatcake fixed at the end of his bayonet), these Yorkshire hill men were then called, are formidable foes to encounter. Indeed at Halifax, though a tall man, and one who had grown up under M. Hamon's tuition into somewhat more than average strength, I remember seeming to myself, among the stalwart voters there assembled, with the single exception of my cockney clerk, if not the shortest, at least the slightest and weakest man in the room. Whatever may have been the case at Halifax, a red-bearded giant, perfectly indifferent to the majesty with which justice is said to clothe herself, came to defend his vote on the Bradford list, in a perfect frenzy of wrath. The professional objector was a little tallow-faced Tory attorney of about five foot three, whom his an- tagonist could have tossed like a bull had he chosen to try. In point of fact, he could have thrashed the Tory attorney, the presiding judge, who had, alas, no javelin men behind hire, and the judge's cockney clerk, all three together, with his left hand. As it was, he contented himself for the moment with shaking his fist at the enemy across the table, and fiercely exclaiming, ' You damned little lickplatter, I will break every bone in your skin ! ' This was very SUCCESSFULLY CONCLUDED 277 shocking, but what was I to do ? Now, besides being really grateful to him for introducing me to the word lickplatter, a far more picturesque expression than lickspittle, the phrase in common use, I knew, having, as I said before, no javelin men behind me, that if I adopted the high and mighty line with him, it would not have the smallest effect ; nay that I might very likely be obliged to prosecute him for an assault, a proceeding which, taking his size, strength, and temper into consideration, I should have adopted with the sincerest reluctance ; my best chance, I thought, lay in an appeal to his business instincts and natural Yorkshire thrift. ' Now,' said I, ' I am not going to stand any of this nonsense here ; if you cannot behave properly I shall adjourn the court and go out for a walk. This may not suit the con- venience of your neighbours, and of yourself, but it will suit me perfectly, as I shall be on duty for another day, and pocket an extra ten guineas.' He recognised the force of this argument, and became as docile as a carefully trained elephant, submitting himself to my decision, whatever it was, quietly and silently. During all this time, I greatly enjoyed the society of my fellow- barristers. A long list of names comes back upon my mind, recalling men whom I greatly liked and esteemed, and conversations full of interest. If I had kept a diary, many things well worth recording, which have dropt away from my memory, might have reappeared in this book ; but then I am 278 CARLYLE not the sort of man who keeps a diary, and hence the reader must take what he can get. Between my professional visits into Yorkshire, I read, among other books, Carlyle's ' French Revolution,' and its effect upon me as upon other men was intense. Since then I have always looked upon him as the greatest literary force of our age (in England I mean, for I am not measuring him, either for better or worse, against Victor Hugo). Tennyson and Browning had also dawned upon us, and were advancing, the first by leaps and bounds, the second more gradually, into their present reputation and power over the hearts of their contemporaries. We worshippers of Carlyle have been of late much dis- turbed by revelations about our strange god, from priests of his who might as well have held their tongues. We have to console ourselves as well as we can with the reflection, that those parts of his cha- racter and his genius which are bright, burn on with undiminished lustre, though there may be spots in the sun. In truth, the mixture of littleness with his greatness, of weakness with his power, always brings back to my mind a fable in a child's poetry book, which when I read it first struck me as full of humour and good sense. There was a kingly elephant, the monarch of his tribe, standing far above all competition. The rest of the herd reverenced and adored him as they were bound to do, when suddenly, to their horror, the forest echoes to his tempestuous roarings ; it seemed AN ILL-USED ELEPHANT 279 as if he were smitten with mortal agony. His trembling subjects gathered themselves together, to discuss what terrible misfortune could have befallen him Perhaps even now he flees away, Pierced by the hunter's dart, To flood some dreary cavern With the life-blood of his heart. His yells continuing without any abatement, they moved on in a body to give him help and comfort, but on arriving at the spot where he was, they found him safe enough, though in a furious temper, and this was the cause of his wrath I laid me down to take a nap, Beside this crystal spring, And the largest fly you ever saw Awoke me with his sting. Still the fact of his being sensitive to trifling annoy- ances did not diminish his strength when he was called upon to put it forth for some good purpose ; and so let us say of Carlyle. In 1839 I attended Mr. Gladstone's wedding at Hawarden as his best man. Catherine Glynne and her sister Mary, both beautiful women, were married on the same day, the first to William Gladstone, the second to George, Lord Lyttelton. The occasion was a very interesting one, from the high character of the two bridegrooms, and the warmth of affection felt for the two charming young ladies, by all their friends and neighbours, in every rank of life. There 280 MR. GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE was a depth and genuineness of sympathy diffused around, which, as the French say, spoke for itself without any words. Some verses of mine referring to this common sentiment are published in my collected poems ; they were welcomed at the time by the two families very kindly -and pleasantly. My anticipa- tions of Mr. Gladstone's remarkable career, hazarded in them, have not been falsified, though perhaps it was just as well for the verses that I did not foresee the exact course it would take. Nay, had a prophet on that morning pointed out to Mr. Gladstone him- self, that he was intended, in after years, to threaten, if not to destroy the House of Lords, and to become the idol of the mob, in the hope of breaking up the British Empire, we might have had something like a repetition of Hazael's vehement protest against the solemn warnings of Elisha ; but che sara sara, and I do not pretend, seeing that my youthful opinions, then identical with Mr. Gladstone's, have no doubt fossilised themselves in the Civil Service, to say more than I can help about a change of feeling that I do not understand. After having been two or three years a revising barrister, in 1844 I was myself fortunate enough to obtain as my wife, Sidney Williams Wynn, the youngest daughter of the late Right Hon. Charles Williams Wynn. I had, of course, been in love once or twice before, but met with disappointments, as men who are not rich often do. I hope it will not be considered a reflection upon my early charmers, MY OWN MARRIAGE 281 whom I yet remember tenderly (they both, alas, died long ago), if I believe that each of these disappoint- ments, bitter as they might be at the time, was a blessing in disguise. My wife and her three sisters, with whom also I lived on terms of the warmest affection, were women of a very noble type. Pres- cott Hewitt said to my daughter once, ' I thought your two elder aunts the two bravest women I ever saw, but I doubt whether your Aunt Lindesay is not braver even than they.' That my wife was endowed with these family qualities in at least as high a degree as the others, those who remember her will know perfectly well without any assurance of mine. In addition to extraordinary courage, these four ladies possessed all the virtues to which courage is akin ; frankness, generosity, loftiness of mind, forgetfulness of self, and a power of sym- pathy hardly to be equalled. But in a book of this kind I do not feel disposed to dwell, at any length, upon the joys or sorrows of my private life ; the world at large has little to do with them. Those who have been my friends and companions are fully aware how much 1 must have suffered, by losing first my dear wife, then a beloved daughter in the bloom of youth and beauty, and lastly a son of whom any father might be proud, just as he began to gain honour in his profession, to which he had devoted himself with untiring energy and zeal ; whilst those who are unacquainted with me, and with them, can- not be expected to take a deeper interest in my 282 APPOINTED RECEIVER -GENERAL OF CUSTOMS happiness or affliction, than in the happiness or afflic- tion of any one else. My marriage, as I was a very poor man, made it necessary for me to look out for some more remune- rative occupation than the periodical donning of a wig and gown by a briefless barrister, and shortly after- wards, Sir Robert Peel offered me the Assistant- Solicitorship of the Excise, and in a year the Receiver-Generalship of Customs, partly as a tribute to the services of my father as the Chairman of the Excise, but mainly in order to discharge a debt (this he said in so many words) to my father-in-law, Charles Wynn. That Mr. Gladstone did not consider himself so far Sir Robert Peel's representative after- wards, as to own that this particular responsibility devolved upon him, I had to learn all in good time. These offers I was kind enough to accept. I need hardly say that by so doing I gave up all hopes of legal or parliamentary distinction, resting content with a safe and respectable mediocrity. Nobody but myself can exactly say what this sacrifice amounted to, still, as I have already confessed that I was not meant by nature to become either a great lawyer or a great orator, I cannot blow my own trumpet effec- tively here. What I do complain of is that such a mediocrity, however respectable, is no longer safe, and that your most intimate friend, if he happen to be a Minister bent upon economy, may find it his duty to fling you down into practical ruin at a time of life when it is hopeless to think of returning to the Bar, THOMAS GRENVILLE 283 or of looking out for a new employment, Whereas, if I had stuck to my original profession, I think I may say without vanity that I was at least good enough to have reached, after a certain amount of hard work, a County Court, or perhaps a Colonial Judgeship. After accepting this post, my proceedings grew to be monotonous enough, and I cannot say that any recollections of mine possess a greater claim upon public attention than those of the average Brown, Jones, or Robinson. Still, even Brown, Jones, or Robinson may be worth listening to about historical, or other events, that occurred before the majority of our present Englishmen were born, and therefore I shall go on writing to the best of my ability. Between my marriage and my becoming a Civil Servant in Thames Street, I saw a good deal of Mr. Wynn's uncle, Thomas Grenville, who had been in the front rank of life, politically as well as socially, from early youth. He was then past his ninetieth year, and as his very considerable faculties, memory included, were as fresh and vigorous as if he had just come of age, I need not say that his acquaintance was well worth having. I used to dine with him at his house in Hamilton Place, perhaps twice a week, during the winters of 1845, 1846, helping to make up his nightly rubber. I am bound to add that he did not look upon my whist-playing powers as beyond criticism, still he ac- cepted them, with his usual urbanity, for what they were worth. In the meantime it was a real pleasure 284 CUSTOMS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY to listen to his talk, for though perfectly simple and unaffected, the manner in which he spoke English was beyond praise ; his sentences were clear, nervous, and incisive, but yet with an old-world ease and grace about them, as difficult to meet with now as the honest man of Diogenes. Being several years older than his cousin, Mr. Pitt, with whom and against whom he had acted in Parliament during many Sessions, the side lights thrown by him upon the events and customs of the eighteenth century were instructive in the highest degree. His account, for instance, of the manner in which he recovered his health, when it threatened to fail him in his early middle age, shows how strongly the life of man takes its colour from habit. He said to me, ' Then it was that I felt ill, and could not imagine the cause. I thought first that perhaps I had been taking too much exercise, but I soon found that had nothing to do with it. I read too much perhaps, so I shut up my books. Again, it might be that I had accustomed myself to sitting up too late, so I went to bed earlier. But the results were worthless. When all at once, by a sort of Providential instinct, it flashed across my mind, that for the last thirty years I had been drinking, day after day, at least a bottle and a half of port wine, and that possibly it was to that practice I might refer the threatened break-up of my constitu- tion. Accordingly I dropt it at once, and speedily recovered my strength/ Now Mr. Grenville had always been a quiet, well- CHARLES, DUKE OF NORFOLK, AND CHARLES FOX 285 conducted gentleman, never giving way to such ex- cesses as were habitually indulged in by Charles Fox, and his companion the other well-known Charles, then Duke of Norfolk. He merely took, one night with another, what was considered the legitimate quantity of wine for a decent member of society to swallow, at or after dinner, till the custom assumed the aspect, not of a mischievous tradition, but of a regular law of nature. Hence Mr. Grenville's notion that it might possibly be unwholesome, could only be arrived at in reasoning by a process of exhaustion. Charles, Duke of Norfolk, of whom I have just spoken, was, I suppose, a giant in strength. He once explained to my father how he and Charles Fox respectively used to grapple with the results of an oro-ie at Brooks's. Pitt, he said, never could address O 77. the House unless helped by the stimulus of wine ; Fox, on the other hand, could not stand so much as a single glass before speaking. ' But when the debate was over, we adjourned to Brooks's, and there we drank a great deal of wine ; yes, sir, a great deal of wine. I used to get up the next morning at six o'clock, walk three times round the Park, and have a bowl of new milk warm from the cow ; then, about ten o'clock, I generally lounged over to Charles Fox's lodgings, and found him sitting up in bed with a racking headache, sipping green tea.' The statesman rake certainly occupied an inferior position to the rake simple on these occasions, and indeed, as might have been expected, the milk-assimi- 286 BOUND NOT TO SNEEZE lating Duke survived his green-tea boon companion for many years. A story, which I got from Mr. Grenville of a friend belonging to a former epoch, illustrates again, curiously enough, how the rules of what men consider high breeding and good taste vary from time to time. Once, when they were talk- ing together, a serious distortion passed across the old man's face. Mr. Grenville was quite alarmed (this shows, I think, that the difference in years be- tween them was very great) and fancied a fit of some kind must be coming on. ' Oh, you need not be frightened,' exclaimed the visitor, recovering himself, ' I am all right. But you see when I first entered upon life, it was considered a gross act of ill-breeding to sneeze in company. You had to master the ten- dency somehow or other, and the result is, that for me and my contemporaries, sneezing has become a lost art. I only wish I could reacquire it now, but alas, it is too late.' Another anecdote I got from him, and thought a good one, had reference to an enormously massive piece of plate, belonging to one of the Lords Say and Sele ; he was very proud of his possession, and com- placently observed from the head of his own dinner table, ' Its weight gives it this advantage at any rate, no robber could carry it off ; I would give it to anyone who succeeded in doing so.' Upon this his nephew, Mr. Fiennes (many Fienneses since, we know, have been distinguished athletes), described by Mr. Grenville as a model of lithe and flexible strength. LORD SAY AND SELE'S PIECE OF PLATE 287 looked at it and said, ' Well, I don't know, but I think I could get it out of the room if I tried.' ' If you do,' replied his uncle, ' je n'ai que ma parole ; the piece of plate is yours.' The nephew at once wriggled himself underneath the vessel, shouldering it, to use Mr. Grenville's illustration, ' as a fox shoulders a goose,' and began to crawl away on all fours, with his prey quite secured, as easily as pos- sible. But happening to turn round in triumph just as he reached the door, he saw that Lord Say and Sele's face was full of astonishment, wrath, and dis- gust. Then, suddenly recollecting that, after all, this was an uncle from whom things greater than silver might be expected, he instantly collapsed, panting out, in the most artistic manner, ' You are quite right, uncle ; the job is too much for any single human strength.' Whether he earned his pardon by this discreet act of self-suppression, I never heard. Not the least interesting of Mr. Grenville's recol- lections were those relating to highwaymen. I shall recall two of them ; the first, in which the robber may be said to have gained a moral as well as a physical victory over him, and Lord Derby (the founder of the great Epsom race), the second where the triumph of mind rested with his sister, Lady Williams Wynn, though her purse and watch, alas, went the way of her brother's. Lord Derby and Mr. Grenville were on their return from Newmarket. As they crossed Finchley Common the attack took place. Their ser- vants, as Mr. Grenville thought, behaved very ill. 288 HIGHWAYMAN GIVING A MORAL LECTURE Now, how far a man who undertakes to brush your clothes, and to bring up your hot water on receiving a certain annual stipend, is bound to stay and be killed or wounded in defending your property, is perhaps an open question. In this case the servants gave a verdict in their own favour, and ran away at once, leaving their masters to fight it out as best they could by themselves. The highwaymen outnum- bered and out-weaponed the self-defenders, and after a certain amount of reciprocal popping, the gentle- men gave in. What mainly saved them from serious mischief, according to Mr. Grenville, was the exceed- ingly luxurious manner in which Lord Derby's car- riage had been stuffed. The robbers got behind it, and kept firing, as they thought, upon the travellers in perfect safety so far as they were concerned ; but the travellers inside were just as safe as they were, the bullets dying away in the dense masses of com- fort, provided by Lord Derby for himself and his friends. Still, the gentlemen, after exhausting their ammunition, gave in. Upon this, the leader of the brigands, not content with carrying off his hardly earned booty, thought fit to read his vanquished enemies a moral lecture. ' What scoundrels you must be/ he said, ' to fire at gentlemen who risk their lives upon the road ! ' Now one sees what was his view of the case, and there is really something in it. Pistol versus pistol may be fair enough, but pistol versus pistol plus gibbet in the background, is a contest in which ' the gentleman who risks his life upon the LADY WILLIAMS W1NN 289 road ' may not unreasonably consider himself over- handicapped ; there is another side to the question of course, but it is not his business to give effect to that. Lady Wynn's adventure ended, I have said, more honourably for her than Mr. Grenville's for him. This is the family legend. She was journey- ing from London with her two daughters, when a man stopped the carriage and demanded their money. Now her particular anxiety was that the maid, a good girl who helped to support her own family, should not be robbed of the wages she had just received. So, after letting herself be stripped of all her own money and valuables, and saying to her daughters, ' My dears, give up your purses and watches at once,' she turned sharp round upon the highwayman, and probably discerning with the quick eye of an experienced woman of the world, that he was not a hardened professional ruffian, addressed him thus, ' I suppose, sir, you are too much of a gentleman to think of stealing the hardly earned wages of a poor servant girl.' This appeal proved successful; he consented to forego that portion of his plunder. And then, being a very dignified old lady, she went on in her stateliest manner, ' And now, sir, I trust that you will withdraw that pistol, as I have observed, sir, that your hand shakes very much.' Now that I am talking about highwaymen. I may as well add that my old uncle Sir John, of whom I have spoken elsewhere, on one such occasion was much more seriously engaged. He and his u 290 A SHOOTING PAIN nephew, Sir Charles Doyle, drove off their assailants, after killing one, if not more of them. Sir John himself, being very severely wounded, they carried him off to the rector's house in the next village, and sent for a surgeon. ' I am afraid, Sir John,' the surgeon remarked, ' that you are suffering great pain.' ' Very great indeed,' was the reply. ' May I ask,' the surgeon pursued, ' what kind of pain ? ' ' Well,' retorted the old boy, who never lost either his readi- ness or his good humour, ' it is not easy to describe exactly, so suppose we call it a shooting pain. 1 This extra and unprofessional infliction was rather hard upon him, as the number of wounds he had received in action is not easy to reckon up ; he must, one would think, have possessed a wonderful constitu- tion, to keep on enjoying good health, after all that he had gone through, till just before he died in his eighty-fifth year. I have said that I helped to make up Mr. Gren- ville's rubber at the end of his life, indeed I was his partner, two days before his death, in the very last games he played. At first my ill-luck was quite astounding ; had the stakes been higher, my position would really have been embarrassing. Even as it was, to lose thirty pounds at shilling whist in six or seven weeks could hardly be looked upon as a trifle by a very poor man like myself. My opponents played a little better perhaps than I did, but not much; indeed, up to that period, at All Souls and elsewhere. I had generally come off a winner. A good WIN A BET AT GOODWOOD 291 many of these shillings went over from time to time to old Lord John Fitzroy, and the remembrance of these mishaps gave an additional zest to one unex- pected triumph I gained over him at Goodwood. We were together in the stand, when the race for the O ' Ham stakes, then a much more important two-year- old race than now, was about to be contested. He felt quite certain either Tingle or the Italian would win ; I differed from him, and said, ' There seem a number of good-looking dark colts from the principal training stables on the ground, if I bet at all I should back the field.' He offered to lay me two to one on his favourites. My answer naturally was, ' I never make any real bets, because I haven't the money to spare, but if you do not mind just this once making it two sovereigns to one, I will take your offer.' No sooner said than done. The horses started ; Tingle was beaten early, but the Italian strode away in front, and at the corner of the stand seemed so unmistakably the winner, that I put my finger and thumb into my waistcoat-pocket and nipped the lost sovereign, as I thought it, in order to pay up at once ; but the cowardly brute, when about six yards from home, swerved right across the course, and let two of his antagonists, Hardinge and a colt of Mr. Bowes's, pass the post before him. I need not say that I relaxed my grip upon the one sovereign with right good will, and held out my open hand for the two. To conclude, there was a cheerful though dignified self-possession about Mr. Grenville, that lent a more u2 292 DEATH OF MR. GRENVILLE than common interest to the close of his long career. Apparently, though not unwilling to live, he con- sidered it unmanly, at his age, to try and prolong life by any change in his habits, by any seeking out of new precautions and comforts. Accordingly, it was with the utmost difficulty, that he could be persuaded to let the servants light a fire in his bedroom, because he thought it looked like effeminate self- indulgence, and he was even more obstinate, when urged not to mount a cold staircase night after night, but to sleep on the drawing-room floor. At last the end drew near, and Dr. Fergusson as usual was summoned, and was met thus : ' I am quite ashamed, Dr. Fergusson, of sending for you so often; the world outside will be saying, "What, does that old fellow think he is never to die ?" Dr. Fergusson did his best, but in vain. In a short time Mr. Grenville's valet brought him his medicine, according to order ; this was his greeting, ' Don't bother me ; ' and half an hour afterwards, the old philosopher died quietly in his chair. 293 CHAPTER XVI. House in Portugal Street Defalcation at the Custom House Death of Prince Albert Afghan War Repeal of Corn laws Pamphlet on Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister. UNTIL I was installed in my new office, I lived for a season or two at Mr. Wynn's house in Grafton Street, but I soon had to transfer myself to No. 1 Portugal Street, where I remained for several years. The choice of this residence was not a very fortunate one. My excellent friend Baron Parke set himself to alter the established law about certain leasehold co- venants, and the alteration operated to my disad- vantage. I had undertaken to keep the premises in good repair, but under the old system a distinction was drawn between landlord's repairs and tenant's repairs, and you were not supposed to promise more than this, that you would maintain your house in as complete a state of repair as you received it, some reasonable allowance being made for the inevitable action of time. The Baron, however, became all at once inflexibly logical, and decided a case of the kind brought before him as if he had been a Seraphic Doctor among the medieval Schoolmen. ' Good re- 294 CUSTOM HOUSE DEFALCATION pair,' he said, ' is good repair ; it neither is nor can be anything else.' From that dictum he deduced his con- clusion, that people like me, who had entered into such a contract, were bound to keep their houses in a state of brand-newness and absolute perfection till the day of judgment at least, if the lease lasted as long. Lord Westminster's agents were not slow to make use of this decision, and I had to pay about two hundred pounds, only due from me because precedents of long standing were thus suddenly turned upside down. Another blow of the same sort also fell upon me. Shortly after I had taken my seat in Thames Street ; a clerk, for whom I was technically responsible, went off, leaving behind him a defalcation of two hundred and seventy pounds ; this sum I had to make good without a moment's delay, but I accompanied the payment with a memorial tending to prove, that the embezzlement must have taken place during the interval between the death of my predecessor, Sir William Boothby, and my own appointment. The Treasury officials, who on this occasion behaved with great generosity (for their legal right to throw the loss upon my shoulders was indisputable), accepted these arguments without making any cavil, and re- funded the money in a week or two. The manner in which the absconding culprit had effected his malversations was ingenious and original enough. The office accounts were made up daily at three o'clock, but the merchants still kept paying cus- WEAK POINT IN THE BANK SYSTEM 295 toms duties over the counter until four. The collec- tions of the last hour were deposited in private boxes belonging to the different clerks ; these boxes were then locked up, each by its owner, and handed over to the Assistant Receiver- General every afternoon. This delivery was accompanied by a memorandum enumerating the various bank-notes, sovereigns, half- sovereigns, half-crowns, shillings, &c. The first thing to be done in the morning, according to theory at any rate, was to compare these memorandums with the contents of the several boxes, and verify the accounts. To make a long story short, the defaulter contrived to hoodwink a sleepy old superior, and by great alertness and activity was able 'to present the first-fruits of the morning, so as to represent the defalcations of the evening before. The sleepy old superior, fortunately for me, was taken ill, and the gentleman who took his place for the moment proved to be much more in- telligent and awake, for he turned sharply round upon the guilty person, and said, ' Lambert, you never can have taken all these new coins across the counter ; you must have been to the Bank, sir, this very morning, to fetch them.' The detected one darted out of the room and ran away at once, but was soon caught, tried, and condemned. The only other time when I was called upon to restore to the Treasury money lost, struck me as a very remarkable occur- rence an occurrence, I may add, showing great want of foresight on the part of the Bank of England. 296 COOKED-UP FIFTY-POUND NOTE Whilst every other note was guaranteed by a separate signature, the twenty and fifty-pound notes were signed by the same person. A clerk on his way back through the city to Threadneedle Street, with a quantity of cancelled Bank paper, had his pocket picked (so he said at least), and shortly afterwards a certain number of sham fifty-pound notes sham, though every part of them was real crept into circu- lation. It was clear that the thief either knew, or dis- covered, or was told by some third person of this acci- dental oversight on the part of the Bank directors, for he destroyed a certain number of good twenty-pound notes, and attached parts of them to the notes he had stolen, thus reconstituting them well enough to deceive even experts. Such a note was presented at my office. There seemed nothing suspicious about it, and it was accepted immediately, accepted not only by my sub- ordinate, a perfectly competent judge, but by the Bank clerks who came down to receive the day's income, and again within the doors of the Bank itself. It was not until two or three days afterwards, that the fraud, it could hardly be called a forgery, was de- tected. The directors required me to pay the money over again, but I resisted the demand on several grounds ; the principal ones being, first of all, that when a recognised official person undertakes to cancel a bank-note, he should cancel it effectually; secondly, that when such a robbery takes place, notice of the fact and of the numbers of the notes that have dis- PUBLIC AFFAIRS 297 appeared should be given at a great public office like mine. Roundell Palmer, then Attorney- General, de- cided against me, and as it did not matter, seeing that I recovered the money without difficulty from the merchant who paid it in, I submitted to his decision. The loss, I believe, fell eventually upon a bank at Nottingham. I can only say that if I had been a member of that firm, I should have fought the matter out to the end, as I think no jury would have endorsed Palmer's opinion. The principal historical events between the first Reform Bill and my becoming Receiver- General of Customs were first the marriage of the Queen with Prince Albert ; the Afghan war, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws. Affairs in Afghanistan were terribly mismanaged. The remoteness of India, practically greater then than now, and the fact that the people who understand, and take an interest in the working of our imperial system, must always be comparatively few, tend to subordinate important questions abroad to trumpery questions at home. We worry ourselves about Household Suffrage and the like, and let the gravest dangers threaten us from abroad, with short- sighted indifference. As to Prince Albert, his pre- mature death was perhaps, among many such calami- ties, the greatest calamity of its kind that has befallen England of late years. In spite of his noble character and devotion to duty, he may not have been as popu- lar during his lifetime as he deserved to be, but every 298 PRINCE ALBERT IN LIFE AND DEATH ensuing year and month of these critical times brings home to us more strongly the truth of Shakspeare's lines in ' Much Ado about Nothing,' The good we have we prize not to its worth. The most terrible part of the Corn Law Repeal was its immediate cause, the potato rot in Ireland. Now whatever may have been Ireland's ill-treatment by England, it was hardly our fault that the Southern Irishman lived almost entirely upon that particular vegetable, instead of upon oatmeal like the Scotch Irishman of the North, or the Scotchman himself ; and certainly, when this unexpected and irretrievable disaster fell upon that unhappy country, England was not wanting in strenuous efforts to meet and mitigate the evil. But alas, it is what we do against Ireland that takes root in the Irish heart, what we do for her is always forgotten. I would add, without attempting to vindicate all the proceedings of the English people, particularly our greedy suppression of Irish trade, there is a certain fallacy underlying many of these Irish complaints. They compare our harshness two hundred years ago with the gentle- ness, perhaps the somewhat effeminate gentleness, of modern manners and modern habits of thought. o This is hardly fair ; law and life a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago were fiercer and more ruth- less everywhere than now. No crime committed by England against Ireland equalled in hard and callous cruelty Louis XIY.'s devastation of the Palatinate, ANCIENT LAWS AND LAWLESSNESS 299 or, to corne nearer home, William III.'s massacre of Glencoe. Yet the inhabitants of Baden, and the Mac- donalds of the West Coast, do not now trouble them- selves to look back so far. The grands-jours d'Auvero;ne, the State and other trials here and else- O " where, the local tyrannies in the more distant parts of England and Scotland, when, as the Highlander phrased it, ' the law had not yet come to Tain,' all tend to prove that in remote provinces, whether of England, Scotland, Ireland, or France, lawless ferocity and merciless law were alternately in the ascendent ; that oppressions in Ireland had many parallels all over the world. And taking these matters into considera- tion, I think it a great misfortune that O'Connell deliberately set himself to kindle afresh the hatred between Celt and Saxon, which, as Mr. McCarthy in his History admits, had almost worn itself out. My own namesake, and remote kinsman, as I believe, always acted in a very different spirit. No one could doubt the ardour of Bishop Doyle's Irish patriotism, but it was ever guided in its course by far-seeing wisdom, and a thorough sense of Christian duty. It is also clear to everybody who has eyes to see, that at present we throw open with hearty Kberality all the advantages of our great Empire to any Irish- men, and their name is legion, who choose to profit by them. One of the results of this is, that owing in some degree to their superior quickness of parts, in some degree also to other reasons too long to enume- rate, the Civil Service ranks are filled with Irish 300 CIVIL SERVICE recruits. In most of the appointed competitions, they beat both Englishmen and Scotchmen hollow. Now if their hatred of England is to burn on with a quenchless flame, they should not, I think, accept our gifts, or pocket our money. The Afghan war, though its losses were repaired, and English ascend- ency re-established within the next year or two, had a bad effect upon the stability of our Indian Empire. It taught the Eastern races that soldiers are not in vin- cible because they happen to be dressed in red, and it was succeeded by many evils, of which, I fear, we have not seen the last. The two Sikh wars, in 1846 and 1847, followed close upon this Afghan war, and it really seemed as if our rule in India was shaken to its foundation ; we struggled through them, however, and I hope and believe that the Sikhs are now among the most loyal of our subjects. They are not fettered by caste restrictions, being neither Hindoos nor Mahomedans, and are, if not Christians, at any rate ' eaters of beef,' so that we have more in common with them than with the natives of India proper. Upon me, one of the queer effects of the Sikh war was, that it caused me to write a pamphlet upon quite a different subject at Jiin Wortley's request. There came a most alarming message from the Governor- General, that after a desperate battle in which, if we gained the victory, it was all that we did, another hostile army had shown itself on the flank of our exhausted force. The report ended with these words, and there being then no electric SIKH WAR PAMPHLET CAUSED BY IT 301 telegraph, we had to wait in the bitterest anxiety before we could learn how this new hostile onset had been met. My nerves gave way, and I could not sleep. ' What you have to do,' said Jim Wortley, ' is to divert your mind by some absorbing occupa- tion. We want very much a pamphlet in favour of my Bill the Bill I mean to permit marriage with a deceased wife's sister. Why not sit down and write it for us ? We are in a great hurry, so you must set to work without a moment's delay.' I agreed, and my pamphlet, if it did not convince the Bench of Bishops, produced upon me the effect I hoped for. On looking back upon the question, I cannot but think that it turns very much upon the truth of a statement put forward by its adversaries ; the state- ment, I mean, that our lower classes take no interest in, and are not affected by the operation of this law. I frankly own that such an assertion fills me with surprise. The first great advocate for removing this particular restriction upon marriage was Lord Francis Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, a wealthy and powerful magnate of Lancashire, devoted to the interests of Lancashire men and women, and so beloved by them, that when a formidable Chartist riot was impending, all his miners and colliers gathered in a body round the house where he lived, crying out with one voice, ' We are ready to die, if need be, for our noble Lord and Lady.' His reason for urging the measure on was, that all through his manufacturing districts, the mill hands and artisans, 302 LORD ELLESMERE JIM WORTLEY either from ignorance of the law, or in defiance of it, had fallen into great irregularity of life, and that serious evils prevailed among them in consequence of this needless prohibition. Jim Wortley, a leader on the Northern Circuit, a member of a family holding much the same position in Yorkshire as the Egertons held in Lancashire, took the Bill up when Lord Francis became a peer, and advocated it on the same grounds. I do not see how they could have been mistaken, but if they were, I own that my zeal in behalf of the measure, which even now is not extreme, would to a great extent fade away. The sexual relations all over the world are so ticklish and critical, and the general tone of morality depends so much upon them, that to relax any existing system, for the sake of trifling improvements in its organisa- tion is not unlikely to do more harm than good. If a few rich men who have fallen in love with their sisters-in-law (this I cannot but observe happens occasionally, whether the wife is alive or dead) are the only persons who desire this change, let them go and live in Germany or in the colonies, or in any other place where such alliances are legal. At the same time, if I could be induced to work hard in their cause, it would be because I am irritated by the non- sense which their antagonists talk. We have the Old Testament paraded before us, as if we were bound to accept the views entertained by semi-barbarous polygamists three thousand years ago, even sup- posing that they then objected to such marriages, INCONCLUSIVE ARGUMENTS 303 which they did not. Do you derive the chosen people from Abraham ? Then you derive them from a man who married his own sister without any criticisms from Moses or the prophets. Do you derive it from Jacob ? Well, he married two sisters at once, and neither man nor God made any objection. It is obvious, also, from the relations imposed upon brethren with regard to their brother's widow, from the marriage of nieces with their uncles and the like, that the main object of Jewish marriages was to keep the family property together, and that in com- parison to that they thought little of entering into engagements, which our English High Church divines may look upon as incestuous. Again, the great Jew who made the name of his people known all over the world, and who still stands out as the type of his race, surrounded himself with seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. I can hardly suppose that he troubled himself much with any nice inquiry into the degrees of affinity sub- sisting between the different members of this conjugal rnob, unless indeed the rattling controversialist of the ' Saturday Keview ' should maintain, that these three hundred concubines were all deceased wives' sisters, whom Solomon would have led to the altar, had he not been prevented by his determination to adhere, in every respect, to the letter of the law. Again, this Mosaic law is not dead, but alive, and if you ask any Hebrew gentleman, who may be considered as an expert spe- cially qualified to pronounce an opinion thereon, he 304 TEN PER CENT. laughs at the idea of its containing any such prohibi- tion, though he generally adds, ' Of course we accept the rule of the country in which we are domiciled, whilst we are domiciled there.' Again, though the Archbishop of Canterbury may tell us that we and our wives' sisters are one flesh, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, backed by the common sense of mankind, as I pointed out to Lord Houghton many years ago, takes quite a different view, and in the event of your sister-in-law leaving you a legacy, quietly announces that you are strangers in blood, and exacts his ten per cent. The social argument brought forward by English divines and others is not so untenable as the scriptural one, but it rests in a great degree on imagi- nary foundations. With anyone who contends that an attractive girl, in a conspicuous worldly position, can go and keep house for an agreeable young brother- in-law, without exciting unpleasant remarks, and risking her reputation, it is useless to argue, and yet, it is mainly to secure for women this impossible position, that the present arrangements, according to our bishops and curates, have to be guarded against attack. Upon the whole I adhere to what I said above. If Mr. Beresford Hope and his allies can prove, as they say they can, that the late Lord Ellesmere and James Wortley were totally mistaken in their belief, and the removal of this restriction is of no vital importance to our manufacturing population, a mild sympathy is all that I can give to the opponents of the law. I have no great tenderness for what Miss LORD PLUM- CAKE LEAH AND RACHEL 305 Edgeworth somewhere calls 'the sorrows of my Lord Plum-cake,' and if his lordship finds life intolerable without turning his sister-in-law into a new wife, he can take himself off and marry her elsewhere ; but on the other hand, if Lord Ellesmere and James Wortley were not mistaken, I think the reasons for cancelling this somewhat arbitrary edict are stronger than those for maintaining it. Indeed, to my mind, even the prohibition of marriage with two sisters at once was not suggested to the Jews by any moral feeling; how could it be, when under the same law a man was not only allowed, but obliged to marry his brother's widow ? What brought that article into the Hebrew code was, I believe, a national tradition concerning the quarrels between Leah and Rachel, which cast a shadow on all such marriages, though not in them- selves worse than other polygamous contracts ; this, however, is a mere matter of opinion, and no doubt would be boisterously contradicted by the writer in the ' Saturday Review ' and his clerical friends. So much for my pamphlet, which successfully put me, and, I daresay other people, to sleep, and is now itself at rest for ever. The only other word I have to say is this, that some casual inquiries I have made do not confirm the Saturday Reviewer's assumption, that among Roman Catholics there is any particular difficulty in obtaining dispensation for cases of this nature ; on the contrary, I am told that the Church is less disposed to withdraw the barrier that separates blood relations, such as first cousins, than when the x 30G ALIWAL AND SOBRAON ecclesiastical prohibitions are imposed on account of affinity. If I am rightly informed, then, England, without her colonies, is almost the only Christian country in the world, where a man may not marry his deceased wife's sister, and this gives even my Lord Plum- cake some right to grumble. In the meantime, the Sikh war went on, and those who are not too young will recollect how the countless dusky corpses floated down the river, be- tween the two main armies pitted against each other at Sobraon, thus bringing news more vividly than any post or telegraph could do, of the fierce battle at Aliwal, and the bloody defeat of the Sikh invaders. This battle of Aliwal was followed by that of Sobraon, and the first war came to an end. At the close of the second struggle, the Punjaub, as everyone knows, was annexed, and Dhuleep Singh, who, as a boy, had succeeded, in name at least, to his father Kunjeet Singh as lord of that country, was deposed and brought over here. His Koh-i-noor also became one of the English crown jewels. I never quite un- derstood the logic of that confiscation, and it may fairly be said. I think, to have imported into England the ill-luck, with which it has always been connected, according to an Indian superstition. 307 CHAPTER XVII. Henry Cheney and his brother Edward Italian sermon referred to Impossible to report Divorces in Poland Tenth of April Sedi- tious movements in Germany and elsewhere Death of Sir Robert Peel International Exhibition of 1851 Death of the Duke of Wellington Crimean war Indian mutiny Zulu war. ONE of the friends whom I made about this time was Plenry Cheney, a very brilliant, though some- what disappointed man. The childless owner of a large estate entailed upon the Cheneys kept death at bay, in the most inconsiderate manner. Henry, the immediate heir, waited and put off grappling with English life month after month, and year after year, until, when at length he found himself the squire, the time was gone by, and he could not do himself full justice. He was something in the position of a grand three-year-old, whose proprietor has over- looked the entrance day for the Derby and St. Leger, and therefore he had to content himself with minor successes. As one of the best amateur painters of his day, he had spent the greater portion of his youth in Italy, so also had his brother Edward, whom perhaps my readers will recollect as figuring in Lockhart's ' Life of Scott.' He pointed out, they will remember, to Sir Walter, when he grumbled at Dante's x 2 308 MICHAEL SCOTT AND DANTE exclusiveness in hell, 'as if nobody born north of the Alps were worth damning at all,' that he at least had no right to complain, since his own ancestor, Michael Scott, was getting it as hot as ' the best or worst of them ' in the great poet's Inferno. Henry Cheney's intimate acquaintance with the language, the litera- ture, and the habits of Italy made him a very inte- resting companion. I recollect one day his repeating to me, word for word I believe, a most peculiar sermon heard by himself at the Lent preachings in Rome. I happened to say ' I think it rather hard upon the Church of England, that the Catholics are always contrasting the grand ideas of their faith with our humdrum daily practice ; Catholicism has her humdrum daily practice too, I suppose.' He assented at once, and remarked, 'if the Protestants knew some of the details of the papal system as I know them, they would be startled, and that not a little.' There- upon he went on to tell me that when the seasons for preaching come round, two classes of priests were selected to do that work. The first class consisted of learned, able, and eloquent divines, whose dis- courses were at least as powerful and instructive as any Protestant discourses could be. ' But besides them,' he proceeded to say, ' a set of monkish hu- mourists are called upon to amuse, and to excite the imagination of the common people, and in order to accomplish their object, these clerical mountebanks stick at nothing.' Now I admire many things, and many persons belonging to the Roman Catholic SUPPRESSED SERMON 309 Church, but not everything or everybody ; and I think it would be well if those Protestants who are dazzled by the glorious outward aspect of Rome, in her universality and invincibility, knew a little of what was going on behind the scenes. I therefore had intended to reproduce a buffo sermon recited to me, among other things of the same kind, by Henry Cheney forty years ago. But the sermon in question is so full of blasphemous impiety that competent advisers interfered, and told me it really must not be published. ' If it were published,' they said, ' it would shock so many excellent people that the effect might be disastrous.' I myself believe that such matters should be made known, but, upon the whole, I thought it safer to give way to the critics who kindly tendered me their advice. And there- fore this wonderful piece of ecclesiastical oratory (and I may say I never met with anything the least like it) has been suppressed, But for it, I should hardly have brought Henry Cheney into this volume. We were intimate friends* no doubt, but our intercourse was of the most ordinary kind, without bearing in any way upon the special reminiscences of my life, with the exception of his Italian tales. He was a delightful talker, and played brilliantly both at whist and chess. He might also, I have little doubt, have done a good deal in literature, had he chosen to give up his mind to it, but he merely wrote, whenever he did write, for his own amusement. His best poem was a playful satire, reminding one perhaps a little too 310 DIVORCE IN POLAND much of Lord Byron's * Beppo.' But a short prose story, privately printed after his death, possessed, I think, higher qualities. It was composed to illustrate the Italian belief in that ancient superstition, in- herited from the Romans, about the evil eye. Henry Cheney's wonderfully accurate knowledge of all the lights and shadows that play round Italian life enabled him to give his descriptions a reality and local colour, such, as I fancy, no other Englishman could have done ; he also contrived to infuse into the tale, very impres- sively, a supernatural element, in the manner which I think most effective- the manner, I mean, which allows a reader to believe as much as he likes, through the nerves of his imagination without bringing his reason to bear upon the question at all. Such delicate hints and suggestions show an artist's hand a great deal more than the blunt straightforward ghost at present in fashion, whom you may not hesitate about, but must accept or reject at once. I have thought it right to say thus much about Henry Cheney, as he has not been allowed to preach his sermon. Though indeed so many eminent divines, from the bishop to the curate, have been requested by admiring friends to publish their sermons, that the request not to publish his discourse causes him, I think, to stand alone, or almost alone, among these reverend multi- tudes ; reminding us more or less how Lord Castle- reagh stood in plain clothes among the ambassadors and secretaries who all of them blazed with stars, crosses, and orders at the Congress of Vienna ; there- POLISH CLERGY INFLUENCED BY TRADITIONS 311 by eliciting from Prince Metternich the well-known remark : ' C'est distingue c,a.' The next story I have to tell, also refers to a Catholic practice, and in the original manuscript followed the contraband sermon, as naturally as a small boat follows in the wake of its ship, but the ship having been confiscated, the boat is rather adrift upon the waters ; however, here it is : Divorce, in the Catholic Church, is commonly supposed to be for- bidden, but there seems to have been, at one time, in Poland at least, a modification of this law which must have operated now and then in a very un- expected manner. My grandfather, Welbore Ellis Doyle (spoken of hereafter), I suppose between the American war and the French Revolutionary war, filled the post of military envoy or something of the sort, at Warsaw. He was well received by the Poles, and with one distinguished family lived on most intimate terms. A daughter of the house, a great favourite of his, was about to be married, when one morning she appeared before him with a very solemn aspect, holding a paper in her hand. ' I have to ask you,' she said, ' my dear colonel, to take charge of this document ; it is my formal protest against the marriage I am about to contract.' ' Good heavens, my dear child,' he cried out, ' if the proposed alliance is so odious to you, do let me intercede with your father and mother ; they have always professed a thorough friendship for me, and perhaps I may be able to persuade them not to insist on dragging you 312 REVOLUTION OF 1848 to the altar against your will.' ' Oh, dear me,' was the girl's answer, ' you do not understand the matter at all. I have not the least wish to break off my approaching marriage, only, perhaps ten years hence, Casimir, or Ludovic (or whatever the gentleman's name might be), may not suit me as well as he does now, and if I can point out that I protested formally at the time of my espousals, I shall be able to divorce him and go my own way.' Whether the young lady was accurate in her view of the Polish ecclesiastical law, and what ultimately became of the document or of the bridegroom I never heard. There are of course grave objections to making the conjugal tie irre- trievably binding, but if the Polish clergy winked at this method of escaping from it, it shows that the authority of the Church of Rome there was unable to triumph absolutely over local traditions and opinions. Perhaps the close neighbourhood of the Greek Chris- tians rendered the Catholic Bishops more pliable to the will of the aristocracy in Poland, than elsewhere. In the year 1848 the Revolution of France drove Louis Philippe into England and completely upset the dexterous political scheme, by which he had hoped to secure the throne of Spain for his son, the Due de Montpensier. These disturbances on the Continent were soon followed by the great Chartist demonstra- tion of the 10th of April in London. This outbreak was contemplated with much alarm by many sensible people. It was apprehended that there might be some intercommunion between the Chartists here, and the POSITION OF THE ENGLISH ABEOAD 313 anarchists abroad, and that thousands of foreigners, more accustomed to the use of arms than our undis- ciplined populace, might join the English mobs, and turn the so-called demonstration into a formidable revolt. As it happened, I had to go and fetch my wife home (she had been spending the winter at Nice for her health). Before starting I went down to the Treasury, and had a talk with the parliamentary secretary there. I told him that if he looked forward to anything like a real outbreak, I should feel it my duty to stay till the danger was past and gone, in order to take my place amongst the special constables about to be enrolled (they included, as everyone knows, Louis Napoleon) ; but the secretary treated the matter very lightly, and said it would be perfectly ridiculous for me to put off my journey on such a pretext. He was quite right, since, as everyone knows, the demon- stration collapsed entirely, and that noble army of special constables paraded the town, truncheons hi hand, without having to break anybody's head. Travelling abroad at the moment was somewhat dis- agreeable. You could not well go through France, because the French authorities took possession of any gold you might have about you, and it was very de- sirable to have a certain quantity of gold ready for use. The foreign bankers were beginning to be rather shy of their English customers, and if April 10 had not passed off so innocuously, they would certainly have refused to cash your circular notes, or to attend to your letters of credit. As we were making our way back 314 ALANS RECEPTION OF THE NEWS FROM ENGLAND through Savoy and Germany down to the Rhine, the whole country was in a great state of fermentation, bodies of troops stood on guard at each railway station, and disquieting rumours flew about every- where like birds of ill omen. We fell in with a friend, an elderly gentleman, who was returning home accom- panied by three pretty daughters, and though we were all a little anxious, it was impossible for us, daughters and all, to help laughing at his particular variety of terror ; he was always fancying that the poet Herweg, or some other revolutionary leader, would swoop down upon our train at the head of his legions, and carry off the young ladies into the mountains, there to remain as captives of his bow and spear. After pass- ing the Alps, we halted at the Savoy inn I forget the name of the place near where Horace Walpole lost his favourite dog ; the reader may recollect that he put him out for a run along the road, and that a wolf jumping out of the bushes snapped him up, and carried him off into the forest so rapidly, that all attempts to rescue him became hopeless. We saw sauntering about the village some magnificent wolf- hounds, who were very much in their proper place. For the people turned them out among their Alpine sheep during the winter, to protect the flocks, in collars armed with spikes of steel, and called them (which gave the dogs an additional interest in our eyes) by the old mediaeval name of Alans. 1 It may not be 1 'King Richard has not an Alan like him.' Walter Scott's Talisman. DEATH OF SIR R. PEEL AND SERVICE FRANCHISE 315 amiss to add, as a less sentimental, but perhaps more valuable recollection of that part of the world, that although the wine infallibly sets your teeth on edge, the beer, dark-coloured like our porter, was ex- cellent. The Americans behaved with respect to the 10th of April in a thoroughly American fashion. Their commercial interests were, of course, liable to be very greatly affected by any English convulsions, and they did not like the look of things. Accordingly, the first man who landed with a newspaper of the llth in his hand was carried off, and lifted into a conspicuous position above the heads of an anxious crowd. ' Read out, read out,' was the general cry. The traveller began to deliver his formal account from the ' Times,' when he was interrupted by an universal shout, ' Oh, bother all that, what are the funds ? ' ' 92f ' or just what the case might be, was the answer given. ' That's enough, thank you,' rose up on all sides, and the as- sembly dissolved itself like ' les neiges d'antan.' The acute Yankees learned the general result from these figures, and could afford, as practical men, to wait for details till they were completely at leisure. Of the next years I have little or nothing to say of my own, though many things of great importance happened. Among other sad events the death of Sir Robert Peel was a heavy blow to all his countrymen, but a civil servant trudging down to his business, morning after morning, and debarred from taking any active interest in practical politics, because he 316 ENGLAND'S LOSSES has no vote and is forbidden to put himself forward in public matters, has perhaps less to do with histo- rical events than most other men. The case is dif- ferent now, but the parliamentary division which gave civil servants the franchise (both Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli being opposed to the change), was a stolen one. I recollect asking Mr. Gladstone, shortly before one of the various Reform Bills was introduced, this question ' I say, among other roughs, are you going to let me have a vote now ? ' I was joking, but he answered with more heat and earnestness than I expected, ' Never until universal suffrage is reached, never, with my consent, shall a civil servant go to the poll.' I thought him perfectly right ; the English Civil Service is of the highest value to the country, mainly because its members are bound to assist all Governments alike in the daily working of the British constitution, without having, or at any rate showing, the slightest preference for one set of ministers over another. Still I hope that no great practical harm has been done by the introduction of this new element into our public offices, inasmuch as the new privilege has been exercised, under proper guidance, with tact and discretion. As to politics on a larger scale, where the great interests of the country are concerned, and you are not acting as a partisan but as an Englishman, I see no reason why, though an exciseman or employed in the Custom House, you should not think, talk, and work as seems right in your eyes. Accordingly, when the HYDE PARK EXHIBITION 317 Volunteer movement was started, I tried to forward it with all my heart ; but of that hereafter. Returning to Sir Robert Peel's death, I can only repeat what others have said, and said better, that the shock of this calamity was terrible indeed, and further record my opinion that England during the last thirty or forty years has suffered greatly through the pre- mature deaths of many of her best and ablest sons. With ordinary good luck, Sir Robert Peel, Prince Albert, Praed, Macaulay, George Lewis, Sidney Herbert, Charles Buller, cum multis aliis, might all have lived longer, and done good service to our common country. Of late years we have sadly wanted such men to influence, control, and restrain public opinion ; wanted them, I think, more than at most other periods of our history. But fate has been against us, and we must make the most of those who remain, or have since come to the front. But though great men leave us the world goes on, and in 1851, in spite of Peel's death, all England, and in a lesser degree all foreign countries, eagerly supported the first International Exhibition in Hyde Park. It was supposed, I do not know why, to be a harbinger of peace and goodwill among men. Up to the present era certainly, the spirit of commerce has not been, on the whole, a pacific spirit, and however reasonable the rose- coloured anticipations of statesmen appeared three- and- thirty years ago, they certainly have notjbeenrful- filled. I need not describe what everyone knows*and has read about, but I may recall to men's minds that 318 MISTAKE ABOUT HAN WELL THE ORIGINAL NIHILIST shortly after the opening of this world fair, it was muttered abroad that a pickpocket had made his appearance, to shear his flock there gathered together, in the full uniform of an English bishop. As far as I was concerned, coming up to London one day, I found myself in a railway carriage with a quaint old lady who had left her home at the extremity of Cornwall, to see what was to be seen at this unprecedented Exhibition. She had never travelled so far from the West until then, and was naturally anxious to learn what she could about things in general. As we raced along in the train, when close to London, she ex- pressed a desire to have Windsor Castle pointed out to her. I replied, ' Oh dear me, I am so sorry you did not speak before ; you could have seen it perfectly well, on your right, by looking out of the window.' ' Ah, I did see it then ; ' was her answer, * a large red brick building, was it not ? ' For a moment I hesi- tated, but however painful it might be to undeceive her, I could not let the venerable pilgrim go back to Penzance, in the belief that she had been reverently gazing at Windsor Castle when she only looked upon Hanwell. The one other thing, apart from what is known to everybody, that comes back to me from the Exhibition of 1851, was the completeness with which the new police won the hearts of the strangers, more especially of the strange ladies, by their good manners, their ubiquity, and their zeal. A French- woman, with whom I talked as we were crossing the Channel together, expressed herself thus, ' Je raffole DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON 319 de ces policemen.' Still I doubt whether a compli- ment to the force from, quite another quarter is not a higher one. Very soon after the force was set on foot, chalk manuscripts I suppose they may be described as manuscripts glared upon you from all the walls of London, ' No Peel ; no new police ; no nothing.' The publisher of this pathetic ejaculation, who may fairly be called the original Nihilist, seems to have felt in his heart of hearts how terrible a blow had been aimed at the republic of thieves and burglars, by the establishment of Sir Robert Peel's civilian army, and we must agree with him, I think, that if the inhabitants of London had been left in the hands of the old watchmen until now, he and his com- panions would have had a much better time of it. The Duke of Wellington overlived the Exhibition of 1851 for a short time, and then died full of years and honours. If not a brilliant minister, at least he carried into statesmanship the same unselfish devo- tion to the interests of his country, which renders him so remarkable among successful generals. I recollect hearing from my father an anecdote told him by the Duke himself, in his own characteristic language, one day when he was dining at Apsley House. We learn from it, with what contemptuous indifference this great man pushed aside all considerations of personal dignity false personal dignity, as he thought it if they stood in the way of his duty to England. ' After the battle of Talavera,' he said, ' I wanted the Spanish force 1 to make a movement, and called 320 CRIMEAN WAR upon Cuesta to take the necessary steps, but he de- murred. He said by way of answer, " for the honour of the Spanish crown I cannot attend to the direc- tions of the British general, unless that British general go upon his knees and entreat me to follow his advice." Now,' proceeded the Duke, ' I wanted the thing done, while as to going down upon my knees I did not care a twopenny damn, so down I plumped.' I was amused, and I may add provoked, to find, several years afterwards, that this act of magnanimous con- descension, showing to my mind a far nobler sense of self-respect and self-reliance than if Wellington had fussily insisted upon his own pretensions and rights, did not recommend itself to a latterday soldier who had, I believe, distinguished himself in the Crimean war ; he, forsooth, thought it impossible that any British Commander-in- Chief, should so far degrade himself. I could only say, in that case either my father or his host had told a deliberate lie. That was what I said ; what I thought of the Duke's critic, I did not trouble myself to put into words. As to the Crimean war in 1855, 1856, 1 have little or nothing to say of my own. It was, as everyone knows, grossly mismanaged, and Marshal St. Arnaud's refusal to advance immediately after the Alma, com- pelled the allied armies to turn what had been in- tended as a pounce, or to use the French phrase, a coup de main, on Sebastopol, into a regular siege, for which they were not prepared. Again, on the 17th October, when the bombardment commenced, I believe STATE OF OUR ARMY 321 the idea was to overwhelm the Russian guns under a tremendous cannonade, and then storm the place. But as the French artillery, to which the chief portion of this business belonged as a matter of course, trot O 7 ^> smashed up and silenced in three quarters of an hour, that scheme also came to nothing. I myself always fancied that the Russians were afraid of a night attack. The manner in which they kept up a perfectly useless fire for hours, evening after evening, led me to form that opinion, and I should have been inclined to wait for a time, till their gunners had tired themselves out and gone to rest, and then have made a rush upon the fortifications ; but our generals, I suppose, considered all that, and thought the attempt too perilous. As soon as the war was over we took care to inform the world at large of the miserable state of our army (our army, not our soldiers, thank God), but as no sufficient steps were taken then, nor have been taken since, to get at the root of the evil, we might just as well have kept quiet. It was little more than two years ago, that a young friend of mine sitting next a man of great literary distinction, whose authority on all Crimean matters stands d(^serve;lly high, broke out into natural indignation at the manner in which our soldiers, sent from England (not from India) to Egypt, were starved and poisoned through the blundering of the authorities at home. She declared, with true feminine impetuosity, that some- body ought to be hanged ' pour encourager les autres.' 4 Ah, yes,' her neighbour answered, ' the same remark Y 322 ZULU WAR EGYPTIAN CAMPAIGN OF 1882 was made to me by a very nice girl whom I took in to dinner six-and-twenty years ago. It was mouldy bread and green coffee then, it is mouldy bread and putrid meat, I understand, now; otherwise there is no change, we have simply a new performance of the old tragedy by another set of actors, and I feel as if I were carried back in a dream to the days of the Crimea.' In the Zulu war the preserved meats were not amiss, but a Government eager to save everything sent cheaper provisions to Egypt (so, at least, I was told), and to this cheap food there was but one objection, that it was quite uneatable; there- fore some thirty ships, with an average of about three hundred invalids apiece, came back during the months of August and September 1882, to say nothing of those who died on the spot, or brought back the seeds of death within them on their o return from Egypt. Through this ill-organised cam- paign I lost a beloved SOD. But when a man who has chosen to be a soldier dies for his country, his friends must submit to the misfortune in silence, I therefore say nothing about him from myself. Still I do not think it out of place to mention what happened at Manchester (where his regiment, the 2nd Dragoon Guards, was quartered) shortly after he had been taken from us. On Christmas Day, at their annual dinner, the privates and non-commissioned officers of his troop spent their hardly-earned money in buying costly flowers ; with these they surrounded MINISTERIAL HUPJIYIXGS INDIAN MUTINY 323 a black-edged tablet, which was fixed above the place where he ought to have been standing. On this tablet were written the following verses, verses that came, I think I may say, from the heart of one whom he had commanded, and represented the feeling common to him and all his comrades Brave as the bravest, Foremost in fight, Gallant and courteous, Generous and bright ; Beneath the turf now Our war-worn captain sleeps, And over him here Each grateful trooper weeps. Of such a tribute to the memory of his son any father may well be proud. All this, if we may judge from the Indian regiments, which suffered little because they were better cared for, might have been avoided. But everything at home is always done in a hurry ; ministers have to scud before a gust of popular feeling, and under its impulse they tumble about in a state of bustling inefficiency, which would be ludicrous, if it were not so profoundly tragical. The Crimean war was soon followed by the Indian Mutiny, a mutiny helped on, I should say, by our blatant candour as to the weakness of the English administration. ' An Empire,' as Napoleon said, l may be made of adamant, but a free press will grind it into powder.' At this moment we are informing the Mahdi, through his agents in England and in Egypt, of all that we mean to do, and yet we make 324 INDIAN MUTINY sure of our ultimate success. 1 From this Indian Mutiny we escaped, as everyone knows, by the skin of our teeth. Whether we should do so a second time is a very serious question, but as I have no recollections connected with this passage in our history, not equally belonging to all other Englishmen, I pass on. There is, indeed, one thing worth noting. As I stopped at Exeter shortly after the relief of Lucknow, I read in the Exeter newspaper, at the London Inn, a lyrical poem on the relief of Lucknow, which struck me as excellent of its kind. Having to hurry on by the next train, I failed to secure the paper, but if any Devonshire man happens to know where it may be found, he should not allow so fine a piece of work to drop into oblivion. 1 This does not refer to the present moment. It was written before the Mahdi died, of course ; but another Mahdi has only to rise up, and he may rely upon receiving all necessary information from the Times, Daily Neu-s, &c. 325 CHAPTER XVIII. Napoleon's attack upon Austria Volunteer movement False eco- nomy Reasons why the Boers revolted State of the Navy Zulu discipline Curious story from New Guinea Civil war in America Accident to General Lee's despatches Lord Derby's opportunity Fenian murder of a policeman in Manchester. IN 1859 Europe was startled by Louis Napoleon's unprovoked attack upon Austria, and under the im- pulse of that sudden alarm the volunteer movement took its present form, and I did my best for it. I was offered a captaincy in one of the City regiments, but this I declined. I was not fit for an officer, and though I would gladly have gone into the ranks as a private, my advancing age, to say nothing of my lameness and blindness, stood in the way. My task, therefore, was to ransack every corner of the City, soliciting sub- scriptions, not without success, from the merchants and tradesmen of London. Occasionally, of course, I met with a rebuff from a ' capable citizen,' but rough words break no bones, and when such a thing happened, I shrugged my shoulders and knocked at the next door. I also joined others in the suggestion that Lord Wemyss, then Lord Elcho, should put himself at the head of this important development of our national common sense. I 326 VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT LORD WEMYSS well knew that during his undergraduate days, he had been a sort of ' Admirable Crichton ' among his Christ Church friends, combining all the qualities which make a man popular with mental accom- plishments and physical powers. Moreover he was still young and full of energy, so that he seemed to me to be the very man fitted to undertake the task. I pointed out this in various letters, but whether his acceptance of the position was propter hoc or only post hoc I cannot say, nor does it much matter, but I have always fancied, though I never put myself forward, or claimed any merit for my labours, that few people took more trouble to bring the volunteer organisation into shape than I did. Not that the spontaneous, and I may say, instinctive protest of the British people, against the apathy and passive treason of our successive administrations appears to me a sufficient safeguard, when we contemplate the many dangers that threaten us, but still it is creditable to the English people, and good as far as it goes. Ministers ought to know and honestly inform those who trust them with power, looking their clients in the face, that the whole art of war has been completely remodelled of late years, whilst we stupidly blunder along in the old way. Very likely, if our enemies, whoever they may be, gave us time enough, the latent strength of England and the resolute character of our race might bring any contest to an honourable conclusion. But that is just what they will not do. Everybody can see for himself that wars now are, and will be, short, sharp, and de- CONTINENTAL ENMITY 32'< cisive. A month or two settles the question ; so that the landing of a French array or the landing of a German army upon our coasts would find us quite unprepared, and the world would be astonished, and I am sorry to add amused, by a catastrophe more sudden and tremendous than any she has seen since the fall of Babylon. Our governors seem to forget how overcrowded the country is, how its means of living depend almost entirely, thanks to their boasted free trade, upon foreign importations, and how complicated and precarious is the texture of our arti- ficial and accidental prosperity. Hence even the as- cendency of a hostile fleet upon the seas for a month or two would force us to surrender at discretion, be- cause we should not be able to feed tbe people, and England, once overthrown, would never, I think, re- cover her place among the nations. There is a good deal of talk just now of a bitter feel- ing having arisen against this country on the Continent. As to that I believe there is a certain amount of mis- conception ; this feeling is not a real animosity, and would soon disappear if we made ourselves strong. It is, in fact, not to disguise the truth from ourselves, very much akin to the enmity of a burglar against a lonely house, easy of access and full of plate and jewels. Foreign powers are strong and greedy ; they think us, and I am afraid they are right, not only rich but weak at present. Now a ruler, whether he be called a kins: or the president of a republic, when he finds himself the nominal master of a hnjrc. troublesome, and ex- O ' * 328 LA GRANDE NATION BISHOP BUTLER pensive army, is not unlike the man who maintains a large stud of race-horses at a great cost. They are not kept merely to look at ; no, the owner means to get his money back out of them somehow or other. Neither, we may be sure, is France spending uncounted millions to make her navy stronger than ours, only that she may reckon up the tonnage of her ships, and count the number of her guns. She may not for the pre- sent have any deliberate intention of bringing us to ruin, but the power to do so would be as it were a pleasant savour in her mouth, and she might at any moment yield to the temptation of showing us and the world what ' La grande nation ' can do. Bishop Butler, in his ' Analogy,' throws out a suggestion, that a whole people may now and then run into madness, and move all together under the same delusion, just like a single maniac. And I sometimes doubt whether posterity may not agree with him, and say of us, ' Surely the Eng- land of the latter part of the nineteenth century must have been out of her wits, in sacrificing her glory and her life to ephemeral commonplaces and party cant. She grudged,' they will say, ' the insurance money neces- sary to keep herself safe, lest an untrained and ignorant multitude should grumble against over-taxation, and amused herself with playing at being a first-rate power, not having any of the equipments of a first-rate power. She went through all the grimaces of diplomacy, with- out remembering that the essence of diplomacy is to hint, amid a profusion of bows and smiles and compli- ments, that under certain circumstances you may be MR. GLADSTONE A FIDDLEE 329 obliged to put your hand upon the hilt of your sword, and that if the hilt have no blade underneath it, and those whom you are addressing know the fact as well as you do, these gesticulations are not only useless but contemptible.' It has been said of Mr. Gladstone, smartly, but not I think unjustly, that he keeps fiddling away on the franchise, whilst the Empire burns ; but the Conserva- tive leaders are nearly, if not quite, as much in fault as Mr. Gladstone or any other Liberal minister. Both parties, from my point of view, are erring grievously in this matter. They shrink from looking their constitu- ents in the face, and telling them the truth, lest by ex- plaining how large sums of public money ought to be spent now on behalf of the public, they should damage their electioneering prospects. Proclaiming peace where there is no peace, ihey deceive others, and let us hope themselves, and cajole a short-sighted, money- grudging populace by rival feats of arithmetic, each pre- tending to be more economical than the other. Now, truly economical they neither of them are. Misplaced thrift, the thrift for instance of that narrow-minded skinflint Joseph Hume, upon whom Mr. Gladstone showered his praises the other day, to flatter the people of Aberdeen, is simply the worst form of ex- travagance. Surely, anybody with eyes in his head can see this for himself, when he considers what sums (to say nothing of what lives) we have thrown away in Afghanistan, in Zululand, in the Transvaal, in Egypt, in the Soudan, because of our weakness and 330 THE BOERS AND CETEWAYO want of preparation. No one of these mischiefs would have occurred, not a shilling of that money would have been wasted, if our enemies knew that the England they were called upon to confront, was an England really armed and properly equipped. Does anyone suppose that if it had been under the guardianship of Germany, or Russia, or of France, that the Boers had taken refuge in their agony of terror, they would have dared to break out into open rebellion against them, as they broke out against us, the moment that terror had passed away ? These Boers, who always hated us, were despairingly afraid of Cetewayo, and not without reason, as everyone who knows how, in comparison with Zulu martial educa- tion, the discipline of Sparta was effeminately slack, will readily agree. Any strange and unexpected form of fighting, such as the historical rush of the Highlanders, claymore in hand, or the fanatical charges of an Arab host, armed with spears made of real steel, not of Sheffield composition put together for sale in the market, is dangerous even to first- class troops, till thoroughly understood. Now the battle array of the Zulus was a great deal more than a strange and new form of fighting. As the out- growth of a highly organise! military system, it had made itself so formidable to the Boers, that they fled to us for protection. As soon as the danger was over, they indulged their old hatred against us, but they indulged it because we were weak and unready ; if we had been strong, they would have remained JOSEPH HUME'S ECONOMY 331 quiet enough. Therefore, as I said before, these Joseph Hume's scrapings together are not really savings, even if we count honour for nothing. Millions might have been spent, but they would have been spent well and not ill, and we should never have seen the precious blood of brave Englishmen poured forth like dirty water, as it now is, if by chance the murmurs of those to whom they look for office drag our ministers into some unpremeditated, ill-managed, and generally useless expedition. As to the other points connected with this miserable Boer mishap, I have not the heart to discuss them at any length. Still, I cannot but observe that Mr. Gladstone always overlooks the heaviest part of the charge against him. He defends himself for having made peace ; what Englishmen ask is why he ever made war ? When out of office he led the Boers to believe that he sympathised with them entirely, and when he regained office he had fourteen months, during which he might have arranged matters to everybody's satisfaction (for who cared about retain- ing the Transvaal ?) But for some reason, or for no reason, he neglected the opportunity given him, and we see the results. Would to God that he had called to mind that famous sentence of Polonius, ' Beware of entrance into a quarrel,' somewhat earlier than he did, and applied it in another sense. Long after I had written the above, Mr. W. H. Smith suddenly called attention to the state of the navy. The country seems inclined to take the 332 STATE OF THE NAVY question up, and will probably force ministers into some sort of action. Their adherents in the press of course deprecate panic, and attempt to solve the difficulty by praising themselves and their masters. What I am afraid of, in the near future, is, that the Government, deaf and blind to everything but party objects, will do just enough to satisfy a partisan Par- liament, thereby enabling its members to make glib rhetorical speeches, and throw dust in the eyes of the people. As to the past, if no better excuse can be put forward on behalf of the past administration x than Sir Farrer Herschell's excuse, somebody ought to be impeached. He is, I presume, a more or less respon- sible assertor of Liberal infallibility, yet all he can say amounts to this, ' Ironclads so often prove failures, that it is wise to save our money and wait till we can secure perfect ships.' Now if Sir Farrer Herschell had been a native of one of those countries for which a powerful navy is a luxury, and not a necessity of life ; if he had been a German, an Italian, or even a Frenchman, his arguments might be sound enough. In a war betw r een France and Germany, the result will depend upon the armies issuing from Alsace and Lorraine ; if they gain the victory, the Germans will once more impose their own terms upon France ; if they are defeated and driven back, the French Republic will have the better in any subse- quent negotiations for peace ; and what may have 1 I was writing, of course, of the Gladstone Administration, but it applies, if not equally, all but equally, to the Tories. SIR F. IIERSCHELL'S WAITING ATTITUDE 333 happened in the meantime to their respective fleets is hardly worth considering. Germany, therefore, might safely watch the progress of naval architecture for any number of years, and wait, without adding to German war-ships, till she saw her way clearly before her. The same thing may be said, more or less, of all the greater powers ; but as for us, though we find it hard to spend money without getting an adequate return for our expenditure, we have to do it. If we tarry for Sir F. Herschell's ideal vessel, not begin- ning to set our house in order till she is discovered, France and other countries will not tarry ; and what- ever may be Sir Farrer Herschell's feelings, it will be but small consolation to the average Englishman, when he sees England passing under the yoke, that the ships that have wrested from her the empire of the seas, and crushed her down into permanent in- significance, are still open to criticism in point of construction. It is surely well to reflect that our navy is our only real defence, whilst the navies of all the rest of the world are simply engines of attack a distinction between us and them which makes all the difference. The only real remedy I mean that we should despatch our chattering Parliament into space for twenty years or so, and appoint a man of energy and foresight whose motto is ' deeds not words ' will not be resorted to; we must therefore, I fear, trust to Providence. Neither Whigs nor Tories will have courage enough to take John Bull by the horns, and turn him manfully and effectually into the right road. 334 ZULU DISCIPLINE 1 A plague on both your houses ' say I ; and there, so far as I am concerned, the matter must rest. Before this digression, I said that the discipline of Sparta was effeminately slack as compared with that of Zululand. Their military organisation would no doubt have secured them a great lordship through Southern Africa, if they had not fallen in with the white man's rifles and cannon ; even against him they struggled magnificently, and all but achieved an impossible triumph. The gentleman with whom I conversed on the subject was a Mr. Holland, a man of great general knowledge and intelligence, besides being thoroughly conversant with all the elements of South African life, whether European or native. This is what he told me. All the male children, as soon as weaned, were taken away from their mothers, and placed in infant military schools under the superintendence of grim old crones, devoted to the king's orders. In these school-camps their education proceeded step by step. No pains were spared to develop strength, activity, craft, and daring, whilst for any serious failure they had but one punishment, death. The manner in which they took what may be called their military degree, according to Mr. Hol- land, was as follows. On being pronounced com- petent to face the fatigues, and go through the drill appointed for a grown-up soldier, the body of fight- ing undergraduates went up for their final examina- tion thus. They were turned out all together against any wild beast that might happen to be in ZULU MILITARY LITTLE GO 385 the neighbourhood, and expected to master and capture it without weapons, by their hands alone. The wild beast in question might be a panther, bull, or even a lion ; of that they had to take their chance. Those who died under the claws and teeth of their savage antagonists died with honour, and the sur- vivors were transferred at once to a more advanced training school. When there, forced marches, and military exercises and rehearsals of the most elabo- rate kind, tried the strength of these recruits to the utmost, and a failure to accomplish the object before you had to be expiated by a violent death. Besides this, there was but one road to love or marriage, and that was through the blood of the king's enemies. The man who did not or could not ' wash his spear ' was condemned to perpetual celibacy. We cannot therefore wonder that Cetewayo's young men, so dis- ciplined and tempted, were always panting for war, and that the results of the whole system proved to be a very terrible survival of the fittest. These were the men, who, with no weapon but their assegais, were found lying in heaps thirty yards from the mouths of our mitrailleuse guns, and who, before we forced a quarrel upon them, by their savage dexterity and untameable courage, had struck terror into the hearts of the Boers a terror such as no civilised enemy could have awakened. We might have saved ourselves a great deal of trouble by simply letting them alone. With reference to the fighting of barbarous tribes, I may as well introduce a story here, read by 336 BATTLE IN NEW GUINEA me out of a book that happened to be lying on our club table many years ago. This book purported to record the recollections of a retired merchant skipper, and related his more important voyages with consider- able minuteness of detail, but I only keep in memory one legend. Still, as the events described are said to have taken place on the coast of New Guinea, towards which country our Australian colonists and German unfriends are now turning their eyes, it may be as well to preserve the facts, if facts they be, from oblivion. The merchant skipper told his tale with great spirit, and if, as experts assure me, the whole statement must be a fable, he yet showed extraordinary tact and skill in shaping his story. According to his account, he and his first mate landed somewhere in New Guinea to shoot parrots and other game. Whilst thus engaged, they heard a rustling in the bushes behind them ; they turned round in some alarm, and found themselves face to face with a tall savage painted red and yellow all over. The gentle- man stepped forward, made them a military salute, exclaiming at the same tune ' Plaise your honours, I'm an Arafoura.' He then explained to them that though a foreigner, he had through a long series of troubles and romances fought his way to the chief- tainship of a neighbouring clan. He added that he had heard of their landing, and having still some sympathy with white men, had moved down from his own district to save them from the leader of a neighbouring sept ; he then proceeded, thereby show- NEW GUINEA UNIFORMS IRISH MANGO CAPAC 337 ing that he had an eye to the main chance, that as he was about to fight a battle on their behalf, he trusted they would not mind stationing themselves with their fowling-pieces on the enemy's flank, and firing upon them without a pause. ' Pop away at the white paints,' said he, ' and you cannot go wrong.' He then gave them his own history ; how he had served in the army for a certain time ; how on his return to Ireland he had entangled himself in some national conspiracy, and had been transported for fourteen years. Whilst undergoing his sentence, he and nine other convicts made their escape, and pushed on northwards towards the unknown continent. Eight of the party perished in their desperate under- taking, but he and one other, also an old soldier, struggled to the end, and constructing a raft at one of the extreme points of Australia, crossed the Torres Strait into New Guinea. When there they were at once made slaves of by the natives, but owing to their habits of discipline, and superior know- ledge of life, they gradually earned their liberty, got promotion in the savage army, and at last, after a battle in which his last surviving comrade had fallen, he found himself chosen to be the chief of the tribe. The action for which the two seamen were enlisted to serve took place on the following day, and was contested with unflinching courage. The Irish Arafoura led on his red and yellow followers, and a gigantic warrior bedaubed with white paint acted the part of a barbarian Achilles on the other side, z 338 FALL OF THE KIVAL CHIEF but unfortunately for him he was not, like his Thessalian forerunner, invulnerable, and a bullet from one of the sailors ended his career. When this happened, the Irishman was so delighted that he rushed out of the battle, covered with blood and dust, and exclaimed aloud, ' that was a good shot, your honours ; you couldn't find a bigger blackguard than that fellow if you searched the country for a hundred miles round.' By the fall of this great antagonist, victory was secured to the skipper's allies. The white paints fled in disorder, and the chief of the conquerors joined his European friends, saying to them, ' And now your honours, if you please, I'll take a drink, for them Arafouras die hard, and fight like divvils.' But whilst their superior ofiicer re- freshed himself in this harmless manner, his dark subordinates spread themselves over the field of battle, murdering the wounded white paints without scruple. The English allies objected to this, and asked him why he permitted it : his answer amounted to this : ' You see I do not myself commit any such cruelty, I would not do anything of the kind for the world ; but my hold on the tribe is not sufficiently strong to enable me to set their habits and traditions at defiance, and therefore I am obliged to wink at many practices, though I do not approve of them/ On the same principle he afterwards declined to accept presents of rum and brandy, because he had to keep his head cool and his eye vigilant, against the jealousy and intrigues of those whom he had CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 339 supplanted. These incidents were put into very good Irish, and skilfully interwoven with the fable, if it were a fable. The great argument against the truth of the story is, that he spoke his old language as fluently as if he had lived in Dublin or Cork till a week before the time of his meeting the skipper, and this experts affirm to be impossible ; still, the objectors overlook the fact that his comrade had died but recently, and two men constantly talking together might have retained a power, which must have been lost to a single man among strangers. He seemed to have introduced a certain discipline into the savage life of his adopted clan, and to have generally im- proved it. It would be interesting, in future years, as the power of Australia extends itself over the neighbouring island, to ascertain whether in some Arafoura tribe any traces are to be found of this Manco Capac in the rough. In 1860 the Civil War in America took place, con- stituting a great epoch in the history of the world. Whether the Southerners had not, strictly speaking, a right to withdraw from a confederation entered into by mutual consent, when their northern associates inter- fered with them at home, might fairly be argued ; but those enterprising neighbours put aside such technical questions, asserted the right of the strongest, and pre- vailed. I suppose even if fortune had not sided with the conquerors, they would, through their superior resources, ultimately have worn their antagonists down, but they would have taken longer about it. z 2 340 MEETING AT CUDDESDEN AN EX-OFFICER I recollect meeting at Cuddesden, in Bishop Wilber- force's house, some American guests. One of them, then in orders, had served through the war as an artillery officer in the Northern army. He was a very intelligent gentleman, as clergymen who have begun as soldiers or sailors often are, and he seemed certain of what he told me. According to him, the failure of Lee in his attack upon Pennsylvania was mainly owing to a piece of carelessness on the part of one of his subordinate generals. This officer, a hot- tempered and impetuous man, received a document from Lee containing all the details of the proposed invasion, and pointing out to him what steps he personally had to take. Something or other made him angry ; he was too good a soldier to disobey or to criticise his orders, but he vented his spite upon the paper, by tearing it up, and throwing it upon the ground. The moment his troops moved on, these fragments were picked up and pieced together by a hostile partisan, who sent them over at once to McClellan. Lee accordingly found all his schemes foreshown and guarded against, so that he was eventually foiled and driven back, and, as it happened, the check he then received proved to be the real turning point of the war. My friend assured me that, according to his belief, but for this accident the war would certainly have lasted for two years longer, even if the Federals had persevered to the end, in the face of the fresh difficulties they would have had to encounter. In consequence of her victory America promises to become by-and-by the greatest power in the world only the world is apt to take its own course in such matters ; hence her ultimate fate is not so easy to foretell. In spite of Mr. Lowell's brilliant address at Birmingham, I doubt whether the fairy palace of democracy, there upreared by him, rests upon trust^ worthy foundations. America has so much elbow- room, and such enormous natural resources, that she can put the mischiefs of universal suffrage aside for the present without feeling them. The evil which in our worn-out country would become a corroding ulcer, for her, under existing circumstances, is nothing more than a wart or a pimple. Land, as Lord Sherbrooke pointed out with great wisdom many years ago, an irritant here, is a sedative there, and the spirit of envy, the curse of men called Liberals, is kept languid and inactive on the other side of the Atlantic, whilst the abounding resources of a new and magnificent country are being developed by the labour of a comparatively scanty population. Mr. Lowell and other patriotic Americans are quite right in not troubling themselves about the immediate future of their people. It may be one, two, or even five hundred years, before the latent dangers sure to develop themselves rise to the surface, but I certainly do not think we should be wise, worn-out and over- peopled as we are, to imitate the example and tread in the steps of that red-blooded young giant. I say this without hesitation, although we are told among other things by enthusiastic Liberals, that Christ himself was a democrat ; this I do not dispute, bivt 342 CHRIST A DEMOCRAT LORD DERBY'S CHANCE then we must remember that ' His kingdom was not of this world.' If every man were perfectly unselfish, devoted to duty and an earnest lover of God, the earth might be quite ready for democracy. In point of fact, one Government would be just as good as another, inasmuch as we should require no government at all, every man being a law to himself. But in the mean- time, for us who live under monarchies or republics very much of this world, the surrendering the national power into the hands of the lowest class, in other words of that class which, without any fault of its own, is more liable than any other, through its ignorance, impulsiveness, and blind reliance upon unprincipled demagogues, to be led into error, seems to be at least somewhat premature. Having said this much, it would be unfair to our artisans and work- men not to point out, how patiently and magnani- mously they endured the distresses that befell them, owing to this civil war and the consequent interrup- tion of our American trade. I have always fancied (of course it is easy to in- dulge in such Alnaschar dreams when you are not obliged to act upon them) that our English aristocrats here missed a wonderful opportunity of recovering any ground they might have lost in popular estima- tion; they missed it, I think, because the late Lord Derby did not perceive, or at any rate did not take advantage of an opening, through which he might have made himself, as it were, the King of the North. His riches were great, and what is more, quite avail- able, his family is one of the noblest in the land, and COTTON FAMINE 343 besides this, he was perhaps the most effective natural orator of his day. Now if he had chosen to use the influence attainable by the exercise of these three powers in combination, it is difficult to name the height to which he could not have risen. Supposing he had subscribed 100,000^. to begin with, and promised 500Z. a week as long as the evil days lasted, taking care to accompany these gifts by telling the Lancashire multitudes, in his own vigorous and im- passioned language, that he knew how deeply he was indebted to the hard-working Lancashire lads for the position he occupied, and that they never should ' clem ' as long as he had anything to share with them, he surely would have accomplished great things. Other noblemen and gentlemen, less rich, or less highly born, or less eloquent, would have had to follow in his wake ; if wise, they would have followed with a good grace, and endeavoured to win back the hearts of their fellow-countrymen by imitating his example. I know that this sounds rather Quixotic, and am perfectly well aware that Lord Derby performed his duty thoroughly well on that occasion. He gave his suffering neighbours his money, his time, and his thought, and duly earned their gratitude ; but it was gratitude in a milder form than the imaginative glow of feeling, which I had pictured to myself as within his grasp. In this humdrum century, the spirit that founded monas- teries and built cathedrals, endowing them with vast estates, is no longer alive among us. Much good is done, and much excellent work got through, but it is 344 FENIAN MURDER IN MANCHESTER got through after a quieter fashion, and this upon the whole is, I daresay, just as well ; still I cannot but think, that in this particular case, if my idea had caught fire in Lord Derby's mind and lifted him up into action, though he might not have been quite as rich at the end of the cotton famine as at the beginning, he would have got at least his money's worth in return. As to the history of the years since 1860 I have nothing to say except what might be said just as well by anybody else. I shall therefore only glance at them in passing. The first observation on public matters I have to make is this. Mr. Justin McCarthy's ' History of our own Times,' in spite of his well-known Irish proclivities, is written from be~ ginning to end fairly and impartially. This makes it more important to point out any accidental misconcep- tion tending to mislead his readers, more important because the general character of the book would naturally lend to such a misconception currency and weight. Now in his account of the Fenian rescue when Messrs. Deasy and Kelly escaped at Manchester, he tells us, ' in the scuffle ' a policeman was killed.* 1 The details of this story, I am told in a letter from a friend, are contradicted, upon what authority I do not know. The rescuers of Messrs. Deasy and Kelly are sai4 to have fired a pistol through the keyhole, and to have thus accidentally killed the policeman, who was looking through it to ascertain what caused the disturbance outside the van. In that case there was no scuffle, and therefore nobody cojild have been killed in one. The man on guard was perhaps not such a hero as I thought him, but that does not affect my argument. The Irish patriots, instead of deliberately murdering an avowed enemy, 6,ho\yed themselves ready to murder all persons who stood in their POLICEMAN DIES AT HIS POST 345 This is not the way to describe what, as I have always understood, was a deliberate murder. The constable stood on guard over the police van, without weapons. An armed force surrounded him, a pistol was put to his head with the alternative of yielding up his prisoners or dying. He preferred death to the sacrifice of duty, and was instantly shot. It is not my business, be it understood, to speak over harshly of such proceedings ; the perpetrators of such deeds may perhaps be noble-minded men, but in order to rank as such, they and their friends must accept the hanging, which no Government that is not eager towel- come the triumph of anarchy can spare them, without a murmur. Unless each of these blood-stained patriots is ready to give a life for the life he takes, he degrades himself to the level of an ordinary assassin. To try and escape by lying afterwards as O'Donnell did when he killed Carey the informer, is simply to be- have like a soldier who runs away in the face of the enemy. If the Irish, as they tell us, are at war with England, they can hardly expect England to remain at peace with them, and unless we mean to let society crumble into ruins, law and order must be main- tained, even though, in the effort to maintain them, we have to bring to the scaffold men, whose motives and characters may separate them from the baseness of a common felon. The extreme unreasonableness of the Irish Nationalists on such occasions is one of their most irritating qualities. way, their own friends included, if fate went against them, provided they could effect their purpose in breaking through the door. 346 CHAPTER XIX. Elected Poetry Professor at Oxford My lectures afterwards pub- lished Mrs. Siddons the younger The Moabite inscription ' The Dream of Gerontius ' My ode to Lord Salisbury Militant old clergyman Miss Austen her sad adventure in Switzerland. IN 1867, as I said before, I was elected Poetry Pro- fessor at Oxford. The holder of this professorship, I think, ought to fill a more important part than he does in university life. He should have a much larger salary, do a great deal more work, and exercise jurisdiction over wider provinces of criticism and thought. In point of fact, as I have always thought, he should reside in Oxford, devote his whole time to his business, and be professor, not of poetry alone, but of literature in general. I do not think I did my work ill, so far as there was any work to be done, bat I always regretted that during Mr. Arnold's ten years, I had not prepared myself for my duties by a formal and methodical course of studies in the proper direction. The fact is that the Bishop of Rochester (I hud once dreamed of succeeding to him) retired from his office at the end of the first five years, thereby taking me by surprise. Before I had time to consider the matter under this new aspect, Mr. Arnold was in the field, and I let him walk over, but in middle life, MY LECTURES PUBLISHED AS A MATTER OF DUTY 347 years glide away at a great pace, and I found Arnold's reign ended before I knew where I was, then after some hesitation I allowed the old half-forgotten wish to wake up again, and offered myself as a candi- date. The lectures I published afterwards (according to Oxford rules I had little choice about that) were, I flatter myself, good of their kind. They had always been well received in the lecture-room, and were afterwards welcomed in print by a large majority of my reviewers quite as kindly as they deserved. I need not add that the spiteful noticer set to work after his fashion, treating me with that magnificent contempt in which our unknown Aristarchuses are apt to indulge themselves behind their vizors. The form of authorship I am referring to deserves, 1 think, every discouragement. From a real criticism, however harsh, however unjust even, there is gene- rally something to be learnt ; not to mention that if you are bold enough to disregard Henry Taylor's famous apothegm ('a controversy in the press, with the press, is the controversy of a fly with a spider'), and strike back at your adversary's weak points as hard as you can, you may amuse yourself by getting up a quarrel ; but the anonymous para- graphs so unpleasantly familiar to most of us who Avrite, besides being totally barren of instruction, are as impalpable as the hum of a mosquito, so that nothing is open to us except anointing our gnat- bites with the oil of self-complacency, and thanking 348 SELF-SACRIFICING UNDERGRADUATE our stars that a mosquito, after all, is not a deadly serpent, but only a venomous insect. I have said that I was well received in the lecture- room, and this is no more than the truth ; but it would be uncandid if I did not admit that I often addressed myself to bonnets and frocks, rather than to caps and gowns ; more than once, indeed, I might almost have supposed myself Poetry Professor to Girton instead of at Oxford. In saying this, I do not mean to undervalue myself, but merely to state what everybody knows, that after two o'clock a young undergraduate has something else to do than attend cut-and-dried lectures not directly connected with his degree. One of the first boys I met, after being elected, was my young cousin, the late Sir William Milner ; he felt that blood is thicker than water, and that a sacrifice had to be made. Ac- cordingly, he gathered himself together, and volun- teered a solemn promise (unlocked for by me I beg to say) that he would come and listen to my instruc- tions once at any rate during my tenure of office. The covenant with himself relieved his mind, and I need hardly tell my readers that there it stood until he left Oxford, always about to be fulfilled. Early in my career (my opening lecture, or rather speech, for I aimed more at speaking than at reading a formal lecture, had been a success) I took my son Everard along with me to deliver Oration Xo. 2. We found o ourselves in the midst of a stream of people all steadily moving onward in the proper path, and we MRS. SIDDONS MOAB1TE INSCRIPTION 349 both of us, in our simplicity, believed that these were zealous admirers, hurrying to hear more of the elo- quence that had enchanted them a month or two before. When lo and behold, about fifty yards from our goal, they one and all swept down a turning to the left, and I discovered on inquiry, that young Mrs. Siddons, about to recite Shakspeare, was the attraction, instead of the Professor of Poetry. I took the place at my desk, I must acknowledge, somewhat crestfallen for a moment. On another occasion, the famous Moabite inscrip- tion was to be lectured about after I had finished. Now my handwriting (though decidedly better than Dean Stanley's, and as good, I think, as Lord Hough- ton's), has never been much esteemed by my friends ; one of them, accordingly, glancing first at the strange Semitic characters in the rear, and then at the manu- script in my hand, quietly observed that he thought the hieroglyphics the more legible of the two. On one occasion, indeed, the hall where I spoke was crammed thoroughly full, there was not even standing-room, but then I accepted the compliment as it was meant, a compliment not to me, but to one far greater the subject I had chosen being the ' Dream of Gerontius.' Still, without being on the same level with the illus- trious Cardinal, one may have something to say to the world, and I do not mean to withdraw from the state- ment I made just now, that my lectures on poetry are worth reading. During my professorship, I had to write an ode greeting Lord Salisbury as our new 350 ODE TO LORD SALISBURY Chancellor. Now I have the highest possible respect for Lord Salisbury, but poetry, unless perfectly spon- taneous, is not likely to be worth much. I think, therefore, that the Bishop of Rochester and Mr. Arnold were both of them lucky in having escaped from this somewhat unattractive task. To me it was specially unattractive, because I possessed no musical gifts. I did what I could by telling Sir Gore Ouseley, that I thought in such a case the verses ought to subordi- nate themselves entirely to the accompaniment, and that any hints he might give me as to cadences, or modulation, or adjustment of letters, should be carefully attended to. He was kind enough to send me some slight recommendations, but they were not sufficient for my purpose, and when I heard Miss Edith Wynne struggling with difficulties I might have spared her, I felt sorry that she also had not been consulted. The rhythm, though it might be good enough as verse rhythm, seemed too hard and ringing to be happily dealt with by a musician, and I discerned afterwards that I could have done better if I had put myself more completely into a state of pupilage. But then I did not know that she would be the executing artist, and Sir Gore Ouseley, living away from London, was difficult of access. He did his part, as I understand from competent judges, excel- lently well ; but my stanzas when sung, creaked a little I thought, giving Miss Wynne more trouble than I liked. During one of the years whilst I was at the CONVERSATION WITH A CLERGYMAN 351 Custom House, I cannot give the exact date, I had a very strange conversation with an aged clergyman who got into the same railway carriage with me at Dorchester. He was a very fine-looking man, cer- tainly past eighty, as upright as a dart, and full of power, ' his eye not being dim, nor his natural force abated ; ' his manners were extremely courteous, with a touch of the old school about them, and we speedily began to talk to each other. He launched out in praise of the younger divines, for their zeal and devotion to duty. ' I myself/ he said, ' have long been a parish clergyman, and till lately I never per- ceived that I had failed in the performance of my appointed task, but when I look round, and see with what energy my younger neighbours work, and the effects produced by that energy, I feel ashamed of my own slackness and lukewarmness in bygone years ; and yet,' he added, ' there are one or two points as to which the men of to-day might learn something from us who belonged to an earlier genera- tion. For instance, before I went into the Church, I was an officer of the 13th Hussars. When the peace of 1814 was concluded, it seemed to me that my business as a soldier had come to an end, and that I had better take up some other profession in its place. There was a family living ready to my hand, and accordingly I took orders. Before, however, I passed on to my own rectory, I accepted a curacy for six months in the Black Country. As you may suppose, sir, whilst in the Hussars my life was very much the ?52 MR. JACKSON'S INSTRUCTIONS TURNED TO ACCOUNT same as the life of other young officers. Among other things, I became a favourite pupil of the late Mr. Jackson's ; you have heard of Mr. Jackson, sir ? ' Now, at Eton, though not equal to Shrewsbury men in the manipulation of Greek particles, we were strong in our knowledge of Boxiana, so I answered him without a moment's pause, ' Of course I have ; why, he beat the Jew Mendoza in ten minutes.' Then his heart warmed to me at once, and he replied : 1 True, sir, as you observe, he beat the Jew Mendoza in ten minutes ; and, as I told you just now, I reckon myself to have been his favourite pupil. On arriving at my post, I found my parishioners in a thoroughly barbarous condition. One of their habits was, that the women, stripped to the waist, with their hair cut short, had to fight pitched battles in the public-house, their husbands giving them knees, according to the accepted rites of pugilism. I resolved to put a stop to this practice, and a contest having been arranged between two renowned championesses, I stepped into the arena and forbade it. Upon this, the bully of the place turned upon me. ' Very good,' said I, ' off with your coat.' No sooner said than done. We took the place of the ladies, and in a quarter of an hour, thanks to the instructions of my friend Mr. Jackson, I had given him such a thrashing that he kept his bed for a fortnight, and troubled me no more. Then, sir, I began to get influence in my parish ; they said " the parson war a mon." Now my eldest son, who has lately taken my place, is in most respects a far JANE AUSTEN 353 better clergyman than I ever pretended to be, but under those particular circumstances, he would have been in a difficulty.' Of course, my worthy old friend was quite right in abolishing this female fight- ing ; still, in our wife-beating days, a little of Mr. Jackson's science might not be absolutely thrown away upon the gentler sex. A sober woman might then have some chance of thrashing a drunken man, and of counter-hitting him into peace and quietness, through a series of well-deserved black eyes. There is no chance of that now. As I observed in a former chapter with reference to more serious matters, such as Catholic emancipation and the like, these im- provements are no doubt advantageous on the whole, but yet they have their drawbacks drawbacks not sufficiently foreseen and considered beforehand. As I refer here to a clergyman of the old type, and have just been looking at Lord Brabourne's ' Life and Letters of Jane Austen,' the great literary artist to whom we are indebted, among other things, for a gallery of those clerical portraits, destined to last as long as the English language, I may as well take this opportunity of discussing her merits. I am one of the regular Austen vassals, and consider her as without a rival among English writers, in her own line and within her own limits. I should not say, as Macaulay says, that she ranks next to Shakspeare, any more than I should put a first-rate miniature painter on the same level with Raphael or Titian. It is enough for me that she stands alone as A A 354 'PRIDE AND PREJUDICE ' ' PERSUASION ' a first-rate miniature painter in her own particular school of design. When Lord Brabourne picks out ' Pride and Prejudice ' as her best piece of work, he must excuse me for differing from him. If he had said it was likely to amuse ordinary novel readers more than ' Persuasion,' or ' Mansfield Park,' or ' Northanger Abbey,' well and good. But to my mind, it is not equal to any one of those three works, if we are on the look out for her special excellences ; I mean exquisite- ness of finish, delicacy of humour, and sureness of touch. Lady Catherine de Burgh is a caricature, Sir William Lucas is a caricature, nay Mr. Collins him- self, full of glorious humour as the sketch of him is, still seems to me something of a caricature. Yes, and worse than this, Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine, is more than once, without the authoress intending anything of the kind, pert and vulgar, an accusation which no one would dream of bringing against Anne Elliot in ' Persuasion,' Fanny Price in ' Mansfield Park,' or Catherine Morland in ' Northanger Abbey.' My belief is that Jane Austen, disappointed at the poor success of ' Northanger Abbey,' abandoned her own natural manner in ' Pride and Prejudice,' and tried to catch the public eye by the adoption of a broader style of drawing, and more decided colours. I am far from saying that we gain nothing by this effort of hers, but we also lose something, and what we lose is some of that peculiar quality distinguish- ing her from all other novelists. To me, ' Persua- D ' PORTRAIT OF HERSELF HER JOURNEY ABROAD 355 sion ' is the most beautiful and the most interesting: o of her stories. Especially do I think it the most interesting, because it contains, unless I am mistaken, more of herself, more of her own feelings, hopes, and recollections, than the rest of her books put together. And this brings me to my main reason for touching upon Miss Austen at all, since as an authoress she needs no help or recommendation from anyone. If you draw your inference from what she has written, you would suppose she had never been out of Eng- land, but so far from this being the case, unless my informant made a most unaccountable blunder, the one romance belonging to her brief career, the one event which darkened, and possibly shortened her life, took place after the peace of 1802, and took place in Switzerland. A friend of mine, Miss Ursula Mayow, being on a visit at a country house in the Austen district, was taken to an afternoon party by her friends. Whilst there, some of the guests began to talk of Mrs. Gaskell's ' Cranford,' then just published, and a voice was heard in the distance saying this : ' Yes, I like it very much ; it reminds me of my Aunt Jane.' To Miss Mayow, a devoted Austenite, there could be no doubt who was meant by ' my Aunt Jane,' and accordingly she went as soon as she could and intro- duced herself to the speaker. This was the story told her, and if it be true, why Mr. Austen Leigh and Lord Brabourne say nothing, and apparently knew nothing about it, I cannot explain. Mr. Austen, A A 2 356 CAPTAIN WENT WORTH IN REAL LIFE accompanied by his two daughters, Cassandra and Jane, took advantage of the long delayed peace to undertake a foreign tour. Whilst in Switzerland they fell in with a young naval officer, the Captain Wentworth we may assume, afterwards delineated with such tenderness and skill in the novel of ' Per- suasion,' a novel not given to the world till after her death. This course of true love ran perfectly smooth, and but for the cruelty of fate, Jane Austen's career would probably have been altogether a different one, happier perhaps for herself, if less important to the world. But before the arrangements for this marriage were taken in hand, so at least in their blindness Jane and her lover imagined, a momentary separation was agreed upon between them. Mr. Austen and his daughters settled for themselves, that whilst their friend enjoyed himself in climbing mountains, and threading difficult passes, they would jog on to Chamouni, and wait quietly there till he rejoined them. This was done, but they did not find him on their arrival, nor did any tidings of his whereabouts reach them. Anxiety passed into alarm, and alarm into sickening terror ; then at last, just as the Austens were about to return home, full of the gloomiest apprehensions, the fatal message they had been ex- pecting came to them from a remote mountain village. Jane's lover had over-walked and over-tasked him- self. After a short illness he died of brain fever, but he had just managed, before his senses left him, to pre- pare a message for the Austens to tell them of his MFSS AUSTEN'S SUBSEQUENT LIFE 357 coming end. They returned to England, and accord- ing to the narrator, ' Aunt Jane ' resumed her ordi- nary life as the rector's daughter, never recurring to her adventures abroad. She seems as it were to have turned a key on the incidents of that year, and shut them away from her for ever. She had a desk which her niece promised to show to Miss Mayow, if she would come over to their house, and to this desk ' Aunt Jane ' retired whenever the work of the parish left her any leisure, and wrote a letter or a chapter in a novel as the case might be. This story lends a great charm to ' Persuasion/ When we think of this woman of genius, at once delicate and strong, who had determined to live a life of duty and patient submission to the inevitable, unlocking her heart once more as she felt the approach of death, and call- ing back to cheer her last moments those recollec- tions which she had thought it her duty to put aside, whilst there was yet work to do on earth, we are drawn to her by a new impulse, which heightens our admiration, and warms it into a real personal affection. 1 1 This story is true substantially, and the reflections it suggests are not affected by any changes of detail ; but Miss Austen's living relations deny the probability indeed, almost the possibility of a journey to Switzerland in 1802. 358 CHAPTER XX. Origin of the Doyle family William Doyle, the wit My great-uncle Sir John Doyle His fine qualities Peroration of a speech of his My grandfather's remarkable power over his soldiers The quick march of the 14th Regiment Poem on the subject My father My uncle, Charles Joseph Stories of the Peninsular War. I NOW proceed, as I promised, to give some account of my family, and certain members of it whose lives I think worth commemorating. Though every member of the sept now, I fancy, calls himself Doyle, this does not seem always to have been the case. There are several traditions connect- ing us with ancient Irish champions, long before the Norman conquest of Ireland, but I am not sufficiently familiar with the old Erse annals to choose between them, nor has anyone been able to explain to me how, why, or when the Celtic title of a very numerous clan dropped away from it, to be replaced by a name practically identical with that of the ancient Norman house of d'Oyley, whose armorial bearings, moreover, seem also to have been ours, at latest from the reign of Elizabeth. Indeed, in that respect we appear to have been ' plus Royalistes que le Roi,' unless my old great-uncle, Sir John, was mistaken, 1 when he 1 I do not think he could have been, as he was anything but pleased to have his faith shaken in the old family traditions. D'OYLEY ARMS IN NORMANDY WICKLOW ORIGIN 359 stated that he found our bordure or and azure in Norman Chapels, as borne by the French D'oyleys, though their English descendants had abandoned it. At any rate, the Doyles were settled in Wicklow from an early period. Spreading from Wicklow over Wexford, Carlow, and Kilkenny, ' they developed into several wealthy and powerful families.' l Wealth and power, however, did not, for most of them, outlive James I.'s plantation of Ulster, in 1616. This move- ment, if it were a plantation from one point of view, was from the other a very decisive and violent uproot- ing, and among the Irish gentlemen who suffered from it, several Doyles are to be found. The head of my particular family, however, escaped James I., but only to be crushed by Cromwell. Denis Doyle, Governor of Fort Chichester, and a large land-owner in Wexford, died about 1625 ; his sister, Grace Doyle, soon followed him to the grave. William Doyle, my great-grandfather's great-grandfather, administered their personal property as next of kin (prorsus consan- guineus) and succeeded to the Wexford estates as heir- at-law in 1627 ; but in 1653 these estates were taken away from him, and handed over to an English family of the name of Thornhill. He must have been an old man in 1653, and probably did not survive his ruin long. His son, James Doyle, was evidently an able man, for he set the family on its legs again. He passed from Wexford into Carlow, obtained there in 1676, from the Bagenalls, a property called Kilconney, and 1 Debrett's Baronetage, 1819. 360 JAMES DOYLE died in 1708, being, according to his record, 'of a great age.' Of course it sounds rather pathetic to think of lands violently torn from your forefathers, and remaining in the hands of aliens, but when the event happened two hundred and thirty years ago, a philosopher may say to himself, first, do I agree with Sophocles ? when he tells us ///>/ vvai TOV aTTavra VIKO. \oyov ' TO 8', CTret <^avr), /3f)vai KeWev, oOev Trep iy/cei, TroX.1) SevTfpov (is Not to be born at all, for men Is the one triumph truly great ; But if we must touch life, why then Next to it, far the happiest fate Is, that we swiftly pass agen, Back to the silence left of late. Secondly, do I agree with Solomon ? when he preaches to us, ' Yea, better is he that hath not been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun ? ' If I do, then these confiscations of 1653 were a real misfortune to me, because, but for them, the family circumstances would have shaped themselves other- wise, the family alliances would no doubt have been different, and the Francis Doyle, if there were a Francis Doyle of 1885, though perhaps the best of men, would yet be somebody else, not me ! But, on the other hand, if I prefer my real personality to his imaginary one, and being to non-existence, I have no reason to nurse a grudge against Cromwell. I cite the utter- ances of the sage and the poet the more readily as I O'SOLOMON AND O'SOrHOCLES WILLIAM DOYLE 361 am dealing with an Irish question ; and the statement above (it is practically one statement) is an absolute Irish bull. The sentence that a man is the better for never having been born, ' sic tauriformis volvitur/ that I should scarcely be surprised if it were dis- covered on some old commentator's manuscript, that the real names of the moralist and the playwright were, respectively, 0' Solomon and O' Sophocles. James Doyle I apprehend to have been the first Protestant in the family ; indeed, there is a legend among us that his mother or grandmother, Lady Lind- say, a Scotch widow, converted us to Protestantism. Anyhow, towards the close of the seventeenth century, his son, William Doyle the second, of Cloughmony, was a prosperous gentleman enough. He left a son Charles known to fame among his contemporaries as ' the long-headed man ' an epithet indicating, per- haps, a certain Scottishness in his composition. His son, the third William, was supposed to be one of the most brilliant, if not the most brilliant Irishman of his time across a dinner-table. In financial matters, how- ever, so far from resembling his father, he was a sin- gularly short-headed man, and spent everything that he had long before his death ; so that, for the last hundred years or so, we Doyles have escaped all difficulties about rents (rents to be received, I mean) and have run no danger of being Boycotted or shot at from behind a hedge, as oppressors and landlords. I recollect hearing from my father that, in his youth, he met Sheridan at a supper-party, given, I think, 362 WILLIAM DOYLE AND SHERIDAN by the first Marquis of Hastings. The well-known Curran was one of the company. As several of the guests were walking away together, Curran remarked of the lion of the evening, ' Yes, he is an agreeable man, a very agreeable man, but he would have been a child in Willie Doyle's hands.' This is obviously an exaggeration, it may be added, an after- supper exaggeration ; still, we cannot suppose that a man like Curran would have ventured upon this daring statement, without something like a reason behind it. We may, therefore, conclude that William Doyle's Irish reputation was not undeserved. Only two witticisms that I know of have survived him ; but the first of them is enough to show that his humour was subtle, keen, and also absolutely his own. As soon as he had ruined himself, it naturally became the duty of the Lord Lieutenant, and other people of influence in Dublin, to provide so delightful a diner- out, at any rate for a time, with the means of living, and accordingly, he at once obtained some lucrative legal office ; a Mastership in the Irish Court of Chancery, I believe. His predecessor, who had either retired, or been promoted elsewhere, was a gentleman called Ord. For some reason, or for no reason, William Doyle disliked him particularly. At the dinner inevitably given to celebrate his accession to this very convenient post, numerous toasts went round as a matter of course, and it became his duty to propose the health of the very person who had made room for him. This he was determined not to do. The AN ECHO THE PROVOST'S BALL 363 pressure upon him therefore soon grew very strong, and utterances from every corner of the table came pouring in. ' Come, Doyle, give Ord ; you must give Ord, you cant give any man but Ord.' He caught at this last phrase as a cricketer, fielding at point, snaps up the ball cut to him, and turning blandly round upon his advisers, replied, ' I am my friends' echo ; any man but Ord ! ' The other joke, though it sparkles pleasantly enough, is more commonplace, and certainly would not have required a Sheridan to give expression to it ; indeed, I should hardly have thought the pun worth repeating, had it not con- nected itself with one of those Irish traits of character which distinguish Paddy from John Bull in so decisive a manner. William Doyle and Provost Hutchinson, though personal friends both before and after the dispute, blundered into a political dispute, and a duel was arranged between them. My great- uncle's second, on calling to pick him up, thought that his clothes looked smarter than usual, and made a remark to that effect. ' Well,' retorted his principal, ' I could hardly help dressing for the Provost's ball ! ' He had, moreover, an attack of gout upon him at the time, and was carried to the ground in a sedan-chair. On meeting his antagonist, he paid the chairmen, and told them to move off to a distance. Not a bit of it, they insisted on sticking to their client, and remained close by him on different sides whilst the shots were being exchanged. They would obviously have lost caste among their fellows had they consulted their 364 MR. RUTHVEN AND THE LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN own personal safety on such an occasion. This brings back to my recollection another incident of the same sort. When Ruthven, one of O'Connell's adherents, and the Tory Lord Mayor of Dublin fired three shots apiece at each other, the editor of O'Connell's newspaper, after elaborately proving that Ruthven was in the right, and the Lord Mayor in the wrong, found himself compelled, on Irish prin- ciples, even then to praise his Tory antagonist. He said, l It must be acknowledged on all hands (an expressive phrase, covering, I suppose, nuns, arch- deacons, quakers, Mr. Bright, and other peace-at-any- price members of Parliament) that the Lord Mayor of Dublin deserves the highest honour for having refused to shelter himself under his official position.' I think the writer of this paragraph ought to have been elected an honorary member of the Society of Dublin Chairmen. In spite, however, of William's brilliant power of conversation and great social popularity, his two brothers, my great-uncle, Sir John, and my grand- father, Welbore Ellis Doyle, were predecessors in whom their descendants may take, I think, a more legitimate pride. Seven children six sons and a daughter had been born to Charles Doyle from his marriage with Miss Milley. The ODC daughter, Catherine, deriving her name, as did also the second son, Dunbar, from their great-grandmother, Catherine Dunbar, became, as Mrs. Bushe, the mother of the famous Chief Justice, John and my grandfather SIR JOHN DOYLE'S CAREER 365 were much younger than the other members of the family, and were left pretty much to themselves (when their father died in 1769), at the ages of nine- teen and fourteen respectively. They both of them, in my opinion, are men who deserve to be com- memorated. General Sir John Doyle, my great- uncle, was born in 1750 ; he died full of years, but with all his faculties unimpaired, when upwards of eighty-four. He was distinguished in many ways ; a thoroughly good soldier, an admirable parliamentary speaker, witty, genial, and of a most gracious dispo- sition. He possessed, moreover, in addition to these qualities, a power of guiding and influencing others, which, with ampler opportunities, might, perhaps, have justified us in thinking him a great man. As it is, we must content ourselves with saying that, within his own limits, he passed through life as a thoroughly successful one. Sir John Doyle, as a soldier, served his country well ; but he served in America and in the Low Countries, in the first Revo- lutionary war and in Egypt. Hence, what he did was naturally thrown into the shade and eclipsed by the Peninsular and Waterloo campaigns. But the eloquent speeches he made in the Dublin Parliament, the efficient manner in which he conducted the Irish War Department under Lord Fitz- William, and, indeed, under his successor, who would not let him go, though he refused to modify his political opinions ; the rapid success with which he raised and organised the 87th Regiment in Kilkenny and the neighbouring 366 HIS INFLUENCE IN GUERNSEY counties, where his name is yet remembered with affection ; the tact and skill shown by him in winning over the people of Guernsey, during those critical years, to accept new taxes at his request, in spite of the serious expenses incurred to complete his system of military roadmaking, and, indeed, to do every- thing he asked them, all combined to prove that he was a man of remarkable character, as well as of great and varied abilities. A curious instance how he is still held in honour by the Channel Islanders came under my notice not so many years ago. Whilst I was staying there on a visit, an old lady wrote to me, stating that her Chaumontelle pears were the pride of the island, that she never sold them at a lower price than 61. per hundred, but to me, as ' le neveu de mon oncle,' she was ready to let the hundred go at a pound less ! Of course I felt deeply grateful for her kindness, but, as a benighted stranger, I fancied that even the insignificant sum of tenpence was a startling sum to pay for a single pear, and I evaded the offer as politely as I could. Sir John, in addition to more serious qualities, had his own share of wit and humour. If not equal to that of his elder brother, it was still very considerable, and many good sayings of his are recorded. One of his retorts in an Irish debate always struck me as being exceedingly happy. A Liberal politician I forget his name had gone over to the other side, and had been rewarded for his opportune apostasy by office. Sir John attacked GOOD SAYINGS SPEECH IN IRISH PARLIAMENT 367 him in a speech full of sarcastic banter what, I suppose, would now be called ' chaff.' The victim answered, quite correctly according to the dictates of Aristotle's Rhetoric, in a very solemn tone : * My gallant and honourable friend is, I know, well versed in the classics ; these are not times for so light and flippant a style, and I must beg of him to remember that wise maxim, " Dulce est desipere in loco." Sir John jumped up at once, quite out of order, I dare say, and retaliated as follows : ' I am very much obliged to my right honourable friend for his classical quotation, and beg to return it to him with a literal construe ; Dulce est, it is pleasant ; desipere, to make a fool of oneself; in loco, in place' The peroration to one of his speeches, which has been preserved, seems to me so good, that, as it is not very long, I shall transcribe it. There was an esta- blishment in Ireland for the relief of worn-out and disabled soldiers, similar to our establishment at Chelsea, but with only half the Chelsea allowance ; it was also subject to many other disadvantages which Sir John sought, and sought with success, to remove. He was highly applauded throughout, but the pas- sage I am about to quote fairly carried away the House. In pleading the cause of the Irish veterans he adduced many instances of fidelity and zeal. In so doing he told the following story of a corporal of Dragoons, the interest of which, as it appears to me, no time can diminish : ' Another brilliant example of devotion to duty 368 NOBLE SELF-DEVOTION TO DUTY flashes across my mind. When Lord Rawdon was in South Carolina he had to send an express of great importance through a country filled with the enemy's troops. A corporal of the 17th Dragoons known for his courage and intelligence was selected to escort it. They had not proceeded far when they were fired upon, the express killed, and the corporal wounded in the side. Careless of his wound, he thought but of his duty ; he snatched the despatch from the dying man and rode on, till, from the loss of blood, he fell, when, fearing the despatch would be taken by his enemy, he thrust it into his wound until the wound closed upon it and concealed it. He was found next day by a British patrol, with a smile of honourable pride upon his countenance, and with life just sufficient to point to the fatal depository of his secret. In searching the body was found the cause of his death, for the surgeon declared that the wound in itself was not mortal, but rendered so by the irritation of the paper. Thus fell this patriot soldier in rank a corporal, he was in mind a hero. His name was O'Lavery, from the parish of Moira in County Down. Whilst Memory holds her seat, the devotion of this generous victim to his own sense of duty shall be present to my mind. I would not for worlds have lost that name ! How it would have lived in Greek or Roman story ! Not the Spartan hero of Thermopylas, not the Roman Curtius, in their self-devotion went beyond him. Leonidas fought in the presence of a grateful country he was in a strange land, unseen ; Curtius had all Rome for SKILFUL SPEECH IN GUERNSEY 369 his spectators O'Lavery gave himself up to death alone in a desert. He adopted the sentiment without knowing the language, and chose for his epitaph, " Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ! " The success of Sir John's exertions on this occa- sion was complete, and established him in public opinion as a speaker of the highest promise. This promise he afterwards fulfilled ; but in 1793 the war called him back to his original profession. He offered his services to Government, undertaking to raise a regiment of his countrymen. In spite of his being so well known as a Liberal politician, Mr. Dundas accepted his offer, and the 87th regiment was accordingly raised. Active service then occupied him until after the Union had taken place, and he never, that I know of, tried to enter the Imperial Parliament. But that he did not lose his power of speaking by disuse, his address to the Guernsey representatives (when in 1804 he persuaded them to make his roads) which is a consummate piece of advocacy, sufficiently proves. Altogether, I think him, and I hope my readers will agree with me, a great-uncle to be proud of. My grandfather, Welbore Ellis Doyle, though some years younger than Sir John, was his senior in the service. Sir John had at first been intended for the Bar, and this, of course, threw him back as a soldier. He was a man of a different type from his elder brother scarcely as amiable, and with less of what is commonly called talent ; but he possessed immense force of character, and a gift of dominating others, B B 370 MY GRANDFATHER A GOOD SOLDIER ' CA IRA!' which, as it is one of the greatest of human powers, so it is one of the most difficult to understand or ex- plain. He died in the vigour of life as Governor of Ceylon. The mountain centres of that island were still under the rule of the kings of Kandy, so that all Europeans were confined to the unhealthy districts of the coast ; and this proved fatal to him. Had it not been for his untimely death, his extraordinary per- sonal qualities must have secured him the highest dis- tinction ; as it is, he has left a mark upon the British Army, which though trifling in itself, ought yet, among brother-soldiers, to keep his name alive. To him it is owing that the revolutionary tune, ' Qa ira' has remained to the 14th regiment since 1793 as their chosen quick march. At the battle of Famars, in that year, the French attacked so fiercely that his regiment wavered for a moment. The revolutionary fever, in truth, blazed forth as a new element in war, and everywhere the discipline learnt under average drill-sergeants was at a loss how to meet it. He, however, was not at a loss ; for, dashing to the front, he called out in a loud voice ' Come along, my lads, let's break these scoundrels to their own damned tune. Drummers, strike up " Ca ira ! " The effect was irresistible, and the enemy found themselves running away (it was an Irish exploit, and a bull is excusable) before they could look round. Again, at the siege of Valenciennes a redoubt had to be stormed, and he was selected to storm it. He called his men together, and addressed them thus : ' My lads, the general in com- STORMING A REDOUBT 371 mand has done us a great honour. We have been selected to perform an important, and, I will not disguise from you, a dangerous duty. We have to carry yonder redoubt, said to be mined underneath ; we must carry it, therefore, in such a fashion that the enemy may not have time, as he retires, to blow us and it up together. I want a hundred of you to follow me there volunteers, ground your arms ! ' The whole regiment grounded them at once, as if by the action of a single will. 'Very good,' continued the colonel, 'then I'll take the hundred next for duty.' And with that hundred next for duty, the redoubt was so rapidly stormed that the enemy had no time to explode their mine. His last recorded interview with his favourite regiment is not less remarkable, and shows how long a noble strength of mind retains its power over those who submit to it, not. as slaves but as freemen, because it is noble. The 14th regi- ment, some years after he had left it, being under orders for India, mutinied on the beach of South- ampton, where my grandfather was then military governor, and positively refused to embark. I have heard from the description of an eye-witness how the general (he was then a general) received the news. Seizing the excited messenger by the collar, he swung him out of the saddle, and, jumping on his horse, galloped down to the scene of action. His staff fol- lowed him, the eye-witness I speak of being one of them. We learned from him that the moment the mutineers caught sight of their old colonel, a kind of B B 2 3/2 POWER OVER THE 14TH REGIMENT thrill trembled through their ranks, as if an electric current were traversing them. He then drew up his horse close in front of the disorganised crowd, and quietly gave the following order : ' Grenadiers, recover arms ; shoulder arms ; to the right wheel, march ! ' The regiment obeyed at once, and passed on into the boats without saying another word. Then, having enforced discipline, as he was bound to do, the general, not one of those officers who govern by mere sternness, without any sympathy for their men, inquired into their griev- ances, and insisted that those of which they complained justly should be redressed before the transports sailed. My grandfather died before his time, and this was a real loss to the British army. Whether I should have been better off if he had refrained from joining the majority, like his brother John, till past eighty- four, is quite another question. I fancy, with all his fine qualities, he was a bit of a Tartar, and how a short-sighted, blundering, unmethodical grandson might have fared at his hands, is a problem which perhaps it is just as well should have been left unpresented by destiny, and unsolved. Indeed, it may be doubted whether any necessity for its solution would ever have arisen. My grandfather, however able in many directions, did not trouble himself much about the laws of nature. By his exertions my father was made a captain when he was eleven, and carried off to the Netherlands for the campaigns of 1793 and 1794, campaigns during which the Rhine was twice solidly frozen over ; he was MY FATHEE HIS HEALTH FAILED EARLY 373 then swept off to active service in India before he had seen his fourteenth birthday. The result of all this was, that my father no doubt a very strong man originally died at fifty- seven, as Dr. Chambers told me, simply of old age. Now, had my grandfather lived on, he would have continued to forget that his son was made of flesh and blood, and not of steel wire ; he would have discouraged any attempt of his to retire from the army, as a last chance of reacquiring something like health and strength, and would have killed him by over-pressure whilst he was yet, as years ago, in the beginning of youth. In that case I should not have been here to write my reminiscences, or to speculate upon the treatment I should have received from the tough old ex- Governor of Ceylon. As it was, he did not extinguish my father, but only crippled and maimed a life, just saved by his own death a death which from that point of view can hardly be looked upon as premature. My father, from the age of three or four- and- twenty, could not do much more than crawl along the paths set before him. His abilities and acquirements indeed were such that this crawl- ing process of his was at least equal to the ordinary walk of an able man, so that, as Chairman of the Excise for many years, he won golden opinions from all those who were brought into contact with him. Before his constitution broke down, as was natural for his father's son, he passed through many exciting scenes. For instance, he served under Nelson at Copenhagen, his regiment having volunteered to act 374 NOTICED BY NELSON AT COPENHAGEN as marines. Nelson seems to have taken a fancy to him ; for, as the council of war was about to sit, just before the engagement, he clapped him on the shoulder and said, ' Come, boy, come along with me/ So this lad of nineteen took his seat among the big- wigs ; let us hope as ' a wise young man, a Daniel come to judgment.' When the fighting had ceased, Nelson instantly sent him on with despatches to Berlin, in order that no time might be lost in impressing that uncertain and somewhat jealous Government, with the results of the struggle, as much might depend, as far as immediate conse- quences were concerned, upon the view that Prussia felt disposed to take. It may seem a difficult position for a boy of his age to have to confront ministers and ambassadors, charged to the brim with secret or avowed hostility to England, but his antagonists were not aware that behind that youthful aspect lay hidden the experience of a traveller, who had already seen the ' cities and manners of many men/ and of a soldier who might almost be called a veteran. Lady Charlotte Proby then at Berlin with her father, our ambassador to the King of Prussia told me more than once how great a sensation was produced at the Koyal table, when this beardless youth silenced the most pertinacious of his questioning enemies a man who kept bothering him as to what would have hap- pened if the Danes had done this, that, or the other by replying at once. ' Alors, monseigneur, nous aurions fait sans cornbattre, ce que nous avons THE ' DANNEBROG 'RAPID JOURNEY TO LONDON 375 combattu pour faire,' and then proceeded to explain, with perfect distinctness, how and why the same result must undoubtedly have followed. From my father himself the two things I gather in connection with this Copenhagen affair were, first, the blowing up of the ' Dannebrog.' He used to tell me how the doomed vessel, one mass of flame, drifted through the hostile fleets, her guns sullenly discharging them- selves as she passed ; then in an instant, a dense column of black smoke, rushing up through the sky to an unbelievable height, diffused itself into a haze of fire, through which the fragments of spars and tim- bers were seen dimly floating. These fell at intervals with a heavy splash into the sea, and when the sound ceased there was an end of the ' Dannebrog.' The second event he used to dwell upon was this. The vessel on which he had embarked himself grounded in the Elbe, and he often told me how a dismay fell upon him, lest this disaster should throw him behind the regular king's messenger plodding home, with a duplicate of that despatch, which it was my father's great object to be first in delivering. On landing, however, he took a chaise and four, and bribed the post-boys to gallop to London at the rate of seventeen miles an hour, thereby all but frightening into fits an elderly gentleman, who had been unlucky enough to ask him for a lift. This experiment, as he failed either to break his own neck or that of the elderly gentleman in question, turned out a success, and just won him the race according to his desire. 376 KINDNESS OF SCOTCHMEN Life, after this, was not very eventful to him. He had hoped, as his oratorical talents were considerable, his reasoning powers acute, and his knowledge of men (a knowledge even in ministers of the highest repu- tation somewhat rarer than one could wish) unusual for his years, to distinguish himself in Parliament. Opportunities would not have been wanting, but before anything could be arranged his health failed completely. The time that remained to him here, was little more than one long illness, and, though he did excellently well all that he took in hand, am- bitious hopes had to be put aside, and he died, as I have said above, of old age at fifty- seven. When my grandfather died in Ceylon, another general officer, whose name need not be given, took charge of the son of his old friend with enthusiastic good- will, but he turned out to be a capricious, un- stable sort of man, and treated my father so badly, under the influence, I believe, of an ill-conditioned Frenchwoman, that the young fellow, though scarcely sixteen, turned upon him with irrevocable determina- tion, and threw up his appointment. A Highland regiment quartered at the station took part with the boy, and, as a company of theirs happened to be vacant, they placed it under his command at once, in order to facilitate his return to Calcutta, whither they were wending their way. From that time my father always maintained a strong liking for the Scotch, and often told me that he looked upon them as the firmest and truest of friends. This regiment was made up GEORGE CHOLMONDELEY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON 377 almost entirely of Frasers ; Fraser of Suddie, if I am right in the name, being its colonel. One of the most interesting pieces of old-world gossip I got from my father related to Lord Nelson's Lady Hamilton. George Cholmondeley (he is men- tioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson) though belonging to a former generation, became an intimate friend of our family during the latter years of his life. He also had been a close ally of Sir William Hamilton's before his marriage. One morning he was summoned to his friend's presence, not alone, for another gentle- man, older and more experienced, had been sent for at the same time. The two men were then solemnly called upon to advise Sir William Hamilton, whether it might not now be desirable that he should make, as the phrase is, an honest woman of his beautiful mistress. The reasons for and against it were care- fully submitted to them by the lady's protector. Cholmondeley, young and hot, broke into indignant remonstrances : ' Good God ! ' he cried out, ' you are not going to make such an ass of yourself as that ! Pray put the idea aside at once ! ' But the other worthy, to Cholmondeley's great disgust, took quite a different view : ' Well,' he said, ' if, as you assure us, this young woman fell into her evil ways more by mischance than from any natural tendency to vice ; and if, as you feel quite certain, she is now, not only a true penitent, but also deeply attached to you, my opinion is that you cannot do better than make her your wife.' When they departed together, 378 LADY BYRON Cholmondeley turned angrily upon his companion, ob- serving : ' You call yourself a friend, do you ? You ought to be ashamed of yourself for ever ! ' But the answer was ready : ' My dear Cholmondeley, if I had been as young and as ignorant of what is going on as you are, I might very likely have followed your example, but since I happen to know, on the best authority, that the marriage, about which we were consulted this morning, took place a week ago, I thought it as well to accept the inevitable ! ' On two occasions my father had to take upon him- self the difficult and disagreeable task of arbitrating between a husband and a wife, and that after a re- conciliation had become impossible. The husbands, in both cases, were eminent men, though not quite of equal eminence. Lady Byron, an old family friend of ours, when driven to desperation, applied to my father to act on her behalf. This he did. But as he felt himself bound in honour to disclose nothing, O' the greedy curiosity of the public must not expect any food from me who know no more than they do. I can only tell them that my father never re- pented of what he had done. The one point I can speak of which appears to me worth noting is this. Here were three men, my father, Dr. Lushing- ton, and Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, a cousin and early friend of Lord Byron's. They were all three men of great ability, they were all three thorough men of the world, they were all three men who had worked out their lives on perfectly different lines. My father had been tossed about the world, from the THE BYRON QUESTION 379 time that he found himself a captain in the army at eleven ; Dr. Lushington was a distinguished Oxford man, and fellow of a College, who became a highly successful advocate ; Sir Robert Horton, the cousin, a country squire of good position, afterwards an able civil servant and professional politician. And yet these three men, so different in their antecedents and characters, were completely in unison, and held that Lady Byron had no choice except to separate her- self from her husband ! They were, I said, all men of the world. In other words, if Lady Byron's anger had been roused, on discovering that Lord Byron was not an irreproachable husband, they would, I am sure, have told her in very plain language, ' As you chose with your eyes open to marry a man of wayward genius, who is at the same time the spoilt child of society, you cannot expect him to behave exactly like a model archdeacon, you must accept the conse- quences of your own rashness, and try to touch the higher and better parts of his nature by gentleness and persevering affection.' As they did not take this course, I must leave to Lord Byron's partisans to settle for themselves, how it came to pass that these three gentlemen, being the men they were, if Lord Byron's conduct were pardonable at all, never sug- gested to his wife that she should pardon him. Again, many years afterwards, he attempted to mediate between Lord and Lady Lytton (she was a cousin, of ours), but in vain. Her temper was in such a state of inflammation, that she would listen to no moderate counsels, and my father had to sit still 3 SO LORD AND LADY LYTTON CARLO DOYLE under her furious invectives whilst dying of heart disease. I have always thought that by her impla- cable egotism she shortened his life. Long after his death I put my resentment on one side, and tried to help her, but she soon became intractable. Lord Lytton, who always behaved with perfect courtesy both to my father and myself, offered to increase her allowance on certain conditions. I thought them rea- sonable enough, but the very mention of the word ' conditions ' drove her wild with rage, and a storm of abuse fell on my devoted head. Our intercourse ended with a letter, addressed to me as follows : Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, Bart., Receiver-General of Customs (however infamous), Thames Street, London. The inside of the letter matched the outside, and I never saw or communicated with her again. To return to my father's profession. As he left the army so young, it is not to him, but to his brother Charles Joseph, commonly known as Carlo Doyle, and celebrated in his day as one of the hand- somest men in the British army, that I am indebted for a certain number of military anecdotes worth, I think, rescuing' from oblivion. I have tried hard, with the help of my distinguished friend Colonel Grove, to give them the requisite degree of accuracy and exactness, but upon the whole with very im- perfect success, so that the reader must take them in the rough, just as I had to take them, long years ago, when they turned up in casual conversations with COLONEL HEAD GENERAL LONG 381 my uncle. To begin with number one. There was a certain Colonel Head, of the 19th Light Dragoons, who would have quite realised Frederick the Great's idea of a cavalry officer, viz. that anyone in that branch of the service who waits to be charged ought to be cashiered on the spot. Colonel Head, ordered to move his squadrons up, and join a brigade of Heavy Dragoons under a certain General Long, arrived at his post to a moment, but General Long was behind time, and the Irish colonel found him- self opposed to a very superior French force, with the support that he had been led to expect wholly wanting. Nevertheless, the spirit of St. Donnybrook (if there be such a saint or martyr in the Irish hagiology) filled him with an adequate enthusiasm : ' Mee lads,' he said, ' you see those fellows over there ; tip 'em the Brummagem Spurrs and sa-a-bres !' ' Mee lads ' obeyed with right good will, and broke the enemy up like soap-bubbles, chasing them to a town some distance off, then in French occupation. My uncle, who charged with them (as one of the staff, he had, I suppose, some good reason for being there) frequently declared to me, that as they came back at a swinging trot, through squares of French infantry on either side, the men were swaying like reeds in the wind, and that he could hear the ex- postulations of the officers, ' Tenez ferme, mais tenez ferme, done ! ' as he passed. To the end of his life he felt very angry at the after-treatment of the 19th Dragoons, always insisting on it that if this exploit 382 DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S DESPATCH of the knight of St. Donnybrook had been properly followed up, a great success must have ensued. On their return, as might have been expected, they found General Long & Co. where he ought to have been a good while before. Upon him the effect of this charge was by no means what it had been upon the French. He did not consider it a triumph at all, and, after blowing up his subordinate officer sky- high, for not waiting till he, the true commander, O " O 7 had found himself at leisure to enter an appearance, ended his reprimand thus : ' I suppose, Colonel Head, if you had found the gates of Alcantara (let us so call the place provisionally) open, you would have ridden into the market-place ? ' If he had expected penitence, the expectation was a foolish one, for the Irishman assented at once : ' By Jasus, and that I would ! ' being his immediate reply. A general, however, has means of telling his own story at head- quarters ; not so a colonel with whom he is at variance ; and the result of Colonel Head's readi- ness to ride into the market-place (where certainly he would not have stood idle) was, unless my memory deceives me, a famous order to be found in the Duke of Wellington's Despatches. This order, after stating that nobody doubted the gallantry ol the 19th Light Dragoons, w r ent on to remark, that the romantic tales of great kingdoms being overrun and conquered by a few squadrons of light cavalry, are generally supposed to be slight exaggerations. My uncle always maintained his opinion, that from DUKE OF WELLINGTON DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH 383 the date of that order the efforts of the English o cavalry in Spain, though they did their duty in a manner beyond criticism, became tamer and less enterprising. He had an opportunity, later on, of giving his view of the case to Lord Wellington, at a military banquet, held somewhere, in one of the in- tervals of the war ; but he could get nothing out of the Iron Earl (he was then an Earl, and not a Duke) except ' Hum ! haw ! ho ! that is what you think, is it ? ' Wellington, I fancy, always trusted less to cavalry than his eminent predecessor, the Duke of Marlborough. The Duke of Marlborough, unless I forget my history, was in the habit of using his guns and his foot- soldiers very freely at the be- ginning of an action. Then, as soon as both armies had worn themselves out in a long and doubtful struggle, he began to pour in masses of horse, kept by him fresh and unexhausted till the critical moment, thus securing and completing his victory. Wellington, on the other hand, from first to last, re- O lied less upon sabres and lances than upon muskets, and bayonets. Another story of the same time brings two of our family into play. Sir John Milley Doyle, who had a half-independent Portuguese command, seemed to be pushing on his troops rather faster than Lord Wellington liked. ' Ride over, Doyle, to that damned Irish cousin of yours,' was the order given, ' and tell him to keep his men in hand for the present.' Doyle obeyed, and found the ' damned Irish cousin ' crack- 384 SIR JOHN MILLET DOYLE FUENTES D'OXORE ing a huge hunting-whip to the tune of ' Hola, senores ! forward, senores ! en avant, sefiores ! ' and so on. On receiving the general's command he an- swered thus : ' Oh, very well ! that must be as he chooses ; but do you tell Lord Wellington from me, Carlo, that it is a very bad plan backing young horses just when you have got them to face a hill! ' Carlo, I apprehend, was much too wide-awake to do anything of the kind ! Again, between the two actions which took place at Fuentes d' Onore, a French officer, prowling about in the hope of making some discoveries that might be turned to the advantage of his general, encountered and found himself arrested by a British patrol. He was brought to my uncle by his captors, and intro- duced with the following speech. ' If you please, sir, I don't know what he means, but he says he is a parliamentary \ ' My uncle marched him off to Lord Wellington, who wasted no time about the matter. ' Send him to the rear.' ' But, my lord, he says he's a parlemcntaire.' ' Parlementaire be damned! Send him to the rear ! ' On the road thither, the prisoner, who seemed to be a free-and-easy kind of gentleman, was naturally not unwilling to ingratiate himself with those into whose hands he had fallen ; still there can be no doubt that he meant, more or less, what he said, and this is what he did say. ' Quant a vous, vous n'avez qu'a dire, Hal, fron dress ! et voila vos gredins en ligne. Quant a nous, il faut repeter, Avancez, mes amis ! avancez, mes enfants ! Bien RUSSIANS AND ENGLISH AT HAMBURG 385 heureux, s'ils ne vous impendent pas, Avancez vous- meme, monsieur le capitaine ! ' Now, this estimate of the two nations was, I dare say, accurate enough. A French soldier might be quite as brave as an English one ; in quickness, in individual enterprise, he might even be superior to most of his opponents. Still, these very qualities often rendered him less docile and effec- tive, as part of a military machine, an instrument fitted for the mere act of battle. He fell to criticising an order instead of simply obeying it without a question, after the manner of his English rival. Therefore, although more field-marshals' batons might be carried in the knapsacks of French privates, the English, if we may borrow Sheridan's phrase from his farce of ' St. Patrick's Day,' ' argued better in platoons.' In a very different part of Europe, my uncle shared in an expedition of quite another character. During the year 1813, I believe when Germany had arisen as one man (no, not quite that, there was one very notable exception, M. von Goethe), to shake off the oppressions and outrages of France, a force, partly composed of Russians and partly of Englishmen, advanced to Hamburg, and were royally welcomed by the inhabitants of that ancient city. It will be some time, I fancy, before these two nations again fight side by side. Perhaps a century or two hence, when the British Islands have been pulled down by the disciples of Progress and the preachers of a world-wide philanthropy into a tenth-rate power, we may furnish a humble contingent to some future Czar c c 386 'THE ROSE' AND THE TWELVE APOSTLES whilst he is vainly attempting to resist the invincible Chinese (i.e. if we are to accept the Muscovite tradi- tion, that the Russians are to subdue all the rest of mankind, and that China is then to conquer them). Without much affection for Russia, I cannot but think that her defeat, under such circumstances, would entail what the French call a mauvais quart d'heure on the world in general, and though at pre- sent this event does not seem near or probable, I can only say that in my judgment more unlikely things have happened. In 1813, however, Englishmen and Russians joined together that they might deliver Germany from the French yoke. Their troops were welcomed by the municipal authorities with the greatest enthusiasm, and a great banquet was in- augurated in their honour. Somewhere in the city, thirteen huge casks of wine, belonging to the cor- poration, and filled with the finest Rhenish obtain- able for love or money, stood in a group. The queen of this august family was called The Rose, an obvious allusion to the Virgin Mary, the others were named after the Twelve Apostles. Whenever, upon some solemn occasion, our Lady (not of Sorrow) had to part with some of her nectar, the deficiency was supplied from the store of the oldest Apostle, and so on ; the youngest Apostle being re- plenished, without counting the cost, from the best and most suitable hock that could be found. At the banquet I have spoken of, each field officer found at his side a pint of the Rose, and a bottle from one of RETREAT OF ALLIES BLIGHTING OF 'THE ROSE' 387 the older Apostles ; plebeian wines, I dare say, might be called for ad libitum, by anyone who wanted more than the city's liberal allowance. Healths were drunk, sanguine prophecies bubbled over everything like a flood, and ' all went merry as a marriage bell.' But war, alas ! is a matter of deeds, not of words ; even the grandest speeches will not restore lives wasted, or precious blood poured out in vain. The allies were outnumbered or out -manoeuvred ; at any rate, they had to retire from the city, and in marched the exulting French. There was no question then of pints, or even of bottles ; the intruding army, besides committing other little irregularities, perhaps even harder to be endured, set to work with a will, and drank the Virgin Mary and her twelve stately adherents dry, in three quarters of an hour. The same sort of thing will happen in London one of these days, if we go on playing at being a first-rate power, with an inadequate navy and a still more inadequate army. But there is no help for it ; demo- cracy is democracy, a form of government utterly unfitted for a great empire, with far-reaching interests, and exposed to a complication of ever- recurring dangers. I should have thought that the fate of Athens might have impressed these truths upon the minds of our statesmen, but they seem like men who know nothing of history, and live as if they had not any ancestors behind them, but were just intro- duced into a new world. We can only hope, there- fore, that, as happens to men slowly recovering from c c 2 388 DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY SPANISH PRAIRIE-FIRE a dreamless sleep and stupor, the Past, with all that it has taught, may come back to them by degrees, and that they will not continue to act and speak, as if they had been turned out of Eden some twenty years ago. Returning to the Peninsular War, Carlo gave me a very interesting account of what, I suppose, would be called in America a prairie-fire, in the height of the dry Spanish summer. The grass suddenly flared up, and the burning torrent swept down to a small river. At the other side of this river, that division of the army in which my uncle was serving had pitched its camp. Everybody thought, of course, that the conflagration on reaching the water would have to stop. But not a bit of it ! the flame gathered to the edge, and straightway jumped the brook like a well- trained hunter. It then rushed through the tents, playfully blowing up a powder-magazine or two as it passed, on to a vast forest behind them. All through the night, he told me, the fire kept eating its way onwards ; and the crash of the trees, as they fell continuously one after the other, produced an im- pression upon the nerves a sort of irritating expec- tation which totally prevented sleep. At the moment, however^ he did not lose his presence of mind, and there was a general laugh against him afterwards, because, when it became obvious that the mischief could not be averted, he was heard calling out to his servant, in a loud voice (I have said that he was well known as a dandy perhaps. GENERAL SHERBUOKE 389 rather, as a coxcomb, which, after all, in a handsome young officer, is not a capital crime), ' John, John, you go to the horses ; I'll look after my small things ! ' General Sherbroke, also, the hero of the world- famous ghost- story, used to figure a good deal in his narratives. The general was a kind-hearted man, but hot-tempered, and, as might be expected from his antecedents, full of nervous eccentricity. He came once upon some baggage waggons, and the baggage drivers were walking past a sick officer, left helpless upon the road, with as much indifference to his fate as if he had been one of the garrison at Sinkat. Sherbroke seized the trunks that were in transit, including, I believe, some of his own, and flung them right and left into space, seating the officer on the waggon in their stead. When he arrived at his destination he took the sick officer into his own quarters, and watched over him with the utmost tenderness until he died. In due time it became necessary to read the funeral service over his body. Sherbroke dressed himself in full uniform, and began his task with the solemnity of an archdeacon. He arrived safely at ' Ashes to ashes,' but then, unluckily, some impish little Spanish urchins came upon the scene, laughing and jumping, and chasing each other up and down the churchyard. The soldier-priest's temper went like a rocket ; he began pelting the lads heavily with stones, interpo- lating into the Prayer Book this kind of unclerical 390 SHERBROKE AND PICTON language : ' You d d young blackguards, I'll teach you to skip and grin whilst I read the funeral service over a British officer ! Take that and that and that ! ' accompanying the pelting with a volley of curses. Having thus discharged his wrath, the archdeacon in red resumed his functions, and the service went on, ' Dust to dust,' &c., just as if no- thing had happened. There is another Peninsular legend in which he also fills the foremost place ; the facts, I believe, are well known, but they are always assigned to the wrong man to Picton, and not to Sherbroke. Sher- broke sent my uncle forward to tell a certain com- missary, that such-and-such an amount of bread must be prepared for troops on the march, by next morn- ing. My uncle found the gentleman in question giving a sumptuous breakfast to a number of his friends. He communicated his order, and was answered very politely by the founder of the feast, that he would use every exertion, and hoped that he should be able to comply with the general's request. Carlo, who knew Sherbroke's temper much better than the commissary did, felt sure that his peppery commander would not be satisfied with these vague assurances, and replied accordingly, ' Very good ; those are the orders it is your business, not mine, to have them carried into effect.' Thereupon, back he trotted. On reporting the commissary's message, Sherbroke, as he expected, broke out into a torrent of wrath. ' He'll use every exertion, will he ? He DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND SOULT 391 hopes to be able to comply with my request, does he ? Return to him, sir, with this message that if the bread is not on the spot at the right moment, I'll hang him ! ' Very naturally this plan of the general's was not agreeable to the commissary, and he appealed to Lord Wellington, who happened to be within reach. Lord Wellington listened patiently, and when the perturbed official informed him that General Sherbroke had used most extraordinary language, and had even threatened to hang him, in- quired, with a sympathising air, 'Did he, by G ?' ' He did, indeed, my lord.' ' Then all I can say is, by G he'll do it ; and I strongly recommend you to have the bread ready ! ' I need scarcely inform my readers that the bread arrived in excellent time. I have no doubt I could go on pumping up, out of the depths of my memory, many interesting stories of the same kind, but I think, perhaps, the public may have had enough of them. I shall, therefore, only relate one other, to me by far more interesting and important than all the rest put together. I regret most sin- cerely that I cannot give the exact time when, or the exact place where, the events happened. I can only assure my readers that they are substantially true, but my recollections must be taken, as I said before, in the rough. Towards the close of the Peninsular War, the Duke of Wellington had to force the Gaves, as the operation was called, i.e., to force his way through the gorges of the Pyrenees, retorting their invasion 392 THE DUKE GOES TO BED upon the French. There was a series of manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres, accompanied by a certain amount of fighting, though none of the battles were battles of primary importance. In fact, it was a military game of chess between Wellington and Marshal Soult, keenly contested, and finally won by the former, who succeeded in entering France, and in passing on vic- toriously to the end of the campaign. On one occa- sion, the Duke thought it necessary to make a forced march, that he might anticipate the enemy in securing for himself a certain position. In the course of this march the army became somewhat disorganised, and the men struggled on to their destination in a way which would have rendered an attack by the French, could they have made one, difficult to deal with. The Duke, however, gave his orders with perfect coolness, and then went on to say, ' Now I shall go to bed.' ' To bed, my lord,' was the somewhat anxious comment ; ' but what if the French attack us during the night ? ' ' Oh dear, no ! ' he said, ' we are quite safe from attack till ten o'clock to-morrow morning ! ' The troops, as they came up, were properly disposed of, the requisite preparations made, and everybody looked out for the coming ten o'clock. Accordingly, just as had been predicted, shortly after that hour, the French made their appearance in force, and endeavoured to wrest from the British troops the advantage gained by that successful march. They were, however, baffled and driven back. That move in the blood-gambit remained to the credit of GENERAL ALAVA 393 Wellington and England. General Alava, to whom the Duke opened himself more freely than to most other officers probably because he was of foreign birth ventured to put this question to him, ' Might I ask, my lord, how you knew that the French would not attack us till ten o'clock in the morning ? ' ' Oh, certainly ! ' was the answer. ' As we were riding through such-and-such a pass, did you not see three French vedettes gallop off as hard as they could ? ' ' No,' said Alava, with his eyes and mouth wide open. ' But I did] retorted Wellington, ' and I felt at once what would happen. Those fellows went off and reported to Soult, that they had seen me there in person, and I knew Soult quite well enough to be sure of his course. He would summon a council of war as soon as possible, and tell them, " If Lord Wellington is there in person he must have got up his reserves, before attacking him I must get up mine ; " and as for his reserves, I was quite certain that they could not be got up to act against us till ten in the morning, therefore I took things easily and went to bed.' That is what we call at chess, being able to give your antagonist a knight ; whether, if Massena, whom he always dreaded more than any other of Napoleon's generals, had been the one against him, he would have acted precisely in the same manner, may be doubted. Even now I have not come to the end of the story. I was repeating it in the common room at All Souls one evening, old Sir Charles Vaughan, the ex- Ambassador, being present. 394 SIR C. VAUGHAN AND THE FRENCH GENERAL ' Ah, yes,' he remarked, ' I know that story as well as you do ; and what is more, I can cap it for you. I was telling it some years ago at a Paris dinner. A French general, one of the party, on hearing it, looked for a moment or two rather sulky and dis- composed, but at last broke out as follows, " Yes, indeed, for I was second in command on that occa- sion, and those were the very words Soult used ! " I shall here bring my recollections of what I was told about the French war to an end, but one or two of Carlo's other stories deserve, also, I think, to be recorded. He went to India with the first Marquis of Hastings, as his military secretary, and whilst there was exposed to the cholera. This outbreak of the cholera fell then upon the Hindoos, so far as I can judge from his account of it, as a new malady. 1 Whether at any former period it had been known in the East I cannot say ; if it had, it seems to have passed out of memory. Some people, unless I am mistaken, believe that the terrible ' Black Death ' of the Middle Ages was cholera in its most malignant form, drifting gradually westwards till it reached us not the ordinary plague. But, at any rate, in all those Asiatic regions, till its reappearance in 1816, it had been, I fancy, so long unrecognised, that it was practically unknown. He saved a favourite servant of his by a rather daring manoeuvre. The doctors declared recovery impossible, and that he 1 My uncle may have been mistaken, of course ; but that was the impression he left upon my mind. BRITISH PRESENCE OF MIND 395 could not live through the day. ' Then I suppose I may do what I like with him ? ' was my uncle's query. ' Of course,' they answered. Upon this he posted a man as a sort of sentinel to watch over his pulse, and whenever that stopped, or threatened to stop, he poured in a tablespoonful of camphorated spirits of wine. As the man did not die, either of the disease or of the remedy, which is saying a great deal, my uncle was very proud of his irregular medical triumph. He also once related to me a remarkable instance of presence of mind shown before him in a tiger-hunt. Everybody supposed the tiger to be dead, but when a certain officer rashly approached him, the creature suddenly recovered himself, sprang upon his enemy, and carried him off to the jungle. The officer fired one of his two pistols at its head, but without effect, and found himself hi the tiger's jaws with his right arm pinned down across his breast, utterly powerless. After a time, his captor, in order to do his work more comfortably, chucked him up into the air, catching him by the thigh as he fell. His victim took advan- tage of this opportunity to introduce the muzzle of his remaining pistol, quietly and steadily, into the tiger's ear. When he pulled the trigger the brute fell dead without a struggle. The snap of the animal's teeth, none the less, re-catching him as he fell, had inflicted so severe a wound upon the sinews of his thigh that he was lamed for life. Still, he may be said to have gained a step by this lameness, as Lord 396 BREAKING OF CALCUTTA BANKS WEST INDIES Hastings, in acknowledgment of the courage and calmness he had shown, promoted him upon the spot. During his residence in India my uncle saved a considerable sum of money, but returned to England in 1823, leaving his fortune behind him. He left it to be forwarded whenever the exchange between the two countries took a turn favourable for England ! Before it did this, the great Calcutta Banks, in one of which his funds were deposited, went down, one after the other, like ninepins, and Carlo found himself left penniless. He thus, when long past fifty, had to begin his life again. At first he went out to Jamaica as Lord Sligo's secretary. After this, they made him Governor of Grenada, and there he remained until his health broke down, and he returned home to die. One of the incidents of his Governorship has always interested me, on its own account first, and still more as illustrating the traditional character of the different negro tribes. A ship with a cargo of slaves having been captured, the slaves on board were released, and handed over to various persons throughout the island, and thus placed under a kind of apprenticeship. A boy and a girl, the girl a Koromantyn and the boy an Eboe, became part of the Governor's household. Whether many young people in this generation have read Miss Edgeworth's ' Grateful Negro ' I am not prepared to say, but those who have will recollect how she contrasts the Koromantyn nature, and the Eboe nature, making her hero, Ca3sar, a thoroughly noble Koromantyn, KOROMANTYNS-EBOES 397 and his betrothed, Clara, the gentlest of Eboe maidens. Now Miss Edgeworth is perfectly right in describing the Koromantyn as fierce and haughty, and the Eboe, on the other hand, as meek and sub- missive : where she errs (from a historical point of view), is in speaking of any Koromantyn as a slave at all. When they fall into our hands, they are willing enough to be soldiers, and they become good soldiers in the West Indian regiments, but slaves they never would be they either committed suicide, or pined away in silent despair, so that their value in the market amounted to nothing, for the simple reason that nobody would buy them. The Governor's Koromantyn girl, as we shall see, possessed in a high degree the natural attributes of her people. In obedience to them, she took a fancy into her head that the Eboe boy, whom from the heights of her Koromantyn self-esteem she utterly despised, had gradually become a greater favourite than she was. This being so, she at once determined upon revenge. Havin<>- manufactured a sort of sabre out of the iron o hoops of a puncheon, she cut her rival down with a severe blow upon the head as a mere matter of course. Then, rushing into the room of the august brown housekeeper, she dragged all the best clothes out of the drawers, and tore them to shreds. These facts having been accomplished, she marched in stately dignity out of doors, and sat down in the bush, crooning out a wild sort of hymn. The housekeeper stood weeping over the fragments of her gowns, the Eboe boy was 398 SUICIDE PREVENTED plastering up his head, and the Governor writing his despatches, so that nobody took much notice, till the old sergeant-major of the Black regiment, quartered in the town, came to the Governor, and asked if he knew what the girl was doing. ' No ; how should I ? ' was the natural reply. ' Well, sir, she is singing the death-chant of our race, and unless prevented, will certainly make away with herself.' Now, the Governor had much experience of life, and had learnt that the nature of women, under whatever coloured skin it hides itself, is everywhere much the same, so he knew how to talk to her. ' What are you about ?' he shouted out, ' making that hideous hullabulloo so near my window ? Can't you see that you hinder me from writing my letters ? If you must grunt like a hog in a high wind, go further off, and make those ridiculous noises as long as you please ! ' This unsentimental way of looking at matters fell upon the grim excitement of the young savage like a bucket of cold water, so she gathered herself up, and lurched sullenly back into the house. A cabinet council being then held under the auspices of the sergeant-major, the final result was that this Koro- mantyn Camilla, on receiving a humble apology from the Eboe boy for having given her the trouble to cut him down, a humble apology from the brown house- keeper, because it was her fault that she had tired herself in tearing all those gowns and petticoats in pieces, and a humble apology from the Governor for interfering with her magnanimous projects of self- THE HEROINE BECOMES A WASHERWOMAN 399 destruction, consented to survive. She afterwards married a Koromantyn fellow-countryman one of the Koromantyn soldiers, and vented her superfluous energies on other clothes in a more peaceful fashion. She flourished for many years as the best washer- woman on the island. I shall conclude this chapter by a poem of mine written in honour of the quick march of the 14th regiment mentioned above. 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