THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
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 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS
 
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 Photo] 
 
 [EllioU d- Fry. 
 
 Frontispiece.
 
 MY LIFE & FRIENDS 
 
 A PSYCHOLOGIST'S MEMORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES SULLY, LL.D. 
 
 Emeritus Professor of Philosophy. 
 
 University College, London, 
 
 and Author of 
 
 "Studies in Childhood," "Outlines of 
 
 Psycholog>'," etc., etc. 
 
 WITH 17 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
 
 
 {AH rights ycscrveci) 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Early Recollections ....... '6 
 
 Bridgwater — Ancestry — Sects and Parties — Early Mem- 
 ories — Christmastide — Visitors — In Chapel — Quakers — 
 My Father 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Schooldays ......... 26 
 
 Dame-schools — St. Francis — Home Life — ^Watchet — The 
 Somersetshire Farmer — Reading — Music — Guy Fawkes 
 Day — Macready — Leaving School — Charles Dickens — 
 Religious Experience — Gerald Massey — The Princeites — 
 Politics — Plymouth Brethren— Leaving Home 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Student Years : London . . . . . .61 
 
 Dr. Angus — College Debates — Pulpit Orators — St. James's 
 Hall Concerts — Garibaldi — John Stuart Mill — Leaving 
 College 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Student Ye^uis : Gottingen in the Sixties ... 77 
 
 The German Tongue — Old Gottingen — The Students — 
 The Promenade — Heinrich Ewald — Christmas in Germany 
 — Culture — Duelling — Prussian Officers — A Triad — Her- 
 mann Lotze — i^sthetics — The Old Spirit and the New
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A First Wandering ....... 
 
 Halle — The Kommers — Dresden — A Thunderstorm — 
 Nuremberg — The Tyrol — Across the Mountains — Venice — 
 The Alps 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Beginning Work ...... j,^ . 
 
 Change of Plans — A Royal Commission — Literature — John 
 Morley — Proof-reading — The Saturday Review — Psycho- 
 logy — Berlin — The Crown Princess — Return to Work — 
 " Sensation and Intuition " 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Recuperative Italy ....... 
 
 Naples — Pompeii — Capri — ^Difficulties at an Inn — ^Rome — 
 Homeward 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 In Full Work ........ 
 
 The Daily Task — Charles Darwin — Mrs. Hertz — 
 " Pessimism " — London Noises — Hampstead — Canon 
 Ainger — Chums — Lecturing and Examining — Stanley 
 Jevons 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 In Full Work (continued) ...... 182 
 
 Alexander Bain — Bain's Successor — Politics Misplaced — 
 Books on Psychology — Lectures at Cambridge — The Nine- 
 teenth Century — Dreaming and Imagining — Experiments 
 in Fiction 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Outside Interests ........ 198 
 
 Culture at Hampstead — The Metaphysical Society — Sir 
 William Jenner — Foote's Case — Bradluugh's Case — Recre- 
 ations — The Theatre
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Outside Interests (continued) ..... 213 
 
 R. L. Stevenson — A Glacier Accident — Norway — Various 
 Friends — Colonel Osborn 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 SlACKENING THE PaCE . . . . . . . 228 
 
 The Grote Chair — The Congress of Psychology — Val 
 d'Anniviers — University CoUege-^ — Recognition — " Studies 
 of Childhood "—" Essay on Laughter "—The British 
 Academy — Alexander Bain 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 The Thinning of the Ranks ...... 246 
 
 Lady Welby — Shadworth Hodgson — Sicily 
 
 PART II 
 
 PEN-PORTRAITS OF FRIENDS 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 George Eltot in the Seventies ..... 259 
 George Henry Lewes — Tennyson — Imagery 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 James Cotter Morison . 267 
 
 The " Life of St. Bernard " — Conversation— Hospitality 
 —"The Service of Man" 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Henry Sidgwick ........ 277 
 
 The Moral Sciences Tripos — Affability — Conversation — 
 Temperament — Last Days 
 
 1*
 
 X CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 PAQB 
 
 Hekbert Spencer ........ 288 
 
 The Boarding-house — The Athenaeum Club — Foreign 
 Appreciation — Synthetic Philosophy 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 Leslie Stephen ........ 29d 
 
 At Home — ^The Cornhill Magazine — James Payn — ^The 
 Sunday Tramps — Routes — Refreshments — Composition of 
 the Tramps — Charles Darwin — Swiss Memories — Person- 
 ality 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 William James ........ 316 
 
 " Principles of Psychology " — Political£6ympathies — 
 " Pragmatism " 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 George Meredith ........ 32S 
 
 Meredith's Talk — Nationality — ^Declining Years — Future 
 of England — Raillery — Farewell 
 
 Index . . . . . . . ' . . . 33ft
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 JAMES 8UIXY . . . , . 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 THE CORNHILL (MARKET PLACE AND CHXJBCH), BRIDG- 
 
 
 WATER .... 
 
 Facing page 
 
 6 
 
 THE RIVER, BRIDGWATER . 
 
 
 
 40 
 
 GOTTINGEN ..... 
 
 
 
 78 
 
 PROFESSOR EWALD .... 
 
 
 
 86 
 
 ALEXANDER BAIN . 
 
 
 
 86 
 
 ARTHUR KINGLAKE .... 
 
 
 
 130 
 
 GEORGE CROOM ROBERTSON 
 
 
 
 182 
 
 LADY WELBY ..... 
 
 
 
 250 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT ..... 
 
 
 
 260 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 
 
 
 
 262 
 
 JAMES COTTER MORISON . 
 
 
 
 268 
 
 HENRY SIDGWICK .... 
 
 
 
 278 
 
 HERBERT SFENCEB .... 
 
 
 
 288 
 
 LESLIE STEPHEN .... 
 
 
 
 296 
 
 WILLIAM JAMES .... 
 
 
 
 816 
 
 OSOBOB MEREDITH .... 
 
 • • »f 
 
 
 824
 
 AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 The Author has been greatly helped in the 
 work of reading the proofs of this book by 
 the generous aid of his friend Professor 
 Carveth Read. 
 
 Chapter IV has already appeared in the 
 Hibbert Journal in 1915. 
 
 xii
 
 PART I 
 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE
 
 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Ix the forties, when I came upon the scene, 
 Bridgwater was by no means an imposing-looking 
 town. Whether one reached it from the big 
 energetic " Bristol city " or from the more elegant 
 and aristocratic city of Exeter, farther to the west, 
 it was apt to appear poor, if not mean. Depression 
 of the eye was likely to be followed by that of 
 the lungs, for the air was heavy and relaxing, so 
 that even local doctors have been kno^^'n to resort 
 to the self-denying ordinance of advising their 
 patients to get out of it as often as possible. 
 A longer inspection, however, was calculated to 
 modify a first hasty condemnation of the old to^Mi. 
 If its air was a little soporific, it was flushed now 
 and again with quickening currents borne by the 
 rushing tides of the river from the near-h^ng 
 Bristol Channel. If the broad sweep of more or 
 less marshy flats to the south and east bred ague 
 and other evil things, these " moors " were a 
 fattening pastui'age which made the town a mart 
 for excellent butter, cheese, and other commodities.
 
 4 MY LIFE AND FRIPINDS 
 
 The muddy river itself, vv^hich looked the picture 
 of uiiYvholesome stagnation when the tide was 
 low, contributed to our welfare. Spring-tides 
 lifted the water to so high a level that ships of 
 a respectable tonnage could reach the docks of 
 our port. 
 
 The trade of our tovvii included not merely the 
 importation of coal from South Wales, together 
 with tim.ber, artificial manures, and other things 
 from, more distant shores, but the exportation of 
 corn and other agricultural produce. The lan- 
 guages of Frenchmen, Norwegians, and other 
 foreign sailors were frequently to be heard about 
 the docks, and I first tried my tongue at conver- 
 sational French with some of the sailors who 
 wandered about the town in low caps and baggy 
 linen trousers hawking strings of onions. By the 
 earl}'^ forties Bridgwater iiad got linked up with 
 the Bristol and Exeter Railway ; and as people 
 had not yet begun to bother their heads about 
 cutting a Severn tunnel, the owners of the 
 coasting vessels, w^hich made up most of the 
 shipping on the Parret, had a good time. 
 
 It is only the ignorant stranger, glancing at our 
 town from a railway carriage, that takes the 
 country to be fiat ; the native knows that it loves 
 and clings to the hills. As soon as you reach the 
 end of the town going west or north-west you will 
 come upon a quite respectable natural hill. These 
 adjacent modest elevations suffice for views of a 
 wide expanse of country, with land and sea, plain 
 and hill marked off with a map-like distinctness. 
 From them the land and the sea look closely
 
 BRIDGWATER 6 
 
 interlocked. Pointing to the Steep and Flat 
 Holms are projecting headlands, eager arms 
 of Mother Earth stretched out towards her 
 fugitive children, who look forlorn in the chilly 
 mist ; while on the low fla.ts rise solitary conical 
 hills, which long ago were islands, though now 
 abandoned by the receding water. Here a 
 glance will reveal the truth about the land's 
 flatness. Large stretches of plain there un- 
 doubtedly are in the vicinity of the town ; yet 
 the plain is a broad valley between two fair ranges 
 of hill — the Mendips, softened in the distance, and 
 the Quantocks, so protectively near as to show 
 not only the dents of their cosy combes, but their 
 clumps of wind- driven firs. To the Bridgwater 
 man the proximity of these hills is a fact of capital 
 importance. They speak to him of breezy uplands, 
 where shy deer may be seen in the distance etched 
 above the sky-line, of long Avinding combes, in 
 whose crystal brooks frolic young trout, and 
 where the cunning fox keeps the secret of his lair. 
 Besides the tradition of sport handed down from 
 the days of King John, they can boast of a chain 
 of fine old buildings, churches, and manor-houses ; 
 while to a lover of our literature they recalled 
 the golden days when Coleridge walked with 
 Wordsworth or Doroth}^ Wordsworth about the 
 vv^oods and meadows which skirt the hills. Re- 
 moter places, too, like Dunster on one side and 
 Cheddar and Glastonbury on the other, were 
 spiritually annexed by us. And the dull flats 
 themselves, near-lying Sedgemoor and the rest, 
 were proudly exhibited to those who loved
 
 6 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 beautiful church towers and thrilhng historical 
 associations. 
 
 In thus laying stress on its neighbourhood I 
 must not be supposed to underrate the attractions 
 of the town itself. If much of the architecture 
 was commonplace, it had some redeeming features. 
 There was its finely conceived centre, the Cornhill 
 with its market-place, to which all the streets 
 converged. Approaching it from the east, you 
 saw behind it on the left the elegant church — large 
 even for Somerset — the lofty spire of which was 
 held up firmly by a crenellated square tower. It 
 contains the one art treasure of our town, a fine 
 altar-piece, about the origin of w^hich there has 
 been some bold romancing, probably the work of 
 a seventeenth-century Italian painter. For the 
 lover of old streets Bridgv/ater had much that 
 was interesting. Some of them were narrow and 
 curving, with next to no footway, reminding one 
 of those of Siena and other Italian towns. Now 
 and then one would come upon a stretch of high 
 brick wall over which trees peeped, the hiding- 
 place of some garden, marking perhaps the site of 
 an ancient Franciscan priory. 
 
 More thrillingly mysterious than those conventual- 
 looking walls was the ruined water-gate of the old 
 castle, to be seen on the West Quay. You may get 
 sight of the mouldy, dank-looking archway by 
 entering between two low folding doors, and it will 
 certainly give you in the gloomy light an eerie 
 impression of slow secular decay. Though the 
 walls of the castle have long ago disappeared, one 
 still meets with reminders of it. In an otherwise
 
 ANCESTRY 7 
 
 perfectly level town, there is an anomalous rise 
 as one goes from the Quay through the spacious 
 and genteel Castle Street up to Castle Square, 
 which is explained by the fact that on the site 
 of the Square there once stood the keep of the 
 old fortress. 
 
 Another curious relic of the old town is the 
 short blind-alley of a street named Blake Street, 
 from the old house in which the brave Puritan 
 Admiral is said to have been born. This street 
 is not very easy to find ; so Bridgwater people, 
 not so many years since, brought out their 
 Admiral's fame into the full daylight, setting 
 up a statue to him in front of the market-place 
 on the Cornhill. One more reminder survives in 
 the name Monmouth Street, down which, the 
 story says, the rebellious Duke rode on his fateful 
 journey to Sedgemoor. 
 
 To many, more noteworthy than the old build- 
 ings and the fair landscapes will seem the great 
 natural curiosity of the town, the bore, or high 
 tidal wave, that sweeps up with rousing voice 
 between the sleepy mudbanks on the turn of a 
 spring-tide. As a spectacle of death and silence 
 suddenly giving place to life and riotous sound 
 it would be hard to beat. 
 
 Of my ancestry I have little to record. My 
 father came of a seafaring stock. In the church- 
 yard of St. Decuman's, outside Watchet, stands my 
 paternal grandfather's tombstone, on which is 
 graven a rough yet eloquent expression of a sailor's 
 resignation when finally " home from the sea "
 
 8 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 and near the end of life's buffetings. There was, I 
 think, some Welsh blood on my mother's side. 
 Neither my father nor my mother was a cold, 
 phlegmatic Saxon — if there be such a racial 
 variety. A certain quickness of response to im- 
 pressions and something of emotional excitability 
 characterized both, though the turbulence of 
 passion was excluded by strength of will, aided by 
 the moderating influence of a shrewd practical 
 intelligence. I have inherited some of their 
 temperamental warmth. Whether I was, as my 
 friend Grant Allen used to assure me, a Celt, I 
 cannot say. What is certain is that, like my 
 father, I was of a mercurial temper, spoke quickly 
 and walked briskly, was easily moved by " the 
 tears of things," yet ready and hearty in 
 laughter. 
 
 In the forties and fifties, Bridgwa,ter, like 
 many another country town, w^as a rather dull 
 place. In a general way life jogged along with 
 hardly m^ore of lively variation than the revolutions 
 of a donkey turning a wheel. The town i^.xhibited 
 in acute form the social distinctions of profession 
 and trade, church and dissent. The number of 
 religious sects was remarkable, and I remember 
 how sorely it perplexed a German lady friend who 
 first made acquaintance with the intim.ate ramnfi- 
 cations of our religious world as the wife of the 
 Unitarian minister in our town. These distinctions 
 implied social barriers which were only raised in 
 certain favoured cases, as when a wealthy and 
 influential Unitarian merchant mJght be admitted 
 to the higher social stratum, which was composed
 
 SECTS AND PARTIES 9 
 
 in the main of those who were both professional 
 men and churchmen. The sharp pohtical division 
 of Liberal and Tory coincided for the most part 
 with this doubly grounded bifurcation of Bridgwater 
 " society." The rigid separation of classes was 
 at once the effect and the cause of a poor repre- 
 sentation of the intellectual life in our town. It 
 is chiefly a comm.on love of things of the mind, 
 whether embodied in books or in works of art, 
 w^hich brings together men of different callings, 
 religious communities and the rest. 
 
 My father vv^as at once a trader, a^ Baptist, and, 
 for his time, a pronounced Radical in politics ; 
 hence these sharp divisions of middle- class society 
 came weightily home to us. Yet the assumptions 
 of superiority implied in them were, I am sure, 
 never resented. Dissenters had as yet scared}^ 
 begun to seek by political and other m.cans the 
 entree into a higher social circle. We were indeed 
 apt to be proud of our family commercialism, of 
 our dissent, and of our Radical-Liberalism ; and 
 we derived amusement from the downward 
 glances of those who liked to think themselves 
 our social superiors. 
 
 In those days wedded folk had not begun to 
 be scrimpy in the duty of bringing children into 
 the world, and families of six or thereabouts were 
 rather the rule than the exception. Before I 
 entered upon my teens our family had reached 
 the respectable figure of eight children, a number 
 which remained undiminished until I was in the 
 middle of the thirties. We found a full and varied 
 life in our home, and the richness of this life was
 
 10 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 in a measure promoted by the absence of more 
 exciting distractions outside. 
 
 If vivid and full recollections of the first years 
 be an essential qualification for writing one's 
 memoirs, I am hopelessly disqualified. Most 
 of the reports of memory come to me hardly 
 less thin and faint than ghostly voices echoing 
 down a long corridor, or like human speech heard 
 at the far end of a telephone and confused with 
 wholly unrecognizable sounds. Of the first years 
 I can recover only a few of such echoes. So far 
 as I can ascertain, I had nothing of the rich, 
 childish fancy which gives to the visible world 
 a strange yet ravishing magic and serves to 
 impress its scenes indelibly on the memory. Nor 
 was I in any sense a dreamer. If I had a 
 bent in that direction, it was no doubt kept 
 down to rudimentary dimensions by the rough 
 and tumble of our rather crowded home. Of 
 my first three or four years, spent in a house 
 in Salmon Parade on the east bank of the 
 Parret, I have managed to preserve only one 
 dim fragmentary impression, that of mounted 
 horsemen splashing through our street, on the 
 occasion, without doubt, of an exceptionally high 
 tide. But who can say what these first so-called 
 recollections really mean : whether they are in 
 part at least true memories of things seen by us, 
 refreshed from time to time, or merely reverbera- 
 tions of tales repeatedly told us by our elders ? 
 Even in my second home in Monmouth Street, 
 where I reached the age of twelve or more, I failed
 
 EARLY MEMORIES 11 
 
 to garner many distinct memories of single impres- 
 sions. I can, it is true, recall faintly the look of 
 the long garden where we boys sometimes played 
 at the thrilling pastime of gunpowder explosions, 
 and could secure a daily laugh by watching the 
 ostler clean our restive horse. I seem to see still 
 his futile tuggings at the halter as " Jimmy," in 
 his most freakish mood, renewed his rearings and 
 gyrations, and to hear his rich output of Somerset 
 epithets when half cajoling, half execrating his 
 troublesome charge. Yet, oddly enough, I pre- 
 serve no mental picture of the horse itself. 
 Nor can I recall even the rooms of the house 
 where so much of my time must have been 
 spent — only a blurred sketch of the hinder out- 
 side wall, where the ripening nectarines used to 
 glow in the morning sun. 
 
 One prominent feature in the early memory- 
 picture is a long fruit and vegetable garden, in 
 which my brother and I were engaged in the boyish 
 occupation of fetching pears down from a well- 
 laden tree. This tree was rooted in the adjoining 
 garden, but stretched its branches invitingly over 
 the wall into ours. It belonged to our uncle, and it 
 may be that in helping ourselves in this fashion 
 we rashly counted on avuncular generosity. What 
 then was our cruel disappointment when the uncle's 
 head suddenly appeared above the dividing wall 
 and he began, in alarming tones, to abuse us for 
 robbing him of his pears ! 
 
 But the most vividly outstanding memories of the 
 Monmouth Street home relate to my eldest sister. 
 One Sunday afternoon, more from inadvertence
 
 12 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 perhaps than from a wish to spy, I opened the 
 drawing-room door and saw this sister sitting very 
 close to the gentleman who was at this time " paying 
 her his addresses." I got a good scolding later, 
 and the experience set me thinking. I knew what 
 was meant by the troublesome excuse " I am 
 engaged " when I wanted somebody to do a thing 
 for me ; but this sort of " engagement," which 
 monopolized the drawing-room on a Sunday after- 
 noon, was another and a quite baffling matter. A 
 second experience, recalled under the fuller blaze 
 of memory's lamp, was the death of this sister. 
 She was known and remembered among us as 
 having a very gentle disposition and a deep, un- 
 demonstrative piety. The fervency of her piety 
 was shown in her insisting shortly before her death 
 on giving us all, sisters and brothers and servants, 
 as well as parents and husband, a religious 
 farewell. Her beautiful face, ahvays delicate, 
 and no^v refined awa}^ to an almost transparent 
 mask for her ardent spirit, looking pleadingly at 
 me as she whispered her last admonition to be 
 " good," returns to my inner perception as I write. 
 My intensified sensibility was, I remem-ber, tor- 
 tured during that solemn leave-taking by the 
 sound of a hand-organ playing near the death- 
 chamber. That moment's experience of defiant 
 horror msiy perhaps have started the growth 
 of my lifelong and almost furious detestation 
 of the naturalized British " grinder " ; from 
 which the musical and cheery itinerant instru- 
 ment one meets with in Italy must be carefully 
 distinguished.
 
 EARLY MEMORIES 13 
 
 The regime of our home was a Puritan one, 
 temxpered by a fund of generous allowance in our 
 governors. The religious practices, morning and 
 evening prayers in the home and Sunday services 
 in the chapel, were strictly observed. My father's 
 prayers were extempore. They had a certain 
 spontaneous eloquence which, following the custom 
 of those days, we referred to a divine unction. 
 Sunday was presented to us in a kind of halo which 
 blotted out from sight m.ost of our weekday in- 
 terests and occupations. We were provided with 
 a variety of what was regarded as edifying Sunday 
 literature, its heaviness being relieved by illus- 
 trations which, if not beautiful, had an eerie 
 fascination for young eyes. Among these was 
 Foxe's " Book of Martyrs," a work which John 
 Bunyan seems to have held in higher repute than 
 v^e children. Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," and, 
 in a lesser degree, his '' Holy War," had the right 
 proportions of the terrible and the lovely ; and 
 even to-day such names as Apollyon, Giant Despair, 
 Greatheart, Vanity Fair, and the Delectable Moun- 
 tains send a thrill of terror or of wondering delight 
 through my blood. And oh ! the delicious queer- 
 ness of those names, Mr. Worldly- Wiseman, Mr. 
 Facing-both-Ways, and the rest ! Of the " goody " 
 stories I remember best " Sandford and Merton," 
 probably because I so cordially disliked its obvious 
 preachiness. How happy we should have been if 
 somebody had told us of the laughable attempts 
 of the author, Thomas Day, to train his two girl 
 protegees in the Rousseau manner by firing a pistol 
 at their skirts so as to harden them in endurance.
 
 14 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 This imposition of a weekly fasting from agree- 
 able mental food grew less severe as the years 
 passed ; partly because we were growing and 
 demanding more liberty of choice, partly as a con- 
 sequence of the wider views which my elder sisters 
 were now imbibing. The newer style of family 
 magazine introduced later, such as the Sunday 
 Magazine and Good Words, had, I think, a con- 
 siderable influence in effecting a half-stealthy intro- 
 duction of fiction into religious homes. It was an 
 interesting moment in our family history when 
 the fitness of a book for Sunday reading began to 
 be discussable. 
 
 A certain severity of discipline, against which 
 we youngsters were apt to kick, arose from the 
 circumstance that ours was a busy house requiring 
 much punctilious regularity in the matter of meals 
 and other things. My father was a hard-working 
 man, for whom time was money, and he was away 
 in his office, save for the brief meal intervals, until 
 six o'clock and later. My mother, too, had her 
 busy sphere. The activities of the domestic hive 
 included in those days not only such obvious 
 functions as the weekly washing and ironing, but 
 the weekly baking, the less frequent brewing — 
 which it is said was done by women who started 
 work at three in the morning, — the occasional bouts 
 of dressmaking when a dressmaker would come 
 for a shilling a day and her keep, and the great 
 summer occupations of preserving fruits, pickling, 
 and making sweet cordials, such as the invaluable 
 elderberry wine. In a large house with a family
 
 EARLY MEMORIES 15 
 
 of eight children two servants were obviously 
 inadequate to keep things going. My mother was 
 energetic and capable of prolonged exertions, and 
 she looked to her girls to show a like strenuousness, 
 more particularly by assisting in the dressmaking 
 and ironing. 
 
 The growing pressure of our needs developed in 
 my mother a severe regard for the economies. I 
 remember how glad she would be when, during a 
 visit to Steart or other primitive seaside place, 
 we boys succeeded in getting for the table some 
 succulent silver eels. These marine creatures hid 
 themselves at low water in slimy pools under 
 stones, and in order to get them out and slay them 
 we had to splash ourselves with mud. On our 
 entrance after the chase, our much-tried parent 
 would look despairingly for a moment at our 
 bespattered clothes, but before there was time for 
 a scolding to escape her we had brought a look of 
 more than satisfaction to her face by showing the 
 contents of our basket. The captains of our coast- 
 ing vessels knew her weakness, and when their 
 vessels returned from the coast of Wales they 
 would " remember missus " by bringing her a keg 
 of cockles or even of oysters. 
 
 In spite of sombre Sabbatarian restrictions, and 
 in spite, too, of absorbing business preoccupations, 
 our home managed to keep something of joyous- 
 ness, and even of gaiety, in its atmosphere. The 
 appearance of our father on the scene in the evening 
 was like a belated outburst of sunshine. He had 
 a full, resonant laugh, and enjoyed a " capital joke " 
 with the lustiest. He loved, too, a bit of romping
 
 16 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 play with his bairns after the long day's work was 
 over. I faintly recall his look as, before we little 
 kids were marched off to bed, he would go down on 
 all fours on the floor and play the part of horse for 
 us delighted riders. Our excitement must have 
 cost him dear when we kept our seat on his back, by 
 grasping his long side- whiskers. I have retained 
 a particular gratitude for these paternal unbendings 
 and stoopings to infantile sport. They brought 
 him nearer to us and saved us from the absurdities 
 of some "up-to-date" children described in recent 
 literature, v/ho regard their parents as poor inferior 
 creatures inhabiting a stupid abnormal world quite 
 out of touch with their own. 
 
 As compared with children of to-day we had, 
 of course, only a few toys, and these were of simple 
 construction and inexpensive. But perhaps we 
 managed to get as much imaginative enjoyment 
 out of them as children now get out of more 
 elaborate and costly ones. Their scarcity had 
 at least the advantage of securing for us a full 
 jubilant delight on receiving a new one. As we 
 grew we were admitted into the secrets of such 
 games as dominoes. Our mother had a good 
 calculating brain, and she used to get quite ex- 
 cited over the game. Later a bagatelle board 
 came upon the scene, and this was of course greatly 
 preferred by us boys, not only as being more a 
 thorough game than the arithmetical exercise of 
 dominoes, but as giving us something to do. My 
 /nother, I remember, was equally enthusiastic 
 over the new game, and would spring about like 
 a young girl after making a good stroke.
 
 CHRISTMASTIDE 17 
 
 The j oiliest time, when parents and children 
 sank their differences and became wholly one in 
 frolicsome play, was Christmastide. A day or 
 two before the feast we might be taken by father 
 to the grocer's shop to buy oranges, almonds and 
 raisins, and other lovely dainties. I delighted 
 especially in the sight of the pretty boxes, with 
 lively Southern ladies painted on the cover, in 
 which the French plums were neatly arranged 
 under folds of white paper with serrated edges. 
 The grocers' shops had a complex charm for our 
 eyes, and for our nostrils too. We liked to stand 
 outside the window of one of them in awesome 
 v/ondcr gazing at the figures of the two Chinese 
 mandarins — poor, unhappy-looking exiles who gave 
 expression to their weariness by perpetual noddings 
 of the head. 
 
 The fun began on Christmas Eve. In those days 
 there was no Christmas-tree, but we got our beauti- 
 ful dazzling lights in another way. Father would 
 place on the glowing drawing-room fire a large 
 ashen faggot which shot up tongues of flame — 
 a marvel for all beholding — and further delighted 
 us by the splutterings and cracking noises it 
 emitted. Christmas Day was much what it is now, 
 a frank indulgence in " good cheer." A special 
 feature at breakfast was a pile of hot flakey 
 " manchets." The thrilling hour was after tea, 
 v/hen, the afternoon siesta of our elders having been 
 completed, we were free to romp and play games. 
 To the head of the family was allotted the part of 
 Father Christmas. His arrival at the front door 
 was announced by the maid in mysterious whig- 
 
 8
 
 18 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 perings, which whipped up our curiosity to the 
 bursting-point. The disguise at first completely 
 took us in, though our peering curiosity soon 
 discovered something of the familiar. 
 
 The Christmas entertainment which remains 
 freshest in my memory was a sort of puppet-show 
 of moving shadows. The apparatus was simple 
 enough — just a clothes-horse or two covered with 
 sheets, a few paper cuttings of houses, bridges, 
 and other objects for the mise en scene, and for 
 actors some cardboard figures of men and animals 
 whose bodies and arms were pivoted and movable 
 by strings attached. We sat outside in the dark 
 and gazed with rapt impatience at the brightly 
 illumined screen, across which might flit some- 
 times an awful formless shadow-apparition. Our 
 entertainers, standing, like the Punch and Judy 
 showman, out of view, would throw upon the 
 screen strange dark little figures — a manikin re- 
 pairing a bridge, a scissors-grinder, or a fractious 
 horse and his rider, accompanying the show with 
 a characteristic song or cry, such as " The bridge 
 is abroken, and can't be mended," or " Scissors 
 to grind." It was a huge delight to us to see 
 some of our favourite town sights imitated in 
 this way. It was, too, a great mystery ; for 
 though we saw that it was the magic of light 
 which did the work, we had not enough 
 mechanical knowledge to guess the secret of 
 the moving puppets. Keen, however, as we 
 were to solve the puzzle, we were rather sorry, 
 after the explanation had been hit upon, to part 
 with our sweet illusions. This little attempt at a
 
 VISITORS 19 
 
 marionette performance was artistically poor 
 enough, and cannot be compared with the dainty 
 Puppenspiel of which Goethe tells us in " Dichtung 
 und Wahrheit " and in " Wilhelm Meister," re- 
 calling his own childish experiences. Yet it may 
 be that the greater mystery of our show and the 
 weird fascination of the shadows made it hardly 
 less entrancing. 
 
 After our sisters had been to a boarding-school, 
 the girl friends that they had made there would 
 pay us visits, which helped to enlarge the home 
 circle and its interests. They brought possibilities 
 of a picnic to the pretty sloping park of Halswell, 
 and even of a drive to Cockercombe or other gate- 
 way to the Quantock heights. And what was 
 more exciting for children, perhaps, they brought 
 us stories, both tragic and comic in tone, of girls' 
 school experiences. Later, when I was beginning 
 to care for books, the visits might introduce a new 
 novel to be read aloud. Reading aloud was one 
 of our great treats, and I remember how we used 
 to have our nerves strung up to the highest pitch 
 of fearful ecstasy when listening to the adventures 
 of Uncle Tom and the other figures in Mrs. Beecher 
 Stowe's narrative. 
 
 Besides these longer visits, we often had a call 
 from friends coming to the town. It might be 
 somebody from the Athelney neighbourhood, or 
 more distant regions of the flat moors — a rough- 
 looking countryman, perhaps, who talked the good 
 broad " Zummerzit " dialect, and showed some- 
 thing of a yokel's awkwardness in sitting down to
 
 80 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 our table and talking to young ladies. The 
 weekly market-day, and still more St. Matthew's 
 Fair about the end of September, was the time 
 for these callers, who would be asked by my father 
 to come and take " pot-luck " at our table. Among 
 these country folk one ever-welcome guest was, 
 like the farther of Phillis in Mrs. Gaskell's story, a 
 farmer- preacher. He was of unusual height, and 
 had a stoop, begotten, our childish fancy suggested, 
 of many bendings of his back on entering doorways 
 unaccommodatingly low. He bubbled over with 
 merry humour, and I loved to watch his cheeks, as 
 rosy as one of his Somerset apples, crinkle up and 
 half hide his eyes as the mirthful fit took him. 
 
 With parents who, though deeply serious, were 
 disposed to be large-hearted, and with sisters 
 gradually broadening out in their views, the re- 
 ligious ordeal became tempered. Parents and 
 children had a good endowment of humour, and 
 for us younger ones there lay close to the 
 solemnities refreshing springs of merriment. 
 Even during the hushed minutes of family 
 prayers our lively young perceptions would be 
 tickled by some droll incongruity, as the sudden 
 outburst of a mal-apropos from a small child 
 whom the authorities had been hasty in allow- 
 ing to take part in the trying ceremony. 
 
 But it was in chapel that we early looked 
 out for momentary reliefs from the strain of 
 self-compression imposf-d by the service, more 
 especially by the long sermon. We began to be 
 taken to chapel at an early age. The building 
 had planted itself rathe? boldly just oppoTsite
 
 IN CHAPEL 21 
 
 St. Mary's Church ; but in so doing it had — whether 
 from a spontaneous prudence or under compulsion 
 I do not know — tempered its look of aggressiveness 
 by placing itself out of sight behind an arched 
 entrance. Yet if its exterior had a shut-in look, 
 its interior, after you had passed the dark corner 
 under the gallery where the Sunday-school children 
 were packed away during the morning service, 
 wore a most open aspect. There were no side 
 galleries, and the rows of pews, both on the sides 
 and at the entrance end, were arranged in amphi- 
 theatre-like tiers. From a juvenile point of view 
 this arrangement had the obvious advantage over 
 the old plan of level secretive pews of giving our 
 eyes a full and unobstructed command of the scene. 
 Everything that occurred seemed made to entertain 
 us, and I am pretty sure that our sisters were 
 hardly less keen than ourselves in noting the 
 appearance of something new and funny. The 
 entrance of the worshippers was charged with 
 queer meanings for young eyes. The various 
 gaits of men and women alike, as they marched 
 with something of the pompousness or of the 
 awkward constraint of closely observed mortals^ 
 down the steps, along the aisle, and up the steps to 
 their pews, were an engrossing entertainm_ent ; nor 
 did we fail to note novel and piquant features in 
 their dress. The modes of settling down in the 
 peWj too — the smoothing out the dress, the emitting 
 a little nervous cough, and the rest — had a poignant 
 interest for us. And when the moment of col- 
 lective sitting down to the sermon was reached, 
 the tension of expectation was almost more than
 
 22 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 we could bear. The possibilities of all sorts of 
 little self-adjustive vocal utterances kept our 
 attention spellbound. Still more exciting was the 
 watching of the poses of the head, so as to catch the 
 first oncoming of a nodding somnolence ; for it 
 seemed to us that we should be sure some day to 
 see a collapse of the whole human frame. 
 
 Sometimes more in-esistible intrusions of the 
 droll would reward our diligent peering. In one 
 of the higher rows of seats there used to sit an old 
 gentleman, exquisitely got up in frilled shirt, who 
 was wont now and again to regale himself— if not 
 also to ward off a threatening sleepiness — with a 
 good pinch of snuff. But, alas ! his hand was 
 shaky, and the fragrant powder had a way of 
 falling into the immaculate frills ; which catas- 
 trophe he would meet in hot haste by trying to 
 flick away the snuff, growing ever redder and redder. 
 
 I would not suggest that even in the first unin- 
 structed years of chapel-going I found only this 
 sort of childish amusement in the proceedings. A 
 more serious attitude was developed by the musical 
 part of the worship. At the time I speak of, some 
 dissenting chapels were already exerting themselves 
 to relieve the drab Puritanism of their services by 
 cultivating a more artistic kind of choral music. 
 It happened that an influential merchant in our 
 congregation had trained his ear on the classical 
 works of Mozart, Beethoven, and even earlier 
 composers. He reorganized the singing in the 
 chapel, substituting for the old jejune hymn- tunes 
 others based on motives taken from the works of 
 these masters ; and he actually added to the vocal
 
 QUAKERS 23 
 
 part anthems with solos, some of which, I believe, 
 were rendered by paid professional singers. The 
 organ and choir were in a gallery at the back, and 
 invisible from our pew. I drank in the music 
 with a delicious wonder, and, if I thought at 
 all, referred it to some mysterious angelic choir. 
 Perhaps the effect of this first introduction to the 
 magic of good music lives on in the feeling with 
 which the best music still inspires me — of being 
 lifted high above terrestrial things. 
 
 Our readiness to find amusement in the pro- 
 ceedings of the chapel service was part of a 
 general disposition to make our world as far as 
 possible an amusing spectacle. In our small town 
 there was a rich crop of personal oddities. The 
 number of religious bodies itself furnished a cer- 
 tain droll diversity of appearance and of behaviour, 
 and among these bodies it was, I think, the Quakers 
 who ministered most to our appetite for piquant 
 eccentricities. It was a delight to see the dear 
 Quaker ladies in their grey silk dresses and bonnets, 
 and the elderly gentlemen, too, darkly clad in broad 
 hats, cut-away coats, knee-breeches and gaiters. It 
 was a greater treat to be taken into one of their 
 shops and overhear their quaint conversation. 
 
 Among these was a chemist's shop, in which, in 
 addition to the funny Quaker-talk, we got the 
 thrilling experience of going up close to the great 
 coloured globes which had glared at us through 
 the window like a pair of monster eyes. The 
 chemists in Bridgwater, even when not Quakers, 
 were given to affecting certain oddities, and I 
 seem able to recall an alert old gentleman who
 
 24 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 delighted us by skipping about his shop in a white 
 Eton jacket. To return to the Quakers : even 
 their ways of doing business were apt to be pecuhar. 
 A Quaker chemist, on being asked by a customer 
 how^ much he had to pay, would reply by asking, 
 " What hast thou been accustomed to pay ? " 
 This illustrates, perhaps, in a whimsical way a char- 
 acteristic with which we used to credit Quakers — 
 a strict adherence to the terms of a bargain once 
 made. Among the early experiences of which 
 blurred impressions still survive in memory are 
 visits to a dear old Quaker lady. Though a bit 
 prim-looking, she had a sweet expression ; so that 
 something in me — a bit of nascent priggishness 
 perhaps— v/as shocked when she corrected some 
 excessive warmth in a remark made by my acknow- 
 ledged corrector with the words, " Thee oughtn't 
 to say that, James Sully," 
 
 For all his congeniality of tem^per and playful- 
 ness, my father had a deep-laid respect for duty, 
 and he expected obedience from his boys. I have 
 no reason to think that we were a particularly 
 bad lot, but we had in us, I dare say, the average 
 amount of " original sin," and I in particular 
 came in for some chastisement which, I feel sure, 
 was " richly deserved." Ructions are apt to occur 
 even in a closely united family if the parents happen 
 to be themselves strong-v/illed and to have be- 
 queathed some of their masterfulness of spirit to 
 their offspring. I cannot remember that we ever 
 resented the severity of our father's discipline ; 
 though, like other boys, we found at the mom.ent 
 the short prefacing discourse, in which he sought
 
 MY FATHER 25 
 
 to persuade us that it was parental love which 
 prompted him to chastise us, a hard pill to swallow. 
 So far as I can remember, I had, even in the early- 
 years, no extravaga^nt ideas of my parent's in- 
 fallibility, and was ready now and again to challenge 
 his opinions. But I had a lot of admiration 
 for him. This feeling had more than one root. 
 His cheery bonhomie and generosity drew out 
 our affections. His discipline shov\^ed an unre- 
 laxing regard for impartiality and fairness. We 
 paid him, too, a kind of hero-worship. This came 
 to us to a large extent by way of traditions handed 
 down by our mother and sisters. We heard what 
 hardships he had bravely faced in his boyish days, 
 and how brave he had proved himself during the 
 terrible cholera scourge of 1849. Just opposite 
 us there was a "rookery" which contributed a 
 large quota of the deaths in the town. Our uncle 
 urged him to remove his family, and offered the 
 hospitality of his house at Wembdon. But father 
 declined to move us, viewing a flight at such an 
 hour as cowardice as well as lack of religious 
 trust. In his rash carelessness he even went so 
 far as to take part in the gloomy work of moving 
 the bodies of the poor cholera victims by night to 
 the churchyard — a risky undertaking, with which, 
 it may be supposed, but few were prepared to 
 charge themselves. We were proud, too, of his 
 plucky refusal to pay church rates, a step which 
 helped to make him obnoxious to the " respect- 
 ables." Another story of his bravery told us of 
 his carrying some of us, when cut off by a rising 
 tide at VVatchet, up a steep cliff.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SCHOOLDAYS 
 
 The memory deposit of my early schooling is 
 scanty enough. I was first taken in hand by an 
 elder sister, an experiment which lasted but a short 
 time, and was, I fear, no great success. After 
 this I was marched off, when still a " wee mite," 
 to a dame-school in the town, hand in hand with 
 the sister next above me in the family scale. Then 
 came a trial of a second Bridgwater dame-school, 
 with a mistress of whom I still preserve a fairly 
 clear mental portrait. She had a lot of trim curls 
 of the lightest shade of yellow. I half worshipped 
 those curls, at once delighted by their entrancing 
 prettiness and cast down by the rebuking look 
 their too perfect habit of keeping in place gave to 
 my own unruly locks. 
 
 The third experiment was a dame boarding- 
 school in a village lying among the flats to the 
 north of the town. It was not far from East 
 Brent, the abode of a famous archdeacon, a High 
 Churchman, with a holy detestation of dissent, 
 for whom my father naturally enough cherished 
 a reciprocal antipathy. It was a rather nice- 
 looking detached house with a lawn in front. 
 
 26
 
 DAME-SCHOOLS 27 
 
 Figures of Adam and Eve stood one on either side 
 of the gravel plot. They faced one another there 
 in primal nudity, and I think that our first 
 mother was holding out the fatal apple to her 
 lord. The white statues had a weird fascina- 
 tion for me, possibly because their nudity and 
 the naughty conduct of the lady invested the 
 figures for my superstitious fancy with some sort 
 of malign influence. The house and the two figures 
 had recently been painted ; and even to-day 
 when I smell fresh paint the fayade of that 
 house flanked with the improper statues glimmers 
 out for a moment from dark oblivion. 
 
 From this dame-school I was removed to still 
 another in the village of Westonzoyland. I was too 
 young to appreciate the beautiful many-windowed 
 square tower of the local church, and my English 
 history had hardly advanced enough to make me 
 interested in the adjoining battlefield of Sedge- 
 moor. ^Vhat that year or so in the old village has 
 bequeathed to memory is the image of a fair young 
 girl of about my own age for whom I cherished a 
 sentimental fondness. I was particularly proud 
 of her obstinate refusal to use the name " America," 
 for which she always substituted " Columbia," 
 thereby showing, as I thought, an unusual childish 
 respect for historical fair-play. 
 
 My third and last dame boarding-school lay 
 near to Stogursey and to the bit of solitary low- 
 cliffed shore called Shurton Bars, on which Cole- 
 ridge wrote some lines. My brother next below me 
 in age accompanied me to this school. Our school- 
 mistress, who was small and dainty in person
 
 28 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 and lively in speech and movement, had by some 
 freak of destiny paired with a thatcher. He was a 
 big man, and had a large head and protuberant 
 eyes, one of which refused to look at you. Yet 
 his bigness, aided though it was by the cast in 
 the eye, gave to his aspect nothing of the for- 
 midable. He showed himself, on the contrary, 
 a particularly harmless person, as he moved 
 slowly about, talking but seldom, and then 
 only in a soft, a,pologetic sort of voice. The 
 divergent eye somehow helped this expression 
 of meekness of spirit — a wish not to be aggres- 
 sive in a glance. We boys soon grew to like 
 him, partly for the pleasant look of his ruddy 
 cheeks framed in by white hair, and partly for the 
 gentleness of his manner. Perhaps, too, we were 
 drawn to him by a fellow-feeling, a common wish 
 to escape from the almost fierce activity of our 
 mistress, from her rather nagging ways, and from 
 her depressing insistence upon the superior status 
 of her family. Yet the lady's mental preoccupation 
 with her ancestry did not, fortunately for us, lead 
 her to neglect her housekeeping, which (I remember 
 with gratitude), produced excellent apple-pies for 
 the cold Sunday dinner. 
 
 Our host would sometimes take us with him on 
 his thatching expeditions, and we rather liked to 
 walk with him attired in his picturesque costum.e 
 of brown velveteen jacket and leggings. Once 
 he led us into the squire's park, where I was much 
 impressed by the great clumps of trees on the 
 tops of which the rooks cawed, by the broad, 
 spacious lawns and glades where the deer loitered,
 
 ST. FRANCIS 29 
 
 and by the fine old mansion. The restfulness 
 that for my ear still Im-ks in the sound of the 
 rooks' cawing dates from that visit. 
 
 The little chapel near our cottage had the well- 
 known aspect of the old country conventicle. The 
 appearance of the minister harmonized with that 
 of the chapel. His spare figure, lean cheeks, and 
 shiny black clothes spoke of the res angusta domi. 
 The gentleness of his soft blue eyes was very 
 "winning. He, too, had something meek and 
 apologetic in his manner, and this impression 
 was oddly intensified for me by the presence of a 
 hairy wart on one cheek. We looked upon him 
 as a saint, and had we then heard of St. Francis, 
 should have taken him to be a follower of his Lady 
 Poverty. His double duty at two chapels some 
 miles apart led to his sharing in our cold Sunday 
 dinner, and I enjoyed watching the gusto with 
 which his spare body attacked the cold pork and 
 apple-tart. 
 
 His congregation consisted of a variety of rustic 
 types which might have contributed additions to 
 the rich portrait-gallery of Mr. Thomas Hardy. 
 A special feature of the service was the entrance 
 of a procession of tallish men, who no doubt had 
 their satisfactory reasons for remaining outside 
 to the last moment. They would straggle in and 
 out with most ungainly strides, and I fancy we 
 used to call them " the awkward squad." One 
 or tv/o of them held the office of flute-player or 
 other performer in the choral service, and their 
 attempts at harmonious orchestration were of en- 
 grossing interest to us boys. Technical obstacles
 
 30 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 sometimes occurred, when the musicians would 
 hold a parley one with another, and possibly with 
 some of the lay members of the congregation. 
 The occasion of a baptism gave much anxiety to 
 our hard-pressed minister. A well-filled baptistery 
 in the middle of a narrow aisle was not easy of 
 circumvention, and I remember an occasion, 
 which has become historical for our family, when 
 an extravagantly tall rustic, walking as majes- 
 tically as he knew how, suddenly disappeared 
 with a splash, to rise again with all the majesty 
 washed out of his figure. 
 
 But my memories of the Burton chapel are 
 not all of a droll kind. I connect with it one 
 of my earliest experiences of religious — or quasi- 
 religious — exaltation. A young girl — probably a 
 day pupil at our little dame-school — was taken 
 with a serious illness and her life was despaired of. 
 In the chapel we were much moved by the prayers 
 offered up for her. Then she got better, and I 
 seem still to recall her attenuated form and pale 
 face when she came among us again, and still to 
 catch a faint reverberation of the delicious awe 
 which captured me on looking upon one who had 
 just been at the gate of Paradise. 
 
 When about twelve years old I was taken 
 from the mixed dame-school and placed under 
 the master of a private school in our town. I 
 had now to work more seriously, and the new 
 conditions developed new dispositions. I had 
 inherited from my father a certain plodding 
 pertinacity. Tradition says that when preparing 
 my lessons I was sometimes so carried away by
 
 HOME LIFE 31 
 
 my eager temper as to hurl my books to the 
 boundaries of the room, and, I suspect, strong 
 expletives after them, for no better reason than 
 that they refused to explain themselves quickly 
 enough to my impatient understanding. Such 
 outbursts might well appear to argue a puling 
 breakdown of the pertinacious attitude. Yet 
 the fact that I would almost immediately after- 
 wards pick up the inoffensive projectile is against 
 this view. I feel pretty sure that these 
 vehement kickings against an imposed task, 
 traces of which survived in much later years, 
 were useful to me. The short explosive fit gave 
 full satisfaction to an impatient impulse, while 
 it served, perhaps, indirectly, as a few rapid 
 pacings of the room might have done, to stoke 
 up the fire of the sustained effort. 
 
 I was now living at home, and came once more 
 under the closer influence of parents and sisters. 
 I began about this time to be promoted to com- 
 panionship with my nearest sister in her country 
 wa.lks. I recall some in the early spring to farms 
 lying near the town in sheltered hollows, where 
 the first scented violets and primroses were to be 
 found. I doubt whether any other days have 
 for me in memory quite the serenity of those first 
 spring days spent with a sister or two in meadows, 
 woods, or deep-banked lanes. The most thrilling 
 moments in these early rambles came with the 
 first note of the cuckoo. We awaited it with a 
 tense eagerness, for we knew that we had to 
 run — run as if for life — on the first hearing of it 
 if we wanted " good luck " for the year.
 
 82 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Besides the walks there were drives into the 
 country with father and mother. On entering 
 the larger and more imposing Crowpill House they 
 set their face against vulgar display ; and the 
 single horse and phaeton continued to be the one 
 " turn-out " for our drives. So we children had 
 to sit squeezed together rather tightly behind 
 our seniors. One advantage which this position 
 brought me v/as the enjoyment of the fragrance 
 of father's cigar, a luxury in which he indulged 
 only during the relaxation of a drive. Our 
 favourite directions were westwards towards the 
 Quantocks, past pretty villages like Durleigh, 
 Enmore, and Spaxton. Sometimes we would go 
 to the north-east of the town along the Bath road, 
 so as to see the pretty villages of Edington and 
 Cossington. We children had imbibed much of 
 our love of flowers from our mother, whose great 
 delight on a drive was to persuade father to stop 
 at the gate of a cottage garden so that she might 
 have a full enjoyment of the flower-show. Her 
 passion for these gardens got to be known by the 
 cottagers, who in those days had no class hostility 
 to " carriage folk " ; whereby it came about that 
 they would steal out to the garden gate and talk 
 with her about the flowers, and perhaps present 
 her with a bunch, or even with a root or two of 
 some choice rarity to be planted in her own garden. 
 
 Father had consideration for his horse, and we 
 boys were early accustomed to ease the equine 
 task by getting out and walking up the hills. I 
 have kept this habit unbroken, and sometimes 
 have got near a wrangle with a Swiss or Italian
 
 WATCHET 33 
 
 driver by insisting on dismounting at the foot of 
 a hill. 
 
 A closer glimpse of the Quantocks came with 
 the annual outing to Watchet, our favourite bath- 
 ing resort. We younger ones went down closely 
 packed in a cart. I can still recall my sensation 
 of enlarged freedom on leaving behind the liigh 
 hedgerows, provokingly exclusive to eager young 
 glances, and finding myself facing the wide open 
 slopes, sheeny with bracken. The bleating of a 
 few sheep, which broke the perfect silence of 
 the hills with a note of half-sad abandonment, 
 deepened this sense of a new freedom. The halt 
 at the inn " Castle of Comfort," set back against a 
 wood, and a stroll into the wood itself, gave us 
 other experiences of the blissful quietude of places. 
 
 At Watchet the family managed somehow to 
 stow itself away above a baker's shop, where 
 delicious biscuits, warm from the oven, were to be 
 counted upon. These summer weeks at the seaside 
 were a hygienic institution. Our father, as an old 
 " salt," was a great believer in the virtues of sea- 
 water, and I should not like to say at what tender 
 age he began to subject each of us to his rigorous 
 bathing system. The sky might be cloudy and the 
 wind chilly, but nothing was to interrupt his " cure." 
 Three dips apiece were the regulation length of the 
 bath, father doing the dipping and then handing 
 us over to mother and the maid to be well rubbed. 
 I still recall my feeling of terror lest I should not 
 be ready for the next blinding submersion. 
 
 Other enlargements of my acquaintance with my 
 county and its inhabitants were obtained by occa- 
 
 4
 
 34 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 sional visits to the homes of my father's friends. 
 I was still in my early teens when I stayed for 
 some long summer weeks at the house of a Wes- 
 leyan family. We had become acquainted partly- 
 through business relations and partly through 
 a friendship formed by the daughters of the two 
 houses at a Wesleyan boarding-school. It was a 
 large house with a farm attached and a freshwater 
 river close by. There were bathing and lowing of 
 a rough sort to be got ; but what I most enjoyed 
 was a long day in the hayfield, ending with a 
 ride home on the warm, fragrant hay, the joy being 
 intensified by the subconscious feeling of insecurity 
 as the wagon and its load went bumping and 
 swaying from side to side along the deep-rutted 
 lane — or " drove," as we called it. It was in 
 this hayfield that I was initiated into the mystery 
 of cider-drinking, which experience involved a 
 moral as well as a physical qualm, as the 
 consciousness of breaking a family tradition of 
 temperance became clear to me. 
 
 The respectably large family included a number 
 of sons, all older than myself. As accommodation 
 was limited, I had to share their many-bedded 
 dormitory. It was a fine moment when they 
 would come to bed and wake me out of a light half- 
 expectant sleep. Their mutual chaffings were an 
 endless enjoyment for me. As an unsophisticated 
 youngster, I naturally came in for a good amount 
 of " gammoning," as they called it. But for all 
 their teasing — which was good-natured enough — I 
 felt uplifted and flattered by their companionship. 
 Although two of them were reading for a university
 
 THE SOMERSETSHIRE FARMER 35 
 
 degree, they would all when at home talk the broad 
 Somerset dialect. The father made a striking 
 figure in his black swallow-tail coat and knicker- 
 bockers, and his long silver tresses well combed 
 back from the forehead. He represented the older 
 Methodist type, and the easygoing and rather 
 frivolous ways of his sons were a puzzle to him. 
 I looked forward to the late evening hour when we 
 would sit on the kitchen settle close to the fire, and 
 I would pry into the black soot-crusted chimney to 
 catch a glimpse of a star. At such a time the old 
 gentleman would give good advice to his boys, 
 taking it in good part when in their replies they 
 fell to a light chaffing tone. 
 
 The kitchen was the meal-room, and there 
 morning and evening prayers were offered up. The 
 morning prayer particularly interested me. The 
 head of the house would enter the kitchen, sit down 
 at the end of a. long table, take out the Family 
 Bible from its drawer and the spectacles from 
 their case, and, without looking to see whether 
 anybody else was present, begin to read the 
 day's lesson. Then, all of a sudden, he would 
 seem to wake out of a fit of abstraction, glance 
 round and notice that only one or two v/ere 
 present, and going to the foot of the stairs, 
 shout the name of some absentee— a daughter 
 perhaps, or a servant. The late-rising boys 
 could not be gra,ppled with in the morning. 
 But the old gentleman got the best of it at 
 the evening prayers v/hen, deeming a passage 
 particularly applicable to one of them, he would 
 rub it well in by asking, " D'ye hear that, Mais
 
 36 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 (master) J. ? " Such personal applications of 
 gospel truth were at that time not uncommon 
 among Wesley ans. I remember going some years 
 later into a small Methodist chapel in Cornwall and 
 seeing the preacher (a lay-brother, I fancy), who 
 was holding forth on that queer archaic theme 
 modesty in female dress and deportment, suddenly 
 fix his eye on two smartly dressed girls in the 
 gallery. The stern look was instantly followed 
 by the question, " What would John Wesley say 
 if he were here this afternoon and saw all this 
 finery in the house of God ? " 
 
 It was at this hospitable house that I came 
 across my first love-story ; and my lasting im- 
 pression of its very serious and matter-of-fact 
 ways is quaintly complicated by after-pulsations 
 of the romantic sentiment awakened by a 
 stealthy perusal of this little book. 
 
 During the second period of my living at 
 home its atmosphere began to have considerable 
 influence on my intellectual development. At 
 the time of which I write, books were neither so 
 plentiful nor so cheap as they are to-day. My 
 mother took a certain part in my intellectual 
 upbringing. I still have a copy of " Robinson 
 Crusoe" which she gave me on my twelfth birth- 
 day. When, in penning a letter, I could not, as 
 Sentimental Tommy could, hit upon the " inevit- 
 able " word, I used to repair to her, because she 
 had — so I put it — such " a flow of language." I 
 associate her in a peculiarly close manner with 
 the exciting days of the Crimean War. At this 
 time we were taking in the Illustrated London News,
 
 READING 37 
 
 as well as a boys' illustrated paper in which there 
 was running a story entitled " The Arctic Crusoe " ; 
 and mother would be as eager as ourselves to seize 
 upon a new number of the journal, putting our 
 patience at times to a scarcely endurable strain by 
 keeping us waiting for our turn. We got to know 
 the names and figures of all the English and French 
 generals in the Crimea, and we shared, no doubt, 
 in the common detestation of the Emperor Nicholas, 
 or " Old Nick," as we dubbed him. Of the Indian 
 Mutiny, which so closely followed the Crimean War, 
 I remember hardly anything. Probably, by being 
 away from home at school, I heard the less of this 
 terrible struggle. I can, however, recall how proud 
 — almost wickedly proud for good peace-loving folk 
 — we Baptists were on hearing of the heroic feats 
 of our co-religionist. Sir Henry Havelock. 
 
 The principal cultured influence of my home 
 came from my sisters and the friends who had 
 stimulated and encouraged their reading. We 
 were not at this stage permitted to read the longer 
 novels of Dickens or Thackeray, whose names were, 
 I think, a little suspect to good religious people as 
 savouring of an impious kind of ridicule. But we 
 knew them and others by name, and were keenly 
 curious about them. My sisters were now growing 
 into womanhood, and they appear to have had a 
 fair number of reading friends. When our pulpit 
 was empty through a resignation or an illness, a 
 "supply" would be sent down from Bristol College, 
 an arrangement which ensured us an occasional 
 week-end visitor. Among the better read of these 
 students who thus visited our house was Thomas
 
 38 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 (or, as we familiarly called him, "Tom") Fuller, 
 the grandson of a once renowned divine, Andrew 
 Fuller, and later Sir Thomas Fuller, the friend and 
 biographer of Cecil Rhodes. He and others brought 
 a keener intellectual air into our home, which 
 stimulated the mind of my father as well as that 
 of his more eager daughters, while even we younger 
 ones were stirred to a wondering curiosity by their 
 far-ranging talk. 
 
 Books, too, with ravishing bindings, if not also 
 with ravishing titles, were now stealing into our 
 home. Among the precious ones that I dis- 
 covered, at this time or soon afterv/ards, was a 
 dear little diamond edition of Shakespeare be- 
 longing to mj^ second sister, into which now 
 and again as a great treat I was allowed to 
 dip. And it was about this time that I got 
 my first acquaintance with Longfellow and 
 other safe " homish " poets. Among the books 
 which helped to develop our humorous turn was 
 " Hood's Own." I was never tired of looking 
 at its " killingly " funny drawings, and I revelled 
 in its puns, all unaware in those benighted Victorian 
 days of the terrible things that might be said 
 against such word-play. 
 
 Next to books, music was the chief branch of 
 culture represented in our house. When I was 
 still in my lower teens my two eldest sisters played 
 the piano and sang, while the third w^as ripening 
 into a symxpathetic interpreter of the instrument. 
 Of the sesthetic value of the favourite drawing- 
 room songs of this time — the duet " What are the 
 wild waves saying ? " " The May Queen," and
 
 MUSIC 39 
 
 other rather lachrymose effusions long since cast 
 aside among the rubbish of the Victorian era— 
 the less said the better. Yet some of the 
 vocal music of Bishop and Blumenthal had 
 a modest worth, and seemed wonderful to us 
 until, long after, we came to know such com- 
 posers as Schubert and Schumann, Grieg and 
 Brahms. Echoes of those far-off songs have a 
 strange way of haunting the memory chambers, 
 and there is a musical rendering of Charles 
 Kingsley's " Three Fishers," once sung by a 
 sister who has passed away, that brings back 
 the touch of a vanished hand with a scarcely 
 endurable poignancy. 
 
 Of outside influences likely to further our mental 
 growth there is little to be said. The town 
 was even worse off for concerts than for lectures. 
 There were but few public entertainments of 
 any kind ; though I can recall one in which 
 George Grossmith—gra7id-pere, I mean — gave us 
 some delicious caricatures of public speakers ; 
 among which were interspersed droll songs and 
 other " variety " ingredients. 
 
 The migration of the family to a house on the 
 river's bank gave us an opportunity of seeing 
 more of the life of the port. Close to Crowpill 
 were the docks, with the daily show of loading and 
 unloading. We admired the fine fellows who bore 
 so easily the great sacks of corn into the ware- 
 house, and we found a fascination even in the 
 blackened human figures that carried up baskets 
 of coal from the vessel's hold. The carriers wore a 
 queer canvas head-gear, with a pad-like appendage
 
 40 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 behind, on which the basket rested. Even to-day 
 you can see them carry up coal in this fashion 
 from vessels moored in the river, while hard by 
 is heard the new-fangled machinery of a crane. 
 Close to the docks was a grassy mount, a delightful 
 place for a climb up and a deliciously rapid roll 
 down. Not far from our home there stood a stately 
 house of classic design, then occupied by one of the 
 Browne family, a Unitarian and a close friend of 
 my father's. It was known as " The Lions," from 
 two roughly hewn quadrupeds crouching on the 
 pillars of its gate. We children were interested 
 in this mansion from a saying about it : " When 
 the lions hear the clock strike twelve they go down 
 to the river and drink." I dare say we easily 
 found the key to this little puzzle ; and I felt 
 almost ashamed of my town when, returning jto it 
 in 1913, I overheard a small girl, on repeating the 
 story to a still smaller one, rob it of all its point by 
 omitting the words " when the lions hear." 
 
 The great spectacle, however, in these first 
 years at Crowpill was the water traffic, especially 
 at a high spring- tide. The struggles of our plucky 
 little river-tug as she tried to tow up a large barque 
 or a string of smaller vessels through the winding 
 reaches of the river made appeal to our boyish 
 admiration. But best of all was the sight of a 
 mighty spring-tide bore. Its approach seemed to 
 quicken the sleepy Bridgwater air to a high pitch 
 of electric tension. It was now that the barge- 
 men's wits were severely tested. They used to 
 while away the tedium of waiting at a tavern near 
 our house, and, very humanly, they would postpone

 
 GUY FAWKES DAY 41 
 
 their exit from the snug bar to the last moment. 
 The result would be that they had to rush down the 
 steep, muddy bank with unaccustomed velocity, 
 and this when the limited powers of their rather 
 bandy legs were still further reduced by unwisely 
 prolonged potions. Then would follow a hulla- 
 baloo of raucous shoutings and fierce imprecations, 
 such as must have shocked our river-god. if we 
 possessed such a divinity. 
 
 Among the more imposing spectacles of the 
 town was the pageant of Guy Fawkes Day. It 
 took place on the large open space of the Cornhill, 
 an excellent site for the huge bonfire, in which 
 we burnt the effigies of " Old Nick " (the Emperor 
 Nicholas) and other persons obnoxious at the time. 
 Besides accommodating the fire and the crowd of 
 worshippers, this irregular sort of "square" offered 
 in the back streets opening upon it an admir- 
 able starting-point for the pyrotechnic performers. 
 These were a band of enterprising young townsmen, 
 who took their fifth of November fireworks right 
 seriously, making their own squibs, fat giants 
 fitted into holders at the end of long handles, so 
 that they might be at a safe distance from the 
 bearer's person. They bleached their faces or wore 
 masks, decking themselves out in outlandish cos- 
 tumes, so as to be quite unrecognizable. The 
 carnival began when a procession of these fierce- 
 looking young Vulcans rushed out of their hiding- 
 places upon the crowd, the sound of whose laughter, 
 passing into shrieks as the big sparks flew about 
 them, gave the finishing touch to the weird per- 
 formance.
 
 42 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Another brilliant show enacted on this central 
 place was the gathering of the Mounted Yeomanry— 
 " Yeomanry Cavalry," as we called them. Neither 
 the steeds nor their riders were, I fancy, above 
 criticism ; but we boys were still happily free 
 from an ultra- critical mood, and we paid our 
 bucolic sons of Mars a handsome admiration as 
 they rode up with a fine rattle of accoutrements 
 and noisily drew out their flashing swords. It was 
 only some absurd contretemps, as when a rustic 
 horse, maddened by all this townish racket, grew 
 restive, tried to look like a biped, and otherwise 
 misbehaved himself, that could force a laugh 
 from us at our martial heroes. 
 
 Of my later schooling, between the ages of thir- 
 teen and seventeen or thereabouts, I recall but little 
 worth recording. Frequency of change continued. 
 This was no doubt a loss in some ways. Yet it 
 gave me the opportunity of comparing pedagogues 
 and their methods. Even if it was a disadvantage, 
 I can now see that my father did his best by me. 
 I was the eldest boy in the family, and there was 
 no precedent to guide his selection ; wherefore I 
 had, in a sense, to serve as a " vile body " for 
 educational experiments. Since, moreover, there 
 were behind me three more boys and a girl to 
 be educated, he had to think of expense. I was 
 perhaps unfortunate in my head-masters, none 
 of whom excited a lively admiration. I managed 
 to hit it off better with one or two of the assistant 
 masters. 
 
 At my first school, in Yeovil, I was taken up by 
 the French master, one Ternon by name. I came
 
 MACREADY 48 
 
 to him with a special recommendation. One of 
 my sisters, when at a boarding-school, had learned 
 French from a Mile. Ternon, who entrusted to her 
 pupil the precious secret that she was the wife of 
 the gentleman with whom she corresponded, and 
 not the sister, as she had given out to the authorities. 
 We had heard the story from my sister, and Ternon 
 had through his wife heard of the Sully family. 
 So we became good friends. He taught us elemen- 
 tary geometry, and I remember what trouble he 
 had to beat into one refractory head the meaning 
 of the mathematical conceptions, " a straight line," 
 and the rest. 
 
 One experience at this Yeovil school has etched 
 itself deep into my memory- tablet. Macready, 
 who had retired from the stage and was living at 
 Sherborne, came over to the town to give recita- 
 tions for some charitable object. I was taken to 
 the hall to hear him. As illustrating som.e keenness 
 for culture among the Bridgwater Baptists of this 
 time, I may add that our minister, together with 
 my brother-in-law and my eldest sister, drove to 
 Yeovil in order to hear the recitations, retm'ning 
 the same evening — a matter of some fift}'^ miles. 
 I think I owe the privilege of hearing the tragedian 
 to their visit rather than to any enlightened views 
 of my head-master. Novf and again, even to-day, 
 I seem to catch faint echoes of the passionate note 
 which Macready threw into his rendering of " Alex- 
 ander's Feast," and of the biting, almost hissing, 
 note upon which he gave out slowly and em- 
 phatically the lines of " Lady Clara Vere de Vere." 
 
 The last two years of my schooldays at a public
 
 44 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Dissenter's "college" at Taunton were the most 
 enjoyable part of them. I was, I think, a good 
 healthy specimen for transplanting to the soil of 
 a public school, being vmencumbered by any ten- 
 dencies towards moping or dreamy abstraction. 
 My schoolfellows seemed to find me companionable, 
 and rewarded me by placing me in their list of 
 popular fellows. I threw myself with a certain 
 enthusiasm into the games, and took part in school 
 matches. I did perhaps but slender justice to the 
 classical teaching of the head-master ; but I seem 
 to have done fairly well in mathematics; and one 
 of my prizes, I remember, was for German, a subject 
 which at that time was very badly taught. 
 
 If the rather dry formality of the head-master 
 was discouraging to our impulses of attachment, 
 we found a delightfully unconventional and ex- 
 pansive soul in the second master, who in those 
 benighted days actually taught us, in addition to 
 Latin and Greek and other literary subjects, the 
 elements of chemistry. His most striking physical 
 feature was a notable paunch. The head, too, was 
 of unusual size, the clean-shaven face Habby and 
 pasty, and the eyes large and protuberant. He 
 carried his heav}' weight with a surprising light- 
 ness of tread. He was hopelessly myopic, and 
 had to peer quite closely at notes or other things 
 which he wanted to see clearly, frequently calling in 
 the aid of a hand-lens. His defective sight handi- 
 capped him sadly in maintaining discipline, yet he 
 knew how to frustrate the attempts of rash pupils 
 to score off his infirmity. If, on approaching the 
 classroom, he heard signs of disorder he would
 
 LEAVING SCHOOL 45 
 
 enter as noiselessly as a cat, his thumbs hitched on 
 to the armholes of his waistcoat and his huge body 
 and head gently swaying from side to side. Since 
 the acute hearing did much to make up for the 
 partial blindness, he would sometimes show an 
 tmcanny adroitness in pouncing upon an offender. 
 Like Dogberry, he had his standing jokes, some of 
 which were poor enough, such as "As long as your 
 leg ! " — an expression he was wont to bring out, 
 accompanying the word with a slap on his fat 
 thigh, when a tyro in Greek made the omega short. 
 He seemed now and again to sniff our boredom 
 under the infliction of his stale repetitions, and 
 would coaxingly apologize by prefacing a thread- 
 bare jest with the words " For the sake of the new 
 boys." He was no doubt a bit of a himibug and of 
 a mountebank also. But at least he was humanly 
 congenial, and we had something near an affection 
 for the humorous old bo}'- 
 
 I left school at the age of seventeen to take a 
 prescribed place in the ofhce of my father and micle, 
 and accepted my destiny without misgivings. I 
 felt the common regi-et at saymg good-bye to the 
 playground and the school chums. But the love 
 of home was stronfj in me, and I looked forward 
 to its nevr and fuller life \\ith eager hope. The 
 schools had failed in certain respects. They had 
 done next to notliing to awaken a love of literature. 
 Yet the later studies had begotten a certain thirst 
 for knowledge : for which reason, on accepting 
 the office, I stipulated for a " study " where m 
 the evening I could continue undisturbed my old
 
 46 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 battle with the books. I found an excellent 
 hermit's cell in a sort of loft of one of the store- 
 houses in our yard. It was here, whilst reading 
 John Foster's Essays, that I began to descry dimly 
 some of the problems of philosophy. 
 
 It was, I think, in this same loft that I began 
 another kind of activity. During the last half- 
 year at the Taunton school I was drawn into 
 the current of a religious revival, and became 
 obsessed with the idea of " doing good." The 
 humanitarian impulse directed itself towards the 
 captains of our vessels, of whom I saw a good 
 deal. Their hardships under the continual menace 
 of storms touched my imagination, and I used to 
 gather them about me and read to them. I doubt 
 whether the experiment effected much beyond 
 winning their recognition of my friendly attitude. 
 
 My three elder sisters were now at home — " for 
 good," as v/e put it — and the family life grew fuller 
 and richer. Differences of age were much less of 
 a barrier to sympathy than they had been. There 
 would be interesting personal matters, such as a 
 callow love-affair, to be confided to the brother in 
 the hope that he might help to solve some teasing 
 girlish problem. The home was a brighter one 
 now that we had reached " years of discretion " 
 and could have our say about books, house decora- 
 tion and the like, and even about such serious 
 things as Church matters and politics. The culture- 
 influence had widened and deepened during the 
 three or four years of my absence at school. My 
 father's kindly disposition exposed him to the 
 infection of my sisters' developing tastes. I well
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 47 
 
 remember the evening when they won him over to 
 Charles Dickens. A girl friend was staying with 
 us, and one of Dickens's novels was being read 
 aloud when my father entered the room. For 
 some time he pretended to be reading his news- 
 paper ; but the living voice asserted its supe- 
 riority, and very soon an imperfectly smothered 
 laugh betrayed his keen interest in our story. We 
 chaffed him on his swift conversion, and after this 
 had but little fear of his interfering with our 
 novel-reading. 
 
 The reading of Dickens aloud strikes me, on 
 looking back, as the way to get the fullest enjoy- 
 ment out of him. We youngsters at any rate 
 " just had " to get a sympathetic laugh or sigh of 
 pity when following the history of his people ; so 
 reading together became almost necessary. The 
 " wrongest " way of appreciating his stories — to 
 judge from my own experience-^was to hear the 
 author himself read them in public, as he did 
 towards the end of his life. I have never been 
 able quite to shake off the disillusioning and 
 almost nauseating effect of the " Christmas Carol " 
 coming — with no adequate voice to support it — 
 out of the mouth of that " got-up " dandified 
 jeune-vieux, with the rouge, the limelight, and 
 the rest of it. 
 
 To return to my father : I noticed in other ways 
 how at this time his mind was relaxing its old tight 
 grij) on the Puritanic code. One Sunday after- 
 noon my brother and I were walking with him 
 towards the Hampfields. A pond we passed was 
 frozen, and among the skaters on it we saw the
 
 48 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 son of one of my father's Quaker friends. As he 
 came up to us my father tried hard to look shocked 
 and to bring out a Sabbatarian rebuke. Yet we 
 boys felt sure that his displeasure was at least 
 half feigned ; and we boldly backed up the skater's 
 plea for the perfect innocence of his recreation. 
 
 Music now became for me an engrossing 
 interest. I had been taking lessons on the piano 
 at Taunton, and even the inroad they made on 
 the playhour did not set me against the pursuit. 
 On returning home, I followed up these lessons 
 by others on the organ and on the rudiments 
 of " thorough bass." I was even bold enough to 
 indulge in extemporizations on the piano. My 
 uncle took a serious view of this new craze for 
 music, warning my father against its dangers. 
 But happily for me the objection was overruled. 
 The organ-lessons were given in our chapel. I 
 had for a blower a rough-looking character who 
 used to magnify his office in a comical way, greedily 
 swallowing my flattering suggestion that the 
 secret of organ-playing lay deep-seafed in the 
 blower's sustaining breath. Music now began to 
 fill a larger place in our home recreations. My 
 father's advance in tolerance is illustrated by the 
 fact that a drinking song was now introduced into 
 the drawing-room, smuggled in, forsooth, by no 
 less serious a person than our minister, who would 
 give out in fine rollicking style something like 
 the following lines : 
 
 Minheer Van Dunck, though he never got drunk, 
 Sipped his brandy and water gaily.
 
 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 49 
 
 I was strangely moved by this daring assault upon 
 the sober traditions of our house, experiencing 
 for a moment an almost dislocating shock, as if 
 some Puritanic fibre in my spiritual organism had 
 snapped. Yet, if fearsome, the joy of sudden 
 expansion was real and intense. 
 
 Our musical achievements were greatly re- 
 stricted by the circumstance that all of us, girls 
 and boys alike, learned only that greatly over- 
 rated instrument, the piano. Looking back, I 
 regret that the boys, at any rate, had not taken 
 up the violin and other instruments, so that we 
 might have indulged ourselves in concerted 
 chamber music like another Baptist family I had 
 known in Yeovil. 
 
 We acquired a certain fame among our friends 
 as a musical family. The younger members of a 
 Quaker family that we knew, having no piano of 
 their own, would come down to Crowpill to get 
 their music. The Friends of that date still looked 
 askance at the idea of a musical instrument in 
 the house. 
 
 On returning home I entered upon a stage of 
 religious experience of the deeper kind. My 
 attainment of the age when new emotions are 
 astir, the effect of the " revival " at Taunton, 
 together with the constant and penetrating 
 influence of the home, had, no doubt, to do with 
 this more agitated passage in the current of my 
 development. Supreme among the influences of 
 the family atmosphere was my affection for my 
 father. My heart was at this time drawn out 
 to him by new and yet stronger cords. He 
 
 5
 
 50 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 was, I know, set upon my joining the Church, 
 and his longing was satisfied. I was baptized, and 
 took part in the rites and the whole life of our 
 Church. 
 
 In all this I was quite sincere, and became 
 " devout " in my father's sense of the word. I 
 learned to know all the ups and downs of the 
 religious consciousness, from the dulling, dispiriting 
 effect of an unsympathetic minister and a dry 
 sermon up to the spiritual elevation and recrea- 
 tion effected by their opposites. My religious 
 experience, though it included a certain amount 
 of solitary meditation and prayer, was essentially 
 social in its texture. It was a sharing in a common 
 attitude, in a common group of emotions, and in 
 conjoint acts of confession, prayer, and thanks- 
 giving — a variety, by the way, which William 
 James seems almost completely to have over- 
 looked when classifying the main types of 
 religious experience. 
 
 Our common religious life was not withdrawn 
 into a sort of hothouse impervious to out-of-door 
 influences. We were able to see the droll side of 
 some of the proceedings at prayer-meeting and 
 Church-meeting. We were free to discuss religious 
 questions and to express our independent views. 
 About this time my eldest sister became engaged 
 to a " man of thought " — to use an expression 
 not unknown in Somerset — a Churchman who 
 read, among other writers, Carlyle, Ruskin, and 
 Goethe, and was abreast of the advancing wave 
 of Biblical criticism ; and no serious objection 
 was made to the engagement by my parents.
 
 ge:rald massey 51 
 
 This meant a considerable enlargement of my 
 spiritual outlook. 
 
 Of more public activities outside the chapel 
 the most important came to me with my appoint- 
 ment as joint-secretary to the Bridgwater branch 
 of the Young Men's Christian Association. My 
 father had been the beloved Sunday-school teacher 
 of the founder of the Association, George (after- 
 wards Sir George) Williams. So my appointment 
 to share in the secretariate would naturally be 
 agreeable to him. ]\Iy colleague Avas the son of 
 one of the most prominent Conservative lawyers 
 and Churchmen in the town. The appointing of 
 him, along Avith the son of the uncompromising 
 Dissenter and Radical, served, no doubt, to em- 
 phasize the broad " undenominational " spirit of 
 the Association. We had a reading-room high up 
 under the dome of our market-house. Among our 
 undertakings was a pleasure party by water down 
 the river and the Bristol Channel. 
 
 My great success when officer of the Association 
 was the securing of Gerald Massey as lecturer ; he 
 had shortly before brought out a collection of 
 " Poetical Works." It was a thrilling experience 
 to write to a poet, and a yet more delicious one to 
 have him as our guest at Crowpill. I have quite 
 forgotten even the subject of his lecture, but I can 
 still recall his appearance and something of his 
 talk. He was an ideal specimen of the poet for 
 a first vision by admiring young eyes. His mien 
 had, it is true, nothing of the "divine madness," 
 nor did he give himself the airs and mannerisms 
 that are said to be m.ore or less characteristic of
 
 52 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 a certain type of singer. But he had a beautiful 
 face, and his fine features and his brilHant eyes 
 with tender depths in them, framed in by a mass 
 of thick hair, remain, spite of time's blurring, 
 one of the most cherished portraits in memory's 
 picture-gallery. At first I was a little uncertain 
 how a poet would fit himself into the plain 
 homely ways of our house. But my apprehen- 
 sions proved to be quite groundless, and his 
 visit was one unbroken delight, to parents 
 hardly less than to children. I have since met 
 other and greater poets, but never reduplicated 
 the rapturous experience which my first poet 
 brought me. 
 
 The life of our town grew during these years 
 more and more interesting to me. The river 
 became mine in a new sense, now that my day's 
 work required me to know the whereabouts and 
 the projected movements of our vessels. I saw, 
 too, more of the commotion of market- and fair- 
 days. At that time the marketing was done not 
 only in the market-house and railed-ih space in 
 front of it, but in the streets. The noise and 
 hurry-scurry when the poor frightened bullocks 
 and sheep got out of hand and rushed blindly 
 wherever an open space in the crowded street 
 seemed to offer itself, was highly exciting to boyish 
 spirits, untroubled as yet by too much sympathetic 
 sentiment. St. Matthew's Fair, held in September 
 in St. Matthew's Field, lasted three whole days, 
 and brought into the town " a sight of folk." 
 How the saint who gave it his name could have 
 tolerated all its revellings with their extra quota
 
 THE PRINCEITES 53 
 
 of sickening drunkenness, I was, and still am, 
 quite unable to say. 
 
 One of the sights which now made the town 
 gape was the triumphal entry of the Princeites, 
 or followers of the once modest evangelical curate, 
 Mr. Prince. This curious community housed itself 
 in the Agapemone, at Charlynch, the same year 
 that I returned to Bridgwater. Although they 
 hid themselves for the most part behind the high 
 walls of their "Abode of Love," they managed, 
 when they came out into the daylight, to make 
 their presence as imposing as possible. They were 
 well-to-do people, and I seem vaguely to recall the 
 commotion in our sleepy little town when they 
 drove into it in great splendour with four bay 
 horses, outriders, postilions, and — to give the 
 needed touch of the formidable — a number of 
 bloodhounds. Their approach was announced by 
 heralds crying, " Blessed is he who cometh in 
 the name of the Lord ! " As might have been 
 expected, this exciting invasion of somnolent 
 Bridgwater by noisy commotion dimmed for 
 our eyes the glorious excitement of the daily 
 coach as it dashed into the town and pulled up 
 at its principal hotel. 
 
 The tradesmen of the town were required to 
 address their parcels to "My Lord the Prince," 
 and a story still runs in Bridgwater that the chief 
 draper lost their custom by refusing to comply 
 with the condition. The double insolence of appro- 
 priating the title " Lord " and transmuting " Mr. 
 Prince " into " the Prince " suggests a touch of 
 distinctly morbid megalomania. There seems to
 
 54 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 be no room in Prince's case for the plea, urged by 
 Mrs. Oliphant in her " Life of Edward Irving," 
 that divine greatness had been thrust upon him by 
 his idolators. Yet we have the strange fact that 
 Mr. Prince, the curate, drew men of other Churches 
 than his own by the earnestness of his exhortations, 
 and that when he left the Charlynch church to 
 found his society he carried his vicar with him. 
 Does there, one wonders, always lurk in a strong 
 personal fascination the microbe of a sinister 
 disposition to impose upon others as well as upon 
 oneself ? 
 
 At the beginning of the sixties the Volunteer 
 movement contributed to our town a second mili- 
 tar}^ display. We youngsters quizzed the Volun- 
 teers with critical eyes. One of their first captains, 
 I remember, acquired from his unusual height the 
 familiar sobriquet of " Long John." The almost 
 Quakerish modesty of the uniform, a,fter the gor- 
 geous array of the Yeomanry, may have disposed 
 us to ridicule their pretensions. I remember a 
 rather saucy conundrum invented about this time : 
 " Why are the Volunteers like Lord Nelson ? " 
 the answer to v/hich was : " Because the last thing 
 that Lord Nelson did was to die for his country, 
 and that is the last thing the Volunteers would do." 
 
 The affairs of the larger world now began to 
 acquire a greater hold upon my attention. My 
 father was in this respect also my instructor 
 and model. For him the religious life acquired 
 spaciousness and adventurous courage in the 
 missionary field. On the walls of Crowpill House 
 there hung portraits which made us youngsters
 
 POLITICS 65 
 
 acquainted with some of his missionary heroes, 
 such as WiUiam Knibb, of Jamaica, the strenuous 
 pioneer of the movement for the emancipation of 
 slaves ; the scholarly Dr. W. Carey, of India ; 
 Robert Moffat, of South African fame, and John 
 Williams, of the Pacific Islands. The picture of the 
 last chased into the sea by his cannibal murderers 
 was of poignant interest ; and the family story 
 relates that it had later to be withdrawn as too 
 terrible for very young eyes. Side by side with 
 these hung the portraits of my father's two 
 " Tribunes of the People," Cobden and Bright, 
 Edward Miall, the editor of the Nonconformist, and 
 other Liberal worthies. These mural portraits set 
 us j^oungsters thinking ; and I remember wonder- 
 ing, among other things, where Bright, the Quaker 
 and lover of peace, could have got his rather 
 ferocious mastiff-like lower jav/. The more enthu- 
 siastic side of our Liberalism was nourished by 
 our father's readings and by talks about Kossuth, 
 Garibaldi, and other revolutionary liberators of 
 their country from the foreigner. 
 
 My father was a keen politician, and I some- 
 times feel a bit ashamed as I recollect how little 
 of his fervour I have displayed. In municipal 
 politics, indeed, he took hardly any part, not so 
 much, I think, because titles and robes had no 
 attraction for him as because he was scared off 
 by the manner in v/hich offices were apt to be filled 
 up. All the more, he threw himself into the fray 
 of the parliamentary contest. When still young, 
 we were taken at election times to see, from a 
 shop window overlooking the Cornhill, the hustings
 
 56 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 with its gay banners, its resetted orators, and, best 
 of all, the motley crowd all alive with movement 
 and vociferation, ever inventing some new way 
 of manifesting its approvals and disapprovals and 
 its rough sort of humour. Each candidate came 
 in at first for enthusiastic cheers from one of the 
 two sections of the crowd, distinguished by yellow, 
 or " buff," and " blue " rosettes and banners. But 
 alas ! the sweetness of the " hurrahs " would 
 immediately after be turned into bitterness, as 
 rude exclamations, insolent questions, roars of 
 horse-laughter, and even more offensive tangible 
 missiles like cabbage-stumps, came from the other 
 section. 
 
 An election took place in the year in which I 
 returned home. The Liberal candidates were 
 A. W. Kinglake and Colonel Tynte, of Halswell 
 Park, our picnic resort. My father was a warm 
 supporter of " Eothen," and I had the treat of 
 being taken to hear him address his supporters. 
 He was of a thickset figure, wore his iron-grey 
 hair short and erect, and had an eyeglass, which 
 he was wont suddenly to drop. His voice was 
 weak and husky, and he had frequently to refresh 
 his throat by sucking a lemon. Colonel Tynte 
 formed a curious contrast to the little shy- looking 
 traveller. His figure was tall, and impressively 
 got up in elegant frock-coat and with long military 
 moustache. He looked an ideal candidate for 
 admiring burgesses with children to be placated. 
 Both Liberal candidates were returned at this 
 election, and Kinglake remained our member for 
 about nine years. But, as we shall see, if we were
 
 PLYMOUTH BRETHREN 57 
 
 proud of him, he had in the end but little reason 
 to be proud of his electors. The Bridgwater seat 
 attracted the eye of more than one literary man, 
 Walter Bagehot, whom my father also supported, 
 standing for it, unsuccessfully, in 1865. 
 
 During this period we extended the range of 
 our acquaintance with other families. One of 
 these belonged to the Plymouth Brethren. It 
 was a large family like our own. The boys 
 were growing towards manhood, and while they 
 respected their parents' creed and would put 
 in an appearance at "meeting," they were glad 
 of an opportunity to breathe a spiritual atmo- 
 sphere less heavily laden with " texts " from 
 the Bible. The father, who looked the very 
 embodiment of seriousness, had hidden reserves 
 of humour, and as the boys grew and threw off 
 their theological swaddling-clothes they played 
 upon the more genial side of their parent, educat- 
 ing him up to a good-natured acceptance of much 
 hardy jocosity. The mother had one of the most 
 unforgettable of those faces which express a soul 
 made beautiful by memories of love. Though she 
 wore a most engaging smile, she lacked her hus- 
 band's quick responsiveness to the note of fun. 
 So the boys would gently tease her, inventing 
 stories of her waking up to the inner significance 
 of a joke hours after its perpetration, and some- 
 times even at meeting. Most of these clever and 
 entertaining youths v\^ent later to try their fortunes 
 in America, from which, when paying visits to 
 the old country, they would bring a touch of the 
 racy American idiom, and something, too, of the
 
 58 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 country's larger freedom of outlook. We all bene- 
 fited by these waftings of a transatlantic air 
 into our closer home atmosphere. Even father's 
 seriousness fell before the attacks of their American 
 humour. I remember how on one occasion, v.hen 
 one of the visitors v»^as so frivolous as to speak 
 of two places of worship as " opposition shops," 
 my father, after pretending for a moment to be 
 shocked, had, willy nilly, to join in our laughter. 
 
 During these last years under the paternal roof 
 I enjoyed, of course, a greater freedom of excursion. 
 I took to horse exercise, and explored yet more 
 thoroughly the beautiful surroundings of our town. 
 Now it was a ride on a gloAving autumnal afternoon 
 to fill my pockets with the brown nuts easily 
 reachable from the saddle ; now it vras a winter 
 drive to Westonzoyland and a day's skating on 
 flooded Sedgemoor, v/here we could fly miles and 
 miles, arrested only now and again by a " rhine," 
 the wa-ter of which had sunk so that wc had steep 
 slopes of ice to descend and climb. At this time, 
 too, I enjoyed with a brother my first walking 
 tour. We chose the English lakes, and approached 
 them in an unusual way, I suspect, by taking a 
 cargo-boat from Liverpool to WTiitehaven. We 
 must have been pretty green, for we climbed 
 Helvellyn without a guide, and, being overtaken 
 by a mist, had hard work to find our vv^ay down 
 to Patterdale. 
 
 Thus happily I crossed the boundary of teens 
 and twenties, still half a home-child, but taken 
 with new and mightier impulses towards self- 
 assertion. Another centrifugal force was also at
 
 LEAVING HOME 69 
 
 work. I had accepted business from no conscious 
 drawing of heart. Now the old thirst for know- 
 ledge grew better defined and more imperious. 
 The humanitarian impulse was still a potent 
 element in my religious activity. The two motives 
 combining led me to decide to enter the ministry. 
 ]My father met my proposal with his accustomed 
 breadth of view and generosity, and after some 
 delay I entered my name as a student in Regent's 
 Park College. I had more than exhausted the 
 educative influence of my Bridgwater surround- 
 ings. I had accomplished but a sorry amount of 
 systematic reading, and had received but little 
 aid from the stimulating forces of personal 
 contact with tutor and fellow- student. Yet, 
 when looking back on those years, I have never 
 felt the sharper pains of regret. Perhaps I did 
 grow intellectually more than I knew at the time, 
 illustrating in a humble fashion Goethe's line : 
 
 Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille. 
 
 In any case I reaped a certain profit from the 
 delay : getting more firmly grounded, not only in 
 the lore of the affections, but in such elements of 
 individuality as independence of view, and a habit 
 of thinking out my ovm estimates of the goodness 
 and badness of things. 
 
 Since so much of life looks futile to a searching 
 retrospect, one may perhaps be forgiven for in- 
 dulging for a moment in that most palpable of 
 futilities — a glance at the " might have beens." 
 What sort of a youngling, I have sometimes asked
 
 60 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 myself, should I have become by the twenties if, 
 instead of the rough-and-tumble and the big 
 expansive affections of our large family life, the 
 fates had decreed for me another sort of environ- 
 ment—say that of a quieter and more studious 
 home with a Swedenborgian at its head, such 
 as fell to my friend William James, or of one 
 consisting only of parents, both devoted to the 
 spiritual nurture of their one precious child ? But 
 on the heels of the question there seems to come 
 my ever prompt Italian monitor, with his quick 
 shrug of the shoulders and his effectually dis- 
 missive question, " Chi lo sa ? "
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 STUDENT YEARS: LONDON 
 
 Our Baptist College in Regent's Park had a most 
 uncollegiate appearance. A glance at its large 
 classical portico showed one that it had been the 
 residence of a wealthy citizen. It was one of those 
 aggressive erections which, by a piece of good 
 luck or an unchallenged hardihood, have managed 
 to wedge themselves into our parks, as well as 
 into Hampstead Heath and other common lands. 
 To drive past the porter's lodge up to the im- 
 posing portico must, one supposes, have been 
 to many a Baptist student an excitingly new 
 experience. The spacious entrance hall, in spite 
 of the organ which figured in it, looked like 
 anything but a portion of a Baptist academy, 
 and the magnificent ballroom, for all its effort 
 to pass itself off for a library, wore a hopelessly 
 worldly expression. 
 
 The palatial construction offered the student 
 one of two kinds of "study" — a share in one of 
 the larger rooms in the central part of the build- 
 ing or a small room at one end all to himself. 
 The authorities arranged that a new-comer should 
 begin with the modest allotment of a share ; where- 
 
 61
 
 62 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 fore I found myself with two fellow-students in a 
 lofty room amply lit by large windows. Anything 
 less cloistral in appearance than these " studies " 
 it would be hard to imagine ; and I remember that 
 our spacious apartment was liable to interruption 
 from calls at all sorts of hours from charmingly 
 sociable students who took their own reading 
 lightly, and assumed that we shared their dila- 
 tory ways. We suffered these idlers, if not gladly, 
 at least with something of Christian composure. 
 Happily for me, both of my companions were 
 workers. One of them, William Medley, who was 
 older than I, proved himself a delightful companion. 
 With a shy, deeply rooted piety, and a quiet, un- 
 hurrying pertinacity in work, he combined a most 
 tenderly whimsical humour, which discharged its 
 harmless darts in all directions. None, not even 
 our favourite tutors and " chums," were spared ; 
 nor would any of them, I think, have cared to 
 escape from its playful touch. My other companion 
 was a young lay student, Robert Whitby, on whom 
 Medley had cast his spell. And he too became 
 a lifelong friend. 
 
 Since we were reading for the Arts degree in 
 the University of London, we were absolved from 
 much of the theological course. The Principal, 
 Dr. Angus, drilled us in his " Bible Handbook," a 
 volume that, I fear, we were apt to think a little 
 too " handbooky." At his lectures we sat round 
 a table, and, after a short prayer had been offered, 
 he began his exposition, while we proceeded to 
 take notes. He allowed us to put questions, and 
 some of the bolder spirits would now and then
 
 DR. ANGUS 68 
 
 strain this allowance by trying to prolong a theo- 
 logical discussion. 
 
 Our Principal possessed much of the practi- 
 cal " canniness " commonly associated with the 
 northern latitudes from which he came. If he 
 lacked something of the divine afflatus which draws 
 about a teacher devoted followers, he was an ex- 
 cellent instructor in moderate views, a,nd I dare 
 say he was just the right tutor for one who, like 
 myself, had allowed feeling and impulse to grow 
 a little too luxuriantly, till it needed the pruning- 
 knife. The exegetical expansion of a handbook 
 hardly allowed him scope for the more arousing 
 and attaching kind of appeal. After all, a learner 
 in most cases only m^anages to glimpse a facet 
 or two of his preceptor's concrete personality ; 
 and after I had ceased to be his pupil, I dis- 
 covered in my old tutor quite unsuspected depths 
 of kindly feeling. 
 
 Both in appearance and in disposition our 
 classical tutor, Dr. Benjamin Davis, formed a 
 striking contrast with the President. His tall, 
 rather unwieldy frame, which seemed to lurch 
 from side to side as he walked, his absent, student 
 eyes, thatched over with shaggy brows, his gamut 
 of grunt-like inter jectional sounds which expressed 
 various shades of satisfaction and its opposite at 
 our attem.pts to answer some linguistic poser — 
 these and other characteristics somehow drew us. 
 He had, moreover, something of the warmth of 
 the Welsh race, and a genius for attaching younger 
 men. Under the spell of his lovable personality 
 I worked away, not only at Latin, Greek, and
 
 64 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 German, for which I had some hking, but at 
 Hebrew, which rather repelled than attracted me. 
 His way of exercising us in discovering cognate 
 words in different languages interested me greatly, 
 and started a habit from which I profited later 
 when travelling abroad. 
 
 Our corporate life had hardly more of an ascetic 
 flavour than our palatial building. We had a 
 sort of "Union" — in the University sense. There 
 was a reading-room in which we could see news- 
 papers and reviews, among others The Fortnightly 
 Review, which started under the editorship of 
 G. H. Lewes in 1865 on what were then con- 
 sidered rather free-thinking lines. A discussion 
 would sometimes arise as to the comparative 
 values of this and that paper. We took The Times, 
 of course ; but during the days of hot dispute over 
 the execution, in Jamaica, of the negro Gordon 
 by Governor Eyre (1866), our men, who were 
 naturally disposed to side with J. S. Mill and the 
 minority against Eyre, growing restive under what 
 they regarded as the one-sided treatment of the 
 question by The Times, desired to substitute for 
 it the Daily News. Unfortunately, in their zealous 
 haste they introduced the latter newspaper with- 
 out the formal sanction of the committee which 
 had to decide upon the journals admitted. This 
 high-handed proceeding was strongly condemned 
 by some of us, including (if I remember aright) 
 one who remained my friend long after my student 
 days, Harry Foot. We malcontents gave effect 
 to our protest by seceding from the Union. Since 
 that time I have been rather fond of appearing in
 
 COLLEGE DEBATES 65 
 
 minorities, but, so far as I can recollect, never 
 again appeared in a minority which so obviously 
 represented the principle of law and orderly 
 procedure. 
 
 In our Union we not only read papers, but 
 organized ourselves into a parliament. Here we 
 held many a debate, which, if not productive of 
 the highest quality of dialectic art, was apt to be 
 lively and entertaining. Then there were public 
 debates held in the library, to which members of 
 other colleges and friends were invited. I re- 
 member that one of the latter had for its theme 
 a subject specially appeahng to unsophisticated 
 and rather priggish youth. It ran, I think, some- 
 what as follows : "Is the influence of the periodical 
 literature of the day a good or an evil one ? " We 
 liked to get a good figure-head for our chairman, 
 and on that particular occasion we had secured 
 Hepworth Dixon, who strengthened the non-theo- 
 logical element by bringing with him Charles 
 Reade. The latter, when called upon to speak 
 by enthusiastic tongues and hands, made awkward 
 attempts to get out of it. But as the clamour 
 continued he suddenly stood up, and in a lame, 
 apologetic fashion confessed that he could not 
 imagine what our strenuous and heated discussion 
 was all about. In pooh-poohing our attempts to 
 assay the value of journalism, he dropped an 
 expression that sounded to our correct ears 
 shockingly improper in a Baptist college. For 
 a moment we felt very hot, and the face of 
 our good Principal, towards which we had 
 instinctively turned, was all aflame. The novelist 
 
 6
 
 66 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 had perhaps this much excuse for his impropriety, 
 that though the presence of ladies should have 
 bidden him hold back the imprecatory word, the 
 worldly magnificence of our library may well have 
 led him to forget for a moment that he was ad- 
 dressing theological students. We were by no 
 means daunted by this contretemps, but pushed 
 boldly on in search of men of letters for our chair- 
 man. I remember being drafted off with another 
 to visit Arthur Kinglake, who, after receiving us 
 civilly enough, declined to undertake the duty. 
 Is it possible that our foolish attempt to determine 
 literary values had reached " Eothen's " ears ? 
 
 We belonged to the age of " muscular Chris- 
 tianity," and expended a good deal of our energy 
 in the cricket-field. I took a subordinate part in 
 intercollegiate matches in which our champions 
 shone forth. One of these was T. V. Tymms, a 
 spare man but a deadly bowler, who, with Harry 
 Foot, became my chum during the last years of 
 my residence. Another athlete was a layman, 
 Abel Thomas, afterwards a well-known barrister 
 on the South Wales Circuit. He was a congenial 
 Welshman for whom I conceived a strong liking. 
 My few memories of him shine with a heroic light. 
 Shortly after I had "gone down" he distinguished 
 himself by saving a number of lives when, owing 
 to the pressure of a crowd of skaters, the ice on 
 the Regent's Park lake suddenly collapsed. 
 
 We used the opportunities which London offered 
 us of hearing renowned preachers. Sometimes 
 one of these would visit the college and address 
 us. I rather think that Henry Ward Beecher was
 
 PULPIT ORATORS 67 
 
 among these visitors. At any rate, I heard him 
 and others champion the cause of the North during 
 the American War when The Times and a large 
 part of Enghsh society were sympathizing with 
 the South. 
 
 We used to wander far in our search for a 
 pulpit orator on a Sunday morning — walking there 
 and back. We began by selecting the more 
 " spiritual " or " edifying " preachers, but, as 
 minds broadened, we included in these Sabbatarian 
 samplings men of doubtful orthodoxy like Edward 
 "White or, worse still, T. T. Lynch, both of whom 
 held forth in Camden Town. Of these more or 
 less heretical preachers Lynch has left on my 
 mind by far the most vivid impression. He had 
 been compelled to leave one church by charges of 
 theological heterodoxy brought against the ideas 
 in his book of hymns, " The Rivulet." He was 
 now preaching, if I remember aright, in a new 
 iron church in the Hampstead Road. His congre- 
 gation made up for its smallness by the remarkable 
 diversity of its individual members, among whom, 
 I was told, was Henry Vincent, the Socialist. 
 His sermon was a piece of subtly woven thought, 
 abounding in ingenious conceits, and warmed 
 through and through with the glov/ of a genuinely 
 poetic imagination. The manner of the preacher's 
 delivery had a certain wcirdness. He would 
 almost hurt you as he spasmodically gripped a 
 vertical rod and, using this as a pivot, swung 
 himself about it. These bodily contortions were 
 accompanied by no less awry movements of the 
 facial muscles. Yet if all this eccentricity of
 
 68 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 manner was far enough away from the looked-for 
 graces and charms of oratory, it supphed a forcible 
 symbohc revelation of what was going forward 
 in the preacher's soul — the fierce pain-whipped 
 strugglings of thought and feeling towards a per- 
 fectly clear, harmonious form of utterance. Little 
 of the substance of his discourses abides with 
 me ; yet my friend Whitby can recall one passage 
 which won our special admiration. Preaching on 
 the text " By might shall no man prevail," he 
 boldly enlarged its scope, following up the words 
 " no man " with " no, not even an angel — no, 
 not even God.^^ 
 
 These Sunday wanderings gave us a certain 
 mappish acquaintance with London on its sleepy 
 day. To any full inspection of the wonders of 
 the metropolis • I cannot testify. Want of time, 
 aided perhaps by lack of the keener sort of interest, 
 restricted our peregrinations. So it befell that I 
 lapsed into the habit of viewing the great city as 
 my big workshop from which I flew whenever I 
 wanted a holiday — a habit which clung to me 
 through all the years of my residence in1:he capital. 
 
 Our circle of recreative amusements was, of 
 course, restricted. We had our private opinion 
 that visits to the theatre might benefit young men 
 preparing to be public speakers, but we knew 
 that the churches still fought shy of dramatic 
 spectacles. Music, on the other hand, was open 
 to us, and I was able to avail myself of the Monday 
 Popular Concerts (or " Pops ") at St. James's Hall. 
 These had been started four years before I went 
 to Regent's Park, and during my residence there
 
 ST. JAMES'S HALL CONCERTS 69 
 
 and for many years later — after they had been 
 supplemented by the Saturday performances — I 
 found in them a chief delight as well as an excellent 
 schooling for my ear. My second sister married, 
 and settled in London whilst I was at college ; 
 and after this she would often accompany me to 
 St. James's Hall. In this way a good deal of 
 music, German and other, to the beauties of which 
 these concerts first opened my ears, came to be 
 associated in the closest possible way with hours 
 of a rapturous sympathy between brother and 
 sister. Other associations came later on to be 
 formed with these musical treats — the sight of the 
 blind youths from the St. John's Wood School 
 when the joy of sound lit up their dull, vacant 
 orbits, and of more than one distinguished writer 
 and artist, for whose face I used to look out as 
 for a sort of resonator which would help me to 
 bear a weight of enjoyment too great to be carried 
 alone. 
 
 WTien, years later, I heard of the demolition of 
 St. James's Hall in order to make room for a huge 
 hotel, I seemed for a long minute to live over again 
 in epitome those delightful concerts. I saw again 
 Joachim and his quartet shuffling up the steps 
 into the visibility of the orchestra, and I tasted 
 again the delicious thrill of those first ahnungsvoll 
 tryings of the instruments. Other figures, too — 
 grave ministers of the lyric muse — appeared to my 
 fancy, such as the Abbe Liszt, Madame Schumann, 
 Piatti, along with less dignified forms, such as 
 Rubinstein hurling his fingers down on the keys 
 and every now and then managing between the
 
 70 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 thumps to throw back the big shock of hair from 
 his face. As for the music, the Hall became for 
 me at the hour of its fall a large sea-shell heamted 
 by many interlacings of m.agical tones. 
 
 The most memorable of the public spectacles 
 which I enjoyed during those college days was 
 the entry of Garibaldi into London (in April 1865). 
 A big crowd was expected, so we started early, 
 taking up our position a little below the Hay- 
 market about one hour before the hero was 
 expected to arrive. It was my first experience of 
 a London crowd, and I gave myself up to conning 
 its ways — its rougher manners as well as its good 
 humour. I was amused at the efforts of the shorter 
 folk to climb above the heads of the grown-ups. 
 One or tvv^o urchins, I remember, were bold enough 
 to perch themselves on the pedestals of princely 
 personages. The promised hour of two o'clock 
 passed without a sign of our visitor. But the 
 London crowd, I found, is used to delays, and it 
 continued to indulge in its humorous outbursts. 
 It was only when four o'clock left us still waiting 
 for our General that signs of impatience grew 
 ugly and threatening. ^ 
 
 At last our weary hours of standing and peering 
 were rewarded. The flutter of a banner Vv^as dis- 
 cerned far dov/n towards Charing Cross, after 
 which came the confused murmur of many voices. 
 The crowd, slightly disorganized by the long 
 delay, was forced back towards the pavements, 
 and room made for a procession of temperance and 
 
 I On the cause of the delay see G. M. Trevelyan's 
 ' Garibaldi and the Making of Italy," pp. 289 ff.
 
 GARIBALDI 71 
 
 other societies bearing their banners and music. 
 After this came one more disappointment as the 
 thread of the procession seemed suddenly to snap. 
 Thus it happened that it was nearly seven o'clock 
 before the longed-for figure greeted our eyes. A 
 furniture van had been stopped by the sudden 
 thickening of the crowd, and some of us managed 
 to get a footing on its platform. The mounted 
 police had now enough to do to clear a way for the 
 carriages. Our easily recognizable hero appeared 
 in an open carriage drawn by four horses. He was 
 standing, supported by his two sons. Mounted 
 police rode on each side of the carriage. There 
 was no element of official grandeur in the spectacle, 
 for the four horses hardly reached the level of 
 scenic display. It was a purely popular function, 
 the visit of a private citizen to an admiring people. 
 So we thought when we concentrated attention 
 upon the hero, wearing, one might say, his working 
 clothes, the grey shirt and trousers, the bright red 
 tunic thrown over the shoulders, and the low felt 
 hat. His manner of acknowledging the cheers 
 of the crowd by a gentle waving of the hand was, 
 too, simplicity itself. Pomp and circumstance 
 could have added nothing to a face in which, as 
 Francis Galton has it, simplicity, goodness, and 
 nobility were impressed on every lineament. It was 
 the masterful fascination of a noble personality which 
 kept our tired bodies straining to look, and still to 
 look, as long as there was anything left to see. 
 
 The course of University studies grew more 
 interesting after the dry matriculation work of 
 the first year. By the beginning of my third I
 
 72 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 had so far come under the spell of the classics, more 
 particularly of Greek poetry and philosophy, as 
 to begin reading for Honours. But philosophy 
 put in the stronger claim, and as the year ad- 
 vanced I decided to try my chance of Honours in 
 this branch. The course of philosophic reading, 
 as understood at this time by our University 
 authorities to be desirable, was not perhaps very 
 soul-satisfying. Since my time the reading has 
 been enlarged and enriched, more especially by 
 the inclusion of a wider study of the history of 
 philosophy. As it was, I had to find my chief 
 nutriment in the writings of J. S. Mill, Herbert 
 Spencer, and Alexander Bain. This was, no doubt, 
 a one-sided representation of philosophy even as 
 regards the less controversial branches of psy- 
 chology and logic. Yet it should be remembered 
 that the one-sidedness of the London curriculum 
 was intended to balance another and opposite 
 one-sidedness of representation in more than one 
 of the older Universities. In any case, as even 
 Oxford seems to have recognized, the predominant 
 empirical philosophy of the hour supplied the 
 most convenient, if not also the most"' natural, 
 starting-point for philosophic study. I, at least, 
 on traversing my student days, feel that much 
 of any love of clear thinking which I possess is due 
 to the characteristically British manner of philo- 
 sophizing, which Mill and the others were further 
 developing. To read Mill and Sir W. Hamilton 
 concurrently, and with some critical comparison, 
 was no bad exercise in distinguishing between a 
 more exact kind of logical thinking and a looser
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 73 
 
 and more showy manner of presenting things 
 philosophical. 
 
 For all his seemingly cold self-restraint, Mill 
 appealed to the humaner side of me as neither 
 Spencer nor Bain appealed. More than one 
 student in our Baptist College had something like 
 a pupil's combined reverence and fondness for 
 him. It was in my third year, when philosophy 
 became a leading subject of study, that Mill first 
 stood as Liberal candidate for Westminster (1865). 
 Accompanied by a fellow-student, I went down 
 to hear him speak just before the election. The 
 other political party, with the customary eager- 
 ness to score off opponents, had been plastering 
 the street walls of Westminster with alarming- 
 looking quotations from Mill's writings. And 
 the evening on which we heard him he was 
 pretty hotly plied with questions. He quietly but 
 firmly refused to have anything to say about 
 his religious opinions, herein setting an example 
 not always rigidly followed by later candidates 
 suspected of heterodoxy. But on other matters 
 he was frank enough. I remember to-day what 
 a thrill of fearful expectation — instantly displaced 
 by a feeling of joyous relief— shot through me as 
 I heard a man in the hall ask Mill whether he 
 had actually used certain words by no means 
 flattering to the working classes and Mill at once 
 reply in a quiet, almost an indifferent, manner 
 that he had used the words quoted ; which plucky 
 answer was instantly followed by loud cheers. ^ 
 
 I Mill himself refers to this incident of his canvassing 
 in his " Autobiography," pp. 283-4.
 
 74 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 The scene burnt itself into my memory : the 
 sunken face, the large, calm brow, and the thin 
 voice of the thinker, against the robust heads 
 and commanding voices of his interrogators. The 
 Garibaldi procession had shown me the great 
 simplicity of the soldier ; the meeting in the 
 Westminster Hall revealed to me another sim- 
 plicity no less great, that of the thinker schooled 
 by long practice to so scrupulous a care in utter- 
 ance as to have forgotten the very possibility of 
 such a thing as prevarication. 
 
 In recalling Mill, I am apt to experience regrets 
 which may well sound sentimental or worse. One 
 of them has to do with his speech in the House 
 of Commons against the proposed abolition of 
 capital punishment (April 21, 1868). Even when 
 face to face with the easygoing, matter-of-fact 
 country squires and others who lialf a century 
 ago made up the bulk of the House of Commons, 
 he was not willing to relax his hold on first prin- 
 ciples ; and so the unaccustomed parliamentary 
 ears had to do their best to follow him, as with 
 masterly insight and precision of language he un- 
 folded his reasons for opposing the amendment 
 in favour of the abolition. Among other points, 
 he urged that the punishment of death is, beyond 
 comparison, " the least cruel mode " in which it 
 is possible adequately to deter from certain crimes. 
 He laid stress upon the function of an element of 
 the unknown in quickening the imagination, and 
 brought out the desirability of making punish- 
 ments in reality less rigorous, rather than more 
 rigorous, than they seem. He cast a historical
 
 LEAVING COLLEGE 75 
 
 glance on the subject, contrasting the ancients' 
 too Httle care for death with our modern too 
 great care. He put the question, " Is death, then, 
 the greatest of all earthly ills ? " The speech 
 must have fallen with more of a shock upon its 
 hearers from the circumstance that only two 
 years before he had led the " humanitarians " 
 against Governor Eyre. I remember still the 
 vivid impression v/hich the reading of the speech 
 made upon my mind. I have often regretted 
 that I did not hear it, and in recent years I have 
 caught myself indulging in the whimsical wish 
 that one of our journalistic photographers — who 
 seem to some of us often to waste their art upon 
 such poor subjects as grinning brides and bride- 
 grooms — could have taken a fihri into the House 
 of Commons on the day of that speech, and 
 added to our permanent possessions by fixing 
 the changes of expression in Mill's audience 
 as he brouufht down the light of the eternal 
 ideas to illumine the sordid-looking problem of 
 the hangman. 
 
 With the passing of the final examination for 
 the B.A. degree in October (1866) my college 
 career ended. Three years of strenuous reading 
 for examinations had wrought notable changes 
 in me. Spiritually, I felt arid and exhausted as 
 by an air-pump. I had acquired the practice of 
 putting questions to myself, and I knew it was 
 impossible for me to fall back into the passive 
 acquiescent attitude of my old religious days. I 
 went to Liverpool and talked with Harry Foot, 
 who had been my closest confidant during these
 
 76 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 three years of intellectual and moral fermentation 
 and regeneration. 
 
 The difficulty of the problem, how to return to 
 the business of preaching, was shelved for a time 
 by the proposal that William Medley and I should 
 go to Germany for the next year or two to con- 
 tinue our philosophical studies in preparation for 
 the M.A. degree. Gottingen was fixed upon, 
 primarily (I think) as affording opportunity of 
 prolonging our study of Hebrew under the 
 famous Ewald. I feel pretty sure that it was 
 our tutor, Dr. Benjamin Davis, who had most to 
 do with the formation of this plan. He loved 
 Germany, and knew Ewald. To his counsel our 
 affection gave an unhesitating assent. The Ger- 
 many that his kindly heart thought of for us was 
 his own beloved home of linguistic scholarship. 
 His simple undisturbed religious belief rendered 
 him incapable of a thought of speculative danger 
 in my case. Thus it happened, not without 
 some appearance of the irony of things, that 
 at this critical moment in my development the 
 loosening of old attachments was to be carried 
 to a further stage by the insidious influence of 
 a complete and prolonged withdrawal from the 
 sanctities of home, in a remote land, amid new 
 currents of life, culture, and thought. Thus might 
 I have conceived of the ordeal had the proposal 
 been submitted to me a year or two earlier, for- 
 getting in a moment of sentimental regret what 
 my poet had taught me concerning the value of 
 the " dead selves " on which stepwise we climb 
 to higher things.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 STUDENT YEARS: GOTTINGEN IN THE SIXTIES 
 
 I SET out for Germany with my college friend, 
 William Medley, on January 11, 1867. In my 
 case the strain of the three years' reading for a 
 degree and the shaking of the supports of early 
 beliefs had been followed by a depressing reaction, 
 and the sense of drifting from ancient moorings 
 was deepened as for the first time I saw the English 
 coast disappear behind me. But the sight of a 
 new world at Calais roused me to a pleasurable 
 curiosity. The strange appearance of the boats, 
 carts, and houses, of the men's tilted caps and 
 loose tapering trousers, and of the women's short 
 petticoats and white caps, brought a first thrilling 
 sense of being abroad. The fa9ades of the streets 
 and squares in Brussels under a frosty, starlit sky 
 transformed this first half shock-like sensation 
 into one of pure delight. At Cologne we encoun- 
 tered one of the impressive contrasts in German 
 life, the tight grasp of Prussian officialism and the 
 laxity of the Continental Sunday. My love of 
 music saved me from any unpleasant shock of 
 Puritan prejudice on hearing the band play in 
 the pretty gardens of the Flora and again, later, 
 
 77
 
 78 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 on learning that our hotel was to be made gay 
 by an evening concert. The landscape that lay 
 about us on the way to Gottingen — rounded, 
 companionable-looking hills clad in fir-wood, look- 
 ing down on snowy valleys where high-roofed 
 houses huddled together for warmth — drew us 
 yet closer to the land which our favourite German 
 poets had already half taught us to love. 
 
 Looking from our hotel window the morning 
 after our arrival in Gottingen, we seem to be in 
 a Russian town. The snowstorm has not quite 
 hushed the streets, for the clang of the sleigh-bells 
 and the fierce crack of the drivers' v/hips keep 
 the place pretty lively. Everybody is thickly 
 wrapped up, the men in long cloaks with deep fur 
 capes and wristbands, the girls in thick woollen 
 hoods and fur tippets. Children are being pushed 
 to school in rough wooden sleighs. 
 
 Somebody had told us of the principal peda- 
 gogue of the place, a certain Dr. Ptiorgenstern, 
 who, among many accomplishments, had a fluent 
 command of English, while his name held a 
 promise of a welcome illumination over the first 
 difficult passage of our pilgrimage in Germany. 
 After fumbling over the intricate system of 
 doors and bell-handles in a German house, we 
 reached the doctor's flat. Lie received us civilly, 
 bidding us " Take place ! " as if he were a sort 
 of creator and we as yet only unrealized ideas. 
 In spite of some pedantic ways, he was a very 
 nice little man, and did his best for us. In his 
 room we had our first experience of the visitor in 
 a German homCt sitting confined behind a table
 
 GOTTIXGr.X. 
 
 To face i>. 87-
 
 THE GERMAN TONGUE 79 
 
 on a stiff sofa, while our host added another wall 
 to our prison by sitting and facing us on the other 
 side of the table. I feel pretty sure that, though 
 we could read German with ease, our conversa- 
 tional experiments were hardly better than those 
 of our worthy host ; though, whether from polite- 
 ness or from a pedagogic seriousness which had 
 no place for humour, he gave no sign of being 
 amused at our slips. 
 
 For me and my friend, these first crude stages 
 of linguistic performance were charged with merri- 
 ment. So greatly did I enjoy the fun of it that 
 later on, after attaining some facility in speaking 
 German, I knowingly continued to perpetrate 
 astounding solecisms. This impish behaviour on 
 my part had for its object the entertainment of 
 some young girls whom we used to meet when 
 spending an evening at their 'pension ; and it 
 was amply rewarded by shouts of laughter. As 
 to the early imintentional slips, I am pretty sure 
 that they were bad enough. I had been told 
 that the way to gain proficiency in the language 
 was to talk and talk, not minding the mistakes 
 which miight occur and would pretty certainly 
 be corrected by the good Germans, who seem 
 to love nothing better than to set us ignorant 
 foreigners right. I followed out this plan with 
 good results, and stumbled along with something 
 of the pluck of a horse fording a swollen river. 
 
 One of my instructors in German v/as a lady 
 at whose pension we afterwards lived. She would 
 think to encourage us on our thorny linguistic 
 road by relating slips of a greater gravity than
 
 80 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 ours, made by other English beginners. Among 
 other " howlers " was the answer made by an 
 English boy staying at her pension to an inquiry 
 as to what he had eaten when dining out. Wish- 
 ing to say " roast beef and potato salad," -he 
 managed by something like a stroke of genius to 
 say " roast child and slipper salad," substituting 
 Kinder for Kinder and Pantoffel for Kartoffel. 
 But for the perfect candour of my good land- 
 lady's eyes, I should have suspected the authen- 
 ticity of this story. It is more likely that the 
 young Briton invented the clumsy confusion for 
 her benefit. It was a comfort to learn years 
 afterwards that Germans too, when first trying 
 their hand at English, are apt to exhibit some- 
 thing of the same frailty. Perhaps one of the 
 most amusing examples is the attempt of Richter, 
 the celebrated musical conductor, to describe his 
 difficulties when crossing the Channel. Wishing to 
 say, " Wlien I feel ill I must lie down, but when 
 I lie down I get giddy," he said something like 
 this : " When I am bad I lie, and when I lie I 
 swindle " (es schwindelt mir). 
 
 Already knowing German grammatically, but 
 quite uninitiated in the pronunciation of it, I 
 secured the services of a student to whom I 
 read aloud. He was a well-marked type, with 
 a parchmenty skin and protuberant eyes, and 
 kept vigorously sucking a long pipe, which he 
 could go on sucking when moving about by 
 clutching the mouthpiece with his teeth. He 
 was an excellent stickler for the nuances of 
 pronunciation ; yet years later I had in Florence
 
 OLD GOTTINGEN 81 
 
 a little girl of eight as my maestra in Italian, 
 who (I am bound to own) was quite as good as, 
 if she did not surpass, the German student. 
 
 Our first peregrinations about the old town 
 were in seareh of lodgings : piloted by the good 
 Dr. Morgenstern, whose idea of a student's 
 " diggings " was an exceedingly modest one. Our 
 explorations made us acquainted with certain 
 curiosities of architecture in Gottingen houses as 
 well as with certain oddities in their inmates. 
 The atmosphere of som.e of the small upper rooms 
 which we visited was not exactly inviting. The 
 German mode of heating a room by the consump- 
 tion of a stove-full of wood in the morning, 
 and keeping closed double windows for the rest 
 of the day, results in an indescribable variety of 
 stuffiness. So offensive to nostril and throat was 
 this foul composition that, though neither of us 
 was a smoker, we welcomed the after-fumes of 
 German tobacco as introducing a fresher and 
 more wholesome element into the exhausted air. 
 
 We succeeded at last, with as little injury to 
 his feelings as possible, in dismissing our well- 
 intentioned guide, and set about a search for 
 more habitable quarters. This took us into some 
 of the queerest parts of the old town. Its primi- 
 tiveness was written on its face, on the gutter 
 rillets at the sides of the street which bore away 
 their malodorous burden in the most leisurely 
 fashion, in the rough-hewn many-cornered paving 
 stones that made much walking a, penance, and 
 in the lamps suspended in the middle of the 
 streets high above our heads. We soon began to 
 
 7
 
 82 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 get used to the little drawbacks of the streets, 
 and learned to like their expressive physiognomy. 
 The old houses, which were elaborately timbered 
 and topped with high-peaked red roofs, had a 
 way of insinuating themselves into our affection. 
 Now and then the vista of a street would be 
 pleasantly broken by a high church tower ending 
 in a short spire or in a dome. Of the shops, the 
 most seductive to our eyes were the new '^nd 
 antiquarian bookshops. We soon grew fond of 
 hanging about these, going so far as to peep into 
 the latest unbound and uncut publications, sniff- 
 ing their agreeable press aroma. The traffic of 
 the streets, from the yellow Posiwagen and 
 the long cradle-like wagons with horses loosely 
 attached, down to the little bakers' carts drawn 
 by dogs that seemed to pant as with impatient 
 zeal, had many an attraction for our unaccus- 
 tomed eyes. We found the centre of outdoor 
 life, the market-place, especially engaging ; and 
 our lingerings there were prolonged after we had 
 made acquaintance with the old apple-woman, 
 nicknamed Alte Tante, of whom tradition whis- 
 pered that she had been Heine's sweetheart when 
 he was a student in Gottingen — dividing his time 
 rather partially between dry juristic studies, 
 amusing inspection of the foibles of dreamy pro- 
 fessors, and criticism of the dimensions of the 
 Gottingen dames' feet. She was now a handsome 
 old lady, who looked a little witch-like as she sat 
 muffled up to the chin and plied her wily mercantile 
 arts on a new generation of ingenuous youth. 
 
 We duly visited the fine modern University
 
 THE STUDENTS 83 
 
 building, the " Augusta," where we went through 
 the not very tedious formaUty of paying our 
 fees and obtaining our certificates of matriculation 
 (Matrikelschein). No doubt we had an amused 
 satisfaction in bearing away our University tes- 
 tamur ; but I think we came nearest to a feeling 
 of proud elation when we found ourselves ad- 
 dressed by the Pedell (beadle) or by a tradesman 
 as " Herr Studiosus." The ponderous formalities 
 of the German language have a Vv^ay of giving a 
 touch of glory to us poor mortals. 
 
 Gottingen was in those days a " little nest " 
 of a place, in the life of which the University 
 bulked large. Students were to be seen in plenty, 
 more especially in the vicinity of the aula. 
 Although they carried their notes of lectures under 
 their arms, they appeared as little oppressed by 
 any weight of learning as our Oxford under- 
 graduates appear to be when, issuing from the 
 lecture-room, they tuck their skimpy gowns under 
 their arms. Unlike the latter, however, the Got- 
 tingen students do not hurry away after a lecture, 
 but loiter and chat with a German's love of leisure 
 and Gemiithlichkeit. Differences of rank among 
 the students at once disclose themselves. The 
 coloured caps mark off the several corps from 
 the plain students whom they dub " Bar- 
 barians " (Wilde). The latter often look a little 
 shabby in dress and pasty in face, whereas the 
 corps students seem better off in both senses, 
 and frequently add to their flourishing aspect by 
 some decorative adjunct, such as a cane or a big 
 Danish hoimd.
 
 84 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 A favourite promenade of the students was the 
 long Wender Strasse. Here they loved to crowd 
 and talk and, aided by the barking of their dogs, 
 would often make a pretty clatter. The best 
 walk in Gottingen was on the broad ramparts 
 or vallum encircling the old town. Here in the 
 afternoon, under an avenue of limes, many 
 citizens of both " town " and " gown " did their 
 carefully regulated amoimt of slow post-prandial 
 pacing. The afternoon procession included not 
 only professors and other elderly persons, but 
 young people of both sexes, who, however, 
 always kept severely apart one from the other. 
 We liked to come here at the frequented hour 
 and watch the slowly advancing procession, each 
 figure in its turn emerging from a speck-like 
 insignificance into the full altitude of erect man- 
 hood. Of all these perambulating figures the most 
 noteworthy type was the learned professor, moving 
 with slow step and eyes fixed on the ground, and 
 apparently lost in thought. By observing these 
 quiet dream-like figures we began to understand 
 some of the students' jocose stories of the absent- 
 mindedness of their professors ; as when it was 
 said that a dear old Gelehrter, on walking out one 
 moonlight evening, took all the tree shadows 
 thrown across the road to be ditches, every one 
 of which he proceeded with great circumspection 
 to jump over. 
 
 From the quiet aspect of these professors, seem- 
 ingly preoccupied in their respective lines of 
 speculation, you would scarcely guess that the 
 University has been, and still is, agitated by last
 
 THE PROMENADE 85 
 
 year's annexation of Hanover to the now master- 
 ful kingdom of Prussia. But stay a moment : 
 here is another variety of cloak-wrapt profes- 
 sorial figure. He is white-haired and his face 
 too denotes age, yet he holds himself erect as a 
 reed, and advances with a brisk, energetic step. 
 We shall hear presently more about this stalwart 
 veteran, for he is a conspicuous figure among 
 Gottingen celebrities, no other than the world- 
 famous Oriental scholar and uncompromising foe 
 to Prussian rule. Professor Heinrich Ewald, to 
 whom we bear a letter of introduction from our 
 Regent's Park tutor. I got to know his figure 
 well among the promenaders on the vallum, and 
 I think only once chanced to see another sample 
 of an aged yet vigorous professor quite so pictur- 
 esque, and that was F. W. Newman in the days 
 of his retirement, when, dressed in a dark cloak 
 and wide-awake hat, he used to face the wintry 
 winds on the sands of Weston-super-Mare. To 
 be one of the " learned " is a distinction in Got- 
 tingen, and our professors as they amble along the 
 avenue are being ever saluted by the raising of a 
 hat, which courtesy they unfailingly acknowledge. 
 We got our first glimpse of the new political 
 situation in Gottingen from the gentleman in 
 whose house we found agreeable lodgings. He 
 was a very tall man, and had a strength of voice 
 proportionate to his height. Like many another 
 who has to make his meaning clear to an obtuse 
 foreigner, he resorted to the obvious device of 
 shouting at us. He had been Rittmeister (cavalry 
 officer) in the Hanoverian army ; but though we
 
 86 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 addressed him as " Herr Rittmeister," we knew 
 that his mihtary career was ended. We sus- 
 pected that the letting of his well-furnished rooms 
 pointed to the pressure of reduced circumstances, 
 and we ascribed something of irritability in his 
 manner now and again to the low condition of 
 his patriotic spirits. Could it have been that he 
 saw in the two young Englishmen representa- 
 tives of that England who had failed to stand 
 by Hanover in the hour of her need ? 
 
 As we arrived at Gottingen in the middle of 
 a semester (the half-yearly term), rather too late 
 to inscribe ourselves for a full course of lectures, 
 \Ye took advantage of the custom to hospitiren — 
 i.e. to attend lectures as non-paying " guests " — 
 in the classrooms of some of the more famous 
 teachers. Among others we heard Ritter, the 
 venerable historian of philosophy ; Lotze, the 
 psychologist and metaphysician ; and Heinrich 
 Ewald. By the kind permission of Ewald we 
 attended the remainder of his courses as Iiospites. 
 He had at this time but few hearers, but to us 
 he was much the most interesting personality 
 among the professors. He was one of the staunchest 
 of the party loyal to the Hanoverian King, and he 
 refused to take the oath to the Prussian monarch. 
 He was threatened with expulsion, but in con- 
 sideration of his eminence and his great age 
 he was by some special arrangement permitted 
 to lecture at Gottingen. 
 
 We heard exegetieal lectures on the Psalms and 
 certain books of the prophets. Ewald's appear- 
 ance as he entered the lecture-room was arresting.
 
 IT^' 
 
 wm
 
 HEINRICH EWALD 8T 
 
 He would step quickly up to the cathedra and 
 at once, as if charged with a pressing message, 
 begin in a thin, worn voice with the familiar 
 " Meine Herren ! " The white, ascetic face, with 
 its prominent cheekbones and its bright, spiritual 
 eyes, framed between two long wisps of white 
 hair, and an ample white neckcloth, would alone 
 have riveted our attention. But the magical 
 power lay in the utterance. The mere sounds 
 v/ere wonderful, as a rapid passage given in a 
 sort of thin falsetto gave place to slow tones of 
 an unusual depth of pitch and richness of timbre. 
 The quick movements, too, which accompanied 
 the declamation, such as little energetic tappings 
 of the closed hand when a point had to be ham- 
 mered in, or the rapid turns of head and hand 
 as the Hebrew text had to be brought near 
 the speaker's eye, added to the intensity of the 
 expression. 
 
 The psalmist's ovv^n deep passionateness appeared 
 to overflow into the lecturer, as his utterance 
 now rose to fierce explosive cries of invective, 
 now sank to tender notes of pleading which took 
 on something of lyrical rhythm and melody. We 
 seemed to be listening at one moment to a poetical 
 recitation, at another to a dramatic personifica- 
 tion, rather than to a scholar's exposition of a 
 text. We soon discovered that this tempestuous 
 ora.tory was more than an interpretation of the 
 v/ords of psalmist or prophet. A new fascination 
 revealed itself in those fiery denunciations when 
 we understood that they v/ere directed at the 
 heads of the living, that this spiritual-looking
 
 88 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 recluse was daring from his professorial chair to 
 strike at his new earthly rulers — at the Prussian 
 King and his minister, Bismarck, whose growing 
 potency he envisaged as a Frevel (an outrage). 
 
 We took an early opportunity of paying our 
 respects to Professor Ewald's family, and through- 
 out our stay in Gottingen found in his home a 
 cordial hospitality. Frau Ewald was of a dainty, 
 mignon person. Her small head flanked with 
 bunches of short black curls, her deep-set dark eyes 
 given to sparkling with animation, and the two 
 small patches of bright red on her cheeks, made 
 up a charming whole. Sitting opposite to you 
 in a plain brown dress, and leaning towards you 
 as she talked with the head thrust well forwards, 
 she captivated you as by the sweet winsomeness 
 of a friendly bird. She surprised us with her 
 knowledge of English literature, customs, etc. 
 She had accompanied the Professor on a memorable 
 visit to Oxford, of which beautiful city, as well 
 as of their friends, the j\Iax Miillcrs and others, 
 they both loved to talk. The moral difference of 
 attitude between a professor in the lecture-room 
 and in the home was, I think, in Ewald's case, 
 less than the usual one. As he came down, wrapt 
 in his fur-bordered Schlafrock, from his study to 
 the evening meal, he still bore in the whiteness 
 of his face and the fading gleam in his tired- 
 looking eyes traces of a recent rapture of spirit 
 from the homely earth to the high realms of 
 scholarly contemplation. Yet as a host, if a little 
 absent-minded now and again, he showed a kindly 
 and almost tender interest in his guests. The
 
 CHRISTMAS IN GERMANY 89 
 
 fierce hatred of the Prussian conquerors threatened 
 now and again to intrude upon the home, and I 
 remember liow Frau Ewald, in an early stage of 
 our acquaintance, begged me never to allude to 
 politics when conversing with her husband. 
 
 One visit to the Ewald family has impressed 
 itself in a specially clear way on my memory. 
 Towards the end of my stay in Gottingen I was 
 invited to spend Christmas Eve with my kind 
 hosts. The German way of observing this festival 
 was new to me then, and the sudden throwing 
 open of the door of an ante-room at eight o'clock 
 to the dazzling spectacle of the illumined fir-tree, 
 the outbursts of wondering delight, and the warm 
 embracings as gifts were distributed all round, 
 made a very agreeable picture of the older sort 
 of German Gemilthlichkeit. A specially enjoyable 
 incident in the festivities was the surprise which 
 Frau Ewald had prepared for her husband and 
 daughter in the shape of a new piano. The 
 Professor had something of the look of a puzzled 
 child as he gazed at the handsome new-comer 
 in his home surroundings ; and when his little 
 daughter sat down in front of it and with un- 
 expected skill drew forth from its keys a charming 
 bit of music, his face positively beamed with joy. 
 
 Another pleasant time with the Ewalds that 
 shines serenely in my memory was a picnic excur- 
 sion which we made together in the summer, to 
 the brace of hills known as " Die Gleichen." In 
 this memory-picture, too, I see the eager young- 
 hearted wife and mother doing her best to diffuse 
 an atmosphere of gaiety, while the Professor,
 
 90 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 still half preoccupied with his grave thouglits, 
 follows her lead slowly and with difficulty. 
 
 We ^vere invited to other Gottingen houses, 
 where we had a better opportunity of studying 
 certain aspects of German home-life and society 
 manners. Though apt to chafe under the long 
 sitting of the evening meal, we managed to recoup 
 ourselves by a good deal of quiet quizzing of our 
 new surroundings. We were duly impressed by 
 the contrast between the jejune simplicity of the 
 table and the ladies' dresses on the one hand, 
 and, on the other, the high degree of cultured 
 intelligence shown by the company. Here in a 
 little out-of-the-way university town the problem 
 of wedding high thinking to plain living seemed 
 to us to have solved itself perfectly and with 
 ease. The knowledge of English literature, old 
 as well as new, shown by the young women 
 surprised us, for it surpassed that of many English 
 women of the same age. Yet we lighted now 
 and again on some amusing gaps in the ladies' 
 acquaintance with our country, as that indicated 
 by the question once put to us by a middle-aged 
 dame, whether it was true that we never saw the 
 sun in London. The younger women V7©re rarely 
 pretty in face or figure, and they seemed to take 
 little pains to tone down their plainness by decora- 
 tive artifices. All the same, we soon found our- 
 selves amiably disposed to the broad faces, which, 
 when animated by conversation, would take on 
 something of the charm of a spiritual expression. 
 
 Of course we had brought with us some of our 
 home preferences. Quietly attractive as they were,
 
 CULTURE 91 
 
 the Gottingen ladies had pretty obvious defi- 
 ciencies. If in the freedom of their talk they 
 showed themselves to be less haunted than their 
 British cousins by the fear of Mrs. Grundy, 
 they acquiesced a little too supinely, we thought, 
 in the restrictions laid upon them by their male 
 folk. \Ye did not quarrel with their alacrity in 
 bearing teacups to their guests, and otherwise 
 encouraging male indolence in the home ; but 
 we strongly disliked the rigid separation of the 
 sexes in the afternoon walks on the vallum and 
 elsewhere. 
 
 One feature common to both sexes which struck 
 me particularly was an unwillingness to trespass 
 upon what is a main field of conversation for 
 English people, namely politics. We soon learned 
 that this reticence was not wholly due to the 
 strong feeling aroused by the recent annexation 
 of Hanover to Prussia. The German habit of 
 leaving the officials to settle what is best for the 
 country seemed to us to be only one illustration 
 of the general belief in the expert, in everybody's 
 having his special domain of knowledge — his Fach 
 ■ — outside of which he should be chary of offering 
 his opinion. I remember one German professor 
 (or was it a Privatdozent ?) asking me in a quite 
 concerned tone, "Is it true, Herr Sully, that 
 George Grote, the historian, is also a banker ? " 
 With this respect for the expert there seemed to 
 associate itself a dull uniformity of opinion about 
 men, books, and other things, and an apparent 
 timidity in expressing views of marked indivi- 
 duality. Even in those days one could see the
 
 92 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 tendency of the Germans to allow their minds to be 
 " over-drilled " — as I once heard an Italian scholar 
 describe it — a tendency which the predominance 
 of Prussia in later years has, I hear, made much 
 more conspicuous. 
 
 Both young men and maidens provoked our 
 British instinct for improving the foreigner by 
 their anaemic parchment-like complexion, due, we 
 thought, to living in unventilated rooms and the 
 lack of the more vigorous kind of tramping .and 
 other exercises. They took our criticisms in good 
 part : indeed, though they might cling to their 
 mode of heating their rooms, they fully recognized 
 the Englishman's general superiority to the Ger- 
 man in practical matters. " Ach ! die praktischen 
 Englander ! " would often escape from their lips, 
 as when we pleaded for less malodorous sani- 
 tary arrangements in streets and houses. How 
 startled they would have looked had we been 
 able to prophesy to them that in a few years 
 Germany would not only have learned from 
 English engineers how to supply her towns with 
 pure water, but have surpassed " the practical 
 Englishman " in many departments of industrial 
 and other invention. 
 
 Study appeared to hold a small place in the 
 affections of many of the Gottingen students. 
 Even the workers would often join the idlers at 
 the week end, making up for the ascetic restraint 
 during the week by a good carouse. In these 
 drinking bouts (Kneipen) an astonishing amount 
 of beer would disappear. The swallowing of a 
 regulation quantity was secured by certain devices.
 
 DUELLING 93 
 
 such as a command from the president of the 
 gathering to empty at one gulp a large glass 
 (Schoppen). The effects of these copious imbibings 
 appeared in the frequent stoutness of the students, 
 some of whom attained the glorious distinction / 
 of being named " beer-casks " {Bierjdsse^. I -^ 
 
 The frequent sight of a slashed face among 
 the students, especially those wearing corps in- 
 signia, naturally made us curious to learn about 
 their duels and the strange code of honour which 
 determined, among other matters, in what cir- 
 cumstances a rapier, a sabre, or a pistol was to 
 be used. The rapier was the resort for most cases 
 of wounded honour, real or assumed, and we 
 found that there existed quite a lore as to the 
 parts of the body to be protected and the proper 
 parts to be aimed at. The nasal protuberance 
 appeared to be a favourite object of attack. I 
 remember once innocently asking a student whether 
 the combatants took their big dogs with them 
 into the duelling-hall, and was told that this was 
 forbidden, on the ground that one of them might 
 take a fancy to a human nose, which was still, 
 by the semi-military laws of duelling, the wounded 
 man's possession, and susceptible of being re- 
 attached to his face. The degree of glory 
 attained by a wound was measured by the number 
 of stitches needed in sewing it up. The mark 
 of honour had the advantage of great duration. 
 At the time I write of, it was quite common 
 to meet in Germany a middle-aged man with 
 his face still scarred by some combat at the 
 University.
 
 94 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 The majority of the students, I suspect, made 
 but few and short excursions into the country. 
 An Aiifluehi beyond the town ramparts, commonly 
 reduced itself to a languid tramp of two or three 
 miles, with frequent halts at Gasthduser (inns). 
 During the winter, longer excursions into the 
 neighbourhood were made in sleighs. The high 
 personages among the corps students would make 
 a fine display on these occasions, with their 
 rich furs, their elegant sleighs and horses, and 
 their big hounds. Even we despised " savages " 
 used to make up sledge parties. I took part in 
 a very enjoyable one, got up (if I remember aright) 
 by the son of Professor Henle, the celebrated 
 anatomist. Our party consisted of twenty and 
 odd men, each of whom brought a lady with 
 him. Headed by a band of music, we set out in 
 the early afternoon. A postilion sitting behind 
 managed by frequent crackings of a long whip to 
 keep the pair of horses up to their work. After 
 a drive of seven miles over glittering snowy roads 
 we alighted at a Gasthaus, w^here coffee and cakes 
 had been ordered. The half-day's junketing 
 wound up with a supper and a Cinderella dance. 
 It struck me as a good illustration of the truth 
 that, if we care to do without display, it is quite 
 easy to secure a considerable amount of refined 
 social enjoyment by the employment of a few 
 simple materials. 
 
 Gdttingen could boast of a small theatre which 
 was duly patronized by the students. We natu- 
 rally frequented it, if only to further our aural 
 mastery of the language. Here one could see,
 
 PRUSSIAN OFFICERS 95 
 
 along with classical plays, already familiar in 
 reading, lighter farcical pieces from the French. 
 Better theatrical resoiu'ccs were to be fomid in 
 the little Hofstadt of Cassell, easily reached by 
 rail ; and among the pleasurable recollections of 
 my Gottingen days are evenings passed in its 
 nice little opera-house, where the works of Spohr 
 and other less well-known composers were repre- 
 sented. 
 
 The political upheaval which disturbed the 
 academic serenity of Gottingen forced itself upon 
 our attention in more ways than one. The newly 
 imported Prussian officers were to be seen all 
 over the town, with ears no doubt alert for any 
 signs of the widespread disloyalty to the new 
 masters. They were to be seen, too, at such social 
 functions as the afternoon Familien-Concerte, at 
 which the gebildete Gottingen families sit round 
 tables and manage, along with some show of atten- 
 tion to the music, to get a good bit of chatting 
 done over their coffee and cakes. From a gallery 
 at the back of the hall I could watch the pretty 
 scene as a student or two joined a table and " made 
 the cour " to a fair maiden. Hither, too, might 
 move with brisker step a Prussian officer, who 
 cut an amusing figure as he executed the spasmodic 
 hip-bend — a mode of salutation, by the way, 
 which admirably illustrates Professor Bergson's 
 conception of the ludicrous as something in human 
 behaviour that looks like mechanical rigidity His 
 arrival would naturally cause a little flutter, since 
 only a few families as yet ventured to concede 
 the entree to these flushed conquerors of their
 
 96 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 King and army. The young lady who happened 
 to be the object of one of these advances might 
 blush and look awkward for a moment. But the 
 sex has been known to be accommodating when 
 one uniform displaces another, and while watch- 
 ing the pretty bit of acting we hazarded the re- 
 mark that the stiff, angular obeisance of this new 
 cavalier had probably seemed in her eyes to be 
 ivunderschon, if not himmelisch. 
 
 A poignant illustration of the divided state 
 of feeling in Gottingen towards the new rulers 
 occurred on the birthday of the Prussian King. 
 The proprietor of a house in which we afterwards 
 resided, wishing to show his speedy transference 
 of loyalty from one crowned head to another, 
 boldly unfurled on his housetop the Prussian 
 banner. The more conservative citizens objected 
 to this cutting down of the decent period of 
 patriotic mourning for their dethroned monarch, 
 and they began to assemble in front of the house 
 and to throw stones at the windows. I heard, 
 too, how bitterly divided were professors and 
 others upon the burning question of shifting their 
 loyalty. Friendships of many years were strained 
 by these divisions, some of them, alas ! to the 
 breaking-point. It was my first experience of 
 one of the painful consequences of a war of con- 
 quest, which, though apt to be dismissed as a 
 small one, has to be reckoned in any adequate 
 comparison of its good and evil aspects. It left 
 a deep impression on my mind, and without doubt 
 sowed the first seed of a lasting detestation of 
 all subjugation of weaker by stronger States.
 
 A TRIAD 97 
 
 Towards the end of my sojourn in Gottingen 
 I witnessed a weirdly fierce outburst of pro- 
 Prussian enthusiasm. It occurred, of all places in 
 the world, in the " Literary Museum," as we used, 
 I think, to call it — a sort of club where members 
 of the University and others could dine, read 
 papers from all parts of Europe, and indulge in 
 quiet talk. The perpetrator of this bit of execrable 
 " bad form " was an American, who by some 
 freak of European wandering had drifted to our 
 retired university town. As a number of us, 
 mostly Germans, were reading the journals, he 
 began in a loud voice, apropos of nothing, to 
 extol Count Bismarck. In the whole history of 
 the world, he assured us with abundant emphasis, 
 there had been only three really great human 
 figures, Jesus Christ, Napoleon, and Bismarck. 
 The juxtaposition of names was suggestive of an 
 unbalanced brain, and we heard shortly after- 
 wards that this eccentric orator had become quite 
 mad and was confined in an asylum in the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 During my second semester I exchanged 
 lodgings for a pension which was frequented by 
 foreign students. It was kept by a Frau Heintze, 
 and lay in a street known as Geismar (or Kleine 
 Geismar) Strasse. Our good, solicitous hostess was 
 of a weakly aspect, and wore a sad and shrinking 
 expression. She was old enough to console her- 
 self for any pinchings in present circumstances 
 by going back to a glorious past when she lived in 
 Weimar and saw the still imposing figure of the 
 Minister von Goethe. Among nearer events she 
 
 8
 
 98 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 WQuld narrate the doings of her §on, who was 
 serving in the Marines. She was supported in 
 her table-talk by a daughter, a strikingly blonde 
 maiden even in Germany, v/ho had undergone 
 a fine Aiisbikhing and was able to correct any 
 inaccuracies in our German with perfect peda- 
 gogic seriousness, undisturbed by any side glance 
 at their ludicrous character. 
 
 In this pleasant house I found not only iny 
 friend Medley, but a httle reading party made 
 up of Alfred West and old students of his fatTier's 
 well-known school at Caversham. We filled the 
 late-summer days with youthful jollity. We dived 
 and splashed in the Weser, the little stream that 
 Heine pokes his fun at. We marched across 
 the peasants' fields singing " John Brown's body " 
 and other rollicking songs, thereby greatly in- 
 censing the good Bauern, v/ho menaced us with 
 angr}^ cries and brandishings of pitchforks, and 
 were, I think, only deterred by something un- 
 canny in our outlandish figures from giving us 
 worse signs of their displeasure. We explored 
 the pretty ruined Castle of Haustein and Miinden, 
 finishing with a Sunday at Cassel, where we 
 laughingly watched, along v»dth the irnpressionable 
 Cassel children and their elders, the quite enjoy- 
 able artificial spectacle of letting the y>^ater descend 
 over a chain of cascades and pools from the 
 heigiits of V/ilhelmshohe. Our enjoyment was 
 darkened by no forecast of what was to come 
 three years or so later, when the defeated French 
 Emperor was interned in this princely pleasance. 
 I set myself now diligently to study. ]^wald
 
 HERMANN LOTZE 99 
 
 still lectured, though he had been pensioned off 
 by the Prussian Government, and I continued to 
 hear him. In psychology and philosophy I was 
 now able to profit from the lectures of Hermann 
 Lotze and other teachers. Lotze was an odd- 
 looking little man, with a black-cherry kind of 
 eye. A high, stiff-looking black stock gave an 
 aspect of rigorous severity to his figure ; but 
 this was relieved, when he spoke, by a queer little 
 pursing movement of the mouth which seemed 
 to me to punctuate some fine shade of ironical 
 humour. He read his lectures in a monotonous 
 way, and I was told that he varied them but 
 little from year to year. At pretty regular in- 
 tervals he would slow his pace, dictating a precis 
 of the passage just completed. ^ He was one of 
 the most popular professors at Gottingen, and his 
 large auditorium was packed with students, in- 
 cluding not only members of the philosophic 
 faculty, but many of the medical ; for, like Wundt, 
 Lotze had approached psychology and the other 
 branches of philosophy from the physiological 
 side, and had won fame by his " Medecinische 
 Psychologic." While I was at Gottingen he re- 
 ceived an invitation to go to a larger university, 
 and upon declining it, he was honoured by his 
 numerous student admirers with a Fac}(elzug j 
 (torch-procession). His teaching did much to ' 
 widen my outlook. Indeed, his particular stand- 
 point in philosophy, from which he tried to do 
 justice at once to Kant and to Herbart, if not 
 
 * These highly compressed summaries were after his death 
 published in small volumes under the title of ' Dictate."
 
 100 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 also to Hegel, qualified him in a peculiar way to 
 be the teacher of one like myself, whose reading 
 hitherto had been rather one-sided. 
 
 Lotze lived in a queer little house outside 
 the vallum, which the students had dub'bed 
 the " pepper-box." His menage was noticeably 
 simpler than that of the Ewalds, and one soon 
 felt at ease in his bright and kindly family circle. 
 I heard from him after I had returned to England, 
 and he was good enough to help me in my later 
 reading and wrote for me a handsome testimonial 
 when I began to aspire to a Chair. Before I left 
 Gottingen he had suggested to me that I might 
 try teaching work in Germany, by setting up as 
 a Privatdozent, laying stress on the value of teach- 
 ing to a student of philosophy in compelling him 
 to clear up and arrange his ideas {irCs Reine 
 bringen). 
 
 While bus}^ reading philosophy in preparation 
 for the M.A. degree of London University, I 
 managed to continue lighter intellectual pursuits. 
 I read as much German as I could, including 
 poetry of Goethe, Schiller, Heine, prose works of 
 Lessing, Schiller, and other authors bearing upon 
 the aesthetics of poetry and art, as well as a fair 
 amount of lighter literature. I continued to give 
 some time to my musical studies, having dis- 
 covered a most amiable young pianist who heard 
 and corrected my performances on the instru- 
 ment. He was of so nicely balanced a nervous 
 organization that once, when I asked him to play 
 a piece of Schumann just after smoking a cigar- 
 ette, he declined in a shocked sort of way. By
 
 .ESTHETICS 101 
 
 way of contrast, I was reminded of him years 
 later when, attending a smoking-concert in London, 
 I saw a man quietly lay down a cigar and im- 
 mediately begin to sing a rather exacting song. 
 This young Gottingen pianist was an ardent ad- 
 mirer of Vischer, the author of what was at that 
 time the most profound and exhaustive system 
 of aesthetics, and he used to discourse to me 
 enthusiastically on some of the abstruse Hegelian 
 subtleties in Vischer 's volumes. 
 
 My advance in the use of the German language 
 enabled me to take a larger part in the social 
 life of Gottingen. I joined a Gesangverein, and 
 got to know, among other new things, Schubert's 
 unfinished opera. I also shared in some of the 
 lighter amusements of the place. At a dance I 
 got to know two Scotch sisters who were staying 
 in Gottingen. They entertained me with their 
 first impressions of German life. Among other 
 funny things they told me that when on a sunny 
 winter day they opened wide their window, quite 
 a crowd of citizens gathered in the street below 
 to see this last vagary of the " mad English " 
 {Verriickte Engldnder). The proper function of a 
 window is to remain shut, so as to keep the day's 
 supply of stove-heat from being dissipated. 
 
 At the end of the winter semester 1867-8 I 
 left Gottingen for good. If Germany had nipped 
 off some early spiritual growths, she had fostered 
 and matured others. During my year and a 
 quarter in the country I had widened my observa- 
 tion of men and of life. I had come to know 
 with some intimacy an admirable type of char-
 
 lOS MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 acter — ^the Gelehrter, which unites with great 
 knowledge and brilliant intellectual powers a 
 singular moderation in desire and simplicity in 
 mode of life. I held it to be no small advantage 
 to an Englishman to have come into daily contact 
 with men who seemed to be the best modern 
 representatives of the wisdom of life as con- 
 ceived by ancient thinkers. Germany's chief £ind 
 most valued lesson to me was " Strive to be 
 rather than to appear." 
 
 Of the personalities I met with during my stay, 
 Ewald was by far the most impressive. Eveti 
 to-d8.y I can recall his features and movements 
 more vividly than those of friends of much longer 
 standing. I continued to get news of the Pro- 
 fessor after my return to England. A letter from 
 a Gottingen lady, dated February 1869, informed 
 me that he had lately got into trouble by saying 
 something against the King of Prussia. He was 
 prosecuted, but in the end was acquitted (frei- 
 gesprochen). In January 1870, Frau Ewald, on 
 sending me a New Year's greeting, told me that 
 the Professor was still giving daily an Oriental 
 lecture. It was, I think, soon after this that he 
 was elected member of the Prussian "'Parliament 
 for the province of Hanover, to which assembly 
 he was bold enough to transfer something of his 
 deep-seated hostility to Prussian institutions and 
 the Prussian spirit. ^ 
 
 To-day, when Germany, while making d 
 
 I The best English account of Ewald's Hfe and work wil 1 
 be found in the volume " Heinrich Ewald," by Professor 
 T. Witton Davies.
 
 THE OLD SPIRIT AND THE NEW 103 
 
 desperate effort to go on chattering about the 
 culture which she once prized, seems at heart 
 ablaze with the flames of war-fury, I find a strange 
 interest in reverting to those distant Gottingen 
 days. What a contrast in spirit and in aimS 
 does Germany of to-day make Vv^ith her a^ncestress 
 of the sixties ! She has gained her political unity 
 and along with it a richer material prosperit)^ 
 But has she not lost something too ? On leaving 
 Gottingen my kind friend Frau Ewald gave me, 
 zur Erimierung, a dear little illustrated edition 
 of Goethe's " Hermann and Dorothea," a poem 
 which contains a touching description of the 
 sufferings of poor refugees driven across the Rhine 
 by the terrors and the desolations of war. The 
 stalwart Germans of to-day, who are probably 
 the most unsparing devastators the modern world 
 has seen, cannot, one supposes, feel very grateful 
 to their greatest poet for choosing such a senti- 
 mental theme. Perhaps some of the professors, 
 who have not shrunk from offering apologies for 
 such things as breach of solemn covenant and 
 unprovoked attack upon a small State, will further 
 exercise their patriotic wits by giving us a new 
 cryptic interpretation of Goethe's poem. 
 
 In the lurid light of the doings of the German 
 of to-day, the figure of Ewald takes on for my 
 imagination a new and profounder significance. 
 He was not only the learned interpreter of prophets, 
 he was himself a prophet, anticipating Avith more 
 than a vague Ahnung, with a clairvoyant pre- 
 science, how the Prussian brain and hand would 
 transform his beloved people, forcing them to
 
 104 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 bow the knee to false gods and to cast into the 
 rubbish-heap all that was best in their old ideals. 
 Was there not a prophetic strain in the withering 
 question he put to an Englishman who came to 
 study the Semitic languages : " Young man, is 
 it a time to be studying dead languages when 
 forty millions of Germans are governed by a 
 devil ? "
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A FIRST WANDERING 
 
 Travel has been regarded as a suitable finish to 
 study. Conformably with this idea, I decided 
 to relieve the strain of study at Gottingen by 
 spending four months of the summer semester 
 in travelling through parts of Germany, the Tyrol, 
 and North Italy. After a few days of historical 
 dreaming over the fascinating scenes of Luther 
 at the Wartburg and of Goethe and Schiller at 
 Weimar, I made for the Saxon and Prussian Uni- 
 versity of Halle on the Saale, having received 
 the valuable introduction of a letter to Professor 
 Tholuck there. The venerable Professor was a 
 little terrifying in his features, but he soon 
 showed himself to be kind, and he at once intro- 
 duced me to some of his theological students. 
 These did their best to inoculate me — more or 
 less playfully — with their enthusiasm for their 
 master, or, as they put it, to see me properly 
 " be-Tholuckt." 
 
 At Halle I heard but few lectures. The river, 
 with its nightingales in the early summer, may 
 have seduced me from the professors' auditoria. 
 Yet I remember attending as guest at lectures by 
 
 105
 
 106 MY IJFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Erdmann, the historian of philosophy; and I saw 
 a good deal of the doings of students outside the 
 lecture-room. Among social relaxations, I was 
 initiated into the rollicking proceedings of a 
 Kommers or Kneipe. It followed a concert 
 given by the Gesangverein, and was attended 
 by professors as well as students. A president 
 was appointed to lead the proceedings and .to 
 maintain such order as was possible. Comic songs 
 were sung, healths drunk, and mugs brought 
 together with a lively ring. "When the hubbub 
 became unendurable even to Kneipers^ shouts of 
 " Ad loca ! " " Silcntium ! " etc., came from all 
 parts. I did not know then that by joining in 
 these revels I was illustrating unknowingly a 
 remark of George Meredith in " Victoria " : " When 
 one really takes to foreigners, there is a peculiar 
 impulse (I speak of the people who are accessible 
 to impulse) to make brothers of them." 
 
 I was so fortunate as to be in Halle during the 
 celebration of the fifty years' jubilee which com- 
 memorated the union of the University with the 
 older University of Wittenberg — illustrious by 
 the shelter it gave to the heretic Martin Luther. 
 I think I owe it to Tholuek that I was able to 
 participate in the festivity. The town was filled 
 with visitors, among v> hom one saw fathers, them- 
 selves, perhaps, former students of the University^ 
 linked arm in arm v/ith present ones. The streets 
 wore the gala attire of bunting and greenery, the 
 joyousness of which was thrown into relief by the 
 black and white device on the Prussian flag. 
 
 The more strictly academic part of the pro-
 
 HALLE lot 
 
 ceedings was worthy of the occasion. The cere- 
 mony of receiving in the aula the delegates 
 and hearing their congratulatory addresses was 
 especially imposing. The entry of the beadles, 
 conducting to their seats the Rector and the 
 professors in their velvet robes, offered a striking 
 snectacle. The black robes of the theologians 
 seemed to punctuate the warmer colouring of 
 the members of the other faculties. Then the 
 doors were thrown open, and a blast of triumph 
 announced the entry of a second procession of 
 delegates still more gorgeously arrayed. Among 
 these was the Prussian Minister of Culture, Von 
 Miiller. The rest Were professors from various 
 sister universities, both Lutheran and Catholic, 
 some of whom were already known to us by name, 
 such as Kuno Fischer of Jena and Ilitzig of Heidel- 
 berg. The congratulatory addresses were warmly 
 applauded, that of Kuno Fischer — a rare orator 
 among professors — being especially cheered. Hardly 
 less vigorous acclamations greeted the tactful re- 
 sponses of the Rector, Professor Beyschlag, among 
 which I remember the telling though hardly trans- 
 latable shout, " Hochstgeistreich ! " 
 
 The function of conferring honorary degrees 
 {EhrenpromotiGfien) held a pleasant surprise for 
 me. Among the names of recipients of degrees 
 was that of John Stuart Mill, whom the University 
 pronounced to be vir ilhistrissimus per omnem 
 orhem terrarum celeherrimus. Stress was laid on 
 the Germans' respect for the scope of his researches, 
 which embraced not only the sciences of Economics 
 .and Logic, but that of Law. The tendency among
 
 108 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Germans is to over-specialization of study, con- 
 fining themselves within the boundaries of their 
 prescribed Fach. 
 
 These graver academic functions were judiciously 
 supplemented by some delightful excursions. One 
 of them was a gondola procession to Wittekind, 
 a pleasure resort on the Saale, about three-quarters 
 of a mile from Halle. The professors and guests 
 were taken in larger barges and smaller gondola- 
 like boats, while the students paddled their watery 
 way in canoes. 
 
 The Saale at Halle is a stream which fits the 
 size of the University and evades the ridicule 
 poured by Heine on the tiny Weser at Gottingen. 
 It looks companionable and gemiithlich as it 
 flows slowly between the Cafe Gardens and the 
 low hills, and glides about the wooded islets, 
 where the note of the nightingale may often 
 surprise you with one of its rich ahnungsvoll 
 utterances. The pace of the procession had a 
 soothing German slowness, affording ample oppor- 
 tunity for seeing every detail of the scene and 
 for giving adequate voice to our admiration. 
 We lingered in the gardens of Wittekind, drinking 
 our coffee to the strains of an orchestra, and on 
 returning in the twilight our path was lit up with 
 the flames of Chinese lanterns and fireworks on 
 the banks. 
 
 The jubilee festival ended with a banquet, fol- 
 lowed by a torchlight procession of the students, 
 and a general Kommers or Grand Kneijoe ; at which 
 last renowned professors might be seen emptying 
 their schoppen with students who had yet to win
 
 THE KOMMERS 109 
 
 their spurs. A striking close to the celebration 
 was given when the students, after extinguishing 
 their torches in the market-place, burst into their 
 favourite song in their Kommershuch, " Gaudeamus 
 igitur juvenes dum sumus ! " 
 
 The curious mixture of Christian and Pagan 
 sentiment in our University customs was illus- 
 trated by the sequence of this Horatian strain 
 of carye diem upon the solemn sermon which 
 Oberconsistorialrath Tholuck had preached the 
 day before in the Domkirche. 
 
 In this way, to the dignity of the University 
 proceedings was happily added an element of 
 good-fellowship, and of the jollity, too, that 
 became a festival in which youth filled so large 
 a place. Both the boylike shouts of approval at 
 passages in the Rector's adroit addresses and the 
 free camaraderie of the Komrners struck me as 
 echt deutsch in the best sense, and a welcome change 
 from the more formal academic functions of our 
 English folk, whom I once heard a German 
 describe — in his haste, let us hope — as kcdtblutige 
 Engldnder. 
 
 During my stay at Halle I ran over to the 
 Moravian settlement at Gnadau, where another 
 festival was to be held, the first centennial cele- 
 bration of its foundation. It formed a curious 
 contrast to the more imposing academic function 
 at Halle. The simple, severe form of the village, 
 consisting of a central square divided by hedge- 
 rows into smaller grass-covered squares, and 
 liberally shaded by lime-trees, seemed to fit the 
 serene name, *' the meadow of grace." The Sunday
 
 110 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 service which I attended was a httlc long, and its 
 slowly drawn-out prayers and liynnis had some- 
 thing of the melancholy effect of a Scotch kirk. 
 Yet the whitewashed church looked almost pretty 
 on the following festival day, when the pure 
 masses of white on the walls, ceiling, and galleries 
 found their complement in the white spots 
 of the sisters' caps and shawls, receiving only 
 a discreet touch of colour from the festoons 
 and hangings of pink gauze which adorned 
 its walls. 
 
 My visit to Leipzig synchronized with the hold- 
 ing of the celebrated Messc, or big fair. Tin; 
 gathering, thougli now smaller than it used to be, 
 still gave the impression of a crowded city. One 
 saw people of various nationalities, mostly Jews, 
 I think, engaged in marketing. The buying and 
 selling of books, once a chief feature in this 
 central Eiu'opean mart, had, of course, declined. 
 Among other curious experiences during my 
 stay here was the Church of England service 
 in the concert-hall of the Conservatorium, the 
 celebrated Gewandthaus, where busts of famous 
 German composers, from Bach onwards, looked 
 down upon the English worshippers. Mendelssohn 
 seemed to smile on the visitor from a land with 
 which he too was familiar. One of the most 
 enjoyable incidents in my visit was a day 
 passed in the country house of Carl Tauchnitz, 
 a member of the well-known publishing firm. He 
 was a good specimen of the old-fashioned German 
 gentleman, whose rather formal manners could 
 not hide a deep and genuine kindness of heart.
 
 DRESDEN l\l 
 
 We were a fairly large party, and I here 
 saw German family life on a large scale, 
 refined by an atmosphere of good breeding. Just 
 opposite to us was a house in whieh Buonaparte 
 had slept before the famous battle of Leipzig. 
 On stepping into the omnibus which was to take 
 me back to Leipzig, a man-servant handed to me 
 a beautiful bouquet of roses and carnations. 
 
 At Dresden I hrst fell under the stronger spell 
 of art. During my three years of study in London 
 I had been too busy to make a serious study of 
 our picture-galleries. Not only leisure, but a 
 full flooding of spirit with the more playful holiday 
 mood is needed for seizing the finer and more 
 detaining charms of painting. I lingered again 
 and again before Rapliael's wonderful " Madonna 
 di San Sisto," and was only a little less fascinated 
 by the work of Tilian, Correggio, and other 
 Italians. The gallery was for me an admirable 
 atrium to the temple of art in Italy. 
 
 Another art, already beloved, unfolded new 
 beauties to me during this visit to Dresden. I 
 was lucky enough to secure here a first hearing 
 of Richard Wagner. The work was " Tannhauser," 
 and my German reading helped to make the 
 drama understandable. IMuch of the music struck 
 me as strange, and inchoate in form. But I felt 
 something of its ravishing beauty, and later in 
 Berlin acquired a fuller appreciation of its wonder- 
 ful expressiveness. 
 
 The next stage of my wanderings was a plunge 
 from art into nature. A tour, partly by steamboat 
 and rail, partly on foot, through the pretty but
 
 112 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 absurdly named Saxon Switzerland^ into Bohemia, 
 brought another joyous expansion of soul. I 
 had not yet seen the Rhine, so that my trip on 
 the Elbe by steamer was something delieiously 
 new. The ever-ehanging scene, as we moyed 
 leisurely up the river, past hill-slopes and hollows 
 where villas and ehurehes glistened and terraeed 
 vineyards spread themselves out to the sun, past 
 fantastic cliffs and peaked hills — from which might 
 peep down some Royal summer residence of the 
 Saxon King or some massive fortress — regaled the 
 eye with a continuous, yet ever varying, feast. 
 Still more enjoyable were the foot excursions to 
 the Bastei, along a road flanked with masses of 
 rock, whose crests were curiously crenellated by 
 Nature's hand, and to the Grosser Winterberg, 
 a mountain of some 1,700 feet. From the crest 
 of the latter I witnessed one of my memorable 
 thunderstorms. It approached us in long masses 
 of black cloud with skirts trailing on the ground. 
 From above and round about these dark masses 
 white light streamed in, so that every part of the 
 landscape in turn was wrapt in a deadly pall and 
 then kissed back into life by shafts -of shining 
 light. In a bit of the landscape near the Elbe 
 the clearing up of the storm reached its maximum 
 degree of beauty. The clouds were now rent 
 towards their edges, and w^hite light shot through 
 their fleecy streaks. These shafts of light looked 
 like w^hite columns supporting a huge black sar- 
 cophagus. From the same Grosser Winterberg 
 
 ^ The scenery might much more naturally suggest the name 
 " Saxon Rhineland."
 
 A THUNDERSTORM 113 
 
 I saw my first mountain sunrise, a perfect example 
 of tiie dramatic spectacle of the sun-god charming 
 away the mists of night and throwing upon sky, 
 cloud, and earth ever new gradations of pure 
 luminous colour. This full reinstatement of sun- 
 light after storm contrasts in my memory with 
 the partial and half-sullen restoration of bright 
 light after thunder which I once saw when 
 leaning over a parapet at Civita Castellana, 
 near Rome. I looked towards Monte Soracte, 
 which retained, as if in smouldering after- wrath 
 at the impious assault of the storm, a measure 
 of its sinister darkness. Yet the conciliatory 
 influence of the returning sunbeams touched 
 and beautified the mountain's dark vestment, 
 transmuting it into a robe of many colours, all 
 rich and deep-toned, worthy of the wearer's 
 majestic shape and of its sacred renown. 
 
 iNIy excursion brought me in touch with more 
 than one party of German fellow-tourists. I now 
 began to feel more at ease in speaking German, 
 and made full use of my new opportunities. I 
 was rather pleased when a young Bohemian officer 
 with whom I had conversed expressed his surprise 
 at my behaviour by saying he did not know that 
 an Englishman was so zugdnglich (approachable). 
 It has been my habit to try to show foreigners 
 that we are not all stupidly shy, or worse, bear- 
 ishly stand-offish, when confronted with foreigners. 
 Since then I have learned more from a dear English 
 lady, who made it her especial business when 
 walking with friends in Switzerland to stop and 
 talk with English strangers, persevering even when 
 
 9
 
 114 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 the " touch me not " ]:)ristles would remain stiffly 
 erect for some time before her genial and engaging 
 mode of accost had succeeded in forcing them to 
 relax. In these walks with German tourists I 
 learned, in a lame fashion at least, to join in tlieir 
 profuse expressions of delight at each new wonder 
 in the scene. I even caught a tepid English 
 warmth from the glow of their Sclncdrmerei. Yet 
 sentiment did not blind me to the amusing side 
 of tiie German's ways— such as his large 
 sightseers' appetite for artificial waterfalls, as we 
 passed on the roadside a boy standing ready to 
 let on the water of a cascade. Another outburst 
 of German sentiment occurred when, walking down 
 to Plebischthor, we heard the soft sounds of distant 
 harps coming from below, and, dravv'ing nearer, 
 saw seated by the side of our path, under an over- 
 hanging rock, an aged pair of musicians. Of 
 course I did my best to join in the cries of " Wic 
 liebhch ! " " Wie riihrend ! " 
 
 " Bohemia " sounded far fiom home, and I had 
 at this stage a new and more lively sense of passing 
 into a strange land. The feeling was quickened by 
 some sharp contrasts between tlic racial type left 
 behind and the new Czech type — the more swarthy 
 complexion supported by a narrov/er and darker 
 eye and by heavy moustaches and beards, and 
 the less open and friendly glance. The " hundred- 
 tov/ered " Prague was the first foreign city I had 
 seen beautified by a sheaf of aspiring pinnacles, 
 to which the series of tall statues of Virgin and 
 saint on the Karlsbriicke seemed to join itself, the 
 whole looking like a masted town lying by the
 
 NUREMBERG 115 
 
 river. It was, moreover, the first impressively 
 Catholic city I had seen where *' Madonna " is the 
 supreme lady, so that all good citizens lift their 
 hats to her as they cross the bridge, and where 
 the poor hang upon the skirts of Christian charity 
 at the church-doors. If the rather forbidding 
 look of the men repelled me for a moment, I soon 
 succeeded in getting on good terms with them. 
 
 At Nuremberg I vvt^s in time to see the mediaeval 
 town without its big ceinture of modern buildings. 
 The profusion of carvings in its streets made 
 roaming a delight, and I became so enamoured 
 of the daintily peaked dormer windows as to try 
 to sketch them standing. Looking back on these 
 hardy experiments, I feel grateful that they were 
 not carried out in a Prussian town, where I might 
 liave been stopped and suspected of espionage. 
 With the quaint Gothic architecture of the old 
 Burg, the Lorcnzkirche, and the beautiful foun- 
 tains, there harmonized pleasantly the costumes 
 of the Bavarian peasants. 
 
 On my way from Augsburg to Munich I snatched 
 a glance at the Alpine snow. Its pure unsub- 
 stantial whiteness won me as the white wing of an 
 angel glimpsed high in heaven might have done ; 
 and, half consciously, my plan of a Rundreise 
 in Germany was exchanged for that of a longer 
 tour to include the Alps. 
 
 At Munich I worked my hardest at sight-seeing. 
 Fate, making use of my growing facdlity in German, 
 threw me into the hands of a student of art from 
 the University of Breslau, and I did my best to 
 accommodate my habits to his, doing three early
 
 116 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 morning hours of tramping and inspecting, on 
 a cup of coffee and a roll, supplemented by a 
 schoppen of " Bairisch." My art-student drilled 
 me in a more methodical plan of studying painting 
 and sculpture. But the weather was hot, and 
 the broad new streets with their white buildings 
 glared cruelly after the narrow shaded ones of old 
 Nuremberg. The head of the huge metal figure 
 of Bavaria into which I climbed one hot afternoon 
 was as a fiery furnace. The long strip of snow 
 cornice, seen again or divined from this furnace, 
 haunted my inner vision, and, though fascinated, 
 I longed to leave behind Pinakothek, Glyptothek, 
 and the rest. 
 
 At length we are off for the Tyrol and North 
 Italy. At Holtzkirche we exchange train for 
 Stellwagen. There are no seats on the top, but 
 we somehow get leave to perch there, though 
 liable to be swept off by the branches of 
 cherry and apple trees which brush our heads. 
 The wilder rocky scenery assures us that we 
 have left the glaring brand-new city of minarets 
 well behind. The high steep-roofed pattern 
 of German houses now gives place to a lower 
 building of wood, with flatter roof and deep 
 eaves. We greet with a child's laughter the 
 pretty Tyrolese costume — the peaked dark-green 
 hats gaily tasselled and plumed, and the short 
 blue jackets above the dark braided breeches. A 
 delicious sense of coolness comes with the sight 
 of the clear blue waters of the Tegernsee, into 
 which there look down wooded hills with lawn- 
 like clearings. We have a taste of old-world
 
 THE TYROL 117 
 
 travel when we start by post from Kreuth Baths 
 at 4 a.m. en route for another picturesque lake, 
 Achensee. 
 
 Just after crossing the frontier between Bavaria 
 and Austria we come across a phenomenon (Er- 
 scheinung) which calls forth a more than usually 
 enthusiastic exclamation from my impressionable 
 art-student. It is a veritable Amazon modestly 
 disguised as a waitress. She is not only very hand- 
 some in face, but her bodily structure shows 
 admirable proportions. Nothing will cool the 
 ardour of my inflammable art-student but a kiss, 
 and the lady, with a just perceptible flush on the 
 cheek, submits. As her worshipper is rather 
 short, the lip greeting can only be effected by his 
 standing upon a chair. The act of worship is 
 carried out with all due restraint amid a group 
 of smiling spectators. 
 
 Our drive along the banks of the dark-blue 
 Achensee was made exciting by the narrowness of 
 our road, which was squeezed in between the lake 
 and the steep side of a mountain. A rapd descent 
 brought us to Innbach in the Innthal, from which 
 place we took train to Innsbruck. Here I felt 
 myself to be very far from the modernities of 
 Munich, and among old-world monuments, and 
 thrillingly near the Alpine giants. From Inns- 
 bruck we again took train for Silz, and thence 
 started on our trudge up the Oetzthal. The 
 wonder of the place was enhanced when, as the 
 shadows descended into the narrow valley, we 
 heard the mellow tones of the "Ave Maria" issuing 
 from a spire, and saw the women who were bind-
 
 118 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 ing up llic liax siiddtMily piiusi.', kneel down with 
 faees turned towards the ehurch, and pray silently. 
 
 The Tyrol in those days was not exploited for 
 tourists. I find from my notes that we procured 
 at our fust inn, for the modest sum of nincpenee, 
 a fine trout, an omelette, and a small bottle of wine. 
 
 The Oet/thal is a nnnow, roadless gorge, down 
 whieh tumbles a noisy torrent, the Oetz, whieh doCs 
 its best to monopolize the valley by driving Uic 
 footpath now and again uj) the steep sides. Nature, 
 in one of her niore savage moods, seemed here to 
 grip us ; yet high above the torrent and the over- 
 hanging roeks we could S])y the solemn pines 
 bathing their summits in the blue, and, higher 
 still, the dazzling Avhite shoulder of some snowy 
 Jungfrau. The series of tiny villages we passc-d 
 through seemed to be one long church procession, 
 every v/hitewashcd house-front being decorated 
 with a rude fresco of the Madonna or with some 
 hieroglyphic of the Saviour. 
 
 At Heiligkreuz we had to find a night's shelter 
 at the cure's house. But for his clerical neck- 
 band, his high jack-boots, stubby beard, and rough 
 manner of accost would have suggested rather 
 the brigand than the priest. His housekeeper, 
 in her delicate bodily frame, her blue eyes, and her 
 soft movements, supplied a striking foil to his 
 boorish robustness. Towards midnight I awoke 
 with sharp agonizing pains — probably the result 
 of a foolish excess in drinking the cold water. 
 Then I learned how kindly a heart beat under 
 mine host's rough exterior. The nearest doctor 
 was more than ten hours off, so mine host had
 
 ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 119 
 
 to tackle the sickness. By prescribing eau sucree 
 within and hot fomentations without, he slowly 
 wooed back my deranged internal organs to some- 
 thing like their normal manner of behaviour. The 
 housekeeper, he told me, had undergone a mira- 
 culous cure in ansv/er to prayers to the Virgin, 
 and as she stole quietly in and out of my room, 
 her white face half hidden in a shawl, she seemed 
 to bear the seal of one just called back to earth 
 from heaven. 
 
 After two days in bed I was out again and walk- 
 ing, alone this time, for I had insisted on my art- 
 student's not waiting for me. In the company 
 of a monk and a rough Tyrolese doctor, I managed 
 to reach Fend, wlierc I enjoyed a good supper and 
 a prolonged night's sleep. The next morning — 
 only three days after the attack — I crossed the 
 Hoclijoch {Jugiim altum) with a trusty guide, 
 enjoying my first near view of glacier and snow. 
 
 Then, dismissing my guide, not without a shred 
 of fear behind m.y sense of liberation, I turned my 
 back on the glittering heights and began my 
 descent to Meran. It was a pleasure to rejoin 
 the highest and most venturesome of the trees. 
 Passing through the pretty, though ill-named. 
 Valley of Sehnalzerthal, I reached the Valley of 
 Etschthal — that is, the Adige — where the vines 
 again appeared. From here I looked down upon 
 the garden of Meran, and had a taste of its heat 
 in summertide. 
 
 Neither at fertile ^leran, nor at the yet more 
 closely mountain-girt Bozen, to which I journeyed 
 by Stellwagen, did I linger about the enticing
 
 120 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 arcades and fruit-stalls. I felt Italy coming to 
 meet me, and hurried on with the Adige past 
 the famous church of Trent to Verona, and 
 my first view of Italy's monumental record of 
 her past. I caught a sort of afterwave of the 
 patriot's angry shudder as I looked upon the forts 
 which had recently made one of the chief over- 
 awing strongholds of the Austrian domination. 
 I looked, too, upon the city's fair streets and 
 squares, where the cold, stately fa9ade of a palace 
 topped with white statues stands side by side 
 with a more picturesque building all aglow with 
 frescoes on its walls and coloured hangings over 
 the door. 
 
 At Venice we were subjected to quarantine, all 
 our clothing having to be unpacked and exposed 
 to the fumee of chloride of lime. Then, in rich 
 compensation, came the rapture of gliding over 
 the watery streets in a noiseless gondola. I was 
 fascinated by every complex movement of the 
 supple-limbed gondolier, by every note in his 
 strange musical cries. In those days, before the 
 steamer had come upon the scene or the ruth- 
 less advertiser had begun to plaster the" coloured 
 walls with his garish prints, the traveller 
 stole softly into Venice as into a cathedral. 
 The gentle pace allowed one to register in 
 memory the details of each dainty fagade, 
 church, and bridge. I felt the dream-city all 
 about me, entering into me as if by some finer 
 porous ducts, and begetting in me a whole new 
 rapturous self. 
 
 As I began, so I continued, a dreamer gifted with
 
 VENICE 121 
 
 a somnambulist's keener divination of what really 
 concerned me in my world. One day in a gondola 
 I met for a moment the laughing face of my art- 
 student. But as we now found ourselves lodged 
 at some distance from one another, the close com- 
 radeship of Munich was no longer possible. So I 
 began, trusting only to my guide-books, to find out 
 what is best in art. The magic of the city's coloured 
 walls, from the ancient mosaics in San Marco up 
 through the several schools of painting, gradually 
 enthralled me. I would wander far in quest of 
 some altar-piece or other treasure, and I do not 
 think that I was ever unrewarded. 
 
 The July evenings were thrilling experiences. 
 The gay scene in the large piazza brought me there 
 every evening. I watched the different " classes " 
 sit together under the colonnade sipping coffee 
 or some more cooling beverage, and listening to 
 the military band, sometimes deigning to glance 
 at the handsome vendor of trinkets as, with a 
 most admirable restraint of manner, he would 
 insinuate his tray under their eyes. 
 
 There was an unmistakable note of jubilation 
 in the air. The uniform of the Italian musicians 
 told us what it meant. This was the first complete 
 Venetian summer since the disappearance of the 
 Austrian, and the city was holding a long festa. 
 The outburst of music was eloquent of a sense of 
 deliverance, and as I listened I caught myself 
 lapsing into a momentary hallucination, and spy- 
 ing the backs of the last of the white coats 
 disappearing round a corner. 
 
 Outside the piazza the same air ot festa meets us.
 
 122 M^ LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Under a deep arch of the Canale Grande a gondola 
 full of men may stop and sing a patriotic song, 
 which gets prolonged and multiplied by rever- 
 berations from the arch. At the sound of the 
 singing other gondolas will pull up under the arch, 
 making a pretty waterlily-like surface of colours 
 on the water, while the balconies above fill and add 
 new bouquets of colour. On the walls of Venice, 
 as of Verona, enthusiastic placards still hung 
 bearing the words " Vogliamo 1' Italia unita ! " 
 and in the windows of the photograph shops 
 caricatures of Austria were still exhibited. In the 
 evening troops of Garibaldian volunteers marched 
 through the streets, making a fine ado v/ith their 
 drums and fifes. Nor did the ladies fall much 
 behind in patriotic demonstrations. If there was 
 no Meredithian " Vittoria " to give a fittingly 
 rich accompaniment of song to the hour's supreme 
 gladness, the lady patriots were everywhere to be 
 seen and heard. It was a delight at the end of 
 the evening to Avatch the gala groups slip down 
 into their gondolas, where they made new lovely 
 flower patterns which repeated them-selves in the 
 soft vibratory movements of the watcK. 
 
 At Gottingen I had seen the sad initial stage 
 of a war of conquest, the forcible annexation of 
 once free citizens to a foreign yoke ; at Venice I 
 saw what happily sometimes makes a jo^^ous 
 end of such a conquest, the uprising of an 
 enslaved people and the driving of the foreign 
 ruler out of the fatherland. Henceforth the 
 Austrian was to be for me no longer the un- 
 happy, beaten foe of Prussia, but herself a hard
 
 VENICE 123 
 
 and obstinate usurper, got rid of only after a long 
 struggle for liberty. 
 
 In order to enjoy a comprehensive coup d^csil 
 of the city, I cHmbed, on one of my last evenings 
 in Venice, the old Campanile (many years before 
 its fall), whence one could look out over the 
 islanded city and its watery mate, just as the 
 old pilgrim-travellers used to look out over them 
 when waiting for tlie ship that was to take them 
 on their way to Jerusalem. More than one 
 imaginative pen has described what I saw there. 
 
 Even into this city of delight there comes in 
 a July night a harsh note — the buzzing mos- 
 quito, from whom a curtained bedstead offers 
 but a partial deliverance. Always a lover of 
 the sea bath, I was stung by the hot da^^s and 
 the mosquitoes' attacks into a raging desire for a 
 " dip " ; and in those days, before the Adriatic 
 had been shut out from view by huge hotels 
 and bathing establishmxents, the Lido offered a 
 glorious opportunity. The thud of its breakers 
 upon the sand seemed to tell the story of the 
 Bride's long bondage and of her joyous 
 deliverance, as of a ia,ter Ariadne. 
 
 My adieu to Venice was said later, on the fuller 
 accession of night, when the stars came out as if 
 in response to an invita^tion from the lamps 
 mirrored in the v/ater to dance with them there. 
 From a favourite pontine lingering-place I gaze 
 into the murky waiter, above which a feeble lamp 
 scatters a sparse light. All is silenced now — the 
 patriotic song, the laughter of the gay parties in 
 the gondolas, the last faint stroke of the gondo-
 
 124 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 lier's oar. The rocking of the moored gondolas 
 is as restful as a mother's last cradling movement. 
 As I look along the deep-shaded canal and glimpse 
 that other bridge leading to the dungeons, there 
 seems to add itself to the night's quietude 
 another and larger repose, that of the mighty- 
 old city sated at last with conquest and power, 
 and hardly more than half awake to those 
 prodigies of her art which draw us visitors to her 
 watery ways. 
 
 Whenever I look back upon this unforgettable 
 visit to Venice, I see her lying in a golden mist. 
 It was the most perfectly festive hour of my life : 
 
 When Time now old was flying 
 
 Over the sunny seasons bright and fleet. 
 
 I returned to Gdttingen by way of Milan, the 
 Italian Lakes, the Gotthard, Switzerland, and the 
 Rhine. Travelling was still pretty slow in places, 
 and one lighted on curious contrasts between the 
 older and the newer modes of journeying. In 
 going over the Gotthard I set out from Magadino 
 (at the north end of the Maggiore) by voiture 
 under a full moon, and at Bellinzona found quite 
 a lively scene in the piazza, where three or 
 four diligences met, and crowds of travellers 
 mixed and got clamantly confused in searching 
 for their proper vehicle. It was half-past ten 
 when the Gotthard diligence started. The noisy 
 voices had died down, and the only sounds were 
 the rumbling of our coachwheels, the tinkling of 
 the bells of the six horses, and an occasional 
 crack of the whip. Every now and then I got,
 
 THE ALPS 125 
 
 as in a lightning flasli, a bright ghmpse of some 
 moonlit vignette of dark ravine or shining rock. 
 By six o'clock the next morning our diligence 
 reached Airolo, where I took to my legs and man- 
 aged to do a thirty miles' tramp over the Gotthard 
 Pass, past Hospenthal to the Furka Pass. All 
 this was delightfully primitive ; whereas in the 
 hotels at Lugano, Interlachen, and other frequented 
 centres the crowd of tourists was more like what 
 it is to-day, only that then there was a larger 
 proportion of English to Americans, Germans, 
 and other people. 
 
 My introduction to the Alps was unforgettable, 
 and ever since I have kept up an enthusiasm for 
 them, content to look at them from the height 
 which perhaps gives the best pictorial impres- 
 sions, say 8,000 to 10,000 feet. The full enjoyment 
 of the vast expanses of snow, ice, and towering 
 rocks came, in my case, only later. I find in my 
 notes of this first inspection of them in the Tyrol 
 and Switzerland that, after the first exciting view, 
 the bare altitudes began to look monotonous and 
 to take on a dreary and almost crushing aspect, 
 and I put down this bit of reflection : " How 
 much more beautiful is the coloured habitable 
 world than the uniform grey and white world of 
 snow and rock. If things were reversed, and 
 instead of living low down we dwelt above the 
 summer snow-line, what an experience would be 
 an occasional descent into the genial region of 
 vegetation ! "
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 BEGINNING WORK 
 
 On taking leave of Frau Heintze, she gave nie a 
 letter of introduction to her old ijensionnaire^ 
 Professor Croom Robertson. During my stay in 
 Gottingen, Robertson, through the influence of 
 his teacher, Professor Alexander Bain of Aber- 
 deen, and of Bain's friend, George Grote, had been 
 elected Professor of The Philosophy of Mind and 
 Logic at University College. Nor v>'as he the only 
 member of the college staff who had stayed at my 
 pension in Gottingen. Years later, when I also 
 was a professor at the college, I found that Thane, 
 our Professor of Anatomy, had also listened to 
 our good Frau Heintze's stories of Weimar and 
 Goethe, 
 
 On reaching London I called on Croom Robertson, 
 who in those days lived near Chalk Farm. He 
 had won the Chair over the head of James Marti - 
 neau, and the victory might naturally have inflated 
 temporarily the self-estimation of an Aberdonian 
 youth of five-and-twenty. In fact, a certain 
 youthful dogmatism in statement chilled me 
 off at first ; but he received me civilly enough ; 
 and later, especially after his marriage, we grew 
 to be warm friends. 
 
 126
 
 CHANGE OF PLANS 127 
 
 In the summer I took the M.A. degree of 
 the London University, and found m_yself unplea- 
 santly faced with a high wall. To take up 
 theology again was impossible. New experiences, 
 the development of wider interests, and deeper 
 thinking over life's problems had combined to 
 wreck my old aims and plans. I still for a time 
 coquetted with the idea of the ministry, and I 
 consulted, among others, free-thinking Noncon- 
 formists like James Martincau and Edward White. 
 But the recurring " No ! " . from a masterful 
 voice within soon decided me to abandon the idea. 
 In order to meet the crisis with the minimum 
 amount of distress to my father, I accepted (in 
 18G9) an invitation to be classical tutor at the 
 Baptist College, Pont}/ pool, the Principal of which, 
 the Rev. Dr. Tliomas, had become connected with 
 our family by marriage. 
 
 But my thoughts were now turning else- 
 where, and I began to write philosophical articles. 
 Through the mediation of Croom Robertson I 
 submitted one or tv/o to Alexander Bain, one of 
 the examiners in philosophy who had awarded 
 nie the M.A. Gold Medal. Lie wrote me very 
 encouraging letters, at the same time proffering 
 some canny Aberdonian counsel. 
 
 In 1868 I married : incurring apparently no 
 serious risk — as my father was then a wealthy 
 man— in embarking upon matrimony. 
 
 In 1869 I was recalled to my native town to be 
 a melancholy witness of its political demise and 
 burial. The Courts had decided that in the elec- 
 tions of the preceding year extensive bribery had
 
 128 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 been resorted to, with the result that both the 
 Liberal members, one of them our half-idolized 
 " Eothcn," were unseated. A Royal Commission 
 was consequently appointed to make a full in- 
 vestigation of election practices in the borough 
 during the last thirty or forty years. The occasion 
 was sad enough to those who cared to think. Yet 
 it had its amusing side. One felt the incongruity 
 of the judicial scene — the assemblage of well- 
 dressed ladies, wearing as cheerful an expression 
 as if they were out for a morning's entertainment, 
 and the three Commissioners, two of whom, at 
 any rate, did their best to assume a solemnity of 
 manner befitting a judicial inquiry. ^ 
 
 The revelations, too, though sordid enough in 
 places, had their comic features. It turned out 
 that a considerable number of the voters, whom 
 from the hustings one candidate after another 
 had addressed in flattering terms, had soiled their 
 fingers by accepting a bribe or " consideration." 
 They tried to make amends for their past dis- 
 honesty by now shelling themselves out, so to 
 speak, in ample confession, describing to their 
 judicial interrogators, among other things, the 
 devices by which they secured as high -a price for 
 their votes as possible. The facts elicited showed 
 that the accepting of a bribe was a common subject 
 of jest among these corrupted burgesses. One 
 curious feature of this bribery was the practice of 
 rigorously keeping a voter to his promise of support 
 
 ^ I was told that the third gentleman appeared to be less 
 interested in the details of the inquiry than in the ladies who 
 filled the long galleries.
 
 A ROYAL COMMISSION 129 
 
 by shutting him up, till he had voted, in a room in 
 one of the party public-houses, where, by obtaining 
 ample allowances of beer, he would be likely to 
 become still more pliant to orders. Into this room, 
 carefully darkened, a mysterious stranger was 
 introduced, whose function it was silently to slip 
 the money into the voter's hand. The element 
 of mystery was variously referred to in the names 
 given to this unlawful donor of coins, one of 
 which was " The Man in the Moon." The blunt- 
 ness of conscience, for us of to-day, shown in this 
 traffic in votes, must be attributed to the fact that 
 the practice had for a century and more grown into 
 a custom. Being a custom, how could it be wrong ? 
 Among the features of the sittings which specially 
 moved me was the long examination of Arthur 
 Kinglake. Anstey, the most virulent of the cross- 
 examiners, displayed a terrier-like fury of per- 
 tinacity when, refusing again and again to accept 
 the sworn statements of so honest a gentleman, 
 he returned to the assumption that the candidate 
 must have had some knowledge of the bribery 
 carried on by his agents during the recent elec- 
 tion. In the end the gross abuses of interrogation 
 resorted to by this too eager official, bent on 
 unearthing human corruption at all costs, were 
 fully exposed by the Court of Queen's Bench, 
 when the Lord Chief Justice said, " I do not 
 remember ever in the course of my experience to 
 have heard — or heard of— such a cross-examination 
 as that to which he (the plaintiff) was exposed." ^ 
 
 ^ Proceedings, Court of Queen's Bench. Queen versus Lovi- 
 bond, January 20, 1870. 
 
 10
 
 ISO MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 My father was among the victims of these prose- 
 cuting attacks of Anstey, which were often sup- 
 ported by the Chairman (Price). It so happened 
 that shortly before he was summoned to appear he 
 had fallen from a ladder, and was suffering from 
 a severe shock. Anstey 's fingers were eager to 
 pounce on so promising a prey as the wealthy 
 Liberal merchant and Dissenter. He began by 
 doubting the validity of the excuse offered f(5i* his 
 non-appearance ; and when at last my father 
 came, much too soon for his own comfort, he 
 brought to bear upon him his most brutish prose- 
 cuting manner. 
 
 After reading this travesty of legal procedure 
 the spirit of rebellion rose high within me. Re- 
 lations of father and son had necessarily grown 
 less intimate with the years, with separation by 
 distance, and v/itli the divergent lines which my 
 develoDment had followed. Here was a chance 
 of shov>^ing that my old affection was still alive. 
 So I sat dov/n and wrote for a Bristol paper a 
 longish letter in which I analysed and criticized 
 the methods of the inquiry, as illustrated more 
 especially in Anstey 's treatment of v/itnesses. The 
 Chairman showed, I think, a certain amount of 
 courage by reading my letter in the Town Hall. 
 But unfortunately, instead of meeting my charge 
 of gross unfairness in the manner of the inquiry, 
 he made som.e irrelevant remarks v/hich implied 
 that I had objected to its scope as including 
 evidence of undue influence. 
 
 The result of the inquiry is familiar to everybody 
 who knoYvs anything of our political history. My
 
 ARTHUR KINGLAKE. 
 
 To fare p. 130.
 
 LITERATURE 181 
 
 native town was disfranchised. It is no plea for 
 mitigation of her sentence that other old boroughs 
 ma,y have been as bad as she. But it should be 
 remembered that a certain number of Bridgwater 
 men, among whom my father was one of the most 
 strenuous, always and consistently set their faces 
 against bribery, and used their influence to keep it 
 out of the elections. 
 
 I thought of the Commission proceedings some 
 years later when I met Kinglake in a London 
 drawing-room. He was now old and deaf, and 
 when I told him who I was, mentioning as gently 
 as I could Bridgwater, I saw that I was touching 
 a sore spot. 
 
 To return to the narrative of my first attempts 
 at literary work. In 1869 Bain encouraged me 
 to offer a paper to John Morley, who was at that 
 time editing the Fortnightly Review. I sent him 
 a psychological study of the belief in free will, 
 and had it returned with some very agreeable 
 words of praise. Growing bolder, I proposed to 
 call on him at Chapman and Hall's office, from 
 which he had dated his letter, with a view to 
 discuss the likelihood of one or two ideas of articles 
 simmering in my brain. To this I received a 
 second and more cordial letter, assuring me that 
 he would gladly serve any friend of Mr. Bain's. 
 He added that he was living out of town, under 
 the Hog's Back, but that if I could spare the time 
 he would be happy to put me up for the night. I 
 went, and with a bound entered into a new domain 
 of experience. A v/ell-appointed English country 
 bouse, presided over by a gracious-looking lady,
 
 132 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 and the company and talk of the most brilHant 
 young writer that Oxford had sent to London 
 for some time, made the moments swell with 
 almost too much delight, in which I fear I forgot 
 not only my plainer belongings in Pontypool, but 
 even my dear Gottingen professors. I had tested 
 my host's preference as to subjects, and I re- 
 turned to Wales with a tete montee. Shortly after 
 I got a letter from Morley accepting a paper, 
 probably one of the essays on music. 
 
 This was in November 1870. A month later 
 I received an interesting letter from Walter Bagehot 
 which shows that I was just now bent on reaching 
 the metropolis. He had stood as a candidate 
 for Bridgwater, and my father had supported 
 him. I had, I think, asked him about my 
 chances of a school-inspectorship. I was at the 
 time keen about Forster's proposed educational 
 " reforms," and had recently lectured for the 
 Birmingham League. Bagehot's answer was, I 
 dare say, wisely cautious. " The London world," 
 he wrote, " is a very Darwinian sort of scramble, 
 and every one should accumulate all possible 
 advantages who means to survive and succeed 
 in it." 
 
 On the same day that I received Bagehot's 
 letter I had another from John Morley, asking me 
 if I cared to accept the post of tutoring his step- 
 son and assisting himself with correspondence and 
 proof-reading, duties which would leave me ample 
 time for writing. I, of course, jumped at the 
 proposal, and before the end of 1870 sent in my 
 resignation to the authorities of Pontypool College,
 
 JOHN MORLEY 133 
 
 In exchanging a tutorship in a Baptist college 
 for literary work, I completed the rupture with 
 my old religious aspirations and associations. The 
 severance involved poignant regrets, not only at 
 the moment, but for many a day. 
 
 Lodgings were found for us under the Hog's 
 Back, in the pretty and retired village of Comp- 
 ton, which has since become more widely known 
 from associations with the painter G. F. Watts. 
 Hither we came one frosty day in January 1871, 
 and found a warm welcome from Morley and 
 his wife. 
 
 Morley generously fulfilled his promise of help, 
 and I soon began to write for the Fortnightly and 
 the Saturday Review. He also gave me his com- 
 panionship ; and the memory of talks with him 
 in his house and in rambles along the Hog's Back 
 is still one of my cherished spiritual legacies from 
 the past. • 
 
 Among the visitors that I met <?t Morley 's was 
 George Meredith, who, of course, held me spell- 
 bound by his brilliant table-talk. F. Greenwood 
 was another guest on this occasion. We had to 
 listen as best we could while Meredith made merry 
 in his deliciously extravagant manner over the 
 unlucky attempts of some nouveau riclie to spread 
 a luxurious table and select choice wines. Our 
 host, shaken by laughter to the verge of tears, 
 had at last to plead for a pause in the Rabelaisian 
 torrent. It was then that I had the first of many 
 walks with Meredith. I must have been excited 
 enough at joining him and Greenwood in a tramp, 
 yet all that I can recall of it is some piquant gossip
 
 184 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 from the realm of " high hfe " that passed between 
 my two companions. 
 
 Morley was interested in my experiences at 
 Gottingen, and our talks touched such themes as 
 the newer German philosophy and the recent 
 advances of Prussia ; but I fear I can have given 
 Morley but little in return for his generous hospi- 
 tality. I remember that he seemed to like ,my 
 playing of Schubert and other composers, and 
 that he praised my wife's singing of German 
 songs. We were, of course, alike profoundly 
 moved by the striking events taking place on 
 the Continent. My sympathies had at first in- 
 clined to Germany as seeming the less aggres- 
 sive of the two breakers of the peace. But the 
 penalties demanded by Bismarck from his con- 
 quered foe induced a m.ore friendly attitude 
 towards France. Although bound to France by 
 literary, and, I fancy, also by personal ties, Morley 
 brought a cool judgment to bear on these events, 
 recognizing what benefit Europe might reap from 
 a united and powerful Germany. Meredith's atti- 
 tude tov/ards the trend of events was, I think, 
 that of a saddened friend of France, restrained 
 somewhat, as compared with the more passionate 
 advocacy of his friend Maxse, by Morley's influence.^ 
 During our quiet rambles along the Hog's Back 
 we talked of other things than the Franco- 
 German struggle. Darwin had just brought out 
 his " Descent of Man," of which Morley wrote an 
 appreciation in the Pall Mall Gazette. All this 
 
 ^ See Meredith's letters to Maxse and his poem " France," 
 pubHshed in the Fortnightly about this time.
 
 PROOF-READING 135 
 
 made me feel as if I were in the innermost circle 
 of men of letters. 
 
 My work for Morley was agreeable enough, and 
 it left me ample leisure for writing. I got to like 
 the reading of proof sheets, especially when the 
 matter was a story of Meredith's. My experience 
 as proof-reader interested me as a psychologist. 
 It made me familiar with the pitfalls that waylay 
 the unwary corrector of proofs. I had many 
 startling illustrations of the facility with which 
 one overlooks misspellings and even omissions of 
 words in reading the proofs of one's own writing, 
 where knowledge of the matter makes one more 
 than usually independent of close visual attention 
 to the verbal forms. The most remarkable example 
 I can recall of this danger was the overlooking 
 of the impudent intruder, a capital " K," in 
 the familiar name " Arabian Nights " (printed 
 as "Arabian Knights"). I had passed this 
 " howler " in three or four readings of the sheet, 
 and only chanced to " spot " it just before send- 
 ing off the revised sheet for press : when, allowing 
 my eye to run carelessly down the page, the 
 oddness of the look of the " K " arrested my 
 glance. I have often found that this idle fashion 
 of looking over without reading printed matter, 
 either by running down the page or, better, by 
 following the words from right to left, and the 
 lines from the bottom to the top, has dragged 
 into light some skulking misprint. Such indolent 
 wandering of the eye eliminates the tendency to 
 focus attention upon meaningy and forces us to 
 concentrate upon the look of the verbal forms.
 
 136 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 1 may add that the " K " in this instance passed 
 unchallenged by two friendly assistants, one a 
 lecturer on English literature and the other a 
 learned Cambridge lady versed in journalistic work'. 
 
 Before leaving my work with Morley I had 
 launched out in different directions of literary 
 activity. Among these were some longer philo- 
 sophical articles. In the pages of the Westminster 
 Review (January 1871) I tried to defend Mill's 
 utilitarianism against the attack of John Grote, the 
 brother and philosophic opponent of the better- 
 known George Grote. This was followed by articles 
 on Free Will, Belief, etc. 
 
 The Westminster was no longer the formidable 
 organ of earlier days when J. S. Mill and other 
 doughty champions wrote for it. The editor was 
 Dr. Chapman, whose larger fame rested, I think, 
 upon the discovery of the therapeutic value of 
 ice-bags applied to the spine. This frigid interest 
 was supplemented by a warm concern for litera- 
 ture and young writers. It was he who in his 
 boarding-house brought together George Henry 
 Lewes and George Eliot. In my time he did not 
 pay his contributors — at least not the .iledglings, 
 — but the omission gave more than one beginner 
 a chance of publicity which might otherwise 
 have been missed. He was ready, moreover, to 
 invite members of his team to his house, and I 
 remember meeting there in the early seventies 
 E. D. J. Wilson, who was for many years on the 
 staff of The Times. We talked over our experi- 
 ences with Chapman when, twenty years later, 
 we again met at the Weisshorn Hotel in the Val
 
 THE SATURDAY REVIEW 137 
 
 d'Anniviers. For the Fortnightly Review I wrote 
 on aesthetic subjects, such as " The Beautiful 
 Aspects of Character," " Musical Form," and 
 " Musical Expression." 
 
 Under Morley's advice I supplemented these 
 more ponderous studies by writing lighter articles, 
 more especially "middles " for the Saturday Review. 
 He had himself written for this journal under 
 the editorship of Cook, and he spoke well of it 
 as offering valuable training in the formation of 
 style. As I look back on my work for the Saturday , 
 which dealt with such trivial matters as " Homish- 
 ness," " The British Hebe," " The Philosophy of 
 Shopping," " Pathos of Pleasure Seeking," " Cario- 
 ling " (in Norway), I am disposed to smile ; so little 
 congruous does their texture and tone seem with 
 those of my later writings. But I remember 
 feeling at the time rather pleased with them. 
 However slight their intrinsic value, the writing of 
 them was a good discipline for these first days 
 of apprenticeship. It forced upon me the lesson 
 of simplicity and terseness in expression and of 
 touching subjects lightly. It may have favoured 
 the adoption of an unpleasant fashion of the hour, 
 a superior and rather contemptuous critical tone. 
 Yet it put me on my guard, not only against such 
 older blemishes as the indulgence in pretty writing 
 and in the sentimental vein, but against newer ones, 
 such as exaggeration in statement and loose emo- 
 tional extravagance. Because of these good services 
 I still feel grateful to Harwood, the editor of the 
 Saturday, for having so liberally opened its columns 
 to my pen. We have since those days developed
 
 138 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 a manner of journalism very different from that 
 of the older Saturday. Yet it may be questioned 
 whether the change of manner is wholly a gain, 
 whether we have found an equivalent for the 
 rather savage but very useful watchdog at the 
 gate of letters, from whose detective eye no dis- 
 guise of fine clothes could ever save the charlatan. 
 
 To the discipline of the Saturday was added that 
 of the Fortnightly. Morley's own style, which had 
 already assimilated something of the precision 
 and lucidity, something, too, of the pointedness 
 and happy phrasing, of the best French writers, 
 was for me at this stage a particularly valuable 
 model. It was just what I needed for the indicating 
 and correcting of certain Teutonisms in my use of 
 language, due, no doubt, to much German reading 
 and speaking. Morley, I remember, set me reading 
 George Sand, whom he regarded as an excellent 
 literary model. Another counsel of my friendly 
 mentor was to widen my literary repertoire, and 
 especially to try my hand at biography and history. 
 I regret sometimes that I did not follow the advice 
 of so competent a guide ; but I only made one or 
 two excursions into this domain of letters, one of 
 which was an article on Herder, which Morley 
 printed in the early eighties. 
 
 In spite of this encouraging introduction to 
 journalism, I decided to concentrate my energies on 
 scientific work : beginning to recognize that I was not 
 a born or inevitable scribbler. I worked slowly, 
 and for the most part with a sense of friction. I 
 did, indeed, manage, now and again, when particu- 
 larly fresh, to reel off a " middle " at a morning
 
 PSYCHOLOGY 180 
 
 sitting ; but, compared with such a nimble pen 
 as Grant Allen's, not to speak of Andrew Lang's 
 flying quill, mine was but a poor jog-trotter. My 
 verbal memory was weak, and I could not before 
 sitting down to write think out and retain in clear 
 consciousness a detailed scheme of my article. To 
 m.e a pen in the hand v/as as indispensable for 
 literary composition as to an extem.pore orator 
 the sight of a prepared audience. This weakness, 
 aided by a low degree of visualizing power, handi- 
 capped me in an especial manner in ail lighter 
 descriptive writing. I was also one of the severe 
 self-critics, and could rarely be satisfied until I 
 had spoilt the look of my page by corrections. 
 
 Along with this recognition of a want of fluency 
 and of the dehghtful sense of speed in writing, 
 I experienced a deep, irresistible bent towards 
 abstract thinking ; and my special leaning towards 
 psychology forced upon me the conviction that I 
 needed some first-hand knowledge of the physio- 
 logical processes that help to condition the currents 
 of our mental life. This subject was now receiving 
 attention in Germ.any ; and though Wundt had not 
 yet founded his famous school of Physiological 
 Psychology, the m^any-sided savant, Helmholtz, 
 had Vvdth excellent effect introduced psychological 
 reflections into his epoch-making works on musical 
 sensation and on the processes of vision. Drawn 
 by his name, I conceived the plan of spending the 
 winter of 1871-2 in Berlin. 
 
 My decision did not at first please Bain, who was 
 keeping a close, fatherly watch upon my doings. But 
 in the end he not only fell in with it, but arranged
 
 140 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 to get some advantage out of it by inviting me to 
 do some work for him in Berlin. About the same 
 time Herbert Spencer also proposed to give me 
 employment. He was now planning out his 
 scheme of sociology, for which purpose he engaged 
 a few younger men to collect pertinent ethnological 
 observations for him. This offer I did not accept. 
 One could, I thought, collect facts for a philosopher 
 with the lines of a finished system in his brain only 
 by becoming his whole-hearted disciple ; and this, 
 greatly as I admired him, I certainly was not. 
 
 Berlin had at this moment been raised to the 
 dignity of the metropolis of the new German 
 Empire. I anticipated the sight of the place with 
 some emotion. I had paid two recent visits to 
 that other capital which the triumphant German 
 army had afterwards besieged and bombarded. One 
 was in 1868 or 1869, in company with a Russian 
 friend, Edward Berens, whose acquaintance I 
 had made at Gottingen. We were on the top 
 (" rimperiale ") of one of the big Paris omnibuses 
 when suddenly Berens pointed to an open carriage 
 and said, " The Emperor ! " Instantly, as from 
 some automatic habit, I raised my hat, and was 
 astonished to see the Emperor and Empress direct 
 their glance towards me and acknowledge my 
 salutation. I understood this immediately after- 
 wards when I observed that nobody else paid the 
 Imperial pair any attention, and learned that 
 Napoleon was very unpopular at this time. My 
 second visit to Paris was in July 1870, when the 
 murmur of the advancing war-storm was distinctly 
 audible. I was now to visit the northern capital,
 
 BERLIN 141 
 
 where the German States were organizing a spec- 
 tacular expression of that Imperial unity which 
 the success of their arms had effected. 
 
 The city had even then some imposing buildings. 
 The spacious street Unter den Linden and the 
 Thiergarten were the frequented resorts, and here 
 we set about making ocular acquaintance with 
 the owners of familiar names. The tower-like 
 figure of Bismarck might be seen stalking along 
 the primitive-looking trottoir, followed by a brace 
 of daring little street urchins whose pigmy stature 
 threw into relief the Chancellor's six feet four 
 of height, and who, sticking as closely as pos- 
 sible to the giant's heels, skilfully managed now 
 and again to get a saucy glance up at the terrible 
 enigmatic face. At a stated hour — in the morning, 
 I think — the big moustached figure of the Emperor 
 was to be seen standing inside the window of his 
 palace, to the delight of his dear enthusiastic 
 subjects. In our little pension we had a peep into 
 the genuine Berlin enthusiasm for its Kaiser. The 
 mother of our hostess, a little wizened figure (from 
 Posen, I think), would burst out now and again in 
 rapturous praise of her " little golden Kaiser " 
 (mein goldenes Kaiser chen). This lively old lady 
 would pinch herself of what we should call neces- 
 saries in order to go to the theatre, now and 
 then, to see her Emperor idol. 
 
 Court manners in Berlin still retained a homely 
 simplicity, and one of the curious sights in the 
 city was the noble form of the Crown Prince in 
 military attire, walking arm-in-arm with the Crown 
 Princess (our Princess Royal) along the trottoir^
 
 142 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 like private citizens on their way to the market. 
 The first meeting of the Reichstag occurred soon 
 after our arrival. The opening ceremony was a 
 brilliant pageant, and it gave us an opportunity 
 of seeing Von Moltke and many other heroes of the 
 war as they passed into the building. 
 
 I seldom came into contact with the military 
 caste, and only once or twice noticed signs of the. 
 arrogant spirit in which I rather expected the 
 Prussian officers to indulge. 
 
 My special work consisted in anatomical studies 
 in Dubois-Rcymond's physiological laboratory 
 and attendance on Helmholtz's lectures, which 
 happened this semester to be on physiological 
 optics. He was particularly kind, and soon gave 
 us the entree to his house. It was at this time 
 a rendezvous for distinguished persons, not only 
 the Gelehrte^ but writers like Adolph Stahr and 
 Fanny Lewald, diplomatic officials and others. I 
 remember Helmholtz showing me a grand piano 
 which an American manufacturer had presented 
 to him in recognition of his services to the science 
 of music. We sometimes saw the Helmholtzs at 
 the Opera, where, to my delight, Wagner's operas 
 were frequently given. 
 
 Other friends stole about us, till we began to feel 
 warmly fenced in with friendships in our cold- 
 looking northern capital. I recall from among 
 these the Von Pertzs, to whom our good English 
 friend Mrs. Gertrude Coupland had kindly intro- 
 duced us. Their children used to play with those 
 of the Crown Princess. Frau von Pertz would tell 
 us of the Crown Princess's exertions on behalf of
 
 THE CROWN PRINCESS 143 
 
 the higher education of girls : an innovation which 
 was, I beheve, looked coldly upon by many con- 
 servative Prussians, who suspected that their ideal 
 of the useful, submissive Hausfrau was threatened. 
 On the other hand, I was told that she offended 
 the traditions of the Prussian Court by introducing 
 a too homely English idea of her m.aternal duties. 
 We also saw much of Solly, the Lector on Enghsh 
 at the University. His wife was German, and the 
 parents and children together offered a delightful 
 example of a plain but cultured German home-life. 
 
 But our nearest and dearest friends were the 
 Lachmanns, to whom our new friend in England, 
 Mrs. Coupland, a sister of Mrs. Lachmann, had 
 given us a warm letter of introduction. The family 
 consisted of a mother and three young girls. The 
 young husband and father, when giving promise 
 of brilliant achievement in science, had been 
 snatched away by death. The bereaved wife had 
 at once set to work bravely both to support her- 
 self and to educate her children by organizing in 
 her rooms a series of lessons to be given by outside 
 professors, and she managed to win for this nearest 
 approach in Germany to a private school a number 
 of pupils from good families. The children, whose 
 ages graduated downwards from twelve years, 
 were the most interesting and lovable little trio I 
 have ever chanced upon. It was always a fresh 
 joy to welcome at our door the three dainty figures, 
 with their braided pig-tails, tartan frocks, and fur 
 tippets and turbans, and to hear the eldest begin 
 in a soft, tender voice, " Mamma lasst Sie griissen." 
 
 During my stay I managed to see som.ething of
 
 144 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 various sides of Berlin life. Besides the Opera 
 House, there was the Hoftheater, where the veteran 
 Dohring still aeted in the great Shakespearian and 
 other parts. I was particularly impressed by his 
 rendering of King Lear, and of Nathan (in 
 Lessing's Nathan der Weise). I sent an article 
 apropos of the latter performance to the Saturday^ 
 under the title " Lessing and the Berlin Stage." 
 We went to hear one of LIclmholtz's popular 
 scientific lectures, given before a gathering com- 
 parable with that of a Friday evening at our Royal 
 Institution. A memorable experience during our 
 stay in the German capital was the singing of 
 Frau Joachim, the wife of the violinist, in a 
 performance of Bach's Passion Music at one of 
 the churches. I got a certain insight into the 
 harder and more strenuous life of the people by 
 attending a meeting of the Social Democrats, as 
 I think the German Socialists were then called. 
 I have the impression that Bebel was one of the 
 chief speakers. The presence on the platform of 
 a seated policeman brought home to me the sharp 
 difference between the Prussian and English ideas 
 of free speech. This experience, too, I utilized 
 by sending a short account of the meeting to 
 F. Greenwood. 
 
 The winter brought us a long reign of frost 
 and abundant snow, and both the Linden and 
 Thiergarten, as well as the wooded heaths of the 
 environs of the city, shone with a new and 
 dazzling beauty. We revelled in sleigh-driving 
 and in skating upon the lake of the Thiergarten. 
 Here one could look upon a brilliant social func-
 
 RETURN TO WORK 145 
 
 tion and enjoy the new experience of fitting the 
 ringing strokes of one's skates to the rhythm 
 of music suppHed by a miHtary band. 
 
 I managed also during my stay at Berhn to do 
 some heavier writing. Morley's continued interest 
 in my work was shown by a letter (dated April 
 1872) telling me that Herbert Spencer and G. H. 
 Lewes had spoken in high terms of my article in 
 the Fortnightly on the " Basis of IMusical Sensation," 
 in which I embodied some of the fruits of my study 
 of Helmholtz. 
 
 In the autumn of 1873 I set about stringing 
 together some papers for a volume. Friends were 
 very kind, and Bain and Morley wrote frequently, 
 showing a continued interest in my projects. I 
 visited Morley when he was staying at Tunbridge 
 Wells. On my expressing a wish to see Oxford, he 
 kindly gave me a note of introduction to Thomas 
 Fowler, then, I think. Tutor of Lincoln College. 
 I had reviewed Fowler's two volumes on Logic 
 in the Fortnightly, and he was disposed to be 
 agreeable. So I saw the colleges of Oxford at 
 the beginning of the October term, when the 
 creepers are ablaze, warming up the cold, grey 
 walls. 
 
 In the same month I was asked by Spencer 
 Baynes, the editor of the " Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 nica," to contribute to the ninth edition a philo- 
 sophical article on aesthetics. Bain sent me 
 a characteristic letter on the theme, apropos of 
 Spencer's theory that echoes of ancestral enjoy- 
 ments enter into our modern love of landscape. 
 He wrote : "I never can see how so much stress 
 
 11
 
 146 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 should be laid upon the enjoyment side of our 
 ancestors' experience, seeing that the poor devils 
 must have had so much of the opposite." During 
 Spencer Baynes' term of editorship I wrote several 
 other articles for the "Encyclopaedia," of which the 
 most important were a historical sketch of the 
 philosophy of " Evolution " (v/ritten in collabo- 
 ration with Huxley) and a psychological paper on 
 " Dreams." 
 
 About the same time I was also approached by 
 Miss Catherine Winkworth as to my willingness 
 to give a, course of lectures on the History of 
 Music to a ladies' class at Clifton. John IMorley 
 had shortly before given me a letter of introduc- 
 tion to J. A. Symonds, at that time living at Clifton 
 in the house of his father, the well-known physician. 
 It seems that a movement had been started there 
 for furthering the higher education of women. ^ 
 Symonds took a keen interest in it, and himself 
 gave lectures to the class. My course was given 
 in the spring of 1874, and I believe I Vv^as bold 
 enough to essay some m.usieal illustrations upon 
 a piano. When delivering the lectures,! lunched 
 with Symonds once or twice, and can faintly recall 
 the paternal home : the large rooms of which were 
 covered with Italian paintings that may have 
 given to the future writer on Italian art his first 
 inspiration. I do not think that he had much 
 technical knowledge of music, but we talked in 
 his garden of the analogies between tones and 
 colours. Along with this teaching work, the 
 
 ' See " Memorials of Two Sisters, Susanna and Catherine 
 Winkworth," edited by Margaret J. Shaen.
 
 SENSATION AND INTUITION 147 
 
 aesthetics of music continued to occupy my mind, 
 and I published in the Contemporary (1874) an 
 article on " The Nature and Limits of Musical 
 Expression." 
 
 My volume of collected essays bore the rather 
 fanciful title " Sensation and Intuition." It re- 
 flected my two chief scientific interests, psychology 
 and aesthetics — more especially my interest in 
 the constituents of musical beauty. In all the 
 papers the psychological attitude and method of 
 treatment were apparent, even the sublime meta- 
 physical problem of free will being treated psj^^cho- 
 logically. I was rather nervous as to the reception 
 of my book. It v/as one thing to produce an 
 article, quite another to publish so weighty a 
 thing as a book, on which the critics might be 
 expected to swoop down. But its reception alike 
 in England, France, and Germany was amply 
 reassuring. Bain wrote a pretty full notice of it 
 for the Fortnightly. A reviewer in the Saturday, 
 whom I was fortunate enough to get to know 
 later, welcomed my attempt to bring a little 
 light to bear upon the dark region of aesthetics. 
 Warm congratulations came later from Theodore 
 Ribot in Paris, R. Avenarius in Leipzig, and 
 others. Presentation copies elicited favourable 
 opinions from Herbert Spencer, G. H. Lewes, 
 and Charles Darwin ; the last writing with charac- 
 teristic modesty : "I have read it with great 
 interest, and regretted that it had not been pub- 
 lished earlier, so that I might have profited by 
 some of the discussions." 
 
 The publication of this volume brought new
 
 148 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 proposals of work. William Minto, a pupil of 
 Bain's, had just been made editor of the Examiner, 
 then, I believe, the property of Lord Rosebery, 
 and he asked me to write for his journal, proposing 
 a revision of the forthcoming Oxford Edition of 
 Hume. Apropos of this offer. Bain wrote telling 
 me of the caution he had given to Minto not 
 to be too sanguine. " Hume himself (urged Bain) 
 is a stiff job (for a critic), but to take him from 
 the arms of the Hegelians is beyond common 
 prudence." About the same time G. Croom 
 Robertson informed me that the new Mental 
 Science Review, finally christened Mind (the 
 design of which Bain had mentioned to me some 
 time before), was to appear under his editor- 
 ship next year, and he asked me to contribute 
 to the first number. A little later Ribot wrote to 
 me from Paris of his proposal to start the Revue 
 Philosophique, and asked for my co-operation. 
 These recognitions and proposals of work made 
 me feel that I had completed the tentative stage 
 of my literary career and was about to enter 
 upon the more assured stage of regular work. The 
 arrival of a little girl in our home was an impres- 
 sive reminder that the Wanderjahre as well as the 
 Lehrjahre were now over. So we set about the 
 weighty business of establishing ourselves in a 
 home. After in vain seeking a suitable dwelling- 
 place in Hampstead, we fell back on the new suburb 
 at Harlesden, not far from Willesden Junction. 
 An allowance which my father was now making 
 to his children enabled me to face housekeeping 
 with a certain composure.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 RECUPERATIVE ITALY 
 
 About this time, owing, I fancy, to an undue 
 emphasizing in Goethe's well-known maxim of 
 " Ohne Rast,'''' to the comparative disregard of 
 " Ohne Hast,'''' I had a nervous breakdown, and my 
 father's generosity gave me the chance of a longer 
 sojourn in Italy. We set out early in December 
 by the beautiful route through the South of France 
 and along the Riviera. The weather continued 
 bleak as far as Lyons, but there the sunshine already 
 seemed to have a touch of southern warmth. 
 Nismes, Aries, the Pont du Gard, Avignon — the 
 very cluster of names still sounds like a festal 
 peal of bells amidst a scene of warm colouring, 
 with gleams of more concentrated light from 
 ancient marble and flowing river. We lingered 
 at Marseilles to drink in to the full the first con- 
 sciousness of being on the shores of the Mediter- 
 ranean ; and again at Nice and San Remo, to 
 satiate our eyes on the sea's blue, edged with 
 glittering buildings, palms and other tropical 
 growths, and guarded by watch-towers and head- 
 lands. Only at Genoa were we sufficiently roused 
 from our dream-mood to attack the business of 
 
 149
 
 150 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 sight-seeing ; after which, still clinging to the 
 magic coast, we lapsed at Sestri Levante into 
 another delicious reverie ; lighting by happy chance 
 upon a sweet peasant boy whose quick sympathetic 
 wit shot ahead of our broken Italian speech and onr 
 unaccustomed gesture language, anticipating our 
 every wish. The railway from Genoa ended at 
 that time at Sestri, the long stretch of tunnel 
 with its short, dazzling openings to sunny sea wot 
 having yet been cut. So we stayed at night at a 
 picturesque townlet, and drove the next day up 
 among interminable olive groves and chestnuts, 
 and then down to the beautiful Spezzia Bay. 
 After a visit to the glorious piazza of Pisa, we 
 made for Florence, where we had arranged to 
 spend our Christmas. Here, under cloudy skies 
 and cold mists, we seemed to be thrust back into 
 the bleak north, and the dismal experience decided 
 us to travel straight to Naples. The sound of 
 *' Roma," as our trean pulled up at the capital, 
 sent a delicious shiver through the blood ; and a 
 short ramble through the streets, with a peep at 
 one of its resplendent fountains, deepened our 
 sense of committing something like a sacrilege in 
 rushing past the Eternal City. 
 
 At Naples we lodged at an " English pension,^^ 
 kept by a Mrs. Turner, an Englishwoman who 
 had adopted the excellent plan of marrying an 
 Italian, thus securing a standard of culinary art 
 for her establishment which an English house- 
 keeper might otherwise have missed. It stood 
 conveniently near the fashionable gardens and 
 sea-front ; although, since it ran at right angles
 
 NAPLES 151 
 
 with these, it was for the greater part of the day cut 
 off from the sun. It stood behind the fashionable 
 resorts, in a street which was narrow and rather 
 dark, but a few steps brought us to sunny Riviera 
 di Chiaia. It v/as a joy on the first morning to 
 emerge from the gloomy vicolo into the full sun- 
 shine of the gardens, v/here we soon dropped into 
 the " sweet " Italian mood of idly watching the 
 boats and the fishermen, and pretending to examine 
 the coral and tortoise-shell, the cavalli di mare, 
 and other curiosities vv^hich the street vendors 
 displayed to us. Our quarters were comfortable 
 enough, and as the season of the little " mxandarini " 
 oranges had begun, v^^e v/ere able to feast three 
 senses upon the dainty fruit. From some old 
 accounts I find that the price of jjension (including 
 room) was eight lire a day, or just £2 a week, a 
 figure not noticeably different from that charged 
 me in Naples thirty years later. 
 
 In those days Naples had not done much in 
 the way of modern improvements. There was a 
 good deal of squalid housing close to the front, 
 and the magnificent Corso Vittorio Emanuele was 
 in the early days of its construction. 
 
 Our company v/as rather cosmopolitan, though 
 the English contingent was well maintained by 
 the presence of a General and a Major. During 
 our stay at the 'pension we had an unpleasant 
 experience of the exclusiveness w^hich English 
 residents abroad are apt to show towards new 
 arrivals until these have been properly inspected. 
 A charming English girl appeared one morning 
 at the breakfast-table, and her arrival alone greatly
 
 152 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 shocked one or two of our ladies. She was one 
 of the most refined-looking women I ever met, 
 and nobody but a very stupid or very prejudiced 
 observer could have failed to recognize in her an 
 educated lady. She showed, too, unmistakably 
 the signs of delicate health. Yet it was only affer 
 my wife and I had begun to make a friend of her 
 that the English sticklers for the proprieties for- 
 gave her for daring to arrive without a chaperon. 
 The foreign pension where the English forgather 
 offers a fine opportunity for studying their instinct 
 for " making a home " ; that is, for joining with 
 one or two others — say, in a railway carriage 
 — in keeping out interlopers. This, as I understand 
 it, is only a modification of our tendency to resent 
 the approach of an unintroduced stranger. One 
 of the most curious illustrations of this which 
 I have met with was the behaviour of an 
 English lady who, after an Italian gentleman had 
 made way for her on the landing of an hotel stair- 
 case, and completed the civility by slightly raising 
 his hat, told a friend that she had been insulted. 
 
 Little by little we began to exert ourselves, 
 visiting the marvels of the Museum, making ex- 
 cursions to the heights behind the city, and to 
 places along the coast, such as Pozzuoli and Baiae. 
 The soft, crumbling tufa walls, the sulphurous 
 springs, and Vesuvius for ever disgorging his 
 fumes, made us feel all the time as if we were on 
 the edge of a volcano. We made up for niggardly 
 attention to the giant by passing some days at 
 Pompeii. By this means we not only got to know 
 the fascinating streets and buildings of the dis-
 
 POMPEII 153 
 
 interred city, but won a fuller appreciation of the 
 natural beauties of this resort of well-to-do Romans. 
 The succession of the hours unfolded ever new 
 phases of mountain, sea, and glittering marble 
 ruin. It was during this visit to Pompeii that I 
 first made acquaintance with that curious product 
 of Western civilization, the American boy, who, in 
 this case, half amused, half puzzled us by the 
 way in which he assumed full authority over his 
 begetters, dictating with the assurance of a trained 
 courier their plan of travel. 
 
 After this we made a longer excursion along the 
 coast beyond Pompeii. At Sorrento we lodged 
 at a small hotel, the " Villa Piccola Sirena." With 
 more appropriateness it might have styled itself 
 " Piccolo Vesuvio," so energetically and obsti- 
 nately did its little metal stove and pipe pour out 
 their fumes upon us. We took longish walks in 
 the neighbourhood, climbing the heights behind 
 the orange gardens. For companions we had a 
 boy and a donkey, both thoroughly Italian in 
 temper, and both bearing romantic Italian names. 
 We were told later that we had run risks of 
 encountering brigands in these wild regions. 
 
 From Sorrento we crossed to the island of Capri, 
 stopping at the Albergo Quisisana, in the village 
 of Capri, some height above the sea. The village, 
 if I remember aright, consisted of a group of low, 
 flat or dome-roofed houses, with odd little windows, 
 half Oriental in their physiognomy. It was a 
 plain but comfortable albergo, which asked of its 
 guests the modest terms of six lire a day. When 
 we visited it the island preserved much of its
 
 154 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 primitive charm. There was no large hotel, and 
 the number of visitors was small, and consisted 
 mostly of artists. The German colony had not 
 yet overrun its recesses. There was no road, or 
 horse, in the island, so that one had to get about 
 either on foot or astride of a mule or donkey. We 
 had come in the nick of time for enjoying the 
 pristine wildness, for the sound of blasting ad- 
 monished us that a " carriageable road " was in 
 the making. The transportation of goods from 
 the coast up the steep slopes was done either by 
 mules or by the finely grown Capriot girls, who 
 bore surprising loads on their erect heads. One 
 of the sights of Capri was the long " scala " of five 
 hundred and thirty-five steps, where these hand- 
 some, half Greek-looking contadine moved with a 
 queenly stateliness upwards, or bounded joyously 
 downwards, or, better still, rested and chatted 
 at some turning of the Scala, breaking into laughter, 
 and falling instinctively into charming arrange- 
 ments of form and colour. 
 
 The painters on the island were, I think, mostly 
 French and English. I remember being taken to 
 a small hut-like building to see a huge painting of 
 the Scala and resting girls, by a French painter, 
 and wondering how he had managed to get his 
 canvas through the little doorway. 
 
 I soon grew obsessed with the colouring of land 
 and sea, cactus and Capriot maid. Ten years earher 
 I had discovered that I could, unaided by any 
 lessons in drav/ing objects, make a pencil sketch 
 of a lake or mountain group. But to reproduce 
 colour was a very different matter. I had — pro-
 
 CAPRI 155 
 
 bably at the suggestion of my artist brother-in- 
 law — armed myself with a box of water-colours. 
 One day I confided my longings to paint to Mrs. 
 Anderson, a painter who was staying at our hotel. 
 She advised me to try to find out for myself how to 
 lay on the washes. I have often regretted that I 
 followed her well-intentioned advice. 
 
 My health still forbade my doing much head- 
 work, and I rigorously abstained from writing 
 notes of my travels. But to sit in the morning 
 on the warm southern slopes of the island, sheltered 
 from the tramontana, and paint the Faraglioni 
 needle-rocks — not white like our island's Needles, 
 but softly flushed by a sunny haze — was hardly 
 more than a dolce far niente. And however poor 
 the visible result, the methodical and detailed 
 inspection involved helped to train the eye to a finer 
 observation of colour. 
 
 We heard a good deal of the little art-vv'orld in 
 Capri, of the obstacles the painters sometimes en- 
 countered from a parent or priest in hiring models, 
 and of the occasional marriage of a painter with 
 a handsome contadina after the latter had been 
 polished into the semblance of a lady at some 
 school. 
 
 A party of Capriot peasants would sometimes 
 come to our inn to show us their picturesque 
 dances. Among these figured the famous Taran- 
 tella, of which our old travellers in South ItaJy 
 have much to tell us. Its wild, impetuous move- 
 ments were apt to give the dancers an appetite ; and 
 a part of the spectacle was to see them, on resting 
 from their gyrations, eat macaroni in peasant
 
 166 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 style, taking up the long worm-like threads and 
 dropping them neatly into their mouths — red wine 
 assisting the repast. 
 
 After a stay of a fortnight, we left Capri one 
 morning early in March for Amalfi. We took a 
 small sailing boat, rounded the Punta di Campa- 
 nella, then hugged the coast of the Bay of Salerno, 
 and passed at an excitingly short distance the 
 famous Siren rocks. The wind was now from the 
 land (vento di terra)^ and if it failed us where 
 the coast-line rose, the sail would be lowered 
 and long oars put out. The beauty of the 
 scenery held us even after our recent drive from 
 Castellemare to Sorrento. The passing of each 
 rocky promontory disclosed a new and exhilarating 
 perspective, the whole winding up nobly with a 
 first sight of Amalfi, climbing stepwise up its 
 tiers of white terraces, while a faint purplish streak 
 beyond added a hint of the coast of Calabria. It 
 looked a half Oriental city, and the impression 
 was deepened when, on approaching it, we saw 
 half-naked men, with skin baked a deep brown, 
 unloading sacks of golden grain upon a wooden 
 floor. 
 
 At Amalfi we found a room at the " Albergo dei 
 Cappucini," where we again paid eight francs a 
 day. We seem to have lighted upon the last bed- 
 room, for it was ours only after we had accepted 
 certain quaint conditions. A Prussian Prince and 
 officer, a youngish man of imposing height, occupied 
 a room beyond ours which could only be entered 
 by passing through our territory. The gentleman 
 in possession agreed on his part to retire at a
 
 DIFFICULTIES AT AN INN 157 
 
 reasonable hour ; while we on our part undertook 
 to be out of our room by a certain hour in the 
 morning, which the Prince, German and early 
 riser as he was, must, I fear, have found anything 
 but reasonable. All went well until on a certain 
 morning we overslept ourselves. On consulting 
 my watch, I was dismayed at the hour. We 
 hurried with the dressing, keeping an ear on the 
 Prince's door, which gave us no relieving sound. 
 Could he, too, have slept late, succumbing, like 
 ourselves, to some heaviness in the air ? We 
 hastened to the breakfast-room, and at the en- 
 trance confronted his genial face wearing a broad 
 smile. He met the astonishment we betrayed 
 upon seeing him by explaining that he had 
 managed to let himself down from his bedroom 
 window. Agreeable as he had been before, this 
 amusing contretemps made us fast friends. He 
 loved to plan new delights, such as an evening 
 excursion by boat to some cavern, where men 
 were engaged to light up the place with Bengal 
 fires. Altogether, Amalfi gave us das schonste 
 moment of our travel days. My eagerness to 
 use the paint-brush now reached a climax, and 
 I found ever new subjects in the buildings of 
 Amalfi, in the dark archways of Ravella above it, 
 and in the square towers on the coast towards 
 Salerno. 
 
 At Salerno we stopped a day or two to see the 
 fine old cathedral and to visit Paestum. The 
 long day's drive to the famous Greek temples was 
 made the more impressive by the circumstance that 
 our road was picketed with troops — bersaglieri,
 
 IBB MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 I fancy — while a mounted escort rode with us. 
 The first view of the temples, the warm tint of 
 the travertine deepening the sea's intense blue, 
 excited a swift nascent movement of the hand, 
 which I instantly recognized as blindly directed 
 towards paints and brushes. I checked the 
 foolish impulse, and was glad for once to sink into 
 a mood of passive contemplation, noting how the 
 tints of temple and prairie changed as we got near 
 them, and how fresh notes of colour were added by 
 the darls: buffaloes and other objects now growing 
 visible. Under the warm colouring of the midday 
 sun the dreariness of the desolate, marshy region, 
 and of the temples long abandoned to the elements, 
 was eifectuall}^ hidden. Thirty odd years later, 
 when travelling up by railway from Messina to 
 Naples, I recaptured by vv^ay of a vivid contrast 
 the m.agic of the sun-bathed scene. The sun 
 liad just risen, but was still invisible, and the 
 watery sky looked repellently cold. The temples 
 had then lost every vestige of their warm tint, 
 and their squat forms, seen from the train, 
 took on the semblance of forlorn creatures 
 crouching low. 
 
 In Rome we had an appartamento in the Via 
 del Babuino. It was on the fifth floor, and 
 we could get air, as well as views of the stone pines 
 on the Pincio, by climbing a few steps to the flat 
 roof. Rome summoned us to work, and we left 
 our idling behind us at Naples. But after a week 
 or two of sight-seeing, I was called back to England 
 by the severe illness of my mother, and arrived 
 only in time to follow her to the grave. On the
 
 ROME 159 
 
 day of the funeral a telegram reached me from 
 Rome, sent off by our friend A. D., telling me that 
 my wife was down with gastric fever, and bidding 
 me bring an English nurse with me. Our dear old 
 stand-by, servant and friend, Ann, who had just 
 nursed my mother, was selected, and I hurried 
 back to Rome vnth her. She had never been more 
 than a few miles from Bridgwater, and my second 
 prolonged anxiety beyond the reach of news 
 was lightened by watching her half-puzzled, half- 
 amused attitude towards her new foreign world. 
 I rem.ember her contempt for the paltry Italian 
 soldiers, who, of course, were ridiculously fore- 
 shortened when looked down upon from our 
 housetop. 
 
 These anxieties prevented me from making a 
 methodical inspection of Rome, and it was not 
 till many years later, after lingering months 
 together there, that it began to wear the look 
 of a familiar city. I worked hard in the Vatican 
 and other museums. It was a transition time in 
 the relations of the Papal to the nev/ secular 
 government, and I find that, among other Papal 
 permissions, I applied for one signed by the 
 " Maggiordomo di S. S.," allowing me to see the 
 " Camere " and " Loggie " of Raphael, the Pina- 
 coteca and the Sistine chapel. The beautiful Villa 
 Albani was then accessible, and I regretted, on a 
 later visit to Rome, to find it so no longer. Among 
 the few impressions I can still recall — besides those 
 left by the more imposing buildings and ruins 
 and gardens — is the mess made by the clearances 
 carried on in the big piazza in front of the central
 
 160 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 railway station — which, however, led to the exca- 
 vation of some valuable antiquities. I was, too, 
 duly impressed by some big spectacles, such -as 
 the illumination of the Colosseum. Royalty dis- 
 played itself generously in those first days of a 
 united Italy, and the beautiful face of the 
 Principessa Marguerita seemed to add a warmer 
 smile to those of the marble princesses in the 
 Museum. 
 
 As soon as our invalid was strong enough, we 
 set out from Rome for Lake Como, stopping at 
 Terni, Florence, Bologna, and Milan. We met the 
 difficulty of choosing between the rival sites of 
 Bellaggio and Cadenabbia by staying at each. In 
 one of these places I happened at the lunch-table 
 to hear of J. S. Mill's death. The announcement 
 was met by the question " Vvlio's Mill ? " to 
 which our news-bringer replied in a drawling voice, 
 " Oh, don't ye know, he's the fellow that wanted 
 to upset the Constitution." I learned later from 
 Bain that I might have called upon Mill at Avignon 
 when stopping there in the preceding December. 
 But after his wife's death he was living in great 
 retirement, and I had heard of the molestations 
 of his privacy by the aggressively curious. Of 
 another loss, a friend this time, I also heard at a 
 lunch -table abroad. It was in a pension at Palermo 
 that an Englishman in the spring of 1904 an- 
 nounced the death of Sir Leslie Stephen ; though 
 happily there was no second Englishman on this 
 occasion to illustrate the usual ignorance of 
 some of our best and greatest. From Cadenabbia 
 we resumed our journey homewards by way of
 
 HOMEWARD 161 
 
 Turin and the Mont Cenis Tunnel. So, for a third 
 time within a month, I entered what was then the 
 only railway passage through the Alps, which, 
 however, this time seemed less dark from the 
 removal of two weighty loads of anxiety. 
 
 12
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN FULL WORK 
 
 We now settled at Harlcsdcn, a new, unsightly 
 suburb, chosen by us as a compromise between a 
 number of needs. 
 
 My literary work continued to be a mixture of 
 the serious article with a relatively light variety. 
 I followed up my contributions to the Fortnightly^ 
 and added to this valuable stand-by the Con- 
 temporary Review. The article accepted by the 
 latter was a pendant to my musical studies. The 
 title, " Opera," brought me a proposal from Charles 
 Leland to contribute two articles on " Opera " 
 and *' Organs " to an American Encyclopaedia 
 which he was editing. The proposal tickled me, 
 for though I had read on the history of opera, I 
 had not the slightest technical knowledge of organs. 
 In addition to these articles I wrote critical notices 
 for the Examiner ; and I contributed to the 
 columns of the Academy, which at this time was 
 the most learned of our weekly journals, and was 
 edited by Dr. Appletou. Among the philosophical 
 books which the Examiner sent me was a couple 
 the reading and reviewing of which was a par- 
 ticular treat. They were both ethical disquisitions, 
 and both original and deeply interesting. Yet 
 
 162
 
 THE DAILY TASK 163 
 
 together they formed a striking contrast, ahke in 
 point of view and in mode of treatment : I refer 
 to Henry Sidgwick's " Methods of Ethics " and 
 F. H. Bradley's " Ethical Studies." 
 
 I now found a sure and more spacious opening 
 for my philosophical pen in Mind, the new philo- 
 sophic review, to which I contributed pretty regu- 
 larly. Alexander Bain, who had brought it into 
 existence, worthily followed up this paternal func- 
 tion by supporting his bantling handsomely from 
 his own purse. He started with the generous pro- 
 posal to pay for all contributions, though after a 
 time he had to curb his rash impulse by restricting 
 the honorarium to critical notices of books. 
 
 Another journalistic opening, offering scope for 
 a sort of tertiiim quid between the more serious 
 and the lighter kind of article, was the Cornhill 
 Magazine. I got to knov/ the editor, Leslie 
 Stephen, and he seemed to be interested in my 
 articles, the topics of which ranged from a German 
 peasant romance up to such grave themes as 
 pessimism. 
 
 By this time I had adopted a fixed plan for the 
 day's work. From three to three and a half hours 
 of the morning w^ere my best hours, and these I 
 allotted to writing, while reading and business 
 were relegated to what I always found to be a good 
 second best, an hour or two after tea. This left 
 me with an hour of the morning and the whole 
 of the afternoon for open-air exercise, for which I 
 had a robust appetite. By this plan my health 
 was kept good, and it was only rarely that I had to 
 diminish the standard quantum of daily work.
 
 164 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Brought into touch with a number of fellow- 
 workers, I no longer felt like a solitary digger in a 
 mine. There was Croom Robertson, a most helpful 
 colleague, with whom I had to discuss problems of 
 " Mind " ; William Minto, at his pleasant Examiner 
 smoking receptions in the Strand, along with 
 Theodore Watts, ^ Comyns Carr, and other good 
 company. My Saturday Review work, too, brought 
 me new acquaintances, including Frederick Pollock ; 
 and the Savile Club helped to enlarge my literary 
 and scientific circle. It was here, I think, that I 
 must have first got to know that genial shepherd 
 of philosophic students in London, Shadworth 
 Hodgson. And it was the same sociable club 
 which introduced me to W. K. Clifford, the brilliant 
 young mathematician and thinker; to F. Y. 
 Edgeworth, whose many-sidedness of mind refuses 
 to be contained even under two categories ; as well 
 as to other lovers of ideas. 
 
 By this time my writings had given me the 
 entree into houses where things of the mind were 
 honoured. G. H. Lewes, to whom I had sent a 
 copy of my book, invited me to the Sunday after- 
 noon gatherings at the Priory. Here, in addition 
 to the revered novelist, George Eliot, I first saw 
 Darwin and other notabilities. The meeting with 
 Darwin was a particularly agreeable one for me. 
 It was a wet afternoon, and I found myself the 
 only guest. Just as I was rising to go, the maid 
 entered and announced " Mr. and Mrs. Darwin." 
 Lewes turned to me and said, " You must not go 
 now." A quiet elderly pair were ushered in. 
 » Afterwards Watts Dunton.
 
 CHARLES DARWIN 165 
 
 Darwin's bald dome of a head, with its deep curtain 
 of grey hair and a long grey beard to match, deeply 
 impressed me. The first number of Mind had just 
 appeared, and Darwin spoke in praise of it, adding 
 that what he especially liked was Mr. Sully's article 
 on " Physiological Psychology in Germany." Lewes 
 turned to me with a knowing smile, and said to 
 Darwin, " Perhaps you would like to know the 
 writer of the article." The great man was generous 
 in talk, and pricked on, I think, by a funny story 
 from Lewes, recounted some curious experiences 
 of his own. One was the receipt of a letter from a 
 learned American, who sought to demonstrate that 
 the doctrine of Natural Selection was to be found 
 in the Old Testament. Another was also the 
 reception of a letter, this time from a canny young 
 Scotsman. This young gentleman, having rather 
 hastily undertaken the task of expounding and 
 defending the Darwinian doctrine before a debating 
 society, and finding himself out of his depth, struck 
 out boldly for terra firma by writing directly to 
 Darwin, asking him to send him a brief epitome 
 of his doctrine. Darwin seemed to enjoy the 
 humour of the thing almost as much as his audience. 
 Another house where men of science and of 
 letters forgathered was that of Mrs. Hertz in 
 Harley Street, to which I was introduced by 
 Kegan Paul, at that time my publisher's reader. 
 " Society " was new to me, and I did not yet 
 shrink from the salon which Mrs. Hertz held 
 on Sunday evenings. I met there a number of 
 persons with awe-inspiring names, among others 
 Goldwin Smith and Frederic Harrison. But the
 
 166 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 crowded rooms, with their Babel-Uke confusion of 
 voices, were not much to my Hking. I remember 
 once, upon entering the drawing-room, spying the 
 tall figure of Edmund Gurney pinned by the slowly 
 moving pack of guests against the wall in a 
 corner. I managed to get to him ; but alas ! we 
 were instantly discovered by our vigilant hostess, 
 who cut short our talk by bearing one of us away 
 to some lady who was " most desirous " of making 
 his acquaintance. 
 
 Among the visitors whom I met in Harley Street, 
 none gave me such a thrill of excitement as Robert 
 Browning. I only had distant views of him, for 
 of course he was drawn off from the crowd. I 
 had seen him some years before in a Congrega- 
 tional chapel listening to the spontaneous and 
 deeply moving poetry of the Welsh preacher, the 
 Rev. Thomas Jones ; and the contrast of atmo- 
 sphere between the Sunday salon and the chapel 
 could not but strike me. The third time I met 
 him was at Leslie Stephen's ; and here again 
 the irony of things planned it that a revered poet 
 should present to me a by no means dignified 
 aspect. He amused us by recounting how one 
 afternoon in Kensington Gardens he was chased 
 round and round the Albert Memorial by a bevy 
 of American lady admirers ; and he follov,^ed this 
 up by describing some not particularly interesting 
 spiritualistic communications which a lady, re- 
 cently widowed, had carried on with her husband. 
 I naturally thought of " Mr. Sludge the Medium," 
 and the contrast brought up a sigh. 
 
 Very pleasant were the small dinner-parties which
 
 MRS HERTZ 167 
 
 preceded Mrs. Hertz's receptions. Our hostess 
 knew some of the secrets of a recherche dinner, 
 and used her knowledge in attracting to her table 
 some of the intellectual lions of the day. She was 
 herself a well-read woman, versed in French and 
 German as well as in English literature. She was 
 smiled at by some as a lion-huntress ; but she 
 seemed to me to seek out distinguished and pro- 
 mising persons not so much to win for herself a 
 reflected glory as to gratify a genuine and many- 
 sided interest in letters and science. On the whole 
 she showed considerable tact, though she was once, 
 like Homer, caught nodding. The occasion was 
 my introducing to her a friend who came of a family 
 distinguished for learning. She received him with 
 the well-intentioned remark, " I hope that the 
 family talent has been transmitted to its youngest 
 scion." 
 
 For some time I had been attracted to the 
 subject of modern pessimism as represented by 
 Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann, and in 1877 I 
 published a book upon their theories. My tempera- 
 ment prepared me for understanding a subject 
 which to most thinking Englishmen, I fancy, is 
 hardly more than pretentious nonsense. Moreover, 
 the Germans' way of stating the problem of the 
 value of human life — making it a question of the 
 preponderance of pleasure over pain — attracted 
 me, because it could only be solved by a careful 
 psychological analysis of our experience. I was 
 sufficiently impressed by the arguments of the new 
 advocates of pessimism to feel roused by it as a 
 menace, and my book was the result of an effort
 
 168 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 to rid myself of the gloomy suspicions which it 
 had bred. 
 
 Much to my surprise, I found, on the appearance 
 of my volume, that a good deal of curiosity had 
 been excited in England about the subject. McColl 
 of the Athenceum, I was told, had received an Un- 
 usual number of requests to review my book. It 
 appealed to a much larger audience than my 
 essays had done. Among those who sent favour- 
 able appreciations of it was W. Wundt, the veteran 
 psychologist, who is still active in Leipzig. F. H. 
 Bradley honoured me with a quite lengthy letter 
 upon the volume, of which he spoke in higher 
 terms than I could have expected. But it by no 
 means pleased all its readers. A doughty Swiss 
 lady, a disciple of Von Hartmann, sent as a con- 
 tribution to Mind a pungent reply to my attack 
 on her master. I fear that this caused less vexa- 
 tion of soul to myself than to my overworked 
 friend Croom Robertson, who wrote me that the 
 article was written in such queer English that he 
 despaired of " licking it into shape." 
 
 One result of the publication of " Pessimism " 
 gave me almost greater satisfaction than the com- 
 mendatory notices of the book. Kegan Paul told 
 me that a man he was interested in, who had been 
 troubled with melancholia and traces of suicidal 
 impulse, showed about this time a striking im- 
 provement in tone of mind. On Paul's asking 
 him what had led him to adopt a more healthy 
 attitude towards life, he replied, " Reading Sully's 
 ' Pessimism.' " I have wondered how many philo- 
 sophic writers could say that a book of theirs had
 
 " PESSIMISM " 169 
 
 produced, among other good effects, that of pro- 
 longing a human hfe. 
 
 I followed up this book with an article, in which 
 I was able to disclose more fully my own attitude 
 towards the question of the value of life. The 
 article bore the title of " Scientific Optimism," 
 and was published in the Nineteenth Century (1881). 
 To my ear the paean sung to evolution by W. K. 
 Clifford and other young enthusiasts had been 
 overdone ; and I found even Herbert Spencer's 
 attempt to construct an optimistic creed upon a 
 biological base a rather cold substitute for the 
 glowing optimism of the eighteenth century. I 
 adopted, I fear, a hopelessly sceptical attitude 
 towards each of the antagonistic estimates of life. 
 
 "Pessimism" brought me more acquaintances, 
 and I tried the risky experiment of drawing nearer 
 to them by taking a house in St. John's Wood. It 
 was here that I became intimate with Huxley and 
 his family. I was at this time writing a philoso- 
 phical article on " Evolution " for Spencer Baynes 
 of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," and Huxley 
 became my colleague in a peculiar way by under- 
 taking to write for the " Encyclopaedia " a biologi- 
 cal article on the same subject. The informal 
 evening receptions by the Huxleys in Marlborough 
 Place were among my cherished treats, carrying 
 me back in memory to the homely reunions of 
 Gottingen and Berlin. What struck me most on 
 meeting Huxley was his exceeding gentleness of 
 manner. Of the doughty combativeness of the 
 disputant with Church dignitaries and others one 
 saw no trace in his home : on laying aside the pen
 
 170 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 he seemed also to cast off his controversial armour. 
 His talk was pitched in a low voice which could 
 woo even the timid. There were only the shaggi- 
 ness of the eyebrows and the reserves of pow6r 
 in the jaw and mouth to remind one of his daring 
 assaults upon ancient yet still formidable spiritual 
 fortresses. He had something of the modesty of 
 his friend Darwin. I remember one evening when 
 at the " high tea " he began to carve a chicken. 
 A lady at his side remarked to him, " Ah, noiv, 
 Professor Huxley, we shall see how a chicken 
 ought to be carved," to which observation he re- 
 plied, " My dear lady, anatomists make the worst 
 of carvers." The Professor used to amuse us by 
 serving up some of his droll experiences as examiner. 
 One of these was an answer to the question, " Briefly 
 describe the circulation of the blood," which at 
 least had the merit of brevity : " The blood flows 
 down one leg and up the other." 
 
 Another agreeable house that I visited in this 
 neighbourhood was Richard Garnett's. I had 
 got to know him at the British Museum, where 
 his charming old-world courtesy and his memory 
 for bookish things — Avonderful* alike in its compass 
 and its orderliness — endeared him to many readers, 
 and was especially welcome to so readily forgetful 
 a person as myself. I was much in the reading- 
 room of the British Museum in those days. Once 
 I had the pleasure of calling Garnett's attention 
 to Mark Pattison, who stood looking bewildered 
 at this big gathering of London students, mostly 
 unacademic. The Garnetts were another of those 
 genial and homely families in which I loved to
 
 LONDON NOISES 171 
 
 forget my work. A happy chance once made me 
 their guest for a week in the little Devonshire 
 village of IMorthoe, and we agreed that the week 
 had made us better acquainted than years of 
 hurried London intercourse. Among younger men, 
 I got to know abovit this time G. J. Romanes, the 
 promising biologist. He was much depressed at 
 this moment by the illness of a beloved sister, 
 which proved to be fatal. A fellow-feeling drew 
 me to him, for I myself had just had to pay my 
 toll to death by losing a brother v>'ho had been the 
 close companion of my early years. It was, I was 
 told, the loss of this sister vvdiich led Romanes 
 to brood on religious questions, and to pen a 
 volume which he published anonymously under 
 the title of " A Candid Examination of Theism, 
 by Physicus." 
 
 I continued to work at a fairly even pace, my 
 mind running on in many directions, now upon 
 dreams and other illusions, now upon noises ; but 
 I soon began to feel that London, even in a 
 sylvan suburb, was not the place for me. With a 
 respectable pov/er of concentration so long as my 
 milieu was favourable, I was a " light " worker in 
 the sense that even small noises and other inter- 
 ruptions had a fatally disturbing effect on my 
 til oughts. To me such stories as that of Mrs. 
 Somerville's writing scientific books in a room where 
 children were at large, read like the superhuman 
 exploits of Greek and mediaeval heroes. Organ- 
 grinders infested St. John's Wood (was it not 
 John Leach who was tormented by them ?), and 
 they v>^ere apt to be unaccommodating when asked
 
 172 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 to carry their music elsewhere, especially if the 
 friendly face of child or maid looked down sup- 
 portingly from a window. The noises of London 
 began to obsess my thoughts, and I had to write 
 against them, as I had written against pessimism, 
 just to clear my brain of a haunting worry. The 
 outcome was an article on " Civilization and Noise," 
 in the Fortnightly Review, which won notice, and, 
 I think, approval, too, from George Meredith. 
 
 The same preternatural susceptibility to the dis- 
 tracting influence of sounds was now having a 
 bad effect upon my sleep. I was safe when once 
 properly launched into a deep sleep, and some- 
 times even amused my family at the breakfast-table 
 by telhng them that I had heard nothing of a 
 nocturnal thunderstorm which had made havoc of 
 their slumbers ; but during the process of falling 
 asleep I was at the mercy of absurdly small noises, 
 which sufficed, if they were not instantly stopped, 
 to drive off sleep for half the night. Certain 
 voluminous sounds, on the other hand, when not 
 too powerful, had a soothing effect upon my aural 
 nerve ; and more than once in Switzerland I have 
 for the sake of this lulling effect chosen an hotel 
 with a big waterfall at a suitable distance. 
 
 In 1878 my lack of sleep hardened into a habit 
 of insomnia. I consulted Dr. J. Hughlings Jackson, 
 who sent me to the Swiss mountains. He had 
 been reading an article of mine on " Dreams " in 
 the Cornhill Magazine, and this interview was 
 the beginning of a warm and lasting friendship 
 between us. His acts of kindness to me are 
 unforgettable.
 
 HMIPSTEAD 173 
 
 Warned by this attack of insomnia, I left St. 
 John's Wood and settled in Hampstead, towards 
 which I had long felt drawn. Small houses were 
 difficult to find near the Heath. But after much 
 searching we discovered a cottage in the triangular 
 space known as Windmill Hill. It was very old, 
 the rooms were low, and the floors uneven and 
 shaky. But its retired position behind a long strip 
 of garden made it especially inviting to me. Here 
 I was able to carry on work with a satisfactory 
 amount of comfort. No organ-grinder, trades- 
 man's errand-boy, or other noise-producer was 
 permitted to enter the garden. It looked down the 
 steep Holly Hill, which was flanked on one side 
 by a high causeway, on the other by arcaded 
 storehouses — a bit of Italy in London that 
 attracted the brush of our local Italian artist. 
 
 In 1878 Hampstead was still a village detached 
 from London : old inhabitants continued to speak 
 of going into the village, and the morning bus 
 announced its destination as " Lun'on." Yet the 
 builder was on its skirts, planning the Fitzjohn 
 Avenue and other magnificent roads. This neces- 
 sitated the pulling down of queer little lanes and 
 courts, which, though they may not have been too 
 healthy, added something to the wrinkled physiog- 
 nomy of the old place. Well Walk had at this time 
 more of the look of genteel age, and Frognal still 
 enjoyed its leafy privacy. Commonplace structures 
 like Cannon Place and Gayton Road began to 
 raise their heads. Yet only a few beginnings of 
 the impending changes had been carried out, and 
 when we settled on the Northern Height there
 
 174 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 was still much in the old buildings, and in the old 
 lime avenues, too, to feed the mood of dreamy 
 musing on the past. And, better still, the Heath 
 itself had hardly been touched by the improver ; so 
 that if guardians were reasonably permissive, small 
 boys, in Kate Greenaway designs, could have their 
 fill of enjoyment, running up and down the sandy 
 declivities where exposed roots menaced naked 
 shins, and pretending to sail ships in the shallow 
 pools. 
 
 The Heath in those days had fascinating trea- 
 sures for youngsters, besides birds' eggs and black- 
 berries. If you walked towards the Spaniards 
 in the evening, you might chance upon a rabbit's 
 white tail scuttling away under a bush. A little 
 farther past the Spaniards you might, in the right 
 month and at the proper dusky hour, overhear 
 the low thrilling notes of a nightingale. Late in 
 the night those who lived near Church Row might 
 hear the cry of an owl that had its eyrie in the 
 church tower. 
 
 As there was no " tube " in those days, Hampstead 
 could not offer a quick journey into the City or 
 the West End. This circumstance helped, I think, 
 to kee]) the suburb a resort of men of letters, 
 artists, and others who wanted quiet. These cul- 
 tured Hampsteadians had formed themselves into 
 a more or less compact society, which kept aloof 
 from the rest of the inhabitants. We were at 
 once admitted into this higher stratum, and I 
 think I managed, in spite of my Bohemian lean- 
 ings, to fit myself fairly v/ell into my nev/ world. 
 
 We owed our rapid admission into this rather
 
 CANON AINGER 175 
 
 close society to the Charles Leweses. I had got 
 to know Charles at his father's house, the Priory, 
 and we had met him and his wife in Switzerland 
 just before we settled in Hampstead. They were 
 most kind in welcoming us and securing friends for 
 us, among whom were Miss Coats and Miss James, 
 who had a beautiful house in Upper Terrace, the 
 large drawing-room of which looked out upon 
 the Judge's Walk and the West Heath. We were 
 invited to delightful little dinners here ; and Canon 
 Ainger, a friend of the house, who lived a door or 
 two away, would look after the male guests, when 
 forsaken by the ladies. Both Canon Ainger and 
 Miss James were lovers of music, and they would 
 delight us by their renderings of our favourite 
 German songs. The Canon was too serious a 
 person to care for large society gatherings, and he 
 was once caught by a lady at an evening party 
 sitting on a tightly packed circular settee, his face 
 buried in his hands. Being asked whether he was 
 unwell, he raised a woebegone countenance and 
 explained that he was just reflecting how happy 
 he had been before he came to the crowded party. 
 But with a few kindred spirits he could be 
 jolly enough. Once in the Upper Terrace, after 
 giving us a rather melancholy song of Schubert, 
 he suddenly got up and, lowering his arms, as if 
 daintily to raise imaginary skirts, executed a 
 series of skipping pas through the whole length of 
 the room, reproducing with admirable exactness 
 the graces of a lady of the ballet. We made much 
 of Canon Aingei- in Harapstead. His clever read- 
 ings from Shakespeare, in which by skilful changes
 
 176 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 in voice, pose, and expression he passed easily 
 from one character to another, were things not 
 to be forgotten ; and hardly less memorable were 
 his lectures. When staying with the Sidgwicks at 
 Newnham College, I heard one of them on Burns, 
 in which he succeeded in winning the testimony 
 of a Scotch student to the correctness of his 
 rendering of the poet's dialect. 
 
 On the Heath the Canon was one of the familiar 
 figures. There was a touch of the pathetic as 
 well as of the picturesque in the slight, stooping 
 form, crowned by the refined face and the silky 
 white hair. The figure seemed to be created for 
 the Heath — to focus its spirit, with the melan- 
 choly of its solitudes and the serenity of its 
 unobtrusive life. He ought, I used to think, 
 to have been accompanied in these gentle pere- 
 grinations by his beloved Charles Lamb. As it 
 was, he had a meet companion in the artist 
 Du Maurier, who now lived, like Ainger, but a 
 few steps from the Flagstaff. They were often to 
 be seen together towards the end of a morning 
 moving slowly across the West Heath. Sometimes 
 Du Maurier would be accompanied by his wife 
 and young children, and then we knew where the 
 Punch artist had found some of his models. They 
 would bring, too, the fine St. Bernard, recog- 
 nizably the " Chang " that had also sat (or stood) 
 for Punch. I had met the Du Mauriers at the 
 Priory, and at Hampstead we renewed a loose sort 
 of acquaintance. He was a teller of good stories, 
 among others one which had Chang as its hero. 
 His master was once taking him to a house of call,
 
 CHUMS 177 
 
 when a kitten opposed itself to the advance of 
 the giant, bristhng with all the manifestations 
 of fierce wrath. The magnanimous Chang in- 
 stantly went over on its back, paws in air, by way 
 of deprecating any hostility on his part, and the 
 kitten's rage was appeased. 
 
 Some of these early acquaintances in Hamp- 
 stead ripened into long friendships. There were 
 pleasant houses for Sunday afternoon tea or supper, 
 where good talk and music could be counted upon : 
 among others, those of the Wedmores, the Ewing 
 Mathesons, the Gilchrists, the William Hills, the 
 Henry Morleys, and Dr. and Mrs. Coupland. It 
 seems strange to me, in looking back to-day, that 
 we should have been able so soon after our arrival 
 in Hampstead to surround ourselves with so goodly 
 a circle of friends. 
 
 Besides these friendly families, I had the more 
 frequent and more prolonged company of one 
 whom I will call my bachelor chum. It was he 
 who attracted me to Hampstead, quite as much, 
 I think, by the prospect of having him as a neigh- 
 bour as by his praises of the salubrity of the 
 Northern Heights. I responded to his brotherly 
 overtures by selecting for my home a cottage only 
 a few steps from his abode. We met almost 
 daily, now for a short after-breakfast walk, now 
 for a longer tramp, in which Stanley Jevons might 
 join, and now on a skating excursion to Hendon 
 or Elstree. Later on, the bicycle came upon the 
 scene, aiming a blow at our unhurried peregri- 
 nations on foot. I used to join him now and then, 
 though knowing that I was a sort of cog to his 
 
 13
 
 178 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 impatient wheels. In another bodily exercise I 
 was quite unable to join him — the early-morning 
 dip in the bathing-pond. Valiant as I was in 
 attacking, on a hot summer day, ice-cold water 
 in Switzerland or Norway, I could not in cold 
 blood face the early-morning plunge in winter. 
 
 Our lines of study overlapped somewhat, and 
 this, together with the multiplicity of his interests, 
 made conversation fluent. His mind seemed to 
 be ever simmering with new problems, and upon 
 meeting him on the edge of the Heath, he would 
 at once put me a poser of the form, " If you had 
 so much money to invest, and the conditions were 
 so and so, would you be ready to risk it ? " I was 
 amused at his supposing that I might be troubled 
 by a superfluity of wealth, but did my best to 
 answer his query. It was delightful to know, 
 when starting for m^y morning view of Harrow- 
 on-the-Hill, that I should find him somewhere 
 near the White Stone Pond. I recognized his 
 cloaked figure at some distance moving very 
 slov/ly with bent back, and loved to startle him 
 out of his fit of abstraction, to see him spring 
 upwards with something of a bird's movement 
 of flight, and to hear his cheery outburst, " Hallo, 
 Sully ! " 
 
 Although my junior, lie seemed, as the older 
 inhabitant, to take special care of me. This was 
 due in part to the svv^eet courtesy of his nature, 
 for he came from the isle of hospitality. x4.mong 
 those delicious memories to which I can return 
 again and again v/as a week spent with him in 
 his ancestral home, a summer week made the more
 
 LECTURING AND EXAMININCx 179 
 
 fragrant by his delicate attentions. Propinquity 
 no longer makes it easy for me to get possession 
 of his genial and sustaining comradeship. Never- 
 theless, I cherish the dream that, if ever I reach 
 the Elysian Fields, I shall be welcomed once more 
 by that sudden upward spring and that thrilling 
 " Hallo ! " 
 
 My removal to Hampstead coincided with a 
 notable increase of work. In 1878 I v/as appointed 
 Examiner in Logic and Psychology in the Univer- 
 sity of London, and in the following year Lecturer 
 on the Theory of Education at the Maria Grey 
 Training College. Literary work was henceforth 
 to be supplemented by teaching and testing the 
 results of teaching. 
 
 The lecturing, which I put into the afternoons 
 so as to secure the morning hours for writing, did 
 not trouble me much. My voice, it is true, was 
 not strong, and had not yet been methodically 
 trained. But then my classes w^ere small, and 
 made no heavy demands on it. The change of 
 scene, still more the direct appeal to a concrete, 
 visible audience, was refreshing after the isola- 
 tion and self-absorption of the morning. I felt 
 the subtle power of the sympathy which binds 
 teacher and pupil when face to face, compelling 
 me to note when a fair head would look up an 
 instant from her notebook with a crease of per- 
 plexity in the brow^, or Vv-^hen her running pen would 
 flj^sjill faster, as if in haste not to lose something 
 she thought good. I did not v/rite out my lectures, 
 but trusted to half a dozen leaves of notes : the 
 skeleton being always rewritten for a new delivery.
 
 180 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 The examining work rather worried me at first. 
 I had horrid misgivings as to whether I might 
 not, according to mood and other variable condi- 
 tions, unknowingly alter my standard. I had to 
 test myself by re-reading the papers and varying 
 the order. I soon found, however, that in work 
 of this kind the standard has for the most part 
 a way of taking care of itself— that one hits 
 somehow in each case on a right judgment of 
 value which sums up the cumulative results 
 of a good many partial estimates, none of which 
 need come into clear consciousness in the final 
 appreciation. I discovered two tendencies to alter 
 the standard : (1) an unconscious raising of it 
 when the same poor kind of answer recurred ad 
 nauseam, especially if it was a violent dragging in 
 of a passage out of a textbook ; (2) a reverse 
 tendency to lower the standard when, after read- 
 ing a number of papers, it seemed hopeless to 
 look for anything better. These two tendencies 
 appeared, however, approximately to neutralize 
 one another. Collaboration with other examiners, 
 some decidedly stricter and others decidedly laxer 
 in their markings than myself, satisfied me that 
 my relative estimates of papers, and so the order 
 in classing them, agreed to a reassuring extent 
 with those of my colleagues. After this I had 
 peace of mind. 
 
 I found Stanley Jevons a particularly helpful 
 colleague, and, as he lived near us, acquaint- 
 ance soon ripened into friendship between the 
 families. He was a valuable companion, full of 
 all sorts of knowledge, gained not only from books,
 
 STANLEY JEVONS 181 
 
 but from shrewd personal observation. He was 
 given to rummaging in bookshops searching for 
 out-of-the-way pamphlets, sometimes in most un- 
 promising-looking suburban quarters. He collected 
 a large number of such papers, which he carefully 
 pigeon-holed. A common interest drew him and 
 my chum together, and so we made a trio in many 
 a pleasant walk and skating excursion. 
 
 The first years of my residence in Hampstead 
 were saddened by the death of my good friend 
 George Henry Lewes, followed a couple of years 
 later by that of George Eliot. I had known 
 them only a few years, yet their departure 
 darkened my world for many a day. About the 
 same time death deprived me of another friend, 
 known also for too brief a time, the brilliant 
 young mathematician and thinker, W. K. 
 Clifford. His brave spirit, supported by so frail 
 a physique, made him the beloved of many. 
 His clever talk at the Savile and elsewhere made 
 his removal an irreparable loss to us. Leslie 
 Stephen wrote me a sad letter just after seeing 
 Clifford off to Madeira, for he knew that he 
 should not see his friend return.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 IN FULL WORK (continued) 
 
 The years 1879 and 1880 were anxious ones for 
 me. My father wrote that he was unable to con- 
 tinue my allowance, and shortly afterwards he 
 lost the whole of his fortune. A second child 
 had come upon the scene, and I felt that I must 
 work still harder. I had to trouble my friends, 
 Bain, Jevons, and others, with inquiries as to 
 possible openings for work. New lecturing em- 
 ployment came opportunely. Croom Robertson 
 helped to get me appointed for, a year as 
 Lecturer on the Theory of Education at the Col- 
 lege of Preceptors, an engagement which was 
 made permanent a year later. I also gave a 
 series of lectures on Art and Vision at the 
 Royal Institution, where I was bold enough to 
 essay some optical experiments for which Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall kindly lent me his apparatus. I 
 was now working at my volume on Illusions. 
 Francis Galton, who had read some chapters of 
 this book in the Cornhill Magazine, wrote with a 
 charming modesty to say that he had thought of 
 writing on the subject himself, but doubted not 
 that I should " not only anticipate all I could 
 say, but say it much better." Morley was installed 
 
 182
 
 Pholo-] 
 
 GEORGE CROOM ROBERTSOX. 
 
 To face p. ISi
 
 ALEXANDER BAIN 188 
 
 in 1880 as editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, and 
 he asked me to review books for him. 
 
 My acquaintance with Bain had steadily grown. 
 I had met him again and again in London, some- 
 times by request in the large vestibule of the 
 Athenaeum, which we would instantly leave for 
 the retirement of the adjacent Park. His appear- 
 ance was remarkable. The little, weakly figure, 
 the curiously m.odelled head and face, the quaint 
 arrangement of the hair — thinned away over the 
 occiput and husbsjided in a long wisp, but allowed 
 to grow to an alm.ost goat-like exuberance on 
 the chin — made a striking ensemble, to which 
 his manner of talk, with its touch of Aberdonian 
 accent, gave further piquancy. 
 
 In the summer of 1879 he invited me to stay 
 with him for a week in Aberdeen, and was 
 particularly hospitable, taking me for a week 
 to Braemar. His health was anything but 
 robust, and, like Herbert Spencer, he gave much 
 thought to it. Having early discovered that 
 his digestion was a preternaturally slow process, 
 he decided to live on two meals a day, break- 
 fast and dinner, with only a cup of tea to 
 break the long abstinence. He had found great 
 benefit from hydropathic treatment and from 
 the Braemar air, a week or a fortnight's inhala- 
 tion of which he tried to secure every summer. 
 He was a thoroughly congenial companion, and 
 would now and then tell amusing stories about 
 Mill and other celebrities to the accompaniment 
 of a mirthful falsetto laugh and shakings of the 
 wee body.
 
 184 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 In 1880 Bain surprised me with the news that' 
 he was resigning his Chair. He hoped I should 
 stand for the post. The Chair was a Crown 
 appointment, and the decision would be made 
 by the Home Secretary, Sir W. Harcourt. He 
 further informed me that Adamson of Owens 
 College, Manchester, was to be a candidate, as 
 also W. Minto, a former pupil of his, who had 
 recently become more closely connected with him 
 through his engagement to Mrs. Bain's niece. 
 Croom Robertson, his most brilliant pupil, was, 
 he told me, too strongly attached to London 
 to care to exchange it for Aberdeen. Quite 
 frank as to his own intentions, he said that he 
 wished to keep Adamson out, and to secure a 
 man who would represent his own school. He 
 would act quite impartially as between Minto 
 and myself. 
 
 I felt that, in the circumstances touched 
 upon above, I had no option, and decided to 
 become a candidate. I collected testimonials from 
 Croom Robertson, Herbert Spencer, Lotze, Wundt, 
 Ribot, and others. The only personal applica- 
 tions I made were one or two by letter. I 
 explained the situation to Morley, who wrote in 
 reply that he was rather in a fix about the matter, 
 as Minto was on his staff at the Pall Mall Gazette 
 office. Minto was elected. 
 
 In the next number of the Spectator the appoint- 
 ment was criticized in no sparing language by 
 the editor, Richard Holt Hutton, who repudiated 
 it as a political " job." Stanley Jevons and 
 others expressed to me a similar view. Bain,
 
 BAIN'S SUCCESSOR 185 
 
 who was very angry with Hutton, wrote to me 
 giving his version of the affair. He added the 
 interesting detail that Harcourt had consulted 
 the two Liberal members for Aberdeen, and that 
 the election was determined in the last resort 
 by local preference. 
 
 To me, too, as also to Adamson, this bit of 
 Crown patronage appeared to be a transparent 
 " job." But I was not heart-broken. Aberdeen, I 
 was told, had its unattractive aspects, its asperities 
 of climate, social as well as physical, for a 
 weakly "Southron." I had done my duty by 
 standing, and I sat down and enjoyed retro- 
 spectively the comedy of it all. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking comic feature of 
 the situation was the patent inappositeness of 
 Minto's appearance upon the academic scene. He 
 had indeed written a book on English Compo- 
 sition, a quite subordinate subject of the Chair, 
 as well as a novel, bearing a thunderous title 
 which might by a loose thinker be said to show 
 some " psychological insight." But those who 
 knew him — philosophers and laymen alike — had 
 laughed at the idea of his competing with a 
 scholar like Adamson, a man of high ability who 
 had devoted years of intense study to the prin- 
 cipal subjects of the Chair. His Savile friends, 
 at any rate, had failed to discover in his genial 
 wide-roving talk a trace of the philosophic mind. 
 
 As between Minto and myself, the destinies 
 had woven things in such a way as to make 
 the result seem almost a joke. When he was 
 editor of the Examiner he had handed over
 
 186 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 all the philosophic books to me: he being en- 
 grossed in his proper subjects, politics and 
 literature. Bain had recognized and publicly 
 praised my books in so emphatic a manner as 
 to make an impartial support of Minto any- 
 thing but easy to a conscientious man. Morley, 
 again, had not only published a number of my 
 articles, but, knowing us both personally, could, 
 one supposes, hardly have failed to catch a glimpse 
 of the amusing contrast between the two can- 
 didates. Once more, Spencer Baynes — who. Bain 
 told me, had written a very strong testimonial 
 for Minto, whereas he had hesitated before giving 
 me, as a late-comer, a rather meagre one — had 
 emploj^ed m.e to write philosophic articles, such 
 as " Esthetics " and " Evolution," for the 
 '' Encyclopaedia Britannica," and kncv^^ equally well 
 what v/as Minto's special departrnxcnt. 
 
 It is, I think, a fair deduction from the 
 facts that Minto could only have secured his 
 academic backing on the ground that, being a 
 mighty clever fellow, a sort of universal genius, 
 a dry technical subject like logic would come 
 as naturally to him as any other. ^ But one 
 doubts whether Minto could have arrived any- 
 where near his goal — even had he been bold enough 
 to enter for the contest — if there had not chanced 
 to be at the moment in the political firmament 
 so propitious a grouping of the stars. As editor 
 
 I The way in which a clever Scotch student used to apply 
 for a Chair on almost any subject is naively disclosed in the 
 account given by Bain in his "Autobiography" of his own 
 applications for Chairs in very unlike subjects.
 
 POLITICS MISPLACED 187 
 
 of the Examiner, and later as member of the 
 Pall Mall Gazette staff, he must have been well 
 known to English Liberals, while in Scotland 
 he had made sure of the influence of the two 
 Aberdeen members and others. His election was 
 a bit of good fortune secured by boldness of 
 grasp. 
 
 Minto's academic triumph suggests more than 
 one reflection. The serious mind might take the 
 incident as a text for a disquisition upon the mess 
 party politicians are likely to make of it when 
 called upon to decide such a question as a 
 candidate's competence for teaching a highly 
 technical subject like logic or psychology. To 
 a less serious person it might bring home a 
 plain truth or two ; as that when a man wants 
 to marry, his will to live — or, to use modern 
 language, his will to power — is apt to grow 
 extraordinarily fierce ; and that, as the old 
 logic books taught us, the best of philoso- 
 phers, being but a man, is a fallible creature. 
 
 The failure of my Aberdeen venture did not 
 deter me from making other experiments of the 
 kind. The very next year I became a candidate 
 for a Chair of Philosophy just founded in the 
 new University College of Liverpool. It had, 
 I was told, been endowed by some sound Presby- 
 terians, who Vv^ould be specially concerned to secure 
 a " safe man," and would be the better pleased 
 if that man combined with an unimpeachable 
 orthodoxy the virtues of a Scot and the culture 
 of Oxford. Again I forced myself to stand, 
 hardly ignorant of the slenderness of my chances ;
 
 188 MY IJFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 again failed to be elected, and again consoled 
 myself with certain drolleries in the proceedings. 
 What I especially enjoyed was the prejudice 
 raised against me on the ground of my book 
 on Pessimism. The worthy Presbyterians appe'Ur 
 to have argued that a writer who chose such a 
 subject must have had some lurking belief in it. 
 We will hope that the new lectures upon logic 
 since instituted in the city have helped the 
 worthy Liverpudlians to demand a sounder argu- 
 ment than one which would go to show that 
 an alienist who devotes himself to the study of 
 mental diseases must be assumed to be him- 
 self infected by them. 
 
 This was my third shot at the academic target, 
 for I had applied some years earlier for the Chair 
 of Philosophy in Trinity College, Dublin. So I 
 judged it best to cease pestering writers of testi- 
 monials and worrying myself by further futile 
 attempts. I was too heavily handicapped in 
 these contests. It was bad enough to be wanting 
 in the cachet of the proper sort of " University 
 man " : it was quite fatal to be burdened in 
 addition with the disqualification of not being 
 the representative of an " orthodox " school of 
 philosophy. 
 
 I was not downhearted under these rebuffs : 
 knowing that I could reach men by my pen if 
 not by my voice. Just at this moment the 
 value of the pen was impressed upon my mind by 
 the fate of a young writer who had produced an 
 elaborate philosophical treatise, of which I was 
 able to say some encouraging words in a review.
 
 BOOKS ON PSYCHOLOGY 189 
 
 My modicum of praise was all that the poor fellow 
 got, and not long afterwards I heard that the 
 general indifference had so preyed upon his mind 
 as to shorten his life. 
 
 My volume on " Illusions " appeared just after 
 the futile academic experiments. Among others, 
 Wundt wrote to me expressing satisfaction with 
 the book, more especially with the treatment of 
 illusions in the narrower sense along with ana- 
 logous errors of memory, etc. 
 
 I now gave a new turn to my writing. Having 
 managed to obtain a fair amount of lecturing, 
 which was increasing, why, I asked, should I 
 not m.ake myself still more independent of the 
 University authorities by becoming a teacher 
 through my books ? Bain's works on psy- 
 chology, which for many years had been the 
 onty accessible textbooks upon the subject, were 
 not particularly well adapted to the needs of 
 the general student, while for those who were 
 studying the subject as teachers they were 
 practically useless. Students and others had 
 urged me to write a handbook on the subject ; 
 and I may not have been indifferent to the 
 prospect of challenging Bain's lengthy mono- 
 poly of the field. The work would be hard, 
 of course — textbook-writing must at best be 
 largely hack-work ; and I found it yet harder 
 than I had anticipated. To have your every 
 step dogged by the doubt " Is this absolutely 
 necessary for students ? " was a most disagree- 
 able experience. Corrections and rewritings of 
 whole sections, and even of chapters, made the
 
 190 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 work a worrying and fatiguing task. Such was 
 the genesis of the " OutHnes of Psychology." 
 
 I knew what I was doing by embarking upon 
 this textbook- writing. The subjects that still drew 
 me most powerfully, aesthetics and descriptive 
 writing, would have to be neglected, and what- 
 ever lightness of touch I had succeeded in 
 acquiring would probably disappear. 
 
 The writing of the " Outlines " took two or 
 three years. Its success more than fulfilled my 
 expectations. Students from Ireland and other 
 parts v/rote to thank me ; and even philosophers 
 like F. H. Bradley sent me very agreeable words 
 of recognition. Croom Robertson wrote face- 
 tiously of young women who were to be seen in 
 the Park hugging the massive volume. Grant 
 Allen brought it down with him to Aldeburgh, 
 where v>^e were fellow-guests of our friend Edward 
 Clodd, and dilated upon its merits. I knew I 
 ought to be pleased, and did my best to feel so. 
 
 But my onerous task was not yet -^completed. 
 An alarming message came from my New 
 York publishers. The Copyright Act between 
 England and America had not yet come into 
 operation ; and they told me that the " Out- 
 lines " had been pirated and issued, with no change 
 save the addition of a few more references to 
 American books on education, as a psychology 
 for teachers. They urged me, if I wished to 
 secure royalties in America, to prepare at once 
 a new edition of my book with fuller sections 
 on the application of psychology to education, and 
 with a new title. I did this, writing as rapidly
 
 LECTURES AT CAMBRIDGE 191 
 
 as I could ; and so " The Teacher's Handbook of 
 Psychology " came into being. I paid for this bit 
 of writing against time by an obstinate attack 
 of writer's cramp ; but this second textbook had, 
 both in England and in America, a larger sale 
 than the hrst. 
 
 My mode of publication brought me into 
 unusually close touch with the printer. I feel 
 guiltily sure that m.ore than once I tried the 
 patience of Mr. Thomson, of the Aberdeen Uni- 
 versity Press, by clamouring for proofs. Yet 
 so gentle — almost maternally gentle — was he 
 towards me that we never came near a quarrel. 
 He just suffered my complaints, and in a short 
 time I began to understand him, and to know 
 how good a friend he had been to me ; after 
 which our relations were of the most amiable 
 kind, and I had the pleasure of being his guest both 
 at his London club and in his house on Deeside. 
 
 Hard pressed by the writing of textbooks, 
 I nevertheless made a not wholly unsuccess- 
 ful effort to maintain my hold on other kinds 
 of work. About this time I was asked to 
 examine for the University of Cambridge and 
 for Owens College, Manchester. The publication 
 of my books on psychology helped to procure 
 me new lecturing work, both in London and in 
 the provinces. A particularly interesting engage- 
 ment was a course of lectures at the new Women's 
 Training College at Cambridge. An amusing ex- 
 perience hangs in my memory on the name of this 
 college. After one of the lectures the lady prin- 
 cipal of the college asked me to come and have a
 
 192 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 talk with her students. One of them asked me 
 what was meant by a passage in a book which she 
 read out. I did not myself for the moment quite 
 catch the point of the sentence, and I asked her 
 where she had found it ; whereupon, with just a 
 glimmer of triumphant laughter in her eyes, -:She 
 instructed me that it was from my own " Hand- 
 book." I ought, no doubt, to have felt ashamed 
 at having my weakness of memory exposed in 
 this way. But the fun of it, which instantly 
 captured my audience, caught me too, and I 
 joined heartily in the laughing chorus. The in- 
 cident illuminated me further as to my propen- 
 sity, born perhaps of the literary habit, to rid 
 myself of ideas that I had fixed in print. 
 
 I still managed to do a certain amount of 
 lighter penwork, persevered with reviewing, and 
 much enjoyed reading, and writing a notice of, 
 Leslie Stephen's " Science of Ethics " for the Pall 
 Mall Gazette ; which service brought from Stephen a 
 warm epistolary recognition. In this same letter 
 he told me that he was giving up the editorship 
 of the Cornhill, and so I knew that the pleasantest 
 stadium of my literary activity was at an end. 
 James Payn, into whose hands the magazine 
 now fell, was not likely to consider proposals 
 so unpractical as an article upon pessimism, or 
 upon Spinoza. He did, indeed, print one of 
 my little hors cVceuvres, the account of an adven- 
 ture on a Norwegian glacier, and he gave me 
 some excellent literary advice ; but after that 
 the ill-matched editor and contributor tacitly 
 agreed to part company.
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 193 
 
 While plodding at the " Handbook " I man- 
 aged to publish in the Nineteenth Century and 
 other magazines three or four papers upon the 
 Psychology of Genius (its precocity, relation to 
 insanity, etc.). Up to this time my relations 
 with editors had been particularly happy. Now 
 I was to have my single passage of arms 
 with one of these formidable officials. Although 
 I had seen but little of the man, my work for 
 James Knowles, the editor of the Nineteenth 
 Century, had run smoothly enough : I had 
 given him my name for his list of supporters 
 when, after a dispute with Strahan (the publisher 
 of the Contemporary Review), he started that 
 periodical. On talking one day with Romanes 
 about his recently published book, " Mental 
 Evolution in Man," he made the suggestion that 
 I should write an article upon it ; which, he 
 thought, Knowles would probably accept for 
 the Nineteenth Century. I wrote to Knowles 
 proposing the article, and he agreed to take it, 
 provided I left him free as to the date of 
 publication. To this I replied that I was fully 
 prepared to give him a " reasonable margin " — 
 " reasonable " to be interpreted in the light of 
 the fact that the article would be on a new book 
 which had been out long enough to secure more 
 than one review. As Knowles did not answer 
 this letter, I assumed, rather weakly perhaps, 
 that it would be all right. The article, entitled 
 " Is Man the Only Reasoner ? " was duly set 
 up in type ; but it did not appear for over a year. 
 I had spoken to Romanes about the delay, and 
 
 14
 
 194 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 he had asked Knowles, once at least, when it was 
 to be pubHshed. Soon after I had received the 
 proof, Knowles sent me a cheque for the article, 
 a proceeding which, I was told, he adopted when 
 a contributor grew impatient. I felt distinctly 
 uncomfortable in this new situation. My pre- 
 vious dealings with editors like John Morley ^and 
 Leslie Stephen had not prepared me for such 
 treatment. I knew that Romanes and Knowles 
 were " friends," and I suspected that Knowles 
 had accepted the article, primarily at least, to 
 please Romanes. But further : my article was 
 anything but a laudation of the more original 
 part of the book, which tried to build an evolu- 
 tional bridge over the gap between animal 
 and human intelligences. Had the editor, I 
 asked myself, assumed that my proposal im- 
 plied that I was prepared to accept and praise 
 Romanes' book ? I could not but think it likely, 
 and felt a real chagrin on realizing how danger- 
 ously near I had come to joining in a bit of 
 log-rolling. 
 
 About the same time I wrote an article for an 
 American Review on the connection between 
 imaginative writing and dreaming — a subject I 
 was no doubt led to think about by a talk 
 I had recently enjoyed with R. L. Stevenson at 
 Skerryvore. I gathered a good deal of material 
 from novelists of various countries. These per- 
 sonal testimonies were chiefly remarkable for 
 their wide diversity. At one extreme, Paul Heyse 
 wrote that he had derived many of his motives, 
 both scenes and incidents, from his dreams ;
 
 DREAMING AND IMAGINING 195 
 
 whereas at the other extreme W. D. How ells 
 insisted in the strongest terms that " there is 
 no parity betv/een the dream-fiction and the 
 thought-fiction — the involuntary and the volun- 
 tary." Between these cases comes a writer 
 like T. Hardy, who, while sharing with R. L. 
 Stevenson the ability to " alter the development 
 of a dream to something else, if I object to it, 
 precisely as in writing a story," had not made 
 use of dreams in fiction ; and Henry James, 
 who, though a constant dreamer, sees people, 
 things, places, when imagining them, much more 
 clearly thrai when dreaming of them. Taking 
 these facts along with R. L. Stevenson's well- 
 known experiences, one is led to infer that there 
 are two pretty clearly marked types of novelist. 
 Hov/ell's attempt to make all fiction "voluntary " 
 activity — in the stricter sense of the word — will 
 not do in face of Stevenson's account of how 
 the little people, unknown to him, do all the 
 weaving work. 
 
 Oddly enough I had, about the date of these 
 inquiries, tried to get at the modus operandi of 
 the novelist by help of a small experiment on 
 myself. I had been a great devourer of novels, 
 but, so far as I know, had never shown the slightest 
 capacity for inventing a story. I remember how 
 humiliated I had felt again and again w^hen vainly 
 trying to produce a fairy story for my children. 
 One day some wily friend remarked, " You are 
 a psychologist ; why don't you write a novel ? " 
 adding, " You might, you know, earn more money 
 that way." The force of " suggestion " asserted
 
 196 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 itself. The idea stuck in my brain, and before 
 I knew where I was, I had jotted down the out- 
 hne of a short story. I called it " Friendly 
 Rivalry." The scene was laid in a future Cam- 
 bridge (" Eng."), and the heroine was, of course, 
 a charming girl graduate, robed like Portia in 
 the lawyer's gown. I could not say how it came 
 to shape itself. Unlike my more serious writing, 
 which was for the greater part a matter of fiercely 
 conscious struggling towards the light, it spun 
 itself out as easily and as smoothly as a spider's 
 thread. The story was accepted, and at once 
 printed, by the editor of Harper^s Magazine. It 
 brought me the largest honorarium I ever re- 
 ceived for a contribution to a serial. And in 
 remitting it the editor actually told me he would 
 be glad to have more stories of the kind from 
 my pen. The experiment appeared to me to 
 confirm the view of Stevenson that — for some 
 novelists at least — the fashioning of a story is 
 largely a subconscious mental process^ But un- 
 fortunately it did more than that. Hitherto 
 I had retained some of my boyish awe for 
 the creator of fiction. Yet here was I, wholly 
 unpractised in the art, with a firmly organized 
 bent of mind towards abstract thought — that is 
 to say, the polar opposite of imaginative reali- 
 zation — succeeding on my very first attempt. I 
 knew that, according to all rational theory, I ought 
 not to have been able to dash off this and a couple 
 of other stories which I then got printed. I could 
 only suppose that the art of story-weaving is a 
 sort of trick, dependent on the development of
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN FICTION 197 
 
 some out-of-the-way corner of the brain, like 
 precocious musical composition. This may help 
 to account for the considerable quantity of accept- 
 able fiction which gives no hint of a superior 
 intellect. It may account also for an occa- 
 sional display of the novelist's talent by people 
 in whom the germ of it is, for the most part, 
 hidden away, as in my own case.^ 
 
 I The astonishing change of Kterary output in Grant Allen's 
 case was, I thought, due to exceptional versatility of mind.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 OUTSIDE INTERESTS 
 
 My professional work kept me fully employed 
 during the eighties. The lecturing in London 
 and elsewhere involved fatiguing journeys, and 
 shortened the working day. Yet I contrived to 
 keep in touch with outside interests. " Semi- 
 recluse," as I was correctly described by a journal- 
 ist, who once wrote an account of me and my 
 work in an appropriately modest journal, the 
 Echo, I had keen sympathies with much that 
 was going on in the world. Even our tranquil 
 Hampstead had its agitations. There was our 
 Speculative Society, which used to discuss econo- 
 mical, social, and other questions in the Holly 
 Bush Inn. We superior Hampsteadians rather 
 liked to coquette with a risky idea like Socialism ; 
 and I rem.ember a great occasion when W. Morris 
 and Hyndman held forth to us on their creed in 
 the house of one of the Speculative fraternity. 
 Hyndman launched out vigorously against us 
 brain-workers, who, he told us with admirable 
 candour, were quite useless members of the 
 community. I recall, too, how the noble leonine 
 head of W. Morris shook and the face flushed 
 
 108
 
 CULTURE AT HAMPSTEAD 199 
 
 with excitement, as he rose to combat some of 
 the anti-sociaHst speakers. One prominent figure 
 in the Speculative gatherings was Sidney Webb. 
 I have a misty idea that I first met Bernard Shaw 
 as a sociahst lecturer in some Hampstead drawing- 
 room, and that his strongly emphasized super- 
 manity struck harshly upon our Hampstead 
 self-complacency. 
 
 Among matters of local interest was the plucky 
 fight for the subscription-library. I was on the 
 committee when the death-sentence on our little 
 institution was about to be read. It was then 
 located in a small building in Upper Heath Street, 
 and quite hidden from sight. Some of us urged 
 that, before closing its career, we should try the 
 experiment of exposing it to the gaze of men. 
 A small room was found in the High Street above 
 a shop, on the windows of which its name was 
 amply displayed. This proved to be the turn- 
 ing-point in its fortunes. The upper chamber 
 was soon too small, and Stanfield House, where 
 the painter of our sea-coasts once lived, became 
 its fitting dwelling-place. 
 
 Of the interests lying outside Hampstead the 
 one that touched my work most closely was the 
 Metaphysical Society. This institution had been 
 founded (in 1869) by James Knowles, who was 
 at that time editor of the Contemporary Review, 
 and who had secured the ear of Tennyson and 
 others as the chief promoters of the movement. 
 A glance at the names on the first list tells one 
 that the word " metaphysical " was in this con- 
 nection used in our loosest English fashioli.
 
 200 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 The " metaphysicians " were chiefly theologians 
 and men of science, with two or three men of 
 letters thrown in. Knowles made use of its dis- 
 cussions by printing some of them as " symposia " 
 in his Review. As might have been expected, 
 when men of various religious creeds were con- 
 fronted with agnostics, the discussions tufhed 
 largely on theological questions. As such they 
 offered a good opportunity for doughty dispu- 
 tation. They offered, too, an opportunity to men 
 who were apt to enclose themselves too narrowly 
 within the boundaries of a particular set to find 
 out something of the moral, if not also of the 
 intellectual, worth that lurked in their opponents. 
 Not long since, I heard from the lips of the Rev. 
 Peter Hawthornethwaite, who acted for some 
 time as chaplain to a Catholic member of the 
 Society, W. G. Ward-or "Ideal Ward," as he 
 was called by his friends — at Freshwater, a 
 charming story of one of these rapprochements. 
 The Catholic Ward and his agnostic opponent, 
 Huxley, found that they lived near one another 
 in St. John's Wood. So upon returning from 
 the meetings of the Metaphysical they fell into 
 the way of walking together from the Marl- 
 borough Road Station. In order to prolong some 
 friendly colloquy, Huxley would accompany Ward 
 to his door ; the latter then returned the civility : 
 the to-and-fro peripatetic discussion being often 
 prolonged to a late hour. Possibly, if we could 
 probe the deeper value of things, we should say 
 that the founder of the Metaphysical Society 
 never achieved anything finer than the bringing
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 201 
 
 of what might well have seemed an oddly assorted 
 pair of inquirers into this spiritual fellowship 
 under the benedictory eyes of the stars. 
 
 By the time I joined the Metaphysical the 
 impulse of this reciprocal self-revelation had ex- 
 hausted itself. Members were becoming weari- 
 somely familiar with one another's points of view. 
 If, as one of the early members once roguishly 
 put it, a chief motive in the formation of the 
 society was Tennyson's desire to consult the 
 experts as to whether he had such a thing as 
 a soul, the poet must, one supposes, by this 
 time have received his answer. And so the 
 eminent cardinals and other theologians lost their 
 pristine zeal, and attendance at the meetings 
 began to dwindle. In the year of my election 
 a more serious attempt was made by Henry 
 Sidgwick, F. Pollock, and others to turn the 
 society into a strictly metaphysical debating 
 club. But, as might perhaps have been con- 
 jectured, the love of pure philosophy was too 
 weak in London to keep the discussions going 
 after the fires of theological controversy had been 
 put out. 
 
 Among my more tepid outside interests were 
 the doings of the Authors' Society. My neigh- 
 bour and friend, Walter Besant, had so fervid 
 an enthusiasm for his bantling that I could 
 not well avoid helping him. I recognized the 
 desirability of guarding the business interests of 
 writers by such a society ; and the passing of 
 the Copyright Act alone shows that it rendered 
 yeoman's service to the cause. But I got rather
 
 202 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 tired of the perpetual drumming on the relations 
 of authors and publishers, which seemed to me 
 to be inflated into the supreme interest of liter- 
 ature. Nor could I altogether stomach the 
 common assumption of its promoters that fiction 
 was the whole — or even the more important part 
 — of literature. Then, too, the indulgence in 
 dreams of a world-wide Eldorado, of which 
 English writers of novels might take possession 
 if only their property were put on a just basis, 
 struck me as hardly likely to foster the worthier 
 sort of interest in letters. It savoured, as R. L. 
 Stevenson — a writer by no means indifferent to 
 the financial side of his craft — once remarked to 
 me, of " the commercial traveller with wings." ^ 
 So after subscribing to it for a decent number of 
 years, I withdrew my name. 
 
 One of the oddest engagements with which I 
 saddled myself was membership of the Neurolo- 
 gical Society. Dr. Hughlings Jackson was strongly 
 of opinion that doctors who had to do with brain 
 troubles should know something of psychology. 
 He himself had been a reader of psychological 
 works, and some of his most important ideas 
 on the course of decay in the brain-organs showed 
 him to have been a diligent student of Herbert 
 Spencer's writings. I felt rather strange at these 
 gatherings of medical specialists, and, of course, 
 found some of the papers above my comprehen- 
 sion. But I reaped not only much pleasure but 
 substantial profit from my association with the 
 
 ' When I repeated Stevenson's words to Meredith the latter 
 added, in an undertone, " Seraphic wings."
 
 SIR WITJJAM JENNER 203 
 
 " brain- workers " in the complete sense of the 
 term. I should like to be able to think that I 
 had been of some assistance to a society which 
 always treated me with rare consideration. My 
 experiences among these distinguished specialists, 
 supplemented by many kindnesses received from 
 individual members of the profession, led me to 
 place doctors high in the scale of humanity. 
 
 During the later seventies and the eighties I 
 took what I fear was for the most part but a 
 lukewarm share in the doings of the Convoca- 
 tion of my University. Being in favour of 
 extending the whole curriculum of studies to 
 women, I gave my vote accordingly. There were 
 some hot discussions on this subject in the 
 theatre of the University. On the occasion when 
 Sir William Jenner made his stirring appeal 
 against the proposed change, I was sitting high 
 up near one of the doors, and Sir William was 
 almost opposite me on the other side of the pas- 
 sage. As his fine head, v/ith its silky v/hite Lair, 
 appeared above the sitters, one could see that he 
 v/as agitated. There was a discernible tremor 
 of the voice, and I thought I saw the gleam of a 
 tear in his eye as he urged his passionate personal 
 argument. " Gentlemen," he said, " I have only 
 one dearly beloved daughter, and rather than 
 see her on the benches of a dissecting-room I 
 would follow her to the grave." As his voice 
 ceased there was a long hush : university dis- 
 putes seemed for a long m^oment cold and almost 
 unreal by the side of this baring of a father's 
 breast. It was the most moving bit of oratory
 
 204 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 that I ever listened to, and the very futiHty of 
 the protest added to the pathos of it. 
 
 In the yet larger fields of activity I made, I 
 fear, in these maturer years but a poor show. ^ I 
 was a hopelessly wn-" political animal "—if by 
 political is meant caring keenly about the special 
 group of questions which the politicians— or their 
 cHentele— happen to make prominent at a par- 
 ticular hour. It was only when some cherished 
 principle seemed to be at stake that I rose to 
 a satisfactory pitch of political ardour. Conse- 
 quently much of the party-wrangling left me pro- 
 vokingly unmoved. Thus in a matter that seemed 
 to me one of supreme importance for a rapidly 
 developing democratic community, namely, popular 
 education, the squabbles of politicians over the 
 religious difficulty made my political sentiments 
 retreat out of sight like injured tentacles. 
 
 Yet in spite of the paralysing effect of this 
 political fastidiousness — as others might call it — 
 I did now and then take a leap into the arena of 
 public affairs. Repugnances had their tempera- 
 mental roots in me, and organized with these 
 there was a strong impulse to denounce what I 
 held to be unworthy. These proclivities were 
 admirably contrived to lead me into difficulties. 
 I remember how, on a Saturday night outside a 
 public-house in the Tottenham Court Road, I 
 ventured on the folly of trying to prevail upon 
 a drunken man to cease pommelling his wife. 
 To my astonishment, the injured lady, as with 
 Quixotic haste I had taken her to be, turned 
 fiercely upon me and, in the strongest vernacular.
 
 FOOTE'S CASE 205 
 
 bade me mind my own business. The ex- 
 perience gave me a new insight into the complexity 
 of the marital relation. 
 
 It was this tendency to attack what appeared 
 to me abuses which prompted me to get up a 
 petition for the reduction of the penalty of one 
 year's imprisonment in the famous case of Foote 
 (1883). He had been charged with blasphemy 
 under an old Act which had long lain rusty. Some 
 of us felt that, to say the least, the sentence 
 savoured of vindictiveness ; and I undertook, 
 with the assistance of Leslie Stephen and others, 
 to prepare a petition to the Home Secretary (Sir 
 William Harcourt) for the partial remission of 
 the penalty. 
 
 The publication for which Foote was punished 
 was, I knew (to put it mildly), shockingly coarse ; 
 but I failed to see how a strong dislike, which was 
 as much aesthetic as moral, could justify such 
 a harsh sentence. The bits of insight into some 
 of the dark corners of human character which my 
 invitations to sign the petition gave me proved 
 very interesting. Some whom I had counted 
 upon were first wobbly and finally declined to 
 sign. Amusing episodes were not wanting to 
 enliven the rather grim business. A distinguished 
 author, who had not stuck at a very irritating 
 offence to orthodox belief by writing the word 
 God with a small " g " (which I thought rather 
 absurd in one who presumably continued to write 
 " Jupiter " and the other deities of polytheism 
 with capitals), was known to be hesitating; and I 
 received letters (one from an intimate friend
 
 206 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 of his) rating him soundly for not coming to 
 the help of a man who was being punished for 
 doing a thing which, in its essence, was identical 
 with what he had managed to do with impunity. 
 We succeeded in mustering a good list of names, 
 including those of Huxley, Tyndall, Richard Holt 
 Hutton, Llev/elyn Davies, Canon Ainger.^ But 
 the subject was no doubt an unpleasant one, and 
 I was impressed by the appearance of so much 
 timidity, not only among the clergy, but among 
 representatives of freedom of thought. I had a 
 polite acknowledgment from the Hom.e Office, and 
 that was all. Somebody — if I am not mistaken 
 Peter Taylor — questioned Harcourt about the 
 petition, and was informed that he did not intend 
 to mitigate the penalty. 
 
 There were other matters of public interest, 
 making a greater uproar, with respect to which 
 my attitude was distinctly not the popular one. 
 I had, I think, heard Bradlaugh speak before he 
 was elected a member of Parliament,^ and had 
 formed a strong opinion as to the honesty of his 
 purpose. Feeling, too, that he was a brave man 
 to face the opprobrium which is certain to fall 
 upon a person of a pronounced singularity of 
 views, I followed with a keen interest the con- 
 stitutional struggle between him and the orthodox 
 party in the House of Commons. I heard 
 him, as he stood walled in by piles of heavy 
 law-books, defend before the three Judges who 
 
 I On George Meredith's friendly attitude towards Foote, see 
 the latter's article, " George Meredith, Free Thinker," in the 
 English Review, March 1913.
 
 BRADLAUGH'S CASE 207 
 
 tried the case his right to affirm instead of taking 
 the oath, and I was impressed by the consider- 
 ation, at once courteous and grave, which the 
 Lord Chief Justice Coleridge bestowed upon his 
 arguments. 
 
 As to the deeper significance of this long 
 conflict within and Vv^ithout the House, I had 
 a very poor opinion of the motives and aims of 
 Bradlaugh's assailants. One could not believe 
 that these pushing lawyers, capitalists, and other 
 men of the world were quite so profoundly 
 shocked by the impiety of Bradlaugh's behaviour 
 as they wished us to think they were. They 
 had, I conceived, a strong dislike to the man 
 and to his teaching. More than this, they must 
 have known that such facts as the taking of the 
 Parliamentary oath by the member who had writ- 
 ten the name " God " with a small initial had 
 given the coup de grace to the idea of any religious 
 solemnity attaching to the performance. And it 
 was precisely this knowledge which lay at the 
 deeper and tougher root of their hostility to 
 Bradlaugh's proceedings. For what he did was 
 fully to expose the empty formality of this swearing 
 on the Bible upon taking a seat in the House. As 
 an honest man whose views were well known, he 
 would not use a form of words which in his case 
 carried no belief. Thus he became odious in a 
 new way, making himself a " nuisance " by dis- 
 turbing the good customs of the House and by 
 claiming to be more conscientious than many of 
 the gentlemen who had quietly complied with 
 the ancient form. I did not fail to admire the
 
 208 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 skilful manner in which Bradlaugh went to work, 
 driving his opponents from one trench to another. 
 It would have been strange indeed if the full fury 
 of that hatred, which any vital attack on the deeper- 
 seated prejudices of the Briton is pretty certain 
 to arouse, had not burst upon his head. 
 
 Foote and Bradlaugh were both fitting targets 
 for the fiercer kind of odium theologicum. A third 
 figure less infuriatingly obnoxious to the properly 
 framed English mind was Parnell. The doings 
 of the Parnell Commission stirred me to the 
 depths. Though no Home Ruler, I could not but 
 regard the attack of The Times, as disclosed by 
 the proceedings of the Commission and the col- 
 lapse of Pigott, as a disgrace to English journalism. 
 Nothing could have more clearly illustrated 
 the lengths to which men will go, when 
 spurred by violent partisan hostility, in shirking 
 the duty of making reasonably sure of the truth 
 of their statements, than the eager and fatuous 
 acceptance by our leading journal of Pigott 's 
 wonderful story. The effect of this revelation 
 upon me was to make me still less of a party 
 politician than I had been before. 
 
 In spite of engrossing work, I took care to re- 
 serve a respectable slice of the day for recreation. 
 The old allowance of open-air exercise was striven 
 for, if not always maintained. Walking was my 
 2nece de resistance. There were solitary walks, 
 walks with my chum or other friend, as well as 
 with a smaller or larger company. Of the latter 
 kind of companionship I had not only the Sunday 
 Tramps, but the Hampstead Tramps, and the
 
 RECREATIONS 209 
 
 Hampstead Mixed Tramps — never to be con- 
 founded with purely male aggregations. They 
 were all good, and served to refresh me. Perhaps 
 the walk that came nearest to perfection was 
 with one companion, if this " one " was nicely 
 attuned, as happened when I was lucky enough 
 to secure Leslie Stephen or Colonel Osborn as 
 partner. Almost as good was a tramp with two 
 or three others when these were carefully selected. 
 Does an echo of Osborn's fine recitations from 
 Shelley, or of the mirthful stories of our Irish 
 friend, Lysaght, still linger on the Heath or in 
 the lanes conducting to Hendon or Harrow ? But 
 the " mixed " tramping had its own attractions ; 
 and the wits of the male contingent would be hard 
 put to it at times, as when the ladies indulged 
 in " Austenolatry " — to use a word coined, as he 
 himself told me, by Leslie Stephen. 
 
 To these walks were added skating parties in 
 the winter to Hendon or Elstree, which added 
 new verve to our vocal competitions. Later there 
 came the mixed cycling party, a poor ghostly 
 simulacrum of the sociable tramp, incapable, for 
 the greater part, of producing more effective 
 intercourse than an exchange of a few spasmodic 
 monosyllables. Finally, there were the tennis 
 parties on the Library Court, or on the hospitable 
 court of Basil Champneys, when " silver " speech 
 lapsed completely into " golden " silence. 
 
 Among my more quiet and sedentary recrea- 
 tions music held the first place. I was able to 
 continue now and again the delightful visits to 
 St. James's Hall ; and when too tired to go into 
 
 15
 
 210 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 town in the evening, there was the excellent series 
 of subscription concerts at Hampstead to fall back 
 on, where the Joachim Quartet and other excellent 
 artists performed. I had also, but too rarely, 
 the privilege of accompanying that scientific 
 lover of music, Edmund Gurney, to the Crystal 
 Palace on a Saturday afternoon to enjoy one of 
 the Symphony Concerts conducted by A. H. Mann. 
 
 To these golden opportunities was added the 
 frequent possibility of hearing good music at the 
 house of a friend in or near Hampstead. To 
 music I still clung both for my purest enjoyment 
 and for my fullest spiritual refreshment. It has 
 occurred to me that, great as are the facilities 
 in London to-day for hearing good music, there 
 remains still a want to be supplied. Many a 
 lover of music living in the suburbs, whom a day's 
 work in town leaves too tired to prolong his stay 
 into the late evening, would, I think, be grateful 
 for the opportunity of attending at the tea hour 
 a short concert lasting, say, an hour or an hour 
 and a half. A series of such short concerts 
 might appropriately be named " On the way 
 home." 
 
 Attendance at the theatre was more difficult 
 for me to compass without interfering with the 
 conditions of my work. My keen appetite for the 
 drama had to cut down its rations to the beggarly 
 war-volume of a rare visit. I had heard Salvini 
 in the seventies, and managed to keep to some 
 extent in touch with the stage : interest in which 
 had been awakened in me by the writings of 
 Lessing. In addition to some of our own dis-
 
 THE THEATRE 211 
 
 tinguished actors, ^ I saw Coquelin (pere), Sarah 
 Bernhardt, and other foreign visitors. My taste 
 for Itahan opera had dechned after I had made 
 acquaintance with Wagner's Musical Dramas. 
 
 A visit to the theatre was thus for me a notable 
 experience. The complete break with everyday 
 surroundings and activities was undoubtedly 
 refreshing, and in the full sense of the word re- 
 creating. To this extent it was good for me, 
 even if I was liable to have my nerves less ready 
 the next morning for a resumption of penwork. 
 The cost of the indulgence began to be realized 
 even during the long omnibus drive — its last mid- 
 night journey — back to Hampstead. How we 
 anticipated, on nearing the foot of Haverstock 
 Hill, the dreary substitution of a creeping equine 
 walk for a trot ! The slowness of the horses ap- 
 peared to be increased by their way of attacking 
 the steeper portions in a zigzag line. The bus 
 was lit only by a dim, smelly lamp, and all the 
 conditions were favourable to drowsiness. On 
 one of these slow home-comings, the figure of 
 our dear Canon Ainger was discovered, curled 
 up in an inner corner of the bus for an 
 oblivious doze. 
 
 My chief indoor recreation, besides music, was 
 novel-reading. I devoured a good many English 
 and quite as many French stories, and got so far 
 with my Norse as to be able to read some Nor- 
 wegian novelettes. German fiction had not kept 
 
 I I regret that, like Edward Fitzgerald, I lacked the pecu- 
 liar complex of qualities (both positive and negative) which is 
 the basis of an enthusiasm for Henry Irving.
 
 212 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 its early hold iipon me. It was much later that 
 I attained proficiency enough in the Italian 
 language to enjoy reading its romances. I cared 
 much for good writing, and found not a few 
 popular English novels irritatingly lacking in dis- 
 tinction of style. In contrast with English novels, 
 I found that fairly good writing, as well 'as a 
 measure of artistic skill, could be counted upon 
 in French romances ; and I have often done in 
 France and Switzerland what I should never 
 have risked doing in England — bought at a rail- 
 way bookstall a novel by a writer whose name 
 was quite unknown to me. Although I could be 
 thrilled by a strong situation and have my facul- 
 ties stimulated by an ingeniously contrived plot, 
 my interest in novels centred in the characters. 
 As long as these were well studied and consistently 
 developed — whether by a George Eliot or by a 
 George Meredith — I was content ; but could never 
 bring myself to read a story in a detached 
 attitude merely to satisfy an intellectual curiosity, 
 as my friend Henry Sidgwick could.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 OUTSIDE INTERESTS {continued) 
 
 By this time our circle of friends had grown large 
 enough. Time was testing degrees of amicable 
 tenacity, more particularly with those at a dis- 
 tance. Yet some of my older friends were kind 
 enough to pitch their tents on our Heights, taking 
 the place of those who had been seduced into 
 abandoning Hampstead for the vortex of London. 
 Among these, I set particular store upon Cotter 
 Morison, the Walter Besants, and the (Professor) 
 Kennedys — a cheery group which brought a new 
 gladness to our home. The retirement of the 
 breezy upland continued to favour a growing 
 knowledge and sympathy between friends. And 
 then one sometimes had that most delightful of 
 experiences, a visit to friends in the country. 
 
 One summer we spent at the Charles Lewes' s 
 cottage on Crockham Common, Kent. This 
 sojourn in the heart of the country made a 
 jubilee year for our children. In their fondness 
 for climbing into trees they seemed to be reverting 
 to the arboreal habits of their ancestors. Living 
 things were an endless delight, from the half-tame 
 rabbits and their funny little gambols up to the 
 
 213
 
 214 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 nightjar sitting on her eggs, hardly distinguishable 
 from her couch of brown bracken, with just a thin 
 slit of the eye revealed — a wonderful picture of 
 combined fear and wariness. How they rebelled 
 against the presence of a meddlesome heath-keeper 
 when they returned to Hampstead ! As for me, 
 I felt taken back to my home, to my Quantock 
 heights. I got a quite new impression of London 
 when it was no longer my workshop, now when 
 I visited it with the certainty of sweet air and 
 perfect evening stillness awaiting me in the 
 Squerries Park, which I should cross returning 
 from Westerham to the Common. 
 
 Another opportunity for social converse and 
 for the warming up of friendships in the leisure 
 of days in the country was supplied by our good 
 friend Edward Clodd. The gatherings at Alde- 
 burgh at Whitsuntide and other seasons must 
 make an illuminated page in the book of memory 
 for many men besides myself. So happy a con- 
 junction of desirable qualities in ar host one 
 cannot expect to be common. To a generous hos- 
 pitality he added a quickly responsive sympathy — 
 which was at the bottom of his art of bringing 
 the right people together — ^while his many-sided 
 knowledge, his abundant humour, and his 
 wonderful memory qualified him to be a lavish 
 purveyor of entertaining talk. In my case the 
 pleasure of these visits was enhanced by my recent 
 discovery of the East Anglian Coast, with which 
 I fell so deeply in love as to follow up some 
 descriptive articles in the Pall Mall Gazette by 
 a longer one in the Cornhill.
 
 R. L. STEVENSON 215 
 
 Among the pleasant glimpses of old acquaint- 
 ances which my occasional excursions into the 
 country gave me was a call on R. L. Stevenson 
 and his wife at Skerry vore, Bournemouth, in what, 
 I believe, was their last year in England. I had 
 seen him now and again at the Savile, but had 
 acquiried since then a much deeper interest in 
 him. Although I was his senior, the fact of our 
 having joined the Savile about the same time, 
 and still more the synchronizing of our series of 
 contributions to the Cornhill, made him seem in 
 a curious way a brotherly companion. Interest 
 in him was especially aroused by the story 
 I gathered from Leslie Stephen and others of 
 the plucky way in which he was carrying on 
 his struggle with poor health. And finally there 
 was the magic of his books — " Virginibus 
 Puerisque," "Prince Otto," "A Child's Garden 
 of Verse," and others — which had captivated my 
 fancy and made of me a warm Stevensonian. I 
 called at Skerryvore one afternoon, and was 
 shown into Stevenson's bedroom, where he lay 
 with head and back propped up with pillows. 
 A touch of delicacy, which the long illness had 
 stamped on his refined face, threw into stronger 
 relief the vigour of his long black locks and 
 large, penetrating eyes. He began by asking me 
 whether I remembered the last occasion on which 
 we had met, and on my pleading forgetfulness, 
 he added, " It was in the smoking-room of the 
 Savile. You and Shadworth Hodgson were dis- 
 cussing the problem of free will, and I had the 
 hardihood to cut into your talk." He said this
 
 216 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 with a touch of genuine modesty, behind which 
 ghmmered the suspicion of a roguish smile. It 
 was then, I think, that I learned from him the 
 part that dreams had played in the " Strange Case 
 of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde " — a point to which 
 he returned later in "A Chapter on Dreams" (in 
 *' Across the Plains "). After a short half-hour's 
 chat, he gently bade me go, inviting me to come 
 again in the evening. On my return I met Mrs. 
 Stevenson, and found her husband agile in body 
 and brain, moving from point to point in the 
 room, talking, gesticulating, and sometimes with 
 a soupQon of attitudinizing as he leaned his lithe 
 body over a chair or threw his long arms behind 
 his head. Among many things touched on 
 during these visits there stands out a proposal of 
 R. L. S. to study individual character by sending 
 round to his friends a questionnaire, of the form : 
 " What fault (or vice) would you most dislike to 
 be accused of ? " His project interested me 
 greatly, for I had always believed in vigorous 
 detestations as a necessary ingredient in manli- 
 ness, and Stevenson's inquiry promised to bring 
 out some fine pet aversions. But though there 
 was a talk of sending me a form to fill in, I can- 
 not remember having received one ; and perhaps 
 it was only a passing idea flung out from Steven- 
 son's teeming brain. 
 
 Not long after seeing Stevenson I renewed 
 my earlier acquaintance with John Addington 
 Symonds. I was at Samaden in the Engadine, 
 and had just undergone a particularly painful 
 experience of a glacier accident. I had arranged
 
 A GLACIER ACCIDENT 217 
 
 with the chaplain of the place in which I was 
 staying to walk up from the Bernina huts to the 
 Diavolezza Pass and back again, on the distinct 
 understanding that, being without a guide, we 
 were not to return by the glacier to Pontresina. 
 My poor comrade, it turned out, was one of the 
 foolishly self-confident men who hold that guides 
 are a superfluity for the climber. Seeing the foot- 
 tracks on the glacier below him, he suddenly rushed 
 down, and was on the ice before I knew what 
 he was after. Full of gloomy apprehensions, I 
 followed, urging him to come back. Then 
 I saw him disappear under a puff of snow 
 smoke. I hurried to the edge of the crevasse into 
 which he had fallen, and asked him whether I 
 could help him, but he bade me return to the 
 hut and send up gLiides with a rope. The cre- 
 vasse turned out to be a closed one, and the poor 
 fellow must after a time have sunk into the icy 
 water, where he was found by the guides. I 
 sent to The Times particulars of the accident ; and 
 somebody wrote to an evening paper instructing 
 me how I ought, by making a rope out of my 
 clothes, to have hauled my companion out of the 
 crevasse. This plausible-looking demonstration of 
 my ignorance was shown by a second letter in 
 the same paper from a member of the Alpine Club 
 to be itself a singular illustration of want of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Symonds had read of the accident, and a kindly 
 prompting brought me not only words of friendly 
 sympathy but a cordial invitation to visit him 
 at Davos. This I accepted, and we had some
 
 218 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 pleasant walks together in the mountain valley, 
 free in these August days from patients and 
 tourists alike, much longer ones than the fleeting 
 hours had granted me in the garden of his Clifton 
 home. It Y>^as good to hear him talk of his frientis 
 among the Swiss peasants, and of their excellent 
 communal government. One saw that, like Lady 
 Duff Gordon in Egypt and R. L. Stevenson on 
 his island in the Pacific, he knew how to rid the 
 invalided exile's lot of much of its drea,riness by 
 throwing himself sympathetically into the new 
 life of the natives. 
 
 It so happened that the Master of Balliol was 
 visiting Symonds' chalet at this time. But alas ! 
 he was out of health and provokingly taciturn. 
 I had met him at Balliol, but only to exchange 
 a word or two, and I hoped now to see some- 
 thing of the real Jowett whom his pupils speak 
 of in such admiring language. But I was des- 
 tined not to discover the secret of the great 
 man's influence. Some years later, when staying 
 at a country house, I found myself in the smoking- 
 room with three men who suddenly discovered 
 one another as pupils of Jovvctt. Now, at last, 
 I thought, I am to see the casket opened, and 
 the precious jeY>^el of wisdom displayed. But 
 unhappily, again, each of the Master's old pupils 
 could only add another example of the neat little 
 snubs he was wont to administer to freshmen : 
 not one of which, I thought, approached in lustre 
 of wit the well-known remark of a Cambridge 
 
 Head to a junior fellow : " Ah ! Mr. , we are 
 
 none of us infallible, not even the youngest of us."
 
 NORWAY 219 
 
 It seems curious that, whereas to the schoolboy 
 a prig is the bete noire among nuisances, yet so 
 many freshmen should — to judge from the good 
 stories that used to circulate in the college 
 common-room — appear at the University with 
 intellectual tumours demanding the instant appli- 
 cation of the sarcastic knife. I have a suspicion 
 that in Jowett's case the persistent and vivid 
 recollection of these early snubs may have been 
 aided by the peculiar ensemble of his personality. 
 An acrid rebuke coming in a low tone from one 
 with so cherubic a head, and the look of one 
 uplifted into the supernal regions of the " Ideas," 
 might well carry with it a peculiar power of 
 perforating the moral tissues. 
 
 New friendships came to me through my visits 
 to Norway, which began early in the eighties. 
 For the discomfort of crossing the North Sea I 
 was fully compensated by the soothing effect of 
 the inland excursions. The long night had no 
 doubt the dravv^back of cutting down my hours of 
 sleep, and a dark curtain which my friend Francis 
 Bond advised me to take with me had no great 
 success. Francis Bond, whom I met by accident 
 on first stepping aboard of a Norway steamer, 
 was an invaluable initiator into the right way of 
 seeing the country. He insisted upon my learning 
 to fish, and I found the pastime not only an 
 effective way of getting through rainy days, but, 
 later on, of great utility when I chanced to reach 
 a poorly provisioned station and had to fish for 
 my supper. 
 
 In Norway the summer snow is so obliging as
 
 220 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 to come to meet the tourist at the low level of 
 3,000 feet, and I had in that country my first 
 serious experience of snow-climbing and ice- 
 inspecting. I carried out my customary plan of 
 getting into touch with the natives and forming 
 friendships in the country which received me. I 
 recall more especially a half-shy learned lady with 
 whom I have spent many agreeable days. She 
 was a delightful companion on the mountains, 
 where I heard her once say that all mankind 
 were egoists — a statement that was far from being 
 true in her own case. She gave me my first 
 lessons in Norse when we were shut up for some 
 days by rain in a hut in the Jotunheim, and 
 invited me to her pleasant retired home at the 
 head of one of the small " Dale " fjords. Here I 
 had the curious experience of inviting myself to 
 the celebration of her uncle's birthday ; when 
 I was rash enough to essay a speech — a 
 becomingly short one — in the vernacular. 
 
 On recalling those Norwegian holidays I can 
 always recapture something of their serene spirit. 
 Among the beautiful things which return to me 
 are the variously tinted mosses which make the 
 fjeld a parterre of colours in August. Even less 
 easily erasible from memory's tablet is a sunset seen 
 after rain from one of the series of islets which 
 girdle the coast. The peaked islands, named by 
 the Norwegians after some resemblance, such as 
 " lion," look at this hour almost black against 
 the bright, warm tints of sea and sky. 
 
 I have revisited Norway within comparatively 
 recent years, and no doubt indulged in the usual
 
 VARIOUS FRIENDS 221 
 
 doleful regrets at the " improvements." One can 
 hardly avoid a sigh on reflecting that the hospit- 
 able clergyman, who used to take toll of all the 
 Englishmen who drove by his sequestered manse 
 by insisting upon their stopping and taking re- 
 freshment at his table, must have long since 
 disappeared from the Norway of tourists. But 
 the sturdy " Gammle Norge " can take a lot of 
 spoiling yet. 
 
 In my ramblings for lecturing and examining 
 purposes, too, I made a number of new acquaint- 
 ances and some lasting friends. Among others 
 were R. Adamson, of Owens College, and three 
 Cambridge men, Henry Sidgwick, James Ward, 
 and John Venn. My work extended my social 
 world in another way, by bringing colleagues and 
 pupils from abroad. William James became 
 known to London philosophers by spending a good 
 part of a " Sabbatical Year " in our metropolis. 
 He appeared early in the eighties at our " Scratch 
 Eight " gatherings — a dinner followed by a dis- 
 cussion. We took to one another, I think, in a 
 quiet, steadfast fashion. Of Th. Ribot, editor of 
 the Revue Philosophique, I formed a delightful 
 impression at Oxford. He had considerable taste 
 for architecture, and to his enthusiastic praise 
 of Oxford buildings I owe part of my own 
 admiration for them. 
 
 Foreigners would look in upon me now and 
 again. Sometimes it was a colleague who had 
 chanced upon some of my writings. At another 
 if was a student who had heard of me. My 
 habit of spending the summer holiday abroad
 
 222 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 facilitated this intercourse with men of other 
 countries. It was on the Dovrefjeld that by a 
 happy chance I met Edward Westermarck, who'se 
 friendship has since been for me one of the good 
 things of Ufe. Another foreigner destined to write 
 a notable book in English was Richard Wallas- 
 chek. To a knowledge of the evolution of music 
 he added considerable skill as a pianist, and our 
 Broad wood " boudoir grand " — chosen, as I was 
 proud to tell my visitors, by Walter Bache — ^never 
 responded more joyously to the touch of the artist 
 than when he played Delibes. 
 
 Among younger men from other shores who 
 honoured me by calling upon me and attending 
 some of my lectures were one or two intelligent 
 Japanese students. Their untiring curiosity about 
 our English ways, and their ingenuity in trying 
 to adapt them to their own people, were very 
 engaging. I remember that in a talk with two 
 or three of them about the state of religious belief 
 in Japan, the idea was broached on their side that, 
 since the Japanese religion was founded on an- 
 cestor worship, the Positivist religion might with 
 advantage be introduced into Japan as a creed 
 for the more enlightened. I encouraged their 
 idea, and induced them to visit the Positivist 
 church, and to make acquaintance with Frederic 
 Harrison. Whether their ingenious proposal was 
 ever put into practice I have not heard. 
 
 Nor was my new social world confined to pro- 
 fessional and literary acquaintance. I was often 
 attracted to men and women who had little, if 
 anything, of bookishness, and was glad enough
 
 VARIOUS FRIENDS 228 
 
 to welcome a really fine nature untouched by 
 the artificialities that are apt to characterize 
 literary and academic folk. Wherefore a strong 
 liking grew up for a man of business like Max 
 Maas ; who attracted me almost as much by his 
 bonhomie and large-heartedness as by his superb 
 violin-playing — an unequalled achievement for an 
 amateur, so far as my experience attests. 
 
 Among my intimates I counted more than one 
 artist. Briton Riviere had, in addition to his 
 devotion to art, enjoyed an Oxford career, and 
 I prized the frequent opportunities I enjoyed, both 
 at Hampstead and in the country, of increasing 
 my knowledge of him and his family. 
 
 Death is ever at work making ugly breaches 
 in the social world we are so busy constructing. 
 My little band of friends had to reinforce itself, 
 so relentlessly was its number decimated in the 
 eighties and later. Close upon the footsteps of 
 G. H. Lewes, George Eliot, and W. K. Chfford, 
 there passed out of sight two of my most valued 
 friends, Charles Darwin and Stanley Jevons. In 
 the sudden death of the latter from drowning on 
 the Sussex coast I lost almost an older brother, 
 so unfailingly kind, so wisely helpful had he been 
 from the first. His good sense and his happy, 
 genial temper made him especially valuable to 
 one whose spirit was apt to be clogged with 
 doubts, if not also with fears. My acquaintance 
 with Darwin had been too short to allow of a 
 close friendship. Yet since the Priory days I 
 had met him more than once in his own home 
 at Down, when the Sunday Tramps were allowed,
 
 224 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 in spite of muddy boots, to drop in at the 
 tea-hour. 
 
 In the second half of the eighties I lost my most 
 affectionate and most patient friend, my father, 
 well stricken in years. Among later companiojis, 
 Edmund Gurney and Colonel Osborn disappeared 
 at this time. I had been brought closer to Gurney 
 by the meetings of our Scratch Eight and other 
 social opportunities, and still more by my deep 
 interest in his great book " The Power of Sound." 
 I reviewed it — in Mind, I think — and, while criti- 
 cizing it under some of its aspects, expressed my 
 deep admiration for it. Looking to-day upon the 
 ponderous tome, as it seems to weigh down my 
 bookshelf, I recognize that it is one of the works- 
 such as I, too, perhaps, am not guiltless of having 
 produced — which are too large, too exhaustive, 
 and too impartial to arrest the eye of any 
 but a very few specially interested and patient 
 students. For these, however, it will remain a 
 monumental achievement, by far the ablest attempt 
 yet made to solve the complex riddle of music. 
 During his last years, while he was devoting his 
 powers to Psychical Research, I saw less of him. 
 I regretted the withdrawal of his fine powers from 
 scientific work, as commonly understood, but 
 knew that he, like Goethe, was still bent on the 
 quest, mehr Licht ! 
 
 I think none of my losses during this decade 
 distressed me more than that of Colonel Osborn. 
 He lived near enough to us for a neighbourly 
 morning Icall, and his figure reappears to my 
 memory as it used to move up our long strip of
 
 COLONEL OSBORN 225 
 
 garden, slowly and with a slight swaying action, 
 that always seemed to me to express a gentle, 
 conciliatory temper. The morning visit would 
 sometimes sm'prise us still sitting at the break- 
 fast-table. He always brought with him his 
 knowing little smile, half enigmatic like that of 
 the Jocunda, though far more winsome, seeming 
 to hint at a contentment born of a happy solution 
 of the world's riddle. He was accompanied by 
 one or both of his young daughters and by one or 
 more of his dogs. 
 
 His care of a number of canine pets greatly 
 impressed one who was a keeper of dogs at more 
 than arm's length. His affection for his quad- 
 ruped proteges was just an extension of his pre- 
 dominant impulse to create about him a happy, 
 smiling world. He was far too much of a gentle- 
 man to drive away a stray dog that flattered him 
 by taking a fancy to his house, and so his little 
 pack was apt to grow to quite imposing dimensions. 
 Of their having affections akin to our own he never 
 doubted. This came out clearly in a story that 
 he told us of a dog's remorse. It was a Sunday 
 evening, and the family, having supped on a cold 
 chicken, had returned to the drawing-room. Shortly 
 afterwards one of the dogs came creeping into 
 the room carrying something in his mouth. In 
 a shame-faced manner he made straight for the 
 sofa — where, if I remember aright, his mistress 
 was sitting — and deposited his burden under it. 
 This turned out to be the remains of the Sunday 
 chicken. Examination showed that he had 
 scrupulously abstained from eating these remains. 
 
 16
 
 226 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Osborn's explanation of the creature's behaviour 
 was that, under the momentary impetus of a brute 
 instinct, he had made a raid upon the chicken 
 and dragged it to the ground, but that at this stage 
 a prick of conscience had not only inhibited the 
 carnal impulse, but had driven him to get as near 
 as he could to a confession of guilt and an act of 
 expiation. 
 
 Osborn's humour was a spring that rarely ceased 
 flowing, whether he was expressing himself in 
 speech or in writing. I have preserved a jocose 
 letter from him setting forth the charms of 
 Hunstanton, to which place I thought of taking 
 my family. " The bathing," he writes, " is so 
 safe that people desirous of committing suicide 
 never go to Hunstanton . . . swimmers are 
 driven quite infuriate from their inability to get 
 out of their depth. . . . They have to carry their 
 provisions with tiiem and to lunch in mid-sea." 
 He was well read and finely discriminating in 
 English poetry, and would often deliglit his com- 
 panions by breaking out into a quotation from 
 Shelley or some other classic. It was his literary 
 gifts in part which endeared him to his friends, 
 who included Shadworth Hodgson and Briton 
 Riviere. To his modesty must be ascribed the 
 circumstance that only a few of his acquaintance 
 were aware of his learning ; for he was one of 
 those Anglo-Indian soldiers who manage to develop 
 something of a scholar's knowledge of the Oriental 
 world — in his case the histor}^ of Islam. 
 
 When I knew him he was a Radical in politics. 
 He contributed articles to the newspapers, and
 
 COLONEL OSBORN 227 
 
 would also take part in our Hampstead discussions 
 on socialism and other matters. But I think 
 that, though a brave soldier, he lacked that slight 
 dash of ferocity which seems to be needed to-day 
 for a keen and effective kind of political debate. 
 I liked him better as a half-hmnorous writer on 
 his favourite pastime, lawn-tennis. His remarks 
 in a manual on the subject on the ways of the duffer 
 are still good reading. I may add that to Osborn 
 I owe any proficiency that I ever attained in this 
 delightful pastime. He died before he was fifty, 
 whilst playing his beloved game with some well- 
 known expert, on a warm spring day. A single 
 exclamation of surprise, and the game of life was 
 over. He once told me half humorously that he 
 thought doctors a quite unnecessary class, and 
 his sudden death saved him from the humiliation 
 of having to admit himself in the wrong.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 SLACKENING THE PACE 
 
 Early in 1892 my largest work, " The Human 
 Mind," was published. I began it as a new and 
 enlarged edition of the " Outlines," but soon 
 found that it was getting too big for that. William 
 James, more than once " a friend in need," ad- 
 vised me to make an independent and advanced 
 textbook of it. I accepted the suggestion, and 
 William James christened the book " The Human 
 Mind." The book won for me approving words. 
 Henry Sidgwick wrote : " I hope to profit by it. 
 I have a great respect for two volumes." From 
 Ribot I received the message : " Grace a vous 
 I'Angleterre possedera un Traite qui puisse etre 
 mis en parallel avec ceux de I'Amerique," and Dr. 
 Hugo Miinsterberg (then of Freiburg, Baden) 
 assured me : " Sie haben ein Werk allerersten 
 Ranges geschaffen." 
 
 In the spring of the same year Croom Robertson 
 resigned the Grote Chair of the Philosophy of 
 Mind and Logic at University College. This 
 followed upon the death of his wife, and he 
 himself died three months after his resignation. 
 He had long suffered from a painful disease 
 
 223
 
 THE GROTE CHAIR 229 
 
 which sometimes prostrated him for a week or 
 more together, so that he had to count upon a 
 possible substitute who could be called on at 
 short notice. I came to his relief as far as I 
 could. It was not easy to take up the thread 
 of another man's lectures on psychology, or even 
 logic, after exchanging but a few words with 
 him as he lay in his bed. And then I happened 
 to know that Robertson was a strikingly original 
 and popular teacher. I had sometimes to go 
 down to Gower Street in the afternoon to find 
 on student faces the gloom of disappointment 
 added to that of a foggy London ; and I needed 
 all my pluck to confront them. 
 
 I stood for the vacant Chair, and was elected. 
 Warm congratulations poured in, and I realized 
 that mine had seemed a hard case to more than 
 I knew of. No message was sweeter than that of 
 the warmest and most congenial of my Hampstead 
 friends— Professor (now Sir Alexander) Kennedy. 
 Whilst I had been doing Robertson's work, both 
 he and his sympathetic wife had seemed to regard 
 me as already belonging to the college. 
 
 The news of my appointment came to me, I 
 think, when I was in Dublin, taking part in cele- 
 brating the tercentenary of Trinity College. This 
 was a truly festive time for me, and I threw my- 
 self heartily into the banquetings, and even into 
 the ball at Leinster Hall. I saw many new faces 
 of interest among the college people as w^ell as 
 among the English and foreign guests. No figures 
 struck me as having quite so much of the look 
 of scholarly distinction as those of Lecky— still
 
 230 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 bearing his unusual height perfectly erect — and 
 James Martineau, whose stalwart form was bent 
 a little as he moved about leaning on his daughter's 
 arm. The Dublin spectacle was, as might be 
 expected, a more gorgeous one than the Halle 
 ceremony ; though I missed the presence of the 
 students who v/ere so interesting a feature' of 
 the German commemoration. Nevertheless, I 
 enjoyed it from beginning to end. The Provost 
 (Dr. Salmon) charmed me, and a month or two 
 afterwards I had the pleasure of meeting him at 
 a Swiss hotel, and watching one whom I had taken 
 to be only a brilliant mathematician set out on 
 his morning walk with a volume of ^schylus or 
 Euripides in his hand. 
 
 From the academic gaieties of Dublin I had to 
 return to London to look after the International 
 Congress of Psychology, which was to be held 
 there in August. In the first Congress held in 
 Paris much prominence was given to Psychical 
 Research and other allied investigations into the 
 more occult regions of mind. Henry Sidgwick, 
 who was to be the president at the London Con- 
 gress, made an effort to give to what he called 
 " orthodox psychology " a more adequate repre- 
 sentation. To this end he undertook a journey 
 through Germany, Austria, and other countries, 
 calling upon distinguished psychologists like 
 Ebbinghaus and Hering. He asked me to be one 
 of the two secretaries of the Congress, taking 
 special charge of the orthodox branch, while the 
 other secretary, F. W. H. Myers, was to look 
 after the Psychical Research department.
 
 THE CONGRESS OF PSYCHOLOGY 231 
 
 The work was pretty heavy, involving a good 
 deal of correspondence and arrangement of busi- 
 ness beforehand, followed by a week of unrelieved 
 high tension — dealing with the readers of papers 
 and other guests, arranging for the several 
 sessions, the printing of precis, and other matters. 
 But, for all the heat of those August days, I 
 thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Even when 
 a nasty contretemps would surprise me, I generally 
 managed to get something good out of the dis- 
 appointment. One morning, just before the lunch 
 hour, I found that Lombroso, the famous Italian 
 alienist, was unable to come to London to read 
 a paper which he had sent me. I asked 
 Charles Richet to help me out of my difficulty. 
 He kindly looked over the manuscript during the 
 luncheon hour, and at the afternoon session gave 
 an extempore resume of its contents, turning over 
 its pages in an easy, familiar way, and improving 
 not only the French, but the literary form of 
 the paper. 
 
 It was the only congress I ever attended, and 
 I made the best of the opportunity. Now and 
 again it may have been momentarily confusing 
 to be asked questions in French and in German 
 at the same moment ; but on the whole I felt 
 glad to furbish up my rather rusty linguistics. 
 
 The gathering had an ample decorative fringe 
 of social functions — dinners and receptions : a 
 circumstance which, while it made inroads on 
 the sleep of a Hampsteadian, added another kind 
 of keen enjoyment. It was delightful to meet 
 men whose names had long been known to me,
 
 232 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 such as W. Preyer, Alfred Binet, Ebbinghaus, and 
 Paul Janet, especially when they were " jolly good 
 fellows," like Delbceuf of the University of Liege. 
 Not the least of my pleasures was to welcome 
 my Berlin teacher and host, Von Helmholtz. 
 
 The Congress over, I rushed away to my be- 
 loved Switzerland : this time to the Weisshorn 
 Hotel in the Val d'Anniviers. I seemed for the 
 first time to be sounding the depths of peace 
 when, on the morning after my arrival, I walked 
 with friends under the spikes of the Rochers de 
 Nava and along the high path to Zinal, cooling 
 my eyes and brain on the whiteness of the group 
 of mountains which rises up behind Zinal like a 
 marble palace shutting in the valley. 
 
 My visit to the Val d'Anniviers was the first of 
 a series of sojourns. The site of the Weisshorn 
 Hotel, some 7,600 feet above the sea, had power- 
 ful attractions for the lover of seclusion and 
 of mountains. A number of easy walks to cols 
 and peaks of about 10,000 feet made u§. feel near 
 the giants. The flora was rich and varied, adding 
 its colour to that of the Blue Lake under Bella 
 Tola. The roughly designed building which we 
 called our " hotel " looked at first repellent — 
 like barracks, as one of us observed. Yet if 
 our quarters were plain enough, we knew how to 
 make the house warm on cold, rainy days. The 
 seclusion drew a number of interesting visitors, 
 mostly English, including some well-known medical 
 men and botanists. The altitude offered us some 
 novel experiences. It was strange to find our- 
 selves in the middle of August snowed up, and
 
 VAL D'ANNIVIERS 233 
 
 extemporizing a snowball battle between the 
 sexes. Very lovely was the reappearance of the 
 delicate Alpine petals, as they seemed to carve 
 out in the snow little cuplike holes, which helped 
 them to breathe again. Yet more wonderful was 
 the cloud-scenery. To be above the clouds and 
 peep down under them into some valley where 
 the sun was making a lovely mosaic of bright 
 colour, was a delight which never lost its freshness. 
 In the late evening hour we might find ourselves 
 looking down upon a floor of cloud whitened by 
 the moonlight. It was easy to imagine oneself 
 gazing upon a white sea, and the illusion was 
 supported by the semblance of dark promontories 
 running out into the whiteness, and, what still 
 more sustained the illusion, the appearance of a 
 lighthouse on one of the promontories supplied 
 by a light from some hotel far away below us. At 
 our height we seemed nearer not only to the 
 giants of earth, but to the starry firmament. A 
 telescope was put up outside the entrance door, 
 which seemed to bring us much closer to the 
 planets and their satellites. 
 
 The finest feature to me in our lofty outlook 
 was the snow-cap of a part of the Diablerets. It 
 took the form of a cradle, and we liked to think, 
 in the childish way, that perhaps, when no mortal 
 eye was looking, some tired angel bearing a 
 message from heaven to earth might rest there, 
 throwing herself upon the cool, spotless sheet 
 of snow. 
 
 Exciting occurrences w^ould come to break the 
 stillness of our eerie. Sometimes it was a stubborn
 
 234 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 lady Alpinist, who insisted on walking back to 
 Zinal when our landlord prophesied fog ; from 
 which foolish over-confidence issued an Iliad of 
 evils, that fortunately just stopped short of 
 the calamity of a death from exposure. 
 
 At another time the excitement had a merrier 
 note. One evening our landlord, who bore an 
 Italian name, announced that his cellar was 
 empty. We insisted upon going down to verify 
 this announcement, and to our delight discovered 
 a good supply of " vino d'Asti spumante." We 
 got him to supply us with the wine at a reduced 
 price, and thus our return laden with bottles 
 became a sort of joyous Bacchanalian rout. 
 E. D. J. Wilson, whom I had met twenty years 
 before at Dr. Chapman's house, took a prominent 
 part in this raid. 
 
 As the snov/ball-fight suggests, the sharp 
 mountain air made us surprisingly vigorous. 
 We should have shocked a punctiliously correct 
 observer who had happened to see us go forth for 
 a day's walk protected with towels over our heads. 
 Alfred Marks, the oldest and one of the most 
 stalwart of our group, took the lead, his well-knit, 
 upright figure looking, as one of the lady pedes- 
 trians put it, " the very image of Fate." The 
 last time I was at the Weisshorn I saw him 
 piling up stones into a conical gendarme to show 
 visitors the quickest way dovv^n to St. Luc. 
 
 I found it a good plan when visiting Swit- 
 zerland to stay from mid- July to mid-August at 
 the Weisshorn Hotel, and then try a little walk- 
 ing tour into some frequented place like the
 
 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 235 
 
 Zermatt or the Chamonix Valley, catching it just 
 after the crowd had begun to melt av/ay. 
 
 My work at University College naturally acquired 
 a nevv' interest for me now that I was officially 
 placed on the teaching staff. The classes were not 
 large, and tended to grow smaller, as philosophy, 
 from having been a compulsory subject for arts 
 students, was gradually thrust back to be one 
 of an optional group of subjects. Fortunately, 
 classes were open to women, who numbered a 
 good half of my students. Science students, too, 
 were able to take the subject, and I knov^^ that 
 some of my colleagues, notably Sir W. Ramsay, 
 would advise their students to broaden the 
 curriculum by taking up logic and psychology. 
 The smallness of the class was particularly de- 
 pressing in the case of the more advanced courses 
 of lectures. Yet there was a peculiar kind of 
 pleasure in lecturing to a small number of appre- 
 ciative students on a subject like Kant's "Critic." 
 Some of these advanced students were keen-witted 
 men, capable of putting a poser to their professor. 
 I recall a Hindoo whose logical work could, I 
 think, be compared in quality with that sent in 
 at the Moral Science Tripos at Cambridge. These 
 rare encounters with genuinely inquiring minds 
 were the highest reward of my teaching. How- 
 ever small my class, it never d¥/indled to a single 
 student, as it once did when I was lecturing at 
 a ladies' college, when, of course, the student 
 was duly chaperoned. 
 
 Later on, as the long-discussed proposal of a 
 Teaching University approached realization, the
 
 236 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 administrative work of the college began to take 
 up more and more of my working hours. At 
 one time I was the Chairman of one Board of 
 Studies and a member of two other Boards ; and 
 the frequent meetings, together with the journeys 
 to South Kensington, Gower Street, and King's 
 College, made considerable inroads upon my 
 working day. The many years of strenuous work, 
 aided by the racket of the railway and bus 
 journeys, began to tell, and I made an attempt 
 (which I hardly expected to be successful) to get 
 a Readership in Psychology at Oxford. As it 
 was, I had to retire much sooner than I need 
 have done had my professorial lot fallen in the 
 comparatively peaceful retreat of one of our old 
 university towns. 
 
 The final goal of my endeavours, the Grote 
 professorship — though I was, I fear, ungrateful 
 enough now and again to think of it in the 
 words of an old poet as " but a chair " — secured 
 me, no doubt, a wider recognition. I t)egan now 
 to be talked about, and tried to take these 
 attentions in the right spirit. 
 
 To popular recognitions there were added those 
 of experts. As early as the middle of the eighties 
 honours began to fall upon me softly and un- 
 alarmingly. Richet wrote inviting me to be- 
 come a corresponding member of a new Societe 
 de Psychologic physiologique ; and soon after- 
 wards Spencer Baynes of St. Andrews wrote to 
 say that the Senatus of his University had awarded 
 me the honorary degree of LL.D. To this last 
 courteous overture I fear I sent but a churlish
 
 RECOGNITION 237 
 
 response, merely saying that I should be ready 
 to accept the honour provided it could be given 
 in absentia. To my surprise, the condition was 
 accepted, and I became a learned Doctor malgre 
 moi. As this off-hand behaviour suggests, I 
 attached but little value to titles and dignities 
 in general. I knew too much about the intriguing 
 and log-rolling which are apt to go with the be- 
 stowal of these honours ; and the Radicalism of 
 my early training had left deep down in the sub- 
 structure of my being a deposit of that tough sort 
 of pride which looks on all external labels as 
 of very little value. Where, however, as in 
 Richet's proposal, the recognition of an expert 
 was offered me, I accepted it gratefully. I should 
 have done the same when, a little later, I was 
 invited to become President of the Neurological 
 Society, had I not felt that it would be much 
 better for the society if a medical member were 
 appointed to the office. 
 
 To complete my list of attentions, I may add 
 that, towards the end of the nineties, I received 
 two flattering invitations from America. The 
 Professors and Fellows of Yale University asked 
 me to attend the two-hundredth anniversary of 
 the founding of Yale College and to receive the 
 honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. This invita- 
 tion was backed by a kind letter from my col- 
 league. Professor Ladd, whose work in psychology 
 I held in high esteem. To my great regret, I 
 was not able to avail myself of the invitation. 
 
 The other voice of recognition from across the 
 Atlantic had a less academic ring. It was a letter
 
 238 MY IJFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 from a New York attorney, informing me that 
 about thirty lawyers in that city interested in 
 philosophy and psychology had formed a club, 
 which they proposed to call " The James Sully 
 Philosophical and Psychological Club of Rochester." 
 Later on, my transatlantic admirers sent me an 
 account of their proceedings. The perfect spon- 
 taneity of the proposal disarmed my general ob- 
 jection to figure in this fashion. I felt, too, that 
 this little philosophic society hidden away from 
 the gaze of the world had the charm of something 
 retired and almost bashful. These New York 
 lawyers, escaping from the commotion of a great 
 city to study philosophy, were for me kinsmen 
 of my much-esteemed London friend, Shadworth 
 Hodgson, who for years in a street off Regent 
 Street led the life of a philosophic recluse, cheered 
 by the visits of a few kindred spirits. 
 
 Imperious as were the demands of my college 
 work, they did not prevent me from setting up 
 one more book on the stocks. I had for some 
 time been attracted to the fascinating puzzle of 
 the child's mind, and the beginnings of something 
 like a serious scientific study of it had been made 
 by W. Preyer in Germany and by others. My 
 psychological leanings led me to watch the un- 
 folding of the infant consciousness in my own 
 children. Friends, too, were most kind in sending 
 me observations which they had made on their 
 children. 
 
 A point of peculiar interest to me in connection 
 with these researches was the tracing of an affinity 
 between the ideas and impulses of the child and
 
 STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD 289 
 
 those of backward races. In working out the 
 analogies between them, I found it necessary 
 to look more closely into ethnological records of 
 the mental peculiarities of savage peoples, and 
 also to seek information from anthropologists like 
 Professor E. B. Tylor. This part of my work 
 brought me one delightful experience, the making 
 of acquaintance with General Pitt-Rivers. I 
 wrote to him respecting some drawings by savages, 
 of which (I heard) he had made a collection. 
 He very kindly invited me to visit him at his 
 country house near Salisbury. His drawings 
 proved to be full of instruction for me. It was 
 no ordinary pleasure to be shown the museum, 
 picture-gallery, band-stand, and other arrange- 
 ments which this inventive and large-hearted 
 country squire had set up as a means at once of 
 educating and of entertaining his tenants. As 
 he drove me round the grounds I could not but 
 ask myself how much more cordial the relations 
 between the classes and the masses in rural 
 England might have been to-day if more of the 
 squirearchy had bestirred themselves, like my 
 enterprising host, to engage the interest of 
 their tenantry by introducing among them the 
 rudiments of higher culture. 
 
 I indicated this turning of my mind childwards 
 by publishing in the Fortnightly Review an article 
 on " The New Study of Children," and, shortly 
 afterv/ards, by producing a book of " Studies of 
 Childhood." It won, as I had hoped, a consider- 
 able popularity, not only among psychologists, 
 teachers, and parents, but among men of letters.
 
 240 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 It was pleasant to receive favourable words about 
 it from men like W. E. Gladstone, Leslie Stephen, 
 and George Meredith. 
 
 Yet my excursions into the field of child-study 
 were by no means wholly enjoyable. They once 
 brought upon me a bit of painful discipline which 
 I hope may have contributed to the " making " 
 of my soul. I was invited to give an address to 
 an educational audience at Manchester on the 
 methods of child-study. I thought I had said 
 enough about the more attractive side of the 
 study, so I now confined myself to urging upon 
 parents and teachers the importance of adopting 
 in their observations as methodical a procedure 
 as possible. The next day I travelled south. 1 
 chose an empty compartment and tucked myself 
 up in a corner with a newspaper. Shortly before 
 the train started two or three women and a man 
 entered, and I presently heard them discussing 
 my last evening's address. They seemed to be 
 sadly disappointed — to judge from scraps of the 
 conversation that reached my ear, such as "So 
 uninspiring ! " "So different from his book ! " 
 I kept the paper well over my face, but I do not 
 think that they once glanced in my direction. 
 The change from the evening dress to the travel- 
 ling suit had sufficed to screen me. I did not 
 once suspect them of consciously paying me out 
 for sinking so low from my earlier inspiring level. 
 It was a lesson for me on the need of living up to 
 one's reputation. I was seized with a genuine 
 feeling of shame. When a little band of strangers 
 thus agree to blame you, it is well-nigh impossible
 
 ESSAY ON LAUGHTER 241 
 
 to believe yourself to be quite blameless : so 
 mightily does the voice of the " social self " bear 
 down upon one's consciousness, stifling for a 
 moment any self-approving judgment that tries to 
 make itself heard. On reaching home I wrote to 
 my kind Manchester host, Sir Alfred Hopkinson, 
 telling him of my adventure, and in response he 
 gave me some no less amusing illustrations of 
 how, when a candidate for Parliament, he over- 
 heard not too flattering opinions of his own 
 merits. Such an indirect and unintentional bit of 
 instruction from others may prove more salutary 
 than a well-prepared admonition. 
 
 I had still one book to write before I relinquished 
 office. The theme of the child and its ways 
 pointed to a relaxation of the more strenuous work 
 of writing textbooks ; and now I further relaxed 
 the strain by choosing laughter as my subject. 
 The influences of early years helped to foster the 
 habit of ruminating on this merry chapter in the 
 book of human experience. My recent quizzings 
 of the mental behaviour of children, and still more 
 of that of savages, had helped to focus my atten- 
 tion upon the subject. I thoroughly enjoyed the 
 writing of the book ; though it was pronounced 
 by some to be too heavy and too exhaustive of 
 its theme ; by others, to be written in an unsuit- 
 ably serious vein ; the critics being quite unaware 
 that a thinker of the laughing Latin race, even 
 if he be a Henri Bergson, is half expected to 
 produce a serious essay on " Le Rire." 
 
 This stimulating critic and thinker honoured 
 me by writing a particularly discriminating criti- 
 
 17
 
 242 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 cism of my " Essay on Laughter." It touched 
 me by its generosity, as I reflected how badly in 
 the same volume I had treated his own theory of 
 the subject. Then there v»^ere two favourable 
 notices of it in the feuilleton of the Journal des 
 Dehats by Emile Faguet, to which George Mere- 
 dith called my attention. These French appre- 
 ciations m.ade me feel a bit surer that it had 
 been worth while to vvrite the book. 
 
 Its appearance Vv^as greeted by one journal at 
 least with a friendly welcome : the editor of the 
 Daily Mail showed his magnanimity by trying to 
 push the fortunes of a book written by one of 
 the negligible small fraternity of Pro-Boers. He 
 covered one whole side of a leaf with a number of 
 skilfully executed caricatures of Mr. Balfour and 
 other notabilities in the act of laughing : an exer- 
 cise in which my book had bade its readers to 
 indulge more freely. This bit of luck, my friends 
 assured me, would give the newly launched literary 
 ship a splendid send-off ; but I knew better. The 
 private conmients, too, on the portraits enter- 
 tained me ; for it was half assumed that this 
 friendly push was due either to a good thumping 
 advertising fee or to some powerful personal in- 
 fluence. It is sad to reflect that a certain kind 
 of journal is apt to be misjudged when it has one 
 of its rare mom.ents of generosity. 
 
 Amongst occasional outside activities during the 
 last years of full work was a very small share in 
 the movement that fmally issued in the founding 
 of the British Academy. In May 1900, shortly 
 before the operation which gave his friends a
 
 THE BRITISH ACADEMY 243 
 
 precious, if short, prolongation of Iiis presence, 
 Henry Sidgwick wrote to me about a proposal 
 to form cither an " Academy " (or " Society "), 
 or a *' new section of the Royal Society," to deal 
 with other sciences than tliose already represented 
 by the latter. He asked me to come with him 
 as a representative of psychology to the Committee 
 of the Royal Society which was now considering 
 the question. Less than a month afterwards I 
 received another letter from him, dated 18 Langham 
 Street, where he was lying after an operation. 
 I did finally attend a Committee of the Royal 
 Society, but, alas ! not with Henry Sidgwick. In 
 the end the cry for an academy prevailed, and 
 so the British Academy added a new variety to 
 our learned institutions. 
 
 I had known nothing of the later stages of the 
 movem.ent, and felt free to quizz the result in a 
 perfectly detached manner. A glance at the first 
 published list of Fellows showed me how shrewdly 
 Matthew Arnold had forecast the lines which such 
 a body would be likely to follow. There was the 
 proper English apportionment of values between 
 " social " and official position on the one hand, 
 and, on the other, well-recognized scientific 
 achievement. Concerning the mode of election 
 I found it impossible to get any information worth 
 naming. How the primum mobile — ^the first 
 electors in a chain of elections — came into official 
 (or non-official) existence nobody seemed to 
 know. Did they, I wondered, invest themselves 
 or one another with this delicate function ? 
 But we must not, if we would avoid laughing,
 
 244 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 examine too curiously how such institutions 
 grow up.^ 
 
 I should have been perfectly content to smile 
 and afterwards dismiss the Academy and its pro- 
 ceedings from my thoughts. It would never have 
 occurred to me that one might feel hurt at being 
 overlooked by what appeared to be in its incep- 
 tion a somehow self-elected body of this kind. 
 But I learned later that my old teacher, Alexander 
 Bain, whose name did not appear in the list of 
 Fellows, had his last years saddened by a sense 
 of the injury done him. The oversight was cer- 
 tainly a remarkable one. He was one of the two 
 or three British psychologists of the last century 
 who had won a European reputation. He was 
 a thinker of indisputable originality and power, 
 who, while an adherent to the English tradition 
 in philosophy, struck out a mode of investigation 
 and a manner of expression which were all his 
 own. He had the further and very rare claim of 
 having proved his devotion to philosophy, not 
 only with his pen but with his purse. He had 
 financed Mind for some years out of his own 
 pocket, at a very considerable loss to himself. 
 The omission of his name was made the more 
 unkind by the circumstance that another Scotch 
 veteran. Professor Eraser, the attractive expositor 
 and critic of Berkeley and Locke, was included 
 in the list. 
 
 My experience did not lead me to regard Bain 
 
 I Leslie Stephen has a quiet laugh at the idea of an academy 
 where men of letters would crown each other. See Maitland's 
 " Life and Letters," p. 454.
 
 ALEXANDER BAIN 245 
 
 as distinguished by moral heroism. He was a 
 violent partisan, no doubt, and was over-zealous 
 in pushing his disciples into University Chairs and 
 other positions of influence. Yet in doing this he 
 had at least one excuse, that he represented a 
 heterodox and unfashionable school of philosophy 
 which was visibly losing ground in England, and 
 which he, no doubt, felt bound to champion to 
 the uttermost. 
 
 That he was not a persona grata to many of his 
 colleagues is at least suggested by the omission of 
 his name from the list of Fellows ; for more than 
 one of those whose names appeared in it knew of 
 his reputation and of his great importance in the 
 development of modern psychology. A glance at 
 the writings of James Ward, William James, and 
 G. F. Stout — to name three of the more promi- 
 nent recent contributors to the science — will 
 show what a force Bain has been in advancing 
 this department of knowledge. 
 
 The absence of Bain's name from a list of 
 living English thinkers illustrates the ill-con- 
 sidered and ultra-empirical way in which we are 
 wont to set to work in such cases. It would have 
 been possible to ascertain from the body of pro- 
 fessors and writers in several subjects what men 
 they regarded as most fairly representing them. 
 And if we had possessed the modesty of. some 
 nations, we could easily have discovered what 
 names were best known outside our own country. 
 But then perhaps the electors would have found 
 it less easy to indulge a British impulse to keep 
 " undesirables " out.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE THINNING OF THE RANKS 
 
 The last years of v/ork saw a great reduction 
 in the ranks of my friends. Among these losses 
 was that of my felio>v-tramp, George Macdonell, 
 a Scotchman and a iav/yer, who seemed to me 
 to have something akin to Louis Stevenson's 
 briglitness of outlook and elasticity of temper. 
 At any rate, he drew mic to him by one of the 
 stronger and less easily defined human attractions. 
 1 long felt the absence of his friendly glance, 
 his cheery greeting, and his full candid laugh. 
 A still harder blow was Kcnry Sidgwick's death 
 in 1900. I v/as in Norway at the time. I knew 
 when leaving England something of the gravity of 
 his malady, but, as friends must do, I hoped to 
 find him still among us on my return. 
 
 Quite a little company of my old friends and 
 colleagues passed away during my stay in Italy 
 after retiring from teaching in 1903. In the 
 first year of my sojourn there I read of the death 
 of two of my colleagues in educational work, Sir 
 Joshua Fitch and Canon Daniel, whose names had 
 entwined themiselves about a long stretch of my 
 professional life ; and of my first teachers in 
 
 246
 
 THE THINNING OF THE RANKS 247 
 
 philosophy, Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer. 
 I had last seen Bain at Aberdeen five years before, 
 as he was walking in the garden, leaning on the 
 arm of an attendant, when he greeted me with the 
 half- sad accost, in which lurked the suggestion 
 of a grim humour, " Well, Sully, you see I am 
 trying to keep myself alive." However variable 
 our relations might have been, the announcement 
 of his death stirred a deep-lying deposit of grate- 
 ful memories. Herbert Spencer's death had no 
 such profound effect on my feeling, as will appear 
 from my account of our relations. The death 
 of my delightful companion of Hampstead days, 
 Canon Ainger, renewed and deepened the sense 
 of personal bereavement v/hich I experienced when 
 those days ended. Then, early in the following 
 year, as a master-stroke, death robbed me of 
 my idol among friends, Leslie Stephen. By this 
 time I felt as if in coming abroad I had been 
 running away from Death and was being pursued 
 by his black shadow. The idea of returning to 
 England, now reduced, like an ancient Roman 
 road, to a place of tombs, v/as insufferable to me, 
 and I lingered on in the Land of Consolation, trying 
 to keep up m^y courage by much walking. 
 
 The follov/ing j^ears brought other sore bereave- 
 ments. All sides of my life were struck at by 
 these blows. When a friend dies our thoughts 
 are wont to revert to the beginning of our friend- 
 ship. Richard Garnett comes back to me as I 
 used to see him and hear him at the enclosed 
 central desk in the Reading Room of the British 
 Museum. His voice was, I think, high-pitched
 
 248 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 and thin, and his speech was characterized by a 
 certain dehberation and precision of statement. 
 On being asked if he knew any good references to 
 an out-of-the-way subject, such as infant prodigies, 
 he would consider a moment, and then reply, " I 
 think if you will consult such and such a book 
 somewhere near a particular page you will find 
 something germane to the subject." I do not 
 remember ever finding him wrong in his conjec- 
 ture. My high opinion of his abilities was raised 
 still higher on hearing that he lunched upon a 
 bun. This form of human diet was a horror to 
 my weak stomach ; so I could not but admire 
 the physical courage of a man who was bold 
 enough to attack it. But the bun symbolized 
 more to me : as a form of dense stodgy food- 
 material it spoke of the busy bibliophile snatch- 
 ing a hurried meal so as to get back as soon as 
 possible to his books. 
 
 The name of Walter Savage Armstrong is plea- 
 santly linked with two delightful holidays In Ireland. 
 He wrote much poetry, and was a good reciter 
 of verse. He knew his country well, not only 
 its physical aspects, but its weird and fascinating 
 history and legends. A walk with him in the 
 Wicklow mountains stands out clear among the 
 radiant summer days. He had a full flow of 
 mirth, which was a further qualification for a 
 fellow-tramp. To these valuable qualities he added 
 a singular warmth of kindness, and had the genuine 
 brand of Irish hospitality. 
 
 Another departure which darkened the sky for 
 many a day was the death of our good neighbour
 
 THE THINNING OF THE RANKS 249 
 
 and friend, Mrs. Orrinsmith. In the years when 
 the children ruled the home, there were frequent 
 patterings of young feet between the two houses. 
 A sister of Faulkner, of the Oxford pre-Raphaelite 
 brotherhood, she herself was a lover of art, 
 and had designed for William Morris ; and both 
 her home and her person reflected a feeling 
 for refined decoration. To listen to her talk 
 of the days when, as an eager girl, she was 
 taken to the house of Burne-Jones, to see 
 Morris and Rossetti, and sometimes even Swin- 
 burne and Meredith, was better than many costly 
 entertainments. I urged her more than once to 
 put down these precious girlish impressions, but 
 she was either too shy to join in the new inrush 
 of women-writers, or was restrained by some old- 
 fashioned prejudice against turning the limelight 
 upon things which have a certain sacredness. 
 
 Soon after this there came the tidings of the 
 death of William James, who, though we may 
 have drifted apart somewhat, still counted, I found, 
 for one of the strong supports of my life. 
 
 Another friendship closed by the heavy leaf-fall 
 of these years was that with Lady Victoria Welby. 
 In the spring of 1892 Mrs. W. K. Clifford 
 asked me whether I should be willing to take 
 part in a symposium of savants and thinkers 
 that Lady Welby was arranging for the Easter 
 holidays. I accepted the invitation, and found 
 myself at Denton Manor among old friends, like 
 Shadworth Hodgson and Romanes, and others 
 only heard of as yet, such as Oliver Lodge and 
 Lloyd Morgan. With Denton Manor itself and
 
 250 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 its charming household I was more than pleased. 
 As it was my first visit to a " country house," I 
 was interested in noting how smoothly things run, 
 if only one brings naturalness of manner to meet 
 that of one's hosts. 
 
 In the forenoon v/e met in solemn conclave, 
 pencil in hand, while our hostess as president 
 directed the discussion. I had known nothing of 
 her intellectual aspirations, but soon got an 
 inkling of the drift of her researches. Her whole 
 soul was at this time concentrated upon certain 
 aspects of language which she regarded as unduly 
 neglected. She had quick and penetrating 
 intuitions, and was deeply impressed with 
 the miany subtle v/ays in which v/ords react, 
 for evil as well as for good, upon our thinking. 
 So completely possessed was she with this idea 
 that she employed a secretary to write out passages 
 from contemporary scientific and other writers 
 which seemed to her to illustrate those abuses of 
 language which, as she held, make for bad thinking. 
 She v/as, I remember, particularly hard upon the 
 darkening possibilities of metaphor, though I do 
 not recall that she quoted the highly metaphori- 
 cal William James among her culprits. Her 
 absorbing study acquired in time something of 
 the zeal of a, religious propaganda, and she was 
 especially anxious to rouse educators to a sense 
 of its importance. 
 
 Her hearers at these gatherings fell into various 
 attitudes. So admirable was she in person and 
 manner, so arresting was the freshness and the 
 penetrative insight of her discourse, that one could
 
 I.ADV \Vi;i,BV. 
 
 To face p. ^W.
 
 LADY WELBY 251 
 
 not but be respectful. Yet there were not wanting 
 some who told her with an almost brutal frankness 
 that she was on a wrong track. She held my eye 
 enthralled when some one would strike in with 
 an appreciative note, and the fine head would 
 reacli forward in eager anticipation of what was 
 coming — every trace of deafness seeming for a 
 moment to disappear under a preternatural tension 
 of the brain. My own attitude v,^as a rather com- 
 plex one. I was interested psj^chologically in these 
 courageous efforts of an elderly lady to strike 
 out her own pathway of theoretic synthesis. I 
 could not but recognize the skill she showed in 
 forcing a word or a phrase to yield its buried ore 
 of rich meaning : as when slie once read me an ex- 
 quisite little sociological and ethical study on tlic 
 significance of the expression " mother-wit." Yet 
 it v/as plain that both her diiTiculties and her 
 efforts to surmount them arose largely from the 
 circumstance that, at a comparatively late date, she 
 was taking up branches of learning for which there 
 had been no adequate preparation in the early 
 and more plastic years. I tried more than once 
 to explain to her that the subject of meanings — 
 or " signifies," as she at one time called it — could 
 not be isolated and made a special branch of 
 science. And when she told me that she had 
 obtained the entree for her message in Mind, and 
 later in our principal Sncyclopgedia, I was more 
 sorry than glad on her account ; lest the friends 
 who had helped her to secure this publicity 
 might have rendered to her memory a very 
 doubtful service.
 
 252 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 The last of the comrades of my strenuous days 
 to leave me was Shadworth Hodgson. Little as 
 I had seen of him for many years, the news of 
 his death carried me swiftly back to the time 
 when his hearty greeting was one of the things 
 that lit up life's road. At the Savile, and, better 
 still, in his rooms in Conduit Street, I held with 
 him much sweet discourse. The generosity he 
 displayed, alike in making his books a joy to the 
 eye and in presenting copies of them to his friends, 
 made one feel it almost a duty to become his 
 pupil ; and if I did not succeed, like William 
 James, in setting him among my masters, I became 
 a diligent reader of his books, and found much 
 that was interesting in his points of view and 
 lines of argument. But, along with most of the 
 friends, Colonel Osborn, Dr. Bridges, and others, 
 who in the seventies and eighties frequented 
 his rooms and partook of his dainty little dinners, 
 I was more interested in his literary criticisms 
 than in his philosophy. His room, packed with 
 books, up to a point barely compatible with ample 
 breathing space, contained many a choice volume. 
 He had published a collection of critical studies, 
 naming it, I think, with chai acteristic humour, 
 " Rejected Essays," of which he gave me a copy. 
 His friends were delighted on hearing of his being 
 appointed president of the new Aristotelian 
 Society. His plan of life seemed to be based on 
 Aristotle's ideal, and something in the nature of 
 a school was, we thought, all that he needed. For 
 many years he found a happy self-realization in 
 guiding his team of younger inquirers ; though I
 
 SHADWORTH HODGSON 253 
 
 fear he may have felt it sorely when the day 
 came — as it will come, if we persist in outliving 
 our hour — for new men to arise who, restrained 
 by no feeling of piety, unsparingly attacked his 
 philosophic views. Some of us who outlived 
 him speculated as to what the man in the street 
 might say when he read of Hodgson's death : 
 " Shadworth Hodgson ? Shadworth Hodgson ? 
 Methinks I should know that name. But what on 
 earth has he done ? " Happily, perhaps, notices 
 of his death were few enough to allow the man 
 in the street to go on undisturbed in his ignorance. 
 For those who care to measure other than surface- 
 values, his death was the completion of a rare and 
 noble life. The tragedy of his short wedded life, 
 hidden in the dedication of one of his works {meis 
 mortuis), was splendidly surmounted, and fol- 
 lowed by a long solitary devotion to the search 
 for truth in our huge noisy metropolis — in the 
 very midst of its fashionable world. 
 
 During the last years of work, when Death 
 was thus levying heavy toll, other friends became 
 virtually lost to us without his intervention. 
 Local removals in this huge all-absorbing London 
 are apt to cut cruelly into the places of fraternal 
 gathering ; and I regretted these losses hardly 
 less than those which the unsparing reaper had 
 heaped upon me. There was no place for a peace- 
 ful resignation in their case. One was teased 
 with the thought that, though practically lost to 
 us, they were still living ; and then there would 
 come the melancholy foreboding that, even if 
 chance were to bring us together again, we might
 
 254 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 find ourselves unable to rejoin hands long 
 estranged. I knew only too well that I should 
 henceforth find no new friends to fill the place 
 of the old ones. Yet the readiness to attach my- 
 self had not been quite exhausted ; and during 
 tliese last years I have, both in England and in 
 Italy, been fortunate enough to add to the 
 number of those whom I can claim as friends on 
 the grounds of affectionate intimacy and the com- 
 parative permanence of the attachment. 
 
 The four odd years which, upon my retirement 
 from official v/ork, I passed in Italy helped to 
 alleviate achings of heart and to restore vigour. 
 The climate enforced at first a measure of dolce 
 far niente. Gradually, however, the inactivity 
 grev/ irksome, and I planned outlines of travel. 
 Among the places where I lingered, both on the 
 " continent " and in Sicily, were the high-pitched 
 hill-cities which, in that fair country, are ever 
 beckoning one to come up higher. In Sicily I 
 worked hard at the Greek temples-^both those 
 still erect and those reduced to a mass of splendid 
 ruins. In a town visited on my way to the ruins 
 of Selinunte, I rejoiced to come upon a memorial 
 to my old acquaintance Samuel Butler, in the 
 name of a street (" Via Samuel Butler "). The 
 curious composite architecture of Saracen and 
 Norman in Sicily greatly pleased me.^ 
 
 I fraternized with the people among whom 
 I tarried ; and, possibly because I was a lonely 
 sexagenarian, they bestowed on me much kind 
 
 I An account of it is attempted in my " Italian Travel 
 Sketches."
 
 SICILY 255 
 
 attention. I would sometimes, as at Orvieto, 
 avoid the Englishman's hotel and take a room in 
 a private house, eating at a restaurant ; which 
 was selected by noting the places frequented by 
 officers. I found them very civil ; and sometimes 
 one of them v/ould take me under his special 
 guardianship, shouting at the waiter if he seemed 
 too negligent of the '''' forestiere.'''' Apropos of 
 these modest alberghi and y^istoranii, I remember 
 once staying in a tiny inn near the ruins of 
 Syracuse. Besides myself there was only a pair 
 of Austrians, a brother and a sister, both painters. 
 The meals were surprisingly good, and an extra 
 flavour was given to the viands by our nimble 
 host, who, after serving us with a dish, would 
 pop his head through a small opening in the wall, 
 presumably intended for conveying dishes from 
 the kitchen to the meal-room, and ask, " Va bene? " 
 ("Is it all right ? "), to which would be responded 
 an emphatic " Benissirao / " (" First class ! ") 
 
 One pleasant incident in these wanderings was my 
 meeting in a Sicilian town with a young professor 
 of English. At the evening meal I caught sight 
 of his inquiring glance, and before the repast 
 was over he came across and asked me if I were 
 not English. We soon " chummed," and he be- 
 came an excellent cicerone and companion during 
 my stay. Not quite so agreeable was my en- 
 counter, on a road not far from Monreale (outside 
 Palermo), with a driver of one of the pretty Sicilian 
 carts on which are painted heroic deeds of the age 
 of Saracen and crusader. He stopped and urged 
 me to " have a lift " and rest awhile. The " repose"
 
 256 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 in the springless vehicle turned out to be a highly 
 disagreeable and fatiguing series of shakings and 
 bumpings. So, hard as it was, I had to beg him 
 to put me down on terra jirma. The experiejice 
 explained, I thought, in connection with the rough, 
 uneven roads, hov,^ it is the peasants adopt so slow 
 a pace when driving in their cars. The old Sicilian 
 cart is, in one respect, the exact opposite of the 
 new motor-car : its delectabilities are enjoyed by 
 the outsider only, while its horrors are allotted to 
 the occupant of the vehicle.
 
 PART II 
 PEN-PORTRAITS OF FRIENDS 
 
 18
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT IN THE SEVENTIES 
 
 I FIRST caught sight of the Leweses in the concert 
 chamber, St. James's Hall, from the balcony of 
 v/hich one could watch Lewes take off his heavy 
 fur-lined cloak and help to make George Eliot 
 comfortable, and could note the passages in the 
 music which appeared to give them special en- 
 jo^^ment. I was then but a poor outsider, able 
 to offer incense to my deities only by stealth. 
 Others, like Sir Frederick Leighton, distinguished 
 also in appearance and reputation, were at this 
 time subjected to a harmless gaze from us unknown 
 worshippers in the Hall. It was towards the end 
 of 1874 that I first called at the Priory to get some 
 help from Lewes in my reading. On being shown 
 into the librarj^ I was received by a man with 
 a queer un-English type of face, lanky black hair, 
 a thick moustache, and a rather ungainly stoop. 
 He welcomed me cordially, and at the end of our 
 interview invited me to call on a Sunday afternoon, 
 emphasizing the value of his invitation by saying, 
 " Don't tell G,, if you happen to know him." 
 
 I soon plucked up courage to pay my respects 
 to the great novelist. In the Priory she was
 
 260 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 hidden away from public gaze as in a nunnery. 
 In response to the bell the entrance gate opened, 
 yet so slowly and suspiciously as to give me for 
 a moment a throb of trepidation. Whilst passing 
 from the gate to the front door I had an awful 
 glimpse through a bay window of a lady in a 
 lace cap, who fortunately was not facing me. 
 In the long draAving-room, to which I was 
 conducted by a quiet middle-aged woman, were 
 a number of persons — mostly men, I think — sitting 
 round the fire, in a semi-oval arrangement. I 
 was taken up by Lewes to the farther end of the 
 oval and presented to George Eliot, the lady I 
 had glimpsed through the window. She looked 
 elderly and a little worn as she sat on a low chair. 
 Her strong face, with its prominent cheek-bones 
 and its unusual length from mouth to chin, is 
 known to everybody. What is less well known is 
 the marvellous transformation of the heavy features 
 when expression gave the alchemist's touch. As 
 she extended a long, thin hand to me and smiled, 
 the grey eyes seemed to light up, while the ripples 
 of the smile broke up the heavy facial masses 
 with sweet and gracious lines. It was, I think, 
 this metamorphosis of a face, looking in repose 
 decidedly heavy, which led one well qualified to 
 judge of faces to speak of it as the plainest and 
 the most fascinating he had ever seen. The capti- 
 vating effect of the smile was supported by the 
 charm of the low-pitched voice, which had a rich 
 timbre and was finely modulated. 
 
 In my time the Sunday afternoon gatherings 
 lasted from about 3.30 to 6. The talk would some-
 
 To face p. -260.
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 261 
 
 times be general, but when the number of guests 
 was large it tended to split up. George Eliot 
 had her own quiet chats with one or two of the 
 visitors at a time. Lewes would now and then 
 bring up a guest, and generally would keep his 
 eye on her so far as to see that she was not wearied. 
 The other end of the elliptical curve was his special 
 domain. Here he could entertain the men at the 
 tea-table after he and his son Charles had taken 
 cups to the ladies. I saw nothing of " the mercurial 
 little showman " of whom George Meredith writes,^ 
 indulging, I suspect, his most merciless vein of 
 caricature. Lewes was much too occupied with 
 his half of the company, from which he got a good 
 deal of entertainment, to make a proper show- 
 man. He and I used to talk " shop," exchanging 
 our views, often unflattering enough, of the philo- 
 sophers of the hour and their productions. He 
 was an excellent story-teller, and would throw 
 himself into what I guessed was an oft-repeated 
 jest with wonderful elan, accompanying his recitals 
 with a good deal of gesticulation and mimetic 
 action. The son of a comedian, and himself a 
 connoisseur of the stage, it might seem to any one 
 listening to his stories that he was more than 
 half acting the incident narrated. 
 
 One of the stories I can still recall was 
 told on an afternoon when George Eliot did not 
 appear. The conductor of a bus is collecting his 
 fares, and on demanding twopence from a foreign- 
 looking gentleman is offered a penny. He repeats 
 his demand again and again, growing louder and 
 I " Letters of George Meredith," ii. pp. 539-40,
 
 262 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 holding up two fingers by way of a clearer demon- 
 stration of the amount claimed. All his efforts 
 having failed, the disgusted official turns to the 
 rest of the company on the bus and asks : " Is 
 there any gentleman here who knows the French 
 
 for ' b y foreigner ' ? " When writing to me 
 
 Lewes would manage to quote something funny 
 that he had just come across, such as the story 
 sent him by Lytton from India of a native student 
 who, being asked in his competitive examination 
 to describe a horse, replied : " The horse is a noble 
 animal, but if he is irritated he will not do so." 
 There were many distinguished guests to be 
 seen at the Priory : among others, Leslie 
 Stephen, the Frederic Harrisons, the Du Mauriers, 
 and W. K. Clifford. Some foreigners of note 
 would now and again come in, including, 
 I believe, Ernst Haeckel of Jena. Sometimes a 
 name was announced which sent a thrill through 
 me. The appearance of no visitor surprised me 
 quite so much as that of Tennj^son and his two 
 sons : it was, I thought, a striking proof of the 
 completeness of Society's acceptance of an irregu- 
 lar connubial relation. Lewes soon monopo- 
 lized the poet. Their talk got upon the topic 
 of " thick-skinned people " ; and Tennyson, 
 no doubt led on by his roguish host, fiercely 
 upheld the popular doctrine that thinness and 
 thickness of the epidermis are indicative of fine- 
 ness and dullness of sensibility. Lewes contended 
 that this was bad science, and maliciously drew 
 me into the squabble, knowing that I was bound 
 to support his view. Then, growing really angry,
 
 'I! il'l'^lu fkljllj'lvll 1 1 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 
 
 To fcice 1) 262.
 
 TENNYSON 263 
 
 the poet drew up his wristband and pinching a 
 bit of the skin, exclaimed : " Look here, Lewes." 
 It was a strange experience for me ; for Tennyson 
 had been the poet of my adolescence and early 
 manhood, and this was our first and last meeting. 
 
 Another caller at the Priory who left a deep im- 
 pression upon my mind Was the great surgeon, Sir 
 James Paget. I can still recall the tall, erect 
 figure and the magnificent black eyes, which 
 searched you through and through, yet with no 
 unkindly intent. 
 
 As I have hinted, some of the company were 
 young, promises rather than realizations of achieve- 
 ment. Among these, one was so young that he 
 besought me not to reveal his age. But he had 
 perfect aplomb, and would join in a general con- 
 versation with what to me was an enviable 
 assurance. He was fresh from a German Univer- 
 sity, and, fired perhaps with something of the 
 Schwdrmerei of the Fatherland, would air his views 
 to us on the desirability of a proper infusion of 
 the emotional into the human composition. His 
 language v/as speckled with quaint Teutonisms, 
 as well as with such metaphysical terms as " objec- 
 tive " and " a priori." The appearance of this 
 unruffled exponent of a rather naive philosophy 
 in a London drawing-room was welcomed by the 
 company as a gay interlude in the more serious 
 proceedings, and heads might be seen slightly 
 turning one to another with a discreet smile. 
 
 If Lewes amused his company by his jocosities, 
 George Eliot enfolded her auditors in an atmo- 
 STDhere of discriminative sympathy. She had a
 
 264 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 clairvoyant insight into mind and character, which 
 enabled her to get at once into spiritual touch 
 tvith a stranger, fitting her talk to his special 
 tastes and needs, and drawing out what was best 
 in him. Her conversation ranged over a large 
 area of subject, touching not only English, but 
 French, German, and Italian literature, and passing 
 easily from homely everyday topics up to art 
 and philosophy. She had read Schopenhauer, and 
 spoke warmly, almost indignantly, of his con- 
 ception of human life. She could not understand, 
 she said, how any one who had the ability and the 
 opportunity to better the lot of others could sink 
 into pessimism. She herself, she added, held a 
 view midway between those of the optimist and 
 the pessimist, to which she gave the name of 
 Meliorism ; and when I was about to bring out 
 my book on Pessimism she allowed me to quote 
 her words, if I " found it useful for the doctrine 
 of Meliorism to cite one unfashionable confessor of 
 it, in the face of the fashionable extremes." Among 
 writers of fiction she spoke highly of Turgeniev, 
 urging me to read him. 
 
 Now and again I heard from the Leweses when 
 they were out of town. In a letter written from 
 Rickmansworth, Lewes speaks of the " undis- 
 turbed country life where les jours se suivent et se 
 ressemhlent, and we can work like steam-engines." 
 
 Not long after George Lewes's death, Charles 
 told me that his mother (as he always called her) 
 would like to see me, to talk over the plan of my 
 assisting her in the revision of Lewes's posthumous 
 volume of the " Problems of Life and Mind," as
 
 IMAGERY 265 
 
 well as an article on Lewes's life and work which 
 I was about to write for a review. It was a dark 
 afternoon when I called, and the lamp was not 
 yet lit. I found a stranger talking with George 
 Eliot. Shortly afterwards he left, and I had my 
 turn. I could see that she was very solicitous 
 about my proposed article on Lewes, and it was 
 a relief when, after I had sent her a proof of it, 
 she wrote to assure me that she had " read the 
 article with very grateful feelings." 
 
 About this time Francis Galton was making 
 experimental inquiries into variations of visual- 
 izing power among individuals. He told me he 
 particularly wanted to get George Eliot's " co- 
 efficient." I brought up the subject during my 
 visit, and she at once said she could carry 
 about so distinct a picture of the faces of her 
 friends, that not only photographs, but nearly all 
 portraits, disappointed her by their incompleteness. 
 
 This was the last time I saw George Eliot. The 
 visit was made unforgettable, too, by a strange 
 occurrence, unique in my experience. While the 
 stranger I found there was in the room, I had not 
 the slightest suspicion that he was familiar to 
 me. But on reaching the gate when leaving, a 
 singularly vivid image of Watts 's portrait of Burne- 
 Jones flashed upon my mind's eye, and I instantly 
 recognized that the stranger I had met at the 
 Priory was the original of this portrait. In 
 general, while good at recognizing persons when 
 present, I am particularly bad at recalling their 
 features when absent. What curious psychical 
 factor, I asked myself, had delayed the re-
 
 266 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 cognition in this case and made it dependent 
 upon a memory-image ? The experience seems to 
 suggest that the recent psychological view of 
 recognition as a wholly imageless process may 
 have to be revised. 
 
 From my conversations with her I did not" get 
 the impression that George Eliot was closely ac- 
 quainted with science. No doubt Lewes talked to 
 her about it and interested her in many of its aspects. 
 But I suspect that Leslie Stephen, in his biography 
 of her, rather overrates the influence of Lewes 
 upon her intellectual development. One must 
 remember that she had read philosophical books, 
 and shown a strong bent towards abstract thought, 
 before she came under that influence. And had 
 there been no Lewes, her reflective disposition v/ould 
 pretty certainly, as she grew older, have encroached 
 upon the dominion of her vivid imagination. How- 
 ever this may have been, in judging of the influence 
 of her association with Lewes upon hei: genius, we 
 should remember that it was he who discovered her 
 great imaginative gift and first fostered it by warm 
 encouragement.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 JAMES COTTER MORISON 
 
 Cotter Morison was one of the happy group of 
 mortals whose lot was extolled by Aristotle — the 
 men who have a strong bent towards the intel- 
 lectual life and at the same time sufficient inde- 
 pendence and leisure for its full fruition. His 
 father, who was believed by his large clientele to 
 have discovered a remedy for some of the ills 
 v/hich ilesh is heir to, left hirn a competence ; and 
 a love of ideas and of their expression in litera- 
 ture prompted him to turn his good fortune to 
 noble uses. 
 
 The early years of Morison's life did not conform 
 to the customary pattern. He lost his father at 
 the age of eight. After a short trial at Highgate 
 School, he v/as removed by his mother, a bright 
 and attractive lady, so tradition says, who held 
 a view of education excellently suited to the boy 
 of genius when you can be sure of him, namely, 
 that education was altogether unnecessary, seeing 
 that it never made stupid people clever, while 
 those who were clever would pick up learning 
 for themselves. Travelling is a good way of 
 putting the " picking up " theory into practice, 
 
 267
 
 268 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 and Mrs. Morison frequently took her boy on 
 foreign tours. But— alas for the pedagogic systems 
 of bright young mothers ! — Cotter appears to have 
 grown tired of perpetual holiday, and in the year 
 1850 he took his education into his own hands, 
 and entered at Lincoln College, Oxford. 
 
 At the University he is said to have won popu- 
 larity by his social qualities, and some reputation 
 as an " oar " and a fencer. Here, too, he formed 
 some of his lasting friendships, among others 
 with the Rector of his College, Mark Pattison, and 
 with John Morley. To Morley he remained warmly 
 attached, and he would speak with enthusiasm 
 of his rapid rise to literary fame. He told me, 
 with a look of pride, of his having had much to do 
 with Morley's appointment to the editorship of 
 the Fortnightly Review. 
 
 He began literary work by joining the staff of 
 the Saturday Bevieiv. I have often wondered 
 how so gentle a person could have managed to 
 attain to that sharpness of stroke which was in 
 those days considered requisite for a Saturday 
 Reviewer. But he was soon to try his hand at 
 a very different kind of writing. The " Life of 
 St. Bernard " would have been a fine example 
 of the sympathetic interpretation of a saint even 
 had it been written by a fellow-Catholic ; as it 
 is, it may claim to be regarded as a literary 
 wonder, a highly successful attempt to render 
 intelligible and appreciable a manner of man, 
 not only remote from the pattern of to-day, but 
 alien, one might have supposed, to the writer's 
 special tastes and intellectual habits. The ex-
 
 riiotoi 
 
 [The London Stereoscopic Co. 
 
 .JAMKS COTTER MORISON 
 
 To face p. 268.
 
 "LIFE OF ST. BERNARD" 269 
 
 planation is probably to be found in the many- 
 sidedness of Morison's mind and the wide range 
 of his sympathetic insight, as also in the strong 
 aroma of medisevalism whieh characterized Oxford 
 when Morison went up. In later life he told one 
 of his intimate friends that at one time the sight 
 of John Henry Newman sent such a thrill through 
 him that he could have fallen at his feet and kissed 
 his hand. It was the same many-sidedness and 
 large emotional responsiveness which predisposed 
 him to take up Auguste Comte's idea of a 
 religious cult in which Humanity was to take the 
 place of Deity, and immortality to become a 
 survival in the hearts and lives of posterity. 
 
 Two incidents connected with the writing of 
 the " Life of St. Bernard " are worth noting. 
 Whilst steeping his imagination in the subject, he 
 obtained the privilege of passing some weeks in a 
 Cistercian monastery, submitting himself to the 
 sternest forms of monastic discipline.^ This 
 action suggests, along with the fascination of 
 his subject, a turn for scientific experiment. The 
 other incident illustrates how, at this time, he 
 fell under the spell of a different type of mystical 
 writer, Thomas Carlyle. Morison took his MS. 
 to his friend George Meredith, who, having found 
 the style too Carlylese, proceeded to impress the 
 fact upon the writer by reading out portions and 
 exaggerating the traces of Carlyle's influence. 
 Morison bore the ordeal for a time, then got up, 
 and in tones of despair announced his resolve not 
 
 ^ Related by Frederic Harrison in the obituary notice of 
 Morison ("In Meraoriam ").
 
 270 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 to publish his work ; whereupon Meredith re- 
 assured him by telhng him that the matter was 
 good, and tliat all that was needed was an im- 
 provement in the manner. Morison took the 
 advice with characteristic docility, and by giving 
 a year or two to the rewriting of the work, pro- 
 duced the excellent j^iece of literature which we now 
 possess. It was probably about this time, just 
 three years before Mrs. Carlyle's death, that he 
 used to visit Chelsea, and learned when smoking 
 with the sage to send the smoke up the chimney, 
 in deference to Mrs. Carlyle's wish. 
 
 After his marriage Morison appears to have 
 lived in Paris. Later, in the Quartier Latin a 
 fiat was taken which became a gathering-point 
 for a select number of men of letters and others, 
 already distinguished or destined to become so. 
 Among these was a group of Comtists or Posi- 
 tivists (followers of xAuguste Comte), which in- 
 cluded Pierre Lafitte, Comte's successor as head 
 of the community, who dined with the Morisons 
 regularly once a week. Distinguished Americans, 
 like Emerson and Lowell, when they came to Paris, 
 were also among the visitors. 
 
 In 1878 his wife died, and he took his young 
 family to London and settled in Montague Place. 
 This new home became another centre for literary 
 workers. The proximity of the British Museum 
 secured a good supply of visitors ; for Morison 
 kept an open luncheon-table. It was about this 
 time that I got to know him, and was cordially 
 welcomed at the lunch-hour when I visited the 
 Reading Room of the Museum. I was drawn to
 
 CONVERSATION 2T1 
 
 him by his geniaHty, in which there was a soupQon 
 of French gaiety, by his kindly interest in the 
 work of others, and by the stimulation and charm 
 of his talk. The bright, alert look, the winning 
 smile, a mode of questioning you which had 
 nothing of intrusiveness, but flattered by its wish 
 to be in close touch with you — these things 
 emerge for me to-day out of the dark spaces of 
 memory. His friendly accost, which seemed 
 almost an expression of gratitude for the pleasure 
 of seeing a friend, was in itself enough to win you. 
 His mobile and versatile spirit seemed to love 
 before all things to keep in touch with young 
 and growing minds. He had an eye for genuine 
 talent, and his house in Montague Place had as 
 a frequent visitor M. Jusserand, then, if I remem- 
 ber aright, attached to the French Embassy. 
 
 I have often regretted that R. L. Stevenson was 
 not able to include Morison among the types of 
 talkers which he distinguishes in a well-known 
 essay. His talk had a manner and a quality all 
 its own. It was earnest and researchful, yet 
 lightened by a certain playfulness of mind — a love 
 of the fencing game with words as well as with 
 swords. It was never monopolizing, but seemed 
 rather to be inviting his interlocutor to give of 
 his best. In this respect it reminded me of the 
 quiet obstetric art of George Eliot — with the differ- 
 ence that the woman seemed to desire to know 
 your ideas in order to know you ; whereas Morison, 
 though he was friendly and sympathetic, always 
 made you feel that he was interested in your 
 ideas for their own sake. He had something of
 
 272 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 the eagerness of mind of the old Greeks, some- 
 thing, too, of their dialectical agility and of their 
 delight in discussion. 
 
 WTiile he enjoyed drawing out the ideas of 
 younger men, Morison was quite ready to meet 
 his equal in the art of conversation. I can recall 
 memorable talks in the hospitable house of our 
 friend Edward Clodd, at Aldeburgh, in which 
 he encountered, among others. Grant Allen, who 
 also was a prolific talker and had a mind stored 
 with various and curious lore. Morison was one 
 of the few who could venture to strike in now 
 and again when, at Montague Place, his friend 
 George Meredith would hold his other hearers 
 spellbound. His flow of talk was supported by 
 an excellent memory, and he was fond of relating 
 to his family how he and Robert Browning had 
 once engaged in the pastime of quoting poetry 
 against each other. 
 
 In 1880 he called upon us at our Hampstead 
 cottage, and, taking a fancy to the old-world 
 toy of a house, took it off our hands for the two 
 months of August and September. I saw him 
 there in August, and found that he quite enjoyed 
 the compression of his family into the small rooms ; 
 which, after the capacious apartments of Montague 
 Place, must, one imagines, have recalled to him 
 his tenure of a monastic cell. His visit was under- 
 taken with the object of trying the far-famed 
 Hampstead air, and of looking round for a possible 
 home. I rather think he had told me shortly 
 before that the organ-grinders, John Leach's 
 tormentors and one of my own pet aversions.
 
 HOSPITALITY 273 
 
 were beginning to trouble the dignified repose of 
 Montague Place. In the end, one of the houses 
 in the new Fitzjohn's Avenue was decided upon. 
 It was some way up the road on the right-hand 
 side.^ On the gate was printed in biggish letters, 
 " Clairvaux," the name of the abbey of which 
 St. Bernard had been the head. The name looked 
 a little odd on one of the palatial fronts of the 
 Avenue, and it must, one supposes, have puzzled 
 even some of the Illuminati of Hampstead. I 
 was glad to have him so near me, and it was a 
 new pleasure to run across and have a chat with 
 him, or to encounter his kindly smile at the 
 Baker Street station on our way home. 
 
 The home in Hampstead carried on the hospit- 
 able usages of Montague Place. While near the 
 Heath and its large spaces of quietude, it was 
 also sufficiently near the clubs and the houses 
 which Morison loved to visit. His dinners were 
 among the most delightful of my social enter- 
 tainments. Conversation never flagged, and the 
 choice and piquant dishes seemed to add to its 
 flavour. 
 
 His vitality and youthful spirits led him to 
 associate much with men who were younger than 
 himself. He would enjoy taking his son to 
 the well-known Saturday luncheon-party at the 
 Savile Club. I well remember an evening at the 
 Savile, when another Hampsteadian and myself 
 had as our guest our friend Colonel Osborn. After 
 dinner, in the smoking-room, Morison came in, 
 and we invited him to join our trio. Conversation 
 
 I At that time No, 19 ; now, I think, No. 30. 
 19
 
 274 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 somehow turned upon certain events in Byzantine 
 history, if I remember aright. Morison was talk- 
 ing away in his dehghtfully easy fashion, when 
 the Colonel gently interrupted, correcting a slip 
 in a date. Morison not only took the correction 
 in good part, but from that moment specially 
 addressed himself to Osborn, seeking to draw out 
 more of his historical knowledge, which was both 
 extensive and minute. At the close of the even- 
 ing he asked us the name of our friend, and 
 spoke with a glow of admiration of his good 
 qualities. It was a charming example of Morison's 
 freedom from the weaker kind of amour propre. 
 
 So perfectly sociable a man could hardly fail 
 to be a delightful companion to his children. I 
 remember his once taking me down to the base- 
 ment of " Clairvaux " to see a bout of fencing 
 between himself and his son. The nervous tension 
 and the swift succession of vigorous movements 
 excited him, and he threw himself into the intoxi- 
 cating exercise with all the gusto of a youngster. 
 Nothing, I think, gave him greater pleasure than 
 to hear one say something nice about one of his 
 children. He seemed to take it just as if it had 
 been tendered to himself. 
 
 Although he knew Besant, Du Maurier, and 
 other neighbours, Morison did not, I believe, 
 figure in what was known as Hampstead Society, 
 which, it may be observed, was then beginning 
 to lose its old local distinctiveness. He lectured 
 occasionally, but for the most part in town. I 
 got him to give us a lecture in the Subscription 
 Library of Stanfield House on " The Conservative
 
 "THE SERVICE OF MAN" 275 
 
 and Progressive Tendencies in Society and Human 
 Nature." But alas ! his name was not widely 
 known, the title of the lecture was perhaps a little 
 appalling, and, worse than all, the vv^eather was 
 atrocious, so that the audience was reduced to a 
 pitiable number. I remember with what a sweet 
 grace he turned aside our expressions of regret 
 tinged with disgust. 
 
 His literary output was a small one. His pro- 
 jected opus magnum, a study of a certain period 
 of French history, was never completed. I re- 
 member paying him a morning call and finding 
 him sitting in his study before a pile of neatly 
 written MS., smoking a cigar. I had not seen 
 a cigar in the mouth of a scholar at work since 
 I was a student at Gottingen, some fifteen years 
 before this. The smoker on that occasion was 
 a student of Oriental languages and a Parisian ; 
 and it occurred to me, that morning at " Clair- 
 vaux," that the habit might have been acquired 
 by Morison also in Paris. 
 
 Some years before death came, Morison knew 
 that he was held in the grip of an incurable disease. 
 He bestirred himself at length, and adding the 
 high courage to the humility of his Saint, he planned 
 a critical and constructive treatise on religion. 
 The first and critical part was published one year 
 before his death, under the title " The Service of 
 Man." It is a sharp attack, more serious and less 
 ironical in its spirit than that of Gibbon, on the 
 moral results of Christianity. Left as a torso, 
 it unhappily suggests a wanton attack. 
 
 Any attempt to reduce Morison to an organic
 
 276 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 unity, as he loved to unify men, seems to be 
 thwarted by the presence of opposite tendencies 
 — gaiety and a half-rehgious brooding on things, 
 the worldly and the spiritual mind — each fairly 
 well developed, even though one may have attained 
 the larger empire. In him there was something 
 of that moral dualism which he points out in 
 " Madame de Maintenon." Yet his friends will 
 not be inclined to apply the common ethical tests 
 too severely. They know that his ever youthful 
 temperament and his varied responsiveness to the 
 many solicitations of human life were a prominent 
 part of what they loved. They may argue, too, 
 that in a historian, to whom in a special sense 
 nothing human should be foreign, this co- existence 
 of wide and vivid interest in the world, with a 
 deeper sentiment for the great mysteries, con- 
 stituted one of the rarer qualifications.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 HENRY SIDGWICK 
 
 I FIRST heard of Sidgwick from my friend Alfred 
 West, who was one of the Cambridge reading- 
 party that joined me at Gottingen in the summer 
 of 1867.^ When later he went up to Trinity, 
 he sent me a little account of Sidgwick's manner 
 of lecturing. Apropos of my review in the 
 Examiner of Sidgwick's " Methods of Ethics " 
 (1875) he told me a good story. In this review 
 I had remarked on the absence in Sidgwick's 
 book of a sufficient reference to the work of 
 Herbert Spencer, and West followed this up by 
 asking Sidgwick why he had not dealt more fully 
 with the bearings of the doctrines of Evolution 
 upon ethical problems. The answer was char- 
 acteristically Sidgwickian. " In the first place," 
 he said, " he hadn't omitted the reference ; and in 
 the second place, he didn't think it had any busi- 
 ness there." West added the interesting bit of 
 news that Spencer wrote to Sidgwick complaining 
 of " the irreparable injury " done to him by his 
 scanty allusions to his views. " Hundreds of 
 people," he urged, " will see your criticism who 
 will never see my remarks." It was only after 
 I See above, p. 98. 
 
 277
 
 278 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Sidgwick's death and the pubHcation of the 
 " Memoir " that I learned his favourable estimate 
 of my review of his book. 
 
 Neither West nor myself, when we met- in 
 Gottingen, knew that Sidgwick had spent two years 
 there studying Oriental languages under Ewald. 
 When, many years later, I heard of this curious 
 parallelism in our LehrjaJire, I felt yet more closely 
 attached to him as by some secret decree of the 
 Fates. Epistolary intercourse between us began 
 on my side. In 1879, when my dream of an ade- 
 quate fortune received a nasty blov/, I wrote to 
 Sidgwick asking him if he thought I should be 
 likely to find work at Cambridge, either by lec- 
 turing or by starting a private hostel for women 
 students. He responded to this bold suggestion 
 of mine very kindly. And thus I got at once my 
 first glimpse of his neat little handwriting and of 
 his kind heart. The year after (1880), I was 
 elected a member of the resuscitated 3Ietaphysical 
 Society, and I remember my first sight of Sidgwick 
 at one of the few meetings of the moribund society, 
 when he was accompanied by his pupil and friend, 
 Arthur Balfour. 
 
 In 1881 I received from him the first of a series 
 of testimonials as to my qualifications for teaching 
 philosophy. He speaks, of course, of my writings, 
 which he lets me see he has read, referring to my 
 last volume, " Pessimism." 
 
 Soon after this he invited me to assist in the 
 Moral Science work of his University. This first 
 appearance in the august seat of learning took 
 the modest form of reading the answers to some
 
 2'koto] 
 
 [KUiotl it Fry. 
 
 HEXHY SIDCiWICK. 
 
 To face p. 278.
 
 THE MORAL SCIENCES TRIPOS 279 
 
 papers on the Theory of Education, which the setter 
 of them (James Ward) was prevented by iUness 
 from undertaking. The following year brought 
 me the more important proposal to examine for 
 the Moral Sciences Tripos. In the first year Sidg- 
 wick was my fellow^ examiner, and shov/ed himself 
 particularly helpful, and he followed this up in 
 the second year by sending me full and explicit 
 directions as to my part in the proceedings. A 
 more flattering attention was paid me later when 
 Sidgwick sent me a warm invitation to stay at 
 his house ("Hill Side," Chesterton Road). He re- 
 grets, he writes, that he cannot give me any v/ork 
 on Ascension Day, but if I will sta,y over Thursday 
 night he will take me to feast in Hall on that daj^. 
 So the intimacy gradually grew till, in 1895, when 
 I was again asked to examine for the Tripos, the 
 old form of accost, " My dear Sir," had given way 
 first to " Dear Mr. Sully " and then to "Dear Sully." 
 Meanwhile other modes of collaboration were 
 making us better known to one another. The 
 year 1892 w^as a red-letter day in the progress of 
 our friendship. It was then that I stood for the 
 Chair of Philosophy in University College (London), 
 rendered vacant by Croom Robertson's death. 
 Sidgwick gave me a strong testimonial, bringing 
 out precisely the strong points in my claim, and 
 even hinting at differences of relative claim 
 between myself and others. I was told that 
 my election to the Chair was largely due to his 
 rccommendati on . ^ 
 
 I Sidgwick here reveals a characteristic emphasized by Lord 
 Bryee : " He was of all the persons I have known the least
 
 280 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 A yet more uniting association with Sidgwick 
 was involved in the official work connected with 
 the Second International Congress of Psychology 
 (held in London in 1892), which has been described 
 in Chapter XII. Sidgwick, as our President, 
 asked me to take charge of " Orthodox Psycho- 
 logy?" ^s distinct from " Psychical Research." ^ 
 This collaboration with Sidgwick helped to reveal 
 and to endear him to me. Though at first looking 
 up to him as my senior and teacher, I found myself, 
 under the softening influence of his geniality and 
 kindness, little by little stealing into the warmer 
 relation of friendship. As a host he was truly 
 delightful. His unobtrusive consideration of pos- 
 sible wants and wishes was a thing to win the 
 heart. I remember, among many such winsome 
 attentions, his insisting upon carrying my bag, as 
 we walked from the room where we did the 
 Tripos work to his home. Another and more 
 delicate kind of consideration was shown me when, 
 with the Sidgwicks, I attended a meeting to pro- 
 mxOte the idea of a Woman's Secondary Training 
 College for Cambridge. By the end of the autumn 
 afternoon the daylight had fallen to a misleading 
 degree of tenuity, and upon stepping down from 
 the platform I slipped and fell. Sidgwick, who 
 was behind me, hastened up, and at once brushed 
 away every trace of annoyance by sweetly re- 
 disposed to be warped by partisanship " {" Studies in Con- 
 temporary Biography," p. 334). 
 
 I In the "Memoir" (p. 516) he speaks of my branch of the 
 subject as " ordinary experimental psychology," while that of 
 Myers and himself he styled "the extraordinary element."
 
 AFFABILITY 281 
 
 marking, " How kind of you, Sully ! But for 
 your warning I should certainly have fallen." 
 He showed, indeed, something like an art of divi- 
 nation in anticipating and finding a solution for my 
 difficulties, such as that described above. 
 
 In the use of one solvent for teasing little diffi- 
 culties Sidgwick was a past-master. His eye had 
 a way of catching the humorous side of a situa- 
 tion. When, for example, at the Congress, we had 
 to decide some nice question — whether a paper 
 should be honoured by being read at the general 
 afternoon sitting, or whether a distinguished 
 foreigner should be allotted such or such a lodging 
 among the houses which offered hospitality — Sidg- 
 wick would relieve the seriousness of the problem 
 by some deliciously humorous comments. 
 
 In addition to this many-sided and tactful 
 helpfulness, my co-operation with Sidgwick dis- 
 closed to me other of his amiable traits. He 
 seemed to me to have nothing of that insistent 
 assertion of superiority which one is apt to attri- 
 bute to the don. Rather, indeed, did he appear 
 to be wishing to bring his junior forward, himself 
 taking a back seat. He showed this in a number 
 of directions. I remember one afternoon, when 
 walking with him and Mrs. Sidgwick in the 
 Fellows' garden at Trinity, I happened to call 
 attention to some fine tree, when he exclaimed, 
 " Why, Sully, do you know the names of trees ? " 
 just as if this knowledge were one of the arcana 
 of the specialist. He showed a delightfully un- 
 philosophical capacity of wonder, which he would 
 express with something of the zest of a child.
 
 282 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Many things were full of interest to him which 
 many excellent men w^ould have passed by as of 
 trivial import. When, for example, I told him 
 of Bain's remark, " I am trying to keep myself 
 alive," he said with a curious emphasis, " That's 
 very interesting." 
 
 There was much in Sidgwick's appearance and 
 manner that impressed me. The beautiful calm- 
 ness of the face exercised a strange fascination 
 on me. His whole appearance, indeed, seemed to 
 me to be softened and ennobled by a rare gentle- 
 ness of disposition. Some of the distinguished 
 guests at the Congress remarked this, and it was 
 Ebbinghaus, I think, who observed to me, " He 
 is a perfect English gentleman." The eye that 
 would be winsomeiy turned to you now a^nd again 
 when arguing out some point had a soupgon of 
 the retirem.ent and the self-effacement of the 
 recluse, while the soft voice seemed ever to be 
 breathing a message of peace. Certain move- 
 ments deepened this impression of a singularly 
 gentle nature. More particularly, the trick so 
 familiar to his friends of stroking his long white 
 beard when talking, struck me as curiously sug- 
 gestive of a gentle, peace-loving and conciliatory 
 spirit. Did the gesture, I wondered, illustrate one 
 of Darwin's laws of emotional expression by 
 serving as a generalized sym^bol of smoothing out 
 intellectual or other difficulties ? 
 
 Even the stammer, which was apt, on first 
 hearing it, to sound confusing and even painful, 
 took on in time the quality of an additional channel 
 of ethical influence— perhaps because he was so
 
 CONVERSATION 283 
 
 brave and pertinacious in surmounting the obstacle. 
 It has been remarked that the stammer seemed 
 to give an extra point to some of his piquant 
 utterances. I should especially have enjoyed its 
 effect in the reported conversation with a German 
 professor : "In England you have no Gelehrten, 
 have you ? " " Indeed, we have." " So ! What 
 then do you call them?" "We call them 
 ' p-p-p-prigs.' " 
 
 Yet the rare sort of pleasure which the company 
 of Sidgwick afforded me was not wholly due to 
 the winsomeness of his moral traits. I found no 
 less fascinating the play of his remarkable mind. 
 Despite the suggestion of a dreamy recluse which 
 his manner would at times raise, he showed him- 
 self when drawn into discussion to be particu- 
 larly alert and " on the spot." Here he would 
 often show himself to be as much the learner 
 as the originator of new ideas. He had a large, 
 magnanimous way of meeting the suggestions of 
 other thinkers ; herein showing himself perhaps 
 to be more of a philosopher than Herbert Spencer, 
 who was tightly shut in by the barriers of a 
 " System." What I think he especially enjoyed 
 when taking up the dialectical rapier was to get 
 at new points of view. A considerable part of 
 the enjoyment of listening to him, in my own 
 case at any rate, arose from the half-playful 
 freshness of his ways of approaching a subject. 
 You could but rarely say beforehand on what 
 side he would attack it, but you might be sure 
 of its being a novel and an arresting side. This 
 held good of all sorts of problems, from that of
 
 284 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 determining the " class " to be assigned to a given 
 set of examination papers to that of pronouncing 
 upon the merits of a new novel. A considerable 
 part of my enjoyment of this play of the Sidgwick- 
 ian mind came from the amusing appearance of 
 whimsicality in many of these ways of quizzing a 
 subject. 
 
 Though a diligent and penetrating self-critic at 
 the right moment, he would show no inclination 
 to go back upon a conclusion after it had once 
 been carefully thought out. And so it befell that 
 one who, as I conceived, had an exceptional 
 readiness in assimilating others' ideas was some- 
 times spoken of as obstinate in his decisions. 
 
 The intellectual enjoyment which I derived 
 from the closer intercourse with him was, of course, 
 enhanced by my previous familiarity with his 
 writings. It was interesting to observe how those 
 traits which I had learned from his great book, 
 " The Methods of Ethics," to regard as^ character- 
 istic, reappeared in his talks and more formal 
 discussions. Among these I should instance the 
 perfect control of a zealous and even eager quest 
 of truth by an adequate critical caution, and the 
 habit of viewing things and their values in their 
 relations to one another. To these prominent 
 intellectual virtues there corresponded such moral 
 characteristics as fairness or impartiality, which 
 made him for me quite as much an ideal of the 
 just man as of the wise man. And — to touch on 
 a characteristic which was reminiscent, not merely 
 of his Greek masters but of his no less revered 
 teacher, John Locke, who first taught us a modest
 
 TEMPERAMENT 285 
 
 English way in philosophy — Sidgwick illustrated in 
 a remarkable degree the attitude of a thinker who 
 consistently subordinates philosophic speculation 
 to a practical end. The practicality of his think- 
 ing used often to peep out in our little discussions 
 of this and that bit of concrete business, in forms 
 which even the plain man could recognize, though 
 to me they appeared now and again to show the 
 impress of a speculative habit. 
 
 So happy an intercourse as this presupposed a 
 good fund of common sympathies and common 
 attitudes towards persons and things. Yet I 
 always felt that there were differences too, both 
 of feeling and of standpoint, betwixt us. As the 
 fact of my writing a book upon modern pessimism 
 suggests, I was much more inclined than Sidgwick 
 to the despondent moods.^ Yet such tempera- 
 mental differences hardly counted as checks to 
 our happy intimacy. I should rather say that his 
 sunnier outlook upon the world, as well as his 
 happy assurance of life's giving him " a main 
 current of calm well-being," drew me more 
 strongly towards him, as towards the brightness 
 and warmth of a southern clime. 
 
 Towards the end of his life he would talk to 
 me about his insomnia, which he knew I shared 
 with him. He gave me particulars of his experi- 
 ences. " At Cambridge (he writes) I am liable 
 to run down to five and a half [hours' sleep], four 
 and a half, three and a half — the latter figure 
 alarms me." But five days^ at Brighton brought 
 
 ^ The " Memoir," however, speaks of his wanting only to be 
 an optimist.
 
 286 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 his record up to six hours again. The improving 
 effect of Brighton he connected not only with the 
 air, but with the soothing effect of a walk by the 
 sea.^ He told me also of other remedies for sleep- 
 lessness that he had tried ; and here he gives a 
 delightful example of his respect for the Aristotelian 
 " mean " between two undesirable extremes. Thus 
 he finds that the books most conducive to sleep are 
 those which, like Adam Smith's " Wealth of 
 Nations," always remain mildly interesting yet, 
 through their familiarity, never become over- excit- 
 ing. Similarly he discovered that when he tried 
 to induce sleep by solving some practical problem, 
 he had to select one, such as planning the next 
 summer's holiday, which had a certain importance 
 without being pressing. He told me further of 
 his wooing sleep by repeating verses, and added 
 the valuable bit of information that he found his 
 ability to commit poetry to memory in no way 
 diminished by years. 
 
 The end of our twenty years of intercourse 
 was darkened by more than one shadow. His 
 first response to the copy of my protest against 
 the Boer War, which I sent him (in November 
 1899), was sympathetic. He would like, he wrote, 
 " to help in preserving the independence of this 
 brave people." He thought it, however, most 
 undesirable to publish anything of the sort at 
 that crisis. Traces of a like good-will towards us 
 Pro-Boers disclosed themselves when, towards the 
 end of the year (1899), I paid him my last visit 
 at Cambridge. As I entered the library he pointed 
 I See "Memoir," pp. 547-8.
 
 LAST DAYS 287 
 
 to a copy of the Daily Chronicle, in which the 
 editor was making a vahant fight for the Boer 
 cause, and said, with a rueful sigh, " You see I 
 still read my Chronicle. I have always been a 
 lover of peace." In the end, however, he wrote 
 me declining to sign, and giving his reasons. ^ 
 
 The following year I was called to his bedside 
 in a nursing home, where he lay after undergoing a 
 serious operation. He stretched out a white hand, 
 and remarked, with a faint smile, " Well, Sully, 
 you see me reduced to the part of a spectator." 
 To this I replied in the same slightly facetious 
 key, " Yes, but it will still be the part of an Im- 
 partial Spectator," which brought a more decided 
 smile from the wan face. Some business matters 
 were then lying rather heavily on his heart. Two 
 months before he had written to me that, in view 
 of advancing years, he wished to put our philo- 
 sophical journal Mind on a financial basis inde- 
 pendent of his personal aid, and would like to 
 propose my name as one of the vice-presidents ; 
 and he now touched on the project of forming a 
 new Academy, or section of the Royal Society, 
 which was at the moment being considered. 
 
 I first heard of Sidgwick's death in August, on 
 my return from a holiday in Norway. On look- 
 ing back I see our leave-taking three months 
 earlier as a most fitting and beautiful termination 
 to a comradeship which, in the midst of strenuous 
 work, seemed to be ahvays smiled upon and made 
 delectable by Sidgwick's serene spirit. 
 I See '-'Memoir," pp. 581-2.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 My relations with Spencer were a little mixed. 
 I should almost smile at the suggestion of our 
 having ever been friends. By this I do not mean 
 that I had too much awe of the great man to 
 dare to think of him under a name so equalizing 
 as " friend." Other men I had known and 
 revered were, I never doubted, true friends, who 
 were not only needed by me but seemed recipro- 
 cally to have something like a need of me. As 
 his "Autobiography" tells us, Spencer had friends — 
 like Huxley and Morley, for example. In a letter 
 I received from him he spoke of a serviceable 
 editor as his " friend." But I always thought 
 of him as being so deeply absorbed in his vast 
 philosophic venture that any warmth of intimacy 
 could come to him only by way of a recognized 
 discipleship, or at least of a large acceptance of 
 his teaching. 
 
 I first saw him by appointment when he wanted 
 to engage me to collect relevant facts for his 
 sociological I tables. He was then residing in a 
 boarding-house in Queen's Gardens, Bayswater. 
 I was struck by the lofty brow set off by long 
 tassels of hair about the ears. His spare figure 
 
 288
 
 IIKIiBKHT SI'KNC Kl{. 
 
 To face p. 288.
 
 THE BOARDING-HOUSE 289 
 
 had just a suggestion of a severe temperance oi 
 habit. The Bayswater lunch was not tempting 
 to an excessive indulgence of appetite. As we 
 sat and talked, he proceeded to explain to me, 
 with a characteristic reference to first principles, 
 wh}'^ in his case the philosopher should select 
 a London boarding-house as dwelling-place. A 
 boarding-house, he urged, at least when it was in 
 Bayswater, would effectually protect him against 
 bores, both those who wanted seriously to talk 
 philosophy and those who were irreverently bent 
 upon " pumping " a philosopher. I was able 
 to understand his wishing to shut out all 
 "shoppy" talk at meal-time; what puzzled me 
 was how such a severe lover of abstract thought 
 could tolerate the tittle-tattle about passing 
 nothings which is apt to pass for conversation 
 at a London boarding-house table. He gave me 
 no hint of possessing a self-protective humour, 
 such as that with which Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 endows his dear professor, helping him to get a 
 rich entertainment out of boarding-house talk. 
 Nor could he, I suppose, as yet venture to clap 
 on those terrible ear-flaps by which, later, he 
 would extinguish human vocalization when it 
 began to weary him. 
 
 He began by making a smiling acknowledg- 
 ment of the fact that I had been one of the 
 early subscribers to his system of philosophy, 
 which he was at this time issuing in fasci- 
 cules ; and then he proceeded to sound me on my 
 willingness to assist him in collecting facts for 
 his sociological tables. 
 
 20
 
 29Q MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 I naturally compared Spencer with Alexander 
 Bain, the other philosopher whose acquaintance 
 I was making about the same time. Both were 
 spare of body and of a slightly ascetic aspect. 
 But the dissimilarities were greater than the simi- 
 larities. When measured with the wee dimensions 
 of the Scotch professor, Spencer's figure was of 
 an impressive height. In facial aspect the con- 
 trast was quite as great. Bain's odd little piquant 
 features were charged with alertness, and the 
 rapid flow of his speech and movements deepened 
 the impression of a mind sharply focused for 
 the tangible world. Spencer's face, on the other 
 hand, held a deep imperturbable repose, and some- 
 thing of the large detaching philosophic vision. 
 His speech, too, was slov/ and meditative, forming 
 a curious contrast to Bain's more staccato kind 
 of utterance. Not less remarkable was the con- 
 trast between the quiet, complacent smile of 
 Spencer and the explosive and slightly malicious 
 laugh of the Aberdeen professor. 
 
 After our first meeting we exchanged civilities 
 now and again. Spencer would sometimes, like 
 Bain, ask me to meet him in the vestibule of the 
 Athenseum Club. But as he was considerably 
 more of a recluse than I, most of our intercourse 
 was epistolary. He wrote me after I had re- 
 viev/ed Sidgwick's " Methods of Ethics." I had 
 suggested in this notice that more space might 
 have been given to the bearings of the doctrine 
 of Evolution upon Ethics. Spencer was excep- 
 sionally vigilant — even for an author — in noting 
 anything which seemed to have a bearing upon
 
 THE ATHEN^UM CLUB 291 
 
 his views, and he wrote to me expressing his satis- 
 faetion at my remarks. To Sidgwick also, as 
 I have said, he wrote a pathetic letter com- 
 plaining of the " irreparable injmy " which had 
 been done him by Sidgwick's nonchalant treat- 
 ment of him.i 
 
 One mark of Spencer's favour I must not omit. 
 He refers in a footnote to an article of mine upon 
 " The Basis of Musical Sensation." Grant Allen 
 called my attention to the fact that this was the 
 only instance of SjDcncer's having expressed his 
 indebtedness to a contemporary v/riter, even in 
 a footnote. 
 
 Spencer further showed his good-will by offering 
 to put up my name for the Athena;um Club. I 
 regretted that he had not asked somebody with 
 a larger coefficient of clubbability than I could 
 boast of. Apropos of the Athenaeum, an amusing 
 story was told of his having been allowed to 
 improve the system of ventilation or some other 
 part of the Club arrangements, and of the disas- 
 trous results which followed the attempt to apply 
 first principles to a knotty practical problem. 
 Towards the end of the seventies I wrote asking 
 him to accept some office or title. He was in 
 Cairo at the time, and sent me a long letter all 
 in his own handwriting. I was, of course, flattered 
 by this attention until I read the postscript, which 
 ran as follows : " Had I with me a copy of the 
 lithographed circular which I use for abridging my 
 correspondence, I should write this reply on the 
 fly-leaf." His sociability was carefully measured 
 » Cf. the chapter on Henry Sidgwick, p. 277.
 
 292 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 out and never allowed to interfere with his great 
 philosophic undertaking. He joined the SaVile 
 Club, in addition to the Athenaeum, in order to 
 be able to enjoy a game of billiards on a Sunday. 
 He would even now and then visit the homes 
 of some admiring friends ; and an amusing story 
 relates that on one of these occasions the dietetic 
 and other exactions involved in the due satis- 
 faction of the philosopher's system of needs put 
 so severe a strain upon the devotion of his hosts 
 that, after a long endeavour to live up to the 
 situation, they fled and left the philosopher in 
 sole possession of the house. 
 
 In the nineties, when he moved to St. John's 
 Wood, I wrote from Hampstead expressing my 
 pleasure at hearing that we were now to be 
 neighbours. I proposed to call upon him, and, 
 knowing the inelasticity of his habits, asked him 
 to name the most convenient hour for a call. 
 He surprised me by suggesting the not too hospit- 
 able hour of a quarter to two or two o'clock. 
 This forced upon me a long walk upon a hurried 
 early lunch, which had cut into my morning's 
 work. The interview was of the shortest, and on 
 both sides, I think, strained. I had hardly sat 
 down and ventured a few words, when he began 
 to betray all the signs of post-prandial somnolence. 
 I at once came to the rescue by saying, " Now, 
 Mr. Spencer, will you please be quite frank with 
 me, and tell me whether you are not in the habit 
 of taking a rest after lunch." A heavenly smile 
 answered my inquiry. On my way back I mused 
 on the unpredictable possibilities of human be-
 
 FOREIGN APPRECIATION 293 
 
 haviour when a man has a system of philosophy 
 to carry about with him. I made one or two 
 further attempts to see him when he was hving 
 at Brighton, but was put off with characteristic 
 excuses. 
 
 These httle rebuffs left no smack of bitterness 
 behind. I was beginning to know my philosopher. 
 More than most men, I fancy, who are burdened 
 with what they believe to be an undertaking of 
 supreme importance to mankind, Spencer attri- 
 buted to the worker the unique value of the work. 
 Thus it happens that, in reading his " Autobio- 
 graphy " and other writings, we are tempted to 
 exclaim now, " What splendid devotion ! " and now, 
 " What colossal egoism ! " 
 
 Between these less agreeable manifestations of 
 the self- emancipation of the superman, he gave 
 me signs now and again of a real impulse towards 
 friendliness. He seemed to be almost touched by 
 my attempt to get up a congratulatory address to 
 him, a proposal which was ultimately abandoned 
 in favour of a memorial portrait. There is a 
 peculiar sweetness in the reward of virtue, when 
 the virtue consists in serving a sublime philo- 
 sopher and the reward is a heavenly smile. 
 
 I was in Italy when Spencer died, and was 
 much struck by the Italians' appreciation of his 
 work. From the Chamber of Deputies at Rome 
 a message of condolence, full of Italian warmth, 
 and beautiful Italian language too, was sent to 
 our country on the loss of her great citizen. On 
 reading it, I tried in vain to conceive of the English 
 House of Commons expressing in like manner its
 
 294 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 sorrow on the death of a distinguished foreign 
 thinker. So far was such a message from our frigid 
 Enghsh customs that, as the official Itahan paper 
 La Tribuna pointed out in an article headed " The 
 Coldness of the English Public," our legislators 
 appear to have taken no notice of Spencer's death. 
 The journal added that Spencer had been " the 
 great philosopher of the nineteenth century for 
 all countries except his own." 
 
 This utterance of the Italians was no doubt an 
 exaggeration ; for Germany, at any rate, had 
 not so accepted him. Yet their pronouncement 
 may help us to " place " Spencer in the philo- 
 sophical scale. Like the Ge^-man system-maker, 
 Von Hartmann, the philosopher of " The Uncon- 
 scious," he was a thinker for the people rather 
 than for the academic world ; and he was, I think, 
 most highly prized by Americans and the Latin 
 races. His work has had for all of us its real 
 and considerable value. He rendered a worthy 
 contribution to thought by bringing the large 
 aspects of the world, and of humanity too, to- 
 gether under the new concept of evolution — 
 loosely defined as the general movement of things 
 in orderly progress from a sim.ple to a complex 
 form. By the time of his death his ideas, 
 in a modified form no doubt, had become so 
 largely assimilated into our thought and our forms 
 of speech that we had half forgotten their origi- 
 nator. We of to-day all talk of Evolution, whether 
 we are thinking of the material cosmos, or of life 
 and mind, or even of art, morals, and religion. 
 It is too soon to judge of how posterity will
 
 SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY 295 
 
 estimate the Synthetic Philosophy : at present 
 there is a reaction against it. But I cannot 
 say how much Spencer was to me in the early 
 stages of my thinking. His clearness, which, 
 after the fog of some metaphysicians, came as 
 a delightful refreshment ; his way of bringing 
 remote facts together by a '' fetch of similarity," 
 as Bain would say ; the splendid constructive 
 ingenuity of his mind — these qualities made the 
 reading of those heavy volumes a delight : a 
 delight I still feel in a modified degree after 
 studying what scientists and philosophers have 
 said of his limitations. 
 
 Shortly after Spencer's death my old friend 
 Leslie Stephen, in a letter dictated to his 
 daughter, touched upon the event. Like all of 
 us, he had learned mxuch from Spencer. Yet his 
 message to riie in this letter, shortly before his 
 own death, was this : "I hope that other men 
 will be born with the same vigour of mind 
 as Herbert Spencer, but trust that they won't 
 think it necessary to invent new philosophical 
 schemes for the world."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 I HAD heard of Stephen by the beginning of the 
 seventies. His name became famihar to me in 
 the pages of the Fortnightly, and I was deeply 
 impressed by the high courage as well as the 
 devotion to truth shown in his " Essays on Free- 
 thinking and Plain-speaking." 
 
 It was about four years after his appointment 
 to the editorship of the Comhill Magazine (in 
 1871) that I first came to know him. I had 
 already seen him at one of the Sunday after- 
 noon gatherings at the Priory ; and I recall him 
 seated there in the social crescent at the end 
 nearer the door and away from the window 
 near which George Eliot was accustomed to sit. 
 His distinguished aspect could not but impress 
 one even in an assembly which was carefully 
 selected. I seem to see still, as in some 
 Venetian portrait, the slight yet commanding 
 figure, the long, finely moulded head and face, 
 showing something of the delicacy which Watts 
 perhaps rather over-emphasized in his portrait, 
 yet something also of virile keenness and 
 strength. I remember the impression of rich 
 
 290
 
 LESLIE STEPHEN. 
 
 To face p. 296.
 
 AT HOME 297 
 
 colouring given by the bright, blue eyes peering 
 out from under the shaggy eyebrows, and made 
 the brighter by the contrast with the dark, warm 
 tones of the abundant hair, moustache, and beard. 
 Like myself, he had cast aside the clerical pro- 
 fession, and his dress — especially the workaday 
 velveteen jacket — had a look of punctuating the 
 escape from the fetters of " orders " into worldly 
 freedom. Our first meeting, at his house in Hyde 
 Park Gate South, was an event for me. I wished 
 to discuss possibilities of work for the Comhill, 
 and some one, probably Morley or Lewes, had 
 given me an introduction to him. It was an 
 afternoon in the fall of the year. Stephen had 
 recently lost his first wife, and I was warned that 
 he was just now very much of a recluse. His 
 accost had in it, behind its evident cordiality, a 
 touch of awkwardness, as of one who was forcing 
 himself to forget the books which tugged at his 
 hands impatiently. As I expounded my literary 
 aims he grew interested and sympathetic. The 
 low, finely modulated tones of his voice impressed 
 me hardly less than the kind and helpful dis- 
 position which his words expressed. They were 
 the first of a long series of encouraging talks. 
 
 The retired position of the house suggested the 
 student who is a lover of quiet. On my first 
 visits he used to take me up to the top of the 
 house, where he had a den far removed from noises. 
 After his second marriage and a considerable 
 enlargement of his family circle, he had his study 
 downstairs in a large room roofed by a glass dome. 
 I loved to think of him in these peaceful surround-
 
 298 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 ings; though I may now and then have felt a 
 momentary twinge as I contrasted them with 
 the intricate network of noises against which I 
 have had to wage so long a war. 
 
 I soon found him a most gentle and considerate 
 editor. My first offering, " A German Peasant 
 Romance," was accepted and printed straight off, 
 the honour of its appearance in Thackeray's old 
 magazine giving me a moment's sense of giddy 
 exaltation. But I immediately followed up this 
 success with a dry, reflective article on " Self- 
 esteem and Self- admiration." Stephen was 
 patience itself under this and other provocations. 
 Indeed, he seemed to go dangerously far in ex- 
 onerating if not in encouraging my rashness, not 
 only by accepting the article, but by writing : 
 " M}^ readers will stand a. fragment of moralizing 
 now and then, to balance the mass of light litera- 
 ture." Unduly elated by this success, I grew 
 bolder, and proposed an article on " The Pessimist's 
 View of Life." This was too much even for the 
 kindest of editors. " The ordinary parson," he 
 wrote, " who is the general object of my dread, 
 has never heard of Schopenhauer ; but he may 
 vaguely scent infidelity in a German name." I 
 regret to say that later on, despite this warning, 
 I ventured to tempt him with the name of 
 Spinoza ; when he administered a well-deserved 
 rebuke. 
 
 From 1875 until 1882, when Stephen gave up 
 the editorship of the magazine, I sent him a fair 
 number of articles, including serious ones, such 
 as "Dreams," "Animal Music," and "Lessing,"
 
 THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE 299 
 
 and lighter ones on such subjects as "A Strip of 
 Suffolk Sea-board," " Our First Glacier Expedi- 
 tion," and " Babies and Science." All the articles 
 I sent him were accepted save one, and only once 
 did I receive from him that vexatious editorial 
 injunction to shorten a paper — the one on " Ober- 
 mann," if I remember aright. He liked to say 
 something encouraging about my articles ; and I 
 remember his telling me, with a touch of character- 
 istic humour, that my article on dreams had ex- 
 cited attention, the usual proof being that he 
 " has received more MSS. on the same subject." 
 
 My good fortune was no doubt furthered by 
 the growing intimacy between us, and especially 
 by the rich opportunities of increasing our mutual 
 knowledge supplied by the excursions of the Sun- 
 day Tramps. But there is reason to think that 
 my contributions interested him for their own 
 sake. He talked to me about them. He did 
 more ; he went back and read my first book, try- 
 ing to get at the secret of music— the enjoyment 
 of which for him, he wrote to me, was zero if not 
 a negative quantity — and at the meaning of modern 
 pessimism. Later on he brought his own ex- 
 periences and his reading to bear upon what I 
 was writing about. Among the subjects which 
 drew him out in this way, I remember dreams, 
 children's ways, and the precocity of genius. 
 Apropos of dreams, he told me of one that he had 
 when walking in Switzerland after a sleepless 
 night. " I fell asleep," he wrote, " as I walked, 
 or half asleep, and, as I got near Chamonix, saw 
 both the real objects and the dream-objects.
 
 300 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 I met, e.g., Cambridge friends coming along the 
 road, who vanished as I approached, or saw carts 
 or houses which fitted in with the scenery and 
 then disappeared." 
 
 The interest was reciprocal. I was not only 
 an eager reader of his books, but while wrrting 
 for his journal I had the pleasure of reviewing 
 two of them, " The History of English Thought in 
 the Eighteenth Century " and " The Science of 
 Ethics." Of the latter he wrote me : "I read 
 your review in the P.M.G. (Pall Mall Gazette), 
 knowing it to be yours both from Morley's 
 statement and internal evidence. It gave me 
 much pleasure, which reviews very seldom do ; 
 especially for one thing which you said and which 
 I shall not specify : which, however, revealed to 
 me not only a critic but a kindly sympathetic 
 reader." 
 
 There was, I suspect, in his kindly interest in 
 my work another ingredient. Were we not both, 
 despite the differences in our years and status, 
 scribblers who were supremely interested in the 
 processes of thought ? And may he not, in con- 
 nection with my effort to secure standing room 
 in the literary crowd, have been influenced by 
 a fact which he brought out years later in his little 
 book on Hobbes : " Popular opinion looks upon 
 philosophers with a dash of amused contempt " ? 
 While fully recognizing, however, the existence of 
 these favourable circumstances in my case, I 
 feel sure, both from my later and fuller knowledge 
 of him and from what other contributors have 
 told me, that Stephen was in general a most
 
 JAMES PAYN 301 
 
 considerate editor, who disliked nothing so much 
 as to disappoint the hopes of a promising young 
 writer. 
 
 As our acquaintance ripened, bits of friendly 
 chat crept into our business letters. Now he 
 would write that he was going to be married— a 
 step which involved a shifting of his domicile 
 from No. 11 to No. 31 Hyde Park Gate ; now 
 that he had just taken leave of poor W. K. Clifford, 
 who was sailing for Madeira. 
 
 Stephen's retirement from the Cornhill hardly 
 involved a loosening of the bond of intimacy 
 between us. We had by this time become fast 
 friends, and I continued to be in touch with him 
 on Tramp Sundays and at other times. The last 
 service he rendered me as editor was to recom- 
 mend me to his successor, James Payn the novelist. 
 
 I wrote one or two papers for Payn, but I did 
 not expect to find in a novelist another Leslie 
 Stephen. Payn, by the way, was towards the 
 close of his life a great sufferer, and he had a place 
 in the list of invalids, along with Croom Robertson 
 and others, whom Stephen sedulously visited. As 
 his readers know, Payn was a great punster. But 
 Stephen (or was it F. Pollock or other Tramp ?) 
 once told us of a particularly good pun perpe- 
 trated u2:)on Payn. He was climbing somewhere 
 — probably in Switzerland — with some companions 
 in better trim than himself, when one of these 
 remarked : " The labour we delight in, physics 
 pain" (Payn). 
 
 He used to talk freely to me about the " Dic- 
 tionary of National Biography." From these con-
 
 302 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 fidences I learnt what a keen scent he had for 
 out-of-the-way information, and what a splendid 
 pertinacity he showed — often in very indifferent 
 health — in making the "Dictionary" as good as it 
 could be. I gathered from them, too, how much 
 trouble he had in keeping his team of contributors 
 together, as well as in securing, along with the 
 inclusion of every kind of fame, a certain pro- 
 portion in the lengths of the articles. 
 
 Stephen v/as not only himself an athlete, but 
 a lover of popular atliletics. When I was staying 
 with him at his house in St. Ives he took me over 
 to Penzance to see som^e Cornish wrestling. And 
 in constructing the programme of his "Dictionary " 
 he paid due respect to the heroes of the prize- 
 fighting and wrestling rings. 
 
 The idea of the Sunday Tramps occurred to 
 Stephen — who was our " chief guide " or, briefly, 
 " chief "—in the autumn of 1879. ^ He himself 
 assigns the genesis of the fraternity to a desire 
 " not to lock up their summer hobby-horse for 
 the greater part of the year, but to give him a 
 periodical outing even through the winter." ^ 
 Other motives probably supported the roving 
 impulse, such as the wish to get away once a 
 fortnight from gloomy bricks and mortar and to 
 have the whole day free for talking and for 
 getting to know one's friends better. 
 
 If not the originator of the plan, Stephen became 
 from the outset its inspirer. He was made to be 
 
 » Sec Maitland, " Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen," 
 pp, 357 ff.
 
 THE SUNDAY TRA^IPS 30$ 
 
 the chief of such a band, and in that capacity 
 was able at once to carry on his Alpine and 
 other walks, and to gather about him a select 
 and sympathetic company. At first his walking 
 powers stood in the way of leadership. His 
 tall figure, with unusual length of arm and 
 leg, not only stood him in good stead in his 
 Alpine rock-clim.bing, but gave him an unfair 
 advantage as guide in a walking club. As you 
 first saw him start at wliat looked like a quite 
 moderate pace, you had no inkling of the ground 
 covered by tiie sweep of that leg. But our 
 kindly chief soon learned to adjust his step to 
 the limitations of average legs and lungs. He 
 grew, indeed, tenderly, almost penitentially, solici- 
 tous not to overwalk the feebler members of the 
 corps, and he purposely selected shorter walks 
 now and again to suit their needs. For the rest, 
 he was a model guide. He had something of a 
 bird's instinct for direction, and would often 
 amuse us, Vv^hen on the trail, by his keenness of 
 scent for a new short-cut not indicated, on the 
 maps. Among the qualifications of a guide which 
 he enumerated in the " Peripatetics " ^ one is, that 
 he should never condescend to ask his way or 
 admit that he has gone wrong. This high inde- 
 pendence once led to a quaint little scene, when 
 our chief, standing with his pack at a cross way, 
 hesitated for a moment, and some well-mean- 
 ing native impulsively came forward and prof- 
 fered the use of his topographical knowledge. It 
 
 » Papers contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette, June and 
 July 1880.
 
 304 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 is hardly necessary to add that his fondness for 
 an approximation to a bee-hne was apt to push 
 him into something indistinguishable from a tres- 
 pass. I remember a comic incident which arose 
 out of this boldness. We were stopped by a 
 keeper, whom we compelled to go through the 
 formality of taking our names and addresses, 
 including those of some distinguished lawyers. 
 
 The planning of the walk was left to our chief. 
 Every fortnight a post- card would arrive giving 
 us the route, the hours of trains, and sometimes 
 the place for lunch. The train would take us 
 some twenty-five miles out of town, and our 
 tramp consisted of a walk from one station to a 
 second lying somewhere about the same distance 
 from London. We joined our chief at the de- 
 parture station, and we were sure to find him not 
 far from the booking-office, looking about him 
 with something of the solicitude of a shepherd 
 when counting his sheep. Our numbers would 
 vary from two or three to a goodly team of eight 
 or more, in which latter case there would arise 
 the need of close packing in the second-class 
 smoking compartment. 
 
 On issuing from the train we formed ourselves, 
 under the influence of some complex system of 
 attraction, into the rough semblance of an 
 irregular squad, of which each line consisted of 
 from about two to five men. But a process of 
 disintegration soon began to reduce the length 
 of the lines, transforming us into a longer 
 procession of groups of two or three. In the 
 early days of the Tramps our chief brought with
 
 ROUTES 305 
 
 him a collie, who would carry out a much longer 
 tramp of his own, running to and fro along the whole 
 length of our line, and, apparently, by his barkings 
 trying to persuade us to keep closer together. 
 
 Our route would be determined by various con- 
 siderations at which we failed to guess. The 
 walk itself, withdrawn as much as possible from 
 j.ighways, was our primary aim. A long, tiring 
 march over a level road was generally avoided. 
 Our chief had a special fondness for the broken 
 country of Surrey and Kent with its alternating 
 hills and valleys and its spacious commons. 
 He liked hardly less a wooded slope skirting the 
 Thames, and such quiet recesses as Epping Forest 
 and Burnham Beeches. He had the Saturday 
 Reviewer''s contempt for gush ; and though when 
 we had climbed a Surrey height, such as Leith 
 Hill or Hindhead, he would let us sit for a 
 minute or so, he expected us to enjoy the 
 beauty of the unfolded scene in severe silence. 
 
 As " Peripatetics " show us, his imagination at 
 such a moment might travel back to his old Alpine 
 haunts. So tiny a height as St. Martha in Surrey 
 recalled his beloved mountains through its like- 
 ness to a Swiss chapel perched on an Alp above 
 a gorge. Another trace of his familiarity with 
 mountains appears in a letter which he sent me 
 once when I wished to join the party en route. 
 He proposed the summit of Highdown Ball, in 
 Surrey, and after carefully indicating its situation, 
 added, " It resembles the mountain in Raphael's 
 ' Transfiguration.' " 
 
 Yet, lover of nature though he was, our chief 
 
 21
 
 806 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 prized hardly less those spots which attracted 
 chiefly by their historical and literary associations. 
 His memory was charged with interesting lore 
 about the places we visited. He did not press 
 his knowledge unpleasantly upon us, but only let 
 drop a word now and again. It is in the ** Peri- 
 patetics " that one m.ust seek for his delightful 
 musings on these m^emorials of the past. Now 
 it was a glimpse of Albury Park, Surrey, where 
 Drummond entertained Edward Irving and the 
 Irvingites, that drew from him one of his dryly 
 humorous remarks on the queer aberrations of 
 the religious mind. At Twickenham we no doubt 
 tried with indifferent success to draw him into a 
 talk about " poor little rickety Pope," as he calls 
 him in our chronicle. A spot near " the lazy 
 Mole " took him back to its once famous tenant, 
 Abraham Tucker, whose cheery optimism — just 
 because, perhaps, it was so far removed from his 
 own attitude to life — won his heart. And then 
 there was the churchyard at Stoke Poges ; where, 
 he tells us in our chronicle, he was relieved to find 
 even the most expansive talker among us refrain- 
 ing from quoting the famous Elegy — conveniently 
 inscribed just outside the entrance gate for a re- 
 freshment of dull memories. Among less familiar 
 sights which our ramblings led us to was a genuine 
 old inn, the Golden Farmer's Inn, near Bagshot, 
 of which Swift speaks. In these searchings for 
 old memorials the editor of the " Dictionary " 
 would now and then peep out, as when he took 
 liis flock to the summit of Hindhead to gaze on a 
 cross which tells of a famous murder.
 
 REFRESHMENTS 307 
 
 Yet the routes chalked out for us were not 
 wholly determined by a desire for edification. Our 
 chief knew the carnal needs of his Tramps, and he 
 found it often a knotty problem to fix upon an 
 inn for luncheon reachable somewhere near the 
 right hour. The meanest tavern would suffice, 
 provided it could stow us all away in the parlour 
 and regale us with the homely fare of bread, cheese, 
 and beer. Our chief introduced a note of severe 
 ascetic restraint into his choice of an inn. He 
 was, I am sure, always put out when the humble 
 *' pub " could not be found, and he was forced to 
 take us to an " hotel," where perhaps a hot lunch 
 was going. 
 
 There were, however, exceptions to the rule of 
 plain living. Friends began to hear of our pil- 
 grimages, and invitations to lunch or tea soon 
 grew plentiful. Some of these offers of hospitality 
 came from our chief's distinguished friends, such 
 as George Meredith, Charles Darwin, and Frederic 
 Harrison. 
 
 When on the march our pace sufficed to keep 
 us isolated from the outside world. We may, no 
 doubt, have astonished, and provoked quiet remarks 
 from, some of the slow-moving churchgoers whom 
 we passed. But I can only recall one exchange 
 of words with other pedestrians. On this occasion 
 some of us were actually pulled up by a gentleman 
 who had the look of a lay preacher. He politely 
 addressed one of our group, a mathematician and 
 logician, with the words, " I beg your pardon, 
 sir, but are you saved ? " To which bold inquiry 
 our Tramp replied awkwardly, " G-God bless my
 
 308 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 soul, I believe not." This frankness encouraged 
 the evangelist to add, " Because, sir, if you. are 
 not saved, you will not go to heaven." This was 
 too much for our logician, who at once made an 
 end of the discussion by declaring that the last 
 remark was " an identical proposition." 
 
 How much conversation, it might naturally be 
 asked, went on among ourselves ? It has recently 
 been suggested that a vigorous day's walking of 
 some twenty to twenty-five miles would be un- 
 favourable to much discourse.^ Our chronicler 
 himself points out that, as we progressed, speech 
 was apt to flag. To quote his humorous way 
 of putting it, " Many a glowing apostrophe and 
 apposite illustration grows humdrum and thread- 
 bare as the journey lengthens." But a fair 
 amount of talk did nevertheless get itself done 
 during these walks, and the quantity increased 
 after our chief had reduced his standard of the 
 average leg capacity. Stephen enjoyed a quiet, 
 unhurried talk with a single Tramp," and one of 
 my greatest treats in these walks was to have 
 him alone for a spell, and listen to his slow but 
 ever pregnant utterances about men and events. 
 Delightful moments, these solitudes a deux, whose 
 d|ielight was rather increased than diminished by 
 fearful suspicion that they were stolen blisses. 
 
 We were an odd, heterogeneous sort of company, 
 hardly more than a fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
 and united only by the common tie of our chief's 
 selection. Our talks reflected the variety of our 
 several callings and habits of life. We had almost 
 I See "Walking Essays," by Hugh Sidgwick.
 
 COMPOSITION OF THE TRAMPS 309 
 
 as good a contingent of lawyers as the House 
 of Commons ; and this circumstance ensured a 
 plentiful dishing up of memorable repartees and 
 other brilliant utterances from the Law Courts, 
 Scotch as well as English. A fair number followed 
 our chief's occupation of scribbler. And being 
 young, we did not neglect the opportvmity of 
 slanging the publishers — the idea of the Authors' 
 Society being already in the air. We would 
 entertain ourselves with the pastime of finding 
 out which of them had the worst reputation 
 among us. So far as I remember, we had no 
 professional poets, though there were versifiers who 
 introduced an agreeable lightness into our dis- 
 course. It was the age of " Limericks," and I 
 remember one impromptu example which may 
 perhaps bear quoting even to-day. We were passing 
 Ealing Station when one of our company — a clever 
 young lawyer, I think — broke into lines which 
 ran as follows : 
 
 There was an old lady of Ealing, 
 
 Who said, " When potatoes want peeling, 
 
 To ascribe Nature's laws to a bountiful cause 
 Shows a lamentable want of good feeling." 
 
 I wish I could recall with some precision how 
 our chief behaved when the frivolous mood took 
 us. I seem dimly to remember a half-inhibited 
 laugh — a kind of truncated snort — which would 
 come out on such occasions, expressing at once 
 a good-natured toleration of our boyish frolics 
 and a feeble attempt at a rebuke. 
 
 Sometimes our chatting would be silenced by
 
 310 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 some bit of sad tidings. So it happened when 
 our chief appeared without " Rob," his colhe,- and 
 we learned that his " dear old friend," as he calls 
 him in his chronicle, had been poisoned in a London 
 park. It was a very gloomy morning when, on 
 arriving at Victoria Station, we read on the 
 bulletin of the Observer the news of the Phoenix 
 Park murders. 
 
 An occurrence which brought us an intimate 
 sense of loss was the death of Charles Darwin, 
 A visit nov^^ and again to his house at Down had 
 been one of the major rewards of our tramping 
 exertions. It was a delightful experience to see 
 him and our chief together. Stephen's affec- 
 tionate reverence for the great evolutionist was 
 warmly reciprocated, and I experienced some- 
 thing akin to the mixture of pride and awe which 
 one feels at being taken into the confidences^ of 
 a pair of lovers. We spoke of the death of our 
 chief's revered teacher in low tones.^ He himself 
 would relate to us touching fragments of infor- 
 mation about Darwin : how, for example, his dog 
 had showed all the signs of human grief on the 
 death of his master. A humorous incident might 
 come out too, such as the remark a privileged 
 servant of the family made to Mrs. Darwin v/hen 
 her master was in poor health. The good woman 
 was troubled by the feeling that he would soon 
 rally if only he would '• find something to do," 
 instead of standing in the garden so much and 
 looking at the flowers.^ Touching the proposal 
 
 ^ A curious diversity in point of view is illustrated by com- 
 paring this utterance of the solicitous servant with the remark
 
 CHARLES DARWIN 311 
 
 to bury Darwin in Westminster Abbey, Stephen 
 wrote to me : "It would seem more congenial 
 to bury the dear old man in that quiet little 
 churchyard close to the house in which he lived 
 and worked so long." 
 
 The visits to Down enlarged and deepened the 
 first impression of Darwin which I received at 
 the Priory. We had more than one interesting 
 little talk in the drawing-room. Among other 
 striking remarks I remember his once saying to 
 me, apropos of a young writer who was just 
 then publishing some popular studies in evolution, 
 that he had always acted upon the principle that 
 observing and theorizing must go on together so 
 closely as to constitute one process. 
 
 Stephen gave up the duties of chief guide in 
 1891, and the event naturally affected the keen- 
 ness of some of us about putting in an appearance 
 on tramp-days. My sense of loss was, however, 
 diminished b}'' the opportunities he now gave me 
 of taking a mild tramp with him alone. The 
 gradual reduction of the distance in the day's 
 walking pathetically marked the stages in our 
 chief's gradual loss of his splendid bodily powers. 
 One of these curtailed peripatetics ended with 
 Hampstead and lunch at my house ; others were 
 directed to Meredith's cottage at Box Hill. 
 
 The editorial association and the fuller and 
 more intimate companionship of the Tramps were 
 
 of her mistress to a correspondent, that her husband is a very 
 ])ad hand at doing nothing after a book has been completed. 
 See Mrs. Lichfield's biography, " Emma Darwin," vol. ii. 
 p. 187.
 
 312 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 the two chief feeders of our friendship ; and 
 out of the fellowship thus established grew other 
 meetings and conjoint work. His generous help 
 in the ticklish business of the petition against the 
 punishment dealt out to Foote not only assured 
 me of his stable friendship, but deepened my 
 admiration for his honesty and his courage. 
 
 Better than many club dinners for communing 
 with his innermost self was a week spent in his 
 summer residence at St. Ives. Stephen and I 
 did some tramping there too, and I can still recall 
 how the recent fall of a politician who had been 
 his friend led him to open up his large pitiful heart 
 to me. His brilliant nephew and fellow Tramp 
 " J. K. S.," of whom he was particularly fond, 
 was with us in one of our ramblings along the 
 coast. The fury of an Atlantic storm had not 
 subsided, and the waves roared in against the 
 rocks. Nothing daunted, " Jim " climbed to the 
 top of a rock which was plentifully washed by 
 the breakers ; and, half amused, half "angered, his 
 uncle watched the sturdy fellow as he stood firm 
 as the rock and took the sousings. 
 
 Despite the presence of some dejecting influences 
 in the air, this visit to St. Ives was one of the 
 memorable experiences of my life. The bowling- 
 green, the plunge with my juniors into the deep 
 sea, the soothing strain of music that was some- 
 times to be heard after breakfast by the open 
 drawing-room window — these and kindred enjoy- 
 ments still come back to assure me that the 
 world is not an ugly place to live in. James 
 Russell Lowell was staying there the same week,
 
 SWISS MEMORIES 313 
 
 and I came in for a singular bit of good fortune. 
 Stephen was busy with his " Dictionary " in the 
 forenoon ; so Lowell, learning that I was a smoker, 
 proposed to join me in the smoking-room. This 
 led to his taking down from the bookcase a copy 
 of " Tom Sawyer," from which he read aloud, 
 teaching me the right local pronunciation of 
 the words. 
 
 Opportunities of a more restricted fellowship 
 were offered me in Stephen's town house. After 
 spending a holiday in Switzerland, I would on my 
 return call and report to him any interesting 
 experiences. He was most sympathetic when I 
 got entangled in the accident on the Diavolezza 
 Pass, and took special pains to assure me that 
 I had done the one thing I ought to have done. 
 I called upon him after another and quite agree- 
 able Alpine experience, a walk over the Monte 
 MoroPass at the head of the Saasthal to Macugnaga. 
 As I mentioned the Hotel Mattmark, where our 
 party passed the night, I saw him smile, and I 
 guessed the reason of it. To save him trouble, I 
 instantly told him that the amusing instructions 
 which he had long since bequeathed to visitors 
 in the Fremdenbuch of the little hotel still stood 
 intact, with his signature not far from that of 
 his friend, John Tyndall. The bit of humorous 
 advice, the recollection of which had revived that 
 smile, read thus : " The stranger who desires to 
 escape the smoke in this room is advised to shelter 
 himself in the chimney." 
 
 He continued to show his old interest in my 
 work ; and, after reading my " Studies of Child-
 
 314 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 hood," he sent me an account of his one childish 
 he — " a horrid, hideous, dehberate he which I could 
 not mention even now ! I cannot imagine why. 
 ... But it was base cowardice— fear of punish- 
 m.ent or rather reproof." 
 
 His last letters to me were increasingly sad from 
 their reference to his health. He w^rote me after 
 the loss of his wife : " I grow more lonely, I fear, 
 as the days go on and my infirmities, deafness 
 in particular, increase, and friends drop off." 
 When telling me of a projected summer holiday 
 (on Hindhea,d, I think), he added, with the ghost 
 of a smile, " I'm getting good at sitting." Yet 
 such complaints were rare. 
 
 Stephen could on occasion be a sturdy stickler 
 for his rights. The only time I saw him wrath- 
 ful was when he considered these rights to be 
 grossly disputed. We were going to call upon 
 Meredith, and stopped to lunch at an hotel 
 not far from Flint Cottage. I went into the 
 dining-room and took the hotel lunch, while 
 Stephen remained outside to consume the speci- 
 ally prepared invalid refreshment which he had 
 brought with him. When he had finished this 
 he joined me at the hotel table. A waiter 
 came forward to ask what he should bring him. 
 On being informed by Stephen that he had already 
 partaken of lunch, this official proceeded to instruct 
 him that it was not permitted to sit at the dining- 
 room table ¥/itliout ordering refreshment. Stephen 
 instantly rose to his full height, and exploding 
 on the offender's ear a shrapnel of vituperative 
 language, drove him in sheer terror out of the room.
 
 PERSONALITY 315 
 
 But to those who really knew him — heart as 
 well as brain — Stephen was one of the two or 
 three men whom they were sure of loving. Why 
 they loved him they could not have explained 
 satisfactorily to the psychological analyst, any 
 more than Stephen himself could have satisfac- 
 torily explained his love for Dr. Johnson. A 
 personality is much more than a " mechanical 
 mixture " of a number of qualities like courage, 
 endurance, devotion to truth, and the rest. One 
 thing was prominent in the indissoluble whole. 
 There lay deeply hidden under his physical and 
 intellectual strength a fund of tender sympathy, 
 which we valued the more just because it was 
 an organic part of so strong a man. Nor was he 
 always careful to keep this tender aspect out of 
 sight. When George Meredith lost his wife I 
 sounded Stephen as to the desirability of send- 
 ing him a line of condolence ; in reply to which 
 he wrote : " My own experience tells me that 
 intrusions of that kind are not resented." 
 
 Stephen's writings reflect his temperament and 
 character in a peculiar way. His criticism has 
 no doubt a sharp logical edge : he loved a 
 dialectic combat quite as much as a Cornish 
 wrestling match. Yet, ardent servant of truth 
 though he was, his critical work is deeply tinged 
 with a love of humanity in its infinite variety of 
 shades of character. And, what is perhaps still 
 more noteworthy, this warm humanity coexisted 
 with a passionate love for his bleak and solitary 
 Alpine " Playground." ^ 
 
 I See some appreciations of Stephen by Meredith and 
 D. W. F. in The Author of April 1904.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 William James was a friend to whom I was 
 drawn rather by similarity of age and of scientific 
 pursuits than by any close personal association. 
 I never saw him outside London ; and, as he 
 wrote to me once, " Vacation at the shore or in 
 the mountains is the only condition of true human 
 intercourse." Yet I managed to see a good bit 
 of him in a scrappy way, and for many years we 
 kept up an irregular exchange of ideas and senti- 
 ments by letter-writing. I first heard of him 
 through Croom Robertson and the contributions 
 he was making to Mind ; among which a doughty 
 attack on Hegel took my fancy. In 1882 he was 
 in London for some time, and I made his personal 
 acquaintance at the meetings of " The Scratch 
 Eight," ^ his admission to which he gratefully 
 recalled in a letter to me dated twenty-six years 
 later. He was, if I remember aright, for the 
 most part a silent listener to our discussions. 
 
 Although we were near one another in age, I 
 
 had the start of him in book-making, and he kept 
 
 an eye, at once brotherly and critical, on my 
 
 publications. He spoke well of the " Outlines of 
 
 I Cf. above, p. 221. 
 
 316
 
 WILLIAM JAMES. 
 
 To face p. 316.
 
 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 317 
 
 Psychology," and told me he was using it as a 
 textbook for his class. But my endeavour in 
 this and in later textbooks to produce a view of 
 psychology which should give prominence to what 
 I considered had been pretty firmly established 
 in our rather shapeless science made him impatient. 
 He thought I was too much concerned to be im- 
 partial ; he reminded me that " a dash of polemic 
 virus is often very useful to drive discriminations 
 home"; and later he urged, apropos of my work 
 " The Human Mind " — for which, by the by, he 
 so far stood sponsor as to give it a name — that 
 I was too open-minded, and that " if you were 
 more polemic, more careless of including all truth, 
 there would be more ring in your accents, and you 
 would catch your readers more." I saw his point, 
 and understood it still better when he brought 
 out his own textbooks. But I knew there was 
 something to be said on my side too. He pub- 
 lished his " Principles of Psychology " a year 
 before " The Human Mind " appeared, and I gave 
 it a warm commendation in the pages of Mind. 
 I was full of admiration for his happy way of 
 fusing the imaginative Avith the speculative, and 
 for the wealth and brilliance of his original sug- 
 gestions. I predicted of it that it would long 
 survive our more laboured textbooks, and James 
 was " exceedingly pleased " with what he called 
 my " munificently kind notice." My principal 
 adverse criticism of the book was that the chapters 
 did not hang together, and that the order sug- 
 gested a collection of separate articles rather than 
 an organic treatise. On this he wrote : " You
 
 818 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 and all my critics are wrong about the compo- 
 sition of the work. The chapters (all but one) 
 were originally written for the book, and separately 
 published as an afterthought." 
 
 James was deeply moved by the sufferings of 
 our friend Croom Robertson. After years of 
 acute pain, against which he valiantly battled, 
 maintaining not only his lecturing work but 
 his heavy duties as editor, he lost his great 
 sustainer, his wife, who died after suffering from 
 an incurable malady. The loss led him at 
 once to resign his professorship. " Poor G. C.R. ! " 
 James wrote to me on hearing of his retirement. 
 " Was there ever such a case of a strong man 
 grappling with adversity ! He will have a monu- 
 ment in the hearts of his friends, if nowhere else." 
 And later, on receiving the news of Robertson's 
 death he wrote me (from Florence) : " Considering 
 what the lamentations of some men would have 
 been, the utter unquerulousness of Robertson has 
 been simply magnificent. . . . His monument in 
 the sixteen volumes of Mind is, after all, one 
 to be satisfied with. God keep him ! " 
 
 I had hoped to see him in London at the Psycho- 
 logical Congress (1892) ; but though he had pro- 
 mised to come and to read a paper, he wrote early 
 in the year to say that he was in poor health and 
 would not be able to be present or to send a paper. 
 He added that he would have to go abroad that 
 summer, with his wife and babes, " to spend my 
 ' sabbatical year ' on half- pay : blessed privilege ! " ^ 
 
 ' I suppose that his stay in London in 1882 was also due to 
 some similar provision by the American academic authorities.
 
 POLITICAL S\T\IPATHIES 319 
 
 From now on I was less in touch with him. 
 His health appears to have remained for some 
 time very uneertain. He had already (in 1892) 
 
 told me of a severe attack of brain-fag : " d d 
 
 neurasthenic constitution — thank Heaven for that 
 word ' neurasthenic ' ; it is almost as good as ' epi- 
 phenomenon.' " Later he suffered from heart 
 trouble, brought on, I was told, by excessive 
 exertion in the Rockies. 
 
 After the early nineties his letters became less 
 frequent. This was no doubt due in part to the 
 need of husbanding his writing powers. But I 
 suspect that he was alive to the fact of my being 
 less sympathetically interested in the new lines 
 of his work as foreshadowed in the little volume 
 " The Will to Beheve." Also the new social 
 demands that came on the heels of a growing 
 popularity left him, when in England, but little 
 time to look up old friends. But, en revanche^ 
 my uncompromising disapproval of the Boer War, 
 which I fear must have loosened more than one 
 tie of friendship, brought me closer to James. 
 I saw him (I think for the last time) soon after 
 the outbreak of the war, when I remember his 
 telling me that " a wave of Jingoism " was passing 
 round the world. In 1900 he wrote from Bad 
 Nauheim (where he was undergoing treatment 
 for his cardiac trouble) urging me to write on 
 " the psychology of man as beast of prey." He 
 was strongly opposed to the new Imperialism in 
 America, and protested against it in a lecture of 
 which he sent me a printed copy. He wrote to 
 me from Rome (in March 1901) : " I see you take
 
 320 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 the war still very much to heart, and I myself 
 think that the blundering way in which the 
 Colonial Office drove the Dutchmen into it, with 
 no conception whatever of the psychological situ- 
 ation, is only outdone by our still more anti- 
 psychological blundering in the Philippines. Both 
 countries have lost their moral prestige — we far 
 more completely tban you, because for our conduct 
 there is literally no excuse to be made except 
 absolute stupidity, whilst you can make out a 
 very fair case, as such cases go." 
 
 As his references to Croom Robertson show, he 
 had a genuine feeling of piety for those whose 
 labours death had ended. In the same letter 
 from Rome he writes : " Yes ! H. Sidgwick is a 
 sad loss, with all his remaining philosophic wisdom 
 unwritten. I feel greatly F. W. H. Myers's loss 
 also. He suffered terribly with suffocation, but 
 bore it stunningly well. He died in this very 
 hotel." He goes on to say he means to write 
 " a little tribute to his (Myers's) service to psycho- 
 logy," which he hopes may not appear exaggerated 
 to me. 
 
 I read between the lines of this letter that he 
 was not sure of my old sympathy following him 
 into the new directions of his work. His psycho- 
 logical writings, splendid as they were, had seemed 
 to me to show a rather dangerous fondness 
 for concentrating upon certain sides of a subject 
 which specially appealed to him and lent 
 themselves to his strong and vivid mode of 
 presentment. And I thought I saw in this habit 
 a harbinger of his manner of laying on the colour
 
 PRAGMATISM 321 
 
 here and blotting out there when he passed from 
 psychology to metaphysic — a provmce which he 
 told me in a letter (dated 1903) is " the only thing 
 that schmecJit (appetises) at present." His little 
 volume on " The Will to Believe," and the " Prafy- 
 m.atism " which grew out of it, brought him, no 
 doubt, a larger audience. It is too soon, even 
 after the many sheets which have been devoted 
 to the subject in Mind and elsewhere, to form a 
 final judgment upon the value of this later work. 
 I have always been among those who felt that 
 in leaving the psychological field Jam^eswas part- 
 ing from his proper subject for one in which he 
 was less at home, and for which his early training 
 had less fully equipped him. 
 
 Our fraternal intercourse ended then with a 
 certain estrangement of our speculative intellects. 
 But our hearts clung to one another to the end. 
 We made a series of vain attempts to meet once 
 more. Now it w^as 7ny health that obstructed 
 our desire, as in 1905, when, though in Italy, I 
 was not well enough to join him at the Psycho- 
 logical Congress in Rome; now on his side there 
 came from Oxford, from Cambridge, and from 
 Rye the regretful apology " no time." The fates 
 were against us. One day I received a telegram 
 from him, sent from a London hotel, inviting me 
 to lunch with him the next day ; and it happened 
 that I, one of the most stay-at-home of people, 
 had engaged myself on that very day to an old 
 Hampstead friend. Later, when I was in Sussex, 
 I heard of his being at Rye, and I wrote proposing 
 to bring a great admirer of his to call upon him ; 
 
 22
 
 322 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 and this letter, he later informed me, he never 
 received. Thus vainly did we grope after one 
 another in the mists. All the same, warm words 
 continued to flutter over to me from across the 
 Atlantic up to the last years, and the words grew 
 still warmer with a brother's heart-blood when he 
 knew that suffering had come to stay in my home.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 My meeting with Meredith, at John Morley's house, 
 did not at first lead to a close acquaintance. 
 This came some years later, and grew out 
 of my enrolment in the honourable body of 
 Sunday Tramps. The mutual admiration of 
 Meredith and our chief, Leslie Stephen, led to 
 our frequently making Box Hill the goal of our 
 walk. Flint Cottage was ill- designed for a large 
 party of pedestrians, and when there was an 
 invitation from Meredith, Stephen would arrange 
 to limit the number of visitors, more particularly 
 for the dinner, which was hospitably added to 
 the afternoon tea. Meredith might join us for 
 the latter part of the walk, accompanied by his 
 dachshund " Bruno,"— whom he would piteously 
 try to call off from the rabbit-holes which refused 
 to give up their fluffy possessors, — and sometimes 
 by one or both of his children, or by a neighbour, 
 like one of the Maxse famih^ The young daughter 
 of the house soon got used to our mud- caked boots, 
 and she showed an excellent contrivance in arrang- 
 ing for the requisite number of Tramps in need of 
 ablutions. 
 
 323
 
 324 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 As his readers know, Meredith had a fine appre- 
 ciation of the beauties of his Surrey home"; and 
 not an infrequent part of his entertainment of the 
 Tramps was a stroll after tea to see some of his 
 favourite trees, a veteran yew, perhaps, or a maple 
 all ablaze with the October crimson. 
 
 At the dinner-table our charming hostess looked 
 diligently after our bodily wants, which other- 
 wise might have had scant justice done them by 
 a husband apt to be preoccupied with some 
 piquant topic of discussion. She was ably sup- 
 ported by her young daughter, who, I remember, 
 would delight in loading the dessert plate of some 
 lucky neighbour with sweetmeats and other 
 dainties. The light yet toothsome dishes and the 
 excellent French wines — which I at least would 
 not have exchanged for Dr. Middleton's port, so 
 eloquently extolled in " The Egoist " — were ad- 
 mirably adapted to a band of London scribblers 
 endowed with but moderate powers of digestion. 
 
 Along with the refinement of these Sunday 
 entertainments there would peep out now and 
 again a barely discernible touch of the Bohemian, 
 just enough to remind us that Ave were frequenters 
 of the road. We were put still more at our ease 
 when, after the repast, we stepped over to the 
 chalet, Meredith's sanctum, and gave ourselves 
 up to cigars and a freer sort of talk. The books 
 in paper covers which filled the shelves added to 
 the impression of French daintiness. 
 
 As my first sight of him at Morley's house 
 on the Hog's Back had assured me, Meredith was 
 a great talker. He was indeed a brilliant and
 
 Fredk. HoUyer 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH. 
 
 [To face p. 324
 
 MEREDITH'S TALK 325 
 
 indefatigable leader of talk, and never long abdi- 
 cated his office even when other good talkers were 
 present. These others seemed to have as their 
 chief part in the conversation to supply new 
 starting-points, or new aspects of a subject when 
 it began to look worn. 
 
 His utterances were spontaneous and flowed with 
 a wonderful continuity. It was the rarest thing to 
 catch him hesitating for a word. The maintenance 
 of such a smooth current of speech implied, in 
 his case, a tense form of intellectual concentration. 
 His hearers were for the most part aware of this, 
 and wisely made no attempt to interrupt the flow 
 of ideas. If one of the unwary did venture on 
 a word, Meredith had an effective way of chastising 
 the hardihood. I remember with what a terribly 
 ironical " Madame ! " he once met a lady's in- 
 terruption, accompanying the ejaculation with 
 one of his extra-ceremonious bows. 
 
 Yet, impatient as he was of interruption when 
 primed for discourse, he sho^ved, I should say, 
 less insistence upon a monopoly of talk than Mr. 
 Gladstone is said to have done. My impression 
 is that in our Tramp-gatherings Meredith would 
 now and again graciously give, not only our chief, 
 but even less important members of the fraternity 
 a chance to join in the talk. 
 
 A notable feature of his talk was the range of 
 topic covered. As his novels, and still more 
 clearly his letters, show us, he could discourse 
 seriously enough when he regarded his subject as 
 an important one. Though apt to be described 
 as a purely imaginative writer, with a strong
 
 326 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 leaning to the comic, he was a shrewd observer of 
 men, and his mind was stored with the genuine 
 wisdom of hfe. He kept, too, in close touch 
 with the larger subjects of the hour, such as the 
 maintenance of the Briton's physique and the 
 aspirations of women to a higher intellectual status. 
 It remains true, however, that the most brilliant, 
 if not also the most stimulating, passages in his 
 talk were expressions of the comic spirit, ranging 
 from the playful antics of a boyish " larkishness " 
 up to the mature and artfully adjusted attack 
 of wit and irony. Extravagance of statement, 
 caricature, a touch now and again of Rabelaisian 
 eagerness to leap the barriers of conventional pro- 
 priety — these were some of the more salient 
 features of his utterance. He was at his best 
 when he had a story to narrate which, though 
 in part vero, he ^vas free to transform into a 
 deliciously astounding hen trovato. The story of 
 the first experiment of a noiweau riche in enter- 
 taining at dinner illustrated his mastery of 
 the cumulative art in this direction. I remember 
 also the comic history of another dinner and its 
 consequences which he once recited at Flint 
 Cottage. It was a Meredithian version of a story 
 which just then was running the round. It told 
 of how an ambitious gentleman, known as yet 
 only to other walks than that of letters, was seized 
 with the aspiration of entering this domain. His 
 ambition was matched by brilliant inventive- 
 ness — ^the idea of securing the editorship of a well- 
 known journal by playing upon another sort of 
 ambition of which he knew the publisher of the
 
 MEREDITH'S TALK 327 
 
 journal to be the subject : he arranged a dinner 
 at which the pubhsher was invited to meet a 
 marquis and other high personages. This piece 
 of ingenuity won all the success it deserved, 
 the publisher remarking to his host, as they 
 entered the drawing-room, " Oh, by the by, 
 it's all right about the Review. The editor- 
 ship is for you." Meredith's account of this 
 little comedy was embroidered by some character-^ 
 istic touches; as when the non-appearance of the 
 marquis at the dinner party was set down to a fit 
 of gout, and when the publisher was described 
 as wanting for the editorial chair " none of your 
 literary recluses, but a man of the world who 
 hobnobs with lords," etc. 
 
 These delightful bits of conversational extrava- 
 ganza were started in various ways. Now it 
 was the remark of a guest which opened up a 
 tempting line of caricature; at another time it 
 was a bit of recent newspaper gossip which pricked 
 him on to the chase of some glorious absurdity. 
 
 When the comic mood was well set, Meredith's 
 hearers might now and again observe him as he 
 glimpsed the crest of a new billow of mirth 
 approaching. One could watch the play of the 
 mouth, the underlip lowered and the tip of the 
 tongue exposed for a second, as some new aspect 
 of his comic quarry disclosed itself. Charles 
 Lamb exactly describes this momentary intrusion 
 of the comic narrator into the jest itself when he 
 writes : " We love to see a wag taste his own joke 
 to his party : to watch a quick or a merry conceit 
 flickering upon the lips some seconds before the
 
 328 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 tongue is delivered of it." ^ Meredith would 
 sometimes go further, and join in the laughter- he 
 was provoking ; yet only so as to secure a moment's 
 relief from the intellectual strain. 
 
 The appearance of Meredith during these enter- 
 taining talks had a distinction which harmonized 
 well with that of the brilliant intellectual effort. 
 The finely moulded head, somxCtimes described as 
 Greek, reminders of which I have met with in 
 the museums of Rome, was in itself arresting, 
 whether fully exposed within doors or half hidden 
 out of doors by a sort of deer-stalker's cap ; 
 and it acquired a new dignity when the talker 
 graciously leaned forward as if to mark a special 
 intimacy of accost. The bright, truth-loving 
 eyes doubled the hold of his speech ; while 
 the voice, always mellow and finely modulated, 
 riveted the attention by a musical link. Among 
 other striking features in his appearance w^re the 
 easy yet perfectly fitting brownish-grey suit which 
 set off the ruddy tints of cheek and neck-tie, and 
 the easy and gracious movements, which had 
 nothing of the Frenchman's quick, energetic 
 gestures. In the earlier years of our acquaint- 
 ance he never seemed to tire of talking ; 
 on a visit I paid him in 1890 he kept the 
 ball going with only a few short pauses for 
 two or three hours, one half of the time sitting 
 in the garden and the other climbing the Hill. 
 
 The range of subject traversed by him in these 
 causeries was remarkable. At this same meeting 
 in the nineties he touched among other matters 
 ? "Essays of Elia."
 
 NATIONALITY 329 
 
 the question of his race. He was a Celt, he said, 
 and added that his Celtic blood doomed him to 
 be an alien among English people. The critics 
 found him obscure, and he hit off a clever little 
 paraphrase of the charges of obscurity hurled 
 against him. I ventured to suggest that he was 
 gcttnig more widely appreciated, and told him 
 of quite a little raid that was now being made 
 upon his books at our Hampstead Subscription 
 Library. But he was not to be comforted by this 
 sort of chaff. Immediately upon the utterance ot 
 this gloomy personal Jeremiad he flew off to the 
 subject of England's condition, a matter about 
 which he was deeply concerned. Our people, 
 he said, had no pure blood. We had no critics. 
 V/e were a third- or fourth-rate nation accidentally 
 put at the head. The Germans were " foul 
 blooded," whereas the French had " the purity of 
 blood." The rapidity of transition from grave 
 to gay was particularly marked on this occasion. 
 Apropos of women, he seemed to think it a fine 
 thing that they were getting access to the pro- 
 fessions. With a touch of the serio-comic, I fancy, 
 he recommended the pulpit as their especial sphere, 
 and backed his plea by reciting a gruesome story 
 of the way in which a vv^orldly rector had met 
 the request of a lady that he would go to see a 
 poor girl on her death-bed. Loyal admirer as 
 he was of woman, he could not spare her from 
 his store of useful targets for his wit ; and I re- 
 member a particularly racy story which he told 
 us about a learned lady who, " in spite of a 
 terrifying hypertrophy of jaw, thought it necessary
 
 330 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 to state that she despised the frivoHties of love- 
 making." His way of treating women in these 
 talks illustrated that large and stereoscopic vision 
 of her with which his books have made us 
 familiar. He fully complied with Schiller's ex- 
 hortation, " Ehret die Frauen " ; and yet respect 
 never blinded him to those fundamental limita- 
 tions, moral as well as physical, which he brought 
 out in dealing with Diana of the Crossways and 
 other of his heroines. 
 
 This memorable visit was completed by a stroll 
 to the top of Box Hill at the moment when the 
 declining sun was hiding itself behind wisps of 
 white mists. The sight brought out the poet — 
 a rare revelation during these miscellaneous 
 gatherings. The sun became for his imagination 
 " A warrior throwing his white cloak about him." 
 
 By this time he had ceased to be what he de- 
 scribed as " the happy walker " of the seventies 
 and eighties. It was at the visit ^ of 1890 — or 
 one near this date— that I became aware of his 
 v/eakness. As he moved awkwardly down the 
 steep grassy slope of the Hill, I instinctively 
 stretched out my hand to help him. He gently 
 but firmly put awa,y the proffered aid. Later on, 
 at the Cottage, I made another attempt to assist 
 him as he lifted himself out of a low chair, and 
 again the offer was declined. Then, on a still later 
 occasion, when Stephen and I were lunching with 
 him, he made a sign to me as Stephen was leaving 
 the drawing-room, and invited me to lend him 
 my arm. Lie had remembered, and was far from 
 bearing me any ill-will.
 
 DECLINING YEARS 331 
 
 It was during these declining years, when tramp- 
 ing together was no longer possible, that I grew 
 more intimate with Meredith. Either alone or 
 with some friend like Leslie Stephen, I would 
 arrange to call upon him towards the tea-hour. 
 Imprisoned though he was in his chair, the limpid 
 stream of his talk retained something of its old 
 fullness and fine flavour. An iteration now 
 and then of a bit of persiflage, or of a more serious 
 diatribe against some pet aversion of the hour, 
 did, no doubt, hint at the approach of an early 
 stage of the senile enfeeblement of memory. But 
 far more noticeable was the amount of freshness 
 and vigour of mind still conserved. 
 
 That for me, at any rate, the old fascination 
 of his talk was still a potent force was shown by 
 the fact that, though highly sensitive to the strain 
 of vocal expenditure, I was only too glad to en- 
 counter Meredith's deafness, unaided though the 
 exercise was by the aural tube which made 
 talking with Leslie Stephen in his last years 
 so easy. 
 
 These later outpourings of wisdom and jocosity 
 combined had a chastened sound. The laughter 
 grew less mordant, more genial and playful.^ 
 The finer sort of intellectual thrust was, I think, 
 less frequently brought off. The attacks on what 
 he particularly disliked or feared in the tendencies 
 of the hour were apt to grow sadder and more 
 plaintive. Yet any loss of the older power and 
 
 I How rich a strain of playful mirth he possessed is shown 
 in his letters to his three granddaughters. See "Letters," 
 pp. 555-6^ 591-2, and 595.
 
 332 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 brilliance of expression was made good for me 
 by the fuller revelation of his warm and deep 
 hmiianity ; and whatever changes may have been 
 noticeable, there was still a quite remarkable 
 output of original and striking comment. 
 
 Our last meeting has left on my mind an un- 
 usually vivid impression. It was the afternoon 
 of an October day (1908), and Meredith sat 
 in the little drawing-room with a shawl over his 
 knees. He had changed notably of late : the hair, 
 reduced to a few noble wisps, reminded me again 
 of Vatican busts. A nurse sat behind, ready to 
 render help when needed. Besides myself, there 
 were present Meredith's daughter and my son. 
 Looking out of the window one caught sight of 
 a donkey quietly grazing — the trusty creature that 
 drew the novelist in his chair. When tea was 
 served, Meredith declined milk, taking the beverage 
 a la Russe with a slice of lemon. But as if to 
 ridicule the idea of his being a confirmed invalid, 
 he bravely smoked a small cigar. For almost 
 the first time I heard him refer to his bodily ail- 
 ments. He now went to bed, he told me, at ten 
 o'clock in order to spare his eyes. He talked away, 
 according to his old wont, of things serious and 
 amusing. He touched once more on his bete noire 
 the priest, and on the frail human way of clinging 
 to the idea of a future life, of which he said the 
 cleric made capital. Apropos of the priest, he 
 referred in a half-despairing tone to a rumour 
 that J. S. Mill, when lying on his death-bed at 
 Avignon, had sent for one. He told us that he 
 had let Sir Oliver Lodge know his dissatisfaction
 
 FUTURE OF ENGLAND 333 
 
 with the later scientific gropings after evidences 
 of a future hfe. A soupQon of the prochvity of 
 age to praise the past appeared in some remarks 
 on pubhc affairs. Bright and hopeful as was his 
 normal outlook on England's future, he was at 
 this stage haunted by fears. He said that both 
 Germany and America were shooting ahead of 
 us, and that the Germans would be in England 
 in twenty years. Apropos of military capacity, he 
 remarked that the German had obstinacy, the 
 Frenchman elan ; that the English soldier used 
 to combine both, but had now lost the old qualities. 
 Nor did Lord Haldane's Territorial scheme seem 
 to him to offer an escape from the danger of the 
 situation. These forebodings were evidently the 
 result of his own reading and thinking. How 
 eagerly he scanned Europe's political sky was 
 suggested by the appearance close to his chair of 
 foreign journals like the Debats, of which, among 
 other journals, he told us, he was a great devourer. 
 The German and the Spanish dictionary which I 
 spied also lying on an adjacent bookstand may 
 have been used for the gathering of political as 
 well as literary information. 
 
 The tone of elegiac regret, so foreign to our 
 Meredith of earlier days, was heard in the plaint 
 that the old big red maples had disappeared from 
 Box Hill, only yellow ones being now left. Yet 
 instantly after uttering this doleful note, as if to 
 repossess himself of his hopeful normal self, he 
 began to descant on the beauty of the Box Hill 
 beeches in springtime, when golden light streams 
 through their leaves.
 
 334 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Toward the end, our happy interview w^as 
 threatened with an unpleasant contretemps." A 
 young man appeared at the gate of the Cottage, 
 and walked up towards the door. Meredith had 
 caught a glimpse of the figure, and I saw that 
 he was perturbed. But on nurse's inquiring, we 
 learned, to our relief, that the caller, a young 
 Welshman, had merely come to leave a card 
 by way of expressing his admiration for our 
 novelist and poet. 
 
 I think ]\Ieredith had felt during this visit that 
 he was not doing justice to himself. In any case, 
 towards the end of our chat, he made a splendid 
 effort to strike once more the joyous, and even 
 the rollicking note. His daughter told him of 
 some friends who were going to Biarritz. After 
 some good chaffing of the British golfer's behaviour 
 abroad, he remarked half regretfully, " I have 
 never seen Biarritz." But he instantly added, 
 " I can read about it, and that is better. I don't 
 need to try the water, or to face the line of waiters 
 when I leave." He then enlarged upon the last 
 draAvback, telling us of the trick which, on leaving 
 a foreign hotel, an acute " Yankee " had succeeded 
 in playing. He ran the gauntlet of the row 
 of expectant waiters, bowing politely to each ; 
 and upon reaching the head-waiter, after con- 
 gratulating him on the excellence of his staff, 
 disappeared through the portico before the empty- 
 handed officials had recovered from their bewilder- 
 ment. 
 
 In the days of Meredith's kindlier laughter 
 I came in for a good share of his railleries. He
 
 RAILLERY 335 
 
 enjoyed a story I must have told him early in 
 the eighties, of some unlucky attempts of mine 
 to diminish the musical ardour of a professional 
 pianist whom the gods had cruelly allotted me 
 for neighbour. But the more kindly teasings date 
 from the nineties onwards. Once, Avhen calling 
 upon him with Stephen, he told our friend that 
 I had subscribed to a Dutch fund for the Boer 
 wounded, and his way of betraying my secret sin 
 satisfied me that he was more amused than shocked 
 at this deviation from the lines of a correct 
 patriotism. 
 
 The richer bestowal of his genial and almost 
 tender mirth came in the last years, and by way 
 of letter. When I last visited him he called my 
 attention to the fact that Emile Faguet had just 
 published, in a feuilleton of the Debats, an important 
 criticism of the theory of laughter set forth in my 
 Essay. Meredith followed up this expression of 
 friendly interest in my writings by sending me 
 some delicious mock imitations of Faguet's 
 criticism. These were written in French and 
 attributed to Frenchmen, bearing wondrous names. 
 The pretty pretence was admirably kept up.^ 
 Besides this bit of delicious fooling he sent me 
 some characteristic jocosities apropos of a copy 
 of my " Studies of Childhood " which I had sent 
 him, as well as of an article on " Beauty and 
 Expression " which I published in the Edinburgh 
 
 I A French scholar told me that in these clever French 
 compositions there was only one unusual word which could 
 suggest that the hand which penned them was not that of a 
 Frenchman. See Meredith's " Letters," vol, ii, pp. 600-30.
 
 336 MY LIFE AND FRIENDS 
 
 Review.'^ I enjoyed it all immensely, and this 
 not merely because of the honour which his atten- 
 tions did me, but because I felt throughout that 
 Love had winged his laughter. 
 
 A more serious and more precious recognition 
 from Meredith was won for two articles of mine, 
 one on " Leslie Stephen," in the Atlantic Monthly, 
 the other on " The Sunday Tramps," in the 
 Cornhill. " Your article on Leslie Stephen," he 
 wrote me, " traverses the course of my knowledge 
 of him, like a torch lighting up the familiar country 
 shadowed by the death " ; and "your sketch of 
 the Tramps will be a memorial, and that of Leslie 
 is a portrait that brings him living before me." 
 Such words coming from so competent a judge 
 have counted among the highest rewards of my 
 literary efforts. 
 
 It is not easy to say just what Meredith has 
 been to me. His large mind, which included 
 capacities so diverse as imaginative creation, inter- 
 pretation of the comic spirit and sound practical 
 judgment, appealed to me on many sides. His 
 serene and hopeful spirit and his love of fun drew 
 me, partly by what was akin to me, partly, too, 
 by what was more alien, though highly prized 
 by me. Looking back on what I have reaped 
 from his books and his talks, I am disposed to 
 place him side by side with R. L. Stevenson as 
 the two prime fortifying influences in my later 
 life. Both had suffered, and both struck the 
 upper note in their shout of " Courage ! " 
 
 If in 1871, when I first heard his voice, some- 
 
 I See " Letters." vol. ii. pp. 480-1, 600-2, 609, 624, 629-80.
 
 FAREWELL 337 
 
 body had asked me, " Could you love Meredith ? " 
 I should have ridiculed the idea. To speak of 
 love in connection with one so strong, so master- 
 ful, and so brilliant would have seemed imper- 
 tinent. But, as he himself has told us, there 
 were more Merediths than one, and the mature 
 and mellow one I was privileged to know won 
 a love hardly less intense than the older feeling 
 of admiration. 
 
 23
 
 INDEX 
 
 Academy^ The, 162 
 Academy, the British, 242-3 
 Adamson, Professor, 184-5, 221 
 Agapemone, the, at Charlynch, 
 
 33-4 
 Aiager, Canon, 175-6, 206, 247 
 Aldeburgh, hoUdays at, 214 
 Allen, Grant, 190,' 197, 272 
 Alps, the, 125, 216-8, 232-5 
 Amalfi, 156-7 
 Anstey, Mr., in the Bridgwater 
 
 election case, 130-1 
 Armstrong, W. Savage, 248 
 Arnold, Matthew, on a British 
 
 Academy, 243 
 Athenceuvi, The, 168 
 Athen?eum Club, the, 183, 291-2 
 
 Bache, Walter, 222 
 
 Bagehot, Walter, 57, 132 
 
 Bain, Alexander, 72, 126-7, 131, 
 
 139, 145, 147, 163, 182-4, 186, 
 
 189, 244-5, 247, 290 
 Baptist College, see Regent's Park 
 BajTies, Spencer, 145-6, 169, 186, 
 
 234 
 Bebel, August, 144 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 66 
 Bellinzona, 124 
 Berens, E., 140 
 Berlin, 141-5 
 
 Besant, Sir Walter, 201, 213 
 Bismarck, 88, 97, 134, 141 
 Blake, Admiral, 7 
 Boer War, the, 242, 286-7, 319-20 
 
 Bohemia, travels in, 114 
 
 Bond, Francis, 219 
 
 Bradlaugh, 206-8 
 
 Bradley, F. H., 163, 168, 190 
 
 Bridges, Dr., 252 
 
 Bridgwater, in the forties, 3-9, 
 
 52-8 ; election days in, 56-8 ; 
 
 disfranchised for corruption, 127- 
 
 31 
 Bright, John, 55 
 Bristol and Exeter Railway, 4 
 Browning, Robert, 166 
 Burne-Jones, 249, 265 
 
 Cadenabbia, 160 
 
 Capri, 153-6 
 
 Carlyle, 269-70 
 
 Carr, Comyns, 164 
 
 Gary, Dr., 55 
 
 Cassel, opera at, 95 ; Sunday at, 
 
 98 
 Champneys, Basil, 209 
 Chapel-going, 20-3, 29-30, 36 
 Chapman, Dr., 136 
 Child psychology, study of, 238-9 
 Childhood, the author's, 9-45 
 Cholera epidemic, the, of 1849, 
 
 25 
 Christmas in the forties, 17-18 
 CUfford, W. K., 164, 169, 181, 223, 
 
 262, 301 
 CUfford, Mrs. W. K., 249 
 Clodd, Edward, 190, 214, 272 
 Cobden, 55 
 Coleridge, 5, 27 
 
 339
 
 340 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Compton, life at, 133 
 
 Comte, 269-70 
 
 Contemjjorary Beview, The, 162, 
 
 193, 199, 200 
 Copyright Act, the, 190 
 CornUll Magazine, The, 163, 192, 
 
 296 
 Crowpill, life at, 39-40 
 Crystal Palace, concerts at, 210 
 
 Daily Chronicle, The, supports the 
 Boer cause, 287 
 
 Daily Mail, The, reviews the 
 " Essay on Laughter," 242 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 134, 147, 164-5, 
 223-4, 307, 310-11 
 
 Davies, Llewelyn, 206 
 
 Davis, Dr. Benjamin, 63-4, 76 
 
 Dickens, 37 ; his readings, 47 
 
 " Dictionary of National Bio- 
 graphy, The," 301-2 
 
 Dixon, Hepworth, 65 
 
 Dohring, Herr, 145 
 
 Dresden, 111 
 
 Du Maurier, 176-7, 262 
 
 Dublin, visit to, 229-30 
 
 Dubois-Eeymond, 142 
 
 Duels in Germany, 93 
 
 Edgeworth, F. G., 164 
 
 Eliot, George, 136, 164, 181,259; 
 
 her Sunday gatherings, 260-6, 
 
 271 
 " Encyclopaedia Britannica," 145-6, 
 
 169, 186, 251 
 " Essay on Laughter," 242 
 Essays, collected, 147 
 Ewald, Professor, 76, 85-7; his 
 
 hatred of Prussia, 87-9, 98-9, 
 
 102-3, 278 
 Ewald, Frau, 88-9, 103 
 Examiner, The, 148, 162, 185 
 Eyre, Governor, 64, 75 
 
 Faguet, Emile, 242, 335 
 
 Family life in the forties, 9-25 et 
 seq. 
 
 Fiction, excursions into, 196; tastes 
 in, 211-12 
 
 Fischer, Kuno, 107 
 
 Foot, Harry, 64, 66, 75 
 
 Foote, Mr., prosecuted for blas- 
 phemy, 205-8 
 
 Fortnightly Bevieiv, The, 131, 133, 
 137-8, 145, 162, 172, 239 
 
 Fowler, Professor Thomas, 38 
 
 "Friendly Eivalry," 196 
 
 Fuller, Sir Thomas, 38 
 
 Galton, Francis, 182, 265 
 Garibaldi in London, 70-1 
 Garnett, Dr., 170-1, 247-8 
 Germans, one-sided nature of, 91 ; 
 
 Schwdrmerei of, 114 
 Germany, life in, 77-109 
 Glacier, fatal accident on a, 217-18 
 Gladstone, W. E., 240 
 Gnadau, Moravians at, 109-10 
 Gottingen, student days at, 76-104 
 Greenwood, Frederick, 133, 144 
 Grosser Winterburg, the, 112-13 
 Grossmith, George (the first), 39 
 Grote, George, 12^ 
 Grote Chair of Philosophy, 228 
 Gurney, Edmund, 166, 210, 224 
 Guy Fawkes Day at Bridgwater, 
 
 41 
 
 Halle, student days at, 105-9 
 Hamilton, Sir William, 73 
 Hampstead, life in, 173 ; the Heath, 
 
 174; society in, 177, 198 et 
 
 seq. 
 " Hampstead Tramps," the, 208-9 
 Hanover, annexation of by Prussia, 
 
 85, 91 
 Harcourt, Sir William, 184-5 
 Hardy, Thomas, 195 
 Harlesden, life at, 162-9 
 Harper's Magazine, 196
 
 INDEX 
 
 341 
 
 Harrison, Frederic, 165, 222, 262, 
 
 307 
 Heiligkreuz, 118-19 
 Heine, 82, 98 
 Heintze, Frau, 97-8, 126 
 Helmholtz, 139, 142, 144 
 Henle, Herr, 94 
 Hertz, Mrs., 165-7 
 Hei/se, Paul, 194 
 Hodgson, Shadworth, 164, 215, 
 
 226, 238, 249, 252-3 
 Hopkinson, Sir Alfred, 241 
 Howells, W. D., 195 
 " Howlers," 80 
 
 "Human Mind, The," 228, 317 
 Hutton, E. H., 184-5, 206 
 Huxley, 146, 169-70, 200, 206 
 Hyndman, H. M., 198 
 
 " Illusions," 189 
 
 Innsbruck, 117 
 
 International Congress of Psy- 
 chology, 230-2 
 
 Italy, travels in, 120-5, 149-61; 
 later years in, 254-6 
 
 Jackson, Dr. J. Hughlings, 172, 
 
 202 
 James, Henry, 195 
 James, WiUiam, 60, 221, 228, 249- 
 
 50, 252 
 " James Sully Philosophical and 
 
 Psychological Club of Kochester, 
 
 U.S.A.," 238 
 Japanese students, 222 
 Jenner, Sir William, 203 
 Jevons, Stanley, 177, 182, 184, 223 
 
 oachim, 69 
 Joachim, Frau, 144 
 Journalism, 137 
 Jowett, Benjamin, 218-19 
 
 Kennedy, Sir Alexander, 213, 229 
 Kinglake, A. W., 56-7, 66 ; unseated, 
 128 ; 131 
 
 Kneipen ov Kommers a,t Gottingen, 
 
 92 ; at Halle, 106, 108-9 
 Knibb, William, 55 
 Knowles, James, 193-4, 199-200 
 
 Lachmann family, the, 143 
 
 Ladd, Professor, 237 
 
 Lafitte, Pierre, 270 
 
 Leech, John, 171 
 
 Leipzig Fair, 110 
 
 Leland, Charles, 162 
 
 Lewes, Charles, 175, 213-4, 261 
 
 Lewes, G. H., 64, 136, 145, 147, 
 
 165, 181, 223, 259-66 
 Liszt, 69 
 Lombroso, 231 
 Lotze, 86, 99, 100, 184 
 Lynch, T. T., 67. 
 
 Maas, Max, 223 
 
 Macdonell, George, 246 
 
 Macready, 43 
 
 Manns, August, 210 
 
 Marks, A., 234 
 
 Martineau, James, 230 
 
 Massey, Gerald, 51-2 
 
 Maxse, Admiral, Meredith's letters 
 to, 134, 323 
 
 Medley, William, 76-7, 98 
 
 Mendips, the, 5 
 
 Meredith, George, 106, 133-5, 172, 
 206, 240, 242, 249, 261, 269, 307, 
 311, 314-15 ; at Box Hill (323- 
 37) ; conversational powers, 324- 
 8; declining years, 330-2; ideas 
 as to the German Peril, 333 
 
 Metaphysical Society, the, 199-201 
 
 Miall, Edward, 55 
 
 Mill, J. S., 64, 72-4, 107, 136, 160, 
 183, 332 
 
 Mind, 148, 164-5, 244, 287 
 
 Minto, William, 148, 164, 184-7 
 
 Moffat, Dr., 55 
 
 " Monday Pops " at St. James's 
 Hall, 68-9
 
 342 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Moravians at Gnadau, 109-10 
 Morgenstern, Dr., 78-9, 81 
 Morison, Cotter, 213, 267-76 
 Morley, John, 131 ; offers Mr. Sully 
 a post as tutor and secretary, 182 ; 
 133-8, 145 ; edits the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, 183; 184, 186, 268 
 Morris, William, 198, 249 
 Munich, 115-16 
 Miinsterberg, Hugo, 228 
 Music, early love of, 48-9 
 Myers, F. W. H., 230, 820 
 
 Naples, 150-2 
 Napoleon III, 140 
 Neurological Society, 202 
 Newman, F. W., 85 
 Newman, ,T, H,, 269 
 Nineteenth Centiirij, The, 169, 193 
 Norway, visits to, 219-21 
 Nuremberg, 115 
 
 Orrinsmith, Mrs., 249 
 
 Osborn, Colonel, 209, 224-7, 252, 
 
 273-4 
 " Outlines of Psychology," 190-1 
 Oxford, visit to, 145 
 
 Paestura, 157-8 
 
 Paget, Sir James, 263 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, The, 183-4, 192 
 
 Paris, 140 
 
 Parnell Commission, the, 208 
 
 Parret River, the, 4, 10; bore on 
 
 the, 40-1 
 Paul, Kegan, 165, 168 
 Payn, James, 192, 801 
 " Pessimism," 167-9, 188 
 Piatti, 69 
 
 Pitt-Eivers, General, 239 
 Plymouth Brethren at Bridgwater, 
 
 57-8 
 Pollock, Sir Frederick, 164, 201 
 Pompeii, 152-3 
 Pragmatism, 321 
 
 Prague, 114 
 
 Prince, Mr., becomes, " My Lord 
 the Prince," 58-4 
 
 Princeites, the, 53-4 
 
 Princess Royal, the, in Berlin, 
 141-3 
 
 Pro-Boers, 242, 286-7 
 
 Prussia, the King of, 88, 96 
 
 Prussian officialism, 77 
 
 Prussians in Hanover, the, 95-6 
 
 Psychical Research at the Inter- 
 national Congress of Psychology, 
 230-1 
 
 Psychology, child, 238-9 
 
 " Psychology, Outlines of," 190-1 
 
 " Psychology, The Teacher's Hand- 
 book of,""l91-3 
 
 Puppet-show, a primitive, 18 
 
 Quakers in Bridgwater, 23-4, 48-9 
 Quantocks, the, 5, 33 
 
 Ramsay, Sir William, 235 
 
 Reade, Charles, 65 
 
 Regent's Park Baptist College, 
 
 studying for the ministry at, 
 
 59-75 
 Bevue PhilosoiJhi^ue, 148 
 Ribot, Th„ 147-8, 184, 221, 228 
 Richet, Charles, 231, 236-7 
 Richter, 80 
 Ritter, 86 
 Robertson, Croom, 126, 148, 164, 
 
 168, 182, 184, 228-9, 318 
 Romanes, G. J., 171, 193-4, 249 
 Rome, 158, 60 
 Rossetti, 249 
 Rubinstein, 69 
 
 St, James's Hall, 68 
 
 St. John's Wood, life in, 169-73 
 
 Salerno, 157 
 
 Salmon, Dr., 230 
 
 Saturday Eeview,The, 133, 131 ,2&8 
 
 SavUe Club, the, 164, 215 252
 
 INDEX 
 
 343 
 
 Saxon Switzerland, the, 112 
 
 Schooldays, 26-45 
 
 Schopenhauer, 167 
 
 Schumann, Mme., 69 
 
 " Scientific Optimism," 169 
 
 Sedgemoor, 5, 7, 27 
 
 Shaw, Bernard, 199 
 
 Sicily, 254 ' 
 
 Sidgwick, Henry, 163, 201, 221, 
 228, 230, 243, 246, 277-87, 290-1 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, 165 
 
 Society of Authors, Incorporated, 
 the, 201-2 
 
 Solly, Herr, and family, 143 
 
 Somerville, Mrs,, 171 
 
 Sorrento, 153 
 
 Spectator, The, 184 
 
 Speculative Society, Hampstead, 
 198-9 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 72, 140, 145, 147, 
 169, 183-4, 202, 247, 277, 283 ; 
 peculiarities of, 289-93 ; Italian 
 and foreign appreciation of, 
 293-4; his Synthetic Philosophy, 
 294-5 
 
 Stephen, Sir LesHe, 160, 163, 166, 
 181, 192, 209, 240, 247, 263, 
 (296-315) ; edits the CornUll 
 Magazine, 296-8 ; organizes the 
 " Sunday Tramps," 299-312; edits 
 the " Dictionary of National 
 Biography," 301-2 ; at St. Ives, 
 312 : characteristics, 314-15 ; his 
 admiration of Meredith, 323 ; 
 336 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 194-6, 
 202, 215-16, 218, 271, 336 
 
 " Studies of Childhood," 239, 335 
 
 Sully family, the, 9 
 
 Sully, James, senr,, 8-9, 14-15, 
 24-5, 47-8, 54-6, 130-1 
 
 Sully, Mrs., senr., 8, 9, 14-15, 158 
 
 Sully, James, parentage and an- 
 cestry, 8 ; schooldays, 26-45 ; 
 studies for the ministry, 59-75; 
 
 student days in Germany, 
 77-109 ; early life in London, 
 126 ; appointment at Pontypool, 
 127 ; marriage, 127 ; employed 
 by Morley, 132 ; literary v/ork, 
 137 et seq. ; teaching appoint- 
 ments, 179-80, 182; elected 
 Grote Professor of Philosophy 
 and Logic, 228-9 ; University 
 honours, 236-7 ; retirement, 259; 
 life in Italy, 254-6 
 
 Sully, Mrs.. 127, 134, 159-60 
 
 Swinburne, 249 
 
 Switzerland, visits to, 124-5, 
 216-18, 232-5 
 
 Symonds, J. A,, 146, 216-17 
 
 Tarentella, the, at Capri, 155 
 
 Tauchnitz, Carl, 110-11 
 
 Taunton, schooldays at, 44-6 
 
 " Teacher's Handbook of Psycho- 
 logy," 191-3 
 
 Tennyson, 199, 201, 262-3 
 
 Ternon, M. and " Mile.," 42-3 
 
 Thackeray, 37 
 
 Tholuck, Professor, 105, 106, 109 
 
 Thomas, Abel, 66 
 
 Thompson, Mr., of the Aberdeen 
 University Press, 191 
 
 Trinity College, Dublin, Tercen- 
 tenary of, 229-30 
 
 Tymms, T. V., 66 
 
 Tyndall, Professor, 182, 206 
 
 Tynte, Colonel, 56 
 
 Tyrol, the, 116-18 
 
 Union, the, at Eegent's Park, 65 
 University of London, Convocation 
 
 of, 203 
 University studies in London, 71-2 
 
 Val d'Annivers, 232-4 
 Venice, 120-4 
 Venn, John, 221 
 Verona, 120
 
 344 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Vincent, Henry, 67 
 
 Vischer, Professor, 101 
 
 Volunteers, the, 54 
 
 Von Hartmann, 168 
 
 Von Pertz family, the, 192-3 
 
 Wagner, 111 
 
 Wallaschek, Dr. Richard, 222 
 Ward, W. G., 200 
 Watchet, holidays at, 33 
 Watts, G. F., 133 
 Watts-Dunton, T., 164 
 Webb, Sydney, 199 
 Weisshorn Hotel, 232-4 
 Welby, Lady Victoria, 249-50 
 West, Alfred, 98, 277-8 
 Westermarck, E., 222 
 Westmi7ister Eeview, The, 136 
 
 Wilhelm I, 141 
 
 " Will to Believe, The," 319 
 
 Williams, Sir George, 51 
 
 Williams, John, 51 
 
 Wilson, E. D. J., 136 
 
 Wittekind, 108 
 
 Wittenberg, jubilee of union with 
 HaUe, 106-8 
 
 Women, admission of to University 
 studies, 203 
 
 Women's Training College, Cam- 
 bridge, lectureship at, 191-2 
 
 Wundt, 99, 139, 168, 184, 189 
 
 Yeomanry, the, 54 
 Yeovil, schooldays at, 42-3 
 Young Men's Christian Association, 
 51 
 
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